Abandoned: A Thriller (16 page)

This dance aside, Alan dabs his lips with a napkin, crushes it into a ball, and tosses it onto his empty plate. “What can you tell us about everything?”

Burns laughs. “Everything?”

“You’ve known her and her family since she was twelve,” I say. “You were the lead in the investigation when she was abducted at the age of thirty-six. You probably have the longest continual relationship with her of anyone besides her mother.”

“Including her mother, actually. She died three years ago.”

One more thing she’s lost forever.

“Point is,” Alan continues for me, “we don’t know what’s going to end up being important. We take everything we can get and sort out the good from the bad.”

“I understand.” Burns takes a sip from his coffee. His gaze is fixed on something from the past. “I met Heather when she was twelve. I was twenty-eight at the time. I’d been in homicide for two years, on the force for eight.”

“Quick rise,” Alan observes.

“I had a hook,” Burns agrees. “My father was a cop. His ex-partner headed up robbery-homicide.” Another sip of coffee. “The thing I remember is how different she was from her mother. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but the mom was always weak. It was just one of those things you could tell, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“Not Heather, though. She was strong. She was grieving, but she was also angry. Got in my face from the get-go. Didn’t want to know
if
I was going to get the guy who shot her father, but
when.
Asked for my card and my number and told me she’d be calling regularly—which she did.”

“What did you tell her when she called?” Alan asked.

He sighs. “A whole lotta nothing. We didn’t have anything to go on. Her dad owned the store and was working alone. No witnesses. It was a robbery gone wrong, probably by a jumpy amateur, so I was hopeful. Someone comes in to steal a few bucks and ends up committing murder, they’re going to feel guilty. But nothing ever came of it. None of the local skells or my usual informants knew anything. Not word one.”

“Unusual,” Alan says.

“Yeah. Made me think maybe it was someone from out of town, passing through. Regardless, I never gave up, but I never got anywhere either. One day, about two years later, Heather calls me. She asks if we can meet. I say sure. I have her come to the station and then I take her for a Pink’s hot dog. She’d never been there. I thought if I wasn’t going to give her good news, I could at least give her a legendary hot dog at a famous location.”

Pink’s is an LA institution. It’s a slice of history. Paul Pink set up a hot-dog stand—a large-wheel pushcart—in 1939, at the corner of La Brea and Melrose. Back then, that location was considered to be “in the country.” In 1946 he constructed a small building on the same spot where the hot-dog stand had stood, and it’s still there today. The walls inside are covered with photos of all the movie stars and other famous people who’ve come there over the years.

“Heather has always been what some people call ‘focused.’ I think she was that way before her dad’s murder. A lot of people like that become antisocial, misanthropic, no time for the small stuff, you know?”

“We know,” I say, thinking of James.

“Not Heather. I knew she had something on her mind and that she wasn’t really all that interested in Pink’s, but she took the time to look at all the photos and to ask me about the history of the place. She was fourteen by then, and I remember it struck me.”

Unusually thoughtful for any teenager, I think.

“She finished the hot dog before she even got around to what she wanted to ask me. ‘I need you to be honest with me about something, Mr. Burns,’ she said. I agreed I would be. ‘Do you think you’ll ever get the man who killed my father?’” He’s watching his coffee, an expression of dissatisfaction on his face. “I considered lying to her. But I decided against it. She deserved better. ‘It’s always possible that something will happen, one day,’ I told her. ‘People get older and start talking because they think they’ve gotten away with it. Someone hears what they say and repeats it to a cop later. It’s happened. But if you’re asking, do I think that I’m personally going to catch him by doing what I do and being a good detective? In that case, I’d have to say no, I don’t.’”

“How’d she react to that?” I ask.

“Better than I would have.” I can hear the admiration in his voice. “She said she understood, and then she thanked me for being honest with her. Made me glad I had decided not to lie, because I got the idea she already knew what the truth was. She didn’t talk for a while, then she asked for another hot dog. I could tell there was something else on her mind and that I needed to let her say what it was in her own time.” He smiles. “She enjoyed the second hot dog more honestly than the first. There was no talking, but neither of us was uncomfortable. That silence is where we became friends.”

