Still no noise from the sleeping giant.
“Perfect,” she’d muttered, cinching her belt, then walking down the stairs to his bedroom, where she pushed open the door despite the pile of clothes on the other side.
“Rise and shine,” she’d said, snapping on the light. In a heartbeat she realized that the room was empty, his unmade bed wrinkled, the duvet tossed to the floor. “Jer?” she said, but she was alone. Had he left while she was in the bathroom? No way. They only had one toilet, and though she’d caught him peeing off the railing to the backyard a couple of times, it wasn’t his usual morning routine. No, he’d have pounded on the bathroom door, yelling about his full bladder. It appeared as if he hadn’t returned the night before. His textbooks and laptop were shoved into the corner of the room, by the scarred table that held his lava lamp, untouched from when he’d dropped them yesterday. She’d seen them in that exact space.
“Fabulous,” she’d muttered and reached for her cell phone just as Chico started sending up a ruckus and the front door opened. As she rounded the corner of the stairs, she nearly ran into her son trying to sneak down to his room.
“Oh!” he said, obviously startled. “Geez, Mom, you scared me.”
“Ditto.” She smelled cigarette smoke on him, and beer.
“Where have you been?” she demanded.
“Out.”
“From last night?”
“Yeah.” His guilt was morphing into defensiveness.
“The movie had to be over hours ago.”
“I crashed over at Rory’s.”
“I don’t know who he is.”
“Just a friend. I worked with him at the gas station for a while. Anyway, I really gotta go.”
“To class. You’ll never make it in time.”
“I meant to bed.”
“And skip class? Jer—”
He spread his big hands wide as he towered above her on the narrow stairs. “Look, Mom. I’ve got it handled. Trust me.”
“How? When you’ve been out smoking and drinking on a school night, then lying to me about it. Hmmm. How can I trust you?”
“Then don’t.” He changed his tack and shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t trust me. I don’t care.”
“And that’s the problem. You don’t care about anything. We’re talking about your future here. Yours! Not mine!”
“Again. We’re talking about it again. I’m sick of it.”
“And I’m sick of you just rolling through life, letting it carry you along without any direction.”
“Is this the part of the speech where you tell me what you were doing at my age? How you were playing college ball and engaged to Dad and having a goal of becoming a super-detective?” he asked.
Bristling a little, she said, “You know, I was just getting to that part, but I see it’s sunken in. Good!”
“Can I go now?”
“You’re asking? You the ‘adult’?”
“I’m just trying to show some respect.”
“Well, show some for yourself, would you? This is your life we’re talking about.”
“Then let me handle it my way.”
Give me strength, she silently thought and realized the argument was going nowhere and fast. “Listen, I have to get to work. I’ve got a job,” she’d said, “a pretty important one, but this conversation is not finished.”
“I know,” he’d grumbled as he passed her and made his way down the rest of the stairs, “it never is.”
And for the first time in what seemed like forever, she’d actually agreed with him. “You got that right.” She’d hurried up the stairs and wondered what had happened to the little boy who had walked down the lane carrying his lunch box, his backpack firmly on his shoulders, a smile usually on his face. God, she missed that kid and she only hoped when Jeremy ever came out of the chrysalis of his teen years, he would emerge as the smart, strong, clever man that kid had promised to be.
That’ll only happen if you stick to your guns and be the mother he needs even while he’s pushing you away. It was moments like this that she really missed Joe. And therein lay part of the problem: They both did. Jeremy was screaming for his father and the one she’d given him in Lucky Pescoli hadn’t begun to fill Joe’s fatherly shoes.
But Santana could. If you gave him the chance.
Inwardly she’d cringed at that thought because she’d always silently sworn that she could be both mother and father to her kids. Turns out, their attitudes had shrieked that she’d been dead wrong. Arrogant and wrong.
The rest of the morning hadn’t gone much better.
