“Can I see her bedroom?”
“Sure,” Devlin said.
“You won’t find much,” Sally said. “The cops took most of her things.”
“Really?” If the Metro police didn’t believe in the kidnapping, why take her possessions?
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police have various geographical commands, sort of like super New York precincts. I drove to the downtown command where I knew one detective lieutenant. I’d only been to Vegas on the job twice before, both missing girls cases. (Girls tend to run to Vegas or Hollywood. Boys head for Mexico or Malibu. Both escape to New York. They’re the biggest dreamers.) I’d found one girl, and had worked with Chris Yost both times.
He grinned when I walked in, and waved me to a chair in his cluttered cubicle. “What’s her name this time, Fortune?”
“Xiang Fei. She’s a Chinese student-”
The grinned vanished abruptly. “I know who the hell she is. What’s your interest in her?”
“Hired by her fiancé.”
“Lewis?” Yost leaned back in his chair, shook his head. “Hell, I don’t believe for a damned second he’s anyone’s fiancé except in his dreams.”
“You also don’t believe the woman’s been kidnapped.”
He gave me a pitying look. “Don’t tell me you believe his fairy tale? No ransom note, no political demands, no damn contact at all? Come on, Fortune. The kid’s been dumped and doesn’t want to believe it.”
“The witness?”
Yost snorted in derision. “Some guy having a cappuccino inside Starbucks sees a woman who might have been Xiang Fei talking to a couple of guys. Talking, that’s all. No grabbing and shoving into a car, no struggle, not even an argument. He turns his attention to something else, and when he looks back all three are gone. How long he looked away, who knows? Damn it, Fortune, he didn’t know if the woman was Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, or Russian! He can’t even say what the two guys looked like except they were both white.”
“Then why pick up all her stuff?”
“You know damn well we have to act on any report of kidnapping. We talked to the Lewis kid, her roommates, and herprofessors. We hauled in her things looking for a motive. We talked to the alleged witness. We canvassed the scene. We came up empty. It never happened. She’s off somewhere on her own.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, Lieutenant. She’s twenty-nine, a woman, not a girl. Everyone says she’s steady, responsible, serious. She stands up a guy she’s at least dating regularly. She leaves laundry she’s doing in the dryer. She’s supposed to bring coffee back to her roommates, and doesn’t. She’s been gone a week without telling anyone where or why. She talks to two guys, and hasn’t been seen since. I have questions.”
“We don’t. The so-called witness didn’t see anything that looked remotely like a kidnapping. Everything else suggests a spur-of-the-moment decision to go somewhere. Plus there’s no motive.”
“Except the reason more women are grabbed than money or politics.”
Yost sighed. “Come on. In a shopping mall, with people all around, rapists grab and run. The victim fights, screams. No one saw anything like that. And any other motive means ransom or hostage, and there would be phone calls.”
He was right, but I owed Marty at least my best shot. “You have the witness’s name and address?”
Yost was interested in the ceiling of his cubicle. He hesitated far longer than I thought normal. “Sure. Frank Goss.” He wrote down the address.
It turned out to be a house buried in vegetation less than half a mile from the mall. When I got there I found an empty garage, and a recessed door with tall plants on both sides that no one opened. I waited in my car, but when Goss still hadn’t come home by 6:00 p.m., I climbed back out and gave the front doorbell one last push. Nothing.
It was growing dark, and I decided to pack it in for the day. It looked more and more like Xiang Fei was off somewhere having fun, and the bad news for Donald could wait until tomorrow.
Still, why had Lieutenant Yost hesitated so long before giving me the name and address of a witness he said had been useless?
In Kay’s new dark blue S-type Jag I’d reached the corner of Frank Goss’s house when a red Mercedes 560SL pulled away from the curb across the street. It had not been there when I arrived, or while I waited, so had to have parked while I was giving the bell that one last ring. Coincidence or a tail?
I placed my SIG-Sauer 9mm on the seat beside me, and led the 560 on a chase along the rapidly darkening back streets, not too fast and not too slow. I found the mall where Xiang Fei had gone for coffee, parked in front of the Starbucks, and went in. I ordered a decaf latte, and sat at a table near the window.
The 560SL was parked three cars up from Kay’s Jag. I carried my latte out to the Jag without looking at the car, and opened the passenger side door. I bent in low out of sight of the Mercedes as if placing the latte into a coffee holder on the floor. Leaving the coffee on the floor and door open, I stayed low and circled to the 560.
Donald Lewis sat in the driver’s seat. When he saw me, he rolled down the window. “Have you found her?”
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I expected a call by now.”
“Did you?” I went around, opened the passenger door, and sat beside him.
For the first time he noticed my missing arm. “Does that make it harder to do your work?”
“It makes everything harder.”
“How-?”
“A crocodile bit it off,” I told him. “Now listen closely. I’ll do your job. From what I’ve learned so far you’re not going to like the result, but you let me handle it, or I quit. No hovering, no tailing, no calling every ten minutes.”
He heard nothing except that he wouldn’t like the result. “You’re the same as all the rest. You don’t believe me.”
“I believe you think she’s been kidnapped, and I believe you’re worried. The police don’t, and so far neither do I. But I’ll work on it until I’m sure. Now go home. When I have something, I’ll call.”
He glared at me as I climbed back out, but when I reached my car I heard the Mercedes start and screech off. An impatient young man who liked his own way.
I drove to the Mirage, and went up to our room. Kay was propped on the bed, shoes off, legs stretched out, a Newcastle Brown in her hand, looking tired.
“How’d the calls go?” I said, sitting in the armchair facing her.
“Sold five gowns, six suits-skirts and pants-and accessories.”
“Good,” I said. “You can play the rest of the time we’re here.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Dinner, a good one on the first night. A show. Back to the room. Not necessarily in that order. Or are you too tired?”
She drained her Newcastle, and smiled. “Not that tired.”
Next morning at 8:00 a.m. I stood on Frank Goss’s doorstep.
“I told the police what I saw. They said it was meaningless.”
“I’m not the police. Tell me.”
“Why the hell should I?”
“Because I’m working for the woman.”
He stared hard at me, then stepped back. We went into a large living room with a cathedral ceiling and good modern furniture. He pointed to a chrome and fabric couch, sat in a matching arm chair. “I’ll tell you exactly what I told them. I saw this tall woman in a long brown skirt, brown boots, and tan jacket. When she got out of her car, these two guys walked up and talked to her.”
So they either knew she was going to Starbucks and were waiting, or they had tailed her. “What kind of car? What did the two guys look like?”
“An old, light blue Dodge Aries. I didn’t get a good look at them. Two white guys like everyone else you see in a mall.”
“Tall or short? Light or dark hair. Formal clothes or casual?”
“Sort of tall, maybe six-feet even. Both of them. One dark-haired. The other wore a baseball cap. Mall clothes. You know, windbreakers, chino slacks, jeans.”