The Driver (14 page)

“259 Sixth Street.”

“What’s that?”

“A hotel.”

“An SRO?”

“That’s right.”

“Which one?”

“The El Capitan.”

“How are you finding that? Bit of a dive, right?”

“It’s alright.”

“You say so. Phone number?”

He gave them the number of his cellphone.

“Are you alright for water?”

“Yes.”

He tossed a packet of cigarettes on the table. “Feel free to light up. We know this can be stressful.”

Milton had to stifle a long sigh of impatience. “It would be stressful if I had something to hide. But I don’t, so I’ll pass, but thanks anyway. Now, please––can we get started? There’s already been too much waiting around. Ask me whatever you like. I want to help.”

Cotton squinted: one eye, a little spooky. “Alright, then. John Smith––that’s your real name, right?”

“It is.”

“And you’re English, right?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ve been to England. Holiday. Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, all that history––one hell of a place.”

Milton rolled his eyes. Was he serious? “Just ask me about Madison.”

“In a minute, John,” the man said with exaggerated patience. “We just want to know a little bit about you first. So how come you ended up here?”

“I’ve been travelling. I was in South America for six months and then I came north.”

“Through Mexico?”

“That’s right.”

“How long you been here?”

“Nine months. I was here once before, years ago. I liked it. I thought I’d come back and stay a while.”

“How have you been getting by?”

“I’ve been working.”

Cotton’s good eye twitched. “You got a visa for that?”

“Dual citizenship.”

“How’s that?”

“My mother was American.” It was a lie but it was what his passport said. Dual citizenship saved unnecessary nonsense that would have made it more difficult for him to work. Being able to claim some connection to the United States had also proven to be useful as he worked his way north up the continent.

“Alright, John. Let’s change the subject––you want to talk about Madison, let’s talk about Madison. You know we’ve dug up two bodies now, right?”

“I’ve seen the news.”

“And you know none of them are her?”

That was news to him. “No. I didn’t know that.”

“That’s right––none of them. See, Madison had a metal pin in her hip. Fell off her bike when she was a girl, messed it up pretty good. They had to put one in to fix it all together. The remains in the morgue are all whole, more or less, and none of them have anything like that.”

Milton felt a moment of relief but immediately tempered it: it was still surely just a matter of time.

“That doesn’t mean we won’t find her,” Cotton went on. “If you’ve been watching the news, you’ll know that we’re still searching the beach and we’re very concerned that we’re gonna find more. So, with all that being said, let’s get down to meat and potatoes, shall we?”

“Please.”

“Why’d you do it, John?”

Milton wasn’t surprised. “Seriously?”

“What did you do with her body?”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I’m not kidding, John.”

“No, you’ve got to be. It’s nothing to do with me.”

“Answer the question, please.”

He looked dead straight at the cop. “I just answered it. I didn’t do it. I have absolutely no idea where she is.”

“So you say. But on your own account you were the last person to see her alive.”

He clenched his fists in sudden frustration. “No––that’s not what I said.”

“You got a temper, John?”

“I don’t know that she’s dead. I hope she isn’t. I said that I was one of the last people to see her before she disappeared. That’s different.”

“We know the two girls we’ve got in the morgue were all hookers. Madison was hooking when she disappeared. It’s not hard to join the dots, is it?”

“No, it isn’t. But it has nothing to do with me.”

“Alright, then. Let’s change tack.” He took a cigarette from the packet and lit it, taking his time about it. He looked down at his notes. “Okay. The night after she disappeared––this is the Friday––we’ve got a statement from Victor Leonard that says you went back to Pine Shore. He said he saw you coming out of the garden of the house where the party was the night before. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“We checked the security camera, Mr. Smith. There’s one on the gate. We looked and there you are, climbing over the wall. Why’d you do something like that?”

Milton gritted his teeth. The camera must have run off rechargeable batteries that would cut in when the power went out. “The gate was locked,” he said.

“Why didn’t you buzz to get in?”

