She's Not There (12 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Turn off the lights.”

Alex turned to face his partner Owen McCall. “What? Why?”

“That’s what Buchanan said to do,” McCall said.

Alex switched off the headlights and steered the rental car into the dark parking lot. He pulled to a stop and leaned forward, peering out the windshield.

“Where is he?” he asked.

When McCall sat forward in the passenger seat, the streetlight turned his face into a chalky mask. He was silent, his eyes scanning the lot. Alex waited, knowing not to say anything. They had barely spoken on the flight up here, McCall sitting rigid in his seat, drinking club soda. Alex had finally gotten tired of his silence and retreated to the back of the firm’s private jet. By the time the Learjet touched down at the Brunswick airport, he was two vodkas deep into his brew of hope and despair. Hope that they would find Mel. Despair that she wouldn’t come home with him. But why would he even consider the second possibility? She loved him, she trusted him. She didn’t know what he had done, and it wasn’t too late for him to make everything right again.

“That’s his rental car over there,” McCall said.

Alex looked to his left just in time to see the glow of a cigarette lighter inside a darkened car.

“Let’s go,” Alex said, opening the car door.

McCall grabbed his sleeve. “Wait. Close the damn door.”

Alex shut the door and the overhead light went out.

“I want you to listen to me, Alex. Let me handle this.”

“She’s my wife, Owen, goddamn it. She’s not thinking straight and—”

“And neither are you right now. I need you to stay calm. We need Amelia to stay calm. We don’t want to scare her. You want her to come home, right?”

Alex ran a hand over his face. “Okay,” he said softly. “Okay, I just want to talk to her.”

They got out and walked quickly through the cold wind to the other car. Alex started toward the passenger side, but McCall was there first, yanking open the door and getting in. Alex slipped in the back.

The car’s engine was off, and Buchanan had his window rolled halfway down. The cold night air, stinking of fish, poured in, and Alex pulled up the collar of his sports coat. It had been seventy-five degrees when they left Fort Lauderdale. It was so cold here, he could see his breath pluming in the air.

He realized he was breathing too fast. He took three deep breaths to calm himself and sat forward between the front seats, staring hard at the house across the street. In the glare from the streetlight, he could see the house clearly, see the peeling yellow paint, the picket fence with its missing slats, the overgrown bushes, and the sagging porch. What the hell was Mel doing in a place like this?

“Is she in there?” he asked.

Buchanan didn’t turn around, his eyes fixed on the house. “It was 6:15 when I called you,” he said. “She stayed out on the porch with an old woman until 7:10 then they both went in.” Buchanan looked at his watch. “I haven’t moved from this spot in the last three hours and no one has come out since they went inside.”

“How do you know for sure that it’s Amelia?” Alex asked.

“I told you when I called you. She made a phone call from this house and I was able to trace it.” He held out a piece of paper. “Plus I was able to ID her with this.”

Alex took the paper. It was a five-by-seven black-and-white photograph. He stared at it for a long time. “This is Amelia when she was dancing. She doesn’t look like this anymore.”

“She does now.”

“Where did you get this?”

“From her closet.”

Alex stared at the back of Buchanan’s head, a spasm of disgust moving through him, like the time that rapist had reached through the bars of the Tallahassee jail and grabbed his arm, grinning and saying he had never touched that little girl. Alex had gotten the man off. Two months later, he quit his public defender job and signed on with a small Orlando firm specializing in corporate law. It wasn’t only for the money. He just wanted to feel clean.

He wanted to feel clean again. He wanted this man Buchanan out of his life. He wanted Mel back. He wanted everything to go back to the way it used to be. He started to put the picture in his coat pocket.

“I need that back,” Buchanan said.

“Why?” Alex demanded.

“In case I have to show it around.”

“But you said she was in—”

“Give it back to him, Alex.”

Alex hesitated and then handed it over the seat. His eyes went to the house. “I’m going up there.”

“No,” Buchanan said.

“Why not? I know if I can just talk to her—”

“You don’t know shit about her,” Buchanan said. “At least not the woman she is right now.”

