Shakedown

Chapter Thirty-eight

There are things we know and things we don’t want to know. When what we know is too hard to handle, we convince ourselves that we can box it up, stick it someplace we can forget about, and then, magically, we won’t know it any longer. Then we protect ourselves with a lie-what we don’t know can’t hurt us.

I have never forgotten the pain of losing Kevin. It had hardened into a callus around the unhealed hole in my heart. But I had put away the unspeakable immobilizing fear and the cold rush of primal panic that swept over me when I first learned that my neighbor had taken him. That’s what I had hidden in the box that Ammara had just opened and it reentered my system as swiftly as snake’s venom.

Wendy wasn’t a young child and Colby Hudson wasn’t a sexual predator. She might have gone shopping and he might have gone fishing. They might have eloped. Someone might have planted the drugs and cash in Colby’s house. Anything was possible and nothing was certain except that I was scared, as frightened as I’d been that day in Dallas.

The disappearance of a child always mobilizes action. Everyone can identify with the child’s vulnerability. There are no gray areas, only outrage and a secret, shameful gratitude of those who join in the search that it wasn’t their child.

It would be different with Wendy and Colby because no one knew whether they were victims or suspects, though Ammara’s unspoken subtext implied that the Bureau believed that Wendy might be the former while it was more likely that Colby was the latter. Colby’s status would be confirmed when the paperwork for his purchase of Jill Rice’s car and house was discovered in the search of his home.

It wouldn’t take long for Troy Clark to run the same traps I had. He’d find out that I had used a phony ID to visit Thomas Rice and that Rice died less than twenty-four hours later. He’d trace my Detective Funkhouser alter ego to Marty Grisnik, who could only give me so much cover without getting his tit caught in the wringer. And he’d find out that I had braced Jill Rice. He’d lock up Thomas Rice’s file before Ammara could copy it and I’d end up answering questions about withholding information and obstruction of justice, shakes or no shakes.

While all that was happening, Wendy would be slipping farther away. She would be only one of several priorities, probably at the bottom of the list until there was hard evidence that she was a victim of something.

When Kevin was taken, I had had the full resources of the federal, state, and local law-enforcement agencies in one of the biggest cities in the United States. They and I did everything we could as fast as we could and it still wasn’t enough. This time I was alone and relegated to the sidelines, unable to control the investigation or, for that matter, my own body.

I tried to dial Joy’s phone number, but I was shaking so much I couldn’t get it right. I slammed the phone onto the car seat, cursing all that was holy and more that wasn’t. I hinged forward, smacking into the steering wheel, anchoring my arms around it until the worst had passed.

I raised my head. The street in front of Jill Rice’s house was deserted. It was small consolation that my outburst had gone unnoticed. My breathing slowed, keeping pace with the decreasing aftershocks in my torso. When my hands steadied, I tried Joy’s number again, searching for a way to tell her that our nightmare was back.

She answered on the first ring, her voice light, almost playful.

“Jack,” she said. “I guess you survived the radiologist.”

“Perfect attendance. Do you have a key to Wendy’s apartment?”

Joy always said I had two voices, with and without my badge. She hated the badge voice, said it was indifferent.

“What’s the matter?”

“Wendy didn’t go to work today,” I said, taking it one step at a time.

“Did you call her apartment or her cell?”

“I didn’t. Ammara Iverson did.”

“Why was she calling Wendy?”

Intuitive anxiety had elevated her pitch half an octave, her voice quivering. I imagined her sitting up, spine stiff, running one hand through her hair before grabbing on to something solid.

“She was looking for Colby Hudson. He didn’t show up to work, either.”

Joy forced a laugh. “Oh, you don’t think they ran off and got married, do you?”

My answer caught in my throat, held there by another spasm, escaping with a stutter. “I wish they had, but it doesn’t look that way. When Troy couldn’t find Colby, Ben Yates sent a couple of agents to his house. They found some things that didn’t belong there and now they’re looking for both Colby and Wendy.”

“Oh, my God, Jack! If Colby did anything wrong, the Bureau can’t think Wendy had anything to do with it! That’s absurd!”

“No one is saying that she did.”

“Then what are they saying?”

“That they can’t find her.”

Joy let out a low, wailing moan, understanding at last what I was saying. The woman who’d left me two months ago would have hung up, asking the rest of her questions in private, getting the answers from a bottle. She didn’t, gathering herself and asking, “What do we do?”

“The Bureau is tied up at Colby’s house. I don’t know if they’ve sent anyone to Wendy’s yet. I want to get there before they do. But I don’t have a key.”

“I do. I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.”

“I’m on my way.”