“Because someone had changed the code to the gate after Madison disappeared. Rather than wasting your time with me, I’d be asking why that was. A girl goes missing and the next day the code to the gate is changed? Why would they want to keep people out? Don’t you think that’s a little suspicious?”

“We’ll be sure to bear that in mind. What were you looking around for?”

“Anything that might give me an idea what caused Madison to be so upset that she’d run away.”

“You spoke to Mr. Leonard?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Madison went to his house. I wanted to know what she said to him.”

“He say anything useful?”

He thought of Brady. “Not really.”

“And you don’t think all this is something that the police ought to do?”

“Yes, I do, but Madison’s boyfriend had already reported her missing and he got the cold shoulder. Most crimes are solved in the first few hours after they happen. I didn’t think this could wait.”

Cotton chain-smoked the cigarette down to the tip. “Know a lot about police work, do you John?”

“Do you have a sensible question for me?”

“Got a smart mouth, too.”

“Sorry about that. Low tolerance level for idiots.”

“That’s it, John. Keep giving me attitude. We’re the only people here keeping you from a pair of cuffs and nice warm cell.”

Milton ignored the threat.

Cotton looked down at his notes. “You said she was frightened?”

“Out of her mind.”

“That’s not what security at the party said.”

“What did they say?”

“Said you barged in and went after her.”

“I heard her screaming.”

“How’d you explain how one of them ended up with concussion and a broken nose?”

“He got in my way.”

“So you broke his nose and knocked him out?”

“I hit him.”

“It raises the question of that temper of yours again.”

Milton repeated himself patiently. “I heard Madison screaming.”

“So?”

“So I went in to see if she was alright.”

“And?”

“I told her I’d take her home.”

“And?”

“She got around me and ran.”

Cotton got up and started to circle the table. “You mentioned Trip Macklemore. We’ve spoken to him. He said you had Madison’s bag in the back of your taxi.”

“I did. I gave it to him afterwards.”

“What was it doing in your car?”

“She left it there.”

“But you’d already taken her where she needed to go. Why would she have left it?”

“I said I’d wait for her.”

“You didn’t have another job to go to?”

“She was nervous. I didn’t think it was right to leave her there, on her own, with no way to get back to the city.”

“You were going to charge her for that?”

“I hadn’t decided. Probably not.”

“A favour, then? Out of the goodness of your heart?”

“It was the right thing to do.”

“He’s English,” the other man, Webster, offered. “What is it you call it?”

“Chivalry?”

“That’s right, chivalry.”

“Don’t know about that, boss, doesn’t strike me as all that likely. Taxi drivers aren’t known for their charity.”

“I try and do the right thing,” Milton said.

He looked down at his notes. “You work for Vasilly Romanov, too, right? Mr. Freeze––the ice guy?”

“Yes.”

“We spoke to him. He had to have words with you the afternoon she went missing. That right?”

“I dropped some ice.”

“He says you were agitated.”

“Distracted. I knew something was wrong.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I already have.”

Cotton slapped both hands on the table. “Where is she?”

Milton stared at him and spoke calmly and carefully. “I don’t know.”

He drummed the table. “What did you do with her body?”

“It’s got nothing to do with me.”

“Is she on the headland?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let me share a secret with you, John. The D.A. thinks you did it. He thinks you’ve got a big guilty sign around your neck. He wants to throw the book at you.”

“Knock yourself out.” Milton calmly looked from one man to the other. “We can go around the houses on this all day if you want but I’m telling you now: if anything has happened to Madison it has absolutely nothing to do with me, and it doesn’t matter how you phrase your questions, it doesn’t matter if you shout and scream and it doesn’t matter if you threaten me––the answers will always be the same. I didn’t do it. It has nothing to do with me. And I’m not a fool. You can say what you want but I know you don’t think that I did it.”

“Really? How would you know that, John?”

