Chapter 22
After Hurricane Rita, the sequel to Katrina, left the neighborhood without power and thus without air-conditioning, I stopped talking about getting a generator and actually bought one, storing it in the garage along with some sticky, dust-covered jerry cans of gasoline and gallons of drinking water. Now, instructions in hand, I try to work out how to operate the thing. Never much good with engines or anything mechanical, the challenge soon stumps me, but not enough to summon Tommy down to assist. His repertoire of life skills, augmented by the time he spent in Africa, no doubt includes the function of generators. But I’d better wait at least until Charlotte is gone.
Along with Ann, she plans to weather the storm in style at a Dallas hotel, returning once everything’s back to normal. Her overnight bag is packed, waiting by the front door for her sister’s arrival. She finds me in the garage, frowning at the inscrutable little machine.
“I feel like I’m abandoning you,” she says.
“Don’t. I’ll be happier knowing you’re all right. Besides, if I don’t figure this thing out, it’ll be like an oven inside. You don’t want to go through that again.”
She takes the instructions out of my grease-stained fingers and attempts for a few minutes to make sense of them. Just as she grasps the basic idea and starts explaining, Ann’s Toyota hums quietly up the driveway, a Prius hybrid just like the ones we pretended to be giving away in the cars-for-criminals scam.
“Gotta go,” Charlotte says, pecking me on the lips.
Since the grave visit, she’s been more relaxed. All the static building in her atmosphere suddenly discharged in a flow of quiet tears, and now it’s like the tension never existed. We haven’t had an argument in twenty-four hours. Last night, she stayed up with me instead of going to bed early. Even the sleeping pills have disappeared into the nightstand.
“Be safe,” I call after her.
“You, too.”
The silence following her departure lasts a half minute before Tommy creaks down the side stairs, poking his head through the open garage door. Seeing the coast is clear, he bounds forward with a look of relief.
“Hey, it’s supposed to make landfall sometime tonight,” he says. “Got any big plans?”
“I’ve got to work.” The instructions hang limp in my hand. “You don’t happen to know how to run one of these things, do you?”
He hunches over the generator, a gleam in his eye. “Not exactly. But, hey, we can figure it out, right?”
“You figure it out. I’ll be out to check on you in a minute.”
I leave him to it, going back inside to change. The house in Charlotte’s absence takes on a still, empty air, so I shower and dress quickly, wanting to get back to the case quickly. Hedges gave me a week, which isn’t much to begin with, but if the hurricane proves as disastrous as they’re saying on the news, with massive flooding and power outages, then my week could contract into a day. So I’d better make the most of it.
Before heading downstairs, I glance inside Charlotte’s nightstand to see whether she’s taken the pills with her. The bottle rolls against the front of the drawer. I shut it, my idiot grin reflected back from the dresser mirror.
When the phone rings, I answer without checking the caller ID, expecting Charlotte since the image of her in my mind shines so vividly. The voice is male, though, and after a second I recognize it. The youth pastor, Carter Robb, who I haven’t seen since my late-night visit to his apartment, when I commissioned him with the task of finding the Dyers.
“I just thought I should touch base,” he says. “I managed to get a number from somebody at the church, but it doesn’t seem to work anymore. I do have that picture for you, though.”
“Picture?”
“Of Hannah and Evey Dyer.”
I clear my throat before speaking. “Mr. Robb, I’ve been reassigned.
I’m not working with the task force anymore.”
“Oh.”
“Have you tried calling Detective Cavallo?”
He sighs. “I have, actually. Donna asked me to, trying to get an update. She feels like, with some of the things she said on the news, there might be some bad feelings. I’ve left Detective Cavallo a couple of messages, but I was hoping – ”
“She’s got her hands full,” I say. “But I’m sure she’ll get back to you as soon as she can. And that’s nonsense about bad feelings. The lady’s daughter is missing. She can say whatever she wants.” I want to get rid of this guy, but I feel like I owe him more than a casual brush-off. “Look, what’s the best way to get in touch with you? I can make a couple of calls and let you know what I find out.”
