The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 (70 page)

“Out of it? What does that mean?”

“She ever do drugs?”

“No way,” Trip said. “Never.”

“That’s what she told me, too.” Milton frowned. “I went in to see her, and look, if I had to say one way or another, then I’d say she was definitely on something. She said everyone was trying to kill her. Very paranoid. Her eyes wouldn’t focus, and she wasn’t making any sense. I’m not an expert, Trip, I’m not a doctor, but if you asked me to testify to it, I’d say she was definitely on something.”

“Maybe her drink was spiked?”

“Maybe,” Milton said. But maybe not. He thought it was more likely that she was doing drugs. A job like that? Milton had helped a girl in the Balkans once during the troubles over there, and she had worked up a ferocious heroin habit. The way she had explained it, she’d needed something to deaden herself to the things she had to do to stay alive, and that had been as good as anything else. And Madison had kept the details of her hooking away from Trip, so wasn’t it likely that she’d keep this from him, too? Didn’t it stand to reason? No sense in pushing that now, though.

“What happened after that?”

“She ran. I went after her, but she was too quick for me, and to be honest, I’m not sure what I would’ve done if I’d caught her anyway. I got in the car and drove up and down, but there wasn’t any sign of her. I called her cell but didn’t get anywhere. In the end, I waited as long as I could, and then I came back. I was hoping she might have found her way home.”

Trip blanched with worry. “Fuck.”

“Don’t panic,” he said calmly. “It’s only been a day. There might be a reason for it.”

“I don’t think so. Something’s wrong.”

Milton said nothing. He pushed Madison’s rucksack along the floor with his foot. “Here,” he said. “She left this in the car. You better take it.”

He picked up the bag, put it on his lap, opened it, and idly picked out the things inside: her books, the bottle of vodka, her purse. “What do I do now?”

“That’s up to you. If it was me, I wouldn’t wait to call the police. I’d do it now—”

“But you said.”

“I know, and the chances are that there’s a perfectly good explanation for what’s happened. She’ll come home, and you’ll just have to explain to them that it was a false alarm. They won’t mind—happens all the time. But if something is wrong, if she is in trouble, the sooner you get the police onto it, the better it’s likely to be.”

“How do I do that? Just call them?”

“Better to go in.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding vigorously. “I’ll go in.”

“You want some backup?”

“What—you’ll come too?”

“If you like.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said, although his relief was palpable.

It was the right thing to do. The way he saw it, they would want to speak to him, and it would save time if he was there at the same time. It would show willing, too; Milton was a little anxious that there might be questions about him driving a prostitute to a job, and he thought it would be better to front it up right from the start. He would deny that he knew what was going on—which was true, at least up to a point—and hope for the best. And, he thought, the boy was becoming increasingly anxious. He thought he might appreciate a little moral support.

“Come on,” he said. “You drive here?”

“I don’t have a car. I got the bus.”

“I’ll give you a ride.”

THEY WERE met in the reception area by a uniformed cop who introduced himself as Officer Francis. He was an older man with the look of a long-standing veteran. His hair was shot through with streaks of grey, his face was creased with lines, and he sat down with a sigh of contentment that said that he was glad to be off his feet. He wasn’t the most vigorous officer that Milton had ever seen, but he wasn’t surprised by that: with something like this, why waste the time of a more effective man? No, they would send out one of the older guys, a time-server close to his pension, someone who would listen politely and give them the impression that they had been given the attention that they thought their problem deserved, and then he would send them on their way.

“You’re Mr. Macklemore?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re the boyfriend.”

“Yes.”

“And you, sir?”

“John Smith.”

“How are you involved in this?”

“I’m a taxi driver. I dropped Madison off last night.”

“You know Mr. Macklemore?”

“We just met.”

“So you’re here why?”

“I’d like to help. I was one of the last people to see Madison.”

“I see.” He nodded. “All right, then, Mr. Macklemore, why don’t you tell me what’s happened, and then we can work out what to do next.”

