“What time was it that you got to Lauterbach’s office?” I asked her.
“After eleven sometime.”
“Did you see anyone on his floor when you arrived?”
“No, no one.”
“Anyone in the building?”
“Well... a man bumped into me in the lobby, coming out of the elevator just after we got there. I was standing in front of the doors when they opened and there he was.”
“What did he look like, this man?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t pay much attention to him. He was just a man carrying a machine under one arm.”
“What kind of machine?”
“It looked like a tape recorder, one of those small ones. I noticed that because a corner of it dug into my arm when he bumped me.”
“Can you remember anything about him? The color of his hair, his size, what kind of clothes he was wearing?”
“No. It was just one of those things that happen in two or three seconds. We ran into each other, he said, ‘Excuse me, dear,’ or ‘sweetheart,’ something like that, and then he was gone and Timmy and I were in the elevator.”
“You don’t have any impression of him at all?”
“No. I was too nervous and worried.”
“Any chance you’d recognize him if you saw him again?”
“I don’t think so.”
The man had to be Lauterbach’s killer, I thought. The time element was right, the tape recorder under his arm was right. He must have taken the recorder from Lauterbach’s office after the shooting; I remembered that I hadn’t seen any electronic equipment in there on Monday morning, and how odd that had seemed considering Lauterbach’s past record and the stuff I’d noticed in his car on Friday night. Whatever had been taped on that machine figured to be the motive, or part of the motive, for his murder.
Not much of a lead without some clue to the man’s identity, but a small lead was better than none. I would pass it on to the cop in charge of the case, Gunderson, as soon as I got back to San Diego.
I said to Ferguson, “Let’s back up a little. How did Lauterbach know Timmy by sight?”
“I once made the mistake of hiring him, earlier this year in Detroit.”
“To do what?”
“Confirm what a friend from Bloomfield Hills told me — that my ex-wife was abusing Timmy.”
“And did he confirm it?”
“To my satisfaction, yes. But he tried to gouge me for more money and I fired him and brought another detective into it.”
“Who also confirmed the abuse?”
“That’s right.”
“Why didn’t you go to the authorities? Why kidnap the boy?”
“It was the only choice I had. The proof my detective found is inconclusive in the eyes of the law. Timmy wouldn’t have been taken away from my ex-wife immediately, not without an official investigation. And the boy is terrified of her — she threatened to beat him bloody if he ever told anyone how she treated him. She’d have done it, too. She might have done it anyway, even if he hadn’t told the truth. She hates Timmy because he’s my son, a part of me. When she hits him she’s really hitting me. Can you understand that?”
“I can,” I said, “if it’s true.”
“You saw Timmy’s back,” Nancy Pollard said. “Isn’t that enough proof for you?”
“Not necessarily. It doesn’t prove his mother was the one who put those marks on him.”
“Ask him. Just ask him.”
“I guess I’ll have to do that.”
“I have the detectives’ reports,” Ferguson said. “I’ll show you those too, if I have to. But why should I? I still don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here. Or how you found us.” He turned to Nancy Pollard. “How could he find us with all that maneuvering around they put you through?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Something Timmy said to him when they talked in San Diego... I don’t know.”
“What maneuvering?” I asked her. “And who’s ‘they’?”
She didn’t answer. But Ferguson said tiredly, “The people I made arrangements with to get Nancy and Timmy from Bloomfield Hills down here.”
“You mean Lloyd Beddoes and Victor Ibarcena?”
His expression went blank. “Who?”
Nancy Pollard said, “No, they were only the ones at the last stop. It was somebody else Carl talked to, somebody in Chicago.”
“I won’t give you his name unless I have to,” Ferguson said.
“Let me get this straight. This guy in Chicago runs some sort of escape network, is that it?”
“Runs it, or handles arrangements for it — I don’t know which. I got his name through channels. It took me weeks and everyone was extra cautious.”
“I’ll bet. How does it work?”
“I’m not sure, exactly. But there are a number of different people involved. Nancy and Timmy were shunted over half the country last week.”
She said, “They took us by car from one city to another and put us up in a hotel for a day or two. Kansas City, Denver, San Francisco, and then San Diego.”
I nodded; I was getting it now. “The idea being to make it impossible for anyone to trace you and Timmy.”
“That was the idea,” Ferguson said bitterly. “Only you seem to have done it without much trouble.”
“I got lucky.” I turned back to Nancy Pollard. “Where were you taken from San Diego on Sunday?”
“A private airfield out in the desert somewhere. I don’t know where. Ibarcena made us put on blindfolds. We waited there for hours before the plane came.”
“And then you were flown down here?”
“To another airstrip somewhere in Mexico. Then we were blindfolded again and taken by car to a third airstrip. The plane from there brought us to Los Mochis.”
So now the whole operation was clear, at least as far as the Casa del Rey was concerned. Beddoes and Ibarcena were little spokes in a big wheel — opportunists recruited to turn their hotel into a way station for fugitives on the move through the network, fugitives like Roland Deveer, the missing financier. Whenever they’d put somebody up in one of the bungalows, they had probably told selected members of the staff that the person was some sort of V.I.P. who desired anonymity, so no registration forms were to be filled out and they were to act as if the bungalow was empty. Elaine Picard was one of the staff members they’d have had to tell, because of her role as chief of security, and she’d doped out the truth — maybe seen Deveer and recognized him. That would account for the newspaper clipping Elaine had sent to her lawyer.
I considered pushing Ferguson for the name of the man in Chicago, but I didn’t believe it was necessary. Once Beddoes cracked — and he would, sooner or later — the identity of the ringleaders would come out. Yank one of the bricks out of the foundation of an organization like this and the whole shebang would collapse.
Ferguson said, “All right, now you know everything. Suppose you tell us just what it is you’re investigating? Timmy’s disappearance? Lauterbach’s murder? The hotel men in San Diego?”
“All of those, in one way or another.”
“And you don’t have a client? You paid your own way down here?” He seemed incredulous. “What kind of detective are you?”
“Sometimes I wonder myself.”
“Why didn’t you just contact my ex-wife, if you knew where to find us? You said she’s offering a five-thousand-dollar reward.”
“I could have contacted her — she’s in San Diego now, called in by Lauterbach, and I saw her on the TV news last night. But I didn’t much like the way she talked about Timmy, as if he were a piece of property. And I remembered him telling me that he didn’t like her because she made him afraid.”
Ferguson nodded slowly. He no longer seemed angry; a kind of wary hopefulness had come into his expression. “So you came to Los Monos to see if I might have had just cause to kidnap him. If I might be a more fit parent than his mother.”