The Program (2 page)

The man patted the seat of his pants, wet with runoff from the sprinklers. He glanced at the door nervously. "Truth be told," he said, "I'm a bit afraid of your wife."

The kitchen smelled sharply of burned chicken. Dray had forsaken her corn on the cob for a three-finger pour of vodka. "I'm sorry. Something about it -- the knock, his expression -- put me back there, the night Bear came to tell us about Ginny." She set her glass down firmly on the stack of overdue bills at the counter's edge.

Tim ran his fingers through her hair and let them rest on her shoulders. She leaned into him, face at his neck.

"I thought my heart would just give out there at the door. Good-bye, Andrea, hasta la vista, sayonara, I've fallen and can't get up."

Her voice was raised and, Tim was fairly certain, audible to the couple sitting on the couch one room over.

"He's a friend of the marshal's," Tim said softly. "Let's sit down, see what he wants. Deal?"

Dray finished her vodka in a gulp. "Deal."

They shook hands and headed into the living room, Dray refilling her glass on the way.

The woman sat on the couch, a gold cross glittering against her sweater. The man stood at the sliding glass doors facing the backyard, hands clasped behind his back, his stoic posture undercut by the moist patch of trouser plastered to his rear end. He pivoted as if just taking note of their entrance and nodded severely. "Let's start over." He extended a big, rough hand. "Will Henning. My wife, Emma."

Tim shook his hand, but Dray stood where she was, arms crossed. Copies of The Lovely Bones, gifted eight or so times by well-intentioned acquaintances, occupied the shelf behind her, the bluish stack accentuating her light hair. "What can we help you with?"

Will pulled a fat wallet from his back pocket, flipped it open, and withdrew a snapshot from the fold. He gestured impatiently for Tim to take it, his face averted as if he didn't want Tim to read the pain in it. A posed high-school-graduation photo of a girl. Pretty but awkward. A bit of an overbite, front tooth slightly angled, mournful green-gray eyes that were almost impossibly big and beautiful. Straight, shoulder-length hair that shagged out at the edges. Her neck was too thin for her head, lending her a certain fragility. Understated chin, full cheeks. The kind of face Tim had seen described as "heart-shaped" on fugitive identifiers; the term had stuck because he'd never before found it to make sense.

Tim's eyes pulled to the much-publicized school photo of Ginny on the mantel. Her second-grade year. And her last.

"I'm so sorry," Tim said. "When was she killed?"

Over on the couch, Emma made a little gasp. Her first peep.

Will took the picture back from Tim abruptly, casting a protective eye over at his wife. "She's not dead. At least we hope not. She's...well, sort of missing. Except she's eighteen --"

"Nineteen," Emma said. "Just turned."

"Right, nineteen. Since she's not a minor, we have no legal recourse. She's gotten herself in with one of these cults. Not like the Jehovah's Witnesses, but one of those creepy, mind-control, self-help deals. Except more dangerous."

Tim said, "Have you tried --"

"The goddamn cops have been useless. Won't even file a missing person's. We've tried every law-enforcement agency -- FBI, CIA, LAPD -- but there are virtually no resources devoted to cults. No one cares unless they turn Waco."

"Her name," Tim said.

"Leah. She's my stepdaughter, from Emma's first marriage. Her real father died of stomach cancer when she was four."

"She was a student at Pepperdine." Emma's voice was brittle and slightly hoarse, as if she had to strain to reach audibility.

Tim's eyes returned to Emma's cross pendant, this time making out Jesus' tiny hanging form.

"Three months ago we got a phone call from her roommate. She said Leah had dropped out. She said she was in a cult, that we'd better find her or we'd never see her again."

"She came home once," Will said. "March thirteenth, out of the blue. My men and I tried to reason with her but she...uh, escaped out the bathroom window, and we haven't seen or heard from her since."

He was the kind of man who had men.

"I'm sorry," Dray said. "I don't mean to be rude, and I understand how painful this is for you, but what does this have to do with Tim?"

Will looked to Tim. "We're familiar with your...work. Marco -- Marshal Tannino -- confirmed that you were a brilliant investigator. He said you used to be a great deputy --" He caught himself. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way."