Trip told the story again, and Officer Francis listened quietly, occasionally noting down a detail in a notebook that he took from his breast pocket. When Trip was finished, Francis asked Milton a few questions: how had Madison seemed to him? Did he have any idea why she had run off the way she did? Milton answered them all honestly.

“You know she was hooking?”

“I didn’t,” Milton said.

“Really?”

“No. I didn’t. Not until we got there. It was just another job for me. I know the law, Officer.”

“And you’ve come here without being asked,” he said, pursing his lips.

“Of course. I’d like to be helpful.”

“Fair enough. I’m happy with that. What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know. Whatever it was, she was frightened.”

“Whose party was it?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know that.”

“A lot of rich folks up there,” Francis mused. “I can remember when you could buy a place with a nice view of the bay for a hundred grand. You wouldn’t get an outhouse up there for that these days. Plenty of the tech guys have moved in. Driven up the prices like you wouldn’t believe.”

Francis closed the notebook and slipped it back into his breast pocket.

“Well?” Trip said.

“I gotta tell you, Mr. Macklemore, this isn’t what we’d call a classic missing persons case. Not yet, anyway. She’s only been gone a day.”

“But it’s totally out of character. She’s never done anything like this before.”

“That may be, sir, but that don’t necessarily mean she’s missing. She’s young. From what you’ve said, it sounds like she’s a little flighty, too. She’s got no history of mental illness, no psychiatric prescriptions, and you say she wasn’t on drugs. Just because you can’t find her, that don’t necessarily mean that she’s missing, you know what I mean?”

“No,” Trip said. “I don’t agree.”

“Not much I can do about that, sir,” Francis said, spreading his hands.

Milton shook his head. “I agree with Mr. Macklemore, detective. I’m not sure I’m as relaxed about it as you are.”

The policeman looked up at Milton with a look of mild annoyance. “What do you mean?”

“You didn’t see the state she was in last night.”

“That may be—I’m sorry, what was your name again?”

“Smith.”

“That may be, Mr. Smith, but she wouldn’t be the first working girl I’ve seen freak out, then check out for a bit.”

“Not good enough,” Trip complained angrily. “It’s because she’s a hooker you’re not going to assign someone to this, right? That’s the reason?”

“No. That’s not what I said.”

“But it’s what you meant.”

He stood and held out his hands, palm first. “Take it easy, son. If she’s still not back tomorrow, you give us another call, and we’ll see where we are then. For now, I’d go back home, make sure your phone’s switched on, and try to relax. I’ve seen plenty of cases like this. Plenty. Seriously. I’m telling you, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they come back, a little embarrassed about the whole thing, and everything gets explained.”

“And the other time?”

“Not going to happen here, Mr. Macklemore. Really—go home. She’ll turn up. You’ll see.”

THEY MADE THEIR way outside and onto the street.

“What the fuck was that?”

“Take it easy,” Milton said.

“You think he was listening to a word we said?”

“Probably not. But I’m guessing that’s standard operating procedure. And he’s right about one thing, it’s been less than a day.”

“You agree with him?”

“I didn’t say that. And no, I don’t. Not with everything.”

Milton had expected a reluctance to get involved, and part of him could accept the logic in what the officer had said; it
was
still early, after all. But the more he thought about what had happened last night, the more he had a bad feeling about it.

The way she had looked.

The way she had run.

The car speeding away.

The bikers. What were they doing at a high-end party like that?

Milton had made a living out of relying on his hunches. Experience told him that it was unwise to ignore them. And they were telling him that this didn’t look good.

Trip took out a packet of Luckies. He put one into his mouth and lit it. Milton noticed that his fingers were trembling again. “That was a total waste of time. Total waste. We could have been out looking for her.” He offered the packet to Milton.

“It wasn’t,” he said, taking a cigarette and accepting Trip’s light. “At the very least, he’ll file a report that says that you came in tonight and said she was missing. Now, when you call them back tomorrow, they’ll have something to work with. And the clock will have started. I wouldn’t be surprised if they treat it more seriously then.”

