Cold truth

Chapter 25

History, geography, and Interstate 70 connect Kansas City and St. Louis in a perpetual rivalry. Both claim, rightly, to have been jumping-off points for the country's westward expansion. Each sits on a border, orbiting the state like moons competing for the gravitational pull of the capital that, not accidentally, is located dead center in the middle of Missouri. St. Louis, its residents often sniff, is an Eastern city- read sophisticated — while Kansas City, they note from the view looking down their noses, is a Western city- read not sophisticated. Kansas-Citians, not above trash talk or cheap shots, still remind their St. Louis brethren of the 1985 World Series, and wonder aloud why a city's movers and shakers rank one another according to the high school they attended.

The highway is a 250-mile concrete tether connecting the cities, a four-hour-drive, long enough for Mason and Abby to exhaust the possible explanations for Paula Sutton's nervous reaction to Mason's questions about Emily Davenport and her near accident when he asked about Abby.

"Are you certain you never ran across Paula before?" Mason asked for the tenth time.

"I'm certain," Abby answered with diminished patience. "I've never heard of the woman, never met the woman, never even listened to her damn show!"

"Okay, I'm convinced," Mason said. "But Paula knows enough about you that she wasn't happy to hear your name. Or Emily's, for that matter."

Abby said, "At least it's easy to understand Max's reaction to the pictures. Gina broke up with him. He doesn't take rejection well, especially when he finds out someone was watching over his shoulder. Plus, he's got a reputation for violence and he's so big, he could have sneezed at Gina and knocked her out that window. I don't blame him for not wanting the police to find out they were involved."

"He is that strong, I'll give you that," Mason said. "Only, I always thought that his Mad Max routine was just an act to psych himself up for football games and sell tickets to wrestling."

"Until today," Abby reminded him.

"Yeah," Mason said. "For someone his size, he's very quick. I never had a chance to get out of the way. He wouldn't be the first guy who killed the woman that dumped him, though I don't know why he'd go after Trent."

"Maybe you and Blues and Harry are wrong about there being one killer. Maybe the murders aren't connected."

Mason shook his head. "I wouldn't bet against Blues and Harry on something like this."

"Are they that good?"

"Yep. They're that good."

"Then maybe you should pay more attention to Trent. All your suspects start out with Gina and dead-end with Trent. Try looking at the case from the other direction."

"You're that good?" he asked her.

"Oh, yeah," she answered as Mason took the Highway 40 exit off I-70, entering St. Louis through the area called West County.

It was also Abby's idea that they talk to her uncle, Nathan Ruben. He might, she said, know who was involved in the adoption of her baby. They had to wait until Monday to see the hospital's records on Abby and Jordan, but could talk to her uncle on Sunday. Abby hadn't thought to ask her uncle at the time, and she hadn't seen or talked with him since her baby was born. Her parents never mentioned his name, as if doing so would remind them of the shame their daughter had visited on them. Abby had her own reasons for wanting to erase her uncle from her memory.

"He was an ugly drunk," she told Mason as they lay in bed that night. "He never hit me, or touched me, but he scared the crap out of me when he drank, which was most of the time. He was a little man and the booze made him mean. He'd threaten to get even with all the people who'd screwed him over."

"Why did he take you in?"

"It wasn't because he was my mother's brother. That's for sure. My parents paid him for my room and board. He needed the money."

"Didn't your parents know what he was like? Didn't you tell them?"

Abby propped herself up on one elbow. "They had to know, but they pretended they didn't. My pregnancy mortified them. That's all they could deal with and they didn't deal with it very well. I had to deal with the rest, and I didn't do such a bang-up job myself."

Mason stroked her bare shoulder, pushing the sheet to her waist. "You were only seventeen. Don't be so hard on yourself."

"If I hadn't gotten pregnant, if I hadn't given up my baby-"

"What?" Mason interrupted. "None of this ever would have happened? You don't know that. You don't even know if your baby has anything to do with any of this. There's only one thing that wouldn't have happened," he told her.

"What's that," she said, her mood downcast.

"Us," he said. "Come here."

Nathan Ruben lived in University City, an urban pocket of St. Louis where the houses were compact, built close together, with narrow lawns sticking out from front doors to curbs like green tongues.

Abby didn't remember her uncle's address, but there was only one Nathan Ruben listed in the phone book. She recognized the street and, when they stopped in front of it, the house. It was dark brick with a low-pitched roof that looked like a hat pulled low on the brow. The driveway was crumbling, ground to concrete pebbles and dust in some places, broken into uneven slabs in others. The patch of grass that passed for a front yard had burnt up in the August heat and not been resuscitated by September rain.

They sat in the car, Mason listening to Abby's quick, unsteady breath, not knowing what to say, waiting for her to open the car door. They hadn't called Nathan because Mason preferred to show up unannounced, catching the old man off guard, and because Abby wanted to put off as long as possible the moment when she heard her uncle's voice again. The sky was gray like rippled aluminum. The wind came in sharp bursts, stripping the trees of their weakest leaves.

Abby gathered her jacket around her. "Okay," she said. "Let's go."

