Gone (4 page)

5

Tuesday, 6:45 a.m. PST

“L
ET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT
—your daughter received a call from Lorraine’s cell phone.”

“Exactly.”

“But not from Rainie. Just her phone.”

“She never heard Rainie’s voice,” Quincy reiterated, “but she did hear the sound of someone breathing heavily in what seemed to be a moving car. Then she heard a distinct sequence of metal pings, which Kimberly believes may have been an attempt at signaling SOS.”

Sergeant Kincaid sighed. He was standing beneath a white awning covering Rainie’s Toyota. He’d been photographing it for the past twenty minutes. Now he was sketching out the position of the seat and mirrors, as well as documenting each dial—how many miles on the odometer, how much fuel in the tank. The sergeant’s hair was soaked, his smooth black face was wet; he looked exactly like what he was, a man who’d been pulled out of his snug bed in the middle of the night, to stand in the middle of a rainstorm.

“Mr. Quincy—”

“My daughter is an FBI agent. She’s been with the Atlanta field office for the past two years. Surely, Sergeant Kincaid, you are not going to discount the instincts of a fellow law enforcement officer.”

“Mr. Quincy, I would ‘discount the instincts’ of my captain if he came to me with a story like this. All you know is that your daughter received a call from a specific phone; you’ve given me no proof of who the caller might be.”

“It’s Rainie’s phone!”

“It’s a cell phone! People lose them, drop them, share them with friends. For God’s sake, my eight-month-old son has already placed a call on my cell phone by holding down one of the speed-dial buttons. It’s not so hard.”

“Pull the records,” Quincy said stubbornly.

“As part of my investigation, I most certainly will. And I’m gonna look at her landline phone, too. As well as her credit card statements and a detailed reconstruction of her past twenty-four hours. You know, I’ve done this kind of thing before!”

Kincaid seemed to realize how strident his voice had become. He took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “Mr. Quincy—”

“I’ve done this kind of thing before, too,” Quincy said.

“Yeah, I know you’re the expert—”

“I lost my oldest daughter to a madman, Sergeant Kincaid. He killed my ex-wife, he almost got my youngest daughter. Maybe in your world these kinds of crimes don’t happen, but in my world, they do.”

Kincaid inhaled deeply again. Quincy could tell the sergeant didn’t want to believe him. And in his own way, he understood. Detective work was inherently about playing the odds. And the statistics said that of the 200,000 adults who went missing each year, only 11,000 stayed missing, and of those, only 3,400 were deemed abducted against their will. If Rainie had been a small child, or maybe a college coed, things might be different. But she was a middle-aged woman and an armed member of law enforcement.

Kincaid was here because of two possibilities: one, that the missing driver of this vehicle, possibly under the influence, had wandered into the woods and gotten lost, or two, that the missing driver of this vehicle, possibly under the influence, had gone into those woods and killed herself.

He would investigate all options, of course. But police work inherently started with a theory. Kincaid had his theory, Quincy now had his.

“Okay,” Kincaid said abruptly, surprising Quincy. “Just for a moment, let’s have it your way. Your wife was abducted from this car; that’s what you think.”

“I would like to pursue that possibility.”

“How? According to you, she carried a piece at all times. Plus she’s trained in self-defense. Seems to me, a woman like that doesn’t disappear without a fight. Look around, Mr. Quincy. What fight?”

“One: I don’t know for certain that she had her Glock. As a general rule, she did keep it on her person, but we would need to conduct a thorough search of the residence to confirm that assumption. Two: we can’t, at this point, discount the fact that she may have been drinking, and that may have diminished her capacity to protect herself. Three: look around, Sergeant Kincaid. It’s a giant mud puddle, what evidence either way?”

Kincaid frowned, regarded the mud, then gave Quincy a speculative stare. The sergeant, at least, was digging this game.

“All right. Who would do such a thing? Who would have a motive to abduct Lorraine Conner?”

“You mean other than her estranged husband?” Quincy asked dryly.

“Exactly.”

“Rainie handled a variety of cases, as a deputy with the Bakersville Sheriff’s Department, then as a private investigator, and then as my partner. That put her in contact with a certain segment of the population right there.”

