Abandoned

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Burns called some uniforms to come and take Hollister away,” Alan says.

I’m standing in the large backyard—which is much like the front yard, just a single tree and waves of too-green grass—looking at nothing. Trying to make sense of everything I just heard. “He really had no way of contacting this Dali?” I ask.

“Nope. Hollister never initiated contact. The perp always contacted him, either by email or cell phone. The emails were always from a free service provider, like Yahoo or Gmail. He tried calling back on some of the cell phone numbers when things blew up, but they were all out of service.”

“They were probably pay-as-you-go phones.” I sigh. “He’s smart. Controlling the contact limits his exposure. He provides proof that he can deliver without ever actually meeting Hollister, and he doesn’t disclose the payment details until it’s time.” I glance at Alan. “I’m assuming they never met?”

“Not once face-to-face.”

“Right.” I nod. “Clever.”

“What’s smart is waiting seven years. You know how much changes in that amount of time in a major metropolitan police department? People are transferred, fired, retire, chiefs come and go, not to mention all the new crimes being committed. Picking out a crime from seven years ago, unless it’s something really memorable, is pretty unlikely.”

It’s true. The inexorability of it is terrifying. Seven years for a payoff?

“It explains some things about Heather,” I say. “The lack of over-the-top physical abuse. No overt signs of rape. Maybe this really is just a purely financial transaction for him.”

“Pick her up, lock her up, toss some food in every now and then?”

“Maybe.”

“What about the scars on her back?”

I consider this. “Perhaps they were just punishment. Again, there was nothing in them to suggest someone out of control. Eight years is a long time. Maybe there were times she rebelled, and he needed to show her who was boss.”

“Like a dog.” He curls his lip in disgust.

“It’s cold,” I muse. “There’s a pathology there, but no passion. I don’t know. It’s odd.”

It’s difficult for me to accept finance as the sole motive. Seven years is one hell of a personal investiture just for money.

My cell phone rings and I answer. “Barrett.”

“Another victim has turned up,” Callie says. “Male, unresponsive, just like Dana Hollister.”

My stomach churns. “Where?”

“He was left in the parking lot of a hospital in Simi Valley. He’d been placed in a body bag with a breathing tube. Some poor grandmother on her way in for a checkup on her hip replacement heard noises, went to investigate, and found him.”

“Any ID?”

“Not yet, but this happened two or three hours ago. What do you want me to do?”

I put a hand to my forehead, just briefly. There’s too much happening all at once. Dana Hollister in the bathtub, Heather Hollister in the hospital, Douglas Hollister in jail, Dylan struggling for life … I don’t include poor Avery, because all that’s left for him is the indignity of an autopsy and a burial. “What’s happened on the ViCAP search?”

“Completed. There have been three other similar crimes reported in the last seven to eight years. One near Las Vegas, another in Portland, and the oldest in Los Angeles. The same marks in the eye sockets were there on all three of them, with the same mental unresponsiveness.” She pauses. “As you suspected, all three had been given homemade lobotomies.”

We don’t have medical confirmation on Dana or the new John Doe, but I’m confident we’ll find the same thing. Our killer is good, but he isn’t flawless. Flawless would be remaining undetected. Leaving bodies behind is the same as a trail of bread crumbs for us. I hope.

“Honey-love?” Callie asks. “What do you want me to do?”

“I’m pretty sure I know who the new male victim is, Callie. Heather had a boyfriend.” I explain to her about Jeremy Abbott.

“That would make sense,” she agrees.

“The timing is pretty compelling. Find out if I’m right.”

“What do you want James to do?”

“Keep him on the database. This guy’s very smart. We’re going to need to be detail-oriented to catch what he’s missed.”

“Speaking of the little beast, he’s asking to talk to you.”

“Put him on.”

“I came across something interesting,” James says without preamble. “The night Heather Hollister was abducted, an oddity was noted by the investigating officers: a series of car accidents, four in all, of vehicles exiting the parking lot the gym was in.”