Now, at the station, after having unloaded on an unsuspecting Joelle, she buried herself in her work. She’d deal with her kids tonight and somehow make things right with the receptionist. Joelle was Joelle: irritating, but, for the most part, benign. And besides, silver and gold Santa sayings or not, she could whip up one helluva Christmas crumb cake!
Chapter 14
“It was a closed adoption,” O’Keefe’s cousin Aggie was saying from the other end of the wireless connection. “And when I say ‘closed,’ I mean shut tight, locked and embedded with an indecipherable code. That was the way the mother wanted it and Dave and I agreed. Gabe was ours. Alone. We didn’t want his biological mother coming back into our lives, making demands or causing trouble or wanting him back.”
“Do you know if he was trying to find his birth parents? Had he checked any of the Web sites, attempted to contact them?”
“What? Gabe? No! None of my kids are interested in contacting their biological parents. I mean, I suppose they might change their minds, but not now. And Gabe, he never even mentioned the adoption even though he knew about it, of course. We’ve told the kids the truth from the beginning ... Why?”
Sitting on the foot of the bed in his motel room, O’Keefe hated that he had to break the news to Aggie, especially when it wasn’t yet confirmed. Then again, they were running out of time and he had to use every avenue possible when trying to locate the kid. He wished he had the kid’s cell phone or computer or, at the very least, records of Gabe’s activity, but the police in Helena had confiscated all of his property. “It could be that Gabe’s biological mother is in Grizzly Falls.”
“What? Oh my God! That’s why you’re there? Holy shit!” She, who rarely swore, was obviously flustered. Beyond flustered. Maybe closing in on panicking. “I don’t understand. Our attorney said the mother had been living in some little obscure town in the Pacific Northwest. I figured he was talking about a suburb or rural area around Seattle somewhere, but, like I said, I didn’t want to know.”
“People move.”
“Closer to their long-lost kids to reconnect!” she said, on the verge of hyperventilating.
“Slow down, it’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like, Dylan?”
“I’m not sure; still trying to sort it out. This could be a mistake, so just calm down, okay.”
“That’s pretty damned hard, considering.”
“I know, I know, but the important thing is that I locate Gabe.”
“Is he with this woman? This mother who gave him up and hasn’t seen him in sixteen years?” she demanded, her voice still trembling, as if she were close to hysteria. “Oh, God, and the father, is he involved, too? This is terrible. Oh, my God, Dylan, what the hell is going on?”
“No. It’s not like that. No one’s involved in anything that I know of. I was close to Gabe, he eluded me, and he broke into a house, then took off.”
“So that was Gabe. What the hell is he thinking? Dave and I, we saw something about this on the news, but the reporter didn’t have a name, of course, as he’s underage. For the love of God, why is he running?”
“Because he’s scared. Look, if you can find out any more information about the adoption, his biological parents, the dad as well, it might help. Then again, it could all be nothing.”
“I just want my son back,” Aggie whispered, calmer now.
??
?That’s what I’m trying to do. Find him and bring him home.”
“Please,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “Gabe’s a good kid. Really. This ... this is all a horrible mistake.” She sniffed loudly and then said something unintelligible.
“Dylan?” Dave said, his voice booming through the phone. “We’ll do whatever we can on this end, okay? Just keep us informed.”
“Will do.” O’Keefe hung up and felt like crap. The kid had been within his grasp and now had disappeared. Every day he wasn’t found, it was more likely he wouldn’t be.
He considered calling Alvarez, but waited. Surely she would let him know if she found out anything. Or would she? The fact that she might be the runaway’s mother complicated things.
Oh, hell, who was he kidding? Anything having to do with Alvarez complicated things. At least as far as he was concerned. To say his feelings were conflicted when he thought of her might just be the understatement of the decade.
Disturbed, his thoughts swirling with images of the woman who inspired way too much passion in him, he shrugged into his jacket and dropped the phone into a pocket, then grabbed his pistol from the drawer of the night table.
