The Switch (43 page)

Tobias ran a hand down his face. Their preliminary search of the Waters Clinic had turned up nothing substantive about
D
ale Gordon other than that he had the know-how and the opportunity to tinker with sperm specimens. There was no proof that he had. Tobias had put Patterson in charge of rounding up sperm donors.

The assignment caused Patterson to grimace. "I don't have Io watch them while they jerk off, do I?"

Tobias sighed. "Samples will be collected in a clinical environment with medical personnel supervising. Your job is to contact the donors and get them there. Okay?"

"Yes, sir," the young agent had said, looking relieved.

"Anything on him?" Tobias asked now, drawing Lawson's attention to the gurney bearing Hennings's body as it was being wheeled into the elevator.

"Nothing. Not even a parking ticket. Last purchase on his credit card was the pendant he gave to Gillian—actually Melina—the night before the murder."

"Hey, Lawson." One of the other detectives poked his head through the door and motioned him into the apartment. Tobias would have followed, but his cell phone rang.

Lucy Myrick felt as though she'd been born inside the windowless room with the ugly walls. Actually the normally sick color had taken on a rosy tint, but that was because it was being viewed through bloodshot eyes.

She had gas from subsisting on fast food and not getting her daily requirement of roughage. Caffeine had her nerves clawing at her skin from the inside, while at the same time her head was muzzy from lack of sleep. She needed a shower.

"But I can't regret what I did for love, what I did for love," she warbled.

Love for her work, love for Tobias, had kept her here for two days, working straight through and nonstop, searching for the link that connected the Lloyd twins, Dale Gordon, and the Andersons. Recently Tobias had thrown a new name into the mix.
Jem Hennings. Caucasian male. DOB 10-2-60, as it appeared on his Texas driver's license issued only thirteen months ago. Five feet eleven inches tall. Weight, one sixty-eight.

Fine and dandy.

Except that Social Security didn't have him in their records under the number he'd given the firm with which he was presently—until tonight—affiliated. Nor had that Social Security number ever filed a tax return with the IRS.

"Something's rotten in the state of Denmark," Lucy mused aloud.

Actually, it turned out to be the state of South Dakota.

She read the information three times before calling Tobias. "It's Lucy."

"It's one o'clock in the morning in Washington."

"You owe me massive overtime and a weekend on the Chesapeake. You may even consider throwing in a bottle or two of fine wine."

"You've got something."

"South Dakota. Seven years ago. One Janine Hennings, age fifteen. Poor grades in school, in with a bad crowd, rebellious at home. Generally running amok. Taken under wing by a school nurse named Dorothy Pugh. Dorothy's all heart, goodness, and light. Within months Janine has done a one-eighty. Gets religion. Prays all the time. Peace and love, the whole nine yards.

"End of the school year rolls around. Dorothy Pugh resigns her post to relocate in New Mexico. Janine is disconsolate and runs away to join her. The parents freak out. Janine's swung too far the other way. Their daughter is still lost to them. They suspect Dorothy Pugh to be a member of a religious cult. They retain the services of a cult-buster—"

"A what?"

"I coined the term," Lucy said proudly. "A shrink that detoxes a mind that's been brainwashed?"

"Got it. Go on."

"Mr. and Mrs. Hennings and the shrink leave South Dakota to rescue Janine."

"And?"

"And they never made it. The RV they'd rented for the trip was found at a campground in Colorado with everything inside intact. But the people were gone."

"Foul play?"

"Indubitably. But not a single clue. No bodies. No blood. No

sign of struggle. No nothing. Another family was camping nearby, but they'd gone into town to have dinner. They left early the following morning without noticing that there wasn't any activity around the other RV. Rain that night ruined any chance of identifying tire tracks. There was absolutely nothing for investigators to go on. It was as though the three people had been beamed up by aliens. Nary a trace of them was ever found."

"Who filed the missing persons report?"

"Thought you'd never ask. Jameson, a.k.a. Jem Hennings, the son and older brother. He got worried when his folks failed to call and report in, which they'd promised to do each evening along the way."

"Was he considered a suspect in the disappearance?"

"Ironclad alibi. He was at work both days his parents were away and had dinner with friends both evenings. He couldn't have possibly made a round trip to Colorado. But following the tragedy, he liquidates all assets, relocates, and starts using a phony Social Security number."

"I smell conspiracy."

"Only one friend ever heard from him after he left South Dakota," Lucy continued enthusiastically. "Guess where he wrote from. Drumroll, please. Oakland, California."

"Kathleen Asher."

"No connection so far, but I'd bet that weekend on the Chesapeake that I find one. Meanwhile, the disappearance of Mr. and Mrs. Hennings and the shrink remains an unsolved case in Colorado. When it happened, Hennings grieved publicly. Anguished over it to reporters. `Woe is me. My parents have vanished. My little sister has run away to join a religious community.' Yaddah, yaddah. Note, he never referred to this religious organization as a cult."

"I don't need to ask, do I?"

"The Temple of Brother Gabriel."

"Lucy?

"What?"

"Will you have my children?" Before she could recover enough to speak, he'd already hung up. "Lawson!"

The detective came barreling through the door of the condo, more animated than Tobias had ever seen him. "You're gonna shit when you hear who's on Hennings's autodial."

Tobias grinned. "Way ahead of you."

"You could have told me."

Since taking off, Chief had been subject to Melina's accusatory stare. He'd given Love Field and Dallas—Fort Worth Airport wide berth, swinging out far to the east and then flying well north of the metropolitan area before banking to the west.

