“If I didn’t know better, Mr. Logan, I’d say you’re trying to coerce a sworn peace officer.”
“I prefer to call it a quid pro quo.”
Streeter drew out a long, slow breath over the phone. “I can’t promise an hour,” he said, “but I’ll see what I can do.”
I hung up and stood at the window, gazing out at the white-flocked Currier and Ives landscape. Streeter had asked me how I knew about kidnapping survival statistics. I wasn’t about to tell him that of the seven authorized rescue missions I’d participated in as a member of Alpha to rescue the victims of kidnappings, only two resulted in those victims returning home alive. The last mission had been the worst: an airborne insertion into eastern Yemen to save two American missionaries taken hostage by extremists. One of the kidnappers detonated a suicide vest at the last minute as we moved in, blowing himself and the two missionaries to pieces.
I blinked the bloody image from my head.
Where are you, Savannah?
The Kavitches insisted I pay for the door jamb that I’d wrecked, and demanded that I check out by noon. Weirdly, they didn’t seem the least bit concerned or even interested in Savannah’s welfare. I told them I was sorry for damaging their home and for casting aspersions on their son, Preston, even if he was a creepy slacker. Repentance is a demonstration of wisdom as far as Buddhists are concerned. Admitting guilt and accepting responsibility for one’s actions are supposed to lessen the effect of negative karma. Selfishly, I hoped that my feigning contrition would bring Savannah back. But I’d racked up more than my share of negative karma over the years. It would take a lot, I knew, to balance the scales.
Are we rewarded, ultimately, for the good we do in life? What about when we do bad things for ostensibly good reasons? If you pump two rounds into the head of a sociopathic jihadist at point-blank range as he enjoys oysters on the half shell at an upscale French restaurant in Cairo, and one of those rounds exits his skull, killing his otherwise innocent, twenty-two-year-old mistress, does bad erase good? I didn’t know. I still don’t.
The sheriff’s print technician arrived at 0925, crunching into the snowy parking lot of the B&B in a silver Toyota Camry. The car had chains on the front tires. The technician wore UGG boots, gray leggings, and a military-style parka, the hood trimmed in fake wolf fur. With her briefcase kit in hand, she flipped open her ID with a flourish and showed it to me as I opened the door. Brown unkempt hair. Small brown eyes. She was petite and looked about twenty-five. I didn’t catch her name.
“I don’t know what was so important that I had to drop everything on my day off and race over here,” she said, striding past me, inside. “I’m missing my Pilates class.”
I shut the door behind her. “I’m missing more than that.”
She asked me if I’d touched anything. Door knobs? Plumbing fixtures? Wood surfaces?
“All of the above.”
“What about this?” She stooped at the waist and peered closely without handling an empty drinking glass sitting on a nightstand, the side of the bed Savannah slept on.
“Not that I recall,” I said.
She opened her kit, got out a small brush, a cold-cream-size jar of finely ground carbon powder, and went to work while I threw on my leather pilot’s jacket and went for a walk.
The thermometer had dipped into the high teens. I was sweating. Savannah was in trouble. I could feel it. The urge to take control of the situation, to do something, was overpowering. In my wallet was a dog-eared picture of her, wearing long gold earrings and a strapless, sparkly purple gown, taken on the day we first met, at the wedding reception for my Air Force Academy roommate. She was unquestionably the most exquisite woman I’d ever known. Even after our divorce, I couldn’t bring myself to part with her picture. Sometimes at night, when sleep eluded me, I would take it out and gaze for hours at her perfect face to remind myself how much her leaving had wounded me, hoping my bitterness would swell such that I could force her out of my head once and for all, forever. Only the strategy never seemed to work. The pleasure I derived from staring at Savannah’s likeness, knowing that she was once mine, outweighed the pain of having lost her. So I kept the photo. And, now, walking residential streets near the Tahoe lakefront, my hair and beard wet with snow, I stopped to show it to anybody who was willing to look at it.
“Have you seen this woman this morning?”
Nobody had, but everyone I approached expressed concern and assured me that they’d all keep a sharp eye out for her.
A wispy Filipino mail carrier in his US Postal Service Jeep spent five minutes telling me in great detail how his own sister had gone to get milk and eggs at a corner market in Fresno one morning and never came home.
A kindly looking grandfather walking his golden retriever remarked how beautiful Savannah looked in the photo, joking that it would be his lucky day to find her before I did.
A big, rangy-looking sewer cleanout technician wearing a beat-up straw cowboy hat felt compelled to give me a lesson on the fundamental differences between men and women. He was stowing his Roto-Rooter machine in his van and quickly closed the back doors as I approached, like he was in a big hurry to get to his next service call — but not too busy to chat after I showed him Savannah’s picture. “Dwayne” was stitched above the left pocket of his stained denim work shirt. He looked to be in his mid-forties.
“You know how women can get sometimes,” he said. “My wife’s no different. Always mad at me for no logical reason, running her mouth, then running off to her mother’s. A day later, she’s back, all lovey-dovey.” Dwayne rested a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Dime to a dollar yours’ll be back soon enough, too. If I happen to see her around town, I’ll be sure and tell her you’re looking for her.”
I thanked him and moved on.
“Is she, like, in trouble or something?” a high school kid on Sacramento Avenue wanted to know, pausing from shoveling out snow from his parents’ driveway to look at the picture.
“Very possibly.”
“That sucks.” He dug a phone out from under his metallic purple snowboarding jacket and asked me for my number. “I’ll hit you up if I see her around.”
“ ’Preciate it.”
I kept going, wandering among businesses along Harrison Avenue.
Nobody had seen anything.
Nobody knew anything.
It was approximately 1130 hours when I left the offices of the Tahoe Daily Tribune, where a news reporter named Diane Fairbanks who looked like she’d just graduated from journalism school snapped a photo of me holding the photo of Savannah and said she’d try to get something into the newspaper the next day. Diane seemed intimidated by my presence. I couldn’t help but wonder if her promises were intended more than anything to get me to leave.
I’d left the paper seconds earlier and was walking down the sidewalk, not at all sure where I was headed next, when I heard tires crunch in the snow behind me and turned to see an El Dorado County sheriff’s Wrangler. Streeter rolled down the driver’s window and stuck his head out.
“Tried calling you,” he said. “You didn’t answer.”
“Could be because I need to go to grad school to figure out how my phone works. What’s up?”
“Just wanted to let you know we’ve notified every local law enforcement agency to be on the lookout for your lady. The print tech’s wrapping things up back at your room. We’ll get results soon as we can.”
“OK.”
He cocked his head and gave me a hard look. “You didn’t have anything to do with any of this, did you?”
“Any of what?”
“Her disappearance.”