Taken (6 page)

Elvis Cole:

six days after they were taken

7.

Six minutes after Nita Morales drove away with her fears on that warm morning, I got into my car, phoned the Information operator, and asked if they had a listing for Jack Berman in Brentwood, California.

“No, sir. Nothing in Brentwood for a Jack Berman.”

“How about Westwood, West Hollywood, or Santa Monica?”

The communities surrounding Brentwood.

“No, sir. No Jacks there, either, nor anywhere in Los Angeles. We have several Johns, a Jason, a Jarrod, a Jonah, a lot of Jameses—”

“How many Bermans altogether?”

“Fifty or sixty, at least.”

“Okay. Thanks for checking.”

I killed the call, then dialed a police officer I know named Carol Starkey. Starkey works as an LAPD homicide detective in Hollywood, and likes me enough to do the occasional favor.

First thing she said was, “Weren’t you going to cook dinner for me? I’m waiting.”

“Soon. Can you pull a DMV registration for me?”

“That’s what you said last time. I think you’re scared we’ll have sex.”

Starkey is like that.

“Can you pull the DMV or not?”

I heard some background sounds, and she lowered her voice.

“I’m at a murder up in the Birds. The paparazzi and helicopters are all over us.”

The Birds was an exclusive neighborhood above the Sunset Strip where the streets were called Mockingbird, Nightingale, Blue Jay, and other bird names. The Birds was known for spectacular views and more celebrities per square inch than Beverly Hills.

She said, “Will it keep till the end of the day?”

“If it has to. I’m looking for the registered owner and an address.”

“Jesus, Cole, it has to. I’m working a murder here, for Christ’s sake. What’s the damned tag?”

I gave her Berman’s tag, and let her get back to her crime. Mary Sue made it sound like Berman had his own place, but he might still live with his parents, who might be among the fifty or sixty Bermans listed by Information. The Mustang’s registration should cut through the guesswork, and give me his or their names and address. If not, I could and would call my way through the fifty or sixty other Bermans, asking if anyone knew Jack.

The last person I phoned was Krista Morales. I didn’t expect her to answer, but you never know. I looked up her number in the things her mother had given me, and dialed. Her voice mail answered immediately, which told me either the phone was turned off or she was talking to someone else.

Her recorded voice said, “Hey, this is Kris. I’ll get back soon. Have a great day.”

I suddenly understood what Nita had told me. Krista had no accent. She sounded nothing like the girl who had phoned her mother, speaking a mix of Spanish and heavily accented English. It was as if she was playing a role, but playing it sincerely. She did not sound as if she was joking or trying to chisel five hundred bucks with a bad joke of a scam. I hung up, called her back, and left a message.

“This is Elvis Cole. I’m coming to find you.”

It was ten minutes after ten that morning when I put away my phone, found a gas station, then climbed back onto the I-10 and made the two-hour drive to Palm Springs. Driving seemed better than making sixty cold calls or waiting around all day for Starkey to clear a crime scene.

I drove east across the heart of Los Angeles, through the San Gabriel Valley, and across the Inland Empire into the desert. It was a nice drive that day. The early spring air was cool with a light haze that left the sky more blue than not.

Just past the casinos in Cabazon, the I-10 Freeway breaks to the south, veering toward the Salton Sea before curving north again to cross America. I left the 10 before it veered, and dropped south into Palm Springs, where you find streets named after dead celebrities like Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, and Dinah Shore. North of the freeway was a different world, where celebrities rarely ventured. The people who staffed the resorts and golf courses and restaurants south of the freeway lived in the low-slung housing to the north. The way Nita Morales described Jack Berman, I expected him to live on the north side, but the GPS in my phone led south to a very nice mid-century modern home on a manicured street midway between two country clubs and a golf resort.

Berman’s house was a gray post-and-beam with a white rock roof, an attached carport, and towering king palms. Two royal palms peeked over his roof from the backyard, and an enormous jelly palm stood sentry by the front door, braced by two date palms set in white rocks. Pretty much every house on the block sported the same palm landscape. They didn’t call the place Palm Springs for nothing.

The carport was empty and the house appeared deserted. I parked in the drive, but walked back to the street to check the mailbox. It was stuffed with ads and flyers and a thick deck of junk mail. Everything was addressed to “resident,” but whoever resided here hadn’t checked the mail in more than a few days. I left it, and went to the front door. The note Nita Morales left was wedged under the doormat exactly where she had left it, unread and undisturbed. I glanced at it, put it back under the mat, and rang the bell even though no one would answer.

