No Return: A Contemporary Phantom Tale (22 page)

Very formally, he said, “Good night, Christine.”

I said, “Good night, Erik.” It was the first time I had ever called him by his name.

Then I went inside and let him lock the door behind me. I stood there for a moment, the drooping orchid my only company, trying to sort out my thoughts and failing miserably.

Still, I was beginning to understand how Persephone might have felt when she ate those six pomegranate seeds and was suddenly overwhelmed by an inexplicable sympathy for the dark lord of the underworld….

Chapter 16

Detective Raoul Ortiz was having a bad day. Late that morning someone had reported an apparently abandoned car in the underground parking lot at the Paseo Colorado shopping center; probably the car would have gone unnoticed for several more days if not for the foul odor emanating from its trunk. Mall security called in the Pasadena police department, whose investigators discovered the body of a nude woman, bound and gagged, in the trunk. That had been bad enough—although Pasadena certainly saw its share of burglaries, domestic violence, and even gang-related shootings, actual murders were rare. Then of course the media somehow caught wind of it, and as the principal investigator on the scene, he’d been forced to make a brief statement so that the vampires—he grinned to himself—the
reporters
couldn’t make the situation sound any worse than it already was.

Privately, Ortiz was of the opinion that the murder had taken place elsewhere and the body dumped at the mall to confuse the issue, since the shabby Toyota had been reported stolen a week earlier in Santa Ana. But that was still speculation, so he’d been able to give out only a few terse facts—that the body was that of a Latina in her early to mid-twenties, and that she’d apparently died of a single gunshot wound to the head. Probably gang-related; he’d transferred out of the LAPD four years ago so he wouldn’t have to see crap like this over and over again, but no such luck on that today.

He picked up the report, sighing. On top of it all, he’d probably get an unwelcome glimpse of himself on the evening news, shining pate and all. It was amazing how he looked overweight, bald, and tired whenever he saw himself on television. That wasn’t the same man he thought he saw in the mirror each morning.

“Detective Ortiz?” Officer Campbell stuck her braided head through his partially open office door. “Got time to take a missing-persons statement?”

Wonderful. A missing-persons report was second in the amount of paperwork required only to a murder-scene report, which he was in the process of filling out right now.

“What happened to Kosky?”

She rolled her big brown eyes. “MIA. Probably making a Starbucks run.”

“Great, sure.” Ortiz pushed the report he’d been working on off to one side of his desk and pulled out a fresh form. “Got any background?”

“Well, the guy already filled out the regular paperwork. But he wants to talk to someone in person.”

“Husband?”

She shook her head. “Nope. Think it’s the boyfriend. And he’s got some other girl with him. A friend, I guess—they don’t look related.”

“Send ’em in.” At the rate he was going, he’d be lucky to make it home in time for dinner tonight. Manuela was going to be ticked.

Campbell disappeared briefly and came back with a young man and woman in tow, both in their twenties, although the woman looked to be the younger of the two by several years. Good-looking kids, both of them, the young man with a nice head of sandy hair and handsome, regular features, the girl much darker and casually gorgeous in a pair of close-fitting designer jeans and a well-tailored short jacket over a low-cut tank top. Ortiz had to force his eyes upward to her face, which was worth looking at as well, with smooth olive skin and a wide, full mouth. He wondered what her heritage might be, since she didn’t look Mexican to him. Brazilian?
 

Officer Campbell indicated that they should sit in the two chairs facing the desk, left the folder with their paperwork in front of Ortiz, and then took off.
 

Ortiz stood and extended his hand, first to the girl, and then to the young man. “Detective Ortiz.”

“I’m Meg Garrison,” the young woman said. The south of the border blood had to be on her mother’s side, then.

The young man took Ortiz’s proffered hand and said, “I’m Randall Cagney.”

The kid’s eyes looked bloodshot, and he was pale as well. Still, his grip was firm enough, and his gaze steady. It was probably stress rather than drugs, however, that gave him his somewhat haggard appearance.

“So what seems to be the problem, Mr. Cagney?”