“Can you provide us with a list of names?”

“I can try. I’d also contact Luke Hayes, the former sheriff in Bakersville—”

“Sheriff Atkins’s predecessor?” Kincaid’s voice implied another question.

“Luke decided to step down from the office for personal reasons,” Quincy supplied. “I haven’t met Sheriff Atkins just yet, but I’ve heard good things.”

“Okay, so Mr. Hayes should be willing to talk about the good old days. What about current cases? Working anything sensitive right now?”

Quincy shook his head. “We’ve been assisting with a double homicide out of Astoria, but our activities are behind the scenes. If the suspect in question was nervous, maybe he’d target the officer in charge, but not us.”

“Wait a minute—you’re talking
the
double homicide out of Astoria?”

“We don’t get that many around here.”

“Beginning of August, wasn’t it?” And then, Sergeant Kincaid proved he really was bright. “The September tenth DUI,” he murmured.

“The September tenth DUI,” Quincy acknowledged.

Kincaid’s gaze shot back to the woods, to the thick blackness just beyond the reach of the powerful spotlights. Once again Quincy knew what the sergeant was thinking, but he still couldn’t go there. Then again, Quincy had never thought Rainie would take a drink again, so maybe the husband was really the last to know.

“I didn’t think there was a suspect in that case,” Kincaid said curtly.

“Our analysis revealed one very clear suspect. Last I heard, however, there was no evidence for making the case. The detectives are continuing to work it, of course. As of this time, however, I am not optimistic.”

“Shit,” Kincaid murmured.

“Shit,” Quincy agreed, quietly.

“What about the photos in her trunk?” Kincaid probed. “That looked like a helluva case. Poor Deputy Mitchell is still puking his guts out.”

“Nineteen eighty-five. Most of the work we do now is seeing if we can shed new light on an old crime. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

“Old crimes lead to new time,” Kincaid murmured. “Any murderers out there still have incentive not to get caught.”

“True, but how would they know about our work? We’re consul- tants, Rainie and I. For the most part, we operate under the radar screen.”

Quincy had flipped open his cell phone. He was trying Rainie’s number again. Still no luck. It was ringing though, which told him it was turned on. So maybe the phone was out of range, or in a place where she could no longer reach it.

Maybe she was in no condition to reach it.

He didn’t want to have that thought. Rainie had never believed him, but the Astoria case had disturbed him, too.

“So where does that leave us?” Kincaid was asking. “By your own admission, there really isn’t anyone out to get your wife.”

“Maybe. Well, wait a minute.” Quincy held up a hand, frowning. “One, we can’t yet rule out a stranger-to-stranger crime. But two, there is an avenue to pursue. Rainie had started some recent volunteer work—”

“Volunteer work?”

“She wanted to become an advocate for foster children. Represent them in the courts; there’s an organization you can join . . .”

Kincaid waved away Quincy’s explanation. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard of it. So she was going to help kids.” Kincaid nodded, showing once again he could read between the lines. “That makes some sense.”

“She already had her first charge. A young boy, Douglas Jones. Douglas—Dougie, actually—claims his foster father is beating him. According to the foster family, however, Dougie is making it all up because he’s finally met his match in their ‘tough love’ parenting style. I should add that Dougie already has a long history of theft, animal cruelty, and petty arson.”

“How old?”

“Dougie’s seven.”

“Seven?” Kincaid’s brows shot up. “You want me to suspect a seven-year-old?”

“No, no,” Quincy said, then added dryly, “though it won’t be too long before you may wonder about that statement. Rainie has been assigned to work with Dougie, to basically determine if he’s telling the truth, in which case she’ll be his voice in court, or determine once and for all that he’s lying, in which case she’ll try to mediate some sort of resolution between him and his foster family. The father in the case is Stanley Carpenter. Who’s thirty-six years old, works the loading docks for the cheese factory, and is rather famous for being able to lift half a pallet of cheese on his own.”

“Big guy.”

“Very big guy. Interestingly enough, that’s his defense in the case. A man his size hitting a boy Dougie’s size . . . You wouldn’t have to wonder about the abuse. The ME would be documenting it at the morgue.”