I followed the drive past two plastic garbage cans outside what was probably a utility door, and into the carport. A wrought-iron gate divided the carport from a swimming pool surrounded by concrete decks, and a covered outdoor entertainment area built around an outdoor kitchen and bar. The gate wasn’t locked.

It was a nice backyard. A sixty-inch outdoor flat screen hung behind the bar, sort of like a tiki design gone wild. Glass sliders on the back of the house allowed an open view of the interior. I was hoping to find Krista and Jack making out, or Jack’s mother baking an apple pie, but no one was in the pool or inside the house. The good news was there were no bodies, and no signs of violence.

Nita Morales had left a note under the front mat, but a second note was stuck at eye level to the living room slider. It was stuck to the glass with a piece of chewing gum. Handwritten in black ink on the back of an
ampm
cash receipt:
Dude! You go without me??? Whas up? D.T
. The receipt was for twenty dollars of gasoline. Nita had probably not left the second note.

In detective circles, this was known as a clue.

The interior was strangely austere, as if someone had begun furnishing the house, then stopped, and left the rooms mostly empty. A black leather couch, two red chairs, and another flat screen TV furnished the living room, but the rugs and tables had been forgotten. Other than light switches and an alarm panel by the front door, nothing hung on the walls, giving the place an unfinished look. I studied the alarm panel, and was pretty sure I made out a tiny green light. A red light would mean the alarm was armed. A green meant it wasn’t.

I returned to the utility door, bumped the deadbolt, and let myself in. A computer-generated voice spoke from the alarm pad at the front entry, announcing that the south side door was open. I listened for movement, but heard nothing. No living person was home.

“Hello? I think your bell is broken.”

When no one answered, I stepped inside, pulled the door, and quickly searched the house. Two of the three bedrooms were empty, so my search was minimal.

The master bedroom clearly belonged to a single male, but a bright blue overnight bag sat on the end of the bed. The bag contained three panties, two sheer bras, two light knit tops, pink shorts, a pair of running shoes, a two-piece swimsuit, and a black hoodie—about as much as a woman would pack for a relaxed weekend with a friend in the desert. A pale gray toiletries bag contained makeup, a toothbrush, and a pink plastic box of birth control pills. The pharmacy label showed the script was filled for Krista Morales. If Krista ran off to Vegas with Berman, she had left her toiletries and birth control pills behind, which young women tend not to do.

I photographed Krista’s things in place as I found them, then returned to the kitchen. A Panasonic cordless phone sat on the kitchen counter beside a blinking message machine. The message machine showed three calls. I hit the Play button, and listened.

“Dude! Don’t leave me hangin’! Where are you, bro?”

The first message ended, and the same male voice left a second message.

“Hey, Berman, you turn off your cell? What’s up with that? Did you guys go back to the city or what? I took the day off, bro.”

“You guys” was a good sign. It implied the caller knew both Berman and Krista Morales, and had seen them together.

The third message had been left by the same voice on the following day.

“Crap, man, I hope we’re cool. Your cell’s giving me some shit about you not accepting calls or messages. I don’t even know if you’re gettin’ my texts. I rolled by your house. Check in, okay?”

I picked up the cordless, and checked the incoming call list. The most recent three calls were all from the same number showing a Palm Springs area code. I dialed. Four rings later, the same voice answered, but in a hushed tone.

“Dude! What, did you drop off the fuckin’ earth? Where you been?”

His Caller ID had recognized Jack Berman’s number.

“This isn’t Jack. I’m a friend of Krista’s mother.”

The caller’s name was Daniel Trehorn. The D.T. who left the note.

I identified myself, explained that Krista’s mother was worried, and asked when he had last seen them, together or apart.

He answered in the same hushed tone.

“That was last Friday night. It’s been almost a week.”

It had been six days. One day after Krista Morales left her apartment to meet Jack Berman. Two days before Nita Morales received the first ransom demand.

“Where did you last see them?”

He mumbled something to someone in the background, then returned to me.

“In the desert. Listen, can we talk in twenty minutes? I’m working. I’m a caddie at Sunblaze. You know where we are?”