“So what do I do now? How long do we have to wait before they’ll do something? Two days? Three days? What’s the right time before they accept that something is wrong?”

“If she’s not back in the morning, I’d call again. I’d make a real nuisance of myself. You know what they say about the squeaky hinge?”

“No.”

“It gets the oil. You keep calling. Do that until ten or eleven. If it doesn’t work, and if she’s still not back by then, go back to the precinct and demand to see a detective. Don’t leave until you’ve seen one. Authority’s the same the world over: you give them enough of a headache, eventually they’ll listen to you even if it’s just to shut you up.”

“And until then? It’s not like I’m gonna be able to sleep.”

“There are some things you can do. Do you know anything about the agency she was working for?”

“No. She never said.”

“Never mind. Google all the emergency rooms in a twenty-mile radius. There’s one in Marin City, another in Sausalito, go as far north as San Rafael. That’s the first place to look. If something’s happened to her, if last night was some sort of episode or if she’s hurt herself somehow, then that’s probably where she’ll be. And when you’ve tried those, try all the nearby police stations. Belvedere, Tiburon, the Sheriff’s Department at Marin. You never know. Someone might’ve said something.”

“Okay.”

“Does she have a laptop?”

“Sure.”

“There might be emails. Can you get into it?”

“I don’t know. There’ll be a password. I might be able to guess it.”

“Try. Whoever booked her is someone we’ll want to talk to. The police will get to it eventually, assuming they need to, but there’s nothing to stop us having a look first.”

He looked at him, confused. “Us?”

“Of course.”

“What—you’re going to help me?” He was almost pitifully grateful.

“Of course I’m going to help.”

“But you don’t even know us. Why would you do that?”

“Let’s just say I like helping people and leave it at that, all right?”

His time in A.A. had taught him plenty of things. One of them was that it was important to make amends; recovering alcoholics considered that almost as important as staying away from the first drink. It wasn’t as easy for him to do that as it was for others. Most of the people that he would have had to make amends to were already dead, often because he had killed them. He had to make do with this. It wasn’t perfect, but it was still the best salve he had yet discovered for soothing his uneasy conscience.

GOVERNOR JOSEPH JACK ROBINSON II was a born talker. It was just what he did. Everyone had a talent: some men had a facility for numbers, some for making things, some for language; hell, others could swing a bat and send a ball screaming away to the fences. Governor Robinson was a speaker, and Arlen Crawford had known it within five seconds of hearing him for the first time. That was why he had given up what could have been a very profitable career in law and turned down the offer of a partnership and the millions of dollars he would have been able to make. He had postponed the chance to take an early retirement and the house on the coast he and his wife had always hankered after. The governor’s gift was why he had given all that up and thrown in his lot with him. That was back then, two years ago, back when Robinson was governor, just starting out on this phase of his political career, but he had never regretted his decision, not even for a second. It could have gone wrong, a spectacular flameout that took everyone and everything around him down too. But it hadn’t, and now J.J.’s star was in the ascendant, climbing into the heavens, streaking across the sky.

Arlen Crawford had seen nothing to make him think that he had misjudged him.

He took his usual place at the back of the room and waited for the governor to do his thing. There had been plenty of similar rooms over the course of the last few months all the way across the country from the Midwest to the coast of the Pacific: school gymnasia, town halls, factory dining rooms, warehouses, anywhere where you could put a few hundred seats and fill them with enthusiastic voters who were prepared to come and listen to what the candidate had to say.

It was like that today; they were in the gymnasium where the Woodside Cougars shot hoops, a polished floor that squeaked when he turned his shoe on it, a banked row of seats where moms and pops and alumni and backers of the school would gather to cheer on the kids, a scoreboard at one end that said COUGARS and AWAY, the neon numerals set to zero. A lectern had been placed against the wall that faced the bleachers with enough space for six rows of folded chairs to be arranged between the two. A poster that they had fixed to the lectern said AMERICA FIRST. A larger banner that they had fixed to the wall behind it read ROBINSON FOR PRESIDENT.