Pain Management (30 page)

I was cradling the cell phone, deciding whether to call Mama, when it chirped for “incoming.”

“What?” It was almost two in the morning.

“You know who this is?” Jenn’s father asked.

“Yes.”

“Come on over,” is all he said before he snipped the connection.

They were all in the living room. Joel in his chair, Jenn perched confidently on the couch, Mike standing with his hands behind his back.

“Would you like some coffee?” a woman asked, stepping into the room like it was midday. She was short and trim, dark-haired, with a face I could tell was usually pretty . . . but now it was all focused on her children. She had cave-mother eyes.

“No, thank you,” I said, politely.

“I’d like some,” Michael said.

I knew she was his mother by the look she gave him.

“Jenn has something she wants to talk over with you,” Joel said. “And she said she’d feel more comfortable if we were all together when she did. That all right with you?”

“Of course,” I said, side-stepping the warning.

“Rosa called me,” Jenn said, no preamble.

I just watched her, waiting.

“It’s up to you, honey,” her father finally said.

“She wants . . .” Jenn started, then stopped herself.

I went back to waiting.

“What Rosa wants, it’s . . . complicated. And I’m not sure it would even be legal.”

“I’m not a lawyer,” I told her, aiming the words at her father, who’d translate them immediately.

“Rosa’s . . . tired of all this,” Jenn said. “She wants it all to stop.”

“All she has to do is—”

“She’s not coming home,” Jenn said, no-argument flat. “That’s not what she wants. She wants to . . . make her own life.”

“You mean, like an emancipated minor?” I asked, remembering what I’d said to Rosebud’s father. It seemed like months ago.

“What’s that?”

“It would mean she was an adult, for all legal purposes,” Joel answered her.

“Could that truly be? Even though she’s only—?”

“That would depend,” her father cautioned her.

“Oh. Well, maybe that’s
sort
of it. But, even if she was . . . emancipated, that wouldn’t be enough. She wants something else. Something much more important.”

“Daisy,” I said.

“Yes! How could you—?”

“I know about big sisters,” I said, thinking of SueEllen. And my own sister, Michelle. And how I wished . . .

“But
could
that be?” Jenn asked, breaking into my thoughts. “I mean, could she really—?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “Your dad’s right. It all depends. I’ll have to talk with Rosa to see what she’s got.”

“Got?”

“I didn’t say that properly. I mean, what
information
she’s got. Because the only way to work something like that out would be if her parents consented—”

“They’d never!”

“You can’t be sure, Jenn,” her father said. “Perhaps if Mr. Hazard were to talk to them—”

“
After
I talk with Rosa,” I interrupted, not wanting to spell out to Jennifer that I’d need some heavy bargaining chips, but needing Joel to get that message.

“But you think you . . .
maybe
could . . . get her father to . . . ?”

“Maybe. Here’s what I can tell you for sure, Jennifer. If I talk to Rosa, no matter how it comes out, I won’t tell her father where she is. And I won’t try to bring her in myself.”

“Really? You swear?”

“Yes. I won’t even tell him I saw her.”

“I don’t see any Bible around,” Michael said. His hands were still behind his back, but the cords in his neck were standing out.

“Your brother’s right,” I told Jennifer. “And I think I know how I can fix it. But to do that, I need to talk to your father. Alone.”

She gave Joel a glance. He nodded. “Let’s go out in the backyard,” he said to me. “Be nice to be outside when it’s not raining, for once.”

“You can smoke out here,” he said, taking a seat on a redwood bench that circled a good-sized table made out of the same stuff.

“I don’t smoke,” I told him, setting the stage.

“When did you quit?”

“A long time ago. Smoking . . .
looking
like I’m smoking . . . is just another way of making sure people don’t know me as good as they think they do.”

“And that’s important to you?”

“I couldn’t do my work without it,” I said. “But sometimes I need people to trust me. Like now. If they don’t know me, there’s only one way to get that to happen.”

“Which is?”

