The Other Side of Silence (17 page)

FOUR

W
ERNON YOUNG REALTY WAS a successful operation, housed in its own stone-and-glass building in an upscale neighborhood near Mission Bay. Eight desks arranged behind a gated counter laden with brochures, flyers, and business cards. Five of the desks were staffed when Fallon walked in, the sales reps, three men and two women, all busy on phones and computers. None of the men was the lean, handsome type in Casey’s photo collection.

Fallon said to the receptionist, a young woman with red hair, blue eyes, and a white smile, “I’d like to see Vernon Young.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Young is out of the office today.”

“Hasn’t been in all week, has he?”

“No, he hasn’t. He’s away on a personal matter.”

“Where can I reach him? It’s important.”

“I’m afraid you can’t. He’s not available.”

“Not even by phone?”

“Not at all. If it has to do with a property, perhaps one of our agents can—”

“I need to speak to Mr. Young personally. I left a message for him yesterday, but he didn’t get back to me. Has he called in for his messages?”

“No. No, he hasn’t. I’m sure he’ll be in touch soon, Mr.—?”

“Jablonsky. When do you expect him back in the office?”

“I really don’t know. Perhaps tomorrow or Friday. Would you care to leave another message?”

“No. I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Casey Dunbar, either?”

“Why, no. Ms. Dunbar has been on vacation the past week.”

Vacation. Sure.

Like the one he’d been on since last Friday.

The woman who answered the phone at the Young home sounded middle-aged, tired, and not overly bright. “Mr. Young’s not here. Neither is the missus, but she’ll be back pretty soon.”

“Who am I talking to?”

“Mrs. Reilly. I’m the cleaning woman.”

“Does Mrs. Young know where her husband can be reached, Mrs. Reilly? It’s important that I talk to him. I stopped by his office, but they said they don’t know where he is.”

“I’m sure I don’t know either. You’ll have to ask the missus.”

“How soon will she be back?”

“She said around three. She’s at the hairdresser’s.”

Three o’clock. Close on two-thirty now. Another thirty or forty minutes of downtime.

He said, “I’ll come by around three, then. What’s the address there?”

“The address?”

“I’ve only been to the house once, two years ago, and I don’t remember the street or number.”

“Well . . .”

“It’s best if I see Mrs. Young in person. It could mean a big sale for her husband’s company.”

“It could?” the woman said, but not as if she cared. “Well, I guess it’s okay then. One two five five nine Wildwood, San Pasqual Valley. You know, where they had them bad fires last year.”

Fallon remembered “them bad fires.” They’d been all over the media a year ago this month. Four of them in San Diego County, the two worst in Poway south of Escondido and San Pasqual Valley in the northeast corner of the city. Over 400,000 acres burned, more than a thousand homes destroyed, hundreds of thousands of people evacuated into Qualcomm Stadium and other shelters. The scars were visible in the hills and canyons above the valley, irregular blackened swaths and patches where houses had once stood. New construction flourished in the area; he saw more than a dozen sites on his way up winding Wildwood Road.

He’d never quite understood the willingness of people to rebuild in the same area where a natural disaster had struck. Maybe they thought it couldn’t happen again. But this was wildfire country. The homes and the vegetation would grow thick again, the canyons would clog with dry brush, and all it would take to set it off again was another bolt of lightning or incident of human carelessness. One more reason why he preferred the desert. It had its natural dangers, sure, but if you knew what you were doing, you had some control over the risks they presented. In the remote, expensive firetraps in locations like this, you had little or none.

The Youngs had been lucky: the section of Wildwood Road where they lived had escaped devastation. No scars, no new construction visible in the immediate area. The homes and outbuildings all stood on large parcels, built onto the hillsides and atop canyon walls, with stilt-supported decks overlooking the agricultural preserve spread across the valley floor below. Million-dollar properties, minimum. Vernon Young had done all right for himself in the real-estate business.

Fallon’s timing couldn’t have been better. His watch showed a few minutes past three when the Jeep’s GPS guided him to a stop in front of 12559 Wildwood—a redwood-and-glass structure that was all juts and odd angles, as if the architect who’d designed it had been drunk or stoned. The car that had been following him for the last mile or so, a silver-gray BMW, rolled past and turned into the Youngs’ driveway. He moved fast enough to intercept the woman who emerged before she could cover the distance between her car and the front door.

