The Vanished (10 page)

This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done, David thought as he listened to Kemper’s grunts.

Grimacing with disgust, breathing through his mouth, David took the wastebasket to the bathroom, carefully pulled the trash bag out of it, and dumped Kemper’s feces and urine in the toilet. After he flushed, he dropped the trash bag in the bathroom wastebasket.

At ten o’clock Vincent called and informed David that he had arrived at his hotel in Laredo. David told him that Kemper was behaving himself. After hanging up the phone, he grabbed a beef fajita and ate it. Then he ate the remaining chicken breast.

As he looked at Kemper, David was surprised by how calm and relaxed the guy was. Was it because Kemper was innocent, or because he was a psychopath?

David opened a bottle, took a sip of water, and said, “Just tell me the truth, Roger. I’m not going to hurt you, I swear.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tell me you took her liver. Tell me where she is now.”

“I didn’t take Annie’s liver. I didn’t kidnap her. When you get the test results, you’ll see I’m telling the truth.”

David rose to his feet, stepped up to Kemper’s bed, and said, “If it turns out that you took Annie’s liver, I will…” He was going to say “kill you” but changed his mind. “Punish you.”

“Why do you think it’s me, anyway? Maybe she was kidnapped for ransom. You’re rich, aren’t you?”

“If it was about money, they would already have called us.”

Kemper rubbed the back of his head against the wall, and said, “I haven’t thought of Annie in years. I guess you don’t approve of that.”

“Did you know she has epilepsy?”

“Epilepsy? Wow. That’s really bad. No, I didn’t know that. Did you report the kidnapping to the police?”

David sat down on the chair and folded his arms across his chest. “Who do you think kidnapped her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think she’s alive?”

“Yes, I think she’s alive.”

It was pure speculation, of course, but it still made David feel encouraged.

Twenty minutes later, David helped Kemper take a piss. He had to monitor Kemper’s penis throughout the whole process to make sure the urine didn’t get on his hand.

Shortly after one o’clock David began to feel a little drowsy. He got up from the bed and did a few sit-ups and push-ups to reinvigorate his brain.

Kemper seemed to be wide awake.

When he was done exercising, David called room service and ordered two pots of coffee. He didn’t plan to stay up all night—although he would if he could—but he didn’t want to fall asleep before Kemper did. After he drank his first cup of coffee, David said, “I want to tell you something, Roger. I’m a light sleeper, so don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

“Okay.” Kemper nodded.

“If you call for help, I’ll tape your mouth and let you choke on your vomit.”

“I understand. I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.”

As David poured coffee into his cup, Kemper asked, “Are you going to stay up until Vincent comes back?”

“Yes, I am.” David set down the coffee pot. “By the way, when did you have the surgery?”

“Last Saturday.”

“When are you going home?”

“Next Wednesday. You know what bothers me? The five-year survival rate for people with liver transplants is seventy-five percent. They say it’s a high rate, but I’m not impressed. There’s a twenty-five percent chance I’ll die in five years. It’s a pretty high chance.”

David found it hard to sympathize with Kemper.

David drifted off around three, soon after Kemper had fallen asleep. He awoke at 8:24 in the morning when he felt someone squeeze his throat. He sat up, flailing his arms, and saw that no one was trying to strangle him. Kemper lay asleep on his bed, his legs still tied.

David took a shower and then ate two beef fajitas, which he washed down with cold coffee. At half past nine Vincent reported that he had dropped off Kemper’s liver sample at the lab.

“When Carol calls, please ask her to email Annie’s DNA profile to you,” David said.

Kemper woke up half an hour after Vincent’s phone call. He asked David to order some food, and David obliged. At five-thirty in the afternoon, while they were watching a Matt Damon movie called We Bought a Zoo, Vincent called and said that Carol had emailed him Annie’s DNA profile.  

“Excellent,” David replied.

He could hardly wait to find out if Kemper was telling the truth. If Kemper proved to be the kidnapper, they would have to move him to a place where no one could hear him scream. When he went to bed, David thought about the fact that they would no longer have a suspect if the DNA comparison showed that Kemper’s new liver had come from someone other than Annie. What was Vincent’s plan?

Did the investigator have a plan?

7

He awoke at eight o’clock in the morning. He looked at his watch every five minutes, waiting for Vincent to call. When the phone finally rang, his palms broke out in a sweat. He glanced at Kemper, who was watching TV, and picked up the receiver.

“Hello.”

“Hi, this is Vincent. I’m at Laredo Testing Center. I want you to talk to Mitchell. He did the profile comparison for me.”

“Okay.”

David sat bolt upright, staring at the phone.

“Hello, David, this is Mitchell.”

“Hello.”

“I looked at the DNA profiles Vincent gave me. They don’t match. The sample that we processed belongs to a male, and the other one to a female.”