I frown, puzzled. “You mean a four-car pileup?”

“No. Four separate accidents, four vehicles, all unrelated.”

“Strange.”

“Too strange,” he says. “I don’t think it was an anomaly. I’m going to see if I can chase it down further.”

Then he’s gone, before I can reply, and Callie is back. “Ah, James, our James,” she says, sounding wistful. “Can’t live with him, can’t kill him slowly enough.”

“Do you know what he’s talking about? This thing with the cars?”

“That would require him to give me the time of day. I’m off to see the man you think might be Jeremy Abbott.” She pauses. “Is it bad?”

I consider Dana Hollister staring into the void. “It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Alan says, not in his happy voice. I’ve just briefed him on my phone call with Callie. “What’s the game plan?” he asks.

I glance at my watch. It’s closing in on four o’clock. The day has gotten away from us. The sun is a runaway horse. “We could go to the hospital,” I say. “We can try to talk to Heather again.”

He shakes his head. “I advise against it. Give her another night, and then go over there with Burns. Just you and him.”

The Crime Scene Unit has arrived. Douglas Hollister has already been led away, cuffed and crying. Avery Hollister’s body continues to decompose in the bathroom upstairs, awaiting the coroner. Dylan Hollister is at the hospital having his stomach pumped. I think of refrigerator magnets and suddenly I’m overwhelmed with a desire to see Bonnie.

“I want to go home,” I say. “Is that weird? I just got back from vacation, and I guess we should go balls out on this, but I just don’t feel like it.”

“Nope. Not weird. That’s the voice you need to listen to when it pipes up.”

He’s mentioned this before, in years past. The voice. He says it is your internal fuse box speaking, letting you know what your limits are.

It has been a crazy few days, I tell myself, beginning the necessary internal rationalization. Bonnie’s cat-killing, the offer from the director, Callie’s aborted wedding celebration, and all that followed. I’m only human. Right?

I yield to my own wimpiness.

“Let’s go home.”

“I’m going to stay here,” Burns says. “Obviously. CSU will feed me anything they find right away, and I’ll send it your way. I assume that will be a two-way street?”

“Scout’s honor,” I say, raising my three fingers in the time-honored salute.

“That’s the Boy Scout salute. You’re a girl.”

I smile, in spite of my exhaustion. “We won’t play any games when it comes to cooperation. You have my word.”

“Good.” He runs a hand through his thinning hair. “You want to hear something awful? I’m excited. All this, and I’m excited. Finally going to break this case open.”

I force another smile, but I don’t share his optimism. “Would you have a problem with letting our computer team go over his PC?”

“I don’t, but computer crimes might. They’re pretty open when it comes to cooperation, but they don’t like having it taken away kit and caboodle.”

“How about a compromise, then? I’ll send my tech over to the LAPD, and they can work together on it. No turf wars that way.”

“That’ll work.”

“Not to tell you how to do your job …” Alan says.

Burns waves him off. “Bull-pen advice is allowed, no offense taken.”

“Your CSU should print the body bag that Dana Hollister came in. It’s a good surface for prints.”

The paramedics had lifted Dana’s slack form out of the bag, which remained upstairs in the tub.

“You think he’s that careless?”

Alan shrugs. “Devil’s in the details.”

“Consider it done. When do you want to try interviewing Heather again?” Burns asks me.

“Tomorrow mid-morning. Ten o’clock?”

“Let’s make it ten-thirty. I’m going to be up to my asshole with this until late tonight. My captain will want a briefing at nine-thirty.”

We agree and shake hands. Burns is still flushed with his grim, hopeful excitement. I understand it, but I can’t find any of it in me right now.

Alan drops me off at my car. The parking lot is emptying out of cars as the sun meanders toward its setting place, getting ready to make the sky bleed.

“I think I’ll go upstairs and rattle James’s cage a little,” Alan says. “You should just go.”

“Thanks.” Alan is my de facto second in command. Yet another reason I will miss him when he retires.

“One thing. In the interview with Hollister, I got the idea he was still holding something back.”