“Mrs. Young?”

She stopped and turned, shading her eyes against the lowering sun. “Lucia Tibbets. Yes?”

“You are Vernon Young’s wife?”

“I prefer to use my maiden name. What is it you want?”

“Your husband. I’m trying to locate him.”

“Yes?”

“Regarding a valuable property in Escondido. The people at his office said he hasn’t been in all week.”

“And they sent you here?”

“No. My idea. I thought you’d know where I can reach him.”

“Well, you were wrong. I haven’t seen or talked to my husband since Sunday night.”

She started toward the house. Again Fallon moved quickly to block her way. Her body stiffened; irritation showed in eyes that were a peculiar pale gray, almost white in the sun. He took her to be in her late forties, with dyed chocolate-brown hair and the too-smooth features of women who have been repeatedly nipped and tucked and Botoxed. There was a brittleness about her, a brittleness in her voice, that gave him the feeling she kept herself tightly wrapped.

“I really do need to talk to Mr. Young right away,” he said. “It could mean a substantial commission—”

“I have nothing to do with my husband’s business dealings.” Her tone said the choice was his, not hers.

“If you could just give me some idea of where he might be . . .”

One shoulder lifted in a faint shrug. “He comes and goes when and where he pleases. As do I.”

So it was that kind of marriage. Fallon wondered if she knew Young had a mistress. Probably. Knew it and didn’t care much, if at all, just so long as he paid the bills.

“Please, Mrs. Tibbets. There must be—”

“Ms. I don’t like the word missus.”

“There must be some place he goes when he wants to get away by himself.”

“My husband doesn’t go anywhere by himself.”

“For privacy, then. Do you have a second home?”

“Oh yes, we have a second home,” she said, and the words came out sounding bitter. “That ranch of his.”

“Ranch?”

“He bought it fifteen years ago.” Over her objection, her tone implied. Sore subject with her. She was the type who’d prefer a beach cottage or mountain hideaway to a ranch. “He worked on one when he was a boy, as if that’s sufficient reason for buying one. At least it pays for itself. He had the good sense to lease the date groves.”

“You said . . . date groves?”

“That’s right. Dates. The nasty sweet fruit.”

“Where is this ranch?”

“In the desert, of course. Near Indio.”

Indio. The snapshot in Casey’s stash: “V. and me, Indio, 7/03.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d let me have the address.”

“I don’t remember the address. I haven’t been there in a dozen years. When I go to the desert, I go to Palm Springs.”

“Could you look it up for me?”

“No, I don’t think so. When he goes there, he doesn’t like to be disturbed.”

“Not even for a real estate deal that involves a lot of money?”

“Not for any reason. Why don’t you talk to someone in his office? All of his people are perfectly competent.”

“I’d rather deal directly with—”

He broke off because he was talking to her back. She was already on her way to the house in long, stiff strides, her hips barely moving inside her white dress as if they, too, had been tightly nipped and tucked.

She must really hate him, he thought. The kind of hate that happens in some marriages when people stay together for the wrong reasons. The kind of hate he was glad Geena had never come to feel for him, or he for her.

The nearest Internet café was in a shopping center a few miles away. It might have been quicker to call Will Rodriguez and ask him to run a property search, but Fallon had bothered him enough as it was. It wouldn’t take him too long to do the job himself. Property searches are simple enough because the information is readily available, no fees required.

Indio was in Riverside County, in the desert twenty-some miles east of Palm Springs, but it seemed likely the tax bills for Young’s date ranch would be sent to his primary address. So Fallon did a search of the San Diego County property records, typing Young’s name and the Wildwood Road address into the rented computer.

Right. The ranch’s address was 5900 San Ignacio Road, Indio.

PART VI

INDIO

ONE

T
HE DISTANCE FROM San Diego to Indio was better than a hundred and sixty miles, a straight-through drive that should have taken no more than two and a half hours. It took Fallon three because he got hung up, as he had coming in, in the damn stop-and-go commute traffic. He was wired up tight, gritty-eyed and functioning on adrenaline and a simmering anger, by the time the Jeep’s GPS took him onto San Ignacio Road.

