The Disappearance (32 page)

Pulling the hotel sheet out of his file, he checks the number Doug called that night. It’s a different number from the one on the interview sheet.

He dials the Malibu number. The phone rings. One, two, three times. He doesn’t want to leave a message. He starts to hang up.

“Hello?” A woman’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Is this the Buchinsky beach residence?” he asks.

“Yes?”

It hits him. How could he have overlooked something so obvious?

“Is this Mrs. Buchinsky?”

The woman opens the door. “Thanks for seeing me on short notice,” he says as graciously as he can. She’s wearing a cotton shirt over her two-piece Lycra bathing suit. “Luke Garrison.” He offers his hand.

His name doesn’t seem to register with her. “Helena Buchinsky.” She shakes, a firm grip, gives him a good eyeballing. “You don’t look like a D.A. type.”

He smiles. “I don’t? How’s a D.A. type supposed to look?” What an accent! he thinks. It gives her an offbeat charm—not that her casual, natural voluptuousness isn’t itself offbeat in the land of anorexic blondes with pumped-up breasts.

“Buttoned-down. Conventional.” She stares at him again, smiling.

He’s dressed pretty conventionally. Still, there’s the goatee, the ponytail. Not regulation district attorney mufti.

She’s liking what she sees, he thinks, feeling the flirtation, which comes as naturally to her as breathing. This is a woman who goes after what she likes, he bets himself. “The times they are a-changin’,” he tells her.

“I’m all for that,” she says. “Come on in.”

She leads him through the house towards the covered sundeck out back. “You want a Coke or something?”

“If it’s no trouble.” He’s walking stiffly; his body, still sore from the bullet intrusion, froze up on him during the ride down.

“No trouble at all.” She veers off into the kitchen, comes back a moment later with two cold cans of Coca-Cola. Handing him one, she leads him out onto the deck.

They sit opposite each other in white Adirondack chairs. Everything in this house is white or off-white: the canvas-covered sofas, the wicker chairs, the bleached wood floors. An extension of the outdoors, of the sand and the sun. She runs a hand through her thick long hair, which has been recently highlighted, golden streaks running through the black. Her tanned, oiled legs are crossed, but not primly—he has a clear shot all the way up her thighs. She has a bikini wax.

He takes his eyes off her legs and looks at her face. Not elegant, but open. “Cheers,” he says in toast, raising the sweating can.

“Cheers to you,” she answers. She looks at him a moment, a questioning look on her face. Like she’s onto him?

He didn’t lie to her. He didn’t tell her the whole truth, either. He didn’t tell her he isn’t a district attorney; he didn’t correct her now, when she brought it up. She hadn’t asked him point-blank, so he didn’t have to lie or make up some convoluted answer.

He had called the number, told her he was given it by Ray Logan, the district attorney in the Emma Lancaster murder-kidnap case, that he was another lawyer working on the case (implying that he and Ray were working together, but not stating so directly), that they were interviewing everyone who knew any of the principals in preparation for the upcoming trial—such as her and her husband, who were acquaintances of Doug Lancaster. “And Glenna Lancaster,” she had told him during the call. “I’ve met her a couple of times. While they were still married.”

He went on to say he needed more information, could he come down and talk to her briefly?

She said sure, and here he is.

“How long have you known Doug Lancaster?” he asks.

“Several years. He and my husband are both in the business.”

The television and film business. To her, there is no other. Languidly, she recrosses her legs. They’re fine, and she knows it, playing with him easily.

And how long have you been fucking your husband’s friend? he thinks. Doug is a philanderer deluxe, and if you’re not after the baby-fat stuff, this is as good as it gets.

Doug Lancaster was with her that night. He’d bet the farm on that. Doug knew the husband was out of town. He called—he could even have been returning her call—she told him to come on down, and he did, at a gallop.

Which he could never tell the police. The dead daughter’s pregnant, that same night the father’s out fucking a friend’s wife, God knows what the mother’s doing, she could be getting it on with the murder suspect. A nice picture to put in front of a jury.

Luke opens his notebook. “Doug Lancaster placed a call to this residence on the night of his daughter’s kidnapping, at approximately one in the morning.” He looks up at her.

Her composure isn’t ruffled. “Yes, I recall that.”

“You spoke to him?” That’s a surprise, that she admits it so readily.

