The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 (75 page)

Milton drove to the address that Victor Leonard had given him and parked. It was eleven in the morning. They walked toward the house, a Cape-style cottage raised high, with a carport at ground level. Milton climbed up a set of steps that rose up beyond the level of the sidewalk and rapped the ornate iron knocker three times. There was a vertical panel set into the side of the door, and Milton gazed inside. He made out the shape of a telephone table, a flight of stairs leading up to the first floor, a jumble of shoes against the wall, coats draped off the banister. It looked messy. A man turned out a doorway to the left of the lobby and came towards the door; Milton stepped away from the window.

The door opened.

“Dr. Brady?”

“Yes? Who are you?” Andrew Brady was very tall, with a plump face, greasy skin and a pendulous chin. His hair was chestnut streaked with grey, and his small eyes had retreated deep into their sockets. He was unshaven, and despite his height, he was overweight and bore his extra pounds in a well-rounded pot belly. He was wearing a fuchsia-coloured windbreaker, a mesh cap and a pair of wading boots that were slicked with dried mud up to just below his knees.

“My name is John Smith. This is Trip Macklemore.”

“I’m sorry, fellas,” he said. “I was just going out. Fishing.” He indicated the waders and a fishing rod that was propped against the wall behind him.

“Could we speak to you? It would just take a moment.”

He glared out from the doorway at them with what Milton thought looked like an arrogant sneer. “Depends on what about.”

“The commotion around here the other night.”

“What commotion?”

“There was a girl. You didn’t hear?”

“The girl—oh, yes.”

“I understand you spoke to her?”

Brady’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Who told you that?”

Milton turned and angled his face towards the house diagonally opposite. “Mr. Leonard. I spoke to him earlier. Is it true?”

“No,” Brady said. “It isn’t.”

“Do you think we could have ten minutes of your time? It’s important.”

“What do you both have to do with her?”

“I’m her boyfriend,” Trip explained.

“And you, Mr. Smith?”

“I’m a taxi driver. I drove her up here the night she went missing. I’d like to see that she gets home safely again.”

“How honourable,” he said with a half-smile that could have been derisory or amused, it was difficult to tell. “A knight of the road.” The bluster was dismissed abruptly, and Brady’s face broke out into a welcoming smile. “Of course, of course—come inside.”

Milton got the impression that this was a man who, if not exactly keen to help, liked people to think that he was. Perhaps it was a doctor’s self-regard. He bent down to tug off his boots and left them against the wall amidst the pile of shoes. As he led the way further into the house, Milton noticed a small, almost imperceptible limp. He guessed he was in his early fifties, but he might have been older; the greasy skin made it difficult to make an accurate guess.

He led them both into the main room of the house, a double-height living room that captured the light from large slanted windows. There was a galley kitchen in the far corner, and a breakfast bar with bar stools arranged around it. There was a large television tuned to CNN, a shelf of medical textbooks and, on the wall, a picture of a younger Brady—perhaps ten years younger—posing in army uniform with a group of soldiers. The photograph was taken in a desert; it looked like Iraq. He cleared the sofa of discarded remnants of the newspaper so that they could sit down.

“Could I get you something to drink?”

“No, thanks,” Trip said, struggling with his impatience.

Milton smiled encouragingly at the boy. “No,” he repeated. “That’s all right. We’re fine.”

Brady lowered himself to the sofa. “So what did Victor have to say about me?”

“Just what he said that you’ve been saying.”

“Which was—”

“That she—the girl, Madison—was here. That she knocked on the door and you took her in. He says you used to specialise in getting kids off drugs and that you run a retreat here. Kids with problems come up here, and you help them get clean. That true?”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“And Madison?”

“No, that isn’t true. And I don’t know why he’d say that.”

“It didn’t happen?”

“I heard the clamour—my God, the noise she was making, it’d be impossible not to hear her. She must’ve clambered over the wall at the bottom of the garden and went straight across, screaming for help at the top of her lungs. I was up working.”

“At that hour?”

“I was an army doctor, Mr. Smith. Served my country in the Gulf, both times.” He indicated the photograph on the wall. “Second time, one of our men ended up with both legs blown off after he stepped on an IED. I went to try to help stabilise him before we got him out. Didn’t notice the second IED.” He closed his hand into a fist and rapped it against his leg; it sounded a hollow, plastic knock. “Gets painful sometimes so that I can’t sleep. It was like it that night. Kept me awake, so I thought I might as well make myself useful.”