It was some miles outside of town, in the part of the Coachella Valley that was still primarily agricultural. Indio had once been surrounded by date-palm groves that produced a large percentage of the country’s date crop, but residential and recreational development had gobbled up all but sections on the south and southeast. More desert land forever lost. One day, sure as hell, there wouldn’t be any more of the Old World agricultural staple that had once been the region’s lifeblood. Just as there weren’t any more orange groves in the San Fernando Valley.

Now, though, geometrical rows of date palms still dominated sections of the sandy desert soil, their crowns swaying in a warm evening breeze. He passed several small ranches, then a Spanish adobe ranch store that looked as if it might be a century old, its illuminated sign claiming it was the home of the finest Medjool dates in the Coachella Valley. Darkness had settled when he reached the access lane marked with the number 5900.

The lane was paved, wide near the entrance, then narrowing somewhat as it led in among the close-packed palms. A shallow drainage culvert ran along the left-hand side. Once Fallon made the turn, he could make out a whitish glow beyond where the lane jogged to the left. Lights from the ranch buildings, he thought. But the guess was wrong.

When he cleared the jog, he was looking at a pair of headlights ahead on his left, a high-beam glare that illuminated the trees in the rows nearest the lane.

Automatically he slowed, eased over to the right. But the other car wasn’t moving; it had been drawn up at the edge of the lane where the culvert was. And somebody was in the grove over there—somebody using a not-verypowerful flashlight in erratic, bobbing sweeps that created weird light-and-shadow effects among the tall, straight palm trunks.

The sidespill from the Jeep’s headlamps picked out movement in the grove to Fallon’s right—just a brief, sliding-past impression of a darting shape. A few seconds later, as he neared the parked car, he could see that its right front wheel was on the edge of the culvert, that the driver’s door stood wide open.

He swung the wheel, slewed the Jeep to a stop close to the car’s front bumper. He yanked the keys out of the ignition, unlocked the storage compartment. The Ruger was in there; so was his six-cell flashlight. He hesitated over the weapon, left it where it was, slammed the compartment shut, and flicked on the torch as he jumped out.

Above the lane you could see the starlit sky, but the crouching masses of palm crowns created a solid ceiling; in among the trees, except on the side where the flashlight continued to move in restless arcs, it was pitch-black. A faint breeze rustled and rattled in the fronds, carried the sound of a voice raised high and shrill—a woman’s voice, calling something he couldn’t quite make out.

The other car was a BMW, silver-gray, a twin to the one Vernon Young’s wife drove. Fallon ran around to the open driver’s door, threw light inside front and back. Empty. The keys still dangled from the ignition. On impulse he reached in for them, shoved them into his pocket.

The woman was still calling, louder, the shift and sway of the flash beam coming nearer. Now he could make out what she was shouting.

“Kevin! Where are you?
Kevin!
”

Casey’s voice.

He aimed his flash, more powerful than hers, toward the sound. The nearby palm boles and the sandy ground around and between them leaped into stark relief. A few seconds later she appeared, running and stumbling in his direction, still crying the boy’s name in a voice that throbbed with the accents of terror.

She saw him, but at first only as an indistinguishable shape behind the six-cell. Now she was saying, as if to a stranger, “Help me, please . . . my son . . .” Then her light shifted, came up to wash over and then steady on him. He lowered his so she could see him clearly.

She staggered to a halt; the sharp intake of her breath was audible in the stillness. “Oh my God! Rick! Where’d you come from, how did you—”

“Never mind that now. What’s happened?”

She stood panting, poised as if to turn and run. He fixed her with the six-cell again. Her face was white, her eyes like black holes thumb-punched in powdered dough. “Kevin,” she said then. “He . . . ran away. He’s out here somewhere, hiding . . .”

“Why? Why did he run away?”

Mutely she rolled her head from side to side.

“You’re sure he’s out here?”

“Yes! I saw him, that’s why I got out of the car. Oh God, Rick, help me find him! Please!”

