Final Approach (15 page)

Chapter Thirty-two

Richard said that in his line of work, calling before an interview is like doing a cannonball jump before trying to fish. We had no assurance that just because David Meyer had called in sick he’d actually be home, but Richard was fairly confident that calling ahead would guarantee his absence.

That’s how we ended up in the parking lot of David’s apartment complex, staring through Richard’s windshield at the second-floor landing shared by units twelve and thirteen. David had no idea we were coming, and I had no idea what to say to him.

“Just introduce me,” Richard said. “Most people are open to questions when they think it’ll help a friend. If he understands why these answers are important to you, hopefully he’ll help us.”

“Yeah,” Jeannie said to him, “until you come to the part about how his two-timing, psycho girlfriend sells black market babies.”

She was in the backseat, leaning forward so she wouldn’t miss anything. Richard turned off the car.

We crossed a neatly maintained lawn and climbed the steps to David’s apartment. Richard knocked. Jeannie was close behind him, staring intently at the door. I looked behind us and surveyed the grassy yard separating us from the parking lot. An abandoned jump rope was coiled near a patch of geraniums below. I thought of Annette, how she might look jumping that rope, and felt inadequate. Maybe I wasn’t even picturing her face correctly.

The door swung open and I turned. I’m not sure who was more surprised, Vince or me.

It felt like ages had passed since we’d last spoken. I wondered if that was because of all I’d uncovered since then, or because of the sour note we’d parted on yesterday. He wasn’t wearing his cowboy hat and its absence made him seem oddly vulnerable.

He spoke first. “What are you…Is everything okay?”

He addressed the question directly to me, looking past Jeannie and Richard as if they weren’t there. A mixture of confusion and concern was on his face, and I wondered how genuine it was. After last night, finding Vince at David and Trish’s apartment was unsettling. Maybe David wasn’t a patsy after all. And what if the rift between Vince and his cousin was just another cover? I remembered the afternoon I’d watched Clement search around Vince’s truck, and wondered if the FBI knew something about him I didn’t.

I introduced him to Richard. Vince studied me a moment longer before shifting his gaze. He nodded to Richard and shook his hand, but his usual cordiality was gone and I had to look hard to find traces of the laugh lines I remembered. He nodded to Jeannie without the smile I’d expected, and then held the door for the three of us.

As we entered, David’s voice came from the hall. He was asking Vince who’d been at the door, but stopped short when he rounded the corner and found the four of us standing in his entry hall, staring.

“Hi,” he said, almost like a question. It occurred to me I was the only person in my trio he was likely to recognize. I apologized for dropping by unannounced, introduced Richard, and explained that David might know something to help with Richard’s case.

“I’m the tag-along friend,” Jeannie said with a half-hearted wave.

David smiled at her, but it looked stilted. I wondered what we’d interrupted.

“Could I ask a few questions?” Richard’s tone was more cordial than usual. “You might have information about a child I’m looking for.”

David’s eyebrows rose. “A child? Sure.”

He gestured for us to sit. Richard and Jeannie took seats near him on the living room sofas. Vince and I remained standing. I wanted to sit—my leg was feeling weaker every moment—but it was more important to stay where I could watch David and Vince’s reactions to Richard’s questions. Especially Vince’s.

“What can I tell you?” David asked. He took a seat opposite Richard and sat on the edge of the sofa cushion, leaning forward so his elbows rested on his thighs.

Richard frowned. “How about the last time you saw Trish?”

David looked at Vince before answering. Vince’s posture seemed to straighten at the mention of her name.

“Trish?” David asked, “What does she have to do with a missing kid?”

“I’m trying to figure that out,” Richard said. “When’s the last time you saw her?”

“Last night.”

Richard redirected to Vince. “How about you?”

The look on Vince’s face was stern, and he didn’t answer right away. He seemed to be exercising enormous self-restraint. His eyes darted from Richard to David, and finally stopped on me. His posture relaxed a little when our eyes met. I’d never seen him stressed before. He seemed weary.

“Do you know something about Trish I need to hear?”

I hesitated. What to do with a question like that.

