Broken (9 page)

Chapter 11

I had a
lot to think about on the way back to San Diego. The question of who had
ordered Todd to kill me was at the forefront of my mind. Whoever was behind the
kidnapping had put the fear in him, but how could they have found out about the
affair? Well, in all honesty, Todd hadn’t struck me as much of a master of
subterfuge. You could probably buy him a few drinks in a bar and he’d open up
like a Christmas present.

Or
someone could be listening in. There was no shortage of people who might try to
get a bug into Davies’s house, the FBI and the SDPD being at the top of my list
of suspects. Maybe somebody had gotten greedy. It wouldn’t be entirely unheard
of for someone in law enforcement to hear something interesting on a wiretap and
try to make a little money off of it, but going so far as to kidnap a woman and
her child? That would be a new one for me. I had contacts I could reach out to
in order to find out if Davies was the subject of an active investigation, and
if so who was running it, but it meant showing my face in front of even more
people, and lately I’d felt like a baby panda at the zoo. It didn’t seem worth
it.

One of
Davies’s competitors seemed more likely. If you wanted to bleed him dry, taking
his family hostage seemed like a good way to do it. And flipping one of
Davies’s people to find out about the affair was just a matter of choosing the
right one to approach, and having the right amount of cash to offer.

The next
call from the kidnappers wasn’t until tomorrow afternoon, so at least I had
some time to think about things. With a little luck this would make more sense
once I’d had more time to think about it.

When I
got back to my house I parked at the curb again. I sat in the car for a moment,
checking the mirrors. Nobody was approaching. If someone else was going to try
to take a shot at me, they weren’t showing themselves yet.

I got
out of the car and looked up and down the street. Everything was clear. I felt
like an idiot for being as nervous as I was, but I’d earned that paranoia,
hadn’t I?

My front
door seemed suddenly very far away, and I found myself wanting my gun back. I
could have asked Dan for one last night. He might have gone for it. He would
have had to weigh the odds that I’d use it for protection against the chance
I’d put it in my mouth and pull the trigger. I’m not sure what conclusion he
would have reached. I honestly wasn’t sure what I’d have done with a gun,
either. On a bad enough day, or if I was in a blackout…

Inside
the house I poured myself an inch of vodka and sat down on the couch to think. Everything
I knew about working a kidnapping case I’d seen on television. That wasn’t
going to be particularly useful in real life. Not unless I rounded up everyone
in Davies’s study and somehow got the kidnapper to say something
only he
would know
. And then maybe daisies would fly out of my ass. That seemed
about equally as likely.

I
thought about calling Dan Evans and coming clean about what was really going
on. As much as I wanted to talk to him, I was almost certain he would call either
the organized crime unit or the FBI as soon as he was done yelling at me. I
could take the yelling, but damned if I was going to give up on this case.

Out of
curiosity I switched on the television. I wasn’t entirely surprised to find
that my cable had been shut off. I had no idea the last time I had paid the
bill, but it hadn’t been recently. I needed to take a little of the cash Davies
had given me and put it in the bank. I sipped my vodka. It could wait until
tomorrow.

My head
was a jumble of thoughts, too much so to think straight. I glanced at my vodka.
I could either drink the rest of this, or try to be productive for a little
while. I decided to give productivity a shot.

I went
into my garage and looked at my motorcycle. It had been such a long time since
I’d ridden it, and I was a little surprised to feel a sudden pang of longing to
get on it and take it out onto the street. The bike was in no shape to ride, of
course, but I pressed the starter anyway and wasn’t surprised to find that the
battery was dead. I knew I had a portable battery charger around here
somewhere. And fresh oil? I had that too, didn’t I? I probably had everything I
needed to get the bike running.

It took me
a little digging to find it, but I eventually got a battery charger hooked up
to the bike. After that I found an oil pan and a couple bottles of fresh oil.
I’d been doing my own bike maintenance since I was a teenager. None of this was
new to me, but it felt fresh in a way that I liked. It was like rediscovering a
much-loved hobby you had somehow forgotten about.

I found
some rags and wiped the bike down when I was finished with the fluids. The tire
pressure was fine. It would take a while for the battery to be ready but I
could probably ride tomorrow if I wanted to. Provided that I was sober enough.

