No Show (14 page)

“Do you know who?”

“Could be anyone. It all depends on who bites.”

“She mentioned that she used to work for the
San Francisco Chronicle
and the
Examiner
. Could she be working for one of them?”

“Possible. Come to think of it, Sarah did offer me something.”

“What?”

“She intimated she’d stumbled onto something hot. Something that would blow my socks off, but I told her I was an old man and I didn’t need my socks blown off anymore.”

“Did she say what it was?”

Beasley shook his head. “No. She’s cagey when she wants to be. If I wasn’t biting, she wasn’t telling. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“Actually, you can. I was speaking to Tom Degrasse earlier today.”

“That pampered poodle? What did he have to say?”

“He suggested that Sarah’s disappearance was part of a scam to break a big story.”

Beasley mulled over the notion. He sniffed before speaking. “Sarah is a journalist and a damn fine one at that. She writes features for me, but it’s not where her heart is. She’s an investigative journalist. She wants to discover the next Jack Abramoff scandal, and she’ll do her damnedest to find it.”

Terry left Beasley’s office with a hollow feeling that had little to do with his grumbling stomach. He needed some food inside him, but decided not to eat in San Francisco, not relishing getting lost in the unfamiliar city. He took a cab back to his car and retraced his way to the Bay Bridge.

Approaching the Edenville turnoff, Terry wasn’t in the mood to cook for himself, so he drove on to the next exit, which serviced the Greenview Mall. The mall had a food court to suit all tastes. Terry picked a Thai place. He settled into a two-person booth and tucked into his cashew chicken with jasmine rice and a 7UP. He didn’t get far.

“Terry Sheffield?” a blond man asked.

Terry nodded with a mouthful of food.

“Can I join you?”

Terry swallowed. “Do I know you?”

The man sat down, unfolded a sheet of paper, and placed it in front of Terry. “No, but I know her.”

Terry stared at Sarah on one of his own flyers. He had been hoping for a moment like this. He had expected to be elated, but instead, his food soured in his stomach. He pushed his meal to one side and picked up the flyer.

Gazing at Sarah’s image, he said, “How do you know who I am?”

“I just saw you on the evening news. I was in a Walgreens yesterday, and I saw the flyer. I picked one up, and I was going to call you tonight; then I saw you sitting here.”

The guy was chipper, delighted to have found Terry. It was a shame Terry couldn’t summon up that same feeling.

“Where are my manners? My name’s Jake.”

“Nice to meet you, Jake. So you’ve seen Sarah?”

“No, I worked with her. I was helping her with a story.”

“Are you a journalist?”

“No, nothing like that. I helped her with research and stuff,” Jake said. “So have you heard from her? Sarah, I mean.”

Terry gave him a look.

“Duh! Obvious.”

“Yeah, well,” Terry said, shrugging his shoulders.

“But she hasn’t called or left a message?”

“No. If she had, I wouldn’t be searching for her.”

“Yeah, right.”

Terry wasn’t sure if Jake was as dumb as he made out. If he was, he couldn’t see him being much help to Sarah’s research. He wondered if this guy really knew Sarah.

“Why did you want to get in contact?”

“Just reaching out. I liked working for Sarah and I want to help find her. If you need someone to ask questions, chase down sightings, I’m your guy.”

Help sounded good to Terry. With Oscar, he was a team of two. A team of three wasn’t much better, but if he could build a grass roots team working to find Sarah, he stood a chance of finding her.

“Do you think her disappearance has anything to do with the story we were working on?” Jake asked. “Because if it does, then I should be looking over my own shoulder. What do you think?”

The question took Terry by surprise. Sarah’s work had the potential for drawing trouble. “I don’t know much about Sarah’s work. What story were you working on together? Was it Genavax?”

Terry regretted mentioning Genavax the second he had said it. Holman’s warning about cranks rang loud in his head. It occurred to him that this guy could be anyone. He needed Jake to give him information, not the other way around.

“Nah,” Jake said, shaking his head. “Our story wasn’t anything heavy. It must be something else. She was working on a lot of things. Have you found any of her notes?”

“No. I haven’t found anything.”

“Look, if you do find them, I’d be happy to look them over.”

“Thanks.” Jake seemed well-meaning enough, but Terry wasn’t sure he trusted him.

“Got any ideas about what made her disappear?” Jake asked.

“None.”

“So you haven’t seen Sarah, heard from her, found any of her notes, and you don’t know what stories she’d been working on that could have led to her disappearance, right?”

“Right,” Terry said warily.

“It’s a stumper, all right.” Jake checked his watch and jumped to his feet. “Well, I’ve gotta go.”

Terry tried to stop him. “Can I get a number?”

Jake screwed up his face. “I’m really late, and I don’t have a pen.”

“I do.”

“I don’t have time. Sorry.”

Don’t have time,
Terry thought.
What was this guy playing at?

“I’ll call you.” He brandished the flyer. “We’ll talk real soon, Terry.”

Jake darted off, swallowed by the evening shoppers. Terry didn’t know what to make of his new acquaintance. He took another stab at his meal, but the food wasn’t that great and his appetite had made a discreet exit. He dumped the chicken and rice into the nearest trash can but kept his soda.

“Hey there, pal.”

Terry turned to find Oscar walking toward him with shopping bags in each hand. Terry smiled, but Oscar didn’t.

“Who was that you were talking to?”

Terry didn’t like the suspicious tone in Oscar’s voice, and he tried to lighten it. “What, jealous?”

“I’m serious, Terry. Who was that you were talking to?”

“His name’s Jake. He said he worked with Sarah, but he was kind of odd. I’m not sure who he was.”

Oscar didn’t look convinced. Shoppers leaving the food court brushed by them.

“Oscar, what’s up?”