“I’ll find it.”

“On Dinah Shore, east of Gene Autry. We’re on the ninth of nine. I’ll meet you outside the clubhouse.”

“See you in twenty.”

“We had plans the next day. We were gonna hang out. Are they okay?”

“I’ll see you in twenty.”

Daniel Trehorn sounded worried. I sounded worried, too.

8.

Daniel Trehorn was a skinny guy in gray shorts, a maroon Sunblaze Golf Resort polo, and pristine white sneakers. A shotgun spray of zits speckled his cheeks, and mirrored orange sunglasses wrapped his eyes as he scanned the desert ahead. We were in his big Silverado pickup, all tricked out with big tires, big shocks, and big lights for life in the desert. Trehorn was driving.

“We were going to Vegas. Krista’s never been to Vegas. Blast up Saturday morning, back Sunday afternoon. Kris hadda be back at school Monday. I went by to pick’m up, that was at noon, but they weren’t home. I called. Nothing. I texted. Nothing. I’m thinking, what the fuck? We don’t roll this way.”

“You and Jack tight?”

“He’s my boy. We go back.”

“You know Krista, too?”

“Sure. They’ve been hooked up for a long time.”

Trehorn was taking me twenty-three-point-two miles south of Palm Springs to the site of an old airplane crash where he had left them that Friday night, six days ago. On that Friday, Trehorn, Jack, Krista, and another couple named Chuck Lautner and Deli Blake had built a fire, drank beer, and listened to music.

I said, “Why did they stay when the rest of you left?”

“Why do people ever want to be alone under the stars? What do you think?”

“I think no one has seen or heard from them since you drove away.”

The twenty-three-mile drive south was mostly on pretty good paved roads, but the last seven miles were ranch and county roads bedded with gravel or cut through sand and rocks. Twenty miles of empty desert is a long way. I wondered if their car broke down, or they had an accident, and if we would find their car overturned on the side of the road.

“You guys came out here at night?”

“Sundown, but it was almost midnight when we went back. I’ve been coming out here since junior high with my brother. It’s no big deal when you know the way.”

I looked around at the long expanse of brush and rubble. You look up “middle of nowhere,” this is the definition.

“Did Jack know the way?”

“He’s been out a few times. It’s pretty simple when you know it.”

Ten minutes later, we bounced to a stop in a cloud of yellow dust, and Trehorn pointed.

“There you go.”

A twin-engine Cessna was on her belly more than a hundred yards off the road, across a field of creosote bushes, barrel cactus, and rocky sand. Clumps of brush had grown up around her like puppies nuzzling their mother. The props and windows were missing, the left wing and tail were crumpled, and her corroded skin had been a forty-year canvas for graffiti that served as a history for pretty much every local high school class and romance for the past forty years. Even after all these years, a dim outline where the land had been scraped to create a landing strip could be seen by how the brush grew.

“This is where you left them?”

“Yeah. We were by the plane. That’s where everyone hangs out, you see how it’s kinda clear where the old runway was? You can build a fire, cook if you want, just kinda hang. Jack left his car out here ’cause he has that Mustang, so Chuck and I drove over, and parked by the wreck. It gets dark, bro, it is
black
out here. I turn on the floods.”

Trehorn had a light bar bolted to the top of his truck.

“Where did Jack leave his car?”

“Couple of lengths behind us, I guess. Chuck went on to the plane, and Jack and Kris climbed in with me. He can’t drive his Pony over that stuff.”

I slid out of his truck.

“Let’s take a look.”

“We can drive.”

“Walking is good.”

A long time ago the United States Army taught me how to hunt men in wild places. People in black T-shirts with loud voices taught us how to move and hide without leaving signs of our passing, and how to find and read the signs left by others. Then they sent us to dangerous places and gave us plenty of practice. I got to be pretty good at it. Good enough to survive.

I did not go immediately to the airplane. I went behind Danny’s truck to see the tracks his tires left, then walked along the road until I found the same track leaving the road for the airplane.

“This is you. See? Let’s follow you.”

Six days after they were here, his tire tracks were still readable. We followed the trail he had left of broken creosote and manzanita, then left his trail for the airplane. It rested twenty yards off what would have been the landing strip, where it had slid sideways to a stop. Older tracks and ruts cut across the clearing were visible, too, along with discarded water bottles and beer cans that looked as if they had been there for years.

