Distant Memory (11 page)

The present call was different. He had taken one of the license plates to the forensics lab to have it examined for authenticity. He wanted to know if the plate was a genuine California Department of Motor Vehicles issue or a counterfeit. The caller, a technician in the lab, told him it was real. His frustration mounted.

How could a car, a new car, have an illegitimate VIN number and unassigned plates? And that was not all that was out of place. The wreck had been severe, but where was the injured driver? He had seen many cases where drivers had lived through impossible crashes, but they never just walked off—not unless they had something to hide. Was that what he was dealing with? A drug runner fell asleep at the wheel, wrecked the car, and then fled to avoid police? Possible, but no drugs were found in the car.

The vehicle was missing other things, too. There had been no registration and no proof of insurance form; state law required both to be carried in the car. Even more suspicious were the facts he was hearing now. Tanner had examined the car again, and this time he noticed something strange.

“You heard right,” Tanner said. “Once we had the car at the impound lot, I took a closer look. It has a global positioning navigation system in it. You know, one of those things that tell you where you are and where you’re going. It can even give you directions to the next gas station.”

“I’m familiar with the GPS, Tanner. What about it?”

“It was disconnected.”

“Maybe the connections were broken in the accident,” Hobbs suggested.

“No way. The wires were cut, neat and clean. Someone wanted the system disabled.”

“But why?”

“I have no idea, but there’s more. The car comes with a cellular phone. It mounts in the dash for hands-free use. It was deactivated—big time. Someone yanked the whole system out.”

“What?” Hobbs couldn’t believe his ears. “Both the GPS and the cell phone were disabled?”

“You got it.”

“This is too weird,” Hobbs confessed. “No driver, no way to trace the car, and now this. Got any ideas?”

Tanner sighed into the phone. “I was hoping you could tell me something.”

“Who spends fifty grand on a luxury car and then guts it like that?”

“Promise me that you’ll let me in on the secret when you figure it out,” Tanner said.

“I will. And thanks. It means something. I just don’t know what.”

“Maybe the fingerprints will help us,” Tanner offered. “Hold on.”

Hobbs could hear Tanner talking to someone in his office. The CHP officer came back on the line.

“We may have something,” he said. “One of our officers found a clerk says that a woman who looked pretty beat-up stayed at his motel. He said two men had come looking for her. They had a picture and—get this—they said they were cops.”

“I’m on my way down,” Hobbs said quickly. “I want to talk to this guy. I’ll see about getting a police artist to join us. Maybe the clerk can describe the woman well enough for us to get a composite picture.”

“Sounds good.”

Hobbs hung up and grabbed his coat. Mojave was a good hour’s
drive from Bakersfield, and he didn’t want to waste time. He picked up the phone again. A few moments later he was out the door and headed to the airport, where a sheriff’s helicopter would be waiting for him.

“Got it,” Raymond Massey said, then switched off the cell phone and placed it back in his suit coat pocket. “That was Mr. Moyer,” he added.

McCullers grunted with feigned nonchalance. Things were getting out of hand. Having Massey along was annoying. Now Moyer was getting involved. Soon, he was sure, the UCLA football team would be offering suggestions.

“We’ve got a break,” Massey said flatly. “He followed my suggestion and ran down Nick Blanchard’s name. There’s no record of him anywhere. No one by that name has a license to drive a commercial truck.”

“That you can find, you mean,” McCullers said.

“If Mr. Moyer says that there is no Nick Blanchard that fits the given parameters, then there is no Nick Blanchard.”

“Fits the given parameters?” McCullers laughed loudly. “That’s a good one, Massey. You sound like you’re talking about stock options or a business merger. We’re tracking a man. The parameters change constantly.”

Massey sighed loudly. “Once again you’re missing the point. Why would a man rescue a damsel in distress, put her up in a motel room, and then lie about his occupation and name?”

“Lots of reasons,” McCullers snapped, “and it’s you who’s missing the point. That kind of behavior is what I’m talking about. You can’t feed a man’s name into a computer and have some database kick out a picture of how the guy thinks. Maybe the guy is one of those antigovernment fanatics who hoard guns and food and who refuse to get a driver’s license or to pay income tax.”

“It is almost impossible to conceal an identity. Maybe he is something more challenging.”

“Like what?”

“Like a government operative, you idiot,” Massey snapped. “Maybe he’s something worse.”

“What could be worse?”

“A competitor.” Massey said it as if the word were dirt in his mouth. “Our business is highly competitive, and a dozen firms would like to know what we know … would like to know what
she
knows.”

“That’s hard to swallow.”

“Well, try harder. This may be difficult for you to understand, McCullers, but at the level of business that Moyer Communications operates, there are a great many shady practices. Some firms retain their own circle of industrial spies and operate with a sophistication that rivals the CIA. If those firms knew about her, they would stop at nothing to bring her on board. It would be a grave mistake for us to underestimate them.”

“That’s all very interesting,” McCullers said sarcastically, “but it doesn’t help very much, now does it?”

“I’m changing our approach,” Massey said. “Stay on the 14 until we reach Lancaster, then take the G Street turnoff.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s where the Gen. William J. Fox Airfield is. Mr. Moyer has arranged for a helicopter. We’ll never catch a truck with a three- or four-hour lead. We can cover a lot more ground this way.”

