Girl Taken: A Detective Kaitlyn Carr Mystery Page 8

  "Did he not invest in this place?" I ask.

  "It's not that. Yes, he sold me the gym and I’m slowly paying him back and building it. I paid a lot for it and I will be paying out from my profits as well for the rest as I grow it. It's successful, and I'm going to pay him back every cent. But Terry isn't like that. If it doesn't work out, he'll just quit. And then he'll say sorry. He'll just apologize, get all torn up. But that will be it. I just didn't want Dad and Ruth to lose so much. I mean, did you see the apartment that they got? It's something that people in college live in. They deserve a house. They worked really hard all their lives and they shouldn't just throw it away and give it to my brother."

  My opinion of John begins to shift. The more he talks, the more sincere he appears to be, aggravated and upset by the fact that he feels like his parents were taken advantage of.

  "What about what's going on now? What about the fact that they're missing?" I say. "What are your thoughts about that?"

  "I don't know. Frankly, I don't really have many thoughts about it. I hope that they took off somewhere, went to Vegas, are having a grand time, but I'm not sure that they would, or could, do that. They were too responsible. And yeah, I'm worried about where they are."

  "Can you tell me anything about the people that were trying to buy the boat? Did they tell you anything about them?" I ask.

  "Come to think of it, there was this one couple... They showed the boat for a bit, and they had a number of sales that sort of didn't go through and they were getting discouraged. They were thinking of lowering the price, even though they knew what it was worth, but they were getting impatient."

  "So, what happened?" I ask.

  "Well, that day when we met up for lunch, when Dad and I got into the argument, he mentioned that there was this couple coming to see the boat. They were going to give them a tour."

  "A couple?"

  "Yeah. I mean, most people who buy boats are couples. That wasn't the weird part."

  "What was the weird part?" I ask, sitting on the edge of the chair now, no longer caring whether I'm touching the mysterious stain or not.

  "Well, the thing is that they were really young. They're in their mid-twenties. They answered the ad and that afternoon, they were planning on taking them out on a cruise to kind of show them the ropes, show them how everything worked."

  "A trial run?" I ask.

  He nods. "That's why we couldn't finish talking. Dad was rushing. They had to get lunch and do some final preparations. They really wanted them to buy it."

  "And you didn't think that they were good buyers?"

  "Well, if they have the money, what do I care, right? But what twenty-five-year-olds can afford a $600,000 boat? I mean, it was just nuts."

  "Well, this is Southern California. People have a lot of money."

  "Yeah. I know that. That's what I kept telling myself. But I asked him if he ran any sort of credit check or asked for proof of funds in their bank account. And he said he was going to do that after the sale. He didn't want to spook them off."

  "What was their story about having the money?” I ask.

  "The guy said that he was a child actor. Was on some show when he was a kid. The money was put into a trust and he had it now. He was bringing his pregnant wife along. I remember Dad saying that he just felt so comfortable with them. He just really hoped that this was going to work out.”

  John stops talking and looks away from me, trying to hold back his emotions.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “I’m just so pissed at my brother.” John takes a deep breath. "I mean, if he hadn't taken their money, they wouldn’t be so desperate to sell their boat. They loved that thing. It was their home. It was just their favorite place to be, out there on the ocean."

  I look deeper into his eyes and he focuses somewhere behind me. He shifts his gaze a little bit from side to side. I know that he's nervous to let himself think about where his parents are now and what could have happened to them.

  "Do you know the name of this couple?" I ask.

  "No. Wait, I can't be sure, but I think he said the woman's name was Trish. He just referred to them as the couple."

  "Okay. That's good. At least that's something to go on."

  I hand him my card and tell him to call me, night or day, if anything comes up, or if he hears from his parents.

  He nods and forces a smile, and I walk away with a heavy heart.

  18

  I get in touch with Benjamin from the crime lab and ask him to look for any names associated with Trish. A few hours later, he gets back to me. There's a Patricia Carlson who was mentioned in an email, along with her husband, Derek, and they had set up a meeting over emails to meet up at the marina.

  "Is there anything else?" I ask. "What did they talk about?"

  "There were only those two emails back and forth. I guess they were using their phones after that.”

  The cell phones were nowhere to be found, and I told Terry that we are currently assuming that they have them with them, but they're turned off. Their mailboxes are full and we have not received information from the companies yet about tracking their location.

  "Honestly, it's almost like they have vanished into thin air," Michael says. "It's like they turned off their phones and buried them deep underground."

  "Let's hope not," I say, and he smiles.

  I do my own research on the names at my desk and then grab some lunch with Luke. The case up in California City actually ended up being nothing. The three boys were found, taken by their addict mother up north to some cabin.

  He’s still in town working on another case, and the fact that he's no longer in Big Bear is something that weighs heavily on us. Anyone else would say that he's just not doing his job, but I know better. Sometimes cases reach a dead end.

  There's nowhere to go.

  Everyone who need to be interviewed was interviewed. Their stories aren't changing, and there's no more evidence to collect.