“That would be great,” he says, giving me his mobile number as well as the number of what he calls a community outreach center. “It’s one of the places the youth group did some volunteering. A friend of mine from seminary runs it, and with the storm coming he needs some help down there getting everything secure. I’m planning to spend the night.”
“Where is this place?” I ask.
He gives an address in Montrose, just a few blocks away from the Morgan St. Café. I ask if he’s ever been to the café before, but he’s never even heard of it. It’s a small world, but not that small.
“If I find out anything, I’ll give you a call.”
“Even if you don’t,” he says. “I’d appreciate hearing something, even if it’s nothing.”
When I return to the garage, the generator is already running while Tommy stares long and hard at the electrical box, trying to figure out exactly how to achieve a link-up. Maybe he’ll electrocute himself, I think, which would solve my tenant problem. Then again, he might burn the house down, which is more solution than I’m really looking for.
“Everything all right?”
“Leave it with me,” he says. “I’ll have it going in no time.”
I study him a moment, trying to decide if what I’m seeing is confidence or foolhardiness.
“Fine.” I throw my briefcase in the car and start the engine, rolling the window down to impart some final advice. “Tommy, don’t burn the house down.”
“Not a chance.”
“And don’t electrocute yourself, either.”
Gene Fontenot answers my call in mid-apology, like he started even before pushing the talk button. “I been meaning to call you, man, really I have. It’s right here on my list of things to do.” He thumps his finger on what must be the list. “You gotta forgive me for not being quicker on this, but what can I say? We get a little busy around here. You know how it goes – ”
“Gene,” I say, cutting him off. “It’s fine. I’ve been pretty busy myself. But have you managed to track down this Dyer woman and her daughter?”
“About that . . .” He rustles some papers around. “Here we go. The answer to your question is yes and no. Yes, I found the lady. She got a place over in Kenner, out by the airport. That’s the good news. The bad news is, the daughter Evangeline, she don’t stay there no more. The mother says, once they moved back, the girl, she fell into her old ways. They had a lotta problems, and eventually the girl run away with some boy.”
“She ran away? When was this?”
More rustling, accompanied by some humming. “That woulda been in July sometime?” He turns the sentence up at the end, uncertain. “ ’Bout eight weeks or so ago?”
He gives me the mother’s address and phone number, which I copy into my notebook.
“Thanks, Gene. I owe you one.”
“Take care of yourself with this storm coming in,” he says. “I don’t want you turning up on my doorstep, looking for shelter.”
“This is Texas, Gene. We don’t run.”
He chuckles. “Keep telling yourself that.”
Once I get him off the phone, I give Cavallo a call. She’s surprised to hear that Robb has been leaving messages for her, confessing she’s been too busy to empty her inbox. The weary edge in her voice is enough to convince me. I’m almost reluctant to ask about new developments on the Hannah Mayhew case, but I ask anyway, and she replies with a derisive laugh.
“We were planning a big press conference today, announcing a new reward for any information, but now they’re arguing about whether to reschedule for after the hurricane blows through. People are ‘distracted,’ apparently.”
“What about the actual casework? Anything there?”
“Let me put it this way. All the tips we’ve gotten? We’re getting down to the bottom. Everything’s been followed up. We’ve interviewed over a hundred drivers of white vans like the one in the surveillance footage, even done physical searches of quite a few, and I don’t think we’re any closer to finding Hannah than we were on day one.”
I pass along the news from Gene Fontenot, which seems to irritate her. She makes me repeat everything, then asks for his number so she can call to confirm.
“Don’t worry about Robb,” I tell her. “I’ll call him back.”
“I appreciate that,” she says, her tone communicating the exact opposite. Not that I can hold it against her. She’s on a dead-end assignment, one of those cases destined to be rehashed for years to come on the unsolved-mystery shows, a future footnote for journalists writing about how media coverage negatively impacts major cases. Cavallo has a right to be difficult.