Back in
my living room I started pulling the crime scene tape off of my carpet and
walls. If anyone needed to remember where Todd had fallen, I could point it out
easily enough, and the bullet holes were plain to see. I wasn’t sure what I was
going to do about that yet. I’d have to call the Harrisons about the damage.
I’d pay for the repairs myself, but I was pretty sure having a guy choke to
death in the living room of a house you owned did something bad to the property
value. They might have some trouble selling it, if they ever wanted to.

I
stuffed the bits of tape into a garbage bag and then went into my bedroom to
clean. I wound up filling two bags and hauling them out to the dumpster. If I
kept this up I was going to fill the dumpster before too long. I couldn’t remember
when trash pickup day was; it had been a long time since I’d bothered to
perform that weekly ritual. I’d have to watch and see when the neighbors did
theirs.

With all
of that done and my house beginning to look marginally livable again, I planted
myself on my couch and sipped my vodka as I thought things over. I was no
closer to figuring out what my next move should be, but at least my house
smelled better.

I took
another swallow of vodka and laid my head back on the couch. It felt like it
had been a hundred years since I’d slept. I’d exercised, had a kind-of therapy
session, done housework, and punched a gangster. And all of that before five
o’clock. Back in the day that really wouldn’t have seemed like so much, but
with my health what it was now, I was exhausted. I felt like I’d run two
marathons without a break in between.

I shut
my eyes and allowed myself a deep sigh. I just needed a minute to…

Chapter 12

It was
still light outside when I woke up, but the sun was in a different place and I
realized it was morning. My clock said 8:32. I’d somehow gotten blasted enough
to sleep through the night. Or maybe I’d just been that tired.

At some point during the night I’d retrieved my bottle
of vodka from the kitchen and gone through the majority of it. That wasn’t a
surprise, historically speaking. What was surprising was that I’d stood the
bottle upright on the arm of the couch and it had stayed there all night
without spilling. I didn’t usually have that much dexterity when I was in a
blackout.

I stood up and almost instantly fell back down onto the
couch, dizzy. I was going to need a minute. I wasn’t sure how much I’d wound up
drinking, but it clearly had been quite a bit more than I needed.

There was about a half inch of vodka left in the bottle.
I picked it up and downed the last of it. No reason to let it go to waste.

Had I opened a second bottle last night? It felt like
it. I could do an inventory later. Right now I needed to…

I woke up again and looked at the clock. 8:53. I’d only
been out another twenty minutes, then. My head felt full of cobwebs and my
mouth was dry. I thought about trying to drink some water, but the thought made
me nauseous. Diet soda was going to have to do it.

My eyes caught sunlight as I stood up and I had to
shield them with my hand. I never got hangovers, but it did seem especially
bright out today. I had sunglasses around here somewhere. I’d find them before
I left.

In the kitchen I was surprised to find that in my
blackout I’d retrieved a legal pad from one of my closets and written a single
word on it. “DELIVERY.” What the hell was that supposed to mean? Had I been
watching QVC and gone nuts ordering things? No, of course not. My television
didn’t work. So it was something else. I’d figure it out when I could think
straight again.

I opened a can of diet soda and downed half of it an
about two seconds, being rewarded with a loud belch for my trouble. Nice. I was
the kind of girl all the boys wanted to take home to meet their mothers.

I went back into the living room and sat on the couch,
shutting my eyes once again. I had some time to spare yet. I could stand to
sleep just a little bit more.

It was nearly eleven when I woke up again. I rubbed my
eyes and thought about that. I had three hours until Davies was supposed to
make the next wire transfer to the kidnappers. That gave me time to do some
other things I’d been neglecting.

I stripped off the clothes I was wearing and put them in
the washing machine, along with an assortment of other things I gathered off my
bedroom floor. If I put the machine on the quick cycle, everything should be
done by the time I got out of the shower.

I didn’t have enough energy to stand up in the shower,
so I wound up huddling on the floor as the water poured down on me. This time I
even washed my hair, which I hadn’t bothered with two days ago. If I was lucky
I’d be able to get a brush through it.

