The Driver (9 page)

“I was hoping you might be able to tell me––did she say anything?”

Milton watched through the bars of the gate as he pursed his withered lips. “Didn’t make a whole heap of sense. She was in a terrible panic. Just asking for help. I’ve no idea what she wanted help for. She had her cell phone out and kept trying to make a call but it didn’t look like she was getting through. I could see she needed help so I told her she could come in. My wife, Laura, she sleeps downstairs because she’s just had her knee replaced, she was up too, all that noise. I got her inside but then she got a whole lot worse. Couldn’t make any sense out of her. Laura picked up the phone and started talking to the dispatcher, ‘this girl here is asking for help, can you send someone to help her,’ and as she finished the call and turned to her and told her to sit down and relax, the police were on their way, as soon as she said that, out the door she went.”

“And?”

“And nothing much. Police came around half an hour later. It was a single officer, he had a look around the place. Said he looked around the whole neighbourhood but he couldn’t find her anywhere. They asked me the questions I guess they ask everyone: what did she look like, what was she wearing, what did she say, all that. I told them what I could remember.” He paused. “I’ve got six kids, Mr. Smith, and I’m sure one or two of them could probably tell you more about drugs than I could. But, you ask me, that girl was pretty well drugged up. She had her hand on the sideboard to help her stay upright. Big eyes––pupils practically as big as saucers. She almost fell over twice while I was talking to her. And she wasn’t making any sense. If that’s not someone under the influence of something or another, I don’t know what is. You ask me, whatever she thought her problems were, they were in her mind––hallucinations or whatever you want to call them.”

“Did you see where she went?”

“Over the fence. Straight into Pete Waterfield’s garden, I guess because he had his security light on, looked like maybe he was in. She pounded on his door but he’s off on vacation with his grandkids and when she didn’t get an answer she kept on going––into his back garden and then away.”

“That leads down to the cliffs?”

“Sure does. You see the boat he’s got parked down there? Behind the car?” Milton said that he did. “She crouched down there, between the two, as if she was hiding from something. I saw her try and make a call on her phone again but I guess it didn’t get anywhere, like the others, because she upped and made a run for it. And that’s the last time I saw her.”

“Yes,” Milton said. “Me too. The cliffs are fenced off there?”

“Around the house, sure they are. But not further down.”

“You think she might have gone over the edge?”

“I hope not. That’s a fifty foot drop right onto the rocks.” He paused. “What’s it got to do with you, anyway? She’s just a customer, right?”

“I’m worried.”

“Ain’t like no taxi drivers I know, get worried about the people they drive.”

“I think something bad has happened to her.”

“Nothing bad happens around here, Mr. Smith.”

“I don’t know about that.” Milton took a business card for his taxi business from his pocket. “I appreciate you talking to me. Maybe I am worrying too much, but maybe I’m not. The police won’t even treat this as a missing person enquiry until she’s been gone a couple more days and, even then, it’s not going to be very high up their list of priorities. I wonder, if you think of anything else, or if you hear anything, or if anyone says anything to you, could you give me a call?”

“Sure I can.”

Milton passed the card through the bars of the gate.

“One more thing,” he said. “The house over there”––he pointed to the house he had just been inside––“do you know who owns it?”

“The company place?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s owned by a company, one of the tech firms down in Palo Alto. Was on the market last year. Ten million dollars. What do you think of that?”

Milton made a show of being impressed.

“Good for the rest of us, too. They send executives there to stay––guys they’ve just hired before they can find a place of their own. None of them ever make much of an effort round here with the rest of us. Not unreasonable, I suppose. Why would they? They’re only stopping on the way to something else.”

“Know who’s in there now?”

“Afraid not. It’s empty, I think.”

“Apart from last night.”

“You can say that again.”

Milton thanked him and the old man went back to his front door. Milton turned back to the big house again. The place was quiet, peaceful, but there was something in that stillness that he found disturbing. It was as if the place was haunted, harbouring a dark secret that could only mean bad things for Madison.

