The Disappearance (33 page)

Doug stares at Lovett as if the man’s slow on the uptake—a year slow. “In my hotel, in L.A.,” he says, answering the question. “You know that,” he continues, almost dismissively. He looks from one public servant to the other. Then the last part of Lovett’s comment sinks in. “For openers
what
?”

Logan steels himself. This is going to be a bitch. “You weren’t in your hotel that night, Mr. Lancaster.” He isn’t comfortable calling him Doug, not under these circumstances. “Not between one and nine in the morning.” He recedes into his chair, as if trying to put as much distance between him and Doug Lancaster as possible.

Doug stares at him. “What are you talking about, Ray? Of course I was.”

Another head shake, this one more emphatic. “No. You weren’t. We have witnesses who saw you leave, and saw you return.” He pauses. “Luke Garrison has already talked to them. He’s ahead of us on some of this, which is outrageous, considering we’re on the same side and he isn’t.”

Doug starts to flash an answer, catches himself, hesitates in mid-move out of his chair, settles back in. He looks from Logan to Lovett. They’re staring at him with intensity. “I … I … that’s not true.”

Logan gets up and approaches Doug. This is going badly. He doesn’t care who Doug Lancaster is or how powerful he is, he can’t abide one of his key players lying to him. The whole case could unravel. “We
know
you weren’t at the hotel, like you told the sheriff a year ago,” he says, working to control his anger. “So let’s have it—where were you? You have to give us something credible, or we are going to be in trouble. All of us.”

Lancaster looks lost, shaking his head back and forth, like someone trying to will a bad dream away.

“You made a phone call to Ted and Helena Buchinsky right before one in the morning,” Lovett says, boring in behind Logan. “You spoke to Helena Buchinsky.”

Doug starts to protest. “No, I—”

“She spoke to you,” Lovett says, cutting Doug off. “She’s already told us she spoke to you, that she told you her husband was out of the country, which you had known but apparently forgotten.” He looks over at his boss—they’re on the same wavelength, so he goes for it. “What we’d like to know is, was the call intended for her, Mr. Lancaster, rather than her husband? Double-checking to make sure her husband was
out
of the country, so you could come on over and see her?”

Lancaster is startled by this aggressive and confrontational questioning. “No. I was trying to get him. I really did forget.”

“So you weren’t with her that night,” Lovett continues. “Which she swears is the case. She says you weren’t there.”

“Well, then …”

Ray Logan’s seething inside. They’ve been lied to, and they’ve been building a case based, in significant measure, on what’s now proving to be false information. “Is Helena Buchinsky your mistress?” he asks bluntly.

Lancaster flies out of his chair. “What the hell!?”

Logan puts up a restraining hand. “You’ve had various affairs over the years, Doug.” He uses the first name now, forget the deferential treatment. “So we have to assume—
and so will Luke Garrison
,” he emphasizes, “that you and this Buchinsky woman were—are—lovers, and that’s where you were intending to go when you called her late that night.”

Doug looks away. “I can’t say she and I are … were … lovers.” His voice is starting to take on a tone of desperation “Her husband is a close friend and business colleague. An accusation like that would be ruinous, disastrous.”

“If you say so,” Ray Logan responds. “But if you had been with her, you’d have an alibi. As things stand now, you don’t. So once again. Where were you?”

Doug looks at them. “I … I can’t tell you.”

Logan can’t believe what he just heard. “Mr. Lancaster.” He’s formal again. “This is serious. You have to tell us.”

“I know it’s serious. But I can’t. I have a legitimate reason why.” He looks at them almost beseechingly. “I’m not the one on trial. I’m the one who lost his child.”

Logan feels impotent, manipulated. “It’s your decision. But it’s going to seriously cripple us.”

Lovett horns in. “What about Sunday night?” he asks.

“Sunday night?” Doug asks, not connecting. Or, more likely, faking it, Logan thinks darkly. This man is digging his own grave with this unfathomable behavior. “The night Luke Garrison was shot.”

Lancaster stares at him in angry disbelief. “You can’t think I had anything to do with that. How could you think that?”