Before calling the youth pastor, I put in an hour at the typewriter before hunting down Wilcox, who’s kept clear of me since his early morning visit to my home. No cubicles for the men and women of Internal Affairs. He has a tiny glass box all to himself, with his name on a plate beside the door. I tap lightly before entering and find him busy typing away, a pair of earphones sealing him off from the outside world. To get his attention, I have to lean across the desk and yank one out.
“What do you want?”
He’s dressed in a glossy blue shirt, his tie knot thick as his throat, with his chalk-striped jacket thrown over the back of his chair. Up close, he even smells nice.
“What I want is a favor, Stephen.”
“Your case is dead, in case you forgot.”
I sit down on the edge of his desk. “The informant may be, but the case sure isn’t.”
The marina surveillance footage warms him up a little, then I slide the sketchbook and the enlarged cell-phone picture across the desk for his inspection. Wilcox is a sharp enough detective not to need everything explained. He flips through the sketchbook, his expression growing thoughtful.
“There’s something I didn’t tell you,” he says. “The finance guy who skipped to Mexico, Chad Macneil? Guess whose money he took with him.”
“Keller’s. I already know.”
His mouth curls down. “Then you probably also know that Keller’s security company rents warehouse space about a block away from where Thomson’s body was found.”
I blink. “What?”
Satisfied with my reaction, he fishes a file out of his desk, paging through it until he reaches a stack of satellite images courtesy of Google Earth with the street grid superimposed. From the air, the long gray rectangles look nearly identical, set apart only by the placement of hvac units and natural variations in the color of roofing gravel. One of them is outlined in yellow highlighter.
“That’s the warehouse Keller rents.”
“What does a security company need warehouse space for?”
“Search me,” he says, trailing his finger across the image. “This road along here, that’s where Thomson’s truck was parked, isn’t it?”
I lean down for a closer look. “That looks to be the spot. There’s a neighborhood across the street, through these trees, and I figured if there was any geographical connection, it would be to the houses.”
“Instead, it’s the warehouse. All of these are owned and managed by the same outfit.”
The layout comes back to me, a complex of gray corrugated buildings hemmed in by fields of concrete and a tall chain-link fence. “There’s a security guard there, a guy by the name of Wendell Cropper. Kind of a strange character, used to be with the department back in the nineties. You know anything about him?”
He shakes his head. “Maybe he saw more than he let on, that’s what you’re thinking?”
“How likely is it, if Keller’s using the facility, that this guy isn’t connected with him somehow? It might be worth bringing him in and sweating him a little more. In the meantime, you ever think about getting a warrant for this warehouse?”
“On what grounds? I’d need to show some probable cause. Besides, the feeling on our team is that something like that would only tip our hand. We’d be taking a big risk. If there’s nothing in that warehouse that shouldn’t be there, Keller would know we’re after him and cover his tracks.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But a warrant is what I’m here for.”
“Not for the warehouse – ?”
I shake my head. “The boat. If that really was a body they dumped, then maybe there’s some trace evidence onboard. Now, if I go through the usual channels, there’s no way they won’t know what’s going on. But you guys, on the other hand, have back doors into the judges’ chambers.”
“You should have come to me sooner,” he says with a laugh. “Trying to find a judge in chambers today is going to be a challenge. They’ve got mansions to board up and yachts to tie down.”
“Maybe we’ll find one down at the marina.”
His smile fades. “It’ll have to wait.”
“If we don’t get in there before the hurricane hits, we could lose the opportunity. They’re talking about Galveston being underwater, Stephen, so I doubt the Kemah Boardwalk is going to be in good shape. I can’t have my smoking gun sinking to the bottom of the sea.”
“The slips can’t be that deep,” he says.
“Come on. I know there are strings you can pull. What’s the point of having a man inside IAD if he doesn’t throw his weight around from time to time?”
After a little token resistance, he gives way. “Fine, March. Whatever you want. But you’re writing it up, not me.”
I slide the warrant across his desk, typed before my visit. He takes it with a rueful smile, glances over the cover page, then reaches for the phone.
