Fear the Worst

  “What’s happened?” I asked. “Have you found Syd?”

  “Come with me,” Jennings said, and I followed her down a tiled hallway, around a corner, and into a simple, unadorned room with a table and chairs. “Have a seat,” she directed me.

  I took a seat.

  She left the door open, and a couple of seconds later we were joined by a barrel-chested man in his fifties with a military-style brush cut.

  “This is Detective Adam Marjorie,” Jennings said. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who took much ribbing about his last name. “He’s… now involved in the investigation.” Her tone suggested he was higher up the department food chain, and was stepping in to show how things were done.

  “What’s this about?” I asked.

  “Detective Marjorie and I would like to review the incidents of a couple nights ago,” she said.

  Not last night, when someone took a shot at me?

  “What do you want to know?” I asked.

  “We want to ask you about Patty Swain,” Marjorie said. His voice was low and gravelly.

  I was starting to get an inkling of what was going on here. I was in an interrogation room. This was going to be an interrogation. And this Marjorie character, he was going to be the bad cop.

  “I told Detective Jennings everything I could,” I said. Looking at her, I pleaded, “Didn’t I?”

  If Marjorie was going to be the bad cop, surely it only followed what Jennings’s role was supposed to be?

  “Tell us again about the phone call you got from her,” she said.

  I told my story again. Patty calling for a ride, how she’d hurt her knee falling on some cut glass. I also gave them some details about the boy who was bothering her, holding on to her arm. Jennings made a couple of notes about that, but Marjorie didn’t appear to care.

  “What sort of shape would you say she was in when you got her to your house?” he asked, moving around the side of the table, only a couple of feet from me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Was she aware of what was going on? Was she lucid? Was she conscious?”

  “Yes. Yes to all those things.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Of course I’m sure. What the hell?” I looked back and forth between the two of them.

  Jennings sat down across from me. “Didn’t you have to practically carry her into your house?” she asked.

  “She was limping,” I said. “Because of her knee.”

  “So you were in physical contact with her,” she said.

  “Huh? Yes, I had to be, to help her into the house, so she wouldn’t fall over. She’d also been drinking.”

  “Where’d she get the booze?” Detective Marjorie asked. “You give it to her?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “It’s so hard for teenagers to get booze, they need me to buy it for them.”

  “Don’t get smart, asshole,” Detective Marjorie said.

  I looked at Jennings, stupefied. “Who is this guy?”

  Marjorie didn’t like that. He leaned in close enough that I could feel his hot breath on my face. “I’m the guy who thinks it’s odd that a man as old as you takes a young, drunk girl into his house late at night supposedly to help her out. What did you do with her when you got her inside?”

  “I don’t believe this,” I said. I turned again to Jennings, thinking naively that maybe I’d find an ally in her, but there was nothing in her expression to suggest she was on my side.

  “I think you should answer the question,” Jennings said.

  “She hardly needed me to get her booze,” I said. “She’d been at a party down on the beach strip. She could gave gotten it from anyone. In fact, by the time I got Patty to my place, she was sobering up. Still a bit drunk, but relatively coherent.”

  “There was a fair bit of blood on those towels,” Marjorie said.

  “Her knee was bleeding,” I said. “Most of the cuts were pretty superficial, but one or two of them were deeper and they bled quite a bit. Come on, what are you suggesting? That I did something to Patty, and then left bloody towels on the bathroom floor where you could just walk in and find them?”

  Jennings leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. “We spoke to Ms. Wood.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “She said you called her the next morning about what she saw.”

  “She drove past the house when Patty and I were going inside. I think she might have been intending to stop, but when she saw I wasn’t alone, she drove on. So the next day, I gave her a call.”

  “Why?” Jennings asked. “You’re not still seeing Ms. Wood, are you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “So why would you owe her some explanation?”

  “I was worried she might have the wrong impression.”

  “So you were worried. About what she might have thought was going on? Carrying a girl into your house? You felt that needed to be explained. That she might naturally get the wrong idea about that.”

  “I wasn’t carrying her,” I insisted. “I told you, I was helping her.”

  “Ms. Wood saw it differently,” Marjorie said.

  I shook my head and rolled my eyes. “She was driving past, at a good clip, at night. She didn’t see things the way they happened.”

  “Okay,” Jennings said, her voice trailing off for a second, like she was collecting her thoughts. Then, “Tell us again about when you first heard from this Yolanda Mills person in Seattle. The one who said she’d seen your daughter out there.”

  What did Yolanda Mills have to do with Patty?

  “It was an email,” I said. “She’d seen the website about Syd. That was what she claimed. But the whole thing was a setup. We’ve talked about this.” I said this looking right at Jennings. “You already know it was a trick to get me out of town.”

  “And then you emailed her back?” Like she hadn’t heard a word I’d just said.

  “That’s right. I wanted to know where I could get in touch with her, and then whoever it was emailed back with a phone number, and I called her.”

  “And spoke to someone,” she said.

  I nodded. “I don’t know who it was. And of course there was no such person when I went out there.”