Richard pressed. “When’d you last see her?”

Vince raised a hand in Richard’s direction and kept his eyes on me. He asked me again. “What do you know about Trish?”

It was difficult, but I pulled my gaze off him to steal a glance at David, who had the wide-eyed look of a man afraid to speak.

Vince seemed devastated. “What’s she done?” His shoulders fell slightly. “Tell me what she’s done.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” David asked. “Vince? What aren’t you telling me, man?” He stood. “Can somebody please tell me what’s going on?”

There was a collective pause while Vince and David waited for answers we couldn’t phrase.

“Why aren’t you at work today?” Jeannie asked David. I’d nearly forgotten she was there.

David looked at her, irritated. “What?”

“Why aren’t you at work today?”

He scoffed. “Took a day off. Things to do.” He gave Jeannie a final glance and turned back to Vince. “What’s going on, man?”

Jeannie sighed an exaggerated, impatient sigh that indicated she’d crossed over into loose cannon mode.

“I thought,” she said to David, “that you were sick.”

Richard pursed his lips and shot her a stare.

“How do you know I called in sick?” David looked from Jeannie to Richard. “I don’t even know you. Who are you people?”

“I’m sorry for the ambush,” I said. “The truth is, Richard knows you called in sick today because he’s in touch with CPS.”

David ran his hands through his blond hair and clasped his fingers behind his head, elbows to the sides. When he took his seat again, he let his hands fall into his lap.

“Why are you in touch with CPS?” he asked Richard. “Why so interested in me?”

“Who you are, and where you work, matters to me because you live with Trish Dalton.”

Vince raised his head.

“I don’t know the right way to say this…” I said. “Trish is…involved with—”

“Your girlfriend’s a felon,” Jeannie said.

I scowled at her.

“A felon?” Vince asked.

“The boy I’m looking for,” Richard said, “It looks like Trish was involved in his kidnapping, and a long line of kidnappings before his.”

“That’s nuts,” David said. “What makes you think—”

Richard continued. “Trish flew for the company this boy’s father worked for. She had access to information that would facilitate his abduction. We have evidence linking the kidnapper to Gulf Coast Skydiving. And the boy’s mother recognized a photo of Trish.”

“
Worked
for?” Vince asked.

“Dead,” Jeannie announced. “Shot in the chest, dumped in a river.”

Vince looked stricken.

David shook his head. “Trish would never—”

“Before you get too deep into defending her,” Jeannie added, “you should know she has another man.”

I marveled at her utter lack of tact.

David looked at me. “What’s she talking about?”

“Jeannie,” I said, “could you please not…”

David didn’t seem to hear. “That’s crazy,” he said. “You’re not making sense.”

His ignorance was painful. But, I decided he’d have to hear the facts now and nurse his wounds later.

“She’s using you,” I said. “She’s involved with another man, probably has been since way before she met you. They run this scam together.” I looked at Vince. “They sell babies on the black market.”

Vince’s face grew paler. He looked away, incredulous.

I continued. “I found a computer file. The baby Richard’s looking for is being sold today, to somebody in Tempe, Arizona.”

Vince’s head snapped up. “That’s why she took the plane.”

His candor jarred me. “What do you know about the plane?”

“I know it’s not
here
,” he said. “I was supposed to fly it back to Oklahoma this morning. An FBI agent gets shot at our airport last night. The plane is gone. My cousin’s missing. It’s not too hard to figure she’s had a hand in this.”

“Why would you conclude that?” David asked.

Vince glared at him, “She’s not the woman you think she is.”

“You didn’t mention the FBI agent earlier,” David said. “What do you mean she’s not who I think?”

I wondered what Vince and David were discussing before we got there.

Vince checked his watch. “She took the kid to Tempe in the Otter. They must be there by now.”

I shook my head. “She didn’t take him to Tempe. Somebody else took him, or he’s still in Houston.”

Vince cocked his head.

I wasn’t sure how much to say. Vince’s role in this wasn’t clear. Just because he looked surprised didn’t mean he actually was.

“Emily was on the plane,” Jeannie said. “No Casey.”

“You were on the plane?”