Ray Logan eases out of his chair to get closer to this man who could be jeopardizing the case of his, Logan’s, life. “We have to think of the possibility. Luke’s going to, he’s going to make a huge stink about it,” he says as calmly as possible, ticking the salient points off on his fingers. “You’re a property owner at the Hollister Ranch, so you have access, which is very important—the police have to assume that the shooter had easy access, in and out. Otherwise, it’s too risky. Two, you own rifles, don’t you?”

Lancaster stares hard at him. “Yes,” he answers gruffly. “I own rifles, I own shotguns, I own pistols. So do millions of other people.”

“Not many who have property at Hollister,” Logan counters. “That’s what’s so troubling, Mr. Lancaster. Three,” another finger raised, “and worst, you’ve been in contact with Luke, threatening him, God knows what.” He’s losing it, he can feel he’s losing it, and he doesn’t care, he can’t help himself. “Why in the world did you do that?” he says heatedly, unable to keep his temper in check any longer. “Didn’t I warn you
not
to have contact with him? Can’t you see how that compromises us, and everything we’re trying to do? For
you
!”

Doug slumps back into his chair. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to.”

Logan’s got to get out of here, the tension’s overwhelming. “Okay,” he says. “Sunday night.” A longer pause than he would like—given Doug’s attitude, he’s fearful of asking this next question. “You can alibi yourself for then.”

“I was here,” Doug says.

“Not alone, I hope?”

Calmly: “Most of the time.”

Logan looks over at Lovett. His investigator is shaking his head in shattered incredulity. “Can you produce someone—anyone—who will vouch for where you were between about eight and ten that night?”

“No, I can’t. I was here, by myself. I was working.”

Logan’s starting to itch from anxiety. His shirt feels clammy on his back. “Where do you keep your rifles?”

Doug hesitates. “At the ranch.”

“I’m going to send someone out from the sheriff’s office to impound them temporarily. I hope you understand why.”

“Do I have to go along with this? I’m not accused of anything … am I?”

Logan shares a look with Lovett. “No. But we can get authorization to search for them if you don’t cooperate. Look,” he says, “we’re going to do it. With or without your assistance.”

Doug looks unhappy at the prospect. With a show of resignation: “All right. If that’s what you need. I’m beginning to feel like
I’m
on trial here.”

“There are holes in your story, Mr. Lancaster,” Lovett explains, taking the heat for his boss. “We need to fill them in. Call our office when you’ve located them and we’ll pick them up. You’ll get them back as soon as we run tests on them.”

There’s nothing more to be done here now. “We’re leaving,” Logan says. “Your mysterious whereabouts could come back to haunt us,” he warns Doug.

Sitting in his chair, Doug looks like all the bones and organs have been sucked out of him, leaving a shell. “I didn’t kill Emma,” he says plaintively. “Never, never. And I didn’t try to kill Luke Garrison, either.” He looks up at them. “I admit I may have pushed too hard, regarding Luke. I felt it was something I had to do. But kill him? No.”

Luke, sitting in his office as he reads over some transcripts for the umpteenth time, is frustrated. Doug Lancaster’s whereabouts on the night of the shooting are unaccountable—Sheriff Williams personally called Luke to relay the information as soon as Ray Logan had met with him to recount his frustrating interview with Lancaster. The anger, disgust, and fear in the sheriff’s voice came through loud and clear over the phone. Williams is still convinced Allison killed Emma, but he’s not proud about the way he’s handled the case, especially his kid-glove treatment of the Lancasters.

Over and over, Luke finds himself drawn to two anomalies in the growing mountain of information.

The first has to do with Emma Lancaster’s key ring, the most damning piece of evidence against Allison. If Emma was being abducted, who would want it? She wouldn’t be taking it, not if she was snatched against her will. The only reason she might have brought it with her would be if she was a willing participant, and needed to get back into the house later. Even then, that’s a dubious premise, because she could come back in the same way she left, through the outside door to her bedroom. The key wasn’t for that door, so it wouldn’t have mattered. It would make a lot more sense that the key ring was lost or misplaced somewhere else. Conceivably it could have been in Allison’s car, and when he found it he tossed it in his glove compartment and forgot about it. It’s questionable whether he would have known it was Emma’s, anyway.

The second piece that has always troubled him is the tissue of circumstances around Allison’s initial stop-and-search. It’s obvious by now that pulling him over on suspicion of drunk driving was contrived, as was the opened bottle of whiskey inside the car (how convenient), which prompted the search. Then the key chain buried inside his glove compartment under a pile of junk. And the condoms at his house, which his girlfriend asserts he doesn’t use.