When my clothes were finished in the washer I stuffed
them into the dryer and set it for the hottest setting. I didn’t have anything
I needed to worry about shrinking in there. I was just desperate to wear
something that was actually clean, and that didn’t have a cartoon dog on the
front of it.

My hair didn’t take well to brushing and I got bored
with it somewhere at the point between rat’s nest and bedhead. What the hell
did it matter, anyway? I wasn’t going up to Solana Beach on a date.

My clothes weren’t as dry as I’d have liked when I took
them out of the dryer, but Solana Beach was a good half hour away and I didn’t
plan to be driving fast. I shouldn’t be driving at all, honestly, but I didn’t
think showing up at a gangster’s house in a taxi was the best idea in the
world.

The trip to Solana Beach was slow but uneventful. I felt
like shit but I kept the car in my lane and below the speed limit. The guard
out front didn’t even bother to stop me this time. The gate was already opening
as I approached and he waved me on through as if we were old friends. I
actually waved back, then wondered if that was something people typically did
here. People who worked in an office complex might expect a friendly wave, but
did the armed guards at a gangster’s estate?

I could see Davies and Emerson sitting at the pagoda
when I got out of the Mustang. I started for them, but suddenly lurched forward
and vomited noisily on the grass. The retching was over in the blink of an eye,
my nausea gone as quickly as it had come. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand
and looked up. Davies didn’t seem to have noticed. Emerson had. From his
expression you might have thought I’d just taken a dump in his mouth.

I made it to the pagoda without further incident. “We
have to stop meeting like this,” I said to Emerson. He scowled at me. On the
table in front of him he had a laptop computer with a wireless modem plugged
into one of the ports. In the center of the table sat a UPS envelope that had
been torn open. A small, cheap-looking cell phone sat next to it.

“You didn’t mention this before,” I said. “I thought the
kidnappers called the house.”

“They did,” said Davies. “This is new.”

“Was there a note?”

“No. Just the phone.”

Something had changed, then. Why were the kidnappers
switching things up now? Because they knew I was involved? That seemed overly
cautious. I was next to useless, after all.

I picked up the phone and flipped it open. It was as
simple as they came. It would do voice calls and texts, but that was it.

“Typical burner,” I said, putting it down. You could buy
them by the dozen in any gas station in California. “Fully charged. You turned
it on?”

“Yes,” Davies said. “I guess there was no point in
dusting it for fingerprints?” He looked unsure. He wanted me to tell him he
hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Anybody who went to this much trouble wouldn’t have
left anything behind we could use,” I told him, thinking of the different
things the Laughing Man had sent me over the years. “You did fine.” Well, he’d
nearly done fine. He hadn’t put out anything for us to drink, and today my
mouth was Gobi Desert dry.

He sighed. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “It feels
good to have someone helping us who knows about these things.”

“I worked homicide, not kidnappings,” I reminded him.

“You’re still a detective. We’re not. I’m sorry I wasn’t
straight with you earlier. I should have been.”

“If you had been I wouldn’t be here now,” I said. “We’re
past that.”

“Okay.”

“So how does this work?” I asked.

Emerson finished whatever he’d been doing on the laptop
and slid it over to Davies. “It’s ready for your password, sir.”

Davies looked at his watch. “It’s time.”

I stood up and nearly lost my balance, needing to grip
the edge of the table to catch myself. I wasn’t sure if either of them noticed
my slip, but neither man reacted. I came around to Davies’s side of the table
and looked over his shoulder. The computer’s Internet browser was set to a
bank’s website, about to initiate a wire transfer. It wasn’t a system I had
ever seen before. “Tell me what this is,” I said.

“Bank of Nevis,” Davies said.

“Mr. Davies holds offshore accounts in several
countries,” Emerson said. “I wouldn’t expect that’s something you’d be familiar
with.”

“Banks in the Caribbean are often used to hide the
assets of people who don’t want questions asked about their income,” I said.
“Besides offering lower tax rates, they won’t comply with requests for
information from the U.S. government.”

“Well, yes,” Emerson said. “It’s a bit more complicated
than that, of course…”

“Do you want me to teach you?” I offered. I was bluffing,
of course. Everything I’d just said I’d seen in a movie once.

