Hocus (35 page)

Again and again he thought of Irene, and things he wished he had told her more times than he had.

I
WATCHED AS
C
ASSIDY’S FACE CHANGED
, from weary to suddenly alert. He didn’t say much to the caller. He listened, looked at his watch, and said, “Great. I’ll call back just as soon as I can.”

He put the phone away and smiled. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up, but our luck just might be changing. That was Hank. We’ve had a couple of breaks.

“First, seems a fellow who just got back in town picked up his newspapers from his neighbor’s house and saw a familiar face on the front page of the
Las Piernas News Express.
It was Samuel Ryan’s photo that drew his attention. Seems he was hired by Ryan — who was using a different name — to do some peculiar unpermitted work on a building. So after wrestling with his conscience and calling his lawyer, he’s on his way down to the department to have a little talk. But from the sounds of it, there’s a possibility that this man can lead us to where they’re holding Frank.”

“What kind of peculiar work?”

“No real details on that yet,” he said.

“Cassidy—”

“A soundproof room of some sort.”

“Oh, Christ….”

“Don’t think like that. It won’t help.”

“No, no — of course not,” I said. “You’re right. Any minute now, we could know where he is. That’s what’s important.”

I was trying hard to convince myself, and he knew it, but he was kind enough not to point it out. He went on to say that the other break had been here in Bakersfield. Detectives had spent time checking out rental car agencies, asking if anyone recalled customers who smelled of aftershave. They’d come across one agency that said no customer smelling of after-shave had been in, but one of their vans had come back reeking of the stuff.

They had been a little surprised, because the van had been rented and returned to them by a woman — who matched the description of the woman in Hocus. The detectives had the van at the crime lab now, but the fragrance had definitely matched the scent on the abandoned “old man’s” clothing.

Her name, according to their records and her driver’s license, was Faye Taft. She had given an address and a credit card number. The rental car agency was near the airport — and Bakersfield PD had learned that Faye Taft also had a pilot’s license. Her flight plans had been to Torrance, and she had left just after the incident at the library. The Torrance Airport confirmed that her plane had been there, but she’d then flown on to Las Piernas.

“Do you think it could have been a woman who approached you?” Cassidy asked.

“Maybe, but for reasons I can’t exactly name, I’m fairly sure it was a man. Besides, if the person who approached me showed up at the rental counter, they would have smelled the aftershave.”

“Well, the fellows at the airport did say she had a large trunk with her, so maybe our magician friend Bret was with her. In any case, between information that’s coming in on Ryan and Neukirk and now this, everybody is pretty busy back in Las Piernas. I think I’m going to have to send Pete on home.”

Pete was happy to go, antsy to get on the road. Rachel was more reluctant. “I don’t want to leave you here alone,” she said.

“I’ll be all right,” I said. “And I’m not alone.”

“You know what I meant.”

“Yes. Thanks. I’ll be coming home soon. Maybe you could help Jack to hang in there.”

“Sure,” she said, and gave me a fierce hug before she left.

The call from Hocus came in right at midnight.

“Good evening, Irene, Tom.” Samuel again.

“Evening, Samuel,” Cassidy answered. “Bret still on his way back from Bakersfield?”

I looked over to him in surprise, then realized what he was doing.

“Now, Tom, that’s the sort of question you know we’ll never answer.”

“I just figured he was the magician in the family. The master of disguise and all that.”

“I have talents of my own,” Samuel said.

“Really? I mean, I’m not surprised, but I guess I supposed the medical training would take up a lot of time.”

“It did. But as it so happens — perhaps Irene will recognize this.” Matching his voice to that of the old man’s, he said, “ ‘As long as you like, honey.’ ”

“So it was you,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, laughing. “And since you were expecting this call, you must have discovered our note. Now, what we’d like to know is, how are things coming along?”

“Well, as I mentioned, it’s tough getting things done on the weekend,” Cassidy said.

“And yet Irene has narrowed the field, hasn’t she? She’s even gone to the place where Powell died. If she’s willing to sit around and talk to the woman her husband was once in love with, she’s making a real effort, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” Cassidy said. “I think that shows you that we’re doing our best here. She’s been through a lot today, trying to find out who this man could be.”