“Now look, you asshole—”

“Shut up,” McCall said sharply. “Just shut up for a second and hear him out.”

Buchanan tossed out his cigarette and rolled up the window. “Your wife was scared enough to run from a hospital. I don’t care why. But something changed her. Maybe it was her head injury, maybe it was something else. But she’s different. Look at that house over there. It’s not like that pink palace of yours back home, is it?”

Buchanan held up the photograph. “And look at this woman. She’s not your pretty blonde Armani Barbie.”

“What are you saying?” Alex asked.

“She’s a different woman. And you’re going to have to be a different man to get her back.”

Alex shook his head. “This is bullshit.”

McCall held up a hand. “What do you suggest we do?”

“You have no legal right to go into that house or make her do anything,” Buchanan said.

“So we wait for her to come out?” McCall asked.

Buchanan nodded. “You wait until she’s out in the open. You wait for the right moment when she doesn’t feel threatened.” He paused. “Maybe I should talk to her first.”

The car was quiet.

“Fuck this,” Alex said.

He jerked open the door, almost falling out of the car. He heard McCall yell something, but he kept going.

Wrong . . . they were both wrong. He knew Mel. He knew that if she could just see him, everything would be clear. She loved him, and somewhere inside her she had to remember that.

He started across the parking lot, breaking into a near run by the time he got to the fence. He hurried up the steps, yanked open the screen door, and pounded on the front door.

A dog barked from somewhere deep inside the house. But no one came to the door. His eyes caught movement at the nearest window—a curtain and a shadowy face. He pounded on the door again, harder.

The porch light went on, and another light inside. A moment later the door opened a crack. An old woman with white hair stared out at him. He could hear the dog barking but couldn’t see it.

“Who are you?” the woman demanded.

Alex looked around her, trying to see inside. For one second, he thought of brushing past the woman.

Calm . . . stay calm.

“My name is Alex Tobias,” he said.

“What do you want?” the woman asked.

“I want to see my wife, please.”

“Wife? What the hell are you talking about?”

“My wife, Amelia. She’s here and—”

“Nobody’s here but me and my dog.”

She started to shut the door, but Alex thrust out a hand, stopping her. The old woman stared hard at him. The barking grew louder and frenzied.

“You best take your hand out of there, mister, if you don’t want it smashed up,” the old woman said.

Alex dropped his hand and took one step back. “I’m sorry. Look, I know my wife is here. I know she made a phone call from this house.”

The old woman’s eyes drifted, as if she were glancing at something or someone off to her left.

“Please,” Alex said. “My wife is not well. Please let me talk to her. I just want to take her home.”

In the glow of the porch light, he saw something shift in the woman’s face. Was she smiling?

“She’s gone,” the woman said.

“What?”

“You heard me. Your wife was here. But she’s not now.”

“I don’t believe it.”

The woman held the door open. “You want to come in and look?”

Alex felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder, and he spun around.

“Let’s go,” McCall said.

“No,” Alex said. “I’m going in there!”

McCall stepped in front of him, his hand tightening on his shoulder. “Go back to the car, Alex. Now.”

Alex stared at McCall’s face, harsh yellow in the porch light. He had seen this expression only once before, eighteen months ago when he had stood next to McCall in the moonlight on the edge of that black-water drainage canal. He had wanted to fight McCall then, but he couldn’t. Just like he couldn’t now.

He spun out of McCall’s grip and stumbled down the steps. He heard McCall say something to the woman but he kept going, heading back to the car.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Buchanan sat slumped in the seat, disgusted. Mostly with himself but with Alex Tobias as well. The man was in the backseat, wringing his hands and crying. What a fucking jackass.

What had spooked Amelia Tobias, he didn’t know. No way would she have noticed his nondescript car sitting in a parking lot in the dark. This woman had no experience at running. She would not be that observant.

“We need to find her,” Alex said. “We should be doing something.”

Buchanan glanced in his rearview mirror. The man looked like a drunk after a three-day bender. Owen McCall was slumped in the passenger seat, staring at the house. Buchanan was still wondering why the hell the partner was even there, but this wasn’t the moment to bring it up.

