“By all means,” I said. He plopped himself onto a bar stool and took another shot from his beer bottle, draining it all the way. Then he smacked it down on the bar. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked up at me. I halfway expected him to belch, but he didn’t.
“Fire away, Chief,” he said.
“Okay. As I said, we’re trying to figure out where Isabel went. If we can find her, we’re hoping we can talk her into coming back home.”
“Hmmm,” he snorted. “Good luck with that.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Seems to me she’s been acting like she couldn’t wait to get away from here for the past two years or so.”
“What makes you think that? Has she run away before?”
He shook his head. “Nah. She never ran before. She just comes home from school and then scoots on up to her room and closes the door. She acts like she don’t want nothing to do with this family.”
Can’t imagine why not. “Understood,” I said. “Teenagers can be a handful.”
“Damn straight,” he agreed.
“Tell me,” I said in as non-threatening a tone as I could muster. “What was your relationship like with Isabel?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you and Mary have been married what-five years now? Almost five years? That means you’ve been around Isabel for almost a third of her young life. You’ve gotten to know her. You’ve had the chance to interact with her. Did the two of you get along?”
He seemed confused at first, but then he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Yeah. We got along fine. I’d get home-she was already home or sometimes she’d get home later. Like I said, she’d walk right straight through and march on up to her room. She didn’t have much to do with me.”
“Did she have any disciplinary problems?” I asked. “Did she ever get in trouble? Did you ever have to punish her?”
He shook his head. “Nah, she was a pretty good kid when it came to stayin’ out of trouble. She didn’t cause no problems-she was just real quiet and kept to herself. Spent all her time up in her bedroom.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let me ask you-it’s a little after four now, and you just got home a little while ago. Is this about the same time you get home every day?”
“Yeah. More or less.”
“So seeing as how Mary works swing shift, that makes you the parent who probably spent the most time with Isabel. Did she ever confide in you? Tell you about any problems she might have been having in school? Something that might have made her want to run away?”
He pretended to think about this for a few seconds. I say “pretended” because he made a good show of staring off into space for about ten seconds, seemingly lost in thought. I figured this was a good eight seconds past his maximum attention span. Finally, he shook his head and said, “Nah-she never said anything. Like I said, she kept to herself.”
“I understand. Do you know if she had any friends? If she did, maybe we can talk to them and help look for her that way?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know any of her friends,” he said. “She got rides to school and back from a girl who lives somewhere around here, but that’s about it-leastwise, as far as I know.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “We’ll check at her school. They might be able to help us locate some of Isabel’s friends.”
I looked down at my notes, then back up at him. “That’s pretty much it for me-I don’t really have anything else-we’re actually just getting started on our investigation. Is there anything else you can think of?” I asked. “Something else you might be able to add?” My point in talking to him hadn’t been so much to get any information out of him-I didn’t expect that would happen. Mostly, I just wanted to deflect his attention from Mary.
He looked at me and then shrugged. “Sorry, Chief,” he said.
I looked at Toni. “Anything else you can think of?” I said.
She shook her head no.
“Well, okay then,” I said, smiling. “I guess that’ll do it for now. Thanks for helping us out. We won’t keep the two of you any longer.” I took a step for the door.
Mary opened it for us. “Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful,” she said.
“No problem,” I said. “You can’t be two places at the same time. Gotta work. I know what that’s like. I turned to Tracey. “Mr. Webber, thanks again for your help. If we find anything, we’ll keep you posted.”
Webber didn’t respond. Apparently, he hadn’t fully appreciated the way Toni fills out a T-shirt when he came inside and checked her out. Now that he’d had a chance to take a second look, he was definitely noticing. In fact, he couldn’t take his eyes off her chest. I stared at him for a second, amused by his complete lack of tact. A few seconds later though, I’d had enough. I felt myself entering familiar territory-what I’ve come to call “the windup.” I snapped my fingers together twice, loudly.
The sound apparently penetrated his feeble brain, and he looked up. I pointed to my eyes with two fingers. “Eyes front and center, big guy,” I said. “Don’t be crude.” He looked at me for a second or two with a look that was half stupid/half predatory until what I said registered. Then the look was replaced by a mean, ugly sneer.
Before anything further could happen, Toni grabbed my arm. “You folks have a nice day, now,” she said, and she fairly shoved me out the door.
“I think my skin is going to crawl right off my body,” Toni said. We were driving south on I-5 on our way back to the office.
“He’s an ass-bag,” I said.
“True. I’ve only just met the guy, and already I think he’s guilty.”
I signaled and changed into the fast lane. “Me, too. We’re not without reasons, though. You’ve got Isabel speaking directly to Kelli, saying the guy raped her. And you’ve got Isabel’s mom-the guy’s own wife-saying she can believe it.”
“And oh, by the way, he’s also beat on her in the past, too,” Toni added. “What an animal. And I must say, that’s an insult to animals everywhere.”
“Agreed,” I said. “An all-around upstanding kind of guy. And then, the smug prick thinks he’s going to match wits with us while the entire time he mostly just wants to stare at your boobs.” I thought for a second and then added, “Thanks again for pushing me out of there. You were just in time. You saved him.”
“No problem. I meant to tell you-you should be more careful.”
“I should be more careful? What do you mean?”
“Yeah-the little finger-snapping thing? Did you forget you’ve got a gun on your belt? That makes it your job to stay out of fights-not start them.”
I thought about this. “You’re right, except I wasn’t trying to start a fight.”
“You may not have seen it that way, but that pea-brain Neanderthal back there might have. You definitely don’t want to get into a fight with a big guy like him when you’re carrying a gun, just because your macho pride gets tweaked or because you think you’re defending my honor. Believe me, I handle lots worse than him nearly every day.”
I thought about this. She was right. Ironically, when you strap on a sidearm, you take on the responsibility of having to work even harder to stay out of confrontations than would be the case if you were unarmed. When you carry a weapon, too many things can go wrong when the situation gets unstable-such as in fight. I knew better. “You’re right. I’ll try hard to dial it back.”
“Besides,” Toni said. “You’d undoubtedly kick his ass. Then you’d probably get arrested for assault. That would suck-getting busted because of a douche bag like Tracey Webber.” Toni and I both practice the Israeli martial art known as Krav Maga. I learned it in Afghanistan. When I got back, I was surprised to find a studio in Bellevue where I could continue my training. I had introduced Toni, and now she’s nearly my equal. In the last four years, neither of us has ever had cause to pull our firearms in the heat of battle. On the other hand, we’ve both used our Krav Maga training numerous times. It works.
“Agreed.”