The Other Side of Silence (16 page)

TWO

F
ALLON TURNED TO PEER across the room. He hadn’t expected anything walking over here, but he’d finally caught a piece of luck. He hesitated, watching the man in the booth hoist a pint of Guinness. Brace him here and now? Or wait until he was finished and then follow him and brace him when he was somewhere by himself? Either way, he would have to do it without the Ruger for leverage. The sidearm was still locked inside the Jeep.

He went to the booth, walking slow, getting a read on Ulbrich on the way. Midfifties, heavy-set, craggy features, close-cropped iron-gray hair. Wearing a short-sleeved blue shirt, no tie, in deference to the warm weather. There was a sports jacket folded neatly on the seat beside him. If he was armed, it was probably a hideout piece and he’d have to be crazy to flash it in here.

“Sam Ulbrich?”

Ulbrich looked up, cocked his head to one side when he didn’t recognize Fallon. “That’s me.”

“My name’s Fallon.” No reaction. “I’d like to talk to you.”

“Business?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I’ve just ordered lunch. First food I’ve had a chance at all day— I’ve been on a job in Lemon Grove since seven. Join me and we can talk while we eat. Or if you’d rather wait until afterward, my office isn’t far . . .” “Here’ll do.”

“Corned beef’s the house specialty,” Ulbrich said. “Lamb stew with black pudding’s good, too, if you like black pudding.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Guinness? Ale?”

“Just talk.”

Ulbrich shrugged, lifted his glass again as Fallon sat down opposite. On his right forearm was a faded tattoo of the Marine Corps EGA, a spread-winged American eagle holding in its beak an unfurled banner with the words
Semper Fi
emblazoned on it. Ulbrich saw him looking at it, said, “Four and out in the early seventies. You ever in the military?”

“Army. MPs. Four years.”

“MPs, huh? I went into police work when I got out. San Diego force for fifteen years.”

Fallon said nothing.

“See any action on your tour?”

“No.”

“Me, neither. Came close, though. My company was in Saigon, just sent over from the Philippines, when the war ended.” Ulbrich drank again. “I was lucky. Sounds like we both were.”

Fallon was silent again.

“So. What can I do for you, Mr. Fallon?”

“You can tell me where to find Casey Dunbar and her son.”

Like tossing a dud grenade. A raised eyebrow was Ulbrich’s only reaction. His gaze remained steady on Fallon’s eyes, its only expression one of curiosity. “What’s your interest in the Dunbars?”

“I’m a friend of Casey.”

“What’s your interest in the Dunbars?”

“I’m a friend of Casey.”

“Is that right? Then you ought to know where to find her.”

“She’s missing. She’s been missing since Monday night.”

“Is that right?” Ulbrich said again. “Well, I’m sorry to hear it. But why come to me?”

“You found her ex-husband for her.”

“I wish that was true, but it isn’t. I traced Court Spicer to Vegas, but that was as far as I got. I might’ve been able to find him eventually if I’d stayed on the case, but she couldn’t afford to keep paying the bills—”

“Laughlin,” Fallon said. “Bullhead City.”

“I don’t get you.”

“Rented house. Sixty Desert Rose Lane.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

Another dud. Fallon felt uncertainty moving in on him again. He’d convinced himself Ulbrich was his man, yet the responses he was getting didn’t support it. Not a whisper of guilt.

Ulbrich said, “So Mrs. Dunbar is missing. Monday night, you said? Where? What circumstances?”

Fallon said carefully, “The last I saw of her was in Laughlin.”

“Laughlin. Why go there?”

“Hunting for Court Spicer.”

“What made you think that’s where he was?”

“Lucky piece of information.”

“Luck’s the name of the game. Find him?”

That put Fallon up against the line again. Tell Ulbrich that Spicer was dead, murdered, see what kind of reaction that bought him? No. The situation here was different than it had been with the Rossis and Bobby J. He’d be leaving himself wide open if Ulbrich wasn’t involved. He didn’t know the man, how law-abiding he actually was. Ex-cop, licensed private investigator . . . he might take that kind of knowledge straight to the Laughlin authorities.

