Faint Trace (3 page)

“Taylor is a good kid,” he said. “Not popular, keeps to himself, and a bit socially isolated because his parents are quite strict about his time.” I managed to hold back a laugh, since the kid seemed to be raised by an elderly man and a housekeeper.

“C'mon, Lyons,” Ernie said, looking down the street before sprinting up the driveway. We hugged the bushes that lined the property, bypassing the garage door and looking for a side entrance. There was one, but it was locked.

“Do you smell smoke, Lyons,” Ernie asked, nose in the air and rattling the door.

“Don't give up on due process so soon, Aguilar.” I ran to the back of the garage, where we found a window propped up several inches.

Once we dropped inside, I could understand why the window was left open. The room smelled of aftershave and nail polish remover, so strong I gagged before breathing through my mouth, a low burn in the back of my throat.

“Where's the loot?” Ernie whispered. “I was expecting to find Dorothy's red shoes and ten copies of the Shroud of Turin in here.”

I was surprised to see that the room was outfitted like a normal garage. “I have to say, I was expecting something less . . . utilitarian.”

A lawnmower was propped in the corner, hedge trimmers hanging next to the window. The whole far wall was taken up by a wooden workbench with a series of cabinets built in above. Inside we found rows upon rows of benzene and acetone, and in the next set of cabinets, bleach and ten bottles of Wite-­Out.

“Meth?” Ernie asked.

“Wrong ingredients,” I said, and pulled open the last door. Inside were neatly stacked rows of passports, arranged alphabetically by country.

I gently picked up one from the top shelf. It was issued by the Republic of Georgia and had stamps from around the globe, the picture showing a young woman with bleached blond hair. I looked at others, documents from Latvia, Thailand, and Qatar. All were issued to women.

“He selling these?” Ernie asked.

“Not much market for expired passports,” I said. I reached below to a stack on the bottom shelf. When I flipped through the pages they were pristine, crisp and clean, with expiration dates three years in the future, empty spots where the photos should be.

I pointed to the chemicals. “Well, that explains the benzene and the bleach. He's using those to create clean passports, ones he can sell.”

“There's a lucrative business for you,” Ernie said. “And a pretty clear signal that Van lives here, at least some of the time.”

Out front we could hear a car approach and then stop.

“Housekeeper?” I asked.

“Too early,” Ernie said, waving toward the window. The two of us hopped gently outside and lowered the window until it was open just a crack. We barely escaped: Huddled alongside the garage, we heard the door inside open, then slow footsteps across the cement floor. I wasn't sure it was Ouyang, but the pace matched the shuffling gait of the old man. The hinges on the cabinet squealed as it opened, and then there was the sound of rustling paper. The steps retreated and the door closed, and a moment later the car started up.

I was in motion, running down the driveway, Ernie one step behind me. I spotted Ouyang's Honda driving up the street, then turning left at College Avenue in the direction of Highway 24. We hopped in the car, and Ernie called in the information to Stanzler as I drove, rolling through stop signs rather than coming to a full halt. Ouyang obeyed all traffic signs, and before long we caught up to the Honda. He certainly wasn't acting like an outlaw. Relaying our position to Stanzler, with no other agents in the vicinity and no idea where we were going, we agreed to follow closely, calling in updates, not that Stanzler expected much excitement.

Ouyang's Honda merged onto the highway. I tapped the brake—­rush hour was past its peak but traffic crawled, slowing the closer we got to the Bay Bridge. I was happy when Ouyang exited towards downtown, and we followed, watching him pull into a handicapped space in a lot next to a bank, and hobble inside.

“Think we'll stand out in our workout wear?” Ernie asked.

“It's California. We'll blend in.”

We entered separately, Ernie pulling a brochure on electronic banking while I filled out a deposit slip, writing in totals for checks I didn't have. I watched as Ouyang approached a bank manager, who graciously led him to the back.

Ernie appeared next to me.

“Safe deposit boxes?” I wrote on the deposit slip's signature line. Ernie nodded.

