Vanished in the Night (3 page)

He hadn’t been surprised when Eric Dinsmore had told him his hunch about Max Shelden had played out. If anyone would have a man’s dog tags, it’d be his son. So if the bones couldn’t belong to Jamal, they probably belonged to Max. How or why the bones and the tags ended up in that construction pit still eluded him, but an investigation like this was all about baby steps.

Dinsmore had gotten the ID straight from the dental records. There were a buttload more tests to be done, but it was pretty certain that the bones in the pit belonged to Max Shelden, son of Celeste and Jamal, brother of Veronica. According to Eric Dins-more, Max had died when he was somewhere between sixteen and twenty-one, which made the bones somewhere between thirteen and twenty-one years old. He’d attended McClatchy High School, but apparently hadn’t graduated.

Veronica Osborne, the half sister, was the closest they could find to a next of kin. Luckily, she’d been easy to locate. A little
too
easy. A woman who lived
alone should consider security more seriously. She’d been in the freaking white pages, for God’s sake.

“You found Max?” she asked. “Where is he? Where has he been?”

“Maybe you should sit down,” Frank suggested from where he sat on the sofa.

She shook her head. “Please, can I see him? Is he in trouble?” She twisted her hands. No ring. So if there was a boyfriend, it wasn’t serious.

“Ms. Osborne—” Frank started.

“Could you just cut to the chase?” She threw her hands in the air. “Please?”

Frank glanced at him and grimaced. Zach rolled his eyes. Rodriguez could take down a belligerent drunk, bust in a door, and drive a squad car 110 miles an hour through traffic, but give someone bad news? Especially a woman? He turned into a whimpering puppy.

“There’s no easy way to tell you this.” Zach leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees. “A body was found this morning in a construction site in downtown Sacramento. We have reason to believe that the remains might belong to your brother, Max Shelden.”

The hands flew to her mouth and the hazel eyes got even bigger. “Oh.” She swayed a little.

Zach stood up and led her to a chair. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

“No. Oh, no. Oh, poor Max. What happened? How did he . . . die?” She choked a little on the last word. Her eyes brimmed.

“We don’t know yet. It might be a while before we figure all of that out.” Zach looked around and saw a tissue box on the coffee table. He grabbed it and handed it to her.

“Do you need me to . . . do I have to . . . identify him or something?” She looked up at Zach, her face full of questions.

He squatted down next to her so she wouldn’t have to crane her neck to look at him. “He’s been, uh, gone for a while. There’s really nothing for you to identify. The medical examiner will be making the ID based on dental records.”

She blinked rapidly. “I don’t even remember what dentist Mama took him to. I went to Dr. Stanzig, so maybe he did, too, as a kid. I don’t know who he went to later.”

“Later?” According to Dinsmore, Shelden had died when he was still a kid. There shouldn’t be a “later.”

“Yeah. You know, after he ran away.”

This wasn’t making sense. It didn’t help that her brain was buzzing with a white noise that made it seem like the police officer’s words were coming
from far away, distorted with static. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t considered that this might be a possibility—that someday some official person would show up on her doorstep and tell her Max was dead. She had acknowledged that it was possible that Max would never come back.

Somehow she’d thought she’d know, though. She’d known the moment their mother died. Veronica had been asleep in the chair next to the hospital bed, and it was as if she’d been slapped awake when the rasp of her mother’s labored breathing finally ceased. It wasn’t the absence of noise that woke her from her fitful sleep, but a feeling—a new absence in her life, a new rock to carry around in her chest. She had known the instant it had happened.

She’d really thought the same thing would have happened with Max, that there would have been some ripple in her soul when he was gone forever.

Veronica had hoped, dreamed, that one day Max would show up on her doorstep, arms open wide with forgiveness and love. If Max
was
going to find her, he probably would have done it a long time ago. Still, she always listed her telephone number, even though most of her coworkers didn’t, especially the women who lived alone. People fixated on nurses in unhealthy ways sometimes.

But she’d wanted to make herself easy for Max to
find. Plug her name into Google. Pick up the white pages at the local library and flip it open to O. She’d be there, waiting for her prodigal brother to come home and be greeted with a feast.

She could quit all that now. Change her number, her name. Move to a different city. Max was never going to come find her. Never going to come home and forgive her.

“I’m sorry. Why isn’t there anything for me to identify?” She shoved her bangs aside and looked into the steady, dark eyes of the detective crouched in front of her. What was his name? McKnight?

“The medical examiner is still working on the time of death. It’s been . . . a while.” He took her hand.

His was big and warm and a little rough. Patients always teased her about her hands. Blocks of ice on the best of days. They felt brittle now, as if they might break.