He had work to do. And, yes, it involved dealing with Selena Alvarez, whether he liked it or not.
And he didn’t.
Or, he thought cynically as he locked the door of his motel room behind him and turned his collar against the bitter cold, maybe he’d been lying to himself all along.
“What in the Sam Hill’s name is going on? Why weren’t we told about this?” Grayson demanded. Flanked by Alvarez and Pescoli, he stood in front of the television mounted on the wall of the conference room.
On the screen, Ray Sutherland was standing in the parking lot of his apartment complex. His kids were with him and he’d placed an arm around each of his half-grown sons. The boys were somber, even shell-shocked, looking as if they would rather be anywhere than on camera. Snow was collecting on the bills of their baseball caps and the shoulders of their oversized jackets, and neither boy would look directly into the camera’s eye. Unlike their father. Ray stared straight into the lens. Behind him, through a curtain of falling snow, were several parked cars, each covered in three inches of fluff, and the front of the apartment building where he resided.
“No one knew it was happening,” Pescoli said.
“Why the hell not?”
“Don’t know,” Alvarez said.
Pescoli said, “No one at KMJC News thought about giving us a heads-up. I’m betting Ray Sutherland did this on his own.”
“Idiot.” Grayson was irritated, obviously felt as if he and the department had been blindsided.
“All we want is for Brenda to come home,” Ray was saying, his voice catching a bit. He stared directly into the camera’s lens. “Honey, if you’re out there, please, call, and if ... if someone else knows where she is, we want them to please let us know she’s all right.”
“What is this?” Grayson said. “We’re not sure she was kidnapped. The FBI hasn’t even jumped in.”
“Yet,” Pescoli thought aloud, and watched the sadness in the two boys’ faces as their father begged for his ex-wife’s safe return. He seemed genuinely upset, but, Pescoli noted, no tears tracked down his face. “He’s the beneficiary on her life insurance policy,” Pescoli said. “Just got the confirmation from the insurance company about an hour ago. Get this: two hundred thousand big ones, and he increased it about three months ago. The benefit was originally fifty grand.”
“Lots of money,” Alvarez said.
Grayson nodded and rubbed the edge of his moustache. “For an ex.”
Pescoli thought the whole scene looked staged. “He made it pretty clear when we interviewed him that he wasn’t all that fond of her.”
“And here he is crying on TV,” Grayson said.
“Not quite crying. No tears. Just a big show, dragging his kids out in the snow.” Pescoli wasn’t buying it.
“This is live, right?” Alvarez said.
Grayson scowled. “Don’t know. Could’ve been taped.”
“We would have heard about it and it looks like it’s evening. I think I’ll head over there now. See what’s up. It’s not that far from here.”
“I’ll come with.” Pescoli was already walking through the door and into the hallway.
“Report back,” Grayson yelled after them. “If I’m not here, call my cell.”
Alvarez was right. Even with the evening traffic, they reached the apartment complex where Ray Sutherland had held court in less than fifteen minutes. The interview was over, the reporter, Nia Del Ray, packing up her gear into the KMJC van that was parked in the lot, a driver already waiting and smoking a cigarette that he held near a cracked window while the big rig idled.
“Hey,” Pescoli said to the reporter, who was about to climb into the waiting van. She didn’t bother flashing her badge or introducing herself as they’d worked with Nia before. “How about a heads-up on something like this?”
Nia, reaching for the handle of the door, paused. “Mr. Sutherland’s request. No cops.”
“Why?” Alvarez asked.
“Don’t know.” Nia’s dark hair didn’t so much as move as she shook her head. “I did mention it and he didn’t really answer, just said something about doing it ‘his way.’ ” Nia grabbed the door and opened it. “He called the station and I was sent out here. End of story.”
With that, she climbed into the van and the driver put it into gear, then pulled out, big engine rumbling, satellite dish tucked in.
