Hunted (Reeve Leclaire 2) (29 page)

S
hortly past dawn, Reeve hears footsteps in the hallway. She lies still and listens. It’s Milo Bender’s gait, but his tread is different. He’s not wearing slippers. She pictures another sole, running shoes, perhaps.

The footsteps approach her door and she expects a knock, but then there’s a pause and a hushed sound. The footsteps creep back down the hallway. A moment later, the front door opens and clicks closed.

She cannot hear his footsteps on the path, but then a car door shuts, an engine turns over, and as Milo Bender drives away, she rises from the bed to fetch the note that he has slipped under her door.

She folds the note and presses it between her palms, touched by his words.

After a shower, she gets dressed, makes the bed, and quickly packs her bags, feeling unsettled about leaving. But no amount of argument could persuade her father that she should stay.

“You’ve accomplished everything and more than anyone could ask,” he’d said. “It’s time for you to come home.”

As she’s heading toward the kitchen, she notices a light on in the den and peeks inside. It’s empty, but she immediately senses something different about the room. What has changed?

The desktop is just as strewn with files and notes as before. Curious, she circles the room, and her eyes come back to the desk.

The office chair, which is usually angled toward the cluttered desktop, is now facing the computer. She puts a hand on it. Warm.

She sits in the chair and nudges the mouse. The computer blinks to life—
Hello Milo
—and challenges her for a password.

She sits back, crossing her arms. She hasn’t a clue what his password might be.

Yvonne is stirring in the kitchen, and she would hate to get caught snooping, so she creeps back to the bedroom to boot up her laptop.

A minute later, Yvonne knocks and whispers, “Good morning, Reeve. Are you up?”

Reeve answers brightly and opens the door.

Yvonne grins at her. She’s dressed for exercise, a rolled yoga mat tucked under one arm. “I’ve got a great yoga teacher if you’d like to come along.”

Being simultaneously polite and closemouthed proves difficult. But luckily, Yvonne is in a rush to get to her yoga class. The second she’s out the door, Reeve starts scanning headlines.

Bender was investigating something, no doubt. What did he find that compelled him to leave this morning?

She understands the moment she sees the headline: “Seattle Woman Vanishes.” The article says a young mother disappeared last night from outside Three Bucks Bar, and Reeve gasps at the photo of Jenna Dutton.

R
eeve tries to explain in a rush, but JD just seems more and more confused. In a low voice, he coaxes her to the kitchen table, hands her a glass of water, and asks if she’s had anything to eat.

“I don’t need to eat. I need you to drive me to Tacoma. Please? Can you?”

“Tacoma? Why?”

“Because he’s doing it again. Didn’t you read the news?”

“Yes, about the woman who disappeared last night? Of course, after you called—and woke me up, I might add—I read all about it.”

“That’s Flint. That’s him, there’s absolutely no question.”

“But isn’t he a pedophile? It doesn’t make sense.”

She needs him to understand, so she starts again. “Listen, Jenna Dutton was my best friend in middle school, and we lived just a few doors apart, so it’s my fault that he took her, now do you get it? And she was kidnapped from Three Bucks Bar, so it’s all connected.”

What is that look he’s giving her? Disbelief? Pity?

“Okay. . . .” He takes a breath and says in a placating tone, “So I understand that you’re upset, but, listen, why don’t we call—”

“The FBI? I did that already. I called Nikki Keswick after I talked to you. They know all about it. They’re investigating.”

“Okay. Good. So could you please explain why a trip to Tacoma is necessary?”

“Because Flint’s mother lives there and she knows! We need to talk to her,” she says, thumping the table.

“Flint’s mother? What does she know?”

“I don’t know, but it’s
something.”
She sets a piece of paper on the table and nudges it toward him. “Look at this.”

He glances at her scribbled notes. “What exactly is this?”

“It’s a network, a diagram.”

“It doesn’t look like—”

“Okay, it’s more right brain than left brain, but look, everything makes perfect sense.”

He frowns at the confusion of lines, arrows, and interlacing circles, so she taps on the paper, urging him to understand. “Here’s Flint, see? Here’s Dr. Moody, and here’s the accomplice, and here’s Mrs. Pratt, Flint’s mother. Everything connects
here,
with his escape, and she’s the only one who visited him while he was locked up. She
knows,
okay?”

“But I’m still missing something. Why do you want to talk to her?”

“I don’t
want
to. It’s not that. It’s that I
have
to. I know it sounds crazy, but I’m sure she’s the key. If I’d talked to her sooner, maybe Flint would be locked up by now.” Reeve gnashes her teeth with frustration. This is life or death. Why can’t he see that? Trying to sound calm, she says, “I’ve got her number, so I’ll call and set it up. But we need to hurry.”

“Um, okay, I can take you,” he says, frowning. “But let’s look at this logically. Flint’s mother has already been questioned, right? And it stands to reason that the bureau has her under investigation.”

“Which makes it even more important that I talk to her.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re getting nowhere.”

“But what makes you think she’ll even talk to you?”

“Because I’m not a threat to her. I’m not a cop or an agent. Besides, it’s a game for her. I’m the reason her son went to prison, which made
her
look bad. And she can’t resist pouring salt in my wounds. It’s her nature.”

The memory is like a knife, still sharp after all these years.

Reeve had steered clear of Flint’s mother during the trial until that one afternoon when she’d encountered her in the restroom. She can still picture the sinister way Mrs. Pratt looked at her while lighting her cigarette. She squinted at Reeve as though seeing through her clothes and counting every scar, then smiled at the glowing tip of her cigarette and said, “My boy sure left his mark on you, didn’t he?”