The young man swallowed, exchanged a brief glance with Meg, then said, “It’s my girlfriend, Christine Daly. She’s disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”
 

“Um, yeah. The last time I—or anyone else, I guess—saw her was Thanksgiving evening, when I dropped her off at her place after we had dinner at my parents’ house in L.A. I kept trying to call her all weekend and could never get hold of her.”

Ortiz took a few brief notes on a yellow pad. “Did you try going over to her house?”

“Yes—by Sunday morning I was getting really worried, so I drove over to her place.” Cagney sat up a little straighter in his chair. “I didn’t see her car, but I went up and knocked and then sort of walked around the house just to make sure she wasn’t in the shower or something. But she wasn’t there.”

“Mm-hmm.” Ortiz rolled his pen over between his thumb and forefinger. “Was the car there when you dropped her off on Thursday night?”

“I don’t—” Then Cagney frowned, apparently thinking it through. “Yes, I’m pretty sure it was there. She usually parked it in the same place in front.”

“And she wasn’t in class on Monday morning,” Meg supplied. “Christine never misses class unless she’s on her deathbed.”

“And how do you know Miss Daly, Miss Garrison?”

“We’re both seniors at USC. And we work at the same restaurant here in Pasadena.”

“And what restaurant would that be?”

“
L’Opéra
. Down on Green Street.”

“I know it,” Ortiz said, making a few more notes on the yellow pad. It was a nice place, the sort of restaurant where he’d take Manuela on their anniversary or her birthday. Who knows, he could have even seen the elusive Miss Daly there at some point.

“So anyway,” Meg went on, “it was kind of weird that she didn’t show up for class, but then she didn’t show up for work last night, and that was totally bizarre. George said she didn’t call in or anything, either.”

“George is your boss?”

She nodded, shining dark hair slipping over the vibrant pink of her jacket. “And then Randall called me this morning, sounding really panicked, and we started talking, and then we decided we’d better come down here and file a report or something.”

“Has Miss Daly ever disappeared like this before?” It was a standard question, but they both looked offended.

“Absolutely not—” spluttered Randall, while Meg said,

“Are you kidding? You could set a clock by Christine. She’s the most responsible person I know.”

Ortiz held up a hand. “Don’t take it personally. I need to ask these questions to find out what’s really going on.”
 

The Cagney kid continued to look daggers at him, but Meg settled back in her chair, apparently mollified.
 

“So...another standard question.” Ortiz lifted an eyebrow at Randall, letting him know that another outburst would be counterproductive. “Was Christine under a lot of stress? Anything that might make her want to take off for a few days?”

The two of them exchanged a glance, and then Randall said, “I don’t think so. I mean, she’s a senior, and she’s thinking of applying to graduate school, plus she works way too many hours, but Christine’s always been able to handle everything, as far as I can tell.”

Meg nodded. “I don’t think Christine knows how to do anything except manage everything.”

Setting his pen down, Ortiz considered Meg carefully. He could tell she was worried, yes, but even more importantly, she looked puzzled, as if she couldn’t possibly understand how Christine could do something as unexpected as simply disappear. “And how long have you known Miss Daly?”

“About a year. She started midyear as a junior, and we first met in music theory. I was already working at
L’Opéra
, so when she told me she was looking for a job I suggested she come work there, too.”
 

“And what about you, Mr. Cagney?”

“About the same. I’m a T.A. and accompany sometimes in the upper-division voice classes.”

“And you’ve been in a relationship with Christine for how long?”

Randall shifted in his seat, looking a little awkward. “About two and a half months.”

“Any reason she would be upset with you, want to take off?”

He scowled at that, but when he spoke his tone was carefully neutral. “No. We had a great time on Thanksgiving. My whole family loved her, and I could tell she really liked them.”

Oh, hell. Ortiz hated these cases. None of the obvious explanations seemed to present themselves, but he was still fairly sure it was a simple case of an overworked student cracking under the pressure and taking off for a few days or even weeks. Nine times out of ten in these cases, the missing people would reappear, usually somewhat shamefaced over what they’d put their friends and families through, but none the worse for wear.

Of course, it was the tenth case that could really be the problem. “Anything else you want to tell me about? Anything unusual going on with Christine?”

Randall shook his head, but Meg bit her lip and looked worried. Interesting.