Kincaid laughed. “That’s the craziest damn defense I’ve ever heard. And yet . . .”

“It makes sense.”

“Yeah, it makes sense.” Kincaid turned back to the car, more thoughtful now. Quincy had his phone back out. He was compulsively hitting Send. Rainie still didn’t answer, but nor did the sound of ringing come from the woods. It gave him the slightest bit of hope.

“She think he did it?” Kincaid asked. “This Stanley guy was beating his kid?”

“She had her doubts. And those doubts could lead to her filing police charges, which for Stanley . . .”

“Would be a very bad thing.”

“Yes.”

“And a guy that big,” Kincaid filled in, “could probably abduct a woman against her will, even someone with training. Assuming, of course, she didn’t have a gun.”

“Assuming she didn’t have her gun.”

“All right,” Kincaid said abruptly. “That’s it. Not like we can do jackshit here anyway until the rain dries out. We’re off.”

“I get to come, too?”

“As long as you stay in my line of sight, and promise not to touch.”

“I’ll be a good boy,” Quincy assured him. “Where are we going?”

“To find the gun, of course. With your permission, we’re gonna search your house.”

6

Tuesday, 7:32 a.m. PST

A
S
Q
UINCY AND
K
INCAID PILED
into Kincaid’s vehicle, the sun was struggling to break through a cloud cover so thick, day was only a paler version of night. It felt as if the entire month of November had been this way, one endlessly long day of drizzle, interrupted by periods of torrential downpour.

Quincy hadn’t quite gotten used to the Oregon climate yet. He was a New Englander, a man who could take the bracing cold as long as it was partnered with a bright winter sun. Frankly, he didn’t know how Oregonians could go so long with rain clouds pressed against the tops of their heads. Rainie always said the gray days made her feel cozy, snuggled up in the refuge of their home. Lately, they had been making him feel like beating his head against a brick wall.

“So when did you and Rainie split?” Kincaid asked from the driver’s seat. Apparently, he wasn’t one for small talk.

“I moved out a week ago,” Quincy said tersely.

“You or her?”

“Officially speaking, I’m the one who left.”

“File for divorce?”

“I’m hoping it won’t come to that.”

Kincaid grunted, already sounding skeptical. “Counseling?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Mmm-hmmm. Federal pension, right?”

“I have one, yes.” Quincy already knew where Kincaid’s thoughts were going. As an FBI agent who’d served the required twenty years, Quincy had retired with full base pay. Not many pension programs like that around anymore. Particularly since most of the FBI retirees were still young enough to keep working in the private sector, garnering an additional revenue stream while building a second retirement program. Double-dipping it was called. And yes, it had worked out well for Quincy. Hence the car, his clothes, his house.

“Divorce would be expensive,” Quincy agreed.

“Mmm-hmmm,” Kincaid said again.

“You’re still not asking the right question, Sergeant.”

“And what’s that?”

“Do I love her?”

“Love her? You left her.”

“Of course I left her, Sergeant. It was the only way I could think of to get her to stop drinking.”

They’d arrived at the graveled drive. Kincaid made the hard right turn, tires crunching on the ground stone as they fought for purchase. The driveway was impractical. An absolute bitch during bad weather. Last winter, Rainie and Quincy swore they’d do something about it as soon as it got warm. Have it regraded, have it paved.

They never did. They loved their little wooden castle perched at its top. And without ever saying as much in words, they appreciated the driveway as their own version of a rampart. Not just any vehicle could make it up. And absolutely no one approached their house without being heard.

Kincaid dropped his car into a lower gear and gunned the engine. The Chevy crested the hill just in time to startle a deer feeding on a salt lick Rainie had placed in the garden. The deer crashed back into the forest. Kincaid parked next to a bank of drenched ferns.

He climbed out, already giving Quincy an arched stare.

Quincy and Rainie had found the house just a year ago. It wasn’t large, but the custom-built Craftsman-style home presented the best of everything. A towering picture window that offered a panoramic view of the mountains. A crested roofline of alternating peaks and valleys. A sweeping front porch, complete with matching Adirondack rockers.

