He glanced across the breakfast table. Cassie was sipping coffee, reading the Datebook section. He drew a breath, then rattled the newsprint and said explosively, “My God!”
Her head jerked up. “What?”
“Look at this,” he said. He passed her his section, tapping the article with his forefinger.
She looked. And then she looked at him, looked past him — a bleak, distant stare. After a few seconds she said, “What does this mean?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Coincidence, Jack?”
“Coincidences happen. One could’ve happened to him.”
“Such as what? A convenient accident?”
“That, or something else. A shyster like him must have plenty of enemies. He paused. “There’s another possibility, too.”
“Yes?”
“It was voluntary,” he said. “What if he found out somehow about Angela going away?”
It was like a slap; she winced, stiffened. “You mean he might’ve gone looking for her, hunting her?”
“I hope to God that’s not it.” The lies were like fecal matter in his mouth, hurting him as much as they were hurting her. He went on with it, hating himself again. “But I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
“How could he have found out?”
“How does anybody find out anything?”
“But he couldn’t know where she went.”
“No. There’s no way he could’ve followed her, with Eric right there. We’ll e-mail her, tell her what’s happened, warn her to be extra careful. Alert April Sayers, too.”
Cassie nodded. But then she said, “I don’t know. I don’t know, Jack.”
“Don’t know what?”
“His car... the paper says it’s in his garage. If he’s gone looking for Angela, why didn’t he take his car?”
“Decided it was too conspicuous, maybe. Or he went somewhere by air.”
“That doesn’t sound like Rakubian. To just drop out of sight that way — no calls to his office staff, leaving everything behind.”
She was thinking too much. Too smart for her own good. “He’s psychotic, Cass. You can’t predict what a psycho will do.”
“He’s been consistent all along, hasn’t he? Disappearing when he can’t possibly have any idea where Angela went... it just doesn’t sound right.”
He couldn’t push it any more; it would only arouse her suspicions. He said, “If something did happen to him, accident or otherwise, it’s good news — the best news we could ask for. A kind of miracle.”
“Is it?”
“If he turns up dead, or doesn’t turn up at all, it means Angela and Kenny can come home. It means we can all stop being afraid.”
“I don’t know,” she said again. “I don’t like this.”
“What don’t you like? You can’t want Rakubian to still be alive somewhere.”
“I’ve wished him dead a hundred times.”
“Well?”
“If he’s dead... why? What happened to him?”
“The details aren’t important—”
“They are if he was murdered.”
“By a stranger? What does it matter who?”
“Suppose it was Eric?” she said.
His first call was to April Sayers. She’d already seen the piece in the Chronicle, had just gotten off the phone with her Utah relatives. Angela and Kenny were fine. Extra precautions were being taken, just in case. And all for nothing, Hollis thought as he rang off. He could imagine how upset his daughter must be over this. Consoling himself that it was only temporary, that the end result justified the additional anxiety, was cold and bitter comfort.
Second calclass="underline" Eric. It was early enough so that he was still in his room and his line was free. Hollis would have preferred to talk to him alone, but Cassie insisted on picking up the extension. Her fear that Eric was responsible had rocked him. He should have seen it coming, but he hadn’t. He’d managed to allay the fear somewhat, enough to keep her from saying anything to Eric; she let him do most of the talking. Eric’s reaction may have reassured her, but it bothered Hollis. No hint of surprise that Rakubian had been reported missing, not found murdered in his home. Concern about his sister and nephew, cautious optimism — the same outward pose as Hollis’s. But was he handling it too well? Not feeling as much guilt and remorse as he should, perhaps thinking that what he’d done was wholly justified?
The third and last call was to the Hall of Justice in San Francisco, Missing Persons division. The inspector in charge of the Rakubian case, he was told, was Napoleon Macatee, but he wasn’t at his desk. Hollis left a message, supplying both home and office numbers. Now he was on record as having made first contact.
Inspector Macatee called him at Mannix & Hollis shortly before noon. Polite, soft-spoken, voice inflections that indicated he was African American. No, Hollis said, he had no information about David Rakubian’s disappearance. He’d seen the news story, he was concerned because of the potential danger to his daughter.
“You know he assaulted her in public a few weeks ago,” he said, “and we had to get a restraining order against him. He’s been getting more and more irrational, calling at all hours, showing up here, making threats.”
“His office staff paint a different picture of the man,” Macatee said.
“Sure they do. They only saw his public face. We have tapes of all his calls, his letters, everything. If you’d like to go through the...”
“Pretty sure I’ll want to do that. Mr. Hollis, I understand you went to the man’s offices last Thursday morning. Mind telling me why?”
“The obvious reason. One last futile attempt to get him to stop harassing my family. It was a waste of time, like talking to a piece of stone. As far as he’s concerned, he isn’t guilty of anything except trying to get his wife back. He’s obsessed with her. He’s not only a control freak and an abuser, he’s a dangerous psychotic.”
“Psychotic’s a pretty strong word.”
“Not for Rakubian. The last time he showed up in Los Alegres, he caught my daughter alone and threatened to kill her and my grandson both if she didn’t go back to him.”
Macatee digested that before he asked, “Anyone else there at the time?”
“Just Kenny, my grandson. But my daughter wouldn’t make up a story like that. She doesn’t lie and she doesn’t exaggerate. She said he meant it, and I believe her.”
“Did you know about this threat when you went to talk to him on Thursday?”
“I knew and I called him on it. He denied it, of course.”
“You make any threats against him in return?”
“No. I lost my head the first time I went there — I guess you know about that — and I was determined not to let it happen again. But I came close to losing it, I’ll admit that.”
“Angry, frustrated... that how you felt when you left?”
“Wouldn’t you be if it was your family, Inspector? I should have known better than to try to reason with a man like him. But no matter how I felt and still feel, I didn’t have anything to do with his disappearance.”
“See him again anytime since Thursday?”
“No.”
“Talk to him?”
“No.”
“Your daughter have any contact with him?”
“No. She was home with us all weekend.”
“She at home now?”
“Not since Monday morning,” Hollis said, and went on to explain about Angela’s decision to relocate, the arrangements she’d made. “I can’t tell you exactly where she is. My wife and I don’t know ourselves.”
“But you can get in touch with her.”