Call Of The Witch (18 page)

“
She doesn’t usually
drink,” said Carlos. “It’s just that we’re celebrating
tonight.”

“
Oh? What are you
celebrating?”

He looked at Lauri again and smiled proudly.
“You want to tell him, dear?”

“
Tell me what?” I
asked.

She stretched her arm across the table and
splayed her hand. “We’re getting married.”

I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before.
Perhaps her beauty outweighed all else. However, presenting it the
way she now did, it was impossible to see anything but the striking
diamond engagement ring adorning her finger.

“
Wow! It’s beautiful,” I
said, and though I wanted to add the word congratulations, it just
wouldn’t come out.

“
It’s one whole carat,”
Lauri boasted. She pulled her hand back and fanned it in front of
her face to soak in its radiance once more.

“
Actually it’s one point
one,” Carlos corrected.

I fell back in my seat and forced a
convincing smile. “Well now, isn’t that something. I don’t know
what to say. I’m speechless.”

“
You can say
congratulations.”

“
Yes, of course.
Congratulations.” There. I said it. I hoped it sounded sincere, and
maybe it did to Lauri, but I think Carlos knew better.

“
Thank you,” said Lauri.
“We’re both very excited.”

“
I’m sure you are.” I
picked up my beer and finished it off in a few quick gulps.
“Listen.” I set the mug aside. “I’m sure you guys don’t need a
third wheel hanging around. How `bout I let you two get on with
your celebration. Carlos.” I checked my watch. “Dominic’s probably
arriving at the Brewbaker’s house about now. Are you going to
relieve him in three hours, or do you want me to take your
shift?”

“
No, I’m good. I’ll take
that shift. I have to get Lauri home soon anyway. She has classes
tomorrow.”

“
Classes?”

“
At B.U.” she
said.

“
Oh. Are you driving to
New Hampshire tonight?”

“
She lives with me,” said
Carlos.

“
With you?”

“
Just during the week that
is. She goes back home on weekends.”

“
I see.”

Lauri said, “Yeah, technically, I still live
with my parents. They think I bunk with a friend at a dorm on
campus.”

“
Okay, well….” I got up
out of the booth and said to Lauri. “It was a genuine pleasure to
meet you, and again, congratulations on your engagement. You make a
lovely couple.”

She smiled at me the way Lilith does
sometimes when she knows something I don’t. “Thank you,” she said.
I turned to Carlos and offered my hand. “Carlos? Congratulations. I
hope you don’t forget to invite me to the wedding.”

I thought he’d laugh at that. He didn’t.
Instead, he shook my hand and said politely, “I’ll try not to.”

I left the house the following morning
shortly before six o’clock. The Sunday paper had already hit my
doorstep and I was glad to see no mention of the kidnapping on the
front page. I expected that by the time I got to the Brewbaker’s
house, Carlos would be ready to give me shit about running late.
Not so surprisingly I suppose, he wasn’t even awake to dish it
out.

Dominic let me in the back door after hearing
me rap quietly on the window a few times. I presented him with a
cardboard tray stacked with four take-out coffees and a bag of
jelly donuts. He liberated one of the coffees and left me with the
tray.

“
Thanks,” he said, turned
and headed for the living room. I followed him in.

“
Any news from the
kidnappers?”

“
No. Nothing.”

“
Damn. That can’t be good.
What in the hell are these guys waiting for? Brewbaker’s got the
money, right?”

“
Yeah, it’s pocket change
for him.”

“
Where are they
now?”

“
The
Brewbakers?”

“
Uh-huh.”

“
Lionel’s upstairs. He
went to bed about an hour ago. The poor guy was ready to pass out
on his feet.”

“
Amanda?”

He shook his head. “Don’t know. She left the
house around ten o’clock last night and hasn’t come home
since.”

I looked around. “Where’s Carlos?”

“
Over there.” He pointed
at a leather sofa across the room.

“
What’s he
doing?”

“
Sleeping.”

“
I can see that. Why is he
sleeping? I thought he was supposed to relieve you. What time did
he get here?”

“
Around three.”

“
So why didn’t you go
home?”

“
I couldn’t. I had too
much to do. Hey, come see. I want to show you
something.”

He led me to the dining room table where he
had set up a makeshift desk consisting of two laptops, a scanner
and a portable printer. “Look here. I’ve been up all night working
on this.” He angled the first laptop towards me. “This is Kelly’s
computer.” He clicked an icon on the bottom tool bar and brought up
Kelly’s Facebook account.

“
Wow,” I said, “a hundred
and fifteen friends. Not exactly the loner Lionel Brewbaker makes
her out to be.”

“
Hardly. Near as I can
tell, most of her friends are other kids that she either goes to
school with or attends dance classes, horse riding, etcetera.
Except for this guy.” He clicked on the profile picture for Russell
Haywood.

“
Hey, that’s her riding
coach,” I said.

“
Yeah, and look at this.”
He clicked on the message tab, pulling up a record of recent
private messages between Kelly and Russell. “Check out the last
entry from Russell. It ends with, ‘Can’t wait till
Saturday.’”

“
What’s that mean? Was she
going to see him Saturday?”

“
I don’t know.”

“
Karina Martinez did say
Kelly was wearing her riding shirt yesterday.”

“
Yeah, but did she ever
make it out there?”

“
We should have gone to
see him last night.”

“
Don’t kick yourself. You
had a lot of irons in the fire. Besides, there’s something else
you’ll want to see.” He spun the second computer toward me, waking
the screen up to a mug shot of one particularly menacing-looking
hombre. “This is Hector Santana, a close friend of Raul Martinez’s.
I ran a vehicle check on him about an hour ago. Guess what? He owns
a black van closely matching the description Brian Weismann gave us
yesterday.”