“I’m sorry,” Milton said.

“No one notices. That’s the beauty with prosthetics these days. You wouldn’t know unless you’re told. They’re not quite so inconspicuous if you have to wear one, though. But you know, we’re getting better at it all the time. Another five years…” He spread his arms wide. “It’ll be good as new. You won’t even know it’s there.”

“Nevertheless.”

“I manage.”

He tried to make a connection with him. “I served, too,” he said.

“Iraq?”

“Yes. Both times.”

“Doing what?”

“Just a squaddie the first time. Then Special Forces.”

“SAS?”

“That’s right.”

“You boys are tough as hell. Came across a few of your colleagues.”

“That right?”

“Helped one of them out. Crashed his jeep. Ended up with a broken leg.”

“You know what,” Milton said, smiling at him. “I will have that coffee.”

Brady smiled. “Not a problem. Young man?”

“No,” Trip said. “I’m fine.”

Brady got up and went to the kitchen. There was a coffee machine on the countertop, and Brady made two cups of black coffee. “You been to Afghanistan, too?” he asked.

“Several times,” Milton replied.

“What’s it like?”

“It wouldn’t be on my bucket list, put it like that.”

“Never been out there myself, but that’s what I heard from the guys I know who have. Ragheads—you ask me, we leave them to get on with whatever it is they want to do to each other. One thing you can say about them, they know how to fight—right?”

Milton ignored his distaste for the man. “They do.”

“Gave the Russians a bloody nose when they tried to bring them in line, didn’t they? They’ll end up doing the exact same thing to us. If it was my decision, I’d get us out of there as soon as I could. We should never have gone in the first place.”

Brady rambled on for a moment, his remarks scattered with casual racism. Milton nodded and made encouraging responses, but he was hardly listening; he took the opportunity to scan the room more carefully: the stack of unpaid bills on the countertop; the newspaper, yellow highlighter all over a story about the Republican primary for the presidential elections; a precarious stack of vinyl albums on the floor; the textbooks shoved haphazardly onto the shelves; framed photographs of two children and a woman Milton guessed must have been Brady’s wife. Nothing stood out. Nothing out of the ordinary. Certainly nothing that was a reason for suspicion.

“Milk and sugar?”

“No, thanks. Black’s fine.”

He passed him a mug of coffee and went back around to sit. “So—the girl.”

Trip leaned forwards. “Madison.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“Not really. I went to the door and called out, but she didn’t even pause. Kept going straight on.”

“She didn’t come in?”

“No, she didn’t. Like I said, she ran off.”

“Why would Mr. Leonard tell me that you said she did come in?” Milton asked.

“You’ll have to ask him that. Between us, Victor’s an old man. His faculties… well, let’s be charitable about it and say that they’re not what they once were.”

“He’s lying?”

“I’m not saying that. Perhaps he’s just mistaken. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Right.”

Brady spoke easily and credibly. If he was lying, he was good at it.

The doctor sipped his coffee and rested the mug on the arm of the chair. “You’ve reported her missing?”

“Of course,” Trip said tersely.

“And?”

“They were useless.”

“Well, of course, in their defence, this isn’t a lost child, is it? She’s a grown-up. I suppose they might be inclined to think she’s gone off somewhere on her own and she’ll come back when she feels like it.”

“She’s missing,” Trip said, his temper up a little. Milton felt the atmosphere in the room change; the boy was angry, and the doctor’s air of self-importance would only inflame things. They had got all they were going to get from this visit. It was time to go.

He stood. “Thanks for the coffee. I’m sorry we had to bother you.”

Brady stood, too. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, reaching into his pocket and fishing out a business card. “This is my number. I’ll be happy to help out if you need anything. I’m on the board of the community association here. If you want to speak to anyone else or if you want to put flyers out, that sort of thing, please do just give me a call. Anything I can do, just ask.”