I felt my phone vibrate against my hip. Glancing at it briefly I saw that it was Holly, Lucy's sitter, a sweet psychology major from St. Mary's College who threaded brightly colored silk through her dreadlocks and called Lucy “dude.” Lucy had always adored Holly, but this week and last she had been ignoring her, which Holly took with good grace.

“She associates me coming every day with illness and pain,” Holly said evenly. “The last time I babysat this often was when Kevin was getting the intensive chemo.” Holly had started calling when she arrived in the morning to let me know the fun plans she and Lucy had for the day and to give me an unofficial report on Kevin. I let this morning's call go to voice mail.

Less than thirty seconds later my phone vibrated again, followed by another call ten seconds after that.

“Answer it,” Ernie said, staring at the ground. “Ouyang should be gone for a few minutes.”

“Aguilar, I—­”

“Lyons, your head won't be in the game until you take that call. C'mon, do it now.”

Ernie was of the “catch more flies with honey” school, only making demands of ­people he was handcuffing, and I tried to figure out if he was angry at me. Instead he smiled, making a hurry up gesture with his hand and I took the call.

“June?” Holly said, breathing hard.

“Holly? You OK?”

“No,” she said, the rest of her sentence getting lost.

“Holly? Holly!”

She didn't answer, but several bank patrons stared and a security guard approached. I did sign language with Ernie indicating that I would watch the front exit if he would watch the side and stumbled through the rotating glass door. The sidewalk was crowded, and I put my finger in one ear, blocking some street noise. Holly was silent but in the background I could hear a man—­not Kevin—­say, “Alta Bates Medical Center.”

“June, sorry,” Holly said. “First, you need to know Lucy is safe and healthy. Kevin is also safe, but he had a scare this morning and needed medical attention.”

Despite Holly's hippie accessories, during a crisis she was as focused and direct as a Navy SEAL. She explained how she had arrived to find Kevin passed out in the bathroom.

“It's hard to tell what happened,” she said. “But it looks like he either coughed or vomited up a considerable amount of blood. The doctors should know better.”

I paced back and forth, earning dirty looks from pedestrians who almost lost an eye to my jutting elbow, as Holly described what happened: Kevin was breathing and had a pulse. He remained nonresponsive. Holly called an ambulance, which had arrived in seven minutes, during which time he never regained consciousness, and the ambulance was transporting him to Alta Bates.

“Lucy,” I said. “Holly, did Lucy . . .”

“Lucy is fine,” Holly said. “She was asleep when the ambulance arrived and I had her sit in the kitchen during the crush. Do you want me to bring her to the hospital?”

“No!” I said. “No, stay home with her while I go to the hospital. Please.” Holly hung up and I turned abruptly and ran smack into Ernie, who grabbed both my arms, steadying me.

“I have to go. Kevin . . .”

“Of course, of course,” he nodded towards the car. “Let's go.”

He didn't meet my eye. At first I thought it was pity, but as I looked past his shoulder to the parking lot I saw the empty handicapped space. Ouyang was gone. I had let him escape.

“I
THINK
T
HE
important lesson I learned today,” Kevin said, “is no more tooth brushing.”

I smiled, appreciating Kevin's efforts to make me feel better, but I couldn't laugh.

“C'mon, June, it was just a nosebleed. Nothing to worry about.”

“You're right, you're right,” I said. “It was nothing.”

A nosebleed seemed like no big deal. According to Kevin he'd gotten up to brush his teeth and fainted, smashing his nose on the sink on his way down. There was a bump on the ridge of his nose and both of his eyes were blackening, but there were no stitches or fractures.

But it wasn't nothing.

The doctors took a look at why there had been so much blood after the injury and discovered that something was wrong with Kevin's clotting factor. They checked his red blood cell and white blood cell counts and made a decision: No more chemo. Tomorrow we would visit his oncologist, come up with a new plan, but for tonight, he would stay at the hospital. The doctor was worried that he might have another incident of bleeding.

Holly had offered to stay at our house with Lucy overnight, but Kevin was having none of it.

“C'mon June,” he said. “Luce needs normalcy.” His reached for my hand. “So do you.”