Thanks to the floating docks, the boats in the marina rise and fall as the water does, the waves choppy harbingers of the coming storm, as is the cloudy gunmetal sky. The late afternoon wind is electric, thick with humidity, smelling of salt. Wilcox is with me, along with a couple of handpicked officers from Internal Affairs. We check in with the security chief, who’s wearing the same shorts and shirt I remember from before, with a little more stubble around the jowls. He guides us through the network of slips, checking his clipboard from time to time as though he’s forgotten which boat we’re heading for.
The Rosalita is tucked between two newer, larger vessels, its hull pearlescent and dingy from the passage of time. We descend from the pier to the cruiser’s stern, feeling the roll underfoot, then advance beneath the open-backed enclosure that shelters the wheel. In spite of his portly form, the security chief moves in easy strides. The rest of us, already gloved, reach for the nearest handholds to keep our balance.
“If you think this is bad,” he says, “just you wait.”
The cabin door is securely locked, but we’ve brought along an officer who specializes in surreptitious entry. After a couple of minutes crouched at the door, he announces victory, stepping aside to let Wilcox pass. My ex-partner pauses, motioning me forward.
“Ladies first,” he says.
A narrow row of steps leads into the cramped cabin, which reminds me more of a fiberglass bathtub insert than the opulently appointed, wood-paneled abode I was imagining. There’s a tight banquette molded into one side, complete with folding table, and a set of storage cubbies on the other, lit only by a row of narrow dirty windows that pierce the hull. I fumble along the wall for a light switch, but if there is one, I don’t find it.
“I hope nobody’s claustrophobic,” I say.
The cabin smells damp and a little fishy, but the surfaces gleam cleanly in the dimness. At the far end, behind a tiny door, I find a cleverly compartmentalized shower and toilet small enough to make an airplane restroom seem vast in comparison. The others file in, and somebody finds the lights. Fully illuminated, the cabin reminds me a bit of a camper my uncle used to keep in the driveway when I was a kid. The idea of it seemed cool, but whenever I went inside, I couldn’t wait to get out again.
We search slowly, methodically, using flashlights to illuminate every crack and crevice, causing as little disturbance as possible. It doesn’t take long, because there’s so little ground to cover. A minute or two into the hunt, I begin to lose hope. There won’t be anything here. They brought the body – assuming it was a body – already bagged. Salazar’s truck, assuming that’s where she bled out, might yield a treasure trove of blood evidence, but by the time they reached the boat, the body would have been squared away. At best, this search might allow me to cross another possibility off the list, but there’s nothing – “Sir.”
One of the IAD officers kneels at the foot of the built-in cabinets, his arm shoulder-deep inside, cheek flat against the frame. He squints in concentration, then jerks back, pulling something loose with a ripping sound. His hand reappears, clutching a bundle wrapped in layers of thick plastic sheeting, secured by strips of duct tape.
Wilcox takes the package to the folding table, carefully unwinding the plastic. He stops halfway through, once the object’s form becomes obvious. I move in, uncoiling the rest of the sheet, removing the final layer aware that no one in the cabin is so much as breathing.
The boat rocks. We sway a little. Our eyes remain fixed on the table. Under the pile of plastic, resting unevenly, lies a blued sig Sauer P229. On the exposed side of the chamber, visible through the cutout of the ejection port, the barrel is stamped BAR STO .357 SIG.
“Is that what I think it is?” Wilcox asks.
Nobody answers. Nobody even breathes.
Driving home late that evening, I remember Carter Robb. Instead of calling, I flip through my notebook for the address he gave me, stopping by on the way. I find him with a group of other men, all stripped to the waist, nailing plywood sheets across the windows of a two-story brick building that could pass for the scrawny cousin of the one housing the Morgan St. Café. The ground floor is done, and now they’ve mounted ladders to reach the second, the work illuminated by shop lights in the yard, since the streetlamps are too far away. The boom box is tuned to ktru, only audible during lulls in the hammering.