Fallon pivoted away from her, ran across to the edge of the grove on the opposite side and back down the road toward where he’d seen the darting shape. Behind him he heard Casey shout, “Not over there, he’s on this side . . .” Then the only sounds were the cry of a nightbird, the thin rasp of his breathing.

After fifty yards or so, he cut in to one of the narrow paths between the palms. He’d had the light aimed low as he ran; now he raised it and swung it in wide, sweeping arcs. Trunks, broken fronds, irrigation troughs, a stack of packing boxes burst into sharp relief, vanished again. He tried to make as little noise as possible, didn’t call out Kevin’s name. If the boy wasn’t responding to his mother’s voice, he’d be even more frightened by a stranger’s.

Twice Fallon paused to listen. Faintly he could hear Casey’s frantic voice shouting again, somewhere back near where the Jeep and BMW were. The second time he stopped, he thought he heard a scrabbling sound off to his left. He jabbed the light in that direction, followed it before changing direction again. Not Kevin. A night creature of some kind.

It might have taken a long time to find the boy, if he’d been able to find him at all, if it hadn’t been for a panic reaction when Fallon passed close to where he was hiding. The six-cell’s white shaft roved past just above his head, flushed him and set him running again down the next row. Fallon veered over there, heard him but didn’t see him at first in the thick darkness. Then the light picked him out—running blind, looking back over his shoulder.

The ground here had an obstacle: a long date-picker’s ladder, wide at the bottom and almost pointed at the top, had been propped sideways against one of the palm trunks. Kevin didn’t see it in time to avoid it. There was a clatter, a yowl of pain, and the boy sprawled headlong.

Fallon was there in five seconds. By then, Kevin was trying to crawl behind one of the palms. He’d hurt himself in the collision with the ladder: dragging and clutching at his left leg, the small face grimacing with pain. He quit crawling when the flash beam pinned him, squinted up into the glare with eyes that gleamed black with fear.

“Leave me alone!” Thin, gasping. “Leave me alone!”

Fallon moved the light out of his face, dropped to one knee beside him. “It’s all right, Timmy. I’m not—”

“My name’s not Timmy!”

He drew back, realizing what he’d said. Timmy. Jesus, what was the matter with him? It must have been that first clear look at the boy, the strained white face and terrified stare, the lank, light-colored hair plastered wetly to his forehead . . . for just an instant it had been like seeing his son alive again.

“I’m sorry, Kevin. I’m sorry.”

The boy cringed away from him, his chest heaving, his breath wheezing and rattling asthmatically.

“It’s all right, you don’t have to be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you. Lie still, take shallow breaths—”

Kevin sat up instead, tried to propel himself backward with both hands. Fallon stopped him by catching hold of the waistband of his Levi’s.

“No, lie still,” he said again, and this time the boy obeyed him. “That’s it. Shallow breaths now. You have your inhaler?”

“. . . Pocket.”

Pants pocket. Fallon felt the outline of it, fished it out, watched as Kevin sucked in three deep inhalations. The boy’s eyes were still saucer-wide. “Who are you?” he said when the asthma medicine had opened up the breathing passages in his lungs. “I don’t know you.”

“My name’s Rick. I’m a friend of your mom’s—”

“No! I won’t go back there, I won’t!”

“Easy, easy. Where’d you hurt yourself?”

“. . . My ankle. I twisted it.”

“Let me see how bad.”

Fallon screwed the six-cell into the sand. When he ran his fingers gently over the injured ankle, the boy whimpered and cringed again but didn’t try to pull away. Nothing broken. Just a strain.

Fallon said, “Let’s get you up,” and put his hands under Kevin’s arms and lifted him without much struggle. It was like lifting a child-sized manikin— the kid couldn’t have weighed more than forty pounds. Stick-thin and malnourished. Court Spicer’s doing, the son of a bitch.

Casey was still calling her son’s name. It sounded as though she was on the access lane, not far away.

“Don’t make me go back there with her,” the boy said. “I hate her.”

“She’s your mother, Kevin.”

“But
he’s
not my father. He’s not, he’s not!”

Fallon held him gently for a few seconds, to calm him, before he said, “When I set you down, stand on your good leg and lean against me. There . . . that’s it. Can you walk?”