“Are they related?”

“No. The profiles are completely different.”

David breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank you, Mitchell.”

“No problem.”

A moment later he heard Vincent’s voice: “I should be back in Monterrey by four.”

“Can you bring me ten thousand dollars? I’ll pay you back when we return to the States.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you.”

David put the receiver into its cradle.

“What did he say?” Kemper asked, his gray eyes fixed on David intently.

“He said it’s not Annie’s liver.” David stood up, fished the handcuff key out of his pocket, and took the cuffs off Kemper’s wrists.

“So we’re cool now?” Kemper said, rubbing his wrists.

“Yes, we are.” David cut the ropes off Kemper’s legs. “I’m very sorry for all the inconvenience we caused you. I’ll give you ten thousand dollars tonight.”

“For pain and suffering?” Kemper got off the bed and began to walk around the room.

“Yes. For pain and suffering. If something goes wrong with your liver, call me.”

David put the battery back in Kemper’s cell and gave the phone to Kemper. Then he handed Kemper his hotel room keycard and a twenty-dollar bill, and offered to call a cab for him. Kemper said that he wanted to take a shower before heading for the hospital.

“I stink like a pig,” he said.

When he came out of the bathroom, Kemper asked, “What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to go back to the States.”

“I mean your daughter. Do you have any other leads?”

“No.”

8

Vincent returned from Laredo at 3:50 pm. He handed David a pack of hundred-dollar bills and said, “Here’s the ten grand you asked for.”

David pocketed the cash. “It’s for Roger.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s back in the hospital.”

Vincent reached into his jacket pocket and took out an American passport. “Here’s your new passport.” He gave the document to David.

David opened the passport to the information page and read the name: James Parsons. He recalled that his fake driver’s license was in James Parsons’s name, too. He flipped through the document and found a Mexican customs stamp on the first visa page dated May 17. There were no other stamps in the passport.

“Does it have all the security features?” David asked.

“Yes.”

They went down to the front desk, checked out, then got in the car and drove to Hospital San Jose Tec to give Kemper ten thousand dollars. After leaving the hospital, they headed back to Texas. They got rid of the guns bought from Oscar as they passed through the Gonzalitos neighborhood: they dumped them into a garbage container behind a restaurant on Highway 85.

Chapter
11

1

They returned to the United States the same way they had left, through the Laredo—Nuevo Laredo crossing.

“Are you nervous?” Vincent asked when they entered the border state of Tamaulipas.

“A little,” David said.

“Relax, you’ll be fine. Just look calm and don’t do anything weird.”

What was the maximum sentence for using a false passport?

If memory served, it was ten years for the first offense.

“Is your watch really fifteen grand?” Vincent asked.

David nodded.

“That’s a nice watch.”

When they drove into Nuevo Laredo, Vincent announced that he was going to take the Juarez-Lincoln Bridge to cross the border.

There are probably a lot of people in this town who sold their organs on the black market, David thought as he stared out the window.

It was seven o’clock when they arrived at the border inspection station. Every northbound lane of the Juarez-Lincoln Bridge was packed with vehicles. The lines were long, but not intimidatingly long. Vincent estimated that they would get to the checkpoint in about thirty minutes.

David lowered the volume on the stereo until it was silent, and said, “What are you going to do next? Do you have a plan?”

“Are you talking about the investigation?”

“Yes.”

“My guys have been checking the residences of the sex offenders that live in your area. There are a few addresses left to check, and I’m going to pay them a visit.”

“Do you have any other theories?”

“No. Let’s hope the kidnappers contact you.”

When they pulled up to the border patrol booth, Vincent rolled down his window, letting in hot air and the smells of exhaust fumes and rubber. The border agent, who was standing in the doorway of the booth, glanced inside the car and said, “How are you doing, sir? How many people are traveling with you?”

“One.” Vincent offered his and David’s passports to the agent, and the agent took them.

David licked his lips, his heart pounding like a jackhammer and his stomach churning wildly.

Was the agent going to run their passports through the scanner—or whatever that device was called?

In his mind, David could hear the agent ordering Vincent to go to the secondary inspection area.

He drew a deep breath through his nose. He felt he was succeeding in projecting an air of nonchalance.

After the agent finished examining the passports, he looked at David through the driver’s window.

“Thank you, sir.” The agent returned the passports to Vincent. “Welcome back.”

“Thank you.” Vincent slipped the passports in his shirt pocket and pressed the gas pedal.

When the car began to pick up speed, David let out a huge sigh of relief.

“See? I told you you’d be fine.” Vincent grinned.

David laughed cheerfully and high-fived Vincent. “Thank you, Vince.”

2

Carol was up when David arrived home. She reheated the leftover lasagna for him, and while he was eating, she asked where he had been.