He said, “No. Casey Dunbar disappeared before we could.”

“Two of you hunting her ex together,” Ulbrich said musingly. “You’re not in the investigation business yourself, are you?”

“No. I told you, she’s a friend.”

“She didn’t mention your name when she hired me.”

“I haven’t known her that long. How we got involved is a long story. And not relevant right now.”

“So what it amounts to, you’ve been playing detective.”

“If you want to put it that way. Four years MP duty, dozen years security work for a company in L.A. I’m not exactly an amateur.”

A waiter appeared bearing a steaming plate of corned beef and cabbage, set it down in front of Ulbrich. “Another Guinness,” Ulbrich said to him. Then, to Fallon, “Sure you don’t want anything?”

Fallon leaned back away from the mingled aromas of the food. They made the eggs he’d had earlier churn in his stomach.

Ulbrich fell to with gusto. Between bites, he said, “You still haven’t told me how it happened. Mrs. Dunbar’s disappearance.”

“She was at the motel where we were staying. I went out to see if I could track down Spicer and when I got back she was gone. No note, nothing— just gone. I haven’t heard a word from her since.”

“So you’ve been hunting her for two days.”

“That’s right.”

“What about Spicer? He kidnapped his son, he’s capable of snatching his ex-wife too. You must know there’s no love lost between them.”

“I know, but Spicer’s not responsible.”

“No? How do you know?”

“Reasons I don’t want to go into.”

“Suit yourself. If not Spicer, who else? Somebody he knew in Vegas?”

“That’s what I thought at first. And that’s where I went from Laughlin.” “And you didn’t find out anything and now you’re here talking to me. Looking for leads, or have you got some screwy idea I’m mixed up in it?”

“Are you?”

“Hell, no.” Ulbrich didn’t sound any more offended than he did guilty. Cabbage juice drooled from one corner of his mouth; he licked off some of it, wiped the rest away with his napkin. “What possible reason could I have for going to Laughlin, making a former client disappear?”

“I can think of one, if you did locate Spicer and found out about his sideline.”

“What sideline would that be?”

“Blackmail.”

The eyebrow went up again. “Blackmail. Well, well.”

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“I’ve been around too long to be surprised by much of anything. So? Why would this blackmail angle interest me?”

“You could’ve tried to cut yourself in. Or to put the bite on him to keep quiet.”

Ulbrich thought that was funny. He laughed, nearly choked on the hunk of corned beef he’d stuffed into his mouth, coughed, swallowed the rest of his beer, coughed some more. “Man,” he said when the fit had passed, “you’ve got some imagination. Either that, or you’re so desperate you’re grabbing at any straw that blows by in the wind.”

“Seems plausible to me.”

“Not if you know Sam Ulbrich, it isn’t. I’ve been in one kind of law enforcement or another for nearly thirty years, Fallon. Spotless record. I’d never do anything to jeopardize it.”

“What about the time you were brought up before the state board of licenses?”

Ulbrich sobered. “You know about that? Yeah, well,” he said darkly, “that was a bogus charge made by a client who was pissed that I couldn’t get the kind of evidence he was looking for on a business partner. The judge cleared me, you understand? Completely cleared me.”

“Okay, so you didn’t know Spicer was a blackmailer. Didn’t find out anything along those lines when you were investigating him.”

“That’s right. And if I had, I wouldn’t tell you what it was.”

“But you’d have told Casey Dunbar.”

“Full disclosure to my clients, always. And nobody else without their permission.”

Fallon said, “Where were you Monday night?”

“Still not convinced, huh?”

“So convince me.”

“Why the hell should I? I ought to push your face in.”

“Welcome to try.”

Their eyes locked and held. During the staredown, the waiter returned with the fresh Guinness and that broke it up. A slow, sardonic grin turned up the corners of Ulbrich’s mouth. He shrugged, picked up his fork.

“Hell,” he said, eating, “I’m not trying to be a hard-ass here. Mrs. Dunbar is missing, you’re a friend of hers, you’ve got a right to be worried. I’d be worried, too, in your shoes.”