  We have lunch a couple of times a week when both of us are free, and it's nice. It feels homey. Now I think about him as my boyfriend and we're in that place in our relationship where everything is good, comfortable, at peace. We haven't talked too much about the possibility of getting married again, but were he to ask me, I would find it difficult to say no.

  "What are your plans for the afternoon?" Luke asks, taking a bite of his Caesar salad.

  His pasta arrives and he takes a big gulp of his lemonade. Neither of us are drinking because we are on duty.

  “I'm going to head out and talk to Patricia and Derek. They were the ones that met up with Deacon to take a look at his boat. It's probably my best bet right now.”

  I'm fine with just a salad and I joke a little bit about the amount of food that Luke is consuming. He likes to have his biggest meal in the middle of the day, two, three courses if he can get it, and then basically eat hardly anything for dinner or breakfast.

  I, on the other hand, am a muncher. I like to graze all day. I know that it's not healthy and it's probably what's keeping those extra fifteen pounds on me, but with a stressful job like this, it's difficult not to do it.

  I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket and I pull it out to look at the screen out of habit. I never let work go to voicemail, especially not when I'm on duty, but this isn't work.

  "Captain Talarico?" I ask, bringing the phone to my face. "Is everything okay?"

  "Yeah, I'm just calling with some news," he says, his voice deep and a little scraggly. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this."

  I hold my breath. Something bad has happened. Violet.

  Luke reaches over and places his hand over mine.

  "It's okay," he whispers in a barely audible whisper.

  "We found Natalie D'Achille's body," Captain Talarico says.

  * * *

  Natalie's body was found in a ditch in Sugarloaf, a small community near Big Bear City. It's a grid of houses, residential, typically a lot more affordable than in the rest of
the Big Bear Lake community, but also smaller in size.

  She was found at the intersection of Orange and Clark in a ditch. Sugarloaf, like the rest of Big Bear, is largely a second home community. There’re some permanent residents and retirees, but there’re a lot of empty homes as well. On this particular street, there was only one full-time resident, a ninety-year-old woman who lived at the far end and who rarely took walks. According to the captain, it is unclear how long her body had been lying there.

  They just got the forensic technician team and the FBI CSI team there to investigate.

  My ears buzz as he talks, laying out the details with as much detachment as possible. This is how we report the stories to our fellow officers and the victims’ families.

  If you don't have a sense of decorum and distance, people lose faith in you and the investigation. But at this point it feels a lot like he's just handling me with kid gloves.

  "Was she wearing clothes?" I ask. "Had she been sexually assaulted?"

  “Yes, she was. I have no idea if she's been sexually assaulted, but she is dressed and her body was wrapped up in a tarp, one of those blue ones that they sell at Home Depot to cover roofs."

  "And no one noticed that? They're so bright."

  “There are a lot of empty homes on the street, and someone from another street said that they thought it was a discarded roll of carpet.”

  People always say that, I thought it was just some trash. The way I think about it is that if I see a roll of carpet in the middle of the street, it's probably likely that it's a body rather than a roll of flooring. But hey, that's just me.

  I keep my thoughts to myself and thank him for giving me a call.

  "I'll be there as soon as I can. I have to do another interview. I'm on a new case."

  "Yes, I understand. Take your time. We have a lot of people working on this."

  When I hang up, Luke's phone rings and now it's his turn to talk. It's his supervisor, and from what I hear, he's getting sent back to Big Bear as well, to investigate this case further. When the conversation's over, Luke looks at me and we both know that it's time to go back.

  “I didn't ask him how she was killed.” It suddenly occurs to me. I bring my hand up to my head. "Of course, how could I be so stupid?"

  "He probably doesn't know yet. They have to do a lot of testing. He won't know for sure."

  I feel like a fool. "I can't believe they pay me to do this for a living and I can't ask a simple question like that. What an amateur."

  "This is your sister we're talking about and her friend. You're distraught, you're worried,” Luke says to make me feel better.

  A waiter comes over to ask us if our lunch is okay and I mumble something, but Luke is much nicer and polite about it. I guess waiters have a sixth sense about these things because in order to be a good one you have to know when to walk away and when to keep to yourself and to give people privacy.

  Luke continues to hold my hand and I only notice that when I look down and see his fingers wrapped around mine.

  My thoughts are back in Big Bear, back with Violet and Natalie, and all of these terrible things that could have happened to them. Somehow we pay the bill and we leave and life around us moves on.

  People go about their days. They continue to talk and laugh and make plans for the future as my sister's friend lies in a ditch somewhere, and then the morgue, waiting to be cut up and autopsied so that we can have a clue as to what happened.

  I have no idea where she is and I have no idea whether finding out what happened to Natalie is going to bring me any closer. Darkness descends around me.

  19

  I'm tempted to cancel my visit to Patricia's house. It’s a surprise one, so I'm the only one that knows anything about it. I’m tempted to drive straight to Big Bear. But I find myself a little bit at a loss. I talked to Luke and he tells me that I need to clear my head before I go up there and deal with all of this. This conversation with the Carlsons needs to happen since they were the last ones to see the Islingtons.

