Loose Ends (3 page)

“You might want to go easy on that stuff,” I said.

Slowly Mira turned, an orange prescription pill bottle in her hand. “I just…”

“You don’t have to make excuses. I’d be popping Valium too if I was in your position.” I wouldn’t, but I was trying to be sympathetic. Fortunately I never had any trouble with drugs or alcohol.

Adrenaline…that was another story.

Mira sighed. “It’s prescribed. I have anxiety these last couple of years, since my divorce. Panic attacks sometimes.”

“I’m not judging you.”

“I’m a pharmacist, you know,” she said as if that explained something.

“Yes. It was on your card.”

“I don’t have enough money for anyone to make Talia a ransom target but I’m the assistant warehouse manager for the biggest distributor in the northern Bay Area. My building has hundreds of millions of dollars worth of high-grade pharmaceuticals in it, though not many people know it.”

“And they wanted you to, what? Help them rob the place?”

“Yes. They forced me to give them my keycard and my codes. They have my thumbprint on a silicone thingy, which I assume they were going to use on the scanner. They also have all my personal info – social security number, former addresses, family names…and they made me tell them what my security questions and responses were.”

“There’s a monitored alarm?”

Mira nodded, seeming to relax as the Valium hit her, so fast that part of the effect must be psychosomatic. So she wasn’t kidding about using them for a while. “Yes. To open the warehouse you have to call the monitoring center, identify yourself, give them a password, respond correctly to a security question, scan a keycard, put in a PIN code and put your thumb on a scanner. Oh, and all of that is in front of a high-resolution camera with them looking on. Otherwise they send a security team and call the cops.”

I sat back, taking a bite of bagel and sipping my coffee. It gave me time to think. “That’s a lot of security. They would have to have someone to double for you on camera. So right off the bat we know there’s a Caucasian woman of about your age involved, maybe with dark hair. Of course, she could wear a wig. Did you see any of them?”

“No. Just a male voice, middle aged I’d say, on my home phone. Blocked number.”

I took another bite and a sip, thinking while Mira fidgeted idly with her cup. “But you say they haven’t pulled the heist?”

“I…I don’t think so. I had the grocery nearby bring me a prepaid cell phone along with a few other things – they do deliveries, costs an arm and a leg, but what can you do – and used it to call the security center and ask them for the exact time I’d last been at the warehouse. I told them I needed it for my records, and they gave me the same time I closed up Friday night. So the kidnappers haven’t used my info yet. As far as I know.”

“Maybe you better start at the beginning and tell me step by step what happened.”

“But my daughter! She’s in danger!”

I put my cup and bagel down and stared at Mira, not allowing myself to throw her own two-day delay back in her face. Not with a paying client. “Mira, I have to get all the details straight in my mind because
any
clue might be the one that helps me find Talia. Believe me, this will save time later. If you call the cops now it’ll take them twice as long to get started on this and there will be a lot of hoopla. Odds are very good that your daughter’s fine. Because you have had no personal contact with them, there’s no reason for property criminals to kill, especially not a pretty little middle-class white girl. The public would eat it up and there would be a manhunt coast to coast. The thieves don’t want that kind of heat on them.”

Mira’s face turned shocked and angry. “What does being a pretty white girl have to do with it?”

I sighed, rubbing my head, trying to put myself in her position. “It’s sad, but I’m just stating the bald, non-PC truth. Dozens of poor kids – mostly black and Hispanic – go missing every day in America, but only a handful of well-off white girls. Who gets on TV?” I deliberately did not go into my personal experiences with missing children. When things went off the rails, they usually did so horribly, but I sure wasn’t going to tell her that.

Mira looked as if she was on the verge of tears. “That’s terrible.”

“I know, but perversely, it’s good news. They’re less likely to hurt her. Really. She’ll be okay. I’ll find her.”

“ I never thought anything like this would ever happen to us.”

“No one ever does. Take a deep breath and tell me what happened from the beginning. Give me details if you can.”

