The Disappearance (8 page)

“That isn’t mine,” Joe protests again.

The cop ignores him. He starts rummaging around in the still-open glove compartment, taking items out and laying them on the seat.

“There’s nothing in there.” The sidewalk is damp; his ass is getting wet through his trousers, and he’s sweating like a bandit under the arms.

The officer has almost finished searching through the pile of bills, old registrations, used food wrappers, and assorted other junk. All the way in the back, almost buried in a crease in the lining, he feels something like a key. He shines his light into the recess, pushing some of the junk aside so he can pull it out and see what it is.

A couple of house keys on a short key ring attached to a funny-looking cross. Expensive, the cop thinks, tossing the keys in his palm. Why does this seem familiar?

Then he remembers.

Joe is brought to the police station. He doesn’t have a lawyer in town; he’s never needed one. He tries to call his agent in L.A., but Scott’s on the red-eye to New York.

At least they’ve got him in a single cell, not sharing with anyone else.

The key ring belonged to Emma Lancaster. Her mother had bought it for her in Greece, when they were on vacation the summer before last. The summer before she died.

It’s after one in the morning. Bert Sterling and Terry Jackson, who had been the lead detectives on the kidnapping case, are called at home. They dress hurriedly and come down to the station. Sheriff Williams is also summoned and comes in.

Joe has already been Mirandized out in the field which he assumed had been on the DUI and open-bottle violation. The arresting officer wasn’t specific. The officers talk about what they should do.

Williams is cautiously optimistic—what an incredible stroke of luck. “We’ve got to be really careful here. We don’t want to blow this.” He thinks about what to do. He calls the district attorney, Ray Logan.

Logan listens intently as Williams fills him in over the phone. There are good reasons to consider Joe Allison a prime suspect, both men agree. The key ring, of course, is a damning piece of evidence. Allison knew the Lancaster house and property well; he’d been there dozens of times. He may well have known the alarm-system codes. And as ugly as the prospect might be, he could be the guy who was fucking Emma—he’s great-looking, charismatic, exactly the kind of man a young girl just learning how to fall in love would go for.

Logan gets to the jail in less than twenty minutes. “What do you think?” he asks the sheriff.

“I think it could be him,” the sheriff says. “That key ring …”

“A big piece, anyway,” Logan agrees. He ponders the options, then says to the sheriff, “Let’s talk to the man.” He thinks a moment longer. “And I want to send one of your men to his house. I’ll call in the search warrant.”

Williams turns to Sterling. “Go get ’em, slugger. You know what we’re looking for.”

A deputy unlocks the door to the holding cell where Joe’s been stashed. Joe jerks awake from his light slumber. “What’s going on?” he asks.

The deputy offers no explanation. “Follow me.”

He leads Allison out of the cell block into the interview section and places him in a small, windowless room. In the middle of the room is a government-issue table with three beat-up metal chairs. There’s also a video camera hidden in the corner of the ceiling that Joe doesn’t know about.

“Have a seat. Someone’ll be in shortly.”

Joe looks around at the drab surroundings. What the hell’s going on? he thinks.

Terry Jackson comes into the room, closing the door behind him. He’s wearing sweatpants and a UCSB varsity basketball sweatshirt, the easiest things to throw on when he got the call. He’s a lanky black man in his late thirties; he played small-college basketball upstate and is known for his booming laugh and needling humor.

“Mr. Allison. Terry Jackson. I’m a detective here in the department. I watch you on television.”

Joe grimaces. “I feel like a jerk.”

“Yeah, I can understand. You shouldn’t have been drinking and driving, man.”

“I didn’t have that much to drink,” Joe protests, but not too hard. These cops hear that a million times a day, he knows. Better to play it cool.

Jackson drops into a chair on the opposite side of the table from Joe, turning it around. He folds his arms on the scarred chairback, leans forward comfortably. “You shouldn’t be in here,” he says.

“Well, okay.” That’s good to hear, coming from a cop. “That’s how I feel, too.”

“So what I’d like to do is, I’d like to ask you a few questions and send you on your way, if that’s okay with you.”

Joe lets out an audible sigh of relief. “That’s fine.”

“Good.” Jackson leans further forward. “The officer read you your rights, right?”

Joe stares at him quizzically. “What are you talking about?” he asks.

“Out there in the street, when you were stopped.” Jackson’s smile is open. “I can’t talk to you at all if you haven’t been told your rights,” he explains. “It’s the law.”