“I don’t know what he told you, but I doubt he worked with Sarah.”

“So you don’t think his name’s Jake?”

“His name’s Jake, all right. Jake Holman.”

“Jake Holman,” Terry said slowly. “Sheriff Holman’s son?”

“The one and only.”

T
erry let himself into his house with Holman still on his mind. The sheriff had sent his son to spy on him. What the hell was that all about? Did Holman think he was hiding something? Terry thought they were past that stage, especially after Holman had gone to all the trouble of organizing a press conference. This had to be some plan to try to trip him up. He remembered some quotation about catching more flies with honey than vinegar. The answering machine blinked a red number one at him. He hit play.

“Terry, it’s Marcus Beasley. I forgot to mention something. Why I didn’t remember it when you were here earlier, I don’t know. It must have something to do with getting old—or just the workload. You wouldn’t believe the long hours I spend here. It’s more than a full-time job.”

Terry smiled. He could see why Sarah liked working for Beasley.
C’mon, Marcus, get to the point.

“Sarah told me once that she keeps a file box or some such with all of her notes on the hot stories. She never keeps them in the office or anywhere they could be poached. I don’t know if that helps. But if you find anything, let me know.”

Jake Holman had mentioned something about Sarah’s notes, and now Beasley had. There had to be something in it. That something galvanized him into action.

He started with Sarah’s home office. He pulled the room apart. He emptied out drawers and unloaded the closet. The floor was awash with discarded storage boxes, their contents eviscerated. Only after he had gutted the room did he realize that if Sarah wanted to keep something hidden, the last place she would hide it would be her office.

The house didn’t have a full attic. The roof’s pitch was shallow, but it did have enough space to store a file box. Using a ladder and flashlight he found in the garage, he climbed into the crawl space. It was a nice thought, but no good. The flashlight beam uncovered fiberglass insulation and roof joists, but that was all.

Terry moved the search into the garage. He put himself into Sarah’s mind. If he wanted to hide something, where would he put it? He popped open old paint cans. He found a box marked “Christmas Decorations” and hoped it was a lie, but the contents were true to their labeling. The toolbox would have been a good place, but Sarah wasn’t using it.

Every smart hiding place resulted in disappointment. The toilet tank held only water. Bedroom closets and a chest of drawers contained clothes. No matter which room he tore apart, it was how it should be. Standing in the living room with the couch upside-down, he lost faith in the quest.

He hoped Beasley hadn’t been wrong. The house was a bomb site. Every room was overturned, and he had nothing to show for it. Then he spotted it.

The coat closet by the front door had a floor panel. The panel gave access to the crawl space under the house. There was another access panel in the smallest of the three bedrooms and he’d already opened that one. He’d even gone into the crawl space, but he hadn’t checked every corner of the building. He yanked the panel up.

Terry didn’t have to go down into crawl space again with all the cobwebs and dirt. Sitting on the dirt below was a metal file box. He reached down and snatched it up. It was locked, but he
didn’t have time to find the key. He grabbed the screwdriver from the garage and jimmied it open, snapping the lock.

Papers tumbled onto the floor. Terry gathered them up. He cleared a space on the dining table by wiping an arm across the surface, sending everything onto the carpet. He sat and examined his find.

His discovery was a jumble. Dropping the contents on the floor had decimated any order the notes were in. It would take painstaking patience to get it all back in order—patience he didn’t have. He was too excited. He wanted the answer to leap out at him, but good sense took over and he persevered. He examined every scrap of paper, but it didn’t mean a thing. Some of it was in shorthand—a foreign language to him. That could be easily deciphered. Beasley or someone would help him out. But that wasn’t the problem. If her non-shorthand notes were anything to go by, it wouldn’t make any sense to anyone anyway. These were Sarah’s notes, for Sarah to understand. The reason for her disappearance might be contained among the sheets of paper in his hand, but it meant nothing without Sarah to explain it all. As depressing as his task seemed, he plowed on.

Fatigue seeped in and he could barely keep his eyes open, but as something started to trickle from Sarah’s notes, the drive to keep going filled him. A thread was developing. He kept coming across the names of four women. None of them seemed very special. They had led unremarkable lives. In fact, they seemed to be pillars of their respective communities in various parts of California, Nevada, and Oregon. Nothing seemed to point to anything that would have made the information worth hiding from would-be news poachers.

Terry continued to sift through the information hoping to find a nugget worth its weight in gold. After another hour of sifting, dawn crept over the horizon, bathing the dining area in peach-colored light, and Terry didn’t think that nugget was going to present itself. He was ready to call it a night—a day
now—when a fifth woman’s name appeared on a list with the other four. He hadn’t found any other notes on the fifth woman, but he didn’t need to find any. He knew her already.

“Alicia Hyams,” he murmured to himself.

Terry needed sleep, but he went into work. He couldn’t afford to take a third personal day. Besides, he didn’t want to be at home right now. After last night’s discovery, he needed distance, a chance to think things through. Not that he was in any condition to think about anything. It felt as if mice had been scurrying around inside his head, and one of them had taken a crap somewhere small and inaccessible. He was physically shattered too. His mental battering had filtered through to his body. He seemed to be coated in a layer of sludge that showering couldn’t remove.

He sneaked into the lab ten minutes late. If he was expecting Pamela Dawson to be all sweetness and light, he was wrong. She was the Ice Maiden again. Actually, he was glad about the return to normality. Nice didn’t suit her too well. He went to his bench, feeling her searching stare burning holes in his back. He guessed there would be a closed-door visit to her office, and there was. It was nothing too vicious—just slightly menacing. Genavax was sympathetic to his situation, but the company wasn’t about to let him slack off at the expense of others, blah, blah, blah. Returning to his bench, he descended into a work mode that kept him busy, but not especially focused.