“A lie?”

He squints, thinking. “Not so much lying as, maybe … omitting? Fuck, I don’t know. It’s just a gut thing.”

“I trust your gut.”

He pats it with his hand. “It’s a good gut.”

“Prodigious.”

He grins. I envy his perfect white teeth, as I have so many times before. The last time I had teeth like that, I was fifteen. Then I started smoking, and now they are what I like to refer to as an “eggshell white.” Alan’s sparkle like all-natural veneers. “Good night,” he says.

There’s still a little bit of light in the sky when I pull into my driveway, a minor miracle. It’s almost always the moon that ushers me through my front door. I climb out of my car, trying not to think much about the day.

I’d never have come home this early on a case even five years ago.

The guilt, I reflect, is a little like Catholic guilt. That feeling that you should be doing something or not doing something, even though the majority of the world wouldn’t judge you for either. This is like that. I’m going to walk through my front door, into my house filled with the people who love me. I’m going to have a nice hot dinner, a heavenly cup of coffee, and then some conversation, laughter, television, bedtime, and possibly a little de-stress sex.

Avery Hollister, in the meantime, will be taken to the morgue. Heather Hollister will be picking at her skin and pulling out strands of hair. Dylan Hollister will wake up to a world where his own father killed his brother and tried to kill him. Dana Hollister will be trapped in her dark, soundless world, as will the man I believe to be Jeremy Abbott.

Douglas Hollister is going to jail, though.

I nod to myself. That earns me something.

As I walk to the door, I notice a white envelope, greeting card size, propped against it. SMOKY is written on it in block capital letters. I frown and look around. I pick up the envelope and open it.

Inside is a blank card on white stock, utterly featureless. I flip it open.

ONE LAST WARNING. DON’T COME LOOKING FOR ME. THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES IF YOU DO. LET IT LIE.

My heart stutters in my chest and my hand reaches for my weapon. I scan the front yard. The streetlights are beginning their dim hum as a timer tells them darkness is approaching. I try to swallow, but my mouth is too dry.

He’d been here! At my house!

The keys shake in my hand as I turn the lock. My hand shakes as I turn the knob. I can’t help it.

Hold it together. I need to tell Tommy about this, that’s established, but Bonnie doesn’t need to know anything.

I close my eyes and take in a deep breath, hold it for a moment, expel it slowly. I do this again. I open my eyes. Better. I paste a broad smile on my face and enter my home.

Tommy approaches as I walk into the living room. He gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Bonnie comes and gives me a hug and a smile. It’s all very Ozzie and Harriet and surreal. We’re turning into the kind of family that the men I hunt need so much to kill.

“Hungry?” Tommy asks.

I sniff the air and find that, yes, I actually am. “That smells amazing. What is it?”

“Just spaghetti. Secret’s in the sauce.”

“I can taste it from here.”

“You’ll get to eat it hot off the stove this time, instead of heating up the leftovers like usual.” Another kiss. “Dinner’s in twenty.” Bonnie’s returned to the coffee table and what looks like homework.

I go upstairs and change into my relaxed clothes, which can consist of such things as sweats or shorts, depending on the weather, and always—always—socks but no shoes. Tonight it’s sweats. I finish taking the band out of my hair. I wear it up at work, but leaving it up at home can give me headaches. I close my eyes again and breathe. “Tommy!” I call. “Can you come up here for a second?”

“In a minute.”

I wait, thinking as I do that you could set your watch to Tommy’s “in a minute.” He tends to mean what he says. I hear footsteps on the stairs and he enters the room, closing the door behind him.

“So you ready to tell me what’s been bugging you since you came in the door?”

My mouth falls open. “You knew?”

He reaches out to touch my hair. He likes it down, like this.

“Smoky, when I was in the Secret Service, I would spend hours studying a crowd of five hundred people, looking for an indication of trouble. Do you really think I can’t see when the woman I love has something on her mind?”

