Time telescoped, expanded, telescoped again. Pain, stiffness, fatigue forced her to stop and rest at four- and five-minute intervals. And every time she heard a noise outside, any noise, her heart skipped a beat and she stopped again, to listen for Lemoyne.
But he didn’t come.
As if he’d completely lost interest in them, forgotten they were in here. Not that she believed that for a second. No hope in that notion. He’d come for them sooner or later. And when he did they better not be here.
Slow-rocking that pan back and forth, back and forth.
And still no Lemoyne.
And still that screw wouldn’t come out, that fucking stubborn little hunk of metal standing between them and freedom would not come out…
24
We searched the house top to bottom, a fast, professional toss. And we did it with the lights on. The only person they were liable to attract at this late hour was Robert Lemoyne, and I wanted him to walk in on us. Real bad, I wanted it.
KIDNAPPED CHILD
Had to be a young child, a little girl judging from the scatter of toys in that basement room. How young? Five, six, seven? Not as old as Emily, but it could’ve been Emily-any kid was vulnerable these days. Thinking that made me all the more furious.
All right. Three possibilities in this case. Lemoyne had a daughter and the second of his ex-wives had custody; it could be one of those things. But the basement room, the padlocks on the door and the closet door, argued against a family snatch. If the victim was the child of somebody he knew, it was likely a onetime thing. If the victim was unknown to him, it was likely a worst-case scenario. Serial pedophile. Maybe a serial killer. One of those subhuman monsters who preyed on children for their own sick gratification and then broke them and threw them away.
In any case, Tamara had stumbled into it. Saw something that made her suspicious enough to run the background check, and then last night made some kind of blunder that landed her in his hands. Her and the kid, locked up in the basement room, and the only thing she could do was leave a desperate message on the closet wall. And today TAKING US TO TRAILER IN THE WOODS
Where? Could be anyplace. Northern California, southern California, Oregon, Nevada… any damn place in the country. There were no unpaid bills to give us a clue, and no receipts; either Lemoyne got rid of them or stored them somewhere-not in the garage because Runyon found a key and went out there to check. No other clues around, either. And no sign of Tamara’s credit cards or driver’s license; he’d probably tossed them into a trash bin after abandoning the Toyota. There wasn’t any child porn or sick souvenirs or anything along those lines-not that that meant much one way or another. Just those crayoned words on the closet wall. And they still weren’t enough to bring in the cops yet.
In the living room, while Runyon continued to poke around, I called Mick Savage on my cell phone. “New developments,” I told him. “Better you don’t know the details. How deep have you gotten into Robert Lemoyne’s background?”
“Pretty deep, but there’s nothing so far.”
“He own a second home anywhere?”
“No way,” Mick said. “He doesn’t even own the one in San Leandro. Long-term lease.”
“What about ties or access to rural property of some kind? A hunting or fishing club he belongs to, for instance.”
“Uh-uh. He’s not a joiner, isn’t even registered to vote.”
“His ex-wife, the second one, the mother of his daughter… what’s her name?”
“Mia Canfield.”
“Didn’t you tell me she’s from someplace rural?”
“More or less. Little town called Rough and Ready, near Grass Valley.”
“And Lemoyne lived there with her while they were married?”
“Right, he did.”
“See if you can find out if she’s still in Rough and Ready. If not, where she’s living now. In any case, on what kind of property and if it’s a house or a trailer.”
“You mean a mobile home?”
“Trailer,” I said. “Trailer in the woods.”
“I’m on it,” Mick said. “Call you back as soon as I have something.”
Runyon had been listening. He said as I pocketed the cell phone, “Stay here or wait outside?”
“In here. Lights off.”
We went around the place throwing switches, returned to the living room by flashlight. I checked the street outside. Quiet, sleeping. All the houses I could see were dark now. We settled down to wait on opposite ends of an old couch with squeaky springs.
Sitting there, I had a flashback to the time, years ago, when I was a kidnap victim-taken at gunpoint by a man I’d sent to prison, driven to a remote mountain cabin, chained to a wall, and left there to die. Three months I’d spent alone and shackled in that cabin, during which time I’d nearly lost both my sanity and my humanity. Time had built a wall around that period of suffering, brick by brick, and the wall had gotten thick enough so I seldom thought or dreamed about those lost months anymore. But Tamara’s abduction had breached the wall, allowed the images and emotions to leak through.
Here one day, gone the next-suddenly, without warning. Family, lovers, friends, business associates left wondering, desperate for news and dreading what the news might be. So much of that kind of lunacy these days, the high-profile cases like Chandra Levy and Laci Peterson, all the low-profile tragedies that never came to the attention of the media or were ignored because they weren’t sensational enough. Some disappearances never explained, others resolved after months or years and too often with grisly results. Even the high-profile cases quickly shunted aside in favor of the next one to come along; human beings forgotten except by their families and the compilers of statistics. That was what would’ve happened in my case, if I hadn’t managed to escape from that cabin and track down the man who put me there; and at that, the media splash following my return had lasted only a short while and now the incident was remembered by only the few who had been directly affected. It hurt like hell, remembering and thinking of Tamara going through the same kind of thing I’d endured, of her becoming just one more statistic-missing and never found, victim of foul play…
Runyon was saying something. “What was that, Jake?”
“Thinking out loud. If Mick can’t find a lead, then what?”
“No choice. We’ll have to take it to the law.”
“Could mean trouble for us. Tamara’s message might not be enough to justify criminal trespass.”
“I know it. Too many missing persons and child abductions these days, and in this goddamn litigious society everybody’s afraid of a lawsuit. The law can’t push as hard as it used to, or afford to give as much latitude to get the job done. They… ah, Christ.”
Runyon said nothing, but it was plain he felt the same.
“If they do try to bust our chops,” I said, “I’ll take full responsibility. Right now I don’t give a damn about my license, but there’s no reason you should have yours suspended.”
“The hell with that. Joint decision, joint responsibility.”
“Mick better come up with something, and fast. I want it to keep being up to us, Jake. Until we know one way or the other about Tamara and the child.”
“So do I.”
One way or the other. Alive or already dead.
When the cell phone went off, I was in that shutdown, half-dozing state you can sometimes drift into in a situation like this, brought on by a combination of inertia and an overload of tension. The noise sat me bolt upright on the couch, fuzzy-headed for a couple of seconds until I realized what it was. I muttered a profanity and dragged the thing out of my pocket.
“Got something,” Mick said. “Mia Canfield Lemoyne owns rural property in Rough and Ready, inherited it from her father. Looks like that’s where she and Lemoyne lived when they were married.”
“Still living there now?”