  They're the only ones with the answers and if they're a dead end, then this will help the investigation progress or at least provide some answers for Terry and John. Luke talks to me about all of this. He's measured in his approach, quiet, solid. That’s what I like about him. Whenever I start to freak out, he calms me down, he puts me at ease.

  Nothing seems to faze him. Nothing seems to worry him. He has plans to go to Wichita, Kansas, next week but neither of us talk about what will happen to those plans now. That's the thing about our jobs, work pops up and you just have to do what you have to do. You get paid overtime, so you should be happy, but occasionally it throws your private life into upheaval.

  Since I am feeling a little out of sorts, I turn toward Luke, as he walks me back to my car, and ask about his trip to Kansas.

  “I'm going to postpone it if necessary, but we have almost ten days until then.”

  I nod, trying to make this make sense.

  “Look, finding your sister is of utmost importance to me. I thought that the case might be going cold, but…” he trails off. "Things keep happening."

  I fill in the blank.

  “It could be nothing. Violet and Natalie’s disappearances could be completely unrelated."

  "Yes, that's true, but it's more likely than not that they are connected. They were friends, they disappeared under very similar circumstances. Their clothes were found wrapped up in a plastic bag."

  Despite my protestations, Luke encourages me to go and talk to Patricia to at least clear my head and get some distance from what I'm about to encounter back home.

  He wants to drive up together in a few hours after he gets packed. We will take separate cars in case I need to get back. Tandem driving is not something I've ever been a big fan of. It always requires one person to go too fast or too slow. But with Luke, it sounds like it could be fun or at least not awful.

  * * *

  I'm in no mood to talk to anyone, let alone a potential witness. But if I go to Big Bear now, and I start dealing with Natalie's death, I know that Terry will have to wait a lot longer to find out the truth about his parents, and who knows what kind of evidence might be lost and what that might result in.

  Instead of a bright blue sky, the clouds have blown in. They look like marshmallow fluffs that someone painted. I stare at them for so long as I drive that I almost run into the back of a Toyota RAV4. I stop short, my brakes squealing. When it speeds up and turns at a red light, I follow close behind, which is a mistake, because a huge dump truck rushes out in front of me, and I nearly T-bone it.

  My mind isn't there, and by all accounts, I should probably stay home, and not talk to anyone at all, but that's not an option.

  I focus as hard as I can to drive to Patricia's address without incident and tell myself that it's just a preliminary interview. If God is at all on my side, she won't be home, and I can postpone this in good faith. I'm surprised to find her in a nice residential neighborhood; a two story, somewhat newer construction at the end of a cul-de-sac. Can this really be the address? I double-check.

  When I ring the doorbell, a woman in her mid-twenties answers and gives me a wide smile. Her hair is cut short, and her skin has a nice glow to it. Some sort of dewy makeup is applied to her cheekbones to make them look more pronounced.

  I introduce myself, and her demeanor doesn't change one bit, but when I mention the Islingtons, she looks concerned.

  "Do you know them?" I ask.

  She moves to the side, and I barely see a little outline of her belly. She's wearing a loose fitting dress and walks on bare feet on her marble floor.

  A house in this area, this size, is probably over 2,000 square feet, two-story with what looks to be a generous backyard. Anywhere else, it would cost $300,000, 400,000 tops, but here, where housing is expensive, this place is likely a million and a half or two. This is west Los Angeles, after all.

  I take a step forward to try to give her a sign that maybe she should invite
me in, but she doesn't budge. Yet, she remains friendly and polite, and I stand on her front porch, and tell her that the Islingtons are missing.

  "What do you mean missing?"

  "No one knows where they are. When was the last time you saw them?"

  "Well, we went on that sea trial to check out their boat, and we bought it."

  "You bought their boat?"

  "Yeah. I mean, it was great. They were so nice. They gave a six-month warranty, and my husband and I are going to be moving onto it very soon."

  I give her a slight nod, forcing my mouth closed.

  I see someone coming in and out of view down the long hallway, by what looks to be the kitchen. I wave hello and a woman who looks like an older version of Patricia, who told me to call her Trish, walks over. Trish’s mom wipes her hands on her apron, announces that she’s making cookies and apologizes for the mess, despite the fact that the place is spotless.

  She smiles at me broadly, the way that her daughter does, and tells me that her daughter and son-in-law live here with them.

  "So, you live with your parents?" I double-check.

  Trish smiles and nods.

  "Yeah. I was a little sick earlier in my pregnancy and we were planning on moving onto the boat so we gave up our place,” Trish says.

  "So, you know about the boat purchase?" I ask her mom, Karen Nosary, who insists that I call her by her first name.

  "Yes, and we can't wait to go on it,” Karen says.

  I turn toward Trish.

  ”If you don't mind me asking,” I say, trying to be as tactful as possible. “But how were you able to afford this boat?"