Back on Murder (12 page)

“Those haven’t been released to the media,” Cavallo says.

According to the time stamps, the Focus arrived at 12:58 p.m. Twelve minutes later, a gray shadow emerged from the driver’s side – presumably Hannah, but the action transpired too far from the camera for decent coverage.

“While she was sitting there, she made a call from her mobile to the prepaid number. The connection lasted about thirty seconds. She was probably calling to say she’d arrived.”

“And then the van pulls up?”

I flip to the next still, in which a white panel van blocks the view.

“One theory is, she got in the van. It was moving slow, and kind of stops right there, but you can’t tell from the footage if she got in. A group of people passes by right then. She might have blended in with them and gone inside the mall.” Cavallo fingers through my stack, sliding out another photo. “As they get closer, you can see one of the girls kind of looks like her. So that’s another theory.”

“Any footage from inside the mall?”

“Nothing we can confirm as her, no. You’d be surprised how many five-foot-four teenage blondes there are in the mall at any given time, and how hard it is to tell them apart on surveillance tape. She had a shiny pink purse, pretty distinctive, and we haven’t spotted anything like that.”

“No witnesses have come forward?”

She laughs. “Over fifty have. She was spotted in the parking lot, inside Macy’s, Sephora, and Williams-Sonoma. She was all over the food court. Sometimes with other girls, sometimes alone. She was arguing with a boy – sometimes a white boy, sometimes Latino – and she was holding hands with at least two different guys.”

“She got around.”

“Yeah, you could say that. There was even a witness in the Abercrombie changing room who heard a girl crying in the next stall. She couldn’t see this girl, but she’s pretty sure it had to be Hannah Mayhew. They’re all sure.”

“And they just want to help. I know how it works.”

Go to a neighborhood like the Third Ward, and no matter what happens – somebody can walk up to a dude in broad daylight and put a gun to his head – nobody sees anything. But out in the suburbs, everyone sees something. As they say, the crazies come out of the woodwork – only the crazies are normal enough. They’re just starved for attention, captivated by their proximity to the girl on tv.

Not that they’re making things up. I’ve interviewed witnesses before with impossible stories, the details obviously culled from news coverage, yet they were convinced what they said was true. Most could probably have passed a lie-detector test. No doubt at this very moment a young woman sits in front of the television in her Abercrombie T-shirt, convinced she was close enough to Hannah Mayhew to hear her weep.

“So you see where the manpower’s going,” Cavallo says. “We’ve got a small army checking out every delivery van and contractor in a ten-mile radius, and another one following up on every sighting that’s been reported.”

“What about her friends at school? Her church?”

“We got surveillance going on a kid at the school. Deals a little weed. Depending on who you ask, Hannah was either dating the boy or trying to convert him. His name is James Fontaine, and so far he’s the likeliest suspect.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“Honestly? I don’t have a feeling one way or the other. Usually I do.”

I hand the photos back, then walk a circle around the empty parking space, studying the pavement for I don’t know what. The wind ripples my pant leg. Overhead, the clouds are black-rimmed and foreboding.

“Can I level with you?” I say. “There’s only one thing I’m concerned about, and it’s the dna sample. If we get a match back on that, it blows this case wide open and puts me back where I belong – ”

“And if it doesn’t match?”

“It will. You may not have a feeling one way or the other, but I do. The girl on that bed was Hannah Mayhew. I don’t know how she got there, but she did.”

“You’re convinced.”

“Absolutely. So just tell me when to expect the answer.”

She shrugs. “Maybe a day, maybe a week. How am I supposed to know?”

“You said you had juice.”

“That doesn’t mean your hunch goes to the top of my list. Like I said, I’m not convinced, so you can’t expect me to put resources behind it, no matter how badly you want there to be a link.”

My collar tightens around my neck. “If that’s how you feel, I can go back to the me myself and get it done. You should have let me do that in the first place.”

“It’s not your case.”

“It’s as much mine as yours now.”