11

MILTON PRESSED THE buzzer on the intercom and then stepped back, waiting for it to be answered. It was early, just before nine, and the sun was struggling through thinning fog. The brownstone was in Nob Hill, a handsome building that had been divided into apartments over the course of its life. Rows of beech had been planted along both sides of the street twenty or thirty years ago, and the naked trees went some way to lending a little bucolic charm to what would otherwise have been a busy suburban street. The cars parked beneath the overhanging branches were middle-of-the-road saloons and SUVs. The houses looked well kept. Both were good indications that the area was populated by owner-occupiers with decent family incomes. Milton thought of Madison and her reticence to talk about the money she was making. It must have been pretty good to be able to live here.

“Hello?”

“It’s John Smith.”

The lock buzzed. Milton opened the door and climbed the stairs to the second floor.

Trip was waiting for him inside the opened door.

“Morning, Mr. Smith.”

“Anything?”

He shook his head.

Milton winced. “Two days.”

“I know. I’m worried now.”

He led the way into the sitting room.

“You’ve spoken to the police?”

“About ten times.”

“What did they say?”

“Same––they won’t declare her missing until this time tomorrow. Three days, apparently, that’s how long it has to be. It’s because of what she does, isn’t it?”

“Probably.”

“If this was a secretary from Sacramento they would’ve been out looking for her as soon as soon as someone says she’s not where she’s supposed to be.”

Milton gestured to indicate the apartment. “Do you mind if I have a look around? There might be something you’ve missed. The benefit of fresh eyes?”

“Yeah, that’s fine. I get it.”

“Could you do me a favour?”

“Sure.”

“Get me a coffee? I’m dying for a drink.”

“Sure.”

That was better. Milton wanted him out of the way while he looked around the apartment. He would have preferred him to have left the place altogether, but if he worked quickly he thought he would be able to do what needed to be done.

The place was comfortably sized: two bedrooms, one much smaller than the other, a bathroom, a kitchen-diner. It was nicely furnished. The furniture was from IKEA but it was at the top end of their range; Milton knew that because he had visited the store to buy the things he needed for his own place. There was a sofa upholstered in electric blue, a large bookcase that was crammed with books, a coffee table with copies of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and a crimson rug with a luxurious deep pile. A plasma screen stood on a small unit with a PlayStation plugged in beneath it and a selection of games and DVDs alongside. There was a healthy-looking spider plant standing in a pewter vase.

Milton went straight to the bedroom. It was a nice room, decorated in a feminine style, with lots of pastel colours and a pretty floral quilt cover. He opened the wardrobe and ran his fingers along the top shelf. He opened the chest of drawers and removed her underwear, placing it on the bed. The drawer was empty. He replaced the clothes and closed the drawer again. Finally, he took the books and magazines from the bedside table. He opened the magazines and riffled their pages. Nothing. Once again, beyond the detritus of a busy life, there was nothing that provided him with any explanation of what might have happened to her in Pine Shore.

He went back into the sitting room. A MacBook sat open on the coffee table.

“Is this hers?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have any luck?”

“No. Couldn’t get into it.”

He tapped a key to kill the screensaver and the log-in screen appeared. He thought of the specialists back in London. Breaking the security would have child’s play for them but his computer skills were rudimentary; he wouldn’t even know where to start.

“The police will be able to do it if they have to.”

“You think that’ll be necessary?”

“Maybe.”

Trip had left a cup of coffee next to the laptop. Milton thanked him and took a sip.

“So,” he said. “I went back to Pine Shore last night.”

“And?”

“It was quiet. Peaceful. I had a look in the house––”

“You went in?”

“Just looked through the window,” he lied. “It was clean and tidy, as if nothing had ever happened.”

“Who lives there?”

“One of the neighbours told me it belongs to a company.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know. It was sold last year. I looked it up online. It was bought by a trust. The ownership is hidden but the deal was for ten million, so whichever company it was has plenty of cash.”