Tim shrugged. "That's okay. I'm not a deputy marshal anymore." The edge in his voice undercut his casual tone.

"We need our daughter back. We don't care how it's done, and we won't ask any questions. She doesn't have to be happy about it -- she just needs to be home so we can get her the help she needs. We want you to do it. Say, for ten grand a week."

Dray's eyebrows raised, but she gave Tim the slightest head shake, matching, as usual, his own reaction.

Tim said, "I don't have a PI license, and I'm not affiliated with any law-enforcement agency. I got myself into some trouble about a year back, with a vigilante group -- maybe you read about it in the papers?"

Will nodded vigorously. "I like your style. I think it was a great thing you tried to do."

"Well, I don't."

"What would make you say yes?"

Tim laughed, a single note. "If I could follow the trail legally."

"We could arrange that."

Tim opened his mouth, then closed it. His brow furrowed; his head pulled to the side. "I'm sorry, who exactly are you?"

"Will Henning." He waited for recognition to dawn. It did not. "Sound and Fury Pictures."

Tim and Dray exchanged a blank glance, and then Tim shrugged apologetically.

"The Sleeper Cell. Live Wire. The Third Shooter. Little art-house flicks like that."

"I'm sorry..." Dray said. "You wrote those movies?"

"I'm not a writer. I produced them. My films have grossed more than two billion dollars worldwide. If I could get fifteen Blackhawk choppers landing in Getty Plaza on three days' notice, I certainly think I can orchestrate your redeputization." His steel gray eyes stayed fixed on Tim. A man used to getting his way.

"The marshal probably has his own opinion on the matter."

"He'd like to talk to you about some creative solutions in person." Tannino's business card magically appeared in Will's hand. Tim took it, running his thumb over the raised gold Marshals seal.

On the back, in Tannino's distinctive hand: Rackley -- tomorrow a.m. 7:00.

Tim handed the card to Dray, who gave it a cursory glance, then tossed it on the coffee table. "Tell me about the cult," he said.

"I don't know a goddamn thing about it, not even its name. Considering the amount we've paid for information..." Will shook his head in disgust.

"How do they recruit?"

"We don't know that either, really. We talked to a few cult experts -- deprogrammers or exit counselors or whatever they're calling themselves this month -- and they coughed up some generalities. I guess a lot of cults prey on young kids, in college or just out. And they recruit rich kids." He grimaced. "They get them to turn over their money." He ran his hand through his hair, agitated. "Leah gave away a two-million-dollar future. Just gave it away. That money was for her first indie film, grad school, a house someday. I even bought her a forty-thousand-dollar car before college so she wouldn't have to dip into it. Now her money's gone, she's alienated her friends, her family" -- he nodded at Emma, who sat passively, hands folded, forehead lined. "She has nothing, nowhere to go. I've sent her letters begging her to come home. Emma has sent articles about cults, what they do, how they work, but she's never responded. I tried to talk some sense into her when we had her that day, but she wouldn't listen." His face had colored; his tone was hard and driving. "I told her that she'd given away her whole future."

"You told a girl in a mind-control cult that?" Dray said.

"We're not here for family therapy. We're here to get our daughter back. And besides, what was I supposed to say? You try dealing with a teenage daughter who's got all the answers."

Dray took a gulp of her vodka. "I would love to."

Tim squeezed her hand, but Will just kept on talking. "Leah's trust fund is irrevocable -- I set it up that way to maximize tax benefits. It turns over money to her every year, and there's nothing we can do to stop it. She gets another million when she turns twenty, another million every year after that until she's thirty. Those people are stealing my money."

"The car," Tim said. "She still has it?"

"Yes. It's a Lexus."

"Is it registered in your name or hers?"

Will thought for a moment, eyes on the ceiling, fingers fiddling with the catch on his gold watch. "Mine."

"Okay. When you leave here, file a report that it's been stolen. The cops will put out a BOLO on the car -- a Be On the Lookout. If they pick her up, they can hold her, and we'll see about getting her released into your custody."