“Because you would have arrested me already and this interview would be under caution. Look, I’m not a fool. I understand. I know you need to eliminate me. I know that I’m going to be a suspect. It stands to reason. I’ll do whatever you need me to do so that you can be happy that I’m not the man you want. The car I was driving that night is parked outside. Get forensics to have a look at it. You can do it without a warrant––you don’t need one, you have my authorisation. If you want to search my room, you’ve just got to ask.” He reached into his pocket and deposited his keys on the table. “There. Help yourself.”

“You’re awfully confident, John.”

“Because I have nothing to hide.” Webster was fingering the cigarette packet. Milton turned to him. “You’re the ranking officer here, right? I’m not going to tell you your job but you’ve got to put a lead on your friend here and get off this dead end––right now. You’re wasting time you don’t have. If Madison is still alive, every minute we’re doing this makes it less likely she’ll be alive when you find her.”

Webster cocked an eyebrow. “You like telling us what we should be doing so much, Mr. Smith––what would you be doing?”

“I’d be looking at the footage from that CCTV camera. Maybe you’ll see what happened. And everyone who went to the party that night will have gone through the gate. You should start looking into them.”

“The footage has been wiped,” he said.

“What?”

“There’s nothing from the Friday night.”

“Who wiped it?”

“We don’t know.”

“You need to talk to whoever did that, then. Right?”

“It was three months ago. It’s not unreasonable.”

Cotton took over. “You got anything to tell us, John?”

Milton thought about the two men in the house after the party. He would have told the cops what had happened, what he had overhead, but how could he do that without telling them that he had broken in? Why would he have done something like that? It wasn’t going to be possible. That was a lead that he would have to follow for himself.

“Alright, officers. Is there anything else?”

They said nothing.

“I’m going to be on my way. You know where I am and you’ve got my number. If you want me to stay, you’re going to have to arrest me.”

He pushed the chair away and stood up from the table.

19

MILTON NEEDED A MEETING. As he drove across town he felt as if he needed one even more than usual. He wasn’t overly worried––he knew he would be able to run rings around the police––but the interview had still left him angry and frustrated. He had known that the police would treat him as a suspect––he would have done the same, if the roles had been reversed––but they seemed fixated. The longer they wasted on him, the worse it would be for Madison. And also, for a man in his particularly precarious position, there was the overriding need to be careful. More than careful. An arrest, his fingerprints and mugshot taken, metadata passing between anonymous servers, he knew that was all the spooks at GCHQ or the NSA would need to pin him down and then it would all kick off again. The firestorm that had blazed around him in Juárez would spark back to life. Worse this time. He knew the prudent thing to do would have been to jump town the moment that there had been even a sniff of trouble. The day after Madison had disappeared. Now, though, he couldn’t. The city had closed around him like a fist. If he ran, the police would see it as a sign of guilt. They would have all the evidence they needed to push their suspicions about him up a notch. There would be a manhunt. His name would be in the papers. His picture on the internet.

He might as well telephone Control.

I’m in San Francisco.

Come and get me.

No, he thought, as he drove across town.

He had to stay and see this through until the end.

He gripped the wheel tightly and concentrated on the pattern of his breathing. The rooms had taught him that anger and frustration were two of his most delicate triggers. A good meeting was like meditation and he knew that it would help him to put the lid back on his temper.

Eva was waiting for him, leaning against the wall by the door. She was wearing a woollen jumper, expensive, long enough to reach well down beyond her waist, a pair of jeans and chunky leather boots. She had a black felt beret on her head. She looked supremely cute.

“Hello, John.”

“You’re early.”

She leaned forward, pressing herself away from the wall. “Thought maybe I’d give you a hand. That alright?”

“Course,” he said.

They worked quickly and quietly: preparing the room, setting up the table with the tea and coffee, washing the crockery. Milton’s thoughts went back to the meeting with the police. He thought about everything he knew. Two escorts found dead on the same stretch of headland. Madison going missing just five miles from the same spot. It looked bad for her. Maybe there was another explanation for what had happened, but, then again, maybe there wasn’t. The most obvious explanation was often the right one.