Missing: The Body of Evidence (21 page)

Her surroundings in the Westside
Pavilion Mall became a blur of activity, with a befuddlement of sound. She couldn’t
figure out how to reduce the profusion of thoughts and images bouncing around
in her mind; like dodgem cars at a fair ground—all going in circles
somewhere—and yet nowhere. Each thought careened into one another and left a
dark cast behind the socket of her eyes, with no resolution to put her on a
clear path forward. An ominous thought percolated, that her gravestone should
be inscribed ‘Here lies Nancy Roberts. In life all she ever wanted was to be.’
What the ‘be’ was meant to signify she couldn’t be sure. Happy, content,
successful, a mother, a wife; maybe it meant all of those. If it meant it was
to be a life free of stress, it eluded her present situation. One thing was for
sure, the way things were headed, it was none of those.

‘Espresso.’ said the waiter and set the
coffee down on the table.

‘Thank you.’

The aroma of the thick black liquid and the
explosion on her taste buds gave her an immediate rush as she took a sip.
Children laughing and chuckling, played a game of catch-me around the tables of
the Mall coffee lounge. She wondered if their innocence would somehow rub off
on her if she ran after them and tagged them.

Get a grip, girl.

She glanced at her cell phone on the table,
and hoped Kyle would call. The odds of the ringtone sounding were not good.
Only three people in the world had the number, her dad, Kyle’s mom and Logan.
She had Kyle’s mom down as protective and doubted she would give Kyle the
number if she knew what the situation was with her and internal affairs, even
if he begged her. Dad never phoned, and the last person she wanted to have a
call from was Logan, unless it was to give her the all clear.

The old man’s words of comfort at the
cemetery came to mind. Nancy rummaged in her purse and found the slip of paper
with the number for the Spiritualist Church. She placed the slip on the table
and smoothed it out. Her fingers drummed the table and her eyes bounced between
her cell phone and the scrawled number. Confidence to make the call eluded her,
but the need to make the call and to try for a connection with her mom
overpowered her. With the number tapped into the phone, her finger hesitated
over the SEND button. Finally, she pressed the button and placed the phone to
her ear. The call connected and she hung up and set the phone back on the
table. Nancy stared at the phone. Without warning, it rang and she reared back
on her chair.

Nancy grabbed the phone and answered.

‘Yes, who is it.’

An internal prayer pleaded for it to be
Kyle.

‘Jed, from the Spiritualist Church.’

Logic escaped her thought process, so
disappointed that it wasn’t Kyle.

‘How did you get this number?’

‘Well, I didn’t read your mind, if that’s
what you’re thinking. The number came up on the switchboard display.’

‘Of course,’ she answered, to the sound of
a belly laugh. Nancy wound her neck back into place. ‘I... I was just wondering
how you go about talking to a spiritualist.’

‘Sorry, we’re closed for refurbishment. I’m
just the janitor.’

‘Is there no one I can speak to at all?’

‘I can give you an address of a woman in my
neighbourhood.’

Nancy took a pen from her purse, turned
over the slip and wrote down the woman’s name and address.’

‘Does she have a telephone number?’

‘Hell no, I don’t even think she has the
electric connected.’ He laughed. ‘Just call around, she has an open door. I’d
say she’d be expecting you, but it would be a pun too far.’

Yeah right.
The
call ended, she gathered the slip of paper and placed it in her purse with her
cell phone.
Maybe tomorrow
? She looked at the Mall clock.
First, Dad,
he should be finishing work now.
Nancy finished her coffee, paid the check
and set off to her car, which was parked on the roof space.

Exiting the Mall, Nancy picked up the Santa
Monica Boulevard and drove through Beverly Hills. She wondered if maybe she
would have been better working as a budding actress waiting tables, rather than
being a cop. By now, she reckoned she could have been married to some rich film
producer, until her looks faded and he traded her in for a newer model. It
wouldn’t have been all that bad, when she thought that she could have cried
about it all the way through the divorce settlement and come out the other end
retired.

The drive was slow and tedious, but the
heavy traffic kept her mind occupied as she hit the Hollywood Freeway and then
picked up Ventura on the final stretch to her dad’s apartment. The engine of
her Ford started to splutter. With her foot pressed hard on the gas pedal, she
turned onto Meredith Avenue, but the car just responded with jerks, managing to
make the last fifty yards to the outside of his apartment.

‘Damn, don’t let me get marooned here.’