“That’s all right, Nevada,” Davies said. He gave Emerson
a warning look. “Let’s try to remember we’re all on the same side here.”

“Of course,” said Emerson.

“Do you want us to shake hands?” I asked Davies.
“Because I’m not going to.”

“Never mind,” he said.

I looked at the numbers on the laptop’s screen. If I
understood it correctly, Davies was about to transfer two million dollars from
his account into another, which was identified only by a sixteen-digit number.
“What happens now?”

“I put in my password to confirm the transfer, click
once there,” he pointed at the screen, “and it’s done.”

“What about the other number?” I asked. It was of a different
length than Davies’s account number. “That’s not a Nevis account.”

“It’s a Swiss bank,” Emerson said. “I was able to work
out the identity of the bank based on the format, but it’s a numbered account.
That means…”

“That means there is no name attached to it,” I
finished.

“Correct.”

I nodded. Numbered accounts were a particular favorite
of drug lords, third world dictators, and anyone else who wanted to hide a
large amount of money anonymously. Even the president of the bank where the
money was being held might not know exactly who owned that account. More than
that, there was likely no way he could figure it out. And even that only mattered
if the money stayed put, which it wouldn’t. A smart kidnapper would have the
resources to divide up the money and transfer it to a dozen destinations around
the globe. And then a dozen more. In a matter of hours it could be made to
vanish into the digital ether, never to be found by even the most determined
investigator.

I watched the screen for a moment, but couldn’t think of
any reason not to go ahead with the transfer. “All right,” I said. “You may as
well do it.”

Davies typed for a moment and then clicked on the button
he’d pointed out earlier. I saw a confirmation come up on the laptop’s screen.
“It’s done,” Davies said.

I went around and took my seat at the table again. “How
long does a wire transfer like that take?” I asked.

“It’s international,” Emerson said. “But fifteen minutes
at the outside.”

“It’s never been longer than that before we get the
call,” Davies said.

We sat there for a moment, none of us speaking. I had
never liked long silences and tended to fill the gaps with wisecracks, but I
had no energy left to do so now. Years of abusing my body, coupled with
yesterday’s exercise and whatever the hell I’d had to drink last night had
taken their toll. I wanted to crawl under a rock and die.

“Remember to get both of them on the phone this time,” I
said to Davies. “Insist on it. Ask Heather what today’s date is.”

“Why?”

“So we know they’re not playing a recording of her,” I
said. “Remember?”

“Of course,” he said. “Today’s date.”

The cell phone chirped on the table. Davies’s hand shot
for it, flipping it open easily with his thumb. “Speakerphone,” I told him. He
looked at the phone’s keypad in confusion, then pressed a button on the phone’s
side.

“Hello?” he asked.

“Mr. Davies,” a man’s husky voice said. I was no expert
on accents, but his sounded like Baja California to me. I’d heard it before, or
at least something very close to it, on my trips into Mexico.

“Let me talk to my wife,” Davies said.

A moment passed and I could hear two men murmuring to
each other in Spanish. It was muffled as if one of them was pressing his hand
over the phone’s receiver, but not quite firmly enough to block all the sound.
One of the men sounded nervous, but I’d never learned enough Spanish to follow
a conversation. It had been on my to-do list for…about fifteen years.

Emerson frowned at the phone. “Is this normal?” I asked
him.

“No,” Emerson said, his brow furrowed in worry. “They
usually put Mrs. Davies on right away.”

“What’s wrong?” Davies asked. He looked at me for help.
“What’s wrong, Nevada?”

The hand was taken off the phone on the other end of the
call and a little girl’s voice came over the speaker. “Daddy?”

“Oh my god!” Davies cried. “Anna! Honey, I’m here!”

“Daddy,” she said again, “Mommy’s…” then there was a
high-pitched cry as someone pulled the phone away from the girl, or pulled the
girl away from the phone. One or the other. Anna screamed one more time, much
farther from the phone now, and the man’s voice was back.

“Three days, two million dollars. Same time.” Then the
connection dropped.

“What the hell was that?” Davies asked me, frantic.

I glanced over at Emerson, who looked stricken. He knew
it, too. Well, one of us was going to have to tell Davies. Might as well be me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but your wife is dead.”