“You haven’t answered my question about Monday night.”

“I was right here in San Diego. Imperial Beach, actually.”

“You don’t live in Imperial Beach.”

“That’s right, I don’t. But my daughter does. With her husband and her two kids. One Monday a month I go out there, have dinner with them, and she tells me all about what her mother’s doing these days and I try not to puke while she’s doing it. That’s where I was last Monday night. You don’t believe it, I’ll give you my daughter’s phone number.”

Fallon slumped against the booth back. Wrong again. Sam Ulbrich wasn’t any guiltier than David Rossi or Sharon Rossi or Bobby J.

“Truth hurts sometimes,” Ulbrich said philosophically. “So where do you go from here, Fallon?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know where to go or what the hell to think. I just keep stumbling into dead ends.”

“Maybe you need some help.”

“Maybe I do.”

“Professional help. My kind.”

Fallon considered it, but only briefly. Even with better resources, what could Ulbrich do that he hadn’t already done or couldn’t do himself? Something in the long run, maybe, but he needed answers
now
. Besides, it would mean telling him the whole story. All confiding in Ulbrich would accomplish was to put himself into greater jeopardy.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“If it’s because you’re low on money, we can work something out.”

“Money’s not an issue. I’ve got to see this through on my own.”

Fallon slid out of the booth, started to turn away.

Ulbrich said, “Wait a minute.” And when Fallon leaned down, “I don’t know that this’ll help you much, but you can have it for what it’s worth. I had the feeling Casey Dunbar was holding something back when she hired me. Hiding something, maybe.”

“Such as what?”

“I don’t know. Just an impression I got when we were talking about Spicer and the kid. I can read people pretty well—one of the reasons I’m good at what I do.”

“Lying to you?”

“Not exactly. Just not giving me the whole story, leaving out details that I should’ve been told. You didn’t get the same feeling from her?”

“No,” Fallon admitted, “I didn’t.”

“Probably because you wanted to believe her. That’s the difference between the personal and professional perspective.” Ulbrich lifted his fresh Guinness. “Luck.”

“Thanks. I’ll need it.”

THREE

N
OW HE HAD SOMETHING else to think about. Had Casey kept something important from Ulbrich, something that might have a bearing on Spicer’s death and her and Kevin’s disappearance? If so, then it was likely she’d withheld the same information from him too. Her account of her life and troubles with Spicer had seemed straightforward enough, and nothing he’d found out so far had contradicted it. But he didn’t really know her. And as Ulbrich had said, he’d wanted to believe her.

Where do you go from here, Fallon?

Good question, and it kept echoing inside his head as he walked back to where he’d parked the Jeep. No theories left that fit the facts as he knew them. No clear-cut course of action. Options, sure, but Ulbrich had had a phrase that fit them, too, all of them: grabbing at straws blowing by in the wind.

All right. The only thing he could do was to keep grabbing.

Avila Court ran parallel to Adams Avenue, not far from San Diego State University—a ten-minute drive from Ulbrich’s office building. Number 716 was an old-fashioned, Spanish-style bungalow court, the kind that had proliferated in southern California in the ’30s and ’40s but that you didn’t see much of anymore. There were eight stucco units in this one, each facing a central courtyard and separated from their nearest neighbors by grass strips and wooden fences.

The courtyard was empty when Fallon walked in. Casey’s bungalow was the second in from the street on the left, its stucco front wall age-pocked and in need of a fresh coat of whitewash. Some kind of flowering shrub grew tall in a planter box next to the front door, giving off a cloyingly sweet scent.

A stuffed-full mailbox told him he wouldn’t get an answer when he rang the bell. He rang it anyway, three times. Then he reached down to test the knob—another futile gesture.

Salsa music, not too loud, filtered out of one of the bungalows across the way. Its facing window wore a set of closed Venetian blinds, as did the windows on all of the other units except for one at the far end. The angle of the sun let him see through the glass to the room inside that one. Furniture shapes, but nobody moving around.

Casually, as if he belonged there, he took the accumulation of mail out of the box and shuffled through it. Catalogues, two bills, a handful of junk mail. No letters or postcards.