They flew for half an hour before they were past the glittering suburban sprawl. Now small towns showed up as patches of light against a black blanket. The night was perfectly clear. The moon was so slender as to be negligible, and because it gave off virtually no light, stars shone brightly.

While he was busy navigating, it had been easy to pretend he didn't notice her stare. It wasn't so easy to ignore a blatant admonishment. "Could have told you what?"

"Don't play dumb, Chief."

"It wasn't relevant."

"Maybe not relevant, but it's interesting."

"Tell me one reason why."

"For starters, your father is Anglo."

"You knew I was half. Even Dale Gordon knew I was a breed. Have you ever seen a full-blood Indian with blue eyes?" "Why are you so damn prickly?"

"Why are you so damn curious?"

"Why don't you like him?"

"Jesus, you never let up."

"Have some chips."

"Huh?"

"Potato chips." She ripped open a bag and offered it to him.

When he looked at her with puzzlement, she smiled insipidly. "I'm letting up."

He plunged his hand into the bag and crammed the chips into his mouth. He'd burned off a lot of energy since gulping down a few bites of cheeseburger.

Melina was munching alternately on the potato chips and a box of animal crackers. "Interesting combination," he remarked.

"I'm hungry."

"Fine. But if you have to hurl again, remember I can't pull over this time."

"No barf bags?"

"This is a no-frills flight." They smiled at one another. He pointed toward her mouth. "You have a crumb." Her tongue dabbed tentatively at one corner of her lips. "Other side." She picked up the potato chip crumb with the tip of her tongue, and it struck him as an intensely erotic gesture.

He looked away. Checked the gauges. Checked the sky.

Searched for something to distract him from his disturbing

awareness of her. "What else have we got by way of cuisine?" "Let's see. Sour-cream-and-chive-flavored popcorn." "Good God."

"You'll pass?"

"I'd rather have shuttle food."

"We're fresh out of that." She dug deeper into the plastic sack. "Cheetos. Chocolate-covered peanuts, which I don't recommend. They've gone a little gray. Lorna Doones. And barbecue-flavored corn chips. Believe me, this was the best of the lot."

"I believe you. I'd settle for a few of your animal crackers." She passed the box to him. When he thanked her, their eyes met again. "What did Pax do to make you dislike him?" "I don't dislike him."

"Ah. So I was imagining all that crackling hostility." "He disliked us."

Melina waited him out. She didn't ask another question, but she assumed a listening aspect that he found himself responding to. Reluctantly, but responding all the same. "Pax was in the Air Force. Stationed at Holloman. My mother was a civilian employee on the base. She was pretty. Petite. I suppose she was a novelty for him, a pretty little Indian girl. Anyway, they married within months of meeting, and I was born before their first anniversary. For a while we were a happy family.

"My earliest memory is of an air show. It was there on the base. I remember my dad showing me off to his friends. One of them gave me chewing gum, the first I remember having. You know, the candy-coated square kind you get out of machines? He let me pick which color I wanted. Then my dad took me around to all the planes and explained how high they could fly, how fast they could travel. I remember thinking that to know all that stuff, my dad must be the smartest person in the whole world.

"He carried me on his shoulders so I could see over the crowd. I was scared at first, but he put his hands on my knees to secure me. He told me to hold on to his hair. No matter how tight I grabbed hold, he didn't complain. I knew he wouldn't drop me. I thought he loved me. Loved her."

He stopped just in time to avoid making a complete fool of himself. He didn't like taking strolls down memory lane, particularly this lane. Melina was forcing him to call forth memories he had deliberately left far behind.

His work had made it easy to take a hard-ass stance against sentimentality. He'd spent years training to respond mechanically to difficult situations, a response technique that he supposed had carried over into his personal life. He performed exclusively on cerebral impulse without allowing any emotional interference to cloud his judgment.

Letting your head govern was easy. It was this heart stuff that was tough. Dealing with emotional issues wasn't for sissies. "Is there another drink in there?" he asked crossly.

She opened a can of Mountain Dew and handed it to him.

"What happened to change your mind? About Pax loving you, I mean."

"And here I thought you were different."

"From what?"

"Other women. Women love to talk. Review. Analyze. Discuss. Dissect. They love to see what makes people tick—particularly men."

"Because you're so fascinating."

"Why, thank you, ma'am," he drawled.

"Relax, cowboy. I meant
you
plural. Men. How you think, how you react to things is interesting. I guess because it's generally different from how women react. The difference intrigues me."

"So you like us?"

"Very much."

"Yeah?" He turned to her. "When's your favorite time to make love?"

"When I'm in the mood."

"No go, huh?"

To say no, she shot him a wry frown.

"Okay, then," he said, "let's talk politics. What do you think of the Kuwaiti position?"

"Old joke, Chief."

"You've heard it?"

"
'
I like it, but my partner says it burns his elbows,
'"
she said, quoting the punch line.

"I thought it was a military joke."

"It got around."

"So what
is
your favorite position?"

She kept her expression impassive. He bobbed his eyebrows, doing his best to coax a smile from her, but she didn't relent. She wasn't going to blush on a bet, and she wasn't going to be sidetracked with flirtatious chatter, either.

He sighed with resignation. "What was the last question?"

"What made you think Pax stopped loving you?"

"I guess the novelty wore off. He was an airplane mechanic.

Couldn't fly himself because of an inner ear problem, but he worked on the bomber jets they tested out there in the desert. His job required him to be away for long stretches of time. Classified stuff. Top secret. At least that's the excuse he gave for being unreachable more of the time than not.