Reeve stared at the woman for a long, stunned moment before fleeing the restroom. With those hateful words still ringing in her ears, she’d charged straight into a pack of reporters, where she’d swatted at news cameras, her cheeks aflame, her humiliation recorded for all time.

“Are you all right?” JD asks, peering at her. “Maybe we should call my dad?”

“I tried that. No answer. We need to go.” She jumps to her feet, knocking her chair to the wall.

“But won’t you miss your flight?”

“I’ll get my luggage. Just drive, okay?”

M
ilo Bender hates lying to his wife, so he has turned off his phone. He knows she’ll be calling to ask if he’s remembered to take his pills, and the truth is, he was halfway to Olympia before he even thought of them.

Still, it’s okay if he misses a day. Hell, he’s got so much medication in his system by now, it would probably take a week before he’d drop to normal blood levels.

Of course, Yvonne would not share this opinion, but if he doesn’t talk to her, he doesn’t have to lie.

He’d slipped out of bed at dawn, telling her to go back to sleep, saying only that he was “curious about something, following up some leads.”

True enough.

She didn’t need to know that he was getting an early start so he could drive south to Olympia. Or that, just as a precaution, he was carrying the gun that he bought shortly after relinquishing his government-issued weapon upon retirement.

The Glock fits nicely into his old shoulder holster.

Bender has resolved that he will explain everything to her tonight, in person, when he gets home. But not on the phone.

At this point, it seems best to keep his plans to himself. If he’s wrong, no big deal.

What he’d learned yesterday had sparked the idea. When Blankenship mentioned that headlight fragments had been traced to a Ford Bronco, he’d almost said, “You know, I staked out Flint’s house for a lot of hours, watching vehicles come and go, recording license plates. I could go back through my records.”

But then he’d got the message, loud and clear, that Blankenship was working on a hot lead and it wasn’t his place to interfere. He would have felt the same way when he was a case agent.

Still, an idea had nagged at him. It woke him up early and wouldn’t let him sleep, so he got up and went into his den, where he scoured through notebooks from years ago. When the FBI was having no luck linking their toughest missing persons cases to registered sex offenders, Bender had decided to cast a wider net, looking at minor violations. That’s when Daryl Wayne Flint’s name had first popped up on his radar.

Flint had Peeping Tom complaints against him, starting when he was a teenager, plus a dropped sexual-assault charge from when he was a student at the University of Washington.

Bender hadn’t liked the smell of the guy. Never married. A loner in a big house. And when it turned out that Flint didn’t live far from Reggie LeClaire’s family, Bender had paid him a visit. He’d gone through his trash. He’d watched the house. He’d noted the vehicles of all Flint’s visitors. But he’d never found enough to gain a warrant.

Maybe it was ancient history, but Bender thought he remembered something. So he pored over his old notebooks, and sure enough, he found a license plate number with “brown Ford Bronco” written next to it.

All those years ago, he had traced the registration and came up with a name—Walter Wertz—plus an address in Olympia. The guy’s record must have been clean, because Bender can’t remember anything about him.

It might be nothing. So, if this trip to Olympia is a waste of time, no one needs to know.

On the other hand, if he finds anything significant, he’ll speak to Stuart Cox as soon as he can. In person. Because those damn cell phones only complicate things. They’re unreliable. They’re always jumbling your words or cutting you off. And Bender hates admitting it to the chatty young people, but his hearing isn’t as good as it once was. All that shooting practice takes a toll.

So now his phone is shut off and tucked into the glove compartment, where it can’t cause problems while he’s out doing something that, yes, could be technically illegal.

But, hell, Milo Bender had dedicated more than twenty years of his life to toeing the line and doing everything by the book, following the bureau’s rules to the letter. He never did anything rash, which seemed smart at the time.

But now he’s not particularly proud of that fact. Now he’s retired, answering only to his conscience. And shouldn’t someone named Bender be able to bend the rules once in a while?

Bender finds the address, drives past, and parks just down the street. He puts on his gloves and approaches on foot, noting that “Wertz” is stenciled on the mailbox. With a yard of unraked leaves, the house seems neglected, but he notes that tire tracks lead to and from the garage.

No lights are on and the drapes don’t stir as he climbs the front steps. He raps loudly on the door and rings the bell. He waits. He tries the door. No one home and it’s locked up tight.

He leaves the front porch and goes around to the back, letting himself through the gate. The house stays quiet—and Reeve isn’t the only one who has studied entrance and egress—so he finds a wheelbarrow and rolls it around to the side of the garage, where he’s well hidden from any neighbors.

He turns it over beneath a window and climbs atop it, steadying himself against the house. The window screen comes off easily and he sets it down on the damp grass.

Facing the window, he cups his gloved hands around his eyes and holds his breath so as not to fog the glass. The inside of the garage is dimly lit. He can make out clutter, but it’s vacant. He sucks his teeth in disappointment at not finding either Dr. Moody’s black SUV or a brown Ford Bronco.

He works the thin blade of a modified grapefruit knife between the window’s metal frames and lifts the latch. The window slides open. He grips the ledge, hoists himself up and over, and scrambles inside, knocking something to the floor.

He freezes, listening.

Far away, a dog barks. . . . Then the stillness returns. Bender’s eyes adjust to the dark interior and he locates the door that leads into the house. As he’s turning back to slide the window closed, he kicks something with his toe—the empty plastic container that he knocked to the floor—which he quietly returns to its place on the shelf.

He pulls out his weapon and takes a breath, preparing for trouble as he approaches the door. The doorknob turns easily, and he peeks inside. A laundry room.

Scuff marks on the floor beside the washer and dryer look recent.