He shoots us a speculative eye. “Some might think it was suspicious, a male cop getting friendly with a fourteen-year-old girl.”

“The thought had occurred to me,” Alan says.

I look at my friend in surprise, because it hadn’t occurred to me. The truth of the relationship between Burns and Heather is written all over the old cop’s face, in the frustration that’s evident when he talks about not being able to solve her dad’s murder. It’s evident in his voice;
when he talked about her thoughtfulness, I’d heard more than admiration. I’d heard the pride of a father or a doting older brother.

Alan is usually much better at reading people than I am. Why’d his mind go there first?

Burns seems to take it in stride. “Yeah, well. We all have our problems. I’ll be honest about the ones I have so you can be clear on the ones I don’t. I can relate to Heather because I had a sister who died of leukemia when she was twelve. I was nine.” His lips compress in sorrow at the memory, even after so many years.

“Second thing,” he continues. “I had a gambling problem for a bit. I never lost the kids’ college fund or anything like that. It was the opposite, actually. I was a poker player and I was really good. It started to take over my life. Playing forty-eight hours straight on my time off and then heading into work wired and with no sleep.” He smiles, as though this isn’t an entirely bad memory. “Might have been fine if I was making a living doing it, but I wasn’t. I was wrecking my life at home and cutting into the job.” He shrugs. “So I got a handle on it and that’s it. Nothing off about my relationship with Heather Hollister. Not once, ever. We clear?” He looks at Alan, not me, as he asks this.

“We’re clear,” Alan says.

“You said she had something else to say?” I ask, trying to put this train back on the tracks.

“Yeah.” The smile that replaces the mild defiance in his face tells me this is a better memory than the others. “‘I want to become a policewoman,’ she told me. ‘Will you help?’ Just like that. She was looking me right in the eyes as she did, determined, ready for a tough negotiation.” He finishes his coffee and pushes it aside. “Heather was always strong, like I told you.”

“What’d you tell her?” Alan asks.

“I told her the first thing she needed to do was graduate high school with good grades. Then I told her she should go to college, get a degree in criminology. My master plan, you see, was to steer her in the direction of doing something that would pay better and be safer. I figured eight more years of school, life, maybe boys, whatever, and some of that fire would cool. She was fourteen. I couldn’t imagine her on the streets in a blue uniform, and I didn’t want to.” He shakes his head, still surprised by the past. “I misjudged her, like so many. She did
exactly what I told her. Showed up when she was twenty-two and told me she needed help enrolling in the police academy.”

“What about this thing with her stepfather?” Alan asks.

I watch Burns closely. His face doesn’t shut down. It goes mild, the barest hint of a smile tipping the edges of his lips. Like most cops, he’s an accomplished liar. If he still had coffee in his cup he’d be using it as a prop, taking a careful sip to show that he’s not troubled in the slightest by Alan’s question. “Pete? What about him?”

I touch Alan’s leg under the table, and he lets me take over. “Burns. Our only interest in anything is Heather. We can guess what happened to the stepfather, and we couldn’t care less. But did you ever consider the possibility that he might have had a hand in what happened to her? Ultimately, she’s the one responsible for him going to court and having to move on.”

“Yeah, I considered it.”

“So? Tell us about him.”

Burns grabs his water glass in a familiar, proprietary way that makes me think he wishes he was sitting at a bar counter. His expression is contemptuous. “Pete was every stereotype you could imagine. Small, weasely guy who got off on beating women because he was too cowardly to beat on anyone his own size. Blew into town a few years earlier and worked odd jobs. Margaret met him—I don’t remember how. He sized her up the way guys like that do. He could smell it.” He takes a drink from the water again, making me think of whiskey. “Thank God, Heather wasn’t weak. Or that he wasn’t one of the big ones.”

I know what he’s saying. The adage
all bullies are cowards
is wishful thinking. Some of them are brutes, huge men who are anything but cowardly and just enjoy using size to enforce their will.

“How old was Heather when Margaret married him?” I ask.

“Fourteen going on fifteen. I didn’t know anything about him or what he was doing, until Heather came to me. I was, let’s say, pretty angry. I’d taken a personal interest in this family. They’d been through enough, and here comes this piece of shit, like a vulture smelling an easy meal.”