“We’re lucky the old lady didn’t call the police on you for pushing her,” Buchanan said.

“Maybe we should get out of here before she changes her mind,” McCall said.

Alex’s head popped between the front seats, into the dim glow of the streetlights. His face was tear-streaked but his eyes held a sheen of rage.

“Maybe
we
should call the police,” he said. “They can get in there and—”

“No police,” McCall said.

Alex sank back into the shadows. McCall looked back at the house and then turned to Buchanan. “So now what?” he asked.

“I go after her. Again.”

“How do you think she got this far?”

Again, Buchanan wondered why McCall cared so much, but given Tobias’s mood, maybe it was good the older guy was here.

“Bus, most likely. You don’t need an ID if you pay cash.”

“How did she pay for her ticket?” McCall asked. “She didn’t have a purse in the hospital. There have been no withdrawals or a request for a new debit card. Alex checked.”

“Maybe she had a stash somewhere, a secret account. Wives often do.”

Alex’s voice came from the backseat. “No. All the accounts were in my name.”

Buchanan glanced again to the rearview mirror. Alex caught the look and leaned forward again.

“She
wanted
it that way,” he said. “She never wanted anything to do with money. She shopped, and I paid the credit cards.”

“Maybe she socked something away.”

“No way. I always knew to the penny what she spent.”

“What about jewelry?” McCall said. “What about her ring, that rock you gave her?”

“How big a rock?” Buchanan asked.

“Ten carats,” Alex said.

Buchanan’s eyes shot back to the rearview mirror. Alex was staring at him but Buchanan looked away, out at the house.

“They would have removed her jewelry at the hospital and secured it,” Buchanan said. “Did they give you any of her personal effects?”

“I haven’t been back to the hospital. And no one has called me.”

“Check it out,” Buchanan said. “Talk to security and the nurses at the hospital. I need to know what she has with her.”

“Yeah, okay, whatever,” Alex said. “But what about right now? If she took a bus to get here, she might take a bus away from here. Why aren’t we—”

Buchanan reached back over the seat. “Give me your phone.”

“What?”

“Give me your phone.”

Alex slapped his iPhone into Buchanan’s palm. Buchanan asked Siri for the bus station in Brunswick, Georgia. When the Google map came up, the station marked with a red pin, Buchanan tossed the phone over his shoulder.

“There’s your damn bus station,” he said. “Go look if you want. But she won’t be there. She might not know how we found her, but she’s smart enough to know she has to come up with some new moves.”

“She’s not as smart as you think,” Alex said, pushing open the car door. “She’s running because she’s brain-damaged and mixed up. Maybe you’re the one who should find some new moves.”

Alex slammed the door behind him. Buchanan watched him walk back to the rental car he and McCall had arrived in. With a roar of the engine, Alex disappeared into the darkness.

For a few moments, Buchanan and McCall sat in the car, silent.

“He blew this,” Buchanan said.

“I know,” McCall said.

Buchanan sighed, his disgust with Tobias growing.

“So what’s your next move?” McCall asked.

“I’ll spend tomorrow here in town, show her picture around. I need to put a tap on the old woman’s phone.”

“Why?” McCall asked.

“Amelia seemed sort of . . .” Buchanan paused. “Sort of affectionate with the old woman. She might try to contact her again. But if I don’t get a lead here, I need to go back to Florida. I need some more background on her.”

He thought about telling McCall about Carol Fairfield and his suspicion that Amelia had a lover, but decided to stay silent. McCall had been the one who had hired him, but there was something odd about his intense interest in Amelia Tobias’s welfare and until he figured out what was going on, he wasn’t going to volunteer any more than he had to.

McCall loosened his tie, and just sat there, staring straight ahead. “You’ll need more money.”

“You bet.”

“How much more?”

“Five grand for another week.”

McCall drew a long slow breath. Still, he didn’t look at Buchanan. “What could you do for a million?” he asked.

“Pardon me?”

“What could you do for a million dollars?”

Buchanan sat back against the door, studying Owen McCall. The man sat straight as a statue, his face like clay in the slant of the streetlight.