“Irene, you’re being very quiet,” he said.

“Sorry, Samuel, I’m just tired.”

“Poor Irene. Cassidy is a man of great endurance. Did you know that? In high school, he was a miler.”

“A miler?” I asked.

“In track and field,” Samuel said. “I could name some of his times, and the races he won. It’s how he got to college. On a track scholarship.”

“I’m flattered,” Cassidy said. “You must have made a real effort to find that out. You interested in track, Samuel?”

“No, Cassidy, in you. You’ve become a specialty of mine. I know all sorts of things about you. I know the name of the little town in Texas where you grew up. I know your high school. I’ve been there. People are very friendly there.”

“Yes, they are,” Cassidy said, but he shifted in his chair. His forehead furrowed with tension.

“Why’d you go into law enforcement, Cassidy?”

Cassidy relaxed a little. “Oh, like a lot of people who get into it, I wanted to make a difference. Is that why you got into medicine?”

“No. I’m not really in medicine, of course, although I know as much as any doctor. I didn’t become an EMT because I was into the humanity of it all, Cassidy. I’m not very fond of most of humanity, for one thing. But it takes a lot to hold my interest — I had such a thrilling childhood, you see. Being a paramedic is far more exciting to me than working in a hospital would be. All except the emergency department. But I like my job better. I like racing to the scene, hearing the sirens, finding everything in chaos — saving them or not saving them. It’s up to me. Just me. We’re alike in that way, aren’t we, Cassidy?”

“There are definite similarities, Samuel,” he said.

“We even have rather tragic beginnings to our stories,” Samuel said.

Cassidy was silent. I was startled to notice he was gripping the phone cord. Cassidy — tense. I watched his face. In the past forty-eight hours, almost constantly in his company, I had not seen this look. He was shaken.

“Yes, that little town in Texas,” Samuel went on. “That’s as far as anyone looks, isn’t it? Thomas Cassidy, track star, likeable guy, very popular. They don’t ask who you dated in high school, do they? They don’t find out that you didn’t date the girls from the local school, do they?”

I saw Cassidy’s gaze wander. I wrote a note: “Cassidy? What’s going on?”

“They do the background checks, but they don’t ask the right people,” Samuel went on. “The jealous women. You met her at a track meet, I hear. From a rival school. But her town wasn’t too far from yours, right?”

Cassidy was ignoring the note. He had closed his eyes.

“What’s the point to all of this, Samuel?” I said.

“You, of all people, should be interested in this, Irene. Your husband’s life is in his hands.”

“So he dated someone from a rival town. Not something that exactly rocks my world, Samuel.”

Cassidy opened his eyes now, seemed to come back into focus. “Not much to that, is there? How’s Faye doing?”

Samuel laughed. “Who cares?”

“Well, you seem to depend on her quite a bit.”

“She isn’t important. Women are not important, Cassidy. Even the beautiful ones. Especially them. Now, the young woman you loved was — you’ll forgive me, Cassidy — she was rather plain.”

“She’s not our concern at the moment,” Cassidy said, but the tension was back in his voice.

“She is if I say she is.
And I say so!”
Samuel shouted. When he spoke again, his voice was soft and low. “I say she is, and that she was plain.”

“You get that from those jealous women you talked to?” Cassidy asked. Something was still not right.

“No, I saw her picture in her high school yearbook. She wasn’t even Miss Personality or any of the other things they give to the ugly girls.”

Nothing.

“Look,” I said, “as fascinating as this is—”

“Shut up!” Samuel said. “No one is talking to you. No one. Cassidy, aren’t you going to defend her?”

Silence.

“I don’t need anyone to defend me,” I said.

“Once again, Ms. Kelly, you are butting in. No one is talking about defending you. I meant Johnnie.”

“Johnnie?” I asked. Cassidy was pale, and a fine sheen of sweat covered his forehead and upper lip.

“Yes, isn’t that delightful? A Texas name. Johnnie Lee Meadows. Can you believe someone would force a girl — an ugly girl — to go through life with that name?”

“She wasn’t ugly,” Cassidy said. There was steel in his voice now.