Mason followed her to the front door. Abby pressed the doorbell once and turned, as if to run away like a child playing a joke. Mason put his hands on her shoulders, easing her back to the door. She rang the bell twice more, then, with uncovered anger, rapped her fist on the hard wood.

A voice filtered through from inside the house. "I'm coming, I'm coming! Who the hell is it anyway? I'm coming."

The door opened, filling the dark entry hall with daylight, causing the old man to squint and shield his eyes. He was as small as Abby had said, not much over five feet. His gray hair was thin, more loose strands than anything else. He was thin, made thinner by his loose-fitting clothes, unshaven face, and milky eyes. Nathan Ruben was a ruined man, past caring that he was. Mason saw nothing frightening about him, though Abby quivered in the doorway, remembering her uncle in a different way.

"Hello, Uncle Nathan. It's me. Abby."

"Abby?" he said, rolling his tongue from cheek to cheek, searching for the connection.

"Your niece. Linda's daughter," she explained, using her mother's name for the first time since Mason had met her.

Memory came to Nathan with a flicker of fear as he stepped back to close the door. Mason moved past Abby, pushing the door and Nathan inside. "Thanks," Mason said. "We'd love to come in."

"Hey, you!" Nathan said. "You can't bust in here! Who the hell are you anyway? I'm gonna call the cops, you don't get outta here!"

His eyes narrowed to black beads, hinting of the menace they once carried for a seventeen-year-old girl. Abby stood in the doorway, now framed by the light. Mason watched as she squared her shoulders, stamping out old fears like a smoldering campfire.

"Uncle Nathan, we just want to talk to you," she said. "Then we'll leave you alone."

"Talk? What about? I don't hear nothing from you in twenty years after all I done for you," he said.

Abby wanted to tell him how little he'd done, but resisted the impulse, knowing that she had to reassure him to learn anything. "Let's sit down," she said, leading the way into his living room.

Drawn curtains and stale air gave the house a tomb-like feel, as if Nathan had cut off the rest of the world while he drank himself to death. A half-empty quart bottle of scotch sat on an end table next to a sofa covered with old newspapers. A mangy tabby cat lay across the top of the sofa. Nathan gave the cat the back of his hand, sending it scurrying away. Abby sat next to her uncle on the sofa, Mason taking a chair opposite them.

"Uncle Nathan," Abby began again, "I'm trying to find my daughter, the one I gave up for adoption. This man is Lou Mason. He's a friend of mine and he's helping me."

"What's that got to do with me? I don't know nothing about that." The little man sat with his arms crossed, his eyes darting back and forth between Mason and the whiskey bottle.

Abby said, "You helped with the adoption. I only want to know who you dealt with, who made the arrangements. Please, Uncle Nathan. It's very important."

"I don't know nothing about any of that. I can't help you," he said.

"Mr. Ruben," Mason said. "You can talk to us or you can talk to the police. We know that your niece's baby was adopted illegally. We know that you were involved. Selling babies is a felony. You can spend the rest of your life living here with your cat and your booze or you can go to jail. Tell us what we want to know and we'll leave you alone."

Mason didn't know any of that, but he ran the bluff to shake up Nathan, convinced that Nathan was immune to Abby's softer approach. Nathan reached for the bottle of scotch, but Mason beat him to it.

"It's not time for your bottle yet, Nathan," Mason said.

"Gimme that!" Nathan said, coming off the sofa and reaching for the bottle.

Mason pressed his hand against Nathan's chest, pushing him back on the sofa. Nathan turned to Abby. "This is how you repay me? You bring this schmuck into my house to beat me up! I'm an old man and you let him beat me up!"

Abby was saucer-eyed, caught between Mason's unexpected harshness and her instinctive sympathy for her uncle in spite of their past. "Lou! Please! It's okay, Uncle Nathan. No one is going to beat you up and no one is going to call the police. Just help us. Please."

Mason stood over Nathan, invoking a silent threat. "Tell your friend to get outta my house or I'm not telling nobody nothing," Nathan said, casting a defiant glare at Mason.

Abby looked at Mason, her eyes pleading. "Fine," Mason said, putting the bottle down. "I'll be in the car."

Abby emerged half an hour later, her eyes red, her cheeks puffy. She slid into the car, closed the door, and turned on Mason.

"You were awful to him! How could you have been so awful?"

"Abby, he's an awful little man. He wasn't going to give us anything unless I shook him up. What did he tell you?"

Abby's eyes filled again. "He is an awful man. He sold my baby because he needed the money. He started crying when he finally told me, but that made it worse for me. He was crying for himself, not for me."

Mason took Abby in his arms. "Did he give you a name?"

Abby shook her head, sitting up and wiping her nose. "No. He said it was a man he met when he was going through the hospital's alcohol treatment program before I even came to St. Louis. The man was a social worker who approached Nathan when he saw the two of us check into the hospital. Nathan didn't remember his name, only that he dressed like a hippy. It's not much to go on, but that's all he remembers except for the money."

"How much?" Mason asked.

Abby clenched her jaw. "Five hundred dollars," she said, "for my baby."