He knew then, without a doubt, that when the time came, he would have a way of losing them. That little piece of knowledge, like coming out of the doctor’s office with the news that it wasn’t cancer after all but just a meaningless little cyst, made his breakfast one of the most enjoyable in memory.
He tipped the waitress an extra two dollars, then returned to his motel room, not caring if the dark blue Ford was on his heels or still parked at the curb half-a-block back. He had told himself, nearly promised himself, that today would be the day, but suddenly that didn’t seem as urgent as it had just a short time ago. When the time came he would know it and escape would no longer be a problem.
Michael set the bolt lock behind him, took up the list of friends and acquaintances he had started yesterday and sat on the edge of the bed. The list had grown nearly two pages long as one lead had taken him to another. By now, though, most of the names had been scratched off. No one in their old circle of friends had a clue as to Teri’s possible whereabouts. In fact, no one seemed to have had much contact with her at all over the past five or six years. She had just drifted away, as it had been described to him time and again. Michael understood perfectly well what that was like.
He folded back the top page of the pad and took a long look at the scribbling underneath. As new names had occurred to him, he had added them at the bottom, and as he looked at the list now, he realized most of the added names belonged to people neither he nor Teri had seen in years. These had been their friends back in their college days.
At the top of the list was Peggy Landau.
Michael dialed the number he had found in the phone book, then leaned back against the headboard and listened as the other end of the line rang three times before being picked up.
“Hello?” It was a man’s voice.
“Yes. I was wondering if I could speak with Peggy Landau, please.”
“Who is this?”
“My name is Michael Knight. We’re old college friends.”
There was a pause on the other end, and as sometimes happens in life, Michael suddenly had a very clear, very intuitive impression of who he was talking to and what had happened. He did not want to believe it for a moment, though, and instead tried to push it out of his mind.
“N-i-g-h-t?” the voice asked.
“With a ‘k’,” Michael said. “You mind telling me who I’m speaking with?”
“This is Lieutenant Sterns. Can you give me an address and phone number where I can reach you?”
Michael explained that he was from out of town and that he was currently staying at a motel. Uneasiness squirmed its way into his voice and his throat tightened up as he gave the man the motel’s address, the room number, and the telephone number. Then he closed his eyes and asked a question of his own, the words barely audible out of his mouth. “What’s this all about, lieutenant?”
“Your friend’s had an accident. I’m sorry.”
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Why else would you be there, answering the phone?”
“There could be lots of reasons, Mr. Knight. Why did you assume she was dead?”
“Just tell me… she is, isn’t she?”
“Yes. She is. I’m sorry.”
The air emptied out of his lungs as if he had been hit in the gut with a football, and he fell back against the headboard, trying to catch enough air to take another breath.
“Mr. Knight?”
He swallowed hard. “Yeah?”
“You want to tell what you were calling about?”
[94]
Walt had known it would be wearisome. That was the nature of the business. Any kind of investigative work requiring a stakeout was going to be wearisome. You had to like cramped spaces and eating on the run and listening to talk radio. You had to live and breathe and sleep on someone else’s schedule. Your time was their time. He had always found it to be like that, and this instance was proving to be no exception.
Childs had left the house a little after seven-thirty this morning and had arrived at the clinic just before eight. He had taken a different route this morning, down Fremont and over to El Camino West. And wasn’t that an unusual thing for a man to do? Most people tended to stick to their routines. Still, Walt cautioned himself not to read into it.
The car windows were down, a lazy afternoon breeze filtering through.
Walt glanced up from his newspaper, looked at the back door of the clinic, and went back to reading about USAir Flight 427 that had crashed outside of Pittsburgh. It had been a quiet morning at the clinic. Maybe half-a-dozen patients had come through. The last had been a woman who had appeared to be in her early sixties and in fine health. She had left nearly twenty minutes ago and no one else had come or gone since.
It was one-fifteen now.
Walt dropped the paper again, giving debate to the idea of running around the corner and grabbing a hamburger at the Bartel’s Drive-Thru. He thought if he hurried he could make it in a little under ten minutes, over and back. But of course, as soon as he rounded the corner, Childs would come bounding out of the clinic, climb into his Buick, and be off and running. Wasn’t that the way it always went?
“Come on, doc. Take me to your leader.”
If there was a leader.
The truth of the matter was he had no way of knowing at this point. There was little doubt that Childs was involved somehow. The question was: how big was his role? Was he the guy at the top or some flunky in the middle?
The back door to the clinic slowly swung open.
Walt sat up, feeling an instant surge of adrenaline.
“’Bout time.”
Childs emerged, carrying a briefcase in one hand. It was the same briefcase he had brought from home this morning, and Walt wondered if it meant that the doctor’s day at the clinic had officially concluded. Childs crossed the lot and climbed into his Buick.
Walt rolled up the windows.
“Come on, make it worth my while, you turkey.”
He had no idea how worth his while it would actually turn out to be.
[95]
Teri sank back on the couch, feeling tired. Her neck ached. She had slept on it wrong last night and gradually throughout the day it had grown stiffer and stiffer. It didn’t help that Gabe had been out there somewhere, on his own, for nearly five days now.
“Uh-huh,” she said, switching the phone from one ear to the other.
She was talking to Peter Brenner, one of the old college gang. She’d had a crush on Peter once, in her sophomore year before she’d met Michael. It had never gone anywhere. Peter had had his eyes on Drew. They were married now, with four children, two boys and two girls. Their first daughter, Kala, as Teri had just learned had become one of the disappeared in April ’85, less than a month after Gabe’s disappearance. Kala had never returned home.
“I’m sorry. I’m trying to get this straight in my mind. Where were you and Drew living when Kala disappeared?”
“That was about a year after we first moved to Houston.”
“And you hadn’t been back this way?”
“No,” Peter said. “Still haven’t. Drew’s parents are out here and we’ve kind of settled in like natives. Except for that Southern drawl, which I think we’ve both come to envy.”
“Sounds wonderful.”
“It has been. Everything except for Kala.”