I call up to Robb, who shimmies down the ladder and snatches a black T-shirt from a pile on the ground, using it to wipe the sweat from his face.
“I thought you forgot about me,” he says.
“I did.”
There must be a residual glow on my face, left over from the discovery at the marina, because Robb perks up all the sudden.
“Something’s happened?”
“Not with Hannah, no. I just happened to be in the neighborhood so I stopped by. The truth is, the task force is waiting for new developments.”
He nods slowly. “So we’re back where we started.”
“There is one thing. I talked to a friend in New Orleans and had him track down the Dyer family. According to the mother, Evangeline Dyer ran away from home again. I know you said she’d done it before. She left eight weeks ago. I haven’t spoken to the mother myself, but I have her contact information, assuming you’d want it.”
“I should call her,” he says.
I copy the information onto a blank sheet of my notebook, ripping the page out and handing it to him. He studies the writing, though his eyes don’t seem to focus on the numbers. More like he’s looking through the page, or seeing something reflected on it.
“I should call her,” he says again.
Over his shoulder, the other workers have knocked off for the moment, keeping their distance but clearly interested in our conversation. I glance their way, prompting Robb to turn as if noticing them for the first time. He waves a hand toward the building.
“This is the outreach center.”
“And what is that, exactly?”
He cocks his head to one side, smiling faintly. “The idea is to provide an encounter space. People from the church, people from the surrounding community, all coming together to talk. Not just about religion, but life. Everything under the sun.”
“I thought it was more of a homeless shelter.”
One of the others, a friendly, broad-chested man of about thirty-five, with sunken eyes and a wooden cross around his neck, steps forward to join us, chuckling at what I’ve just said.
“A homeless shelter would probably be of more use these days, but what can I say?” He shrugs in an outsized, eloquent way. “This is the vision God gave me. ‘If you build it, they will come.’ ”
“Do they?”
He seesaws his hand in the air. “We host some book clubs that are pretty popular.”
“There’s a lot of that going around,” I say, remembering the women gathered at the Morgan St. Café. I pat Robb on the bicep and turn to go.
“Oh, wait,” he says, digging in his back pocket. He removes his wallet, shuffles through a wad of folded receipts, and finally produces a folded photograph. “Here you go.”
I hold the picture up to the light. Hannah, radiant in the camera’s flash, smiles invitingly, her hand thrown lazily around the shoulder of another girl, her face half concealed behind a lump of matte black hair, a bad dye job maybe, her one visible eye rimmed thickly in dark liner. Evey Dyer raises two fingers to the lens, her nails painted black. Whoever snapped the photo probably assumed this was a peace sign, but from my Anglophile ex-partner, I know the gesture she’s flashing is rude.
“Thanks,” I tell him, tucking the picture away. “So you took your youth group to this place for their summer trip?”
Robb nods. “We helped fix the place up, went out in the community to get the word out, hosted a couple of get-acquainted parties.”
“And it was much appreciated,” the other man says. “I’m Murray Abernathy, by the way.” His handshake has a lot of power behind it. “Resident dreamer.”
The three of us stand there in the quickening wind, my jacket whipping around my hips. The sky rumbles overhead, prompting us all to look up momentarily.
“You met Hannah Mayhew, Mr. Abernathy? And her friend Evan-geline Dyer?”
“Hard to miss those two,” he says, still gazing overhead. “They really helped out a lot here. It’s a terrible thing, what’s happened to Hannah. We’re praying she gets home safe.”
“Evey ran away,” Robb says under his breath, causing the other man to deflate.
As I turn to go, the first fat drops of rain start to fall. One breaks cool against my neck. Robb knits his eyebrows as another splashes the bridge of his nose. Within seconds the clouds open and the rain drills down on us. Everyone in the yard moves closer to the building, sheltering under the eaves.
Everyone but me.
I reach my car door, glancing back in time to see Robb, his hair plastered against his scalp, ascending the ladder again, rain-battered, his face pointing heavenward.