Between Casey’s bungalow and the neighbor on the right were a pair of gated areaways separated by a fence, where garbage cans and odds and ends could be stored. Still carrying the mail, Fallon moved over there and lifted the latch. The gate opened inward; he stepped through, shut it again behind him. Two bicycles, one a small boy’s, and a pair of garbage cans all but filled the narrow space. The wooden fence was seven feet tall, weathered but in decent repair, built to provide privacy because the bungalows were set so close together.

One window, small and frosted, overlooked the areaway. Bathroom window. On the way to it, he dropped the mail onto one of the cans. When he pushed upward on the frame, it gave an inch or so before binding up. Casey wasn’t one of the people who left their bathroom windows unlocked.

Not that it mattered. From the way the sash had moved, he knew it was locked with a simple lever arrangement hooked into a plate in the sill. The largest of the blades in his Swiss Army knife slid easily into the crack. He maneuvered the blade against the lever, wiggled and prodded until it released from the plate. With his left hand he held it balanced on the blade while he pushed the sash up with his right.

It made a creaking noise, loud enough in his ears to freeze him for a few seconds. Closing the knife, he sidled over to the gate. There was a thin gap between two of the boards, wide enough for a view of the courtyard. Still nobody around. He stayed there for a couple of minutes, watching and listening. No one came out of the other bungalows or into the court from the street.

Back to the window. Illegal trespass: one more risk, one more felony added to those he’d already committed—and the hell with worrying about it. He hoisted himself into the opening, ducked his head under the sash, corkscrewed his body until he had one leg and then the other inside.

The bathroom was just large enough for a stall shower, sink, toilet. The toilet was positioned directly below the window, its seat lowered and hidden inside a furry pink cover. He stepped down onto the linoleum floor, then out into a short hallway.

Two small bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining alcove, a living area with a gas-log fireplace—all the rooms small, almost cramped, and smelling faintly of dust and the mustiness of places closed up for more than a few days. The bungalow had come furnished—the bland sparseness of the pieces told him that—and Casey hadn’t made much of an effort to personalize it. But she kept a neat house. Everything in its place, the kitchen sink and counters scrubbed clean, the beds made, the books and other kid things in Kevin’s room put away.

Fallon started in the living room, with no idea of what he was looking for. Something, anything—new information, a fresh lead, another straw.

In one corner was a secretary desk, a Dell PC and monitor perched on it. He turned the computer on, booted it up. Casey hadn’t installed a password; he was able to open her mailbox and document files. All of the E-mails she’d received during the past week were spam. And all that was stored on the hard drive were a tax file listing income and expenses, another file of PG&E online receipts, and a handful of video games. The Web sites she’d bookmarked told him nothing, either. Health sites dealing with asthma and women’s issues, YouTube, eBay, kid-related sites.

He made himself take his time going through the desk drawers and pigeonholes, putting whatever he looked at back where he’d found it. The usual paperwork: bills, receipts. A Book-of-the-Month Club flyer, a brochure from a youth camp. In one of the drawers was her checkbook, and a filled transaction register; the combined entries went back nearly six months. Rent, water and garbage, MasterCard, doctor, dentist, a day-care outfit that had probably looked after Kevin when he wasn’t in school and she was working. None of the checks had been written to private individuals.

He scanned through the deposits. On Friday of every week, she banked the salary and commissions she earned from Vernon Young Realty, noted as such in the register—all modest sums. But there were other deposits as well, regularly posted at the beginning of each month, each in the amount of $1,000. The source of that money wasn’t noted. He booted up the computer again, checked the tax file. No record of the monthly $1,000. So where did it come from and why wasn’t she listing it as income?

There was nothing else in the desk. Or in the rest of the living room; he opened every drawer, even lifted the cushions on the couch and two chairs and examined the backs of the pictures on the walls. The kitchen next. Drawers and cabinets, the refrigerator and its freezer compartment— nothing. He went from there into Casey’s bedroom.

