Evan frowned. “Really?”
Aria nodded. “It might not be related to Noelle’s abduction in any way, but I thought it was a bit coincidental that his daughter went missing within a couple days of a friend of his going missing too.”
He scanned the document. Had the FBI discovered this? If they did, he didn’t know about it. Either they’d missed it or investigated and found it to be unrelated. Maybe the FBI didn’t even know about it, because the person who filed the police report on Noelle was her friend Paula Hathaway. Apparently, according to Paula, she was the one who’d first felt an internal alarm after days of not hearing back from Noelle. She’d called Noelle’s father, who had informed her he hadn’t seen her in person either. He’d hung up after telling Paula he was going to check her room and other areas of the house to determine if she’d been home. When Paula didn’t immediately hear back from him, she called the police. What she hadn’t known was sometime between that phone call and the police arriving at his home to take his statement regarding Noelle, he had died of a heart attack. “Dow Maginn,” he muttered, bringing himself back to what Aria had just said about Mr. Meyer’s missing friend. “Was he found?”
“He was.” She pulled yet another file from her magic purse of information and handed it over. “He was the victim of a mugging, apparently. His body was found at the back of an alley, behind a dumpster. Mr. Meyer found out about his friend, and then was informed his daughter was missing two days later.”
Tough week. Evan flipped open the file, scanning it. Yes, Mr. Meyer had had a tough week. But all his hardships ended with a major heart attack that killed him almost instantly. For his daughter, however, things were about to turn a corner into the realm of nightmares. “A mugging,” he repeated. “They didn’t catch the perp, huh?”
“No, but the guy was known to be a drinker and a fighter, and he’d gotten into scuffles before in that same area. He owned a computer repair shop nearby and would go drinking after work. Or sometimes during work, from the few statements the investigators got at the time. It’s a high-crime area. Muggings are not unusual. His wallet and his watch were missing, so the police didn’t have much reason to believe it was more than what it looked like.”
Evan closed the folder, setting it with the other things Aria had given him. “Hmm.”
“Yeah, it set my bells off too,” Aria said. “Anyway, I hope there’s something more for you to dig in to from all that.”
“There definitely is.” He held up his beer, smiling as he clinked it to Aria’s wineglass. “To the possibility of a break. And to you for finding it. I can’t thank you enough for this, Aria.”
Her lips tipped, her gaze hanging on him as she took a sip of her wine. “Anything you need, Evan,” she said. “I’m always here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Evan took in a big swallow of air as the gate clanked closed behind him, and he followed the guard to the visiting room along with three other people. One was a young woman sporting a serpentine neck tattoo and pushing an infant in a baby stroller, another an old woman who hadn’t bothered to take the curlers out of her hair, and the third, a man who appeared to be a lawyer. His ill-fitting suit and general look of apathy told Evan he was likely court appointed and had little interest, if any, in whatever client he was there to see.
Evan fell in line with the small crew of misfits, entering a barracks-type building on the grounds of FCI Beaumont. He took a seat at one of the small tables, and the other people did the same, spreading out from each other. The young woman closest to him took a bottle from her bag and stuck it in the infant’s mouth, bouncing the stroller with her foot as she shot him a wink and wiggled her tongue suggestively. He gave her an uncomfortable smile as if she might be making a weird joke that didn’t exactly land, lacing his hands on the table in front of him and training his eyes on the door at the back where he assumed the prisoners would enter.
He’d gotten to Texas a few hours before, stopped and had lunch, and then headed straight here. The plan was to meet with the man named Lars Knauer and jump back on a flight later that evening. He only hoped this trip was worth his while and the seven hundred bucks he’d put on his credit card.
The door opened, and a guard came through, four men shuffling behind him. He knew what the man looked like from his case file, and when he saw him, Evan stood, lifting his hand to get the old man’s attention.
Lars approached slowly, obviously sizing Evan up. Evan did the same. In the photo he’d seen, the man had looked skinny and sunken in. Of course, the photo had only been from the neck up, and benders could do a number on a person’s face. He hadn’t been able to tell that the man was still so fit for a seventy-year-old. His shoulders were broad, and he didn’t appear to have an inch of extra fat on him. He’d heard the term “built like a brick shithouse” somewhere, and that term came to mind now, though to be honest, he wasn’t entirely sure what it meant or if it actually applied. Lars had a buzz cut, and though it was cropped close to his head and completely white, it was all still there.
Evan held out his hand, and Lars looked at it for a moment as if deciding whether or not to take it, but then he did, clasping it and giving it one somewhat rough shake before letting go.
“Mr. Knauer, thank you for seeing me.”
They both sat down, and Lars Knauer set his hands on the table, palms down. He gave a chin tip. “Call me Lars. You said on the phone you experienced a crime that might be similar to what I reported to the police?”
“Yes, that’s right. Although what happened to me happened eight years ago, so it’s been a while.”
“What was it that happened to you exactly?”
Evan took a deep breath and gave Lars the basics of what he’d experienced, ending with their escape through the desert. He wanted to gain the man’s trust, but he held back on details, also mindful not to sway Lars’s story in any way. Lars had watched him as he spoke, but now he looked out the window to his right, staring at the chain-link fence, which was the only view.
“Similar,” he said, and Evan was almost taken aback by the way his voice had changed, the tone suddenly fearful.
“Will you tell me about what happened to you?”
Lars rubbed a hand over his short-cropped hair, still staring out that window. He sighed, training his eyes back on Evan. “Yeah, I’ll tell you. I was nabbed coming out of a bar at two a.m. They musta struck me from behind, or maybe put a shot in my arm. Hell, someone coulda slipped something in my beer, for all I know. I was pretty wasted, so I have no memory of what exactly happened. All I know is that I woke up in the dark, in a cage.”
“Shit,” Evan swore.
“Yeah,” Lars said. “Shit is right.” He paused for a moment. “I freaked, yelled, screamed, but it became real clear that no one was gonna answer. So I calmed down and went Zen. You know what Zen means?”
“Uh . . . like Buddha Zen?”
“That’s right. Zen is all about transcendent virtues. Moral training. Patient endurance. Meditation. Wisdom. I was a POW in Nam, and a guy I met there taught me about it. Kept me sane until my guys got me out.”
Damn. This man had been a prisoner not once but twice? Three times, as a matter of fact, if you counted his present circumstances, and Evan had to figure he absolutely did.