“Phoenix,” David replied.

“What were you doing there? What did you need Annie’s DNA profile for?”

“I thought I found a lead. I was wrong.”

“Why did you turn off your phone?”

“The battery died.”

Carol put her hand on his and said, “Are you okay?”

David looked at his wife. There was a somber expression on Carol’s face. David could see dark circles under her eyes.

“I’m fine,” David replied. “I wasn’t with another woman, if that’s what you want to know.”

“Honey, I didn’t think you were with another woman.”

“Do you want to talk about the lie detector test? The hypnosis? You want to ask me if I killed Annie?”

“No.” Frowning, Carol took her hand away. “Dave, did I say something wrong? Why are you so… tense?”

“I’m just tired.” He paused and then added, “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care about the lie detector test. And I don’t care about the knife and the confession. I believe you, Dave. I know you didn’t kill Annie.”

David ate a bite of lasagna and said in a flat voice, “I’m afraid we’ll never see Annie again.”

He could have lied to Carol and told her that everything was going to be all right, but he thought she deserved to know the truth. And the truth was Annie either was dead or would be killed in the near future. He had come to this realization five hours after he and Vincent crossed the border.

“Why? What did you find out?”

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to look for her.”

“Remember Elizabeth Smart? They found her nine months after she was kidnapped.”

“The police aren’t going to look for Annie. It’s all up to us now, and I don’t know what to do.”

There was a long silence. Then Carol asked, “Is Aaron Brady a good lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think he can win your case?”

David nodded.

“But we can’t be sure he’ll win, can we? Juries are unpredictable, you said it yourself.”

“The case is very weak. They don’t have a body.”

“What if they find the body?”

David supposed it would strengthen the prosecution’s case only if the body had knife wounds. If there were no wounds, the knife found in Ardmore Park, the only piece of physical evidence against him, would become irrelevant.

A wave of shame swept over David. How could he be so calculating and businesslike when thinking about Annie’s dead body?

“Then the case will be a little stronger,” David said.

“I don’t want to lose you, Dave.”

David laced his hand with Carol’s and said, “You’re not going to lose me.”

Later, as he put the plate in the sink he wondered if Carol had stopped caring about his lie detector test results, the knife, and the confession he had made under hypnosis because she had forgiven him.

Had she forgiven him because she loved him more than Annie? David hoped it wasn’t so.

3

The next day David called Paul Sibert and told him to stop looking for Roger Kemper.

“I had bad information,” he explained. “He has nothing to do with Annie’s kidnapping.”

On Monday evening Vincent paid David a visit at his house. At the investigator’s request, David took him to the study. He thought Vincent was going to present a new theory or a plan of action, but he was wrong.

“I talked to a buddy of mine today,” Vincent said. “He works for the Plano PD. He told me why the police suspect you of killing your daughter.”

“What did he tell you?” 

“He said you confessed to killing Annie when you were under hypnosis. He said they found a knife with her blood and your fingerprints on it.”

“Did he mention that they didn’t find Annie’s body?”

“Yes, he did.”

“They can’t know for sure that knife is the murder weapon because they don’t have the body.”

“You can be convicted of murder even without a body.”

“I know that. Why did you ask your friend about this?”

“I was trying to gather some leads, that’s all. Do you want to talk about it?”

“About what?”

“About the knife, the confession.”

David gave Vincent a long look.

The investigator doubted his innocence. Why else would Vincent want to talk to him about the knife and the confession?

“What would you like to know?” David asked.

“Look, David, I’m on your side here.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“How did you know where the knife was? Why did you confess?”

“I confessed because I was out of my mind. I was in shock. I wasn’t myself then.”

“How did you know where the knife was?”

“I have no clue. And I don’t care how I knew it.”

“Aren’t you even a little curious?”

“Why should I be curious?”

Vincent thought for a moment, and then asked, “Have you ever had amnesia?”

“What?”

He thinks I murdered Annie and then forgot about it. What an idiotic idea!

“Have you ever had amnesia?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Has anyone in your family had blackouts?”

“No. Do you think I blacked out and killed my daughter?”

“I’m just trying to understand.”

“I’m not paying you to understand, Vince. I hired you to look for my daughter. My interactions with the police don’t concern you.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want to quit the case?”

“No.”

“Good.” David sighed. “I don’t expect you to believe in my innocence. Just don’t waste time investigating me.”

“Okay, boss.”

“As for the knife, I believe the kidnappers are trying to frame me.”

“Why?”

“Because they want the police to stop looking for them.”

Vincent nodded thoughtfully. “Right.”

“By the way, have you finished checking the sex offenders’ residences?”

“Yes. Unfortunately, we found nothing.”

David reached into his pants pocket and took out the check he had written to Vincent. “Here’s the ten thousand I owe you.” He gave the check to the investigator.