She nods. “I did.”

“Could you tell me the gist of the conversation, how long it lasted, and so forth. Isn’t that late, getting a call at one in the morning?”

She stares at him like he’s from Mars, then breaks out laughing, a real belly laugh. “In this business you get phone calls around the clock. If Roseanne or Dustin or Jeffrey or Steven wants to talk to you, it doesn’t matter what time it is. One o’clock’s pretty reasonable.”

“So you were up?”

She nods. “I’m a night owl. I don’t need much sleep, I like to sit out on my deck here and watch the waves in the dark. It’s wonderful.” She smiles. “It’s especially wonderful with a glass of Dom Pérignon nearby.”

“I’m sure it is.” He gets back on track. “What did you and Doug Lancaster talk about?”

“He wanted to talk to Ted.”

“Your husband.”

“Yes.”

“And what did you tell Mr. Lancaster?”

“That Ted wasn’t here.”

“And that was it?”

“Pretty much.” A swallow from the can, another crossing of the legs.

Is she waiting for me to make a move?
“Did you and he talk at all?”

She smiles. “Oh, sure. We gossiped for a few minutes. He was upset that he’d forgotten Ted was leaving town—they had some unfinished business. I told him he’d have to wait until Ted returned.”

“And that was it?” he asks.

She stares at him. “That was it,” she says, as if challenging him to say otherwise.

“So to make sure I have this straight,” he says. “Neither you nor your husband saw Doug Lancaster on the night his daughter was kidnapped. He made a short phone call to your house, you spoke to him briefly, and that was it.”

She nods. “You’ve got that right.”

“You didn’t invite him to stop by for a nightcap on his way up the coast. Since you’re a night owl and would be up.” He smiles at her, his look drifting down to her legs now, deliberately, obviously.

Just as obviously, she yet again recrosses them, rubbing one against the other. “No,” she says softly, “I didn’t do that.” She smiles back at him. “My husband wouldn’t go for that, even with an old friend like Doug.”

He feels reckless—he’s been shot at, wounded. Right now, he’s on a pass. “What if your husband didn’t know?” he asks boldly. “Just a drink between friends, a glass of Dom Pérignon at two in the morning.”

She shakes her head, a slow rotation, the smile still fixed, still languid. “Doug Lancaster wasn’t here that night,” she says smoothly. “Why?” she asks. “Did someone say he was? Did he?”

He closes his notebook. “No. I was just making sure.” He gets up, trying not to show his stiffness. “Thanks for your time.”

She walks him to the front door. As he’s about to go, she puts a hand on his arm. “I saw you on television the other night,” she says. “You’re better looking in person. But of course, no one’s going to look their best an hour after being shot and almost killed.”

He almost laughs out loud—she’s known all along. “Well, thanks for talking to me anyway,” he says. Hell of a woman; he hopes Doug appreciates her. He doubts that he does.

“I have nothing to hide. Doug Lancaster wasn’t here … that night. And that’s all that matters, isn’t it?” Her hand is still on his arm.

“Yes,” he agrees. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s all that matters.”

Driving back up the coast again, Luke has one eye on the rearview mirror. His cell phone sits on the seat beside him, ready for a 911 call at the slightest provocation. He’s jumpy, he admits it—he doesn’t know if he’s being followed, or what the deal is. If Doug Lancaster really is behind all this, which increasingly he thinks is the case, someone could be bird-dogging him right now, waiting for an empty stretch of road to try something.

It would be a risky business, a broad-daylight attack. Logan and Williams are on full alert now; if anything else happens to him their asses are in a sling. Hopefully they’ve spoken to Doug by now, told him to cool it, whether he was the assailant on the bluffs or not.

Going to see Helena Buchinsky was a calculated risk. She’ll call Doug, he’ll freak. But that’s part of the plan, to ratchet the pressure up on him, see if he can be flushed out.

If he’s the killer.

The situation is getting gnarly. Initially, Luke’s looking into Doug Lancaster’s whereabouts on the night of his daughter’s kidnapping was a wild grasping at any straw blown up by the wind. Now, with Helena Buchinsky’s flat denial of his being with her that night, the matter of where Doug was becomes a major issue, a powerful weapon for their defense.