She turned off the ignition and after a few
more fits and starts, the engine died. A glance over at her dad’s apartment
showed his car and work van parked in the apartment parking lot.
At least
he’s at home.
After what she had been through, visiting him didn’t seem
like such a big deal. At least she knew he would listen without interruption.
Whether or not he offered her any opinion, simply talking about her problems
would, she hoped, be enough therapy. She picked up her dad’s bag off the
passenger seat and rested it on her knees. An inner strength took hold and she
wasted no time getting to the apartment, knocked on the door and waited. He
opened the door, drenched from head to toe and with a bath towel wrapped around
his waist.

‘You do pick your moments.’

She thrust the bag at him; he took it,
turned and walked down the hallway. She followed and mocked his greeting under
her breath and pulled a face. He disappeared into his bedroom and she went on
into the living room and sat down.

The headlines on his newspaper caught her
eye and she snatched it from coffee table. ‘Miraculous escape from wildfire.’
the headline read with a sub heading. ‘Heroin, LAPD Detective Nancy Roberts,
saves her partner from certain death.’

They hadn’t wasted any time investigating,
what with a statement from Dave, the handyman, and an almost word for word
account of what took place from her statement with Rob. In a footnote at the
end was a quote from Logan. ‘They’re both on sick leave recovering and I hope
you will allow them peace and quiet to recover from their ordeal.’

She wondered if that’s why she hadn’t been
charged yet, to save the police department from the embarrassment until the
news had passed, and if that is what John meant by a ‘political settlement.’

‘I see you’re quite the star,’ said Dad, as
he walked into the room dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, and snatched the
newspaper from her grasp. ‘Come to gloat?’

‘That’s not why I’m here, it’s not what
they’ve written, it’s what they have left out I need to tell you about, it’s
quite serious and I have no one else I can talk to. But first; I want you to
look at my car, it’s got a misfire, or I’ll have to stay in my old room and get
someone to fix it tomorrow.’

‘Keys.’

She tossed the keys to him and he left the
room. She imagined the thought of her having to stay the night spurred him into
action. There was a rummaging sound in the hallway closet and then she heard
the apartment door close.

Nancy made a coffee and waited. There
wasn’t a long wait when she heard the apartment door open.

‘What’s this about?’ Dad asked and threw a
small object on coffee table.

It was a small black object the size of a
shirt button with a wire tail about two inches long.

‘Is that what the problem was with the
misfire?’

‘Could be, the misfire was just a loose
connection on the spark plug. Don’t you know what this is?’

‘Not got a clue, what do you mean ‘could
be’? Tell me.’

There was an uncomfortable silence as
Nancy sat across from her dad, and she awaited his answer as to what the device
could be in his hand. He huffed and puffed, shuffling on the seat cushion and
avoided her gaze. The flowers from Dad at her mom’s tombstone reminded her that
behind his heartless exterior, there was hidden a man who had grieved for
twenty-five years.

Luckily, for her, he had never brought home
a series of
aunties
as the other girls at school experienced. At least,
she thought, he had saved her from that trauma during her childhood. She
couldn’t argue that he wasn’t always there for her with extra-curricular
activities, but they had all been manly pursuits. Not for her the pretty
dresses, make up and giggly-girly sleepovers, and definitely no date for the
prom. Instead, in her childhood, it was all camping, hunting, judo, weapons
training and target practice. No wonder she was ostracized at school and they
considered her butch.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t interested in
boys when puberty arrived, and it wasn’t that the boys didn’t give her sideways
lecherous looks, but asking her out on a date, she reckoned they would have
ended up with her in the cold shoulder stakes. It was no wonder they gave her a
wide birth. It also didn’t help that she had to whup a few of them along the
way to stop the taunts of boys and girls alike. Nancy let out a snicker at
recollections of some of the spats. She saw a strange look in her dad’s eyes as
he glanced her way and detected what she thought was the onset of tears.

‘What’s wrong, Dad.’

‘Nothing, just tired. You know, you do look
the spit of your mom.’

‘Thanks, but I think I have your eyes and I
definitely have your will to win.’

His cheeks reddened and he coughed and
spluttered, as if distracting himself from a moment of weakness. He rested his
elbow on the scuffed arm of his chair, covered his face with his oversized hand
and shook his head.

‘More like nurture than nature,’ he mumbled
under his breath. ‘Anyway, back to business. When did your car start misfiring?’

It took some thinking about and then it
struck her. Her car started to act up on her visit to Kelly’s house when she
went to ask him to come into the station to give his fingerprints. For the life
in her, she could not work out the day, so much had happened since then. Nancy
ran her fingers on the side of her head, relieved that there was no pain.

