Gone in a Flash (23 page)

‘Sir, I tried to tell him—’

‘Shut the fuck up, Mayfair. Just shut the fuck up. Both of you fucked this up royally, and if it wouldn’t cost more than my budget allows to send two more detectives over there and get your asses back here to do paperwork for the rest of your lives, I’d do it. But I can’t. I have to deal with what I have, and unfortunately what I have is you two fuck-ups. So listen. Lieutenant Nixon will use you as he sees fit, and you will bring me anything he feels is germane to our investigation. DO. YOU. UNDERSTAND.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Mayfair said.

‘Yeah, Loo, right,’ DeWitt said.

‘Lieutenant Nixon?’ Lt Hornsby said.

Lt Nixon turned his back on the two fuck-ups and took the call off speaker. Mayfair and DeWitt just sat there, not looking at each other, listening to this Houston top murder cop laughing with their own top murder cop, and they were pretty sure it was at their expense.

I woke up and saw that it was only seven o’clock on a Saturday morning! I didn’t need to get up! Why did I wake up? I didn’t have to pee, which was my usual reason for getting out of bed these days. I think it all boiled down to an inability to toss and turn. With Alicia taking up nine-tenths of the bed, it was hard to do. I got up and moved into the family room. I grabbed an afghan out of its basket next to the sofa and laid down, covering myself. Then I thought maybe I should have peed while I was up. So I got up, went back into the bedroom, used the facilities, and came back out. Alicia had managed to expand her skinny self to cover the entire bed. I went back out to the family room and laid back down on the sofa. A light came on behind me. I jumped to a sitting position, my hands in a position for what I thought might be a karate chop. It was my husband.

‘What are you doing up?’ I asked him.

‘What are
you
doing up?’ he countered.

‘I have a teenager with colt legs in my bed.’

‘I think I’m getting to that age where I can no longer sleep in,’ Willis said with a sigh. ‘Not to mention my feet hang off Alicia’s bed.’ He came and sat down on the sofa next to me. I covered us both with the afghan.

He touched my thigh under the covers. I looked at him and he looked at me, then we both looked around the room. It was definitely empty.

I met Gerald for breakfast that morning, energized and ready to find us a killer. I wasn’t sure how we were going to get to the town of Bethesda in Maryland, but that was my plan.

I ordered an egg, scrambled hard, a biscuit with cream gravy, and an orange juice, and asked Gerald, ‘So where’s this Bethesda place and how do we get there? Do we need to rent a car?’

‘Bethesda is a suburb of D.C. and we can get there by the metro,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ I said. Was I ready to go back down into the bowels of Hell? Well, it hadn’t really been that bad. ‘OK. So eat up and let’s go.’

‘Brother Joe wants me to rehearse with that lady from Louisiana after breakfast – you know, for our duet tonight – and right after that we have the rehearsal for all three choirs,’ Gerald said. ‘You think we can put this off until tomorrow?’

‘No, that’s OK,’ I said and sighed. ‘I’ll go by myself.’

‘Now, Vera—’

‘No, no, it’s OK. I do most things by myself nowadays. I’m used to it.’

‘I won’t hear of it! You can’t go down to the metro by yourself, you’ll get lost!’ he said.

Well, that got my goat. ‘Are you calling me senile? Are you saying I can’t go from this hotel, two blocks to the metro station?’

‘No, of course not,’ he said, falling back in his seat. ‘I just don’t want you to go without me, that’s all. I think we work well together.’

If I were a younger woman, I woulda blushed. But I’m made of sterner stuff these days. ‘When do you think our rehearsal will be over?’

‘Could be pretty late. And we go on at eight tonight. And another problem,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow’s Sunday, and if we need to get information from any state or local agency, they won’t be open until Monday.’

‘We leave Monday,’ I said, almost in tears. Was I just gonna go home and forget all about Rachael Donley? How could I possibly do that?

‘Well, I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve got a whole bunch of frequent flyer miles and I’ll get us two tickets to fly back whenever we finish up. What do you say? Will you stay in D.C. with me?’

‘We’re gonna need to find another hotel. This one is way too expensive,’ I said.

Mr Jones woke up to the smell of breakfast. Mr Brown was not in his bed, so Mr Jones could only assume he’d lived through the night. Mr Jones got up and went into the bathroom, used the facilities, washed his face, then headed downstairs. He followed the smell of bacon to the kitchen. It was a huge room with restaurant-style appliances that could have fed an army. Instead, sitting at a table in the middle of the room were Mr Big, his henchman, and Mr Brown. The crying lady was doing the cooking.