Rainie had loved the open floor plan, exposed beams, and enormous stone fireplace. Quincy had appreciated the large windows and multitude of skylights, which maximized what little light one could eke out of such gray days. The house was expensive, more than they probably should’ve spent. But they’d taken one look and seen their future. Rainie curled up in front of the fireplace with a book. Quincy sequestered in the den writing his memoirs. And a child, nationality still unknown, sitting in the middle of the great room, stacking toys.

They had purchased this home with hope in their hearts.

Quincy didn’t know what Rainie thought when she looked at their home now.

He led the way up the steps, then stopped in front of the door. He let Kincaid tug at the knob. The door was locked; Rainie never would’ve left the house any other way.

Wordlessly, Quincy produced his key. Kincaid worked the bolt lock.

The heavy door swept open to a shadowed foyer, light slowly seeping across the stone-inlaid floor. The wooden staircase, with its rough-hewn railing, was immediately to the left. The great room swept open to the right. At a glance, both men could see the vaulted family room with its massive stone fireplace, then, deeper in, the dining area and kitchen.

Quincy processed many things at once: the plaid flannel blanket tossed in a puddle in front of the fireplace; the half-read paperback, lying print-side-down on the ottoman. He saw an empty water glass, Rainie’s running shoes, a gray cardigan slung over the back of the hunter green sofa.

The room was disturbed, but nothing that suggested violence. It was more like a scene interrupted—Quincy half expected to spy Rainie walking in from the kitchen with a cup of coffee in her hand and a perplexed look on her face.

“What are you doing here?”
she would ask.

“Missing you,”
he would answer.

Except maybe Rainie wasn’t carrying a cup of coffee. Maybe it was a beer instead.

Kincaid finally walked into the room. Quincy drifted in his wake, glad the sergeant was studying the room and not registering the raw look that had to be on Quincy’s face.

Kincaid made quick work of the family room. He seemed to register the book, the glass, the running shoes. Then he was in the breakfast nook. The note was still on the table.

Kincaid read it, glanced at Quincy, then read the note again. The investigator didn’t say anything, just walked into the kitchen. Quincy wasn’t sure if that made the invasion of privacy better or worse.

The OSP sergeant opened the fridge. He caught Quincy’s eye, then opened the door wider, until Quincy could see the six-pack. Quincy nodded, and the other man moved on. Not much food in the fridge, but the kitchen was neat. A mug and bowl in the sink. Counters wiped down.

Rainie had never been the best housekeeper in the world, but she was clearly keeping up with things. Not the kitchen of a woman totally lost to despondency. Then again, Quincy had once worked a case of a forty-year-old mom who’d cleaned the house from top to bottom before hanging herself in the bathroom. In her suicide note, she’d included instructions to her husband on how to reheat all the meals she’d left for him and their three kids. The woman—who’d gone off her antidepressants—didn’t want to inconvenience anyone. She just hadn’t wanted to live.

Kincaid traveled down the back hallway to the study. This was one of the few rooms with carpeting, a thick wool pile that Quincy liked to pace when trying to come up with the right turn of phrase. This was his domain, and walking into it a week later, he caught the faint smell of his own aftershave. He wondered if Rainie had entered this room in the past week. If she had caught that fragrance and thought of him.

The desk was cleared off, the black leather chair neatly pushed in. The room already had a slightly abandoned feel about it. Maybe not a room for remembrance at all, but an omen of things to come.

Kincaid wandered back out and hit the last room of the downstairs: the master bedroom.

This room was more chaotic. The down comforter, covered in a duvet of greens, gold, and burgundy, had been kicked to the foot of the bed. The cream-colored sheets were twisted into a pile, the corner of the room lost to a mound of clothes. The room carried the musty odors of stale linens and recent sweat.

And because Quincy knew Rainie better than he knew his own heart, he could look at each item in the room and see clearly what must have transpired in the middle of the night. The tossed covers from another bad dream. The skewed lampshade from when she’d fumbled for the light.

Her trek to the bathroom, kicking aside socks and jeans along the way. The mess around the sink as she tried to clear the dream from her mind with water on her face.

The water hadn’t worked, though. At least it hadn’t when Quincy had still been around. She’d scrub her face while he watched her from the open doorway.