“A tech firm. Palo Alto.”

“I think so.”

“Apple? Google?”

“Someone like that.”

“You get anything else?”

“I spoke to one of the neighbours. She ran into his house. He said she was out of it, didn’t make much sense. He called the police and that was when she ran off again. He’s not going to be able to help much beyond that.”

The boy slumped back. “Where is she?”

He took a mouthful of coffee and placed the cup back on the table again. “I don’t know,” he said. “But we’ll find her.”

“Yeah,” he said, but it was unconvincing.

“You know what––you should tell me about you both. Could be something that would be helpful.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything you can think of. Maybe there’s something you’ve overlooked.”

He sparked up a cigarette and started with himself. He was born and raised in Queens, New York. His father worked as a janitor in one of the new skyscrapers downtown. His mother was a secretary. His father was Irish and proud of it and it had been a big family with three brothers and six sisters. The children had all gone to Dickinson, the high school on the hill that drivers passed along the elevated highway connecting the New Jersey Turnpike to the Holland Tunnel. Trip explained that he was a bad pupil––lazy, he said––and he left without graduating. The area was rough and he found himself without a job and with too much time on his hands. He drifted onto the fringes of one of the gangs. A string of petty robberies that passed off without incident emboldened him and the others to go for a bigger score. Guns were easy enough to find and he had bought a .22 and helped hold up a fast food joint on Kennedy Boulevard. They had gotten away with a couple of hundred dollars but they hadn’t worn gloves and they left their prints all over the place.

The police had taken about three hours to trace them.

Trip was sentenced to three years in a juvenile facility. He served most of the time at the New Jersey Training School for Boys in Jamesburg. He did thirty months, all told, most of it spent in boot camp, living in barracks with fifty other young convicts. He was twenty when he finally came out. He had relatives in San Francisco, moved west to get out of the way of temptation and enrolled at community college to try and round out a few qualifications so that he could fix himself up with a job. He found out that he had an aptitude for electronics and he took a course in electrical engineering. He parlayed that into an apprenticeship and now he was employed fixing up the power lines.

He met Madison while he was out celebrating his first pay packet. She had been at the bar on her own, reading a book in the corner and nursing a vodka and coke. He introduced himself and asked if he could buy her a drink. She said he could and they had started to get to know each other. She was a big talker, always jawing, and he said how it was sometimes impossible to get a word in edgeways. (Milton said he had noticed that, too.) She was living out of town at the time, taking a bus to get into work. She said she was a secretary. Trip figured out the truth by the time they had been on their third date and he had been surprised to find that it didn’t bother him. If he didn’t think about it, it was bearable. And, of course, the money was great and it was only ever going to be temporary. He always tried to remember that. She had big plans and she was just escorting until she had saved enough to do what she wanted to do.

“She wants to write,” Trip said. “A journalist, most likely, but something to do with words. She’s always been into reading. You wouldn’t believe how much. All these”––he pointed at the books on the bookcase––“all of them, they’re all hers. I’ve never been into reading so much myself but you won’t find her without a book. She always took one when she went out nights.”

Milton looked at the bookcase, vaguely surprised to see so many books, always a clue to a personality. They were an odd mixture: books on astrology and make-up, novels by Suzanne Collins and Stephanie Meyer. Some books on fashion. The Collected Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Milton pulled it out to look at the cover. Several pages had their corners turned down. Not what he would have expected to find. He slipped it back into its slot on the shelf.

“That’s one of the things I love about her, Mr. Smith. She gets so passionate about books. She writes, too. Short stories. I’ve seen a couple of them, the ones she doesn’t mind showing me. And I know I’m no expert and all that and I don’t know what I’m talking about but the way I see it, I reckon some of her stuff’s pretty good.”

“What’s she like as a person?”

“What do you mean?”

He searched for the right word. “Is she stable?”