She crosses her arms. “No. It’s not.”

We head back to her car, neither of us very interested in continuing the conversation. Teaming us up was Wanda’s idea. Maybe it was a favor to me – or maybe it was punishment, the hair of the dog, her way of teaching me a lesson.

She starts the engine, letting the air-conditioning blow, then turns in her seat.

“March, let’s get something clear.”

“All right,” I say, not liking her tone or the intensity of her gaze.

“You see this?” She makes a fist of her left hand and brandishes the engagement ring. “You appreciate the significance?”

“Uh . . . yeah.”

“It means that no matter what you and Wanda have cooked up between you, nothing’s gonna happen. You understand that?”

“I’m a happily married man,” I say.

Her eyes narrow in contempt.

“Look,” I say. “You don’t know me. All I care about is getting those results back. If you’d just make that happen, you could get rid of me a lot sooner.”

She puts the car in gear. “Anyway. You’re old enough to be my dad.”

“What? No, I’m not.” I punch the window button, then lean my head out to yell. “Thank you, Wanda, wherever you are.”

Cavallo smiles, but just barely. When we hit FM-1960, I point right and she turns left.

“I need to get back,” she says.

“Fine, but there’s a lead I want to follow up while we’re out here.”

She sighs. “What?”

“That youth pastor from yesterday. I want to swing by and rattle his cage.”

“There’s no point.”

“Just turn around, all right? Pretty please? You can drop me off. I’ll hitch a ride back with some uniforms.”

She glides into the left-turn lane, tapping her fingers on the wheel. When the light changes, she whips the front around late, giving the tires a squeal, then pours on the gas. The woman always drives like she’s chasing someone. Or being chased.

Finding Carter Robb is easier said than done. His office at the church proves empty, and the number I worm out of the secretary goes straight to voicemail. According to Cavallo, who’s decided to stick with me for the moment, he runs after-school programs on Tuesdays and Thursdays, trading slices of pizza for a captive audience to evangelize. But Hannah’s disappearance trumps the usual schedule.

“All he does anymore is make copies of the flyer,” the secretary says. “Then he posts them all over the place. Sometimes the youth group kids go with him.”

“You have any idea where I could intercept him?”

She fingers the beads around her neck in thought. “His wife teaches at Cypress Christian School – no relation to the church. There’s a coffee place across from there, Seattle Coffee. His home away from home, I think.”

“I know where it is,” Cavallo says.

This turns out to be only partly true, as she proves by hunting around for twenty minutes while I dig through the Key Map and try to navigate. When we finally locate the coffee shop, there’s no sign of Robb, so I persuade Cavallo to take me to the school where his wife teaches. We page her from the office, then wait.

After a few minutes I check my watch.

“You’re not like the other homicide detectives,” Cavallo says.

“So you know a lot of them?”

She gives me a look like I’m an idiot. “They’re mostly big talkers. Gift of the gab. But not you. You’re more of a brooder, aren’t you?”

“Maybe I’ve got more to brood about.”

“I always expect them to be depressed,” she says. “Doing that kind of work, seeing what they see. But I guess you develop an immunity. I don’t think I could.”

“You might surprise yourself someday.”

Cavallo starts to reply, then looks past me. “Here she is.”

Gina Robb can’t be a day over twenty-five, but in her cardigan and cat-eye glasses she’s serious enough for an elderly librarian. She’s pinned a swag of dishwater blond hair back with a tortoiseshell barrette, exposing a swath of pale forehead. Under the cardigan, she wears a flower-print dress that flares at the hips, a self-consciously vintage look.

“You wanted to see me?” she asks, looking from one of us to the other, uncertain whom to address. “Are you from the police?”

I glance at my dangling shield. “How can you tell?”

She parries my attempt at humor with a grave frown. “Has something happened?”

“No, nothing like that,” Cavallo says.

I would never have picked this girl as Robb’s type. Proof, I suppose, that opposites attract, bookworms pairing off with jocks and vice versa. For some reason it makes him more interesting.