"Jesus." Will looked excitedly to his wife. "That's a brilliant idea."

"Did she tell you anything about the cult?"

"No. No names, no locations, no matter how hard we pressed."

"So how do you know it's a self-help cult?"

"From her buzzwords. They weren't religious. More about how she learned to 'tap her inner source' and 'own her weaknesses' and crap like that."

"She didn't mention any names?"

"No."

"What did she refer to the guru as? She must have mentioned the leader."

Will shook his head, but Emma said, "She called him the Teacher. Reverently, like that."

Her husband regarded her, brow furrowed. "She did?"

"You mentioned the cult was dangerous. Did you get any death threats?"

Will nodded. "Couple. Some punk called, said, 'Back off or we'll slice you up like the lamb you served for dinner last night.' " Emma raised a wan hand to her mouth, but Will didn't take note. "Creative little threat, letting us know they had eyes on us. I'm used to threats and bullshit -- thirty-four years in Hollywood -- but I don't like being pushed around. I didn't realize how serious it was until our investigator went missing. Then we got another call: 'You're next.' They probably figured if they hurt Leah, they'd be killing the golden goose, but us, hey. We're expendable."

"Who was the investigator?"

"A PI. Former chief of security for Warner. My men hired him out of Beverly Hills."

Tim's mind reversed, drawn by the pull of a buried instinct. "The same men parked up at the mouth of the cul-de-sac in a Lincoln Navigator with tinted windows, license starts with 9VLU?"

Will stared at him for a long time, eyebrows raised, mouth slightly ajar. He finally sat. "Yes. The same men."

Tim crossed the room and grabbed the pen and notepad by the telephone. "Go on."

"Short little nervous guy, the PI was -- Danny Katanga."

"And he was killed?"

"Disappeared. Last week. He must have been making some headway." Will let out a grumbly sigh. "That's when we decided to go to Tannino."

"We've had no word from Leah at all since she left," Emma said.

Will said, "I keep writing letters, hoping, but nothing."

"How can you send her articles and letters when you don't know where she is?"

"She left a P.O.-box number on our answering machine right after she first disappeared, so we could forward her mail -- probably so she could keep getting her financial paperwork. We figure it's a holding box for the entire cult."

"Do any of your letters get returned?"

"No," Emma said. "They go through. To somewhere."

"Where's the post office?"

Will said, "Someplace in the North Valley. We tried to look into it -- do you have any idea how difficult it is to squeeze information out of the United States Postal Service? We talked to some postal inspector, he acted like he was guarding the recipe for Coke or some horseshit. We finally sent Katanga to stake out the box, but the post office crawled up his ass about invasion of privacy, so he had to watch from the parking lot. He sat in his car for a few days with binoculars, but she never showed up. The cult's wise to it -- they probably send someone different each time to pick up the mail. If they pick it up at all."

"I'll need that address."

"I'll have my assistant call Marco with it first thing tomorrow. Watch yourself with that postal inspector -- I'm not kidding. He'll open you up a new one."

Tim jotted a few notes. "Did you record any of the threatening phone calls?"

"No. We managed to trace the second call back to a pay phone in Van Nuys. Nothing came of it."

"I'll want that information, too." Tim flipped through his notes. "What's Leah's last name?" Off the Hennings' blank stares, Tim added, "You said she was from Emma's first marriage?"

"She has my name. I adopted her legally when she was six. She's my stepdaughter, but I make no distinction between her and my own daughter." Will cleared his throat. "I may have progressed a bit foolhardy out of the gate. Wasn't sure what we were dealing with, so I came out swinging. In retrospect that may not have been the best plan of action." He had a habit, Tim observed, of holding his own conversation, undeterred by interjections. "I had my men post these around town. We got nothing but a bunch of nowhere leads." He pulled a flyer from his back pocket and smoothed out its folds on his knee before handing it to Tim. The same photo of Leah, beneath which was written $10,000 reward for information on the whereabouts of this girl, Leah Elizabeth Henning. Persons wishing to remain anonymous should tear this flyer in half, transmit one half with the info submitted, and save the remaining half to be matched later. Leah's identifiers and contact information followed.