I looked for help from Richard, but he shrugged. If Vince was part of the operation, he already knew, or would soon find out, what happened on the plane anyway. And if he had no part in it, there was no harm in telling him what happened. I explained about the night before.

When I came to the part about Scud, Vince sat down. He seemed more shocked at Scud’s involvement than Trish’s. I told him about our struggle in the training room, how I’d been stabbed in the leg, and that I’d shot Scud but didn’t think he was dead. Vince said Clement was alone at the drop zone when the ambulance arrived. He walked over to me and raised my pant leg as if he had every right to do so. The fabric around my calf was stained dark red. I hadn’t realized my bandage had bled through. Vince peeled back the sticky gauze and the wound brightened with a fresh surge of blood.

“You should have this looked at,” he said, kneeling behind me.

“Nasty.” Jeannie shuddered. “He’s right.”

“Scud did that?” David was pale, his face sweaty. Maybe the facts were beginning to settle in his mind. I couldn’t bring myself to add that Scud—Edward Kosh—was Trish’s Other Man. But the thought reminded me of something.

“David, do you have a computer?” I asked.

He gestured toward the hall. “In my study.”

I removed the saturated gauze from my leg and dropped it in David’s kitchen trash. He passed me some paper towels for my leg.

“Mind booting up your machine?” I asked. “I’d like to know the IP address of your cable router.”

I hobbled behind as David led us to his study.

“Why?” he asked, but didn’t argue.

He powered up the computer and waited for it to go through its self-checks.

The desktop icons appeared and I told David where to get the information I wanted. He hunted and pecked at his keyboard and finally a string of numbers came up.

“Richard, do you have that information from CPS?”

The call had come in during our drive from his office. Richard rooted in his pocket and produced a scrap of paper. He read off numbers as the rest of us leaned toward the monitor. The digits matched.

“What’s that mean?” David asked.

“Did you ever give Trish your system password?”

He shook his head. I wasn’t surprised. Someone as resourceful as Trish could get it herself. I imagined her coming up behind David as he worked, wrapping her arms around him in the same warm hug I’d seen in the rigger’s loft. All she’d have to do is watch his painfully slow typing as he logged in.

I faced David. “Sometimes when you were in the field, someone logged onto this machine as you. Other times, when you were logged in at work, a dual log-in occurred from this machine.”

Vince asked, “Are you saying Trish logged into David’s work account as him?”

I nodded. “David, you’ve been having trouble locating some families.”

He didn’t answer, but I could tell by the way his eyes bored into mine that I had his full attention.

“Richard looked into it. Those families were all lower priority cases.” I nodded at his computer. “If Trish knew you wouldn’t get to those babies for a few days, she could get them first.” I hesitated. “At work they think you’re discriminating based on race. Many prospective ‘buyers’ want white babies, so Trish targets white families.”

David stared at me like only half of my words were getting through.

“I think she takes the babies and, when necessary, makes the parents disappear,” Richard said.

“Records simply show another deadbeat parent skipped town with their kid,” I added. “No kidnapping report, no homicide investigation. Her relationship with you was a gold mine.”

It was hard to remember as we spouted our theories that this was the first David had heard of Trish’s crimes. The poor sap was in love with her. He’d clearly been blindsided.

I didn’t get the same vibe from Vince. David swam in disbelief, but Vince looked to be seething with rage. I just wasn’t sure where that anger was directed.

Richard scanned the room. “Does Trish keep many personal things here? Files on your computer? A notebook? PDA? We know which cities some kids were moved to, but not their addresses.”

All I could think about was Galveston. Four years had passed. Was Annette still there?

“Is it okay if we look around?” Richard asked, too late for Jeannie. She’d opened the closet door and was already inspecting the shelves inside. David seemed too distracted to take offense. He nodded, crestfallen.

I wanted a break. “I’m going out for some air.”

I retraced my path to the living room, opened the door, and only made it as far as the front landing. My leg hurt too much to go down any more stairs than I had to. I looked down. The jump rope was gone, probably picked up and carried inside by a little girl who still lived with the right family.

The door opened behind me, but I was too worn out to turn.