“There was no missing-persons report.”
“No. You see, Reggie disappearin’ for long periods of time wasn’t exactly anything new to me. And then I have this PI come along and tell me he’s run off with this Bonnie, that I know left him some time back, and her little girl. But back then I thought maybe they got back together. And when I didn’t hear nothin’ from Reggie, I just thought maybe he’d decided to become a family man, and well, leave it to him to do it such a lousy way.”
She paused, then said, “I did him wrong, thinking of him like that.”
“You say you were contacted by an Arizona medical examiner’s office?”
“Yes. Just about two years ago, I got a call from Arizona. Somebody down there was goin’ through cold cases, John Does in the morgue. A trainee or something, and they give him this job to do. Decided to run the fingerprints. That’s the one time I guess I was lucky Reggie had a prison record. He was in the FBI system, and so they matched him up that way. And my husband, Mr. Hayes, he paid so I could go down there and bring Reggie’s ashes home.”
By that time, she said, she had forgotten about the PI who had been asking about Reggie. My story had reminded her of him.
“I’m not mad at you or Mr. Ives for what’s in the story,” she assured me, “but I started to think about it and figured Reggie got blamed enough for things he did do, maybe I’d set the record straight for him. I mean, I know you don’t come out and say he took that girl, but people will suppose it, just like Mr. Ives does. And maybe if Mr. Ives stops looking in the wrong place, he’ll have an easier time finding her.”
She gave me the names of her contacts in Arizona. I thanked her, made some notes, and went back to retrieving messages.
I logged onto my computer and found my e-mail in-box nearly as overloaded as my voice mail, although a few of the subject lines told me I had the usual amount of déjà poo in there, too-jokes and links that had been sent to me a dozen times before. Nothing dies on the Internet.
I was deleting spam while half-listening to messages, which is why I had to replay one of them-a young girl. I wondered why she had hung up before finishing her first message, and felt relief that she had left the second one.
A scared young girl, whispering two messages. Messages left before seven in the morning. Not the usual hour for crank calls by kids.
Huntington Beach-where a man had seen a girl who matched Carla Ives’s description.
For a few seconds, I told myself that I shouldn’t jump to conclusions. But I hadn’t reached this point in my career by ignoring gut feelings. I jumped: If this wasn’t Carla Ives, I wouldn’t lose much time following one false trail.
Playa Azul and Vista del Mar. I looked up the location, printed it out, and hurried over to the City Desk. “I have to follow up on a lead,” I told Lydia. “You can reach me on my cell phone.”
I heard her surprised “What-?” and not much more as I left the newsroom.
I glanced at my watch again when I reached the car.
If I didn’t run into traffic, I could just make it on time.
CHAPTER 40
Tuesday, May 2
8:55 A.M.
A HOME IN LAS PIERNAS
CLEO posed before the mirrors on the sliding closet doors. She felt pleased. She had done a really excellent job this time. The man’s suit looked good on her. She liked the shoes. They made her look like someone who was about to take care of serious business.
Well, what could be more serious than murder?
The thought made her laugh.
She had a hat to go with this one. When she put the hat on and adopted certain mannerisms and a way of walking, she knew for a fact that no one watching from a neighboring window would be likely to identify the person they saw as a woman.
In the trunk of the BMW 325xi parked in the garage, she had carefully stored coveralls and work boots, as well as her second complete outfit. Now, that one really looked great on her.
She looked around her. She liked this little house. Only two of her neighbors on this quiet suburban street had met her, and neither knew her real name. She told them she was an international sales representative who traveled a great deal. Nothing of real value was kept in the house, but she used a security system she controlled from her laptop to monitor alarms, as well as the small cameras mounted outside the house and in the various rooms to turn lights and radios off and on. The system would page her if anyone set off an alarm. No one had done so yet, which was something of a disappointment-she planned to deal with the problem personally if it ever happened.
A lawn service came by twice a week to ensure that the yard was clean and green, and that leaflets and flyers were removed from the porch. Her mail was forwarded to a private mail drop.
She had Roy to thank for the inspiration of living invisibly in suburbia. His example taught her to be the perfect, quiet homeowner who never annoyed her neighbors and was never annoyed by them. She never held parties, and did not cause concern by bringing unsavory strangers as visitors to the neighborhood. She never brought any kind of visitor to this house.
She couldn’t stand the place for more than a few days at a time, but it provided excellent quarters when she was in the process of relocating her main residence.
She spent a few moments going over her preparations for her work. She was already wearing a well-concealed knife-she was seldom out of reach of at least one knife. She had already checked and rechecked her Beretta. She smiled, thinking of it. She liked a weapon small enough to be concealed in the palm of her hand. The Beretta had served her well. Loaded with.22 shots, thrust up against the back of a skull-it hardly made more than a popping sound.
She didn’t like the kind of shot she had made on Sheila-she forced her thoughts away from that job. Not everyone would have been able to escape in that situation.
A small duffel bag held gloves, clean-up supplies, and Plans B, C, D, E, and F: the garrote, the restraints, the plastic bag, the syringes, and the drugs.
Roy had called her this morning. She had already given him advice. She wondered if he’d followed it. He was a nervous wreck.
Something in Roy appealed to her, made her like him a little more than the others. Giles was full of himself. She had been drawn to him because of his arrogance and power, but lately that had grown old. Dexter-Dexter was a fabulous lover, and more like her than any of the others. They understood each other. But Roy-Roy was kind of sweet, she decided. Protective of her. It was really funny if you stopped to think about it, but none of the other men even thought of treating her that way. And he would do anything for his children. That had made her like him for more than the sex. An image from her own childhood rose to mind unbidden, and she quickly suppressed it.
She checked her watch. Almost time to go. She began a series of meditations she used to hone her concentration.
A soft alarm sounded, distracting her. Someone was walking up her driveway. Probably a salesperson or one of the seemingly endless number of tree trimmers who littered her porch with business cards and flyers. She hid the bag and silently moved toward a monitor.
A slightly built brown-haired man in his fifties, wearing jeans, a light windbreaker, and running shoes, neared the porch steps. She recognized him immediately and swore. She quickly strode to the door.
What the hell was Giles doing here? He wasn’t even supposed to know this place existed. The son of a bitch thought he owned her.