“She had a tape?” I ask.

He nods. Another admiring smile wipes away the contempt and anger. “Smart girl. She brought it to me, and I did the right thing and
got him arrested. A good lawyer got the tape excluded.” Burns turns the words
good lawyer
into bitter cuts of sarcasm. “What did you do?” I prod.

He sighs. For all his anger, this memory tires him. He’s not ashamed of it, but he’s exhausted by the world that made it necessary. “I grabbed a sorta friend of mine, a retiree who shall remain unnamed but who, let’s say, had always been flexible in his methods of interrogation on the job, and we paid ol’ Pete a visit. Margaret was out at the movies with Heather.” He glances away, and I see the first, smallest hint of shame there.

“Heather knew?” I say. “She knew what was going to happen?”

“As I said. She was a smart girl.” Another whiskey sip of ice water. “We didn’t knock. We waited ten minutes after we saw Margaret drive off with Heather, and we walked right in. Heather had left the door unlocked for us. Pete was sitting in his armchair, wearing a wife-beater and nursing a beer.” He shakes his head. “The guy was such a cartoon. Maybe he saw domestic abusers on TV shows or in the movies and patterned himself after them. I don’t know. Anyway, my friend-who-shall-remain-nameless walked over, grabbed Pete by the hair on his head, and yanked back. The armchair toppled over backward, and we went to work.” He flexes a hand unconsciously. Sense memory.

“We didn’t talk for ten minutes. He must have recognized me, but I imagine that only made him more afraid. We worked him pretty good. Not good enough that he wouldn’t be able to walk out on his own, but we hurt him.

“Once the ten minutes were up, and he was curled into the fetal position and had pissed himself and was crying like a baby, I had the talk. I told him he was going to get out of town, right now, tonight. I told him if he ever touched Margaret again, I’d kill him. I told him if he ever touched Heather, I’d kill him slow. I told him if he ever showed his face around here again, I’d kill him. I told him if he filed a complaint against me, no one would believe him, and I’d kill him.” He gives a little shrug. “Basically I told him I’d kill him.”

“Did he go?” I ask.

“Oh yeah. He couldn’t leave fast enough. I even brought him some money to stake him. Two thousand dollars of poker winnings. I’d do searches for him on occasion. Nothing ever turned up.” He looks at me. His eyes are back to being troubled. “So? You think he could have
had something to do with Heather going missing? I looked, but I never found a connection. Never found Pete, as a matter of fact. No records of him coming back into town at that time or later, no one saw him at any of his old haunts, nothing.”

I consider it. The whole story is fascinating, both terrible and cathartic. Heather’s complicity is disturbing, of course. I have only a sketch of “Pete,” delivered by a man who hated his guts. But even so …

“I doubt it,” I say. “I can’t rule him out one hundred percent, but he doesn’t sound like an intelligent planner. This is too advanced for him.”

Burns stares down at his illusory whiskey water. “That’s a relief.”

“I understand why you focused on the husband and Pete,” I say, moving things back to the investigation. “But were there any other suspects?”

“There was one.” He sounds reluctant. “Heather’s boyfriend.”

“She was having an affair?” I ask.

He sighs. “Yeah. Nice guy by the name of Jeremy Abbott. He worked in real estate, divorced, around the same age as Heather. They’d been seeing each other for about six months.”

“Was this before or after she suspected her husband was cheating on her?”

“Don’t know. I found out about Abbott through her email.”

“Why was he ruled out as a suspect?”

Burns looks confused. “You didn’t read it? In the file?”

“We’re still getting caught up,” I say.

“Then get ready for a shocker. Jeremy Abbott went missing the same night as Heather. His car was found in his driveway, still running. Driver-side door was open and one of his shoes had come off.”

“That’s
why you never considered it random,” Alan says.

Burns nods.

“Douglas Hollister is looking better and better,” I mutter.

“He never turned up?” Alan asks.

“Jeremy?” Burns shakes his head. “Not a sign. Just like Heather. Disappeared from the face of the earth.”

I glance at Alan. He nods back at me.

“What?” Burns asks.