They’d expanded since the first ones we’d seen that afternoon. Now they’d linked me to the shooting at the theme park as well. Jesus, I thought, how many different guns do these people think I’ve got?
“Wow, this is getting wild,” Xander said. He shook his head and looked speculatively at Trey. “Who’da thought it, huh?”
“Shush!”
A new face had appeared on an outside broadcast camera but I’d missed the opening introduction. Not that I needed it to recognise who she was.
“Aw crap,” Trey burst out, “it’s Ms Raybourn!”
“Will you shut up,” I snapped, “and let me listen!”
“. . . more about the missing teenager?” the reporter was asking.
Gerri nodded, her face doing a perfect impression of serious solicitude.
“Sure,” she said. “Naturally, we are extremely concerned at this time for the safety of both the Pelzners – father and son – but particularly so for Trey, who is just fifteen years old. We are appealing to the kidnappers to release the family.”
“I believe you have already had some contact with the kidnappers. Can you tell us anything about their demands?”
Gerri shook her head. “Not at this time,” she said. “Though clearly we are dealing with some very dangerous people and we are really looking forward to writing the bottom line on this without further loss of life.”
“Like hell you are,” I muttered, still reeling.
The outside broadcast cut back to the studio and the beginning of the next story. For a moment none of us reacted.
“Kidnappers?” Scott asked, looking from one of us to the other. “What the fuck do they mean, man – kidnappers?”
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I don’t know what on earth Raybourn hopes to gain by trying to make out that I’ve kidnapped Trey – or Keith for that matter.”
“She was the one who sent Mr Whitmarsh after us at the motel,” Trey said blankly.
I nodded. “Yeah, and they didn’t manage to get us that time, or afterwards, and now with that cop getting killed it’s all got well out of hand.” I looked around at their faces, still and a little pale now. “If I had to guess, I’d say good old Gerri’s trying to make sure she’s got a suitable scapegoat ready to take the blame for whatever it is that she and your Dad are up to,” I said. My lips twisted into a mocking smile. “Looks like I’m it.”
Eleven
“So, the question is,” I went on, “what exactly are they up to?”
Trey shrugged. “Dunno,” he muttered, but I’d seen the way his eyes had nervously scanned across his friends, as though checking they weren’t about to tell me anything he didn’t want me to know.
Time to press him, then.
“Is it something to do with your mother’s disappearance, do you think?” I asked carefully.
“Could be, I s’pose.” He shot me a dark look, but there were no great reactions from the other kids. They clearly knew all about his theories in that direction.
The more I thought about that one, though, the less likely it seemed. If Keith was trying to cover up the murder of his wife, which had apparently passed unnoticed by the authorities for five years, why would he now try to keep it hidden by sending a hitman to kill his son in such a public place?
Surely, if he had the kind of connections Trey had hinted at, it would have been far easier to have arranged a teenage suicide or accidental drowning in the pool at the house. Why the urgency, all of a sudden?
Unless Keith had needed witnesses to the snatch of his son in order to prove its authenticity. Hell, at the time it had seemed pretty authentic to me. But if that was the case, why hadn’t Keith handled his own ‘disappearance’ better? Why let a neighbour see the van he was using to move out, and then give that same neighbour a key for the letting agent?
It didn’t make sense and, worse than that, it was amateurish. And this was the man who had supposedly arranged the murder and disposal of his wife so professionally that nobody had suspected a thing for half a decade.
Or had they?
I glanced at Scott, who was frowning in concentration and clicking the back of the stud that passed through his bottom lip against his teeth. “Can we use the Internet to look up old news stories?” I said.
He looked at me with a touch of scorn, like I’d just asked if we could use a refrigerator to keep milk cold. “‘Course.”
He led the way back up to the computer in the loft, with the others in pursuit. Only Trey was showing any signs of reluctance.
“OK,” I said when we were there, crowded round his chair, “let’s see if you can find any reference to Trey’s mum. Exactly when was it, Trey?”
For a moment he scowled at me, his expression mulish, then he muttered, “Five years last January.”
He gave out information with all the joy of a kid forced to share his last packet of sweets. Scott went onto one of the local newspaper sites and tapped in the full name of Trey’s mother and the area of Daytona where they’d been living at the time.
Nothing came up.
He tried again with other news sources, but each time we drew a blank. It was like the woman had never existed. And the more he tried, the more twitchy Trey became.
“See,” he said at last, a little snappy. “Like I told you – she’s dead, OK? He made her disappear. What did you think you were gonna find?”
“This doesn’t prove she’s dead,” I said gently. “There’s still a chance that she might have just left of her own accord.”
I’d meant it to appease him but it had the opposite effect. Trey’s face shut down, turning white, then as pink as my hair. He swung round, body rigid like he was ready for a fight.
“Take it back!” he yelled, in my face, shaking now. “She would never have left me! You take it back!”
I didn’t react, didn’t say anything at all, but I didn’t back off, either. After a few moments, some small manifestation of sanity seemed to tap Trey on the shoulder and whisper in his ear that maybe taking me on wasn’t such a good idea. The anger faded into nervousness and his eyes flickered away. He turned and slouched down the stairs into the living room, throwing himself onto the sofa. Aimee pulled a face and went after him.
Xander let his breath out through his teeth. “Phew, you sure know how to go stirring up trouble, Charlie,” he said quietly, shaking his head. “Trey’s real touchy about his mom.”
Scott gave up on his searches and sat back, staring moodily at the computer screen. “If his dad is tied in with some government agency then you wouldn’t expect to, like, find any trace of her,” he said slowly, almost to himself. “They can just wipe anybody off the face of the earth.”
“Yes, OK,” I allowed, “but what’s Keith doing that’s so vital to the US government that they would go to those lengths to protect him?” I looked from one of the boys to the other, but they just shrugged. “He’s just a computer programmer who writes financial software, not anything for the military.”
For a moment the only noise in the loft was Scott clicking that stud against his teeth again. Downstairs, over the drift of MTV I could hear the earnest murmur of Aimee’s voice, giving Trey a pep talk.
I sighed. Keith Pelzner worked in an industry where talent made you rich and the bottom line was that he wasn’t a wealthy man. The house in Lauderdale had been rented by the company who employed him. He’d flashed his cash around but even that had all been provided by them. So what made him important enough for this?