I scowl, irrationally irritated at being seen through so easily. “Why didn’t you ask me about it, then?”

He shrugs. “Because I trust you. I knew you’d tell me when and if I needed to know.”

“Simple as that?”

He contemplates me with loving eyes. “A lot of people think being together means you always have to know every single little thing that’s going on with your partner. As if not being clairvoyant suddenly becomes a failing when you’re a couple. I think you should know about the important things, and you should be there when your partner needs you. All the rest is trust.”

“That sounds a lot like the relationship between cops who are partners.”

“There are worse relationships to emulate.”

I frown. “So wait—do you have some secrets still? Things you haven’t told me?”

“Of course.”

I consider this. “And you’re saying it won’t hurt me or us for me not to know them?”

“Yep.”

My first instinct is to reject this philosophy, but after I give myself a moment, I realize that he’s right. I trust him. I’m not worried about any secrets he hasn’t felt the need to tell me. “That’s pretty cool, Tommy.”

“Trust and privacy aren’t mutually exclusive. We fell in love because of who we are as individuals. What would be the point of losing that individuality?”

I put my arms around his neck. “Give me a kiss. A good one.”

He does. “Now. Tell me what you need to tell me.”

I fill him in on the text message sent to me at the wedding, and I pull the greeting card out of my purse and hand it to him. He reads it and gives it back to me when he’s done.

“What do you want to do?” he asks.

That’s all. No fit of anger, no fist shaking, no oaths to hunt down and kill whoever’s doing this. Just a level gaze and a simple question.

“I want to put Kirby on Bonnie, 24/7. That’s my real concern in all this. I was fine when it was just a text message—well, okay, not fine, but it was just about me then.” I shake my head. “This is different. He came to my home. I can’t function unless I know she’s safe.”

He thinks, then nods his approval. “Kirby’s very good.”

“We’ll have to pay her something, Tommy. I can’t ask her to do fulltime bodyguard work for nothing.”

“That’s not a problem. You talk to her and then have her call me about the financial details.”

“What about you?” I ask.

“I’ll guard myself.” It’s said in a way that indicates that’s the end of that particular discussion. “I’m going to get the house brought up to snuff on security. The stuff you did after losing Matt and Alexa was okay, but it’s time to go high tech.”

I’d put double deadbolts on all the doors. At the time it had made me feel better, but—once again—it was only me then.

“I’m scared, Tommy. We’re too happy.”

He plays with my hair again, strokes my cheek with a knuckle, and then he takes my hand and heads toward the door, pulling me along with him. “Wine and pasta are great levelers,” he says. “‘Calm your stomach, calm yourself,’” he quotes.

“Who said that?”

“My father.”

I let him lead me down to the promised peace.

Dinner is a happy thing. Tommy was right. It doesn’t take away the fear, but I feel grounded again.

Bonnie is chatty and animated, talking about her choice for an extracurricular activity.

“Track,” she says. “I think I could run pretty fast, and they have meets and everything. I like running and being healthy, and it’s a good way to meet other girls.”

Track coordinates too well with her desire to become an FBI agent when she grows up, but she’s so obviously happy about her choice that I let it go easily, a butterfly on the breeze.

She doesn’t even mention the other part of the deal—our time at the gun range. I’m sure it’s on her mind, just as I’m certain she’s not bringing it up now on purpose. I accept this manipulation with a kind of relief; it’s very teenage, almost normal.

She helps Tommy clean up after the meal. He likes to hand-wash the dishes and refuses to let me do it.

“It relaxes me,” he says.

The man wants to do all the dishes, all the time. Who am I to argue?

They work quietly, not speaking. Bonnie is very comfortable with Tommy’s taciturnity.

I enjoy watching them when they don’t know they’re being watched. I give them a final, lingering glance and then go upstairs to our bedroom. I close the door and retrieve my cell from the bed where Tommy had tossed it. I dial Kirby. She picks up after two rings.

“Howdy, Smoky,” she chirps. Kirby is almost always chipper, except when she’s killing someone, and maybe sometimes even then.