“Well …” Joe’s hesitant. This is the first time in his life that he’s been in a jail cell. He isn’t following this clearly—he’s too nervous.

Jackson stands up, heads for the door. “Listen, if you’ve got any kind of problem with this, it’s not a big deal.”

“Wait a minute.” Joe stops him. “Am I going to be released now anyway?”

Jackson stops a step from the door. “That I can’t do,” he says. “But it’s no big thing, you’ll be sprung sometime later this morning.”

No way. He wants out now. There could be a reporter or someone who knows him around in the morning, and then he’d really be screwed.

“That’s okay,” he says before Jackson can leave. “He read me my rights.”

Jackson turns back to him. “And you’re all right with that?”

“Sure, I’m fine.” He smiles. “I have nothing to hide.”

Jackson sits back down again. “That’s good, Mr. Allison. A little cooperation from you, a few pieces of information, and we can wrap this up.” He takes the key ring, which is in a Ziploc bag, out of his pocket and places it on the table between them. “This belongs to you, that’s correct?” he asks, taking the key ring out of the bag and passing it across the table.

Joe reaches out and picks the key ring up, looks at it. He hadn’t seen the arresting officer take it out of his car. “No. This isn’t mine.”

Jackson seems surprised. “It isn’t?”

“No. I don’t recognize it.”

Jackson sits back, his arms crossed in front of his chest. “That’s weird.”

“Why?”

“Because we found it in your car.”

“Well, it isn’t mine. Somebody must’ve left it in there.” First the bottle, now this? What’s this all about?

“Like who?” the detective asks.

“I don’t know,” Joe answers truthfully. “I have a million people riding in my car. Anyone could’ve tossed it in there.”

In an adjoining room Logan and Williams are watching over the video feed.

“He’s handling this well,” Williams comments; he’s nervous as hell about this. “If he’s our man.” Doubt is starting to creep in.

“He’s a television personality,” Logan reminds him. “He’s trained to be cool under pressure.” He pauses. “And to lie when it’s convenient.”

Inside the interrogation room, Jackson is pressing. “Man, you let anybody rides with you mess around in your glove compartment?” he asks with a disbelieving smile. “I don’t let anyone in my box, not even my old lady. I got my car phone in there, gasoline credit cards, all kinds of personal stuff. Come on, man,” he says jocularly, “a guy like you?” He winks at Joe. “You’re not going to let anybody rummage around in your personal stuff, I know that for a fact.”

Joe shrugs. “I don’t keep my personal things in there. What is the point of all this?” he adds.

Jackson changes the subject. “Tonight was your swan song at the station, so I hear.”

“Yes. I’m moving to Los Angeles.”

“Ooooh,” Jackson croons. “Tough city. Too big for this small-town boy. But if you want to get to the top, you got to make the move, right?”

“Yes.”

“Guess your boss’ll be sorry to see you go. Mr. Lancaster.”

“He knows it’s a good career move. That’s the way it is in our business.”

Jackson shakes his head in sadness. “What a terrible thing that family’s gone through. And they never did find out who did it. We take that personally in this office,” he adds, as if defending the entire department.

“You’re right,” Joe agrees. It was a terrible tragedy. He knows—he and Glenna have talked about it. Since her marriage broke up, she and Joe have spent time together. She needs someone to talk to, and he’s a sympathetic listener.

“You were pretty close to them.”

“I still am. I’ve talked to Mrs. Lancaster about it. Moving ninety miles south isn’t going to diminish our friendship.”

“That’s good, that’s good.” The detective stares at Joe for a beat. “That young girl, their daughter. I heard she was a hell of a nice kid.”

“She was a wonderful kid,” Joe says forcefully.

“A little headstrong, though? We’ve heard stories she used to sneak out and meet up with boys, right under her parents’ noses.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Joe answers stiffly. He’s uncomfortable talking about this kind of personal thing regarding the dead girl, especially with someone he’s never met before.

“You never heard any of that?” the cop asks.

“No.”

“But you were friends. Not only with the parents, but with the girl too.”

“Well, sure,” Joe admits readily, “Emma and I were friends, despite the difference in our ages. She was very mature for her age.”

Jackson sits back. “I’m about done here,” the cop says. “A couple more questions is all. Not about your deal,” he adds, “that was an accident. We’re not going to bust you on that. We don’t want you going down to L.A. starting your new job with a cloud over your head.”