The first thing that drew his attention was a silver-framed 8 × 10 photograph on the nightstand. Professionally done head-and-shoulders color portrait of Kevin, his pale hair neatly brushed, his mouth shaped into a shy smile. In this photo you could see that his eyes were light brown, with long, fine lashes. Fallon felt his chest constrict. The boy didn’t look anything like Timmy, really. But the longer he looked at Kevin’s likeness, the more it seemed to morph into Timmy’s.

A dog-eared paperback novel, a package of tissues, a tube of hand cream, and a pair of nail clippers were the only contents of the nightstand drawer. He turned to the mirrored dresser. On top was a teakwood jewelry box that contained a tray of earrings, two bracelets, a necklace, and a brooch, none of the pieces expensive. The dresser drawers held nothing but lingerie and folded shirts and T-shirts.

The closet. Dresses, pantsuits, blouses, slacks, jackets, and a pair of raincoats on hangers; a rack of shoes, an umbrella on the floor; some boxes on the shelf above. All the clothing pockets were empty. He took the boxes down one by one. Some kind of fancy gown in the first, baby clothes in the second. The third contained mementoes, most relating to Kevin—a gold-plated baby spoon, a wallet of baby photos, a lock of fine blond hair. None of the other items meant anything to him, except for a woman’s plain gold wedding band without an inscription. He wondered fleetingly why she’d kept it. Not for sentimental reasons, not the way she felt about Court Spicer.

In the bathroom he scanned the contents of the medicine cabinet. The usual over-the-counter medicines and first-aid items, a prescription vial of Ambien, a packet of birth-control pills, an asthma inhaler.

Kevin’s bedroom. Fantasy books, a Nintendo Game Boy, a stuffed tiger with a torn ear, a poster illustration from one of the Harry Potter novels. The boy’s clothing neatly put away in his dresser and closet. Everything in place, awaiting his return.

Fallon went out of there, hesitated, then on impulse stepped into Casey’s bedroom again. He stood sweating in the stuffy air, looking around. He wasn’t sure why—just a vague feeling that he’d missed something the first time. Under the bed? He dropped to all fours, lifted the bedskirt to peer beneath. The only things on the carpet were a pair of skeletal dust mice.

When he straightened, his gaze was on the bureau—on the teakwood jewelry box. Its size registered on him for the first time: twelve inches wide, eight or nine inches deep. He opened the lid again. The tray with the earrings and other pieces was only a couple of inches deep, which meant another six inches or so of space. It took a little effort to lift the tray out; there was a fingertip catch that you couldn’t see unless you put an eye down close to it. And underneath— A ribbon-tied sheaf of handwritten notes, a wallet-sized photo album, two small jewelry cases. Casey’s secret stash, hidden away in the one place where a small boy was least likely to stumble across them.

Fallon opened the cases first, both of which bore Tiffany’s labels. Their velvet-lined innards were empty, the expensive jewelry they’d contained hocked or sold to finance Sam Ulbrich’s investigation. Presents from Spicer, bought with the blackmail money from David Rossi. That was what he thought until he read through the bundled notes, looked at the photos.

Those told a different story. The true story about the source of the jewelry, and a lot of other things too.

They told him what she’d withheld from Ulbrich and from him—some of it, anyway. Deliberate lies of omission that had led him in all the wrong directions and jeopardized his freedom.

They told him who might be responsible for Spicer’s death.

They told him the probable reason for her and Kevin’s disappearance, and how he could go about finding them now.

The notes were all brief, written in a precise, backslanted male hand, some containing promises and sexual innuendo. Only a few were dated; the earliest was October 2000. All were signed with a single initial. The color snapshots were of a lean, handsome man in his forties, of Casey, of the two of them together. Just them, nobody else. Several had been taken around a garden swimming pool with rows of palm trees in the background; in one of those, she’d struck a provocative pose wearing only a pair of bikini swim pants. Fallon took that one out of its glassine envelope. Written in purple ink on the back, in a different hand from the letters—Casey’s hand—was “V. and me, Indio, 7/03.”

V. The same initial that was on the notes.

V for Vernon. Vernon Young.

She’d been having an ongoing affair with her boss that dated back a long time before her divorce from Court Spicer.