“Miss Garrison? Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

Meg gave her companion an uneasy look, then said, hesitating over the words, “Well, Christine was sort of worried about something...”

Ortiz remained silent, watching her. Usually it was best to let the interviewee reveal her story on her own, without too much prompting.

“Christine didn’t really want to talk about it, but she was sort of nervous—she thought someone might be watching her, or following her.”

“What?!” Randall seemed to explode out of his chair, staring down at Meg accusingly.
 

“Mr. Cagney, if you could please sit back down—”

Simultaneously, Meg said to Randall, her sharp tones overriding Ortiz’s words, “She told me not to say anything to you! She knew you would freak out, just like you’re doing now!
Madre de dios
!” The girl’s dark eyes were snapping, but she continued, her tone a little lower, “Sorry, Detective Ortiz.”

“No problem,” he said. “Mr. Cagney, I’ll have to ask you again to sit down.”

The young man glared at him for a moment, then slowly resumed his seat, his knuckles white against the arms of the chair.

“All right, then.” After giving Randall one last quelling look, Ortiz transferred his attention to Meg. “So Christine thought she had a stalker?”

“Well, not in so many words, but—” Her dark, long-lashed eyes narrowed a bit, and then she said, “Okay, yeah. She said she saw this guy a couple of times on campus and got the impression he was following her.”

“Do you remember if she said exactly when she saw this man?”

“Mmm...not really. I think the first time was pretty early on in the semester, like the end of September maybe? And then definitely at the autumn recital, which was mid-October.”

Ortiz took rapid notes on his yellow pad. He was liking the sound of this less and less. But the first order of business was to get as many facts as possible. “Did she say anything about what he looked like?”

“A little.” Meg tilted her head to one side, apparently trying to recall exactly what her friend had told her. One long gold earring brushed against her throat as she did so, and Ortiz studiously raised his eyes once again to her face. God, the girl was distracting. “She said he had dark hair—or did she just say it was brown? Brown, dark, something like that. And she said he looked like he was in his late thirties or early forties, kind of medium height, but a good build, like he might work out or something. I think that was about it.”

“Eye color?”

“Nope. I don’t think she ever got close enough to tell for sure.”

“And as far as you know she only saw him on those two separate occasions?”

“I’m pretty sure that was it, yeah.”

Ortiz continued to make notes on his pad, although he could tell Randall was dangerously close to another outburst. To forestall any more arguments on the young man’s part, he directed his next words to him. “Do you have a recent photo of Christine?”

“Yeah, actually, I do.” Randall reached inside his jacket and pulled out a photo that had obviously been printed on someone’s home computer. “My brother took a bunch of shots with his phone on Thanksgiving, and he gave me copies.”

Giving Randall what he hoped was a reassuring smile, Ortiz took the photo and looked it over carefully. The shot was of Christine and Randall in front of a large fireplace with a heavy carved wood mantel; Randall had his arm draped around Christine’s shoulders, and they were both smiling directly into the camera. The girl had a luxuriant mass of curly dark hair that fell almost to her waist, a surprising, almost archaic look in this era of flat-ironed locks and center parts. And she was beautiful. Possibly not as immediately striking as Meg’s flamboyant, exotic allure, but just as lovely in her own way, with delicate, even features and large blue eyes.

“May I keep this?” Ortiz asked.

It was obvious Randall wanted to protest at first—Ortiz could understand the young man not wanting to part with even this small reminder of his missing girlfriend—but then he said, “Sure. If you think it will help.”

“I hope it will.” Ortiz set the photo down on his yellow pad and addressed his next words to both Randall and Meg. “At this point it’s far too early to call this anything but a missing-person case, but of course I’ll continue to investigate. I think the next step is to procure a search warrant and contact Miss Daly’s landlord so he can give Pasadena P.D. access to her home. Maybe we’ll find some more clues there. In the meantime, don’t hesitate to call if you think of anything else—even if you’re not sure it’s at all connected to Miss Daly’s disappearance.” He pulled several cards out of his top desk drawer and handed one each to Randall and Meg. “That’s got both my direct line and my pager number on it. If you think of anything else, or have a question, just give me a call. I assume your contact info is on the report you filled out?”