Double

34: “Wolf”

The detectives’ reports Carlton Ferguson had told me about — one set from Jim Lauterbach and the other from a large Detroit agency that had a name I recognized and a good reputation in the industry — pretty much corroborated the fact that Ruth Ferguson was an abusive mother. Talks with neighbors in Bloomfield Hills, tapes from bugs planted in the Ferguson house, the statement of a doctor who’d treated Timmy for a badly twisted arm and lacerations he’d received “in a fight with some other boys” — all that and more. Inconclusive in a legal sense, maybe, and some of it evidence illegally gathered and inadmissible in court, but enough for me. Not that I needed any more confirmation: what I’d seen and heard here, and my gut instinct, had already cemented my decision. You learn to trust gut instincts after a while; they’re like old and reliable friends.

When I was done reading the reports, Ferguson and Nancy Pollard and I sat on the terrace, drinking cold bottles of Carta Blanca and talking, while Timmy splashed around in the pool out of earshot. I found myself liking the two of them. I don’t condone kidnapping, even in extreme cases like this one, but people — good people — get driven to desperate measures sometimes, and they don’t always use the best judgment.

I found myself liking Ferguson even more when he offered to reimburse me for my plane fare and expenses — and didn’t insult me by offering any payment beyond that. I didn’t say no to the plane fare and expenses; I figured I was entitled, since I had just blown the five-thousand-dollar reward for McCone and me. I also didn’t say no when he offered to put me up for the night and to arrange a private flight straight back to San Diego first thing in the morning. He knew somebody in Los Mochis who made regular trips to Los Angeles twice a week — one of the days being Wednesday — and wouldn’t be averse to delivering me on the way. And Ferguson was willing to drive me to Los Mochis himself, if I had no objection to getting up at four a.m. I had plenty of objection to being awake at that hour, but this time I waived it. He went in and made a call and came back to say that it was all set.

The Mexican servant, Maria-Elena, went out and sent Hernando on his way. A little later, she served us dinner on the terrace — pescado espada al horno, which was swordfish baked with olive oil and sprinkled with green onions and which was good enough to make even a confirmed fish-hater like me revise his opinion. Afterward we drank thick dark coffee and Mexican brandy and watched the sunset colors out over Topolobampo Bay and the Sea of Cortez. It was the kind of night you wanted to linger outside long after dark, to enjoy the stars and the lights along the coast and on the night fishers out on the bay, but the mosquitoes wouldn’t allow that. Swarms of them drove us inside before it was full dark.

I said good night to Timmy in the big private room they’d given him. I didn’t ask him if his mother had abused him; there wasn’t any need to now, and he’d had enough pain as it was. But I did ask him if he was happy here, living with his dad and his Aunt Nancy. And he said, “Sure!” with considerable enthusiasm. “I wish my dad had sent for me a long time ago.”

“What about your school?”

“Aunt Nancy was a teacher once. She’s going to make me study. But that’s okay. I like to read books.”

“You don’t want to go back to Bloomfield Hills? To your friends... your mother?”

“Uh-uh. I don’t have any friends there — she never let me have any. And I don’t want to see her again. Not ever.”

Before I left him, I also asked if he could tell me anything about the man who had bumped into his Aunt Nancy in the lobby of Lauterbach’s building on Sunday morning. He couldn’t. Kids’ memories are selective at his age; he didn’t remember the man at all.

In my fan-cooled guest room I got undressed and lay down on the bed under its canopy of mosquito netting. I was pretty tired and I should have been able to sleep right away, but I didn’t. It was still muggy in there, despite the fan, and all I could do was doze, hanging on the edge of sleep — that kind of half wakefulness where thoughts keep running around inside your head, some of them over and over, like the words to a song or to an intrusive little jingle.

Dear... sweetheart... dear... sweetheart... dear... sweet... heart... dear... heart... dearheart...

And all at once I was wide awake, sitting up in bed. Then I was out of it, out from under the mosquito netting and into my pants and on my way through the quiet villa. There were lights on in the living room: Ferguson and Nancy Pollard were still up, sitting in front of the terrace windows, sipping a last snifter of brandy before bed.

They were surprised to see me up again, and even more surprised when I said to Nancy, “That man you saw in Lauterbach’s building Sunday morning. You said he spoke to you after you collided outside the elevator. Something like ‘Excuse me, dear,’ or ‘sweetheart,’ you said. Do you remember the exact term he used?”

She blinked at me. “No, not exactly...”

“Was it dear? Or sweetheart?”

“Neither one. Something that sounded like one or the other.”

“Dearheart?”

“That’s it,” she said. “Dearheart. ‘Excuse me, dearheart.’ Does that mean something to you?”

I nodded. I’d only heard the term used once that I could remember, and that had been last Friday afternoon in the Cantina Sin Nombre, by the man who had been annoying Elaine Picard.

Woodall. Rich Woodall.