“Pisses me off,” Pescoli said as she headed for Ray Sutherland’s apartment.
“Everything pisses you off.”
“Okay, well this guy really pisses me off. Wants to do it his way, like he’s damned Sinatra or something.” They’d reached Sutherland’s unit and Pescoli pounded on the door.
It opened a crack, Brenda’s younger son looking up at them, the chain still in place. His eyes were round and distrustful, a hank of coffee-brown hair falling across his forehead.
“I’m Detective Pescoli and this is my partner, Detective Alvarez. We’d like to talk to your father.”
They showed their badges and the kid looked over his shoulder and yelled, “Dad! The police want to talk to you!”
“Tell ’em I’m not interested!” the man yelled back.
“Mr. Sutherland,” Pescoli shouted. “We can talk here or down at the station. Your choice.”
“What? No! Oh, hell!” Obviously, Sutherland wasn’t happy. Heavy footsteps could be heard and the boy disappeared from the door, only to be replaced by a red-faced Ray. “What do you want?”
“We heard your interview and plea on television and our department, probably along with the FBI, would like to be involved. If this is a kidnapping case, you need our resources.”
“No!” He glanced over his shoulder, scowled, then slipped outside, closing the door behind him. “Look, I only did the thing with the news people for my kids, okay? They’re upset and I don’t know what to tell them. I really think their mother took off, found herself a boyfriend and just made it look like she was abducted or something. She’ll probably show up in a week or two. She just needed a break.”
Unlikely, Pescoli thought. They’d gone through Brenda Sutherland’s phone and computer records. If she had a boyfriend, the guy was buried deep; they must’ve communicated through hand signals or telepathy. Yeah, right.
“And you know this ... how?” Alvarez asked.
“I don’t ‘know’ it for sure, of course. But it seems damned lucky that it happened while I had the kids. No one was hurt right? No sign of a struggle, no blood in the car. She just took off after going to some church meeting. If you ask me, she had a thing for that preacher, what the hell was his name? Mullins, yeah. She thought he was ... What did she say? Oh, ‘understanding’ and ‘caring,’ and oh, yeah, ‘a hunk.’ Really? That pious jerk! If you ask me the guy’s a phony with a capital F.”
Alvarez said, ??
?Suppose your wife was kidnapped; you’d need us to help you get her back.”
“Ex-wife,” he reminded them, glancing from Alvarez back to Pescoli. “There’s no love lost between me and Brenda, okay? I just did this cuz my kids wanted me to.” He glanced at the front door, which was now firmly shut, then the window to the living room where the blinds moved a bit. His lips tightened in impatience. “Look, we’re done here. I said all I had to say and I’m not going to freeze my ass off arguing with you. Brenda will come home when she’s ready or, if she really was abducted, then maybe someone will call.”
“We’d like to help; monitor your phone and e-mail and—”
“Forget it.” His eyes were dark and cruel. “It would be a waste of time for all of us.” He hitched up his jeans by the belt and made his way back to the front door, then disappeared inside.
“Gee, I wonder why they’re still not married?” Pescoli said sarcastically, then let out a long breath as she considered how her last marriage had turned sour. “I feel sorry for their kids.”
“Let’s hope he’s right, that Brenda’s taking a break or having a fling or whatever, but that she comes back, and soon.”
“I don’t think it’s gonna happen,” Pescoli said as they hiked across the snowy parking lot to Alvarez’s car.
“Me neither.”
She hated to admit it, but after the discovery of Lara Sue Gilfry’s body, Pescoli was convinced that whoever had killed her wouldn’t be satisfied with just one victim. The scene had been too staged, the effort to display her body too involved for the creep to stop at just one event.
Nope. Pescoli was willing to bet a week’s pay that the killer was poised to strike again. She knew it. Felt that cold certainty deep in her bones.
Sick as it was, Pescoli feared the next body they found would be Brenda Sutherland’s.