Mira took that deep breath and spoke. “Friday night after work I drove home and parked in my garage. Talia should have been here waiting for me – she’s a latchkey kid. The school bus drops her off on the corner. When I got inside I found a note in the middle of the table. There was also a big envelope with a form to fill out with all the information they wanted, just like an application, and a little plastic box with silicone in it for my thumbprint.”

“What did it say? I don’t suppose you copied it?”

“No, I didn’t think to… It just said to fill out the form and put everything including the note into the envelope, seal it and put it in my mailbox. It said they were watching, and not to call the cops or anyone,
or else
, and that they would return Talia by Saturday evening.”

“Saturday evening. So they probably intended the heist for Friday night or Saturday morning early. They’d tell the security people ‘you’ forgot to do something so you had to come in, but it would be the imposter. What happened next?”

“I did exactly what they said. I filled in every bit of information and put my thumbprint in the silicone box.” Mira’s tone was condescending, perhaps even self-righteous, as if doing what the kidnappers had said should have made everything work out.

I was beginning to vaguely dislike Mira. I wasn’t sure why. She wasn’t overly privileged or rude and she certainly couldn’t be blamed too much for popping pills in a situation like this, two days full of helplessness. Maybe it was just the feeling the woman looked down on me despite the fact it would be
my
ass on the line. Or perhaps it was a strong hunch she wasn’t being fully truthful with me despite the risk to her daughter.

Mira said, “Anyway, I put the envelope in my mailbox – it’s out front at the curb – and went into my bedroom and stayed there like the note said.”

“Your bedroom faces the back, right?”

“Right.”

“So when did the envelope get picked up?”

“Sometime in the middle of the night, I guess. I fell asleep finally about two, and then I woke up around seven thinking it had all been a dream until I remembered again that Talia was gone. No one had called. I went out to check and the envelope was gone from the mailbox. I came back inside, got something to eat, checked my email, turned on the TV and waited. They called about an hour later.”

“So that was Saturday morning…they called around eight? But you checked the mailbox around seven?”

“Yes. Does that matter?”

“It may.” It indicated, but didn’t prove, that the perps were not actually watching or listening in at the Sorkin house. I would have thought they’d have called as soon as they saw or heard Mira check the mailbox, not an hour later…unless they were very clever and that’s what they wanted anyone to think.

“Go on. Tell me about the phone call. You didn’t happen to record it, did you?” Lots of doctors had recorders on their phones for malpractice protection.

“No. I never thought I’d need anything like that. I mean, I don’t deal directly with patients. I was hired for my degree, not my clinicals.”

So she had no interest in helping people
per se
with her medical degree; she just wanted to be a well-paid glorified warehouse clerk. A little girl was in the hands of kidnappers, I reminded myself. Not to mention the ten grand and a client that, no matter what her job, didn’t deserve her current karma, especially not as it was tangled up with her daughter’s. At ten, Talia was innocent. I had a child to find and bring home safe.

“The phone call,” I reminded Mira.

“Yeah. Well, his voice was ordinary. Middle aged, as I said, and probably white. At least, he didn’t seem to have any…”

“Ethnic markers?” I prompted.

“Yes. No accent, either.”

“So you mean he sounded like he was from around here?” When people said “no accent,” what they usually meant was that the person spoke like they did.

“Yes, that’s what I mean. American English, not black or Hispanic or Asian…no offense.”

I chuckled. “One grandmother was Japanese, one Mexican, but my parents and I were all born here, so…none taken.” It showed just how PC everything was getting that Mira felt she had to apologize for making the simple factual observation that I was not quite white. “Go on.”

“He reminded me they were watching and listening. If I kept quiet and they had no trouble, Talia would be returned Sunday. It wasn’t fair because they said they’d return her Saturday night and now they pushed it back. Then they let me talk to her for a few seconds, I guess just to show that she was all right. She said she was okay. I could tell she was scared, but not absolutely terrified. She always was a brave little thing, like a boy.”

I bit back a reflexive lecture on gender stereotypes, because Mira’s characterization reminded me of myself and things my mom used to say about me. Sticking to the facts, I said, “Was that it? Did they say
how
Talia would be returned to you?”