The arresting officer’s testimony has too many what-ifs. Luke needs to explore it deeper. Without that dubious arrest, search, and seizure, the entire case would be dormant. Joe Allison would be in Los Angeles, climbing towards anchorman stardom; Luke and Riva would be up north, marking time with their lives; and the mystery of who killed Emma Lancaster would still be unsolved.

In a strange, seemingly inexplicable but fundamental way, he’s glad this happened, even including the shooting that could have been fatal regardless of his perception of the incident. Something had to happen to break him out of the doldrums his life had been in. His demons had been running his life.

Now, one by one, he’s shedding them.

Doug Lancaster owns one rifle, a Remington 700 .308, that matches the caliber of the weapon used for the assault on Luke Garrison. Sheriff Williams accompanies it to the state testing facility in Soledad, two hundred miles upstate.

“Not the same weapon,” the head of the lab informs him, after the rifle is fired and they compare the bullets with the ones found at Hollister Ranch.

“You’re sure.”

“Positive.”

“Thanks.” A tremendous feeling of relief. If the shells had matched, the egg on their faces would have made an omelet the size of Rhode Island.

He calls down to Ray Logan, who’s been hanging around his office, waiting for the results. Logan, while also relieved, still has doubts. “Lancaster could be holding out on us. He could’ve ditched the real rifle.”

“He didn’t do it, Ray,” the sheriff says. He’s holding on to his weakness for Lancaster. Or maybe what he represents. He isn’t sure anymore.

“You have a vested interest in this,” Logan reminds him. “We all do. But we can’t go into this with blinders on. Lancaster’s having no alibi for either night is giving me a case of the hives. I’m nervous as hell, I don’t mind telling you.”

“So am I,” the sheriff agrees. “But put it in perspective, Ray,” he counsels. Logan’s still a relative tenderfoot. He, on the other hand, has been around the block a thousand times. “You know Doug Lancaster. He’s a good guy at heart. Do you honestly think this man could have murdered his own daughter and then hidden her body like it was done? I can’t buy that, regardless of whatever stupid things he’s done. You don’t know how you’d react to something like that. It could drive you crazy.”

“Yeah,” Logan concedes. He is relieved about the rifle tests.

“You know, the security up at the ranch is lax,” the sheriff reminds his D.A. counterpart. “Anyone can get in and out of there. We can’t assume that whoever shot at Luke is a parcel holder. It could be any asshole with a grudge. This could be something from Luke’s past, an old-time wound that isn’t healed. Luke Garrison put a lot of people in jail,” he reminds Luke’s successor. “There are scores of men out there who would like to see him dead.”

“Maybe.” Logan is not as sanguine as the sheriff. “But none of them ever tried to kill Luke until now.”

“Luke’s been missing in action for three years,” Williams reminds him. “Now he’s back, and he’s high profile.”

“I have a problem with the timing,” Logan says doggedly. “Too coincidental.”

“You might call Luke and give him the news,” Williams says.

“I’d rather you do it. He and I are adversaries, in case you’ve forgotten.”

The sheriff laughs to himself. “No, Ray. I haven’t forgotten.”

He hangs up. Chickenshit bastard, he thinks. We hand you an airtight case and you punch holes in it. Luke Garrison never would have done it that way. Luke Garrison would have run this one right into the end zone.

He misses Luke. But Luke has to go down.

Luke takes the news about the rifle testing with equanimity. If Doug was the shooter, he wouldn’t have turned the weapon over to be used as evidence against him. “Did you take tire castings from up on the bluff?” he asks the sheriff.

“Yes, SOP. A standard truck tire, probably Goodyear, the kind used on a light truck or SUV. There’s plenty of them out there. But we’re working it. We’re not taking this lightly, Luke. I mean that,” Williams says.

“Good. I’m getting tired of seeing your boys every time I step out my door.”

“They’re there for your protection.”

“I’m glad of that,” Luke says. “But they remind me there’s someone still out there who’s trying to kill me. I wish whoever it is wasn’t out there.”

“We’re doing our best. Something will turn up.” A pause. “In the meantime, don’t do anything rash. We want you alive. I still think of you as a friend, Luke, even if we’re on opposite sides now.” He hangs up.