Mary stared at me. Her face was red and puffy from crying.
“I’m willing to apply the innocent-until-proven-guilty rule to the guy. I don’t know him. And I don’t know Isabel well enough to know if she’s telling the truth or not. But you do, don’t you? You know.”
She continued to look at me.
“You do for sure,” I continued. “And I can see in your eyes that you believe her. You believe your daughter.”
It was quiet for a few seconds, and then she asked, “If he did something-something to Isabel-what will happen to him?”
“Listen,” I said. “If it can be proven that your husband raped your fifteen year old daughter-that’s called second-degree rape in Washington state. It’s a class A felony. He could go to prison for ten years or more, and he’ll have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.” I paused and then added, “And if you ask me, that’s damn lenient. There’s nothing he can do to pay back what he took from your daughter.”
She sniffed and thought about this for a second. Then she said, “What if it can’t be proven?”
I thought about this for a second. “Then I guess life goes on,” I said. “Even if it can’t be proven, you’ll still know the truth. You’ll have to decide what you want to do-whether or not you want to live with the guy. But it will be your choice.”
She nodded. I felt sorry for her. She went to work every day. She was doing her best to provide for her family. Unwittingly, she’d allowed a monster into her home. She’d have to come to grips with that and, I hoped, do the right thing. But it would be hard to come to grips with and even harder to confront.
“Would you mind showing us Isabel’s room?” Toni asked.
Mary nodded. “Okay.” She gestured toward the stairs. “It’s upstairs.”
We followed her upstairs and down the hall. Isabel’s room was on the front side of the house.
“She kept it a little cluttered,” Mary said as she led us through the doorway. We looked around and surveyed the room.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Toni said. “It looks just like a teenage girl’s bedroom’s supposed to look.”
A large Justin Bieber poster was on one wall; a Selena Gomez poster on another. Isabel’s dresser held several bottles of inexpensive perfume. A bulletin board was mounted on the wall next to the dresser mirror.
Toni and I noticed a strip of four pictures on the bulletin board-the kind of photos you get from a booth at a mall. Kelli Blair and another dark-haired girl were posing in them-clowning around. Other than the posters, these were the only photos in the room.
“Is this Isabel?” I asked, pointing to the pictures.
Mary nodded. “Yes. Isabel’s the one on the left. That was earlier this year I think.”
Isabel was a pretty girl. In the photo, she and Kelli were cracking up-looked like they’d been having a great time.
“Who’s this other girl?” I asked. Seemed like a natural question, and I wanted to keep Kelli’s relationship with us hidden.
“That’s Isabel’s friend Kelli,” Mary said. “She lives nearby.”
“Do you know her last name?” I asked.
She thought for a second and then said, “Sorry. I don’t”
“Well, maybe we can get it at school. Would you mind if we borrowed this picture and made some copies?”
“No, I don’t mind.”
I unpinned the photo strip and stuck it in my notebook. The pictures served two purposes. First, we needed a good picture of Isabel to show around if we were going to be looking for her. Second, I’d just as soon leave no reminders of Kelli in Isabel’s room-reminders for her stepfather to glom onto.
We had what we needed, so we headed back downstairs.
At that moment, a shiny white Ford F150 pulled up in front of the house.
“Company,” Toni said.
“Oh my God,” Mary said. “It’s Tracey. He’s home from work.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s not a problem. Somebody was bound to come looking for Isabel, right? That’s us. We’ll stand here like we were just getting ready to leave. You’ve got our cards. Stash them in your purse there, and call us anytime you want. After today, we won’t be back in contact with you unless we absolutely have to. If we do need to get ahold of you, we’ll call you while you’re at work. If you can’t talk, we’ll leave a number and you can call us on a break or something.”
She nodded. “Find her,” she said. “Please.”
I nodded. “We will.”
I watched through the living room window as Isabel’s stepfather got out of his truck and started walking toward the house.
Tracey Webber was tall-maybe a couple of inches taller than me, and I’m six one. He was a big guy, and he had a bit of a belly-but there was a lot of muscle there, too. My guess is he weighed two-thirty or so. He wore black work boots, dark blue mechanics pants and a matching shirt with his name stitched on the left breast in silver cursive. The shirt was un-tucked, and both shirt and pants had grease stains-some looked recent; some looked like they’d been there awhile. He was dirty and sweaty and he looked like he’d had a long day. He stopped as he came through the door and checked us out. He had the confident big-guy swagger of a man who’d been through many scraps and knew he could take care of himself. He also had a mean face.
“Hi, honey,” Mary said as she walked over to greet him. She stopped short of hugging him when she saw up close how grimy he was.
Webber said nothing and looked past Mary toward us. “Honey, these people are private investigators,” Mary said, anticipating his questions before he had a chance to voice them. “They’ve stopped by to ask some questions about Isabel.”
He seemed to consider this for a second, before he said, “Why?”
The fact that his sixteen-year-old stepdaughter had been missing a month wasn’t a big deal for him, I guess. Either that, or he already knew why and was just playing dumb.
“Mr. Webber,” I said, “I’m Danny Logan. This is my associate Toni Blair.” He looked us over. I should say, he glanced at me briefly but took his time checking Toni out. This was something I’d gotten used to, but I didn’t like the look in his eyes. Still, I’m a professional-I bottled it up. “We’ve been retained to look into Isabel’s disappearance,” I said. True-not counting the retainer part.
When I mentioned Isabel’s name, he turned back and looked at me, a little more carefully now. His cold, penetrating blue eyes sized me up. So far, my thirty-second snap judgment was that Tracey Webber was a purely physical guy-someone not too burdened by cerebral concerns. I’m usually pretty accurate with these assessments.
“What’s to look into?” he said, breaking eye contact with me and moving to the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. “She ran away. Been gone a month now, and it don’t look like she’s coming back.” He set his keys on the counter and looked back at us. “Want a beer?”
“No, thanks,” I said. He walked around the bar into the kitchen, where he got a bottle of Rainier Beer from the refrigerator. He twisted the top off and left it on the counter. He took a long pull from the bottle before turning around.
“Who’d you say you’re working for?” he asked, as he walked back into the living room.
“We didn’t say,” I said. “Our client wishes to remain confidential.”
“Hmm,” he snorted. “That’s pretty chickenshit. What’re they hiding from?”
I smiled. “A pretty fair number of our clients wish to keep their identities hidden. You shouldn’t read anything into that,” I said. I wanted to try to take control of the conversation. “We were just about to leave, but since you’re home, would you mind if we ask you a few questions? We talked to your wife for a few minutes, but she wasn’t able to shed much light on the situation, since evidently she works swing shift and isn’t home much.”
He looked at Mary, then back at me. “Let’s do it,” he said, confidently. He took a long drink from his beer-probably draining half the bottle. “Think I’ll have a seat. Been standin’ all day long.”