The Spellman Files (19 page)

“I quit.”

“Quit what, dear?” asks my mother.

“Quit this job.”

“You can’t just quit,” says my dad.

“Yes, I can.”

“No. You can’t. Ask your mother.”

“Your father is right,” says my mom. “It’s not that simple.”

“I’ll just stop coming to work.”

“And we’ll stop paying you,” says my dad.

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“Fine,” says my mother. “Except that eventually you’ll need to get another job, and since this is the only job you’ve ever had, you’ll need some kind of reference.”

“What are you saying?” I ask.

“Yes, what are you saying?” repeats my father.

“You’ll take one last job and then you can leave. I’ll write you a letter of recommendation and everything.”

“One last job. That’s it?”

“And then you’re free,” says my mom.

Free. That had a nice ring to it. After sixteen years of working for the family business, it was time to learn whether life would be easier on the outside.

It’s as if they planned for this day…

M
y parents took a full twenty-four hours to discuss the details of my final assignment. I imagined they spent the night laboring over the open files, wrestling with the decision of which was the most impossible. Which case would keep me in their grasp the longest? I braced myself for the worst, but I don’t believe anything could have prepared me for what would come, that morning or over the following weeks.

I met them in the office at 9:00
A.M
. My mother handed me a thick case file, yellowed with age and ringed with coffee stains. She went over the brushstrokes of the case.

“On July 18, 1995, Andrew Snow disappeared while on a camping trip in Lake Tahoe with his brother, Martin Snow. The boys were raised in Mill Valley, California, by their parents, Joseph and Abigail Snow. The police conducted an all-out search for Andrew during the month following his disappearance, but found no trace of him. Nor was there anything in his behavior that could explain his disappearance. He simply vanished. We originally got the case twelve years ago, worked on it for about a year until the client’s funds ran out, then intermittently for the next year, pro bono. We let the case drop in 1997 when all our leads dried up and we didn’t have the manpower to continue the investigation.”

“You’re giving me a missing persons case from twelve years ago?” I asked.

“We want you to see if we left any stones unturned,” my father said casually.

“You and I both know that those stones are endless.”

“What’s your point?” said my mother.

“You’re giving me a case that can’t be solved.”

“Are you refusing to take it?” she asked.

I should have refused, but I didn’t. I figured if I could come up with a single new piece of information, I would have done my job and would have felt justified in leaving. I didn’t believe I could solve the case, I didn’t believe for a second that I could find Andrew Snow—neither did they—but I did believe I could shelve that file once and for all.

“I’ll work the case for two months,” I said. “After that, I’m done.”

“Four months,” countered my mom. As you might imagine, I’ve negotiated with her before. She’s worse than Rae. I had to give in just a bit.

“Three months,” I said, “and that’s my final offer.”

When Rae got the news of my impending departure, she felt compelled to offer her studied assessment of the situation to Milo,
my
bartender. Milo shook his head at Rae when she arrived at the Philosopher’s Club just after opening.

“I don’t want any trouble today, Rae.”

My sister sat down in the center of the row of empty barstools, ordered a double on the rocks, and told Milo not to water it down. Milo reminded Rae that she would be drinking ginger ale and poured her a whiskey-size glass over ice. Rae tossed a few bills onto the bar, which Milo slid back to her.

Milo picked up the telephone and said, “You want to call your sister or should I do it?”

“I’m having a rough week, Milo. Can’t I just sit here for a while? I won’t bother anyone.”

Rae took a sip of her soda and followed it with a hard-liquor grimace.

Milo shook his head. “So I’ll make the call.”

Rae, as expected, was in mid-discourse when I arrived.

“It would be bad enough if I had only my rat Uncle Ray to worry about, but with Izzy deciding to get out of the business, I’m a wreck, Milo. A wreck. That leaves only me. What am I gonna do? I can’t run Spellman Investigations on my own. Who’s gonna buy the staples and the files? We use a lot of files. Who’s gonna do the books? I don’t want to do that stuff. It’s boring. Oh, and who is gonna drive the surveillance van? Who? I guess I’ll have a license by the time they will me the business. But my point is, who will do the boring stuff? Don’t get me wrong, I’ll do it on my own if I have to, but—”

“Izzy, it’s about time,” Milo said, smiling to hide the edge in his voice.

“This is
my
bar, Rae. You’ve got to stop coming here,” I said.

“It’s a free country.”

“Not that free. You could get Milo in a lot of trouble.”

“I’m drinking ginger ale.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“How could you do this to me?”

“Do what?”

“Quit.”

“Most people don’t spy on each other. Most people don’t run background checks on their friends. Most people aren’t suspicious of everyone they meet. Most people aren’t like us.”

“What’s happening to you?”

“I’m seeing things clearly, that’s all.”

“Well, I hope it doesn’t happen to me,” she said as I grabbed the back of her shirt and marched her out of the bar. Rae was silent the entire drive home, breaking her previous record by thirteen minutes.

M
issing persons cases are rare in our business. It is the police who have the tools, the manpower, and the legal authority to exhaust the possibilities, all of which are necessary to find someone who is lost. But the police can only look for so long, and when they stop, families occasionally turn to PIs to continue the investigation, because as long as the search continues, hope is not lost.