“I like the idea, but the truck could have gone so many different directions, not to mention the number of trucks on the road.”

“Mr. Moyer is sending up other helicopters. He has one from Bakersfield that will follow Highway 58 east; another will lift off from Riverside and check out I-15, I-215, and I-10. There will be others, too. We’re to follow the 14 and cut over to I-5.”

“That’s a lot of helicopters. You guys must have pretty deep pockets.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Yeah, whatever,” McCullers said flippantly. “And how are we supposed to find our man from the air?”

“The motel clerk gave us a few clues,” Massey answered with a tone that did nothing to hide his disgust. “You really make a living at doing this?”

“Cut to the chase,” McCullers snapped, resisting the urge to backhand the man next to him.

“The clerk said Blanchard’s truck was white, looked brand-new, and had no markings on the doors. Almost every commercial truck has some kind of signage on it that identifies the company and even the name of the driver. The clerk thought it was unusual that the truck had no markings at all.”

“So we look for a brand-new semi without markings?”

“And two people in the cab.”

“Not a very technical approach.”

“I’m working on that. Hopefully, that will all change soon.”

“It galls you to have to do this without all Moyer’s technical gizmos, doesn’t it? Well, welcome to my world, Massey. Some things have to be done the old-fashioned way. That’s what I’m good at.”

“We’ll see,” Massey commented dryly. “We’ll see.”

G
regory Moyer was angry. He could bring down any man in the country and had done so when it suited his purposes. Generals turned to him for information on world leaders. He could pinpoint almost every dignitary on the globe, but now he faced the possibility of failure. This one woman had slipped through his fingers. The woman was smart.

He paced his cavernous office, his hands clasped firmly behind his back. She was headed south. She could lose herself easily in Los Angeles or San Diego. Eight million people lived in the greater L.A. area, and more than two million lived in San Diego County—ten million people in just those two cities. She could hide indefinitely. She knew all the tricks, things to avoid and things to do to disappear without a trace. Armed with her knowledge, she could drop off the face of the earth and still destroy him and Moyer Communications.

Her first step would be to go primitive, eschewing technological luxuries. No cell phone, no e-mail, no GPS, no ATMs, no credit cards, no bank accounts. Nothing. By leaving no records, she would become invisible. She could easily obtain false identification if she knew where to look and had sufficient cash. And she could borrow an identity. A few cycles of new identities would make her impossible to find.

He had to find her. Every hour made the task more difficult; it was time to call in a few favors, time to pull out all the stops.

He walked back to his desk. His phone, unlike most phones, had no handset. Microphones in his desk and around his office could pick up his voice and speakers relayed the words of the person on the other end of the line. The phone was voice activated. “Phone,” he said.

Ready
, a synthetic voice replayed.

“Security high, encrypt, priority one.”

Ready
, the computerized system said. Moyer knew that his voiceprint had been compared to the one stored in the system. No one could use his phone but him.

“Gen. Lawrence Scott, Pentagon number.”

There was a pause, but no dial tone. Moyer hated noises.

Ringing
, the synthetic voice offered.

A moment later: “Scott, here.”

“General, this is Gregory Moyer. Sometime back you said you owed me a favor. Do you remember that?”

The general laughed. “Not much on pleasantries, are you? I believe I owe you several favors. I count a dozen just from Desert Storm. You had the capability to find my son after he was shot down when no one else could. Yeah, I’d say I owe you a favor.”

“I’m in need of your help.”

There was a short pause and then General Scott said flatly, “Name it.”

Bill Hobbs, who would rather have a root canal than fly, released a sigh of relief as the McDonnell Douglas 500E helicopter set down on the concrete pad at the Mojave Civilian Flight Test Center. He had flown only once before in the Kern County sheriff’s helicopter, and he had hated that too. His relief was tempered by the fact that he would soon have to strap himself in for the return flight home.

A short distance away, just out of the rotor blast area, was a CHP
cruiser. Tanner was standing next to it, his arms folded casually in front of him. Hobbs exited the craft and jogged to the car.

“You look green,” Tanner said bluntly.

“Yeah, well, it’s nice to see you, too. Is our man ready?”

“Unhappy, but ready. I have him at the substation. I ran his record, and he’s clean. One shoplifting charge when he was sixteen, but nothing since.”

“Did he give you a description of the men who were impersonating police officers?” Hobbs slipped into the passenger seat.

Once inside the car, Tanner answered. “Yes. I put an APB out on them. He saw their car, a dark sedan. That’s the best he could do. A dark sedan.”

“Not much help there. Let’s see what else he has to say.”

“I’ll have you there in five minutes. The substation is just a couple of miles away.”

“Good, the less travel the better. Helicopters and me don’t mix.”

The motel clerk sat in a small examination room, a cup of coffee in front of him. His head was down and his shoulders slumped. He looked miserable when Hobbs and Tanner breezed in.

“Good afternoon, Mr.—” Hobbs paused to looked at the clipboard he carried. “Webber. I’m sorry to keep you waiting. Can I freshen that cup of coffee for you?”

Webber looked up. Hobbs thought he looked like the kind of kid who causes parents to grow gray prematurely, but that was a prejudicial opinion. For all he knew, the young man was the best son a mother or father could have. “No,” Webber said. “You can let me go home.”