Allen scrutinized the picture of the self-described distraught father, seeing a handsome blond man in an expensive suit, who was also the man in a silk shirt who had swallowed four double whiskeys and propped a shotgun against his son’s chest just for laughs. True, the man in the grainy photograph looked both exhausted and deeply troubled. But come to think of it, if O’Connell’s business was fraudulent, or even just shaky, having the police nosing around after his son’s disappearance would create its own world of immediate concerns. Maybe he looked tired because he’d been up half the night shredding papers.
The thought cheered Allen, and he went back to the papers and the Internet with renewed interest. He found little. Ten days after Jamie’s disappearance, the paper ran a brief follow-up article, two paragraphs in length, to inform readers that nothing had been heard from the boy or his abductor, and that the police were still treating it as foul play, since the boy was on the young side for being a runaway.
Nothing about having received a letter from Jamie himself, freely admitting to being just that.
Allen sat at the library table, drumming his fingers on the fake wood surface, oblivious to the hum and buzz of the busy patrons as he struggled to come to grips with the possibility that he’d screwed up. He had, without a doubt, allowed himself to be rushed—wham, bam, three weeks from contact to snatch. And although sometimes fast proved best, why hadn’t he dug a little more deeply before he and Alice had opened the door and taken Jamie away?
Back to square one.
Sorry, Rae.
The second-floor motel room he rented gave him a refrigerator, microwave, and once-a-week cleaning, and allowed him an open phone line in exchange for a hefty cash deposit. Even more important, the front door was sturdier than it looked, and the back window gave him an emergency exit that wouldn’t break his neck. Normally, that kind of security was a minor consideration, more habitual than necessary, but the possibility that he’d missed O’Connell’s shady business had made him concerned. The man might be guilty of nothing worse than making himself appear more successful than he actually was, but if he did turn out to be immersed in criminal enterprise—or even in organized crime—he might well have a greater capacity for violent response than the usual abusing parent. Allen had taken children from crooks before, but those offenses had generally been along the lines of turning back odometers or peddling kiddie porn. Only rarely had he come across the darker underworld—but if O’Connell was a part of it, Allen did not wish to be taken unawares.
He hung his clothes in the chipboard closet, then went out again to the grocery and hardware stores. When the motel had gone quiet, he took out his hardware store purchases and screwed locks onto both window tracks, then replaced the door’s dead bolt with one that looked nearly identical, but for which he had the only key.
He spent most of that night lying beneath the sheets staring at the ceiling, pondering Jamie O’Connell. In the morning, he made some phone calls and checked his email; nothing there.
He was aware of an odd feeling in the day, as if the dingy air of the city had a mild electrical current tingling through it. His nerves were jumpy, his body felt as if he hadn’t worked out in too long, even though he’d both run and lifted less than forty-eight hours before. Lack of sleep and a day bent over the library records, he decided; better look around for a club hereabouts, work off the scholar’s stoop.
But this morning, he would remain a scholar, or at least, he’d surround himself with them. He drove through the sprawl of San Jose to the school Jamie had last attended, private and semimilitary, to make inquiries about enrolling his own troublesome son. Back in May, he’d confined his contact with the school to the phone, so he didn’t have to worry about being recognized, and that morning he’d been pleased to find that, although the full school term had not begun yet, the school was running its two-week preliminary course for those needing to catch up, and that most of the staff was on board.
The principal, named Kluger, was exactly the sort of person Allen would have asked for, so self-absorbed it was easy to lie to him, so self-important it was a pleasure. Kruger glanced at the Armani, and became less interested in young Eddie’s problems (fictional young Ed was a thirteen-year-old with tattoos, a marijuana habit, and a peculiar interest in Nietzsche; Allen thought Ed De la Torre would like his godson) than he was in Allen’s bankbook. By dropping a few references to exotic vacation spots and Hollywood first names, Allen had the principal eating out of his hand, and it was a simple thing to establish a few peculiarities of his own. Such as ethnic preferences.
“Do you have any Indian teachers?” Allen inquired, squinting over at the yearly school photographs on the wall as if he couldn’t be bothered to get up and study them.
“Indian?” Kruger’s caution was no doubt due more to lack of understanding of the reason for the question than any incomprehension of the question itself. Should he admit to the presence of a minority on the staff? Or trumpet one?
“Yes, you know, from the subcontinent. A Hindu, a Sikh would be good, Parsi if you can get one. Not a Jain, they’re not disciplinarians.”
“Ah, Indian. Yes, we have two. Mr. Ram— er, Ramaswami I think it is, he’s just joined our computer lab, and Ms. Rao in the middle school English program. She has a degree from London University,” he added.
“Good, can’t do better than an Indian for teaching boys,” Allen declared, as emphatic as a Raj colonel. “Let me talk to the Rao woman.”
“I, er, I think she’s probably in class at the moment.”
“Of course she is, that’s where she should be. But surely you give the poor woman a break sometime?”
The hint of outrage in Allen’s accusation of overwork put the cap on the principal’s state of confusion. “Yes, of course. I mean, her break, let me see.” He leaned forward over his wide, empty desk and pressed the switch on the speaker phone. “Ms. Gillespie, can you tell me when Ms. Rao has her prep time?”