I arrived home to find a subdued Lucy curled up on the couch watching TV, feet pulled tight against her body, hands pulled inside the arms of her T-­shirt. She ignored Holly's good-­bye and I tried to unwind her limbs, releasing her arms and holding her close, but she was having none of it, struggling against me. She fell asleep at 7 p.m., a full hour before her bedtime, and I put her to bed in her clothes, skipping brushing her teeth. Kevin would have made a joke about our family boycotting tooth brushing, but I didn't think it was funny.

I dialed my father. It was a little after 10 p.m. on the East Coast, and while he went to bed early, he always answered the phone. After twenty-­five years as the police chief for Hopewell Falls, he took calls at all hours of the day and night.

Instead of the half-­asleep “Wha?” I expected, I got a chipper hello.

“June,” he said. “I almost called you earlier. Caught a ­couple of teenagers trying to unbolt a mailbox from the sidewalk. I explained to the two young gentlemen that stealing a mailbox was a federal offense and that I was going to call my daughter the FBI agent . . .”

I listened to the rest of my father's story of how he'd scared these kids straight. He described how freaked out they were when he found them, wrenches in hand and with no clear plan on what they would do with a thousand pound mailbox. I didn't laugh.

“June,” he said. “What happened?”

I told him everything: losing the suspect, the trip to the hospital, and Lucy's retreat into herself.

“I'd do anything to keep her safe and happy, but I'm not sure how to protect her from this,” I said.

“When you say ‘this,' June . . . what are we talking? Illness . . . or—­”

“Kevin is going to die.”

Before, Kevin's death had been a terrible possibility, one bleak outcome among several hopeful ones. Today the last of those bright options had vanished with just a nosebleed.

“You want me to come out?” Dad said. “I've got about three years of vacation saved up, and this is what it's for. I didn't realize it had got so bad. I'll be on the next plane out—­”

“That's one possibility,” I said, saying the words I'd practiced before I'd called, trying to keep my voice even. “But I was thinking . . . I have to talk it over with him . . . but what if we came back there?”

“You gonna transfer to the Albany field office?” he asked. “I thought they said-­-­”

“They said no.” I balled my hands into fists, anger taking me by the throat, calming myself with two deep breaths. “There's a hiring freeze, so no new staff for the rest of the fiscal year. We'd probably have to stay with you for a while until I got a job—­”

“Jeez, June. You're an FBI agent. Seriously, you think you're going to fail the Hopewell Falls civil servants exam?”

My father assumed I would stay in law enforcement, and he was right—­I couldn't envision myself doing anything else. He started talking specifics, including the dates of tests and the best way to get my stuff to the East Coast, but I lost the thread of the conversation. I begged off to call Kevin and head to bed, and my Dad let me go only after promising to talk tomorrow.

I checked all the locks on the doors and windows and turned out the lights. I peeked in on Lucy once more before walking to my room, shutting the door, slipping into our bathroom, and shutting that door as well. Kevin's toothbrush sat behind the faucet, and I knew Holly had placed it there instead of Kevin—­he always propped it in the cup. I felt suddenly tired and dizzy and lay down on the floor, the cool tile a relief against my cheek. It was then I saw the blood. Holly had cleaned, but in the far corner the tile streaked from pink to red, blood collecting where the floor met the wall. I pulled a sponge and bleach out from underneath the cabinet, splashed the chemicals directly on the floor, and scrubbed the stains until they were gone. I washed my hands, my fingers red and burning, and rubbed them with vanilla body balm, the lotion masking rather than removing the smell. I changed into my nightgown and returned to Kevin's and my bed, where I found Lucy curled up, blankets pulled snug despite the heat. I slept through the night, waking only once when Lucy grabbed my hand in her sleep and held on tight.

T
WO
DAYS
LATER
, Ernie and I were back in the attic on babysitting duty. Outside, the temperatures had started to fall, but Dr. Ginthner's attic trapped all the heat between the bound volumes on Marxist theory and Spanish Civil War poetry.

“How's Kevin doing?” Ernie asked. “He home from the hospital?”

I scanned the street, searching for approaching cars. “He's home. It was nothing. Just a nosebleed.”