  “Yes, I know,” Jennings said. She seemed to be working up to something. “Kate Wood, she was at your home when you received the first email correspondence from the Mills woman, is that right?”

  I said yes.

  “And then she was on your computer when the second email came in from her, is that right?”

  I said yes again.

  “Where were you at that moment?”

  “What do you mean?” I said. “I was right there.”

  “In the same room with Ms. Wood?”

  I thought back to that night. “I was downstairs, in the kitchen.”

  “And what were you doing?” Marjorie asked.

  “I was phoning shelters, drop-in places for runaways in Seattle,” I said. “I was using my cell while Kate was making calls upstairs.”

  “And where were you getting the phone numbers from?” Jennings asked.

  “I’d grabbed Syd’s laptop and taken it downstairs.”

  The two detectives glanced at each other, then looked back at me.

  “So it was while you were downstairs on the laptop that Ms. Wood shouted down to you that you’d received another email from Yolanda Mills.”

  “Yes,” I said. Where the hell were they going with this?

  “And then what happened?” Jennings asked.

  “I ran back upstairs, read the email, and there was a phone number, so I called it and talked to that woman.”

  Jennings nodded. “Was Ms. Wood in the room at the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did she listen in to the phone call at all? Was she on an extension?”

  “No. She wasn’t.”

  “Would you say she was able to listen to both sides of the conversation?”

&n
bsp; “I don’t understand the point of these questions,” I said.

  “Could you just please answer them?” Jennings said.

  “Should I have a lawyer? You said the other night I might want to give my lawyer a call.”

  Marjorie cut in. “You think you need a lawyer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why would a guy with nothing to hide need a lawyer? I mean, if you’ve got something to hide, we can shut this down right now and you can get your lawyer in here if that’s the way you want it.”

  “I don’t have anything to hide,” I said, knowing as the words came out of my mouth that I was a moron if I let this go on much longer.

  “You want to answer that last question?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid I don’t—What was it?”

  “Could Ms. Wood hear both sides of the conversation you claimed to be having on the phone with Yolanda Mills?”

  Claimed?

  “Um, I don’t know. Probably not.”

  Now it was Jennings’s turn. “Tell me about the phone,” she said.

  “What phone?”

  “The phone you had in your pocket when I dropped by your house the other morning.”

  “That’s the phone that was used to call me from Seattle. Or at least, it had a Seattle number.”

  “That’s right,” Jennings said.

  “If you know this, why are you asking me?”

  “How long had you had that phone?”

  “I hadn’t had it any time at all. I found it just before you showed up. I found it in the dirt. That man who was going to kill me, he even mentioned it, said they forgot it there.”

  “I’ll just bet,” Detective Marjorie said.

  “Look, if you’d given me a second, I’d have handed it over to you,” I said.

  “We weren’t able to find any fingerprints on it, other than yours,” Jennings said casually.

  Marjorie had moved away from me and was slowly pacing the room, which suddenly seemed very small, as though the walls were closing in.

  He asked, “Did Ms. Wood just drop by, or were you expecting her?”

  We were back to her now?

  “When are we talking about now?” I asked.

  “Same as a minute ago,” he said, shaking his head, like I was an idiot who couldn’t follow a simple conversation. “The night you were getting all this news from Seattle.”

  “We’d talked on the phone earlier,” I said. “She was going to bring Chinese food.”

  “Did you tell her to come right away?” Jennings asked.

  Again, I tried to think back. “I asked her to give me an hour.” I let out a long sigh. “I went out for a drive. I do that a lot, looking for Sydney.” I remembered what I had done on that drive. “I stopped by Richard Fletcher’s house.”

  “Who’s that?” he asked.

  I glanced at Jennings, who already knew this story. “He took a truck for a test drive, but he really just wanted it to deliver a load of manure.”

  “You sure he wasn’t delivering this story of yours?” Marjorie asked. “Because it amounts to the same thing.”

  “We spoke to him,” Jennings said. “About the shooting at your house.”

  “Yes?” I said hopefully.

  “It was just like you said,” Jennings said. “He denies dropping by. Says he doesn’t know anything about it. He says he was home all evening with his daughter, and she says the same thing.”

  “She’s a kid,” I said. “Of course she’s going to say what her father wants her to say.”

  “All we have at the moment is your word against his,” Jennings said.

  I was about to say something in protest, but Marjorie cut me off. “You own a gun, Mr. Blake?”

  “A gun? No. I don’t own a gun.”

  “I’m not talking about a licensed gun. Any gun.”

  “I don’t own a gun,” I said. “I never have.”

  “Never even went hunting with your dad as a kid?”

  “No.”

  Marjorie looked unconvinced.

  “I’d really appreciate it if you’d tell me what this is all about,” I said. “I don’t understand the point of all this.”

  “There never really was a Yolanda Mills, was there?” Marjorie said.