“Would you like to talk?”

“No.”

“It must have been a bad one.”

“All nightmares are bad, Quincy. At least they are for us mere mortals.”

“I used to have bad dreams after Mandy died.”

“And now?”

“Now it’s not so bad. Now I wake up and reach for you.”

He wondered if that’s when she grew to hate him. Because her love gave him comfort, and his love, apparently, gave her nothing at all.

Kincaid was finished in the bathroom. He moved around the dresser, opening each drawer, then checking the nightstands.

“When Rainie was at home, where did she keep her weapon?”

“We have a gun safe.”

“Where?”

“The study.”

Quincy led Kincaid back to the wood-paneled room. He gestured to a print on the wall, a black-and-white portrait of a little girl peering out from behind a white shower curtain. Most people thought the picture was mere art, purchased, perhaps, for the whimsical quality of the girl’s gap-toothed smile. In fact, it was a photo of Mandy taken when she was six years old. He used to carry it in his wallet. Years ago, Rainie had had it enlarged and framed for him.

And sometimes, when a case was particularly bad, say the Astoria case, Quincy would sit in here and simply stare at the photo of his daughter. He would think of the wedding she never got to have, the children she never got to bear. He would think of all the life she never got to lead and he would feel the sorrow press down upon him.

Some people believed there was a special home for children in heaven. A place where they never felt sickness, or pain, or hunger. Quincy didn’t know; his relentlessly analytical mind didn’t do well with matters of faith. Did the children who had loving parents or grandparents get to be reunited with them? What about the newborn who starved to death while her mother went on a weeklong drinking binge? What about the five-year-old thrown down the stairs by his father? Were there foster parents in heaven?

Or did these children spend eternity all alone?

Quincy didn’t have these answers. He just got up and went to work each day. It was what he did.

Kincaid took Mandy’s photo down from the wall. The safe was mounted behind it.

Quincy gave the combo. Kincaid turned the dial. The door opened and they both eyed the contents.

“I count three handguns,” Kincaid said with a trace of triumph, while Quincy said:

“It’s not there.”

“But look—”

“All backups. That’s a twenty-two, a nine-millimeter, and my old service revolver. I don’t see her Glock.”

“Would she have left it anyplace else?”

“No. The rule is when at home, the gun is locked in the safe. We wanted to make sure we were in the habit. You know.” For the first time, Quincy’s voice cracked. He caught it, soldiered on. “For when we adopted our child.”

“You’re adopting a child?” Kincaid sounded honestly flabbergasted.

“Were. Past tense. It fell through.”

“Why?”

“The DUI. That event, coupled with a few things from Rainie’s past, made her look emotionally unstable.”

“No shit,” Kincaid murmured.

“The system isn’t meant to be easy.”

“But you thought you were adopting? Right up into September?”

“For a while, Sergeant, we had a picture of the child.”

“Damn,” Kincaid said. He looked back at the safe, mental wheels obviously churning: Burnt-out investigator, overwhelmed by failed marriage, failed adoption, takes her own life. In policing, once again, you had to play the odds.

“Well,” Kincaid said philosophically, “morning’s here, conditions are improving. I think the thing to do now is get some dogs in the woods. Do you have any family?”

“My daughter’s coming.”

“Good, good. That’s probably best.”

“Don’t give up on her,” Quincy said tightly. “My wife is a former member of law enforcement. She deserves better than to become just one more neglected case piled on the desk of an overworked Major Crimes sergeant—”

“Whoa—”

“I have resources, too, Sergeant. Hasn’t that occurred to you yet? Say the word, I can call in old favors. There are people in this town who know and love Rainie. They believe in her. They’ll plow through those woods, they’ll slog through the mud and the rain—”

“Hey, I’m not giving up on this case!”

“You’re already jumping to conclusions!”

“As an objective outsider—”

“You didn’t know my wife!”

“Exactly!”

Kincaid was breathing hard. Quincy, too. For a long time, the men stared at each other, each one waiting for the other to back down.

Then Quincy’s phone rang.

He glanced at the screen and immediately held up a silencing hand.

“Is it—?”

“Shhh. It’s Rainie.”