“Plain. Totally unremarkable.”

“No, there you’re wrong.”

I felt panic rising. If I spoke, I angered Samuel, which might in turn cause him to harm Frank. My only hope seemed to be to get through to Cassidy. I wrote another note: “Come back to me. Please. I need your help.”

He read it, seemed to snap back out of whatever spell Samuel was weaving.

“You surprised me, Cassidy,” Samuel was saying. “I thought you’d have your pick of the girls.”

“I did,” he said. “Tell me, how did you meet Faye?”

“I can’t seem to make you understand that she is no longer of interest to me.”

“Well, we’re even, then. Johnnie Lee is dead, and she’s been dead for many years.”

“It still hurts, doesn’t it, Cassidy?”

“Of course it does, Samuel. You still feel sad about your father, right?”

“Yes, but to be very honest, Julian was the greater loss. My father betrayed us. All of us. But Julian didn’t deserve what happened to him.”

“You knew Julian pretty well, I guess.”

“Yes. And I look forward to seeing him again.”

Cassidy hesitated only slightly before saying, “Tell me about him.”

“He’s dead, and soon we will be, too. Perhaps Detective Harriman will be joining us. That’s up to you. Good-bye, Cassidy. I’ve enjoyed knowing you.”

“Samuel—”

But Samuel had hung up.

The cell phone rang before I could ask Cassidy what the hell had happened.

“Yes, sir,” he said. He listened, smiled broadly. “I was hoping that would be long enough,” he said. “That confirms the address, then. I’m on my way—”

He paused, listened again. He lost the smile. “Sir….”

He glanced over at me, then looked down. “Certainly. I understand. Yes, I’ll explain.”

He hung up, and it was a moment before he looked up at me. “Samuel talked long enough to let us trap the number,” he said. “Between that and the information from the contractor, they’ve got an address. They’re already getting set up down there. There’s a plane waiting at the Kern County Airport. It will get you home faster than driving will. An officer will meet you at the Las Piernas Airport and take you to the site. I’ll warn you that they probably won’t let you close, but—”

“Cassidy,” I interrupted.

“I won’t be going with you,” he continued.

“What?”

“I’m off the case.”

T
HE OLD MAN PEERED
cautiously through the blinds, angled so that he could look out at the cruiser across the street. The officer in the car was watchful, but well past the point where boredom had set in. Would he fall asleep?

The old man wouldn’t. He slept little now. He was fully dressed, waiting. He was always waiting. For almost twelve years now he had waited. He had thought of them each day when he awakened, each night, until exhaustion overtook memory. It was worse during the month of June. In June he hardly slept at all.

He had waited on that Father’s Day for the boys to identify him, to at least mention a policeman.

But the boys hadn’t spoken. Even their drawings had never included a policeman. He knew, because he’d asked Frank Harriman about them.

He had almost confessed everything to Frank. More than once. But each time, he’d thought of Diana Harriman, thought of the cruelty of telling Frank of his betrayal. It should be someone else, he told himself, but never sought another priest.

Instead he waited. He woke up every morning, wondering, Will this be the day?

Three years of hell went by. Silent hell. When the boys started talking, he was sure the first words out of their mouths would be his name.

Instead they didn’t speak of it at all. Did they know then? Did they know how their silence punished him? Made his nights sleepless? Left him wondering when he did sleep, if he had shouted the truth in dreams?

Now this surveillance. He looked back out at the cruiser. Had Cassidy asked them to wait in plain sight, knowing how it would chafe at him?

There was a soft tapping at the back door.

He glanced at his reflection in a hallway mirror, straightened his tie.

“It never hurts to look your best,” he could hear his mother’s voice say, somewhere deep inside his head.

The tapping came again.

He opened the door.

“You,” he said, mildly surprised.

“Us,” came a whispered voice, as others stepped out of the shadows.

I
T WAS TOO DARK INSIDE
the small plane to read the business card I held in my hand, but I skimmed my fingertip over the print, over the embossed insignia of the Las Piernas Police Department and the name Thomas Cassidy. I didn’t need light to know what it said; I had looked at it a dozen times before takeoff.