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Colby had told me his version of buying the house and car, but I preferred the version told by Jill Rice because it fit with my bias against Colby and the intelligence Grisnik had picked up from his penitentiary sources. I was already concerned that Colby had been working undercover so long that he couldn’t remember which side he was on. Even if he was telling the truth, I didn’t like that he’d taken advantage of Jill Rice’s efforts to piss off her ex-husband. And, as much as anything else, I didn’t like that he was sleeping with my daughter.

When Colby disappeared and when drugs and cash were found in his house, I saw what Troy saw-an agent that had crossed the line and taken Wendy with him. It was no different than when Joy went looking for our son Kevin in Frank Tyler’s house after Tyler had picked Kevin up at school. When Joy called and told me that Kevin was missing and that she had found Tyler’s collection of child pornography, I was certain about what had happened and I was right.

The discovery of incriminating evidence in Colby’s house was dramatic and timely, fitting Troy’s suspicions and mine, but it could have been planted there just as the photograph of Latrell and the woman had probably been planted in Javy Ordonez’s car. Though I had considered the possibility of a frame-up when Ammara first told me about the drugs and cash, I rejected it because I preferred what I saw on the surface.

Troy had reacted in a similar way to my shaking, my body’s involuntary expressions, as proof that I couldn’t be trusted. He was wrong about me. Perhaps I was wrong about Colby.

If we believe too much too easily, we don’t ask the right questions. I realized that I had made that mistake with Colby’s story. He had said that Jill Rice had called our office looking for someone to buy her husband’s car, but no one had checked our phone records for that incoming call. I called Ammara Iverson.

“How’s Kate?” she asked.

“Still in surgery. Is anyone working late tonight?”

“Everyone is working. There is no late.”

“Have someone check the records of phone calls made to the office in the last six weeks for any calls originating from a land line or cell phone belonging to Jill Rice.”

“Not that it matters since you’re doing such a good job staying out of this case while you’re on medical leave and all, but why?”

“Colby says that he took a call from Jill Rice and that she was looking for someone to buy her ex-husband’s car. Jill Rice says she never made that call. We need to pick a winner in that liar’s match.”

“You have a favorite?”

“I wish I did.”

“I’ll call you when I know something.”

“Who did you find buried in Latrell’s basement?”

“Black female in the fresh grave. We’re checking her prints, but it’s probably Oleta Phillips. There were two skeletons in the second grave, one on top of the other.”

“One of them is probably Latrell’s mother. Anything else interesting turn up?”

“It looks like he was preparing for the end of the world.”

“How’s that?”

“He had enough candles and?ashlights to last a lifetime,” she said.

“What about bottled water, canned goods and dried fruit, stuff like that?”

“Now that you mention it, we didn’t find any. Maybe he was just afraid of the dark.”

“Marty Grisnik stopped by the hospital. Says he saw you at Latrell’s.”

“Yeah. He wasn’t too happy that he was late to the party, but that’s the way Troy is playing it.”

“You bring him up to date on what’s been going on?”

“Sure. Figured that was the best way to get him on our side, but don’t tell Troy.”

“Not a chance. By the way, you say anything to him about Wendy?”

“Yeah. Grisnik asked for her name and a description. Said he wanted his people to help find her. Why? Is that a problem?”

“No. We need all the help we can get.”

“I’ll get back to you on the phone records,” she said and hung up.

The waiting room felt like it was getting smaller. The walls weren’t moving and neither was I. Waiting for Kate to come out of surgery while hoping that my cell phone would ring with good news was a suffocating prospect.

I left my cell phone number with the nurse, who promised to call when I could see Kate. I didn’t know where to look for Wendy, but I was certain that if I could find Colby, I would find her.

If they were being held against their will, I could spend the rest of my life combing the city inch by inch and never find them. If they were hiding, at least one of them would have to come out for food, money, or air. That was likely to be Colby. He wouldn’t go to his house or to Wendy’s apartment because he’d know that the FBI was watching both of those locations, as was anyone else they might be hiding from. Colby would reach out to a friend and I could only think of one person who might qualify.

Chapter Fifty-six

Pete’s Place was not the place to be at midnight on a Friday night. There were only three cars parked anywhere near the door, one of them across the street. It may have been crowded earlier, but it was down to the stragglers. The restaurant next door, Pete’s Other Place, was buttoned down and black. The nearest streetlight was fifty yards to the north, a ball of yellow that splashed on the pavement and quit, leaving the bar buried in the dark, the faint neon glow in the window a pale beacon for anyone looking for a last stop.

The lights inside the bar were milky, the air quilted with smoke. A heavyset man who looked to be in his sixties, his chin on his chest, was passed out in a chair, his head angled against the wall, an empty beer pitcher on the table in front of him. Tanja Andrija was bent over him, patting his face to bring him around.

“C’mon George. Wake up and go home. I’m not running a bed and breakfast.”

George stirred and smiled, trying to grope Tanja. She batted his meaty hand away like he was a child.

“Not tonight, George. You’re too drunk to do me any good and your wife would kill us both, anyway.”

Two other men were seated at the bar. Both had the broad shoulders and over-the-belt-guts of men who’d spent their lives working hard and drinking harder. They lumbered off their stools.

“We’ll get him home, Tanja,” one of them said.

They each slipped an arm around George, hefting him to his feet like he was a sack filled with feathers and air. I sat down at the bar as Tanja opened the door and the trio stumbled into the night.

She closed the door behind them and snapped the dead-bolt, came around to the business side of the bar, and leaned against the far wall framed by bottles of booze, the mirrored wall behind her letting me watch me watch her. She was wearing low-riding jeans that hugged her like they meant it and a deep red T-shirt stretched tight across her breasts. Standing with her elbows on the counter, her ankles crossed, her eyes alive, and her mouth pitched at an inviting angle, she promised trouble. If she were on my calendar, I’d never make it to next month.

Marty Grisnik and Colby Hudson had fallen for her. I could see why. Grisnik was probably not over her all these years later. Colby might not get the chance to forget her.

“You came back,” Tanja said.

“Is that why you locked the door?”

“We’re closed.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I do. Like I said, we’re closed.”

“I don’t want to buy a drink.”

“What do you want?”

“I’m looking for Colby Hudson.”

She looked around the bar. “I don’t see him.”

“Doesn’t mean you don’t know where he is.”

“What did he do? Break curfew?”

“I didn’t say he did anything. I’m just looking for him.”

“He was in here the other day,” she said, turning her back to me. The cash register was next to her. She opened it, removed the cash, and stuffed the money into a bank bag. She zipped it closed, tucked it under her arm, and looked at me in the mirror behind the bar. “Same day you were here. He introduced us. You should remember that.”