‘Please! Mr Jones, join us! I hope you had a pleasant night?’ Mr Big asked in his heavily accented English.

‘Motherfu—’ Mr Brown started, but Mr Big interrupted. ‘God only knows what you did to provoke him, Stuart— I’m so sorry, Mr Brown.’

As Mr Jones took a seat at the large round table, as far away from Mr Brown as he could get, he couldn’t help noticing the heavily bandaged right index finger. He decided to keep his smirk to himself.

‘So now we discuss the next phase of our journey. Our journey that ends, Mr Jones, in you receiving your share of the money,’ Mr Big said.

‘Excuse me, sir, but I just signed on to get that thingamabob and get it to you. I really need to get my money now. I got mouths to feed, you know.’

‘Actually, you have back child support to pay. I believe you are what they call in this country a deadbeat dad?’ Mr Big said.

‘No, now, that wasn’t my fault. I got laid off—’

Mr Big clicked his tongue and shook his head. ‘You Americans, always ready with an excuse for your failures. And yet your lives are so easy! Me? I was born in a gulag, yet look at me now!’ He waved his arms around the room. ‘I live in a mansion! I live like a czar! You? You are pitiful. And no, your job is not over, Mr Jones, and it will not be over until I say it is over. Do you understand?’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Mr Jones said sullenly, as the crying lady sat a plate of food down in front of him. He took a bite. Um, he thought, scrambled eggs with cheese and onions. And bacon. And fried potatoes! Oh, and look! Biscuits! Yummy.

‘I don’t understand,’ Alicia said.

They were sitting outside on the covered deck, side by side on the porch swing, holding hands. ‘It’ll just be until Christmas – that’s the end of the semester,’ Graham said. ‘This way I won’t have wasted the money Mom and Dad put out for my tuition and books and the dorm and everything,
and
I’ll get some credits behind me. But most of all, it’ll give everybody a chance to cool off. Get things back to as close to normal as they can get, considering.’

‘Considering what?’ Alicia said, her lower lip quivering.

‘Considering that I love you and that you, hopefully, love me,’ he said quietly.

‘Oh, I do!’ Alicia said, and threw her arms around Graham’s neck. He laughed then sobered and kissed her for the first time. Then the two just sat there for a long time.

Finally Alicia said, ‘I don’t know if I can stand being away from you now.’

‘Yeah, you can,’ Graham said, kissing her hand. ‘We know where we stand now. And we know it’s just going to be a matter of a few months.’

Alicia sighed. ‘I guess Mom and Dad really need to get back into the same bedroom.’

Graham laughed. ‘Those two can make any place a bedroom.’

‘What?’

‘I started to come downstairs early this morning. I went straight back up,’ he said.

Alicia covered her mouth. ‘You mean?’

‘Right there on the family-room sofa.’

‘Ewwww …’

Elizabeth Unger was gone. When Mayfair and DeWitt finally got into the Unger home, they too (besides, of course, the Houston PD, who had already gone over every aspect of the house and its disarray) discovered that the greatest possibility was that Mrs Unger had been snatched. Nobody was that bad a housekeeper. Overturned chairs and tables, broken dishes, food on the floor. No, it was pretty obvious that someone had come in while Mrs Unger was fixing dinner for two and taken her. The kitchen table was set for two, and there was still food in pots on the stove, crusted over and dried out. Mrs Unger obviously put up a fight, but to no avail. It was also a good bet that she’d been snatched before her husband had been killed in Austin.

‘Ya think we could get into her lab?’ DeWitt said.

‘Ya think HPD hasn’t already done that?’ Mayfair answered sarcastically.

‘Ya think you could keep your opinions to yourself ?’ DeWitt replied.

‘Ya think you could shut the fuck up?’ was Mayfair’s response.

‘No. I mean it. We should go to the lab,’ DeWitt said.

‘Where is it?’ Mayfair asked.

‘Fuck if I know,’ DeWitt answered.

‘Call the Houston loo,’ Mayfair said.

‘You call him,’ DeWitt said.

‘You’re a fucking idiot,’ Mayfair said as she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and hit the number she’d put in earlier that day. ‘Loo, this is Mayfair from Austin. Yes, sir. We’re at the house. We’d like to go by the lab, sir, if that’s all right with you.’ She listened for a moment then said, ‘Yes, sir. I understand, but just as another pair of eyes, sir?’ Again she listened. ‘Thank you, Loo. Now if we could get the address?’ She listened for a second then hung up the phone.