“Third period, Mr. Kluger.”
He cut the connection without thanking his secretary, and said to Allen, “Third period.”
“And what time would that be?”
The confusion returned, and Allen decided that Mr. Kluger was not exactly a hands-on kind of a principal, if he didn’t know for certain when the periods began and ended. “After ten. Ten-thirty, might be a good time to catch her.”
It was only eight-forty now, and Allen was not about to sit around chatting with this pompous ass for two hours. He stood. “How about I come back then, if that’s okay with you? So as not to waste your time. Say I meet you back here at ten-thirty, you can introduce me to Ms.—Rao, was it?”
The blithe assumption that the school principal had nothing better to do than show a potential student’s father around at the drop of a hat might be slightly insulting, but was almost certainly true. Allen shook Kluger’s hand and was out the door before the man could open it, and disappeared through the outer office in a flash. He stood in the hallway, patting his pockets as if he’d forgotten something; as soon as he heard the principal’s door close, he stuck his head back inside the office to smile at the woman sitting behind the desk. “Ms. Gillespie?”
“Yes,” she said expectantly.
“I’m Mike Ellis, I’m thinking of bringing my son here. Can you tell me, when does third period begin?”
The woman hid her amusement, but Allen could see that she knew quite well that he had asked her boss just that and Kluger hadn’t had a clue. “Second period ends at nine-fifty, there’s a twenty-minute break, and the bell for third period rings at ten after ten.”
“Thanks a lot,” he told her, and left the school with a spring in his step.
He was back in the building well before ten, asking for Ms. Rao’s room when the students came pouring from their rooms at ten to. A series of students directed him to an empty classroom just as the teacher was leaving. One glance, and Allen could only wonder that Jamie’s praises hadn’t been more effusive. The woman was gorgeou
s, small, slim, brown-skinned, and sloe-eyed, and he knew without thinking about it that every one of her students who didn’t embrace neo-Nazi principles would be madly in love with her.
“Ms. Rao?”
“Yes,” she said. In dress she was pure Californian, khaki pants and a linen shirt with a thin sweater over it against the school’s air-conditioning. Her accent seemed to be English, with a faint brush of Indian music that raised the end of her single word.
“I’m Mike Ellis. Mr. Kluger said I could come and talk with you for a minute about your class.”
He could see her thinking that if Kluger gave permission, it had to involve money in some way. “Would you like to talk here, or in the staff room?”
“Actually, it’s kind of nice outside, if you have the time for a stroll.”
She dropped the sweater over the back of her chair, and locked the classroom door after her.
When they were well clear of the school, and safe from the threat of having Kluger scurry up behind them, Allen drew his breath, and took the very risky plunge he had decided on. “Ms. Rao, I told your principal that I was here to look at your school with an eye to enrolling my son.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t have a son. I came to see you. I had some questions about Jamie O’Connell.”
The young woman stopped dead, her face going taut with dismay. “Has he been found?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Are you with the police?”
“No.”
“I think you had better explain yourself, Mr. Ellis,” she said with an edge to her voice. “If that is your name.”
“It’s one of them.” He watched her think about this, and he continued. “I am trusting you, Ms. Rao. Rather more than I had intended before I saw you. I want to ask you about The Lord of the Rings.”
She waited for more; when it did not come, she nodded to urge him on. “The Lord of the Rings. J. R. R. Tolkien. Yes, many of the children are reading it. When I was growing up, we all read Roald Dahl.”
“Would you tell me please, why did you give Jamie a copy of the trilogy?”
Her face closed; she took a step back. “Mr. Ellis, do you work for James’s father?”
“No, I most certainly do not. Although,” he said carefully, “I’d like to know more about him.”
“Why?”
“Ms. Rao, I don’t think I can go into that right now. Let’s just say it involves Jamie.”
“Then the boy’s not dead?”
“As far as I know, he’s fine. Safe,” he added, to see what she did with the word. Her face didn’t alter, but after a minute her body relaxed minutely. “Did you have reason to believe him dead?”
“The newspapers seemed to think it likely.”
“Why did you give him the books?”
“It was his birthday.”
“Do you give all your students expensive sets of books for their birthdays?”
“Just those who need it.”
“Jamie’s father is a wealthy man.”
“Most of the students here come from homes with money,” she agreed evenly, evading the unstated question as smoothly as she had all the direct ones. And then she seemed to relent. “Mr. Ellis, are you doing anything for dinner tonight?”
“It sounds as if I may be. Would you like me to pick you up?”
“There is a bookstore on the corner of St. Helena and Main. Park in the lot out in the back of the store, and we can walk to the restaurant. I shall be out in front at seven o’clock.”
“White tie or none?” he asked, smiling.
“What you have on will be fine. And if the dinner goes well, you can take me dancing.”
He grinned. “Isn’t that just what we’ve been doing for the past few minutes?”
Her black eyes sparked to life with mischief, but she merely repeated demurely, “Seven o’clock, Mr. Ellis,” and her slim body swept back the way they had come.
Oh yes, all her students would certainly be in love with her, Allen thought happily.
