Jeffery Deaver
Captivated
Thursday, August 30
“She’s been gone for a month. And two days.”
The man’s troubled expression suggested that he could easily have added the number of hours.
“No contact with you at all?”
“None.” The voice stumbled. He cleared his throat. “No, sir.”
The two men were sitting in an Asian fusion restaurant — self-billed as such, though to Colter Shaw it resembled any other Chinese place. He was having wonton soup, concocted with homemade chicken stock, Shaw believed. It was good. The man across from him in the booth was ringed by a parapet of bowls and plates — some tofu thing, sauces, soup, egg roll and rice. One of the lunchtime combos. The man had taken two bites of the rice and set down his chopsticks.
“I know — in my soul — I know she’s in danger. Somebody’s kidnapped her. We have to do something!” He tugged at the collar of his gray suit jacket. Brooks Brothers, Shaw had seen when the front flaps parted. The cuffs were frayed. Matthews’s shirt was white, the collar yellowing where it met his neck, and was a size too large. His tie was bold green and he sported a matching pocket square. A big gold ring encircled the middle finger of his right hand.
“You’ve gone to the police?” Shaw asked, his voice a monotone, in contrast to Ron Matthews’s oscillating timbre.
“Yes, of course. I called them a day after she didn’t come home. I was worried it was too soon. But the detective said there’s no waiting period or anything.”
In most states you can report somebody missing ten minutes after they don’t show up. But unless it’s a child or there’s evidence of a crime (the standard police term really is the quaintly Sherlockian “foul play”), the authorities don’t jump on board right away.
Matthews confirmed that this was true in his case. “They weren’t gung ho, you know. There are a lot of missing persons, he told me.”
Thousands upon thousands, Shaw knew.
“He asked — you’re probably going to ask me the same thing — if she’d been in touch with anybody. And, yeah, Evie called a friend the same day she was due home. She said she’d decided to travel for a while. She needed to get away. I had to be honest with the cop.”
Always a good plan.
Well, usually.
“But I think the kidnapper forced her to call her friend, to make sure the police weren’t involved. She didn’t call me because the kidnapper would think I’d know something was wrong. And I would. Evie and me, we have this...” Matthews ran his hand through his thick salt-and-pepper hair. “I’d just know she was in trouble.”
Shaw took a sip of pungent Tsingtao beer. Another spoonful of soup.
Matthews had been sniping furtive glances at him since the businessman had joined Shaw here. He did so again, taking in Shaw’s short blond hair, lying close to the scalp, his broad but compact build, just shy of six feet. An oval face, complexion light. Eyes blue with gray influence. A few women had said he resembled this or that actor, usually some action-movie hero. Most of them he’d never heard of, since, growing up, he’d seen only two or three movies or TV shows a year — and then not until he was ten or eleven. Now, that sort of entertainment was not a major part of his life.
The clothing he now wore was his usual when on the job: jeans, dress shirt open at the collar — today’s was navy blue — and a dark-checkered sports coat. Respectful, to put offerors and witnesses at ease. On his feet, black Ecco slip-ons. Which were comfortable. And offered good traction. Just in case.
The businessman, of course, was interested in teasing more out of Colter Shaw than just his appearance. But all he got in this department, for the time being, was straight posture, constant eye contact, no smiles or frowns, no small talk, just undistracted attention to every word Matthews said. The message was the intended one: I’m listening and I’m taking the situation very seriously. Matthews seemed to relax into confidence. Like most offerors, he didn’t get that Shaw was sizing him up too.
Shaw asked, “Did she — Evelyn’s friend — tell you anything about where she went?”
“No. She said Evie’d called, and that was it. She didn’t pick up again when I called back, once or twice.”
Or dozens of times. Matthews would have called until the friend blocked his number.
“Tell me how she disappeared,” Shaw said. “Details.”
“Evie went to an artists’ retreat outside of Chicago — Schaumburg — last month. Weekend thing. She went to some retreat almost every month, all around the country.” His lips tightened. “Sunday night, she didn’t come home. She was supposed to but she didn’t.”
“She drove?”
“That’s right.”
“You’ve been married a year?”
“Thirteen months. Was our anniversary July tenth.”
“Phone?” Shaw asked.
“Not in service.”
Shaw asked, “Private eye?”
“Cost me more than I could afford, got me zip.”
With a few exceptions, PIs were great for background security checks and poring over computer records to see if your fiancée had ever poisoned a prior husband or misbehaved more than one usually misbehaves in Cabo. The “investigation” part of the job title — as in, pounding pavement — usually wasn’t a stellar performance.
That explained why, two weeks ago, Matthews had posted a reward — $10,000 — in an Indianapolis newspaper and online for information about Evelyn Fontaine’s whereabouts. Shaw’s business associates in Florida had spotted the announcement and relayed the info to Shaw, who happened to be in Chicago finishing another job.
The $10K wasn’t much for a missing spouse believed to have been kidnapped. But for Shaw, the reward was never about the money; it was a flag flying over a problem that, so far, no one else had been able to solve. The sort he lived for.
Colter Shaw was restless in mind as well as restless in body.
He now asked the standard question: Had anyone else been in touch about the reward? Yes, Matthews said. Some people had contacted him but it was clear they had no helpful information and were simply hoping for a windfall. There’d been no calls in the past week.
This was a pattern Shaw had seen again and again.
Matthews now opened his wallet and slipped out a picture. Shaw had already seen some shots online but this was a far better image: a well-done formal portrait that depicted a woman in her late twenties with a long, sweeping neck and an angular face. Fragile in some ways, confident in others. She was more striking than beautiful. Her dark blond hair was piled high atop her head in carefully plotted disarray. Her eyes were blue but toward the violet end of the spectrum, and her smile was mysterious. Given her profession, Shaw wondered if the crafted crescent lips were an unconscious homage to the Mona Lisa — or, perhaps, a very conscious one.
Shaw nodded to the expensive Mercedes-AMG that Matthews had arrived in. “I looked you up. You own an industrial equipment dealership. How wealthy are you?”
Matthews blinked.
“I need to know if you’re a ransom target.”
Usually such demands come early in a disappearance. But not always.
“Maybe a year or so ago I was. But it’s been tough lately. With all the tariffs and trade wars, our revenues have dropped like a rock. The car’s leased and I’m looking at another operating loan. I could probably scrape together a million. You think that’s it? Somebody after money?”
Shaw kept his eyes on Matthews. “I don’t. And you don’t either.”
He’d finally formed an opinion about Ronald Matthews and Evelyn Fontaine. Matthews’s story didn’t quite add up; his eyes were evasive and he was emotional when he shouldn’t’ve been.