“We’re trying to find your husband,” I say. “Any idea where he might be?”

Her gray eyes flick toward the wall clock. “At church?”

“We checked. They said he might be out distributing flyers.”

“I guess that’s where he is then.”

“We checked the coffee shop,” Cavallo says. “They told us he hangs out there sometimes.”

She nods. “Sometimes.”

Either she’s trying to make this hard, or she’s genuinely baffled by our questions. “Would you mind giving him a call? Maybe he’ll pick up if he sees it’s you.”

Her hands fret the hem of her cardigan. “We haven’t dismissed class yet. I should really – ”

“Please,” Cavallo says. “Just humor him, ma’am.”

She moves slower than a reluctant snail, but she does move, her hand sliding into the drooping cardigan pocket, returning with a tiny sliver of a phone, which she thumbs open without glancing down. She punches a speed-dial button and puts the phone to her ear.

“Baby?” she says. “I’m still at the school. Yeah. Listen, the police are here looking for you. I don’t know . . . All right, here you go.”

She hands me the phone.

“It’s Roland March,” I say. “We met yesterday. I was wondering if we could have a chat.”

“Right.” He sounds wary. “You want to meet at the church?”

For some reason I don’t, and I tell him so. “How about I drop in wherever you are?”

“All right.”

“You’ll have to tell me where that is.”

A long time passes. His wife looks up anxiously while Cavallo consults her watch.

“Mr. Robb?”

“I’m . . . I’m sitting in the van. Outside James Fontaine’s house. Trying to work up enough nerve to go knock on the door.”

I walk alongside the red church van, giving the roof a nice tap, then climb into the passenger seat. Robb doesn’t even glance over. His eyes are fixed on the house across the street, a rather palatial brick mansion dating from the late seventies or early eighties with concrete lions on either side of the front steps. Not the crib I’d have expected for a Klein High weed dealer, but I can’t think why not. Where else is he going to live? We’re in the suburbs, after all.

I rap the plastic dash with my knuckle. “You really shouldn’t be doing this. For one thing, you’re not exactly keeping a low profile.”

“I’m not really trying.”

“For another thing – and I shouldn’t even be mentioning this – we’re already keeping an eye on this kid.” I crank the rearview around, glancing back at Cavallo, who’s still behind the wheel, leaving this one to me. “Putting up flyers is one thing. That’s great. But conducting your own stakeout? Not so much.”

“I’m not here to spy on him,” he says. “I wanted to confront him.”

“Won’t he still be in school?”

He looks at me for the first time. “He’s on suspension.”

“Didn’t the school year just begin? He didn’t waste any time.”

Robb wears cargo shorts today, along with Converse sneakers. His black T-shirt imitates the popular milk advertisements, but says got JESUS? instead. After meeting the wife, something tells me he chooses his wardrobe for ironic effect.

“Let me level with you,” I say. “When I saw you yesterday, something didn’t seem right. You were squirrelly. Like our being there made you nervous. So I started wondering what you’d have to be nervous about. Why don’t you save me the trouble and just tell me?”

“I’m not nervous about anything.”

“Really? ’Cause let me tell you something. What you’re doing right here, it’s abnormal. This is not how people react to situations like yours, not when they’re on the level.”

He runs a hand through his spiky hair. “How do they react?”

“Not like they’re guilty.”

“That’s how you think I’m acting?”

“Am I wrong?”

He reaches out and straightens the rearview mirror, reclaiming the territory. “How am I supposed to answer a question like that?”

“You have a guilty conscience, Mr. Robb. I want to know why.”

Human physiology is a funny thing. No matter how cool we think we’re playing it, most of us don’t have poker faces. Our tells can be ludicrously on target. Robb’s a perfect example. His top lip clamps down over the bottom, forcing the tuft of hair on his chin to pop out like porcupine quills. He’s literally biting down the words, and he has no idea.