Graffiti covered every square inch of the wreck like psychedelic urban camouflage that was alien to the desert. It was a small airplane, and now, dead on its belly with missing engines and broken windows, it didn’t seem like much of a reason to drive so far.

The old airplane’s carcass had long been stripped of anything valuable by scavengers and souvenir hunters. The seats were gone, and eye sockets gaped from the control panel where the instruments had been removed. In the back, where the smugglers had probably strapped down bales of weed, were more crusty cans layered with dust.

We continued past the nose to a clear area, where Trehorn pointed out the black smudge that had been their fire, then made a general wave toward a break in the brush.

“We parked there, put on some tunes, and built the fire. See the cut wood? People come out, they scrounge shit from the brush, but that stuff makes a shit fire. Chuck brought real wood. It gets cold out here.”

“Was the fire still burning when you and Chuck took off?”

“Embers, maybe, but that’s all. It was pretty much done.”

I circled the plane, found nothing, and was thinking we had driven out for nothing when I saw a brassy glint in the dust ten feet in front of him. I walked over and picked it up.

Trehorn said, “Whatcha got?”

“A nine-millimeter shell casing.”

The brass casing gleamed brightly, indicating it had not been exposed to the elements long enough to tarnish. I held it up, but he wasn’t impressed.

“People shoot out here all the time. That old plane has more holes than Swiss cheese.”

I found two more casings a few feet away, and then a spent 12-gauge shotgun shell so new it looked like it had just come from the box.

Trehorn wandered off, searching along with me, then called from the center of the clearing.

“Shit. That’s a big sonofabitch.”

“What?”

He pointed at the ground.

“Tires. I run two-fifty-five-sixteens on my Silverado. These gotta be five-seventies. That’s a big honkin’ truck.”

I didn’t know two-fifty-fives from five-seventies, but the tracks he found were from a vehicle with two large tires mounted on each side. The double-tires suggested a large, heavy truck, but a large, heavy truck would have little reason to be in the middle of nowhere.

“These here the night you guys were here?”

Trehorn made a face as he shrugged.

“I dunno. It was dark.”

A confusion of footprints and smaller tire tracks crisscrossed the dirt. Some appeared fresher than others, but I couldn’t tell with any precision how recently they were made.

Trehorn said, “What do you think?”

“I think a lot of people were here. Which tracks are from your Silverado?”

“Back by the plane on the other side of our fire. I didn’t come out here. Neither did Chuck.”

Trehorn followed the large tracks toward the road, but I went in the opposite direction past the fire to the tire tracks he had left that night. When I found a clear example, I drew a large E in the sand, then noted the location relative to their fire and the airplane. I walked past the plane to continue searching the clearing when I saw a white shape caught in a creosote bush. I reached through prickly branches and found a California driver’s license. It pictured an Anglo male with short red hair, lean cheeks, and two bad pimples on his forehead. The name on the DL read M. JACK BERMAN.

I said, “Well.”

Trehorn was still on the far side of the airplane, so I pushed the branches aside. Three credit cards bearing Berman’s name and a worn leather wallet were caught in the lower branches. The wallet contained three hundred forty-two dollars in cash.

I glanced at Trehorn again, wondering if Jack Berman had put his wallet in the bush, and why. The discarded wallet and cash made no sense. If Krista and Jack had left voluntarily, they would not have abandoned the cash. If they were forced away at gunpoint, the person doing the forcing would still take the cash. Good, bad, or indifferent—anyone tossing the wallet would totally keep the cash.

I pushed deeper into the branches. A slip of paper with a handwritten note was caught on a twig near the bottom of the bush. The note read: Q COY SANCHEZ. A second DL was on the ground at the root of the bush, showing a pretty young woman with golden skin and raven hair named KRISTA LOUISE MORALES.

I stared at her picture, then studied the note. Q COY SANCHEZ, written in blue ink with a shaky hand that left the oversize letters uneven.

Trehorn was even farther away, searching the ground as if he hoped to find the Holy Grail. He was worried about his friend Jack Berman, but I did not tell him about the things I found in the bush. I read the note again.

Q COY SANCHEZ.

“Danny!”

He looked over as I tucked the note and the DLs away.

“Let’s go. There’s nothing here.”

I wanted to speak with Nita Morales first, and a man named Joe Pike.