“What are you asking me to do?” Buchanan said.

“Amelia wants to disappear,” McCall said. “I want you to make sure that happens.”

“You want her dead?” Buchanan asked.

Now McCall looked at him, his eyes hard as glass. “I didn’t say that. I said I wanted her to disappear. How you make that happen is up to you.”

Buchanan had heard some pretty bizarre propositions in his line of work, mainly runners who had tried to buy him off after they had been caught. But he had never been asked to carry out a hit on someone. This explained why McCall was here, but what the hell had this woman done to make her husband’s law partner want her dead? Did McCall have anything to do with Amelia’s car going off the road in the Everglades?

“Why do you want her dead?” Buchanan asked.

“That’s not your concern.”

“Does Tobias know about this?”

“Of course he does.”

Buchanan shook his head. Enough of this shit. He had his five grand retainer. He was about to shove McCall from the car when McCall gave a small chuckle.

“Don’t pretend you’re above this.”

“What do you mean?” Buchanan asked.

McCall reached into his jacket pocket, withdrew a folded paper, and handed it to Buchanan.

Buchanan paused and then began to unfold it, slowly because he knew what it was, and he didn’t want to see it. It was a copy of an article from the Nashville
Tennessean
, dated September 12, 2009. The headline was black and ugly.

HUSBAND SUSPECTED

IN DISAPPEARANCE OF

WIFE AND INFANT SON

Buchanan was not surprised that McCall had done his own homework. But what did he think it would get him?

He tossed the paper back at McCall. “I was never charged.”

“It’s likely you were never charged because the police never found the bodies, Mr. Buchanan.”

A slow burn started to creep up the back of Buchanan’s neck.

McCall picked up the paper and carefully folded it into a square as he spoke. “You said during the investigation that you would do everything humanly possible to find whoever abducted your wife and son.”

Buchanan glared at McCall, tempted to smash the man’s head through the passenger window. But his curiosity about where this was going was stronger, so he stayed quiet.

“But you’ve done nothing, really,” McCall went on. “You’re charging me outrageous fees, but you haven’t really been all that successful in your work. Your personal bank account has less than two thousand dollars in it.”

“I have other accounts,” Buchanan said. “One is for my daughter—”

“Who you lost custody of to your in-laws. Who by all accounts hates you because she thinks you killed her mother and baby brother.”

Buchanan looked away. He knew he should throw this man out into the street and head to Nashville without looking back. But something was stopping him.

“Mr. Buchanan,” McCall said. “I really don’t care if you killed anyone or not. I’ll make it two million. Use the money to clear your name, use it to get your daughter back, or just put it in a trust for her and go drink yourself into oblivion.”

“Look, you bastard—”

McCall’s hand shot up. “Like I said, I don’t care what you did. I don’t care what you do. But it’s yours, right now—two million in cash that no one can trace—if you’re willing to do what I asked.”

“We’re done,” Buchanan said. “This is over. Get out of my car.”

But McCall didn’t move. “Mr. Buchanan, I have many friends, friends who tell me things they think I might need to know. One of them is the district attorney in Nashville. He’s preparing an indictment against you.”

Buchanan was so stunned he could only stare at McCall. It was quiet in the car, then he began to hear a strange rushing sound. It took him a moment to realize it was the sound of blood pulsing in his ears.

Jesus, was this never going to end? Five years and they had never found anyone else to go after? And what the hell did they have now that they could indict him on?

“Let me make this easier for you,” McCall said.

Buchanan looked away.

“I will get you the best defense money can buy. No matter what they come up with, I can promise you won’t see one day in prison.”

Buchanan shook his head slowly.

“All right, I’ll sweeten the deal,” McCall said. “I will also make sure you get back custody of your daughter.”

Buchanan closed his eyes. Against the flood of memories, against the feelings of pain and impotence. Against the voice, her voice, that he knew now he couldn’t silence.

No, Bucky, not this way.

Buchanan opened his eyes. For a few seconds, they simply sat in the darkness. Then suddenly, all the lights in the old lady’s house went out.

“It’s a deal,” Buchanan said.