She could be lying about Doug’s not being with her, to protect herself and her marriage. If Doug does come under suspicion, and they were together, would she maintain her denial?

The converse, if there is one, is much more dire. What if Doug truly wasn’t with her that night? Where the hell was he, then?

Doug Lancaster lives in Hope Ranch now, another of Santa Barbara’s exclusive enclaves. It’s closer to the station; on nice days, when he’s feeling vigorous, he rides his mountain bike to work. Ever since his divorce from Glenna he’s buried himself in his work, often going in before seven in the morning and staying until the eleven o’clock news wrapup. Right now, however, he’s at home, awaiting his appointment.

Ray Logan drives his county-issue Buick Park Avenue through the tree-lined streets towards Doug’s house. Seated next to him is his senior investigator, Arthur Lovett. Lovett’s been the lead investigator in a good dozen murder cases. He was Luke Garrison’s number-one man when Luke was the chief. He still likes and respects Luke, and knows that the feeling is mutual. The two men had a drink together when Luke first came back to town, a nice couple of hours spinning old war stories. Lovett was upset that Luke was doing this, but it wasn’t his place to say that.

They’re adversaries now, of course. But there won’t be the kind of personal animosity between them that Luke and Ray Logan feel towards each other—the old king (even though he’s still a young man), now deposed, versus the successor who is trying to fill those big shoes, carve out his own space, and fight the old image, all at the same time.

“What do you think?” Lovett asks now. His boss is tense, he can read the body language. Logan’s gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles are actually white.

“I don’t know” is Logan’s honest reply. “You know me—I don’t like surprises, and I’m starting to feel edgy, like one’s coming. I don’t want to find out that Doug Lancaster hasn’t been a hundred percent straight with us.” He navigates a turn up a narrow road that leads to the gated driveway.

“Have you talked to the woman?” Lovett asks. “Since she talked to Luke?”

“Ronnie talked to her.” Ronnie White is a deputy D.A. who does much of Logan’s personal assisting. “Her story is consistent from when we interviewed her a year ago. She and Doug weren’t together that night.”

Lovett thinks about that. “Then Doug is going to be on the hot seat. Luke Garrison’s going to put him on it, and keep him there. This could turn out to be the Doug Lancaster trial instead of the Joe Allison trial.” He runs a hand over his bald, sun-blotched pate. “I know how Luke thinks.”

“Doug Lancaster doesn’t have to prove where he was that night,” Logan says pessimistically.

Lovett gives his boss a withering look. “Ray. Listen to yourself. Maybe by the book he doesn’t have to have a good alibi, but you don’t want to have to face a jury during summation and not have that question answered. Do you?” he asks pointedly.

Logan shakes his head. “No.” His grip tightens on the wheel again.

They announce themselves through the guard box. The gate swings open and they drive through, winding up a long eucalyptus-lined lane to Doug’s house. Like his old house, this one has views that go on and on. “It used to be everything Doug Lancaster touched turned to gold,” Logan comments as he parks in the circular driveway in front of Doug’s opulent house.

“Not anymore, poor bastard,” Lovett replies as he gets out. He looks out over the manicured yard to the ocean, a hundred yards below where they’re standing. “He’d give all this up in a heartbeat to have his daughter back.”

Logan turns to him. “I hope so,” he says, almost in a whisper, as if he’s afraid Doug might be listening in from some hidden outpost.

“You’re really worried about this.”

Logan nods gravely. “What’s a prosecutor’s worst nightmare?” he asks. He answers his own question: “To be trying the wrong man.”

Lovett grimaces. “That’s the second worst nightmare,” he corrects his boss.

“What’s worse?” Logan asks, his voice betraying his nervousness.

“To be trying the wrong man and have it blow up in your face.”

Lancaster’s new study is different from his old one. It’s light and airy, devoid of ghosts. “How are you doing?” Doug asks. “We’re going to trial in a few weeks,” he says, immediately taking control of the meeting they called. “Are we ready?”

“We’re doing fine, Mr. Lancaster,” Logan says staunchly. “We’re as ready to go as we can be. At this point in time.”

“Good.” Doug glances at his watch, as if he’s running late for an important meeting, more important than this one. “What is it you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Your whereabouts on the night your daughter was taken from her room,” Lovett says, deliberately blunt. “For openers,” he adds provocatively.