“You’re worried that I might be lying. Might be working for Kevin so hard I’d say . . .
do
anything to get my hands on his daughter. I could sit here, tell you my whole life story. And if you believed it, maybe you’d believe
me.
Maybe not. Your whole life, it’s about making guesses, right? Educated guesses, sure. But . . . you said you were a forensic psychologist. I know what that means. At some point, you have to stand up—in court, before a parole board, maybe before Congress, for all I know—and say something that’s a guess. Only, coming from you, from a professional, it’s got to be a
good
guess. That’s what people pay you for, am I right?”

“If you mean I get paid for professional opinions, yes.”

“But they’re still guesses, doc.
Good
guesses, I’m sure. But . . .”

“But they’re all judgment calls, to some extent, yes.”

“And you’ve made some judgment calls about me. Otherwise, I’d never get within a hundred yards of your daughter, much less invited into your home.”

“Some judgments,” he acknowledged, making it clear he wasn’t finished adding up the score.

“If you had time to know me—or if I had the kind of references you could check—maybe there’d be another way. But there’s not. There’s no time. So I’m going to give you something else.”

“What?”

“A hammer. One you can drop on me anytime you think I lied to your daughter about what I’m up to with Rosebud.”

“You’re being oblique. And it’s late. . . .”

“Check the ER admissions for the past couple of weeks, doc. I know you can do that. You’ll find some guy was brought in, all pounded to hell. Big deal. But this guy, somebody chopped off the tips of his fingers. His two
index
fingers.”

“And you know this because . . . ?”

“Because I did it,” I told him, keeping my voice matter-of-fact.

“All right,” he said, not reacting. “And why—?”

“Listen to me, doc. Why I did it doesn’t matter. This guy, he refused to talk to the cops. His boss, the one who was running him, he wouldn’t have wanted that. But now this boss, he’s not around. And this guy, he might be scared enough to say some things.”

“Things about you?”

“No. People remember their nightmares, but not the monsters in them. Not unless they know them from real life. He’d never seen me before. The only people who actually
know
who did that miserable little freak are me . . . and you,” I lied, smoothly.

“But,” he said, leaning back slightly, “if you’re not giving me the facts, what good would it do me to go to the police? They wouldn’t have enough to hold you.”

I leaned into the space between us. “They would when my prints fell, doc,” I said. “And you already have those.”

He seemed comfortable with the silence surrounding us. But it was no test of
my
patience. Dark and quiet. Safe. I could have stayed there for weeks.

“You think you know, don’t you?” he finally asked me.

“Know what?”

“Whatever drove Rose out of her house. Whatever’s going on with her and her father.”

“Yeah.”

He took a deep breath. Let it out. Held my eyes. “It’s not
always
that,” he said.

“I have what you want,” Gem greeted me as I walked in the door. “What you
wanted,
anyway.”

“Speak English,” I answered her. I don’t like it when people get ugly sideways; it always hurts less when they strip away the disguises and come straight ahead.

“The information from that computer you . . . investigated,” she said, ocean eyes innocent. “Remember, I told you it would take some time?”

“Yeah,” I said, sitting down at the kitchen table. “I remember.”

“There was a lot to decipher,” she said. Catching my look, she went on quickly: “I don’t mean it was in code, or anything like that. There was just a huge volume of information. Apparently, your . . . target is a man who never erases
anything
from his hard drive. My . . . The person I used said that it hadn’t even been defragged in probably years.”

“Did he use it for e-mail, too?”

“Yes. And browsing. Very unsophisticated. He used a dial-up, and went to the Web direct through his ISP.”

“Any Daddy-Daughter stuff?”

“Daddy-Daughter?”

“Incest. He visit any incest sites? Or kiddie stuff?”

“No,” she said, her voice measured.

“Corporal punishment, spanking—”

“
Sex
spanking?”

“Yeah. Most of those sites make it clear they don’t play with kids, but some of them . . .”

“No. Nothing like that. He did seem to have an interest in bondage, but only in pretty mild stuff.”

“No asphyx-sex?”

“Nothing even close. But he did have a number of images downloaded. Always of men . . . restrained in some form or fashion.”