“Good job on the wedding, Kirby,” I tell her, meaning it. “Sorry it got interrupted.”

“That’s okay. I don’t think I was feeling as bad as the bald chick.”

“I can confirm that.”

“I’m most pissed off about the cake. I mean, gosh, I really got a good deal on it.”

Probably by flashing your gun and that kilowatt smile, I muse. “What did Callie do with it?”

“She took two slices home. Two slices! That’s all. Does that make any sense to you?”

“What happened to the rest of it?”

She giggles. “Let’s say it was put to good use on a beach by a fire satisfying the munchies.”

“I guess a man was involved?”

“Of course! I mean, what girl with any self-esteem eats wedding cake on the beach alone? Talk about pathetic pictures, you know?”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“So, boss woman. What’s the job? Need someone fucked silly until they give up secrets in the throes of ecstasy? Or maybe you need someone to become extra-special quiet?”

Kirby’s only half joking. I imagine if I asked her to kill for me, she’d do it without much concern. She’d kill and then head back out to the beach with a gosh and a giggle for some more marijuana, wedding cake, and man. Kirby is a creature of the now, and she doesn’t question her own enjoyment of things. I envy it sometimes, but only sometimes. I’m happy with my current moral compass.

“I need you to guard Bonnie. It will be full time, which I guess means you’ll need to pull someone else in to help. I’ll let her know it’s happening. She’s too smart to do otherwise. She’d figure it out.”

A brief silence tells me she’s disturbed by this request. Kirby is the only person I know who’s more inscrutable than Callie, but I’ve seen enough and become attuned enough to the minutiae of her variations to be certain that she cares about Bonnie.

“Someone threatened her?” Her voice is cool, mild, dangerous.

“Me. Someone threatened me.” I fill her in.

“Hmmm …” she says. “Sure, I’ll do it. It’s going to cut into my sex life, but that’s the biz.”

“We’ll pay you, Kirby, of course. Tommy said for you to call him about that.”

“Puh-leeeeeeze! Your green stuff is no good with me, babe. You’ll have to foot the bill for whoever I get to help me, but I won’t accept a shiny thin one for anything else.”

“Kirby,” I protest. “That’s a lot of time, and—”

She interrupts me. “You do know that I’m rich, right?”

“You are?” The thought had never occurred to me.

I can almost hear her rolling her eyes. “See, you think blonde means dummy, just like the rest of the world. Hella yeah, I’m rich! Solving all those problems with drug cartels in South America tended to leave cash lying around, if you know what I mean, plus I was playing them off against each other, selling information and my own special brand of silence to both sides.” If she was here, she’d be winking at me. “Then there’s years afterward working freelance. People pay a lot of money for what I do, Smoky. I’m what is known as highly diversified. Mutual funds, gold, Swiss bank accounts—you name ’em, I’ve got ’em. Then there’s all the blackmail I have stashed away in case I need a really big infusion of cash.”

What can I say? “I appreciate it, Kirby. I really do.”

“No problema. Now, gotta ask the question, hate to but have to. If something does happen, how do you want me to solve the problem?” It’s asked with the same level of unending cheer as all the rest of it.

“Lethally,” I answer, without hesitation.

The penalty for messing with my family is death. This is a morality I no longer have the slightest quandary about.

Kirby takes it in stride, never missing a beat. “You betcha. When do you want me to start?”

“Tomorrow morning, if you can.”

“Coolio. Then I’ll call Tommy, hammer out the details, and head for the beach. One more night licking wedding cake off my current hunk of man before heading into the salt mines.”

I hang up, feeling troubled and amused, which is par for the course when it comes to conversations with Kirby. She weaves stories of carefree sex with cheerful tales of assassination in a dance that leaves you wondering how much is true and if you should be worried about the state of your soul or hers or both.

An adage from my father pops into my head. Chase the wind and you’ll be running forever.

It applies to Kirby. Either cut her out of your life or accept her as she is, because you’ll never tame her. She’s the wind.