As cruel as the discovery of a body can be, it allows those connected to it to grieve and move on. And with the strides made in forensic science, now it is as if the dead were pointing to the killer—whether it is man, nature, or human error. But the absence of a body leaves an unlimited number of possibilities. Without any cohesive leads, you’re left with nothing. A person cannot literally vanish before your eyes, but, as the pictures on the milk cartons suggest, people disappear all the time.

I phoned Abigail Snow, Andrew’s mother, that evening and made an appointment to meet with her the following day. I knew that any contact at all would offer her a false sense of hope, but I convinced myself that I had no choice.

I had only two things on my mind after the last meeting with my parents: 1) Get Daniel back; 2) Work the Snow case.

I gave Daniel a week after Car Chase #1 before I knocked on his window. It was around 10:00
P.M
. and I realized as soon as I knocked that I had no further speech planned in my defense. But still, I knocked again.

Daniel opened the window and said, “No.”

“Maybe in Guatemala ‘no’ is in fact a greeting, but here we use ‘hello’ or ‘nice to see you again,’ or even ‘hey there.’”

“Do you think making wisecracks right now is smart?”

“No, but I already tried ‘I’m sorry’ and that didn’t work.”

“Isabel, I have a door.”

“Actually you have three doors.”

“And your point is?”

“Three doors or one window. You do the math.”

“Your math doesn’t interest me. Use the front door in the future.”

“So there is going to be a future?”

“It was a figure of speech.”

“Can I come in for a minute? I’ll even use the door.”

“I don’t want to see you, Isabel.”

“But I have much more explaining to do.”

“What did I just say?”

“‘I don’t want to see you, Isabel.’ See, I was listening.”

“What does that mean?”

“What you just said?”

“Yes.”

“It means you don’t want to see me.”

“Right.”

“Can I ask why?”

“Am I really having this conversation?”

“I’m not sure where you stand on the answering of rhetorical questions.”

“I’m angry, Isabel.”

“I understand that. I just want to know which thing you’re most angry about, so that I can fix it.”

“You lied about everything.”

“Not everything.”

“Good night, Isabel,” he said as he shut the window.

T
he following morning, my sister woke up at exactly 6:30
A.M
. on her first day of winter break, which coincided with her first day of freedom after the three-month grounding (a grounding, by the way, that allowed for surveillance and blackmail). It had been two weeks since Uncle Ray received the ransom note. Two weeks for my sister to plan her attack.

She woke, brushed her teeth, washed her face, threw on a pair of jeans, one long- and one short-sleeved cotton T-shirt, white and red, respectively, put a comb through her hair exactly five times, picked up the phone, covered the receiver with a dishrag, and made the call.

Uncle Ray, a notoriously late sleeper—so late, in fact, on occasion it became his nickname—picked up on the fourth ring.

“Hello?”

“Listen carefully to my instructions,” said the less-high-than-usual, muffled voice on the other end. “Any deviation from the rules will result in the destruction of your shirt. Do you understand?”

The mere mention of Uncle Ray’s lucky shirt jarred him out of whatever soporific fog still remained. The shirt had been out of his possession nearing two weeks at this point and its absence was felt around the house. Uncle Ray stubbed his toe and it was because he wasn’t wearing the shirt. Uncle Ray got a parking ticket, spilled a glass of water, gained two pounds, had his latest poker game broken up by the cops, and it was because his lucky shirt had been hijacked.

“I’m gonna tell your dad,” threatened Uncle Ray.

“And you’ll never see your shirt again. Is that what you want?”

Ray was cornered and he knew it. “Tell me your demands,” he mumbled reluctantly.

“Take the bus to the Wells Fargo Bank on Montgomery and Market and withdraw one hundred dollars.”

“This is extortion, you know.”

“You have forty-five minutes.”

Forty-five Minutes Later

Per the voice’s instructions, Ray entered the Wells Fargo Bank on Montgomery and Market streets and withdrew exactly one hundred dollars. As he exited the bank, a young male, approximately fourteen years of age, riding a skateboard, approached the older man.

“Uncle Ray?” asked the young male.

Ray spun around in a circle, trying to find his niece, but she was nowhere in sight. He turned back to the skateboarder and eyed him cruelly. “What?”

The young male handed Ray a disposable cell phone. “You have a phone call.”

Ray took the phone and the young male skated off.

“Hello?”

“Be at the pay phone in front of the Wax Museum on Fisherman’s Wharf at eight-fifteen on the dot.”

“When will I get my shirt?”

“You have twenty-five minutes. Lose the phone.”

Uncle Ray tossed the phone in the trash, genuinely believing that he was being watched. He hailed a cab and arrived in front of the Wax Museum with time to spare. He waited outside the phone booth until he saw a young woman approach, fishing through her purse, presumably for coins. He entered the booth, picked up the phone, and slyly held down the receiver while he pretended to talk. Had anyone been in the booth with him, they would have heard a random series of curse words, which served no narrative function. Eventually the phone rang.

“Yeah,” Ray answered in his best tough-guy voice.

“Buy a ticket and enjoy the show,” the slightly less disguised voice said.

“That’s thirteen bucks a pop!” said my uncle, who wouldn’t have stepped foot in a wax museum if it was free and served booze.

“I think you qualify for the senior discount. So it’s only ten-fifty.”

“And what if I don’t do it?”

“I’ll throw the shirt in the bay right now.”

“What did I ever do to you?”

“You want a list?”

“I’m going.”