Rage Against the Dying

Thirty-nine





Had she actually been home all this time and was just ignoring me? Feeling half-stupid and half on edge, I left my car parked in the street, decided on the .38 just to be on the safe side, and approached the vehicle cautiously, the way a cop does when they’ve stopped a motorist, as if someone might sit up in the backseat and start firing. I could see nothing through the windows and used the edge of my T-shirt to test the doors.

I found the driver’s side unlocked, and that put me further on alert. No cop would ever, under any circumstances, leave their vehicle unlocked outside, even in their own driveway. Coleman would probably lock hers if she had it in the garage.

I wedged my pistol into the back of my jeans to give the inside of the car a quick once over and found nothing, not so much as a muffin crumb from breakfast on the road. I popped the trunk, which was similarly empty except for a collapsible lawn chair and a few reusable shopping bags. It was a second bad sign that I was able to get into the trunk.

Nothing more to discover there, so I turned my attention to the house. All window shades drawn both against the heat and as security. The front door was locked. This part was as it should be. To make myself less conspicuous, I went through a low gate on the right side to the back of the house, where I found a French door leading into the living room.

I didn’t bother to knock, just in case someone inside was not Coleman. I broke in, no fancy technique, just used a rock on one of the small panes in the door, reached through to the bolt lock. If someone inside was not Coleman the breaking glass would have alerted them, so I stepped in carefully, weapon drawn, and checked the place out.

The house felt warm and a little stuffy, like when someone goes on vacation and leaves the AC on eighty-five. I wandered quickly through the rooms, growing quickly aware that I was alone, and taking just a few minutes to get some sense of her that might help me. Coleman decorated the way she worked, by the book, or in this case, by the catalog. The place was strictly Bed, Bath, and Beyond, white towels, and bed-in-a-bag. Everything except the towels were shades of brown and geometry.

The bedroom was plain and spare, with a window overlooking the front yard. A collection of photographs including one of her family, presumably, hung on the wall. It made me doubt that Coleman brought Royal Hughes to her bedroom. As a rule, people do not have sex in the same room with photos of their mother smiling on them.

The small walk-in closet held two more suits like the ones I’d seen her wear and a dozen long-sleeved silkish blouses that all looked too hot for Arizona. Some casual clothes, too; jeans, cotton blouses, and a raggedy maroon bathrobe with the chenille ridges wearing away.

Nothing but over-the-counter drugs in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, and she went for the cheap moisturizer, shampoo, and toothpaste. The shower was very clean, the plastic shower curtain had no water drops, which I found neat to the point of weirdness but that’s just me.

Back in the living room I noticed a put-together desk with a blotter that made me smile despite my concerns. Only Coleman would still use a blotter. On top of it rested a laptop computer and a few black binders whose edges were aligned parallel to the edge of the desk, all the clutter Coleman would allow. I recognized the cardboard box containing Floyd’s reading material that we had brought from the Lynch’s, set neatly beside the desk. Heaven forbid Coleman would fail to bring it in from her trunk.

It should have been pretty easy to find what I was looking for, but I rifled through the two small drawers finding nothing but pens and pencils—oh God, they were lined up side by side by length in descending order. She was more compulsive than I’d thought. Calculator, roll of stamps, a can of compressed air for cleaning her keyboard. I went into the larger file drawers beneath. Tax returns filed by year. They still weren’t paying agents what they were worth. A six-year-old passport, with only one stamp for Cancun five years ago, listed her birthplace as Henderson, North Carolina, and her birth date as May 12, 1979.

I finally found what I was looking for next to the phone in the kitchen, on a small bench at the end of the counter. I flipped through the lime-green leather address book. Like me, she didn’t seem to have any friends. The entries, written in pencil, were few. Her dentist and doctor. Eva’s hair salon. What looked like her brother back in North Carolina. Page after page of blanks. Not even anyone from the office. Except under the Rs, there were the initials RH and a number. Coleman was so afraid of being found out she wouldn’t even write his whole name in her address book.

I used her home phone to call the number. Royal Hughes answered very quickly.

“Yes?”

“When was the last time you saw Laura Coleman?” I asked.

“Who is this?”

“Brigid Quinn.”

“What are you doing…?”

“Where?” I asked.

“There,” he hedged.

So he knew her home number by heart when it appeared on caller ID. “When was the last time you saw Laura Coleman?”

“I don’t want you calling my home, Agent Quinn.”

“I’m getting a little angry here. When was the last time you saw Laura Coleman?” I repeated.

“At the Lynch crime scene. I told you. You shouldn’t call my home. I’m hanging up now.”

I heard a voice in the background, “Honey? Can you do Bill’s piano lesson today?”

I had no idea where he lived, but I pressed my advantage. “You’re a liar, and I’m close enough so if you hang up I’m coming over there to put a tire iron through your double-paned windows before you can call nine-one-one, and let you do the explaining. When was the last time you saw Laura Coleman?”

He paused, must have felt that in his position it was wiser not to resist me, plus those double-paned windows are really expensive. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I swear to God, not since the crime scene. It was all over more than a year ago. Why?”

“I think Coleman’s been abducted.” There, I said it.

No oh my God, or what the f*ck, just, “What makes you think that?”

I heard the voice in the background, less distinct this time. He had probably moved outside as we talked.

“Her car is here.”

“Oh for pete’s sake, she rented a car or flew somewhere,” Hughes said, and hung up.

Like I said, no friends. If that’s how Hughes responded, especially given current attitudes toward me, I wouldn’t get any more traction with Max Coyote or Roger Morrison. I was on my own.

Assuming she still had her maiden name I looked under the Cs in her address book and found Ben and Emily Coleman at the Paloma Vista Retirement Center, with an address and phone number.

Only I didn’t call the number directly. Not wanting to alarm her parents I called directory assistance instead and got the main number at the center, asked to speak with the manager.

“I’m calling to ask about one of your residents,” I said.

“I’m sorry. We don’t give out any information on our residents.”

“I’m a family member, and I’m just calling to inquire after Emily Coleman’s health.”

“I’m sorry. Perhaps you could call their number directly. We don’t give out any information on our residents.”

“Could you tell me whether their daughter has been there within the past three days?”

“I’m sorry. We don’t give out any information on our residents.”

“Is this a real person I’m talking to?”

“Yes, and we don’t give out any information on our residents.”

Why can’t anything be easy? I hung up, took the address book with me, and set out for Paloma Vista.