Milton took the card. “Thank you,” he said as they made their way back down the corridor. They shook at the door. Brady’s hands were bigger than his, but they were soft, and his grip was flaccid and damp, unimpressive. Milton thanked him again, and impelling Trip onwards with a hand on his shoulder, they made their way down the steps to the pavement. Milton turned back to the house and saw Brady watching them from a side window; the man waved at him as soon as he realised that he had been seen. Milton turned back to the car, went around, and got inside.

“Bullshit,” Trip said. “One of them is lying, right?”

“Yes,” Milton said. “But I don’t know who.”

MILTON MET TRIP in Top Notch Burger at noon the next day. Julius bagged up Milton’s cheeseburger and the “original” with jalapeños that the boy had ordered, and they ate them on the way back to Pine Shore. Trip had printed a missing person poster overnight, and they had stopped at a Kinko’s to run off two hundred copies. The poster was a simple affair, with a picture of Madison smiling into the camera with a paper birthday hat perched on her head. MISSING was printed above the photograph in bold capitals, her name was below the photograph, and then at the foot of the flyer were Trip’s cellphone number and his email address.

Milton parked outside Andrew Brady’s house, and they split up and set to work. He had purchased a stapler and staples from the copy-shop, and he used them to fix flyers to telegraph poles and fences. He went door to door, knocking politely and then, if the residents were home, explaining what had happened and what he was doing. Reactions varied: indifference, concern, a couple of the residents showing mild hostility. He pressed a copy of the flyer into the hands of each and left one in the mailboxes of those who were not home. It took Milton an hour to cover the ground that he had volunteered to take.

He waited for Trip at the car and stared up at the plain wooden door to Andrew Brady’s house. The doctor had been the subject of several conversations with the other residents. He had visited the library that morning, and his research, together with the information he was able to glean, enabled him to build up a more comprehensive picture. He was an interesting character, that much was obvious, and the more he learnt about him, the more questions he had.

Brady had moved into Pine Shore in the middle 1990s. There was the doctor himself; his French wife, Collette; and their two young children, Claude and Annabel. Brady was the son of an army general who had served with distinction in Korea. He had followed his father into the military and had apparently enjoyed a decent, if not spectacular, career. Unable to work on the frontline after he lost his leg, he was moved into an administrative role. It had evidently been a disappointment after his previous experience. He gave an interview to the local press upon his appointment as chief of surgery at St Francis Memorial Hospital explaining that while he would always love the army and that his military career had made him the man he was, he was a man of action and not suited to “riding a desk.” He wanted to do something tangible and “make a difference in the community.”

The family appeared to be affluent. Their house was one of the more expensive in the neighbourhood, and there was a Lexus and an Audi in the driveway. A couple of the neighbours made awkward reference to his leg; it wasn’t usually obvious that he was lame, a fact that Milton could attest to. He wore shorts in the summer, though, and then it was evident. The prosthesis was a cream colour, mismatched with the tan that he always developed from working in his garden. One of the women that Milton spoke with, a blue-rinsed matriarch who was full of spite, said that she found it distasteful that he would put his leg “on show” like that. Milton humoured her and was about to take his leave when she looked at him with a mixture of lasciviousness and conspiracy.

“You know how he lost it? He told you what happened?”

“Yes—a bomb in Iraq.”

She chuckled. “He usually tells people that.”

“There’s another story?”

“It was a car crash,” she said, delivering the news with an air of self-satisfied smugness. “I don’t know all the details, but the story is that he’d been drinking. It was on the army base out there. He got drunk and drove his car into a tree. They had to amputate the leg to get him out.”

There were some who spoke with a guarded warmness about the Bradys. Andrew and Collette were gregarious to a fault, becoming friends with their immediate neighbours. Andrew had been elected to the board of the residents’ association, and it appeared that most of the other members were on good terms with him. There was Kevin Heyman, the owner of a large printing business. There was Charles Murdoch, who ran a real estate brokerage with another neighbour Curtis McMahon. Those families were close, and there was talk of barbeques on the Fourth of July and shared festivities in the winter. The closeness wasn’t shared with all, and for all those who described Brady as friendly and approachable, there were others who described him as the head of a closed and overbearing clique. While some spoke of his kindness, often visiting the sick to offer the benefit of his experience, others saw him as a loud-mouthed braggart, looking down on his neighbours and claiming status in a way that invited resentment.