“No, but…I mean, this is supposed to be a safe neighborhood. They could drop her off anywhere and she could just walk home, and it’s not like they care about her…oh, God.” A sob welled up from Mira and forced itself from her throat. “Please, you have to get her back.”

I reached across to take Mira’s soft, well-manicured hand in my own callused left, keeping my right back. I’m a leftie and hadn’t lost capability on my strong side. To merely look at my right you couldn’t tell anything was amiss, but people were still funny when they sensed weakness, as if at some level they thought it was contagious.

“That’s what you hired me for – to get her back. Not to catch crooks. That’s the police’s job. I’ll do my very best. So, what happened next?”

“Well, I waited all day and all night, just trying to keep busy. It was agonizing. Then, when Talia didn’t show up by noon Sunday, I started to panic. I got the prepaid phone and called Cole. He said he was out of town on assignment but asked a couple of questions that made me think to call the alarm monitoring, like I said, and found out they hadn’t used my info to get in to the building and steal the drugs yet. Then he told me he knew someone that could help, though I didn’t know who you were then. He just said you were someone discreet and
connected
. The rest you know.”

No, I thought as I stared at Mira. I didn’t know why Cole would say I was
connected
. That word usually referred to someone in organized crime. Or maybe Mira was getting the words wrong. Maybe he said I
had connections
, which was quite a different thing.

I also didn’t know why Mira didn’t just phone me on her burner and try to reach me Sunday. I checked my messages once a day at least. And, I didn’t know how that card got into my drop box. It was one of the parts of this whole deal that made no sense. There might be a couple of other things I didn’t know, but I couldn’t pin them down yet, and if I asked outright, I’d tip her off for sure…

“So here it is Monday afternoon. Are you sure they haven’t stolen the drugs between your call yesterday and right now?”

“Well, I emailed in sick, and then got a reply from my assistant, who would have mentioned anything wrong, I think. Then I called the monitoring center again this morning, just after shift change so it was different guys. I didn’t want them to wonder about me asking the same question again. They gave me the same answer as before so…pretty sure.”

“And you have heard nothing more from the kidnappers?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Okay. You know,” I said, speaking clearly and distinctly to try to help Mira focus, “at some point we will have to bring the police into this, even if it’s just to report the whole thing after we get her back, so you need to be ready. Once I’m gone, I want you to write down everything that happened, every detail, every jot and tittle that you can think of. It will help you later when you have to make a statement, and I may find it useful too. I notice you have a fax machine.”

“Yes, right there.” She pointed.

“When you’re done, fax it to my office at this number. Don’t email it, fax it. Harder to intercept, even if they are tapping your home phone, which I don’t believe they are.” I scribbled my numbers down on the corner of the card photocopy and tore it off. “Call me from that burner phone if you need anything or you think of something else.”

Mira picked up the scrap of paper and looked at it, and then nodded.

“Oh, are you moving soon? I saw the real estate sign holder on the lawn.”

“I
was
thinking about getting something newer but changed my mind,” Mira said, a bit cautiously it seemed to me. “Now I wish I had already. Maybe…” She rubbed her face. “Anyway, a gated community is safer for Talia.”

“Do you have a picture of her you could lend me?”

“Sure.” She retrieved a snapshot from a desk in the other room, and then set it in front of me.

I cleared my throat. “And I’ll need that check.”

“Of course.” Mira pulled a beautiful wallet out of her matching designer handbag and quickly wrote out the amount and the numbers, and then signed it with a ballpoint. She left the TO line blank when she handed it to me.

I stared at the check for a moment. That tug again. My conscience, or my cop sense? Sometimes they were hard to distinguish from each other. Also, Mira’s handwriting seemed to have improved from the scribble on the card. Probably more relaxed with the Valium in her.

I folded the piece of paper in half, slipping it deep into my money clip, which resided in a tight front jeans pocket. “Thank you. I’ll be in touch by dinnertime at the latest. Please don’t do anything before then without calling.” I stood.