‘Last week sometime. Maybe the middle of
the week.’

‘Hmm, and what’s so serious that you need
to eat into my down time?’

With the original question forgotten, she
started to tell him about her situation. Apart from a few tutts and sighs, she
could not work out if his noises were out of sympathy, or disdain. His facial
expression gave nothing away. Twenty minutes in, he leaned forward on his
chair, rested his elbows on his knees, and covered his face with his hands. It
was hard to know if he was asleep or listening intently. Nancy finished her
account, but he remained motionless.

‘Have you heard a word I have said?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I’m thinking. So really,
you’re not on sick leave, you’ve been taken off duty awaiting dishonourable
discharge, pending the outcome of your court martial.’

‘It’s not the army, but yes, I suppose.’

‘And this all came about after going on a
mission with Bill?’

He seemed to choke on Bill’s name and ran his
tongue over his teeth, spitting out some debris, as if Bill’s name brought a
bad taste to his mouth.

‘Why mention Bill? I doubt he has anything
to do with it; he’s on vacation for two weeks and then he retires. I don’t
think I’ll ever see him again.’

‘Good, because the way I see it is, he
visits you on Sunday and doesn’t warn you what’s going down with his buddy
Logan or internal affairs. What a shit.’

‘What do you mean buddy?’

He clearly knew who Logan and Bill were
from somewhere in his past, but he simply clammed up and fired another
question.

‘Did your car misfire start before, or
after you had dealings with the young thug on Piru Street?’

‘Before, I think. No, after. Damn I can’t
remember; it’s in my notebook back at the apartment.’

‘Think… I need to know for sure, so try and
remember later. What else have you been working on, that you could have stepped
on someone’s toes?’

Nancy poured out all the events concerning
the Professor’s death and the suicide of Kelly. This time, she had her dad’s
undivided attention. When she finished her account, he leaned forward, picked
up the object from her car, and twirled it around in his fingers. She decided
to quit while she was ahead and not to tell him about her health worries, or
about all the strange events of her dreams and the mishaps with the broken
glass, although it was all still troubling her.

‘What’s so important about when my car
started to chug?’

‘Well, depending on when your car started
to misfire, I reckon this was placed under your hood by either the internal
affairs guys, or the CIA and they caught your plug lead under the hood in the
process.’

‘What is it?’

‘God, are you that naive, I root them out
every day of the week at work. It’s a tracking device.’

‘Sorry, of course, I just can’t think
straight. So then I wasn’t paranoid, someone was following me.’

‘Looks that way.’

‘But that means no one could have followed
us to the cabin, I left my car at Kyle’s mom’s.’

‘And did you watch for a vehicle following?’

‘Well, no, I slept all the way.’

‘Did you tell anyone you were going to the
Pine Mountains?’

‘No, I discussed it with Kyle at my
apartment, that’s all.’

‘Your apartment?’ He sat back in his chair
and stared at the ceiling, deep in thought. ‘Did you get a photo from the
security cameras at Wal-Mart where the professor bought the lasagne?’

Nancy slapped her forehead with an open
palm.

‘Damn. No, I never thought, and in any
case, Logan said I wasn’t to keep digging.’

He rolled his eyes.

‘And they wonder why the crime detection
rate is going down. Grab your coat and purse. I’ll put this tracker back under
your hood and follow you home. You can get your notebook and a change of
clothes. We’ll leave your car there and we can drive back in mine.’

His offer left her with her eyes popping.

‘Here, you mean stay here?’

‘You can’t sleep at your apartment, trust
me, I’m guessing you’re in my territory now. Do you have a gun?’

‘No, like I said, they took my police issue
from me. Do you think I need a gun?’

Her dad shrugged his shoulders.

‘Doesn’t everyone need one?’

He seemed to have lost ten years and to
have left behind the shadow of a man with only twelve months to retirement. He
sprang into action. Unlocking his gun cabinet, he pulled out a 9 mil, together
with an ammunition clip.

‘Here, put these in your purse, but keep
the ammo clip separate. If anyone stops you, say you’re taking it in for repair
for me, there’s a screw missing, but it’ll still fire.’

‘But how will I get around without my car?’

‘I’ll rent one in my name tomorrow and put
you as the driver.’

He took another 9 mil from the cabinet and
slipped it in his belt. Nancy glanced at the ceiling.
Thanks for whispering
in his ear, Mom.
Nancy wasn’t sure what he meant by ‘my territory now’ but
he clearly knew and he had a plan in mind.