As he bent to unlock the door of his rental car, his spine exposed to all the world beneath its thin layer of expensive wool, Allen suddenly understood why his shoulders seemed to crave a strenuous workout, what the electrical feeling to the air all morning had been. The hot, dry San Jose air had the same smell as the tropical jungle across the ocean or the rainy night under a Portland overpass, lifetimes ago. It was not the air itself, but the smell of setting out on patrol, stepping into the green, knowing that Charlie waited there.
Pure, unadulterated adrenaline. How could he ever imagine giving this up?
Back at his motel room, Allen turned his new dead bolt, hung his jacket and tie on hangers, and checked for email. He had one message, cleansed into anonymity by Alice’s remailing service, and even then it was in the woman’s own version of code: a string of nine digits, the final 2 and 5 separated by a slash. This gave the seven-digit phone number where he could reach her, between the hours of two and five. No area code meant simply the Seattle area.
Satisfied, he checked to make sure neither window had been tampered with, then cranked up the air conditioner to full rattle. He arranged his three-hundred-dollar shoes and his silk-looking-like-cotton shirt in the closet with the jacket, and turned on the bathroom tap to splash his face with water as cold as it would give, which wasn’t very. He was feeling his pair of sleepless nights, and knew he wouldn’t get much rest later, so he stretched out on the slippery flowered chintz of the bedcover. He was asleep in ninety seconds.
His internal clock prodded him after three hours. His eyes opened to the strange room, sun bright around the skimpy curtains; he blinked, and turned quickly over to look at the bedside radio alarm. Just after two. He used the toilet and stuck his head under the cold-water tap again (finding it even warmer than before) before pulling on a pair of shorts, worn sandals, and a T-shirt declaring him an alumnus of Hanover College, Indiana. The car was an oven, its seat scorching the backs of his legs. Half a mile away he spotted a pay phone that wasn’t directly on a freeway or ten feet from a noisy gas station; digging a roll of quarters from the glove compartment, Allen stepped up to the booth.
Alice answered on the first ring.
“We may have a problem here,” he told her. “The father looks like he might be involved in an illegal business.”
“You’re not talking about a meth lab,” she stated.
“More like a scam, or money laundering,” Allen told her.
Her silence was eloquent.
“I’m not sure how we missed it, and I could be wrong now, but I like to keep you in the picture.”
“We missed it because we were hasty. I rushed you. I should have—”
“Alice,” he interrupted, “it was my decision, too. We missed it. The question is what to do now.”
“What do you need?” she asked, and Allen found himself smiling, just a little. One of the things he’d always liked, working with this otherwise difficult woman, was that she knew how to get over it, and get on with it.
“Information.” Better late than never. “I think you know somebody on one of the papers down here. If they could get me an ID, I’d have an excuse to ask questions.” Bluffing only went so far; sooner or later, you ran up against someone who demanded to see identification. If that someone was a cop, things would go to hell in a hurry. Call it smarts, or short-timer’s jitters, but Allen had no wish to spend his retirement in prison.
Alice said, “I think I can get something better than that. You need it immediately?”
“I’m okay tonight, I have a date with the kid’s teacher.” No reaction from Alice, not that he expected one. “Business, in case you’re concerned. And later . . . well, I thought of some other things.” Illegal things, and he wasn’t about to go into details on a phone line.
“I’ll have something for you by this evening. And, take care,” Alice said, which didn’t sound like her. Then she added sternly, “It would be very difficult to bail you ou
t,” which did.
Chapter 25
Allen went into a men’s store that he had spotted while driving to the telephone, and bought two new shirts and a pair of slightly more extreme trousers than he usually wore. When he came around the corner of the assigned bookstore that evening, he saw Ms. Rao’s eyes sweep over him and return to his face with approval. He came to a stop before her and bowed slightly.
“My lady.”
“Sushi or pizza?” she greeted him.
“I like anything. You choose.”
Somewhat to his surprise, she chose the pizza.
It was no chain pizza joint, though. The men in the kitchen greeted her as a friend, and the waitress showed them to a table at the back, next to a window. He ordered beer, she ordered red wine, and when they had their drinks, he raised his and said, “Mike.”
“Sorry?”
“You can’t keep calling me Mr. Ellis. I’m Mike.”
“And I’m Karin, with an ‘i.’ Cheers.”
“Kluger said you were at the University of London,” Allen opened, and the conversation was launched, back and forth with history and interests. Little flirtation, he was relieved to see: a complication he could do without. Karin seemed to feel the same way. The pizza was excellent, the talk easy, and he waited for a sign that she was willing to move on to the next stage, the reason she’d asked him out for dinner. When no sign came, he gave the conversation a nudge.
“Tell me about Jamie O’Connell.”
“I call him James. ‘Jameson’ seemed too big for him.”
“He’s a nice kid.”
“Bright, quiet,” she said, not quite an agreement.
“Many friends?”
“Almost none. There are a couple of other outsiders he talks to from time to time, but it’s always a problem, kids who move schools a lot. It’s hard to work your way into a group that’s been together for some time.”
Outsiders, Allen noted. “Is he bullied?”