“
Black? Not dark
blue?”

“
A faded black paint job
can look dark blue in bright sun light.”

“
You’re absolutely right.
We should get––”

“
Already did. Put an APB
out on Santana and sent a patrol car to his house.”

“
Nice work.”

He hit the control/tab keys simultaneously on
the keyboard and pulled up another screen. “For the record, this is
Dmitry Kovalchuk’s car.”

“
It’s an SUV.”

“
Yes, but it’s dark blue.
Thought I’d mention it.”

“
Yeah, okay. Listen, did
you get anything from that picture the kidnappers sent
us?”

“
Just this.” With an
alt/tab keyboard command, he launched a photo analysis program
capable of examining a picture down to the tiniest pixel. “This
photo was obviously taken with a cell phone. The resolution is low,
the focus is off and the lighting is poor to say the least. Still,
there are some clues to be had by examining it. For instance….” He
zoomed in on the floor Kelly was sitting on. “Notice the planking
here. If we use Kelly’s sneakers as a sort of measuring stick,
assuming she wears a child’s size three or a little smaller, I’d
say these boards are about eight inches wide. That’s typical for
planking used in warehouse floors.”

“
As opposed to residential
applications, you mean?”

“
Correct.”

“
So she’s in a
warehouse?”

“
Or a barn. Look at the
specks on the floor.”

“
Yeah, is that
sawdust?”

“
Possibly, or
hay.”

“
You mean like in a
stable.”

“
Right, except look at the
wall she’s leaning against. It’s concrete block. Most of the
stables around here that have wooden floors also have wooden
walls.”

“
I see what you mean. You
usually see block walls with cement floors.”

“
Here’s something else.”
Spinelli used the mouse to bring up a close-up of Kelly’s face from
head to shoulders. “What do you see there?”

I shrugged uneasily, feeling very
uncomfortable looking at an image of a little girl bound and
gagged. She had tears in her eyes and bits of sawdust in her hair.
“I see a child crying through duct tape to be free.”

“
Yes, but look at her
face. See the dirt?”

“
Yes.”

“
Does that look natural to
you?”

“
How do you
mean?”

“
Here. Let me get closer.”
He rolled the scroll wheel on the mouse until Kelly’s face filled
the screen from forehead to chin. “Now what do you see?”

“
The dirt on her face,
it’s….”

“
Yes?”

“
It looks like someone put
it there on purpose, like the eye-black grease that football
players wear to reduce glare.”

“
Precisely. Notice the
vertical lines down her forehead and chin. They’re exactly the same
width as the horizontal lines on her cheeks.”

“
But why?”

“
It’s obvious, isn’t it?
Whoever kidnapped Kelly apparently cares deeply for her. They don’t
want to hurt her, but they want us to believe they’re willing to
hurt her if they don’t get the money.”

“
Well hell, we’re ready to
give them the money. What are they waiting for? They just have to
tell us where to make the drop.”

“
I don’t know,” said
Spinelli, and I could see him drifting off to a place in his mind
that was likely to bring him to tears again.

“
Dominic.” I nudged him
hard enough to knock his hand off the mouse. “Don’t go
there.”

He blinked back to a more attentive state.
“Sorry.”

“
Tell me what else you
learned from the photo.”

He shook his head. “That’s about it. There’s
not much to work with.”

I cupped my hand to his shoulder and shook it
gently. “You did good work, Dominic. I’m proud of you.”

“
Thanks, Tony.”

I leaned in close to him and said in a hush,
“Now do you want to hear what I have for you?”

He regarded me curiously. “Okay.”

I nodded toward the living room where Carlos
was still fast asleep on the sofa. “I ran into Carlos last night at
Lenny’s.”

“
Yeah?”

“
Guess who he was
with.”

“
Who?”

“
Lauri
Shullit.”

He pushed me away with both hands. “Get
out!”

“
Shhh.” I came back to him
on a whisper. “It’s true. I met her. She’s real.”

“
Nuh-uh.”

“
I saw her ID and
everything.”

“
Seriously?”

“
Seriously. She’s got a
New Hampshire driver’s license. She showed it to me.”

“
New Hampshire? Dang! No
wonder she didn’t turn up in my search. I only queried DMV records
for Massachusetts.”

“
That’ll teach
you.”

“
Is she
pretty?”

“
Pretty? She’s twenty
years old and drop dead gorgeous. She reminds me a little of Lilith
and Ursula. And get this. Carlos proposed to her last
night.”

“
No!”

“
He did. I saw the
ring.”

“
Why hasn’t he introduced
her to us?”

“
Beats me. Maybe he’s
ashamed.”

“
Ashamed of what? He’s
dating a girl thirty plus years his junior. You’d think he’d be
shouting it from the hilltops.”

“
You know what I
think?”

“
What?”

“
I think she’s after his
money and he knows it. And he knows we’ll know it too. That’s why
he didn’t want us to meet her.”

“
And that’s exactly
right,” said Carlos.

Dominic and I turned on our heels. Carlos was
standing in the doorway between the living and dining rooms, his
arms crossed at his chest. How long he was standing there, I didn’t
know, but it was long enough.

“
That’s exactly why I
didn’t want to introduce her to you,” he said. “I knew you would
both think that.”

“
I didn’t think that,”
said Dominic, tossing me under the bus so far I could feel the
wheels grinding my bones to a pulp.

“
Carlos.” I walked up to
him and tried to put my arm around his shoulder. He shrugged it off
as if it were toxic.

“
Don’t Carlos me, Tony.
Some friend you are.”