  “No,” I said. “I thought we’d pretty much established that. She’s an invention. She was made up by these people, the ones working with that guy who wanted to kill me, who probably shot up my car. They wanted me out of town so they could plant that cocaine in my house. They tore the place apart so it would look like someone had been searching the place for it, but missed it. Their whole plan was for the cops to find it, and arrest me. Then I’d be out of the way.”

  “And just who is it who wants you out of the way?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Detective Marjorie grinned and shook his head.

  “My daughter’s missing and you think the whole thing is a fucking joke,” I said.

  “Do I?” Marjorie said. “I think it’s a joke? You give me a story that’s straight out of The Twilight Zone and I’m the one making a joke? Okay, let me ask you something very serious, then, Mr. Blake. Did you make up Yolanda Mills?”

  It was like getting hit in the side of the head with a two-by-four.

  “I’m sorry?” I said.

  “You heard me.”

  I looked at Detective Jennings. “Is he fucking kidding?”

  Jennings held my gaze. “Answer his question, Mr. Blake.”

  I said to her, leaning closer to her, “From him, I can accept this kind of horseshit. But you? From the beginning, I’ve always thought you were in my corner.”

  “This will all go a lot better, and be over a lot quicker, if you just answer the questions,” she said.

  “No,” I said, sitting upright. “I did not make up Yolanda Mills.”

  Marjorie said, “You sure? You sure you didn’t make her up, and use Kate Wood to back up your story? Use her as a witness?”

  “What the hell did she tell you?” I asked. “There’s something you need to know about Kate Wood. No, two things. First, she’s got it in for me because I didn’t want to see her anymore. And second, she’s a nutcase.”

  “Isn’t it possible,” Marjorie said, “that you waited until she came over to discover that first email, then later when you took the laptop downstairs, you sent yourself an email from a bogus Hotmail account in Yolanda Mills’s name, which Ms. Wood discovered upstairs? And then you placed your call to her, but you didn’t really place a call to anyone? That you faked it, all for Ms. Wood’s benefit?”

  Now it was my turn to smile. Not with amusement, but astonishment. I said to him, “And you thought my story was inventive. You’re out of your fucking mind.”

  Jennings remained stone-faced, but Marjorie’s cheeks flushed red with anger. “That’s not exactly answering the question, Mr. Blake,” Jennings said.

  “You have to understand something about Kate Wood. She sees conspiracies all over the place. She thinks everyone’s got it in for her, like everyone gets up in the morning and has a meeting to figure out how they’re going to stick it to Kate Wood today. That’s why I felt I had to call her. Because I know how her mind works.”

  “So that’s your defense,” Detective Marjorie said. “She’s a nut.”

  “I’m just saying you need to know how she sees the world. Is this really what she believes, or did you lead her this way? Because I know it wouldn’t take much. Does she honestly think I was manipulating her? That I set this whole thing up so she’d corroborate some crazy story?” I looked directly at Jennings. “You saw my house when I got back from Seattle. You saw what they did to it.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “It is possible, in theory,” she said slowly, “that you could have done that before you left for Seattle.”

  “Is that what you believe?” I asked her point-blank.

  “You have to admit it’s possible,” she said.

  “That’s not e
xactly answering the question, either,” I said. “Is that what you believe?”

  She grimaced, as though she didn’t want to have to answer. Was that because she didn’t want Marjorie to know she thought I was innocent, or because she didn’t want me to know she’d given up on me?

  “Why would I do something like that? Set up a call from someone who didn’t exist? Tear up my house and make it look like someone else did it? Plant cocaine so you could find it? Where would I get cocaine? And if I could get my hands on some, why would I do that? What possible reason could I have for doing something like that?”

  Neither of them said anything. I guess they wanted me to figure it out on my own.

  “Mr. Blake,” Jennings said, “what started out as an investigation into your daughter’s disappearance has fanned out in a number of directions. For example, there’s this man named Eric who supposedly was trying to kill—”

  “Supposedly?” I said, pointing to my nose. “Does that look like a supposedly busted nose?”

  Jennings continued, “And now a second missing girl. Who’s a very close friend of your daughter’s. You know what the common thread in all these incidents is?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Sydney.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” Detective Marjorie said. “The way I see it, what’s most common is you. You know what I think?”

  I waited.

  “I think you’re a pretty smart guy, but not smart enough. I think it’s even possible there are some people hunting for you. Maybe you’ve jerked some people around and they’re looking for payback. That part I haven’t worked out yet. But I do think it’s possible you’ve staged some of these things to make it look like your daughter was mixed up in something. Divert the attention away from yourself.”

  “Why the hell would I want to do that?”

  “You’re at the center of everything,” Marjorie said. “You’re the last one to see your daughter. The last one to see Patty Swain. We’re not stupid, Mr. Blake.”

  “No,” I said. “You are.” I shook my head. “Whatever you’re getting at, this is crazy.”

  “Is that why you had to get rid of Patty?” Detective Marjorie asked. “Because she figured out you killed your own daughter?”

  I didn’t even think about what I did next. Even if I had, I can’t say that I would have behaved any differently.