The Innocent

Chapter





86


THEY DIDN’T DRIVE to the bank but instead went straight to Gabriel Siegel’s house. His wife was waiting at the door as they pulled into the driveway. Robie led them up to the front porch. The woman looked at him strangely until she saw Vance behind him.

“We’re partners,” Vance said curtly. “Robie, this is Alice Siegel.”

“Mrs. Siegel, we’re here to help find your husband.”

Alice Siegel nodded, her eyes brimming with tears. When she caught sight of Julie she once more looked confused. “Who is she?”

Robie said, “It’s not something we can go into right now, ma’am. Can we go inside?”

Alice stepped back and let them pass through into the house. They settled in chairs around the living room.

Robie looked around. The interior had been done mostly on the cheap. But it was neat and clean and functional. The Siegels were clearly frugal. The bank probably didn’t pay that much. But the Siegels obviously stretched dwindling dollars as far as they could go, just like millions of other families were doing right now.

Vance opened the conversation. “So you said he received a phone call and then walked out. Any idea who called him?”

“No one at the bank knows. I was hoping the call could be traced.”

“Did it come to his line at the bank or his cell phone?”

“His office line. That’s how they knew he had gotten the call.”

“But if it came to the office didn’t someone at the bank ask who was calling your husband?”

“I think they just put the calls through. It’s a business, after all. I guess the person who answered just assumed Gabe would want the call. They don’t have a formal receptionist or anything. Banks don’t really do that anymore. They’ve scaled back.”

“So your husband told me,” said Robie. “Did the person at the bank say it was a man or a woman?”

“A man. Are you going to go there? I mean, isn’t the trail getting cold?”

“We’ll cover that end, Mrs. Siegel,” said Vance. “But no crime has been committed. And your husband isn’t technically missing. He went off apparently of his own free will.”

“But he didn’t come back. He just walked out. That’s not normal.”

“Could he have had an accident?”

“His car is still in the parking lot.”

“So he might have walked off,” said Robie. “Or gotten a ride from whoever called him. Have you tried calling his cell phone?”

“Twenty times. I texted him too. Nothing back. I’m very worried.”

Robie eyed her closely. “Is there a reason why he would have just walked off like that?”

“The phone call. It must be.”

Vance added, “But we don’t know that the two events are connected. He might have been planning to walk off anyway. The timing of the call might just be a coincidence.”

“But why?”

Robie said, “He mentioned to me that you were both worried he might lose his job at the bank.”

“Well, walking out like that is a pretty good way to ensure that he will lose his job,” snapped Alice.

“And you’re sure he didn’t try to contact you? On your cell? Maybe on your hard line?”

“We don’t have a hard line. We cut that out when Gabe’s pay was reduced last year.”

“Can you think of any reason why your husband would just up and walk off like that?”

She eyed him suspiciously. “Well, you came to talk to him. And then he disappeared. Maybe you can tell me the reason.”

That was fair enough, thought Robie.

“Your husband was in the Army during Gulf One,” he began.

“Is that what this is about? But he’s been out of the military for years.”

“He was a member of a squad,” continued Robie. “We were interested in that squad.”

“Why?”

Robie hesitated and glanced at Vance. She said, “We were just interested, Mrs. Siegel. We wanted to ask your husband if he’d been in touch with anyone from his old squad.”

“I know that he knew Elizabeth Claire Van Beuren. They had kept in touch.”

“We know about her.”

“She’s dying.”

“We know that too,” said Vance. “Anybody else he ever mention?”

“A few names from time to time. Hard to remember.”

“Leo Broome? Rick Wind? Curtis Getty? Jerome Cassidy?” prompted Robie.

“Getty, yes, that name I recall. Gabe said they had been close, but he hadn’t seen him since he’d come back. Rick Wind sounds familiar. The thing is, Gabe didn’t talk much about his military time. He was terrified that he was going to die because of the toxic conditions they fought in over there. There are soldiers dropping left and right and the Army won’t even acknowledge there is a thing such as Gulf War syndrome. After Elizabeth got sick he went into a deep depression. He thought a lot of her. He was convinced he would be next.”

Julie said, “You mentioned he and Curtis Getty were friends. Did he have any pictures of them together?”

Robie and Vance looked at Julie. Robie felt immediate guilt. He had never stopped to consider how all of this must have been affecting the teenager.

Alice looked momentarily flustered, but the earnest look on Julie’s features prompted the woman to stand up. “I believe he does. Hold on for a moment.”

She left the room and a couple of minutes later came back holding an envelope. She sat next to Julie, opened, the envelope, and took the photos out.

“Gabe brought these back from overseas. You’re welcome to look through them.”

Vance and Robie crowded in closer and they looked through the photos. Julie said, “There’s my dad!”

Alice looked at Robie and then at Vance. “Her dad?”

“It’s a long story,” said Robie.

He took the photo from Julie and studied it.

The group was standing in front of a burned-out Iraqi tank. Someone had spray-painted the words “Saddam Kabob” across the blackened shell of the armored vehicle.

Curtis Getty was on the far right, dressed in combat fatigues with his shirt unbuttoned, a pistol clenched in his right hand. He looked very young and very happy, probably to be alive. Next to him was Jerome Cassidy. His hair was brown and cut military short. His shirt was off and he looked tanned, lean, and muscular. Next to him was Elizabeth Claire. Shorter than the others, she looked tougher than all of them. Her uniform was sparklingly clean, with every button where it was supposed to be. Her sidearm was in its holster and she stared at the camera with a very serious expression.

As Robie looked at her image he thought it probably would never occur to her that she would be lying in hospice waiting to die just twenty years later.

Alice said, “That’s Gabe on the far left there.”

Siegel was thinner, with more hair. He seemed confident, even cocky, as he looked at the camera. These days he was a shell of the man who was depicted in the photo, thought Robie.

Alice pointed at two other men, standing next to each other in the middle of the group. They were taller than the others. “I don’t know who they are.”

“Rick Wind and Leo Broome,” said Robie. “We know about them.”

“Do you think they might know something about why my husband has disappeared?”

“They might,” said Robie. But he thought, We won’t have much luck asking them.

Vance, obviously reading Robie’s thoughts, said, “We’ll check into that angle.”

“I don’t know why my husband’s military service would come up now, after all these years.”

“Does your husband have anything else connected to his time in the Army?”

“Not that I know of. He had brought some things back. His helmet, boots, and some other things. But he got rid of them.”

“Why?” asked Vance.

Alice Siegel looked surprised by the question. “He thought they were toxic, of course.”