Joe sags with relief. That’s what he’s been waiting and hoping to hear. “Thank you,” he says to the cop. He’s revised his attitude about the officer—he isn’t a bad guy, he had a job to do.

“That kidnapping still bugs me.” Jackson leans forward again. “I was one of the detectives working on it, and us not solving it, it just … it sticks right here,” he says, pointing to his Adam’s apple.

“I can understand that.”

“You were around the house all the time, weren’t you,” Jackson says suddenly by way of left field.

“A fair amount.”

“You were probably there the day she was snatched.”

“Not that day, no. I hadn’t been there for about a week, as I recall. All the rain, there wasn’t much going on in the way of parties and whatever.”

Jackson files that away in his mental computer. “Did we ever interview you?”

“Yes.”

“Regarding your whereabouts and so forth.”

“Yes.” They hadn’t pressed him—he obviously wasn’t a suspect.

“Did the officer who questioned you ever ask your opinion of who might have done it?”

“Of course.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That it had to have been some sick bastard.”

“That was before or after her body was recovered?”

Joe thinks a moment. It’s been over a year ago now, and everything then was crazy, no one was thinking straight; he certainly wasn’t. “Before, I guess. Although it could’ve been after,” he says with confusion.

“I could check that out,” the cop says. “Not that I have any cause to,” he adds quickly. “Now that it’s over, and there’s been a year to cogitate on it, who do you think did it? I don’t mean a specific person,” he clarifies, “there’s no way you could know that. I mean what kind of person. Crazy or sane? A stranger … or someone she knew?” He’s staring into Joe’s eyes, pupil to pupil, as he’s asking these questions.

“I don’t know.” Joe stifles a yawn. Jesus, he’s exhausted. He doesn’t have his watch, they took it off him along with the rest of his stuff, but he guesses it must be three or four in the morning. “Look. I’ve answered all your questions, like I said I would. Now I’d like you to let me go, like you said you would.” He stands up. “A deal’s a deal. I’ve kept up my end, I’d like you to keep up yours.”

Williams and Logan, watching this over the closed-circuit, wince. “He’s right,” the D.A. says. “Legally, we can’t hold him any longer.”

“I’d better pull my boy at Allison’s place,” Williams concedes. “I don’t want him there when he shows up.” He picks up the telephone to dial Detective Sterling’s pager number.

Before he finishes, Sterling comes flying through the door.

There’s a knock on the door to the interrogation room. Jackson opens it. Sterling is on the other side. He says something into Jackson’s ear.

Jackson exits the room without a word of explanation to Joe, firmly closing the door behind him. The lock clicks; it sounds like a gunshot to Allison’s ears. He’s starting to get freaked. What kind of number are these guys running on him? Why have they left him alone?

Jackson joins the others in the viewing room. He sees a paper bag on a table in the corner of the room. Sheriff Williams strides over to it and dumps out the contents: a pair of running shoes. He picks the left shoe up. “Check this out.”

The shoe has a cut-mark in the bottom of the sole, as if sliced with a knife or the edge of a shovel: a solid match to the cut-mark on the shoe print left in the ground outside Emma’s bedroom, and at the trail where her body was found.

Jackson high-fives Sterling. “Great work!”

They’ve also found some condoms, the same type as the ones discovered in the Lancaster gazebo the first night they searched the place. Williams, who knows something important that none of the others knows, treads lightly with them.

“This is a popular brand,” he says cautiously. “In and of themselves they don’t mean anything.”

“Unless …” Sterling doesn’t finish his sentence.

“Don’t go barking up a tree you don’t know where the branches are,” Williams says sternly, cutting off any further discussion. “We have everything we need without any wild conjecturing.”

He’s going to call Doug Lancaster right away. And Glenna too. An end, finally, to this senseless, horrendous tragedy.

A
FTER YOU GO A
couple of hours north of San Francisco on Highway 101, past Ukiah twenty miles or so, you hang a left onto California 20, an old winding road that leads through dense woodland, most of it in Jackson State Forest. Ten miles before you get to Bartstown on the coast, you take a right, going north again now on County Road 97, a narrow two-lane lush with greenery on both sides, stands of pine and cedar and giant redwood, wildflowers and wild vines bursting into color at this time of year, early spring, after it has been raining all winter and the ground is bursting with life.