“You think he’s gay?”

“No. A trace-back showed that he got the images from dominatrix sites. As I said, very light. If he wanted heavier, it’s out there. And if he got as far as he did, he could have gone the rest of the way.”

“Is that the only thing he browsed for?”

“Oh no. It wasn’t even the majority, not by a long shot. He was very interested in politics and crime, especially where they intersected.”

“Yeah, he’s a major-league lefty, I know,” I said, thinking of the Geronimo Pratt book he’d marked up so much.

“It would seem so.”

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”

“Not about . . . that. As I said, Mr. Carpin was something of a slob with his computer. So, if there
was
anything . . . bizarre about his tastes, I believe the trail would still be there.”

“Maybe he had more than one computer. Or he’s smarter than you’re giving him credit for.”

“I don’t think either one,” she said, holding up a thick stack of paper. “Because his banking records are all here.”

“Damn! You sure?”

“I cannot be certain he does not have
other
banking records,” she said tartly. “But his personal checking account, his savings account, his 401(k)—it is all here.”

“Did he—?”

“He paid all his bills by personal check, as near as I can determine,” she interrupted, reading my mind. “I have spent several days going over them. Here, take a look.”

I got up, moved to where she was sitting, her body covered in paper from the waist down.

“You said there was a phone in his office . . . ?” she asked.

“Yeah. Real fancy one, too. Top-of-the-line. And a lot of recording equipment connected to it, too.”

“But there is no bill for it,” she said, a faint smile playing on her lips.

“How do you know that?”

“Because he logs all his bills. He uses one of the accounting programs that come pre-loaded on many computers. There are four telephone lines—that is, lines with individual numbers—coming into his house. Each with numerous extensions. But the line in his office has
no
extensions. What you saw was the only connection. And Qwest bills him only for
three
of the numbers.”

“Maybe he’s got a different carrier for—”

“Not unless he is paying that bill in cash,” she said. “And, given the way he conducts his affairs, that seems highly unlikely.”

“But . . . wait a minute, Gem. His little accounting program wouldn’t show bills he’s
not
paying, right?”

“This is true.”

“So how do you know how many lines go into—?”

“My friend has access to more than just
this
man’s computer.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. But that is not what I found to be most interesting. Look at these figures,” she said, pointing with a French-tipped nail.

“What does that mean?” I asked, looking at a piece of paper with .10
⁶
written at the top.

“It’s just shorthand for more than a million,” she said, impatiently. “But it is not the totals that are important. Look: see where he shows deposits. . . .”

What I saw was a long string of numbers, none less than five grand, a lot of them in the mid-five-figures.

“So?”

“So, first of all, these deposits are
separate
from his paycheck at the architectural firm. I don’t mean they are
deposited
separately—he seems to habitually commingle all his deposits without the slightest concern—I mean they represent an entirely different source of income.”

“Maybe he was consulting out. Or even working a few jobs off the books.”

“This would be some consulting job, Burke. The income stream goes back at least twenty years.”

“Christ. Who was writing the checks?”

“The checks?”

“The ones he deposited.”

“I don’t think I’ve been clear enough yet.” She chuckled. “A number of the checks are drawn on fictitious corporations—”

“Your computer pal again?”

“Yes,” she acknowledged, then went on as if I hadn’t spoken, “but the majority of the deposits were in cash.”

“Even the ones . . . ?”

“Over ten thousand dollars, yes.”

“Son of a bitch,” I said.

“It’s not possible he’s that fucking stupid,” I told Gem later. “Even a low-grade moron knows IRS would be on him like Jesse Jackson on a photo op with those kind of money drops. The banks
have
to report every single one. Unless he’s—”

“Everything’s with a local bank. Same branch for years. If he’s got an offshore account, it’s not on the computer you . . . looked at.”

“Why didn’t he just break them up?” I said, half aloud. “Anything under ten large, the banks don’t have to notify the
federales.
”

“Seemingly he did not care,” Gem said. “Most of the money came right out again.”

“For what?”