He couldn’t. His injured leg buckled when he tried to put weight on it. Fallon said, “I’ll have to carry you,” and swung him up again, into the crook of his left arm, then reached down for the six-cell.

The flash beam, and Casey’s voice calling his name now alternately with Kevin’s, showed him the way to the lane. The boy clung to him, the asthma inhaler clenched tight in his hand. He was breathing more easily now, but his small body had a corded feel and was racked with small tremors.

“Kevin, why were you running away?”

“I couldn’t stay there anymore. Not with
him
.”

“Vernon Young? Did he do something to you?”

“No. No.”

“Then what happened to make you run?”

No answer, just a shuddery inhalation.

Casey’s light was visible as they neared the lane. When they came out, she was only twenty yards away. She saw them and broke into an unsteady run.

“Kevin! Oh my God, is he hurt?”

“Turned his ankle.”

She tried to take the boy into her arms. Kevin went taut as a bowstring when she touched him. He said, “No!” and pressed his face against Fallon’s chest.

He could smell the sweat on her. Something else, too: gin fumes. He put the light on her face. Wet, ghost-pale; the hazel eyes were as wide and seemed as dark as Kevin’s had in the grove. Half drunk, he thought. And still terrified.

He pushed past her, went up the road in long, hard strides. Casey hurried after him, ran up alongside and tried to touch her son again. Kevin cringed and stiffened again. Fallon turned him away from her.

When they neared the Jeep, she said, “Put him in Vernon’s car, the front seat—”

“No! Don’t put me in there,
don’t
!”

“Please, Rick. Then give me back the keys.”

Fallon said, “No. Not yet.”

“Give me the keys. Move your Jeep so we can leave.”

“And go where?”

“A doctor, the ER in Indio . . .”

“He doesn’t need emergency treatment. And you’re not going anywhere except the ranch house.”

Kevin whimpered. “I don’t want to go back there, I don’t want to see him again.”

“You won’t have to see him, honey,” she said. Then, to Fallon, “He’s mine, I know what’s best for him—”

“The hell you do.”

She said with sudden fury, “Goddamn you, let me have him!” and tried to pull Kevin out of Fallon’s grasp. The boy growled at her like a whipped ani- mal. Fallon shoved her out of the way, went around to the Jeep’s passenger side, got the door opened and eased Kevin down on the seat. At first Casey clawed at him from behind, her nails once raking the side of his neck. But as soon as he shut the boy inside, she quit fighting and backed off. When he turned to shine the six-cell on her again, she was standing with her arms down at her sides, breathing in ragged little gasps. All at once, for a reason he couldn’t fathom, the anger and the fear seemed to have gone out of her. Her face had a blank look, like a slate that had been wiped clean.

Fallon said, “You wanted the keys? All right, here they are.” He pressed them into her sweaty hand. “Turn the car around and drive to the house. I’ll follow you.”

She just stood there, staring at him.

“Go on. Don’t give me any more argument.”

It was as if he’d pushed a button or thrown a switch to activate a mechanical device. She pivoted, slow, and walked to the BMW and closed herself inside. The engine throbbed into life. He waited until she backed up and was starting to turn before he slid into the Jeep.

The lane ran straight through the date groves for a tenth of a mile, then jogged left and widened out into a broad clearing. The ranch buildings were just beyond, packing and storage sheds first, all of them dark, the ranch house some distance beyond. The house showed lights inside and out, enough illumination for Fallon to tell that it was a rectangular, tile-roofed adobe with ornate iron balconies at the second-floor corners and outside staircases leading up to them. A four-foot-high adobe wall extended from the far corner to the edge of another date grove.

Casey bypassed a parking area in front, stopped alongside a gate in the adobe wall. Fallon pulled up behind her. Kevin stirred and made another small whimpering noise. “Do I have to go in there?”

“I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“I don’t want to see him again.”

“You won’t have to. I promise.”

Fallon went around to lift the boy out. Casey had the gate open; she didn’t say a word, just started inside. The wall enclosed a nightlit patio garden with a swimming pool at one end—a night image of the scene in her stash of pho- tographs. Sweet peas on trellises and some kind of white-flowered shrubs dominated the garden, their combined scents heavy in the warm night.