‘So what’s the address?’ DeWitt asked.

‘He wouldn’t tell me. He said, “look it up.”’ Mayfair looked at her partner. ‘Think you can handle that?’ she asked and vacated the house, heading for their car.

Unger Laboratories was near downtown, very close to, if not actually in, Houston’s infamous Fifth Ward. It was a cement block, one-story building surrounded by a seven-foot tall wrought-iron fence, bars at the one door and the windows. Considering the disrepair of the neighboring buildings – burnt-out shells, or those still standing with broken windows, and empty of life – it was a fair statement of fact about their location.

An unmarked car pulled up about the same time as Mayfair and DeWitt. The man inside showed them his detective’s shield and leaned out the window, something in his hand. ‘You Mayfair and DeWitt, Austin PD?’ he asked.

‘Yeah,’ DeWitt said, dragging out his own badge and ID. He showed it to the detective, who then handed him a set of keys. ‘This one,’ he said, pointing out a key, ‘opens the front door. This one,’ he said, pointing out another, ‘is for the lab, and this one opens the iron gate.’

‘Thanks,’ DeWitt said, reaching for the keys.

The detective held them just out of his reach. ‘I’m parked right over there,’ he said, pointing across the street at the one living thing on the entire block – a scrawny oak tree. ‘Bring the keys back to me.’ And with that he handed DeWitt the keys, did a U-turn, drove up half a block, did another U-turn, and nestled under the shade of the oak tree.

‘Hell, he’s not too obvious,’ DeWitt said.

‘Maybe he’s just acting as a deterrent, rather than trying to catch someone,’ Mayfair said.

Mayfair and DeWitt exited their vehicle and stood staring around them. It was deadly quiet. Most, if not all, the buildings on that block were abandoned – boarded up, or just left with broken windows and mounting piles of trash.

‘Kinda spooky,’ Mayfair said.

‘Wow, you really are a girl,’ DeWitt said as he moved toward the wrought-iron gate. Mayfair raised her leg and caught DeWitt’s leg, making him lose his balance and almost fall, only catching himself at the last minute with a grip on the fence. ‘My daddy always told me to never hit a girl. But you’re pushing my limit, bitch!’

Mayfair sighed. ‘Do you need extra time, or would it be easier if I used that key instead? I know it takes special skill.’

DeWitt glared at her and unlocked the wrought-iron fence’s gate.

There was a knock on the back door and Luna entered the great room where Willis and I were watching Saturday morning cartoons. We got hooked when the kids were little – they got over it, we didn’t.

‘Got a minute?’ she asked, sitting on the easy chair as Willis and I were cuddled on the sofa. She said this while simultaneously lifting the TV remote and turning off the new and seriously large flat-screen TV.

‘Hey!’ Willis opined.

‘Hey is for horses,’ Luna said. Then: ‘Listen! I haven’t told y’all this, didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, but Eddie’s being released from Leavenworth.’

‘Oh my God!’ I yelled, jumped up and threw my arms around her neck. We didn’t touch much so she initially recoiled, but after a second hugged me back.

Willis was also on his feet and actually hugged her next. ‘I can’t wait to meet him!’ he said, a big smile on his face.

Note of explanation: Eddie is Eduardo Luna, Sr., Elena’s husband. While he and Elena were both in the Air Force, and Elena was pregnant with their second child, Eddie had words at a bar with an officer who was being an asshole. The asshole officer pushed Eddie, an enlisted man, and Eddie pushed back. The asshole officer fell down, hit his head and died. Eddie has been in Leavenworth for the past twenty years. Elena and her boys take a two-week vacation every Christmas and drive to Leavenworth, Kansas. I’ve never asked if Leavenworth – the prison – had conjugal visitation. We didn’t talk about things like that. Actually, we very rarely talked about Eddie. I always got the feeling that was somehow not on the table for discussion.

‘Anyway,’ Luna said, shooing us away from her, ‘I’m going to Houston to pick him up. Nearest straight shot from Leavenworth. The government doesn’t pay for plane changes. And anyway, I sort of want the time on the road to, well …’

‘Get to know each other again,’ I said.

‘Yeah, that.’ She cleared her throat. ‘So, anyway, I got a call a while ago from Detective Mayfair, the female APD?’

Willis and I both nodded.

‘She and her partner are in Houston, initially to see the wife of James Unger, but it turns out she was snatched.’