The cop let her think over what he’d said about Max being dead for a long time. The little one was getting antsy, but the big one with the deep, dark eyes was just breathing with her. She swallowed hard and stilled herself. She knew how to focus. She was quite capable of pushing her emotions into the background and functioning.

Had he said a construction site in downtown Sacramento? Had that been the flashing lights she’d skirted
this morning on her way home? Had that been where they’d found Max? Not only had she not felt anything when he’d died, she’d been that close to where he was buried and only felt irritation at traffic being rerouted.

“What can I tell you? What can I do to help?” Her voice sounded thick and clogged, but steady. She’d shed her tears in private after they left. She didn’t know anyone who would share her grief with her. She’d release it alone. Like always.

“Do you remember the last time you saw Max?” the shorter one asked. Rodriguez. His name was Rodriguez.

Did she remember the last time she saw Max? Yes, of course she did. She’d never forget it. The men had come in the middle of the night. They’d hauled Max out of his bed. He’d fought them, of course. What boy wouldn’t have? Max had been tall and broad shouldered already at sixteen. Not quite a man yet, but on his way there. He’d done some damage.

Veronica’s heart pounded as she remembered the damage the men had inflicted back. It hadn’t taken long for three grown men to subdue one adolescent boy. She remembered the kick to the ribs that one of them had administered after Max was already facedown on the floor. Their mother had screamed, only to be hauled back by Veronica’s father. He’d told her to shush, that it was for Max’s own good.

Veronica was only seven, but even she knew he was lying.

They had cuffed Max’s hands behind his back and hauled him in pajama pants and stockinged feet to the door. He never stopped fighting, so they had to drag him. As they took him out the door, he turned back and begged, “Mama, don’t let them take me. Mama, don’t do this. You know this isn’t right, Mama. Don’t let them.”

But Mama had turned away, like she always did. Dad got his way and Max was gone. Had he known Max would be gone for good? Had her mother? Would it have changed anything? She put her face down in her hands, her heart like a rock in her chest.

“Veronica? Ms. Osborne?” It was McKnight again, quiet but tenacious, dragging her back to the here and now. “Do you? Do you remember the last time you saw your brother?”

She nodded. “The last time I saw my brother was when they came to get him.” She couldn’t force any more words past the clog in her throat.

Again, she got the carefully blank cop face. It was enough to bring her back to earth. “Do you want a glass of water? I need a glass of water.” Whiskey was also tempting, but smacked of how her mother and father would have dealt with the situation. If she had
a life motto, it was to never, ever deal with any situation the way her mother or father would.

McKnight let go of her hand and stood. “Sure. Water would be great.”

“None for me,” Rodriguez said from the couch.

Veronica stumbled into the kitchen, hoping to be away from their prying eyes for a second or two, but McKnight was right on her tail. She filled two glasses with ice from the freezer and then water from the tap and handed him one.

“You’re what? A sergeant?” She took a long drink of water, letting the ice-cold liquid slide down her throat, closing her eyes and willing the buzzing in her head down to a manageable level.

“Yup,” he said and drank, too.

Was he mirroring her to make her comfortable? She did that sometimes with flustered patients. She would stand with the same posture they had or sit with her legs crossed the way theirs were crossed. It was somehow reassuring, calming to them. Was McKnight manipulating her, or was it instinctive?

It didn’t matter—she was calming down enough to think straight.

“The last time I saw Max was when the men from the Sierra School for Boys came and took him. It was 1990. Sometime in the spring. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful. I was only seven.”

“He never came home?” Rodriguez asked from the kitchen doorway.

When had he gotten there? Veronica took a step backward and pressed against the wooden cabinets at her back. She wished they’d both take a few steps away and quit crowding her. “No. He never came home. He ran away from there less than a year later. Once he turned eighteen, Daddy said it wouldn’t matter if we found him again or not. He’d be an adult and out on his own, anyway.”

McKnight nodded. “So he was a runaway? From some kind of school?”

“Sierra School for Boys. It was up near Blairsden. It was, well, like a reform school, I guess.” Veronica rubbed her eyes. “I don’t think it was a real juvenile detention facility. It was more like one of those places you send a bad kid before he ends up in juvie, a reform school.”

McKnight scribbled some notes down on a pad he’d taken out of his pocket. “So Max was a bad kid? He’d been in trouble?”

“That came out wrong. Max wasn’t an angel, but he wasn’t exactly a problem, either. He was just a kid, doing the stuff that kids do. He and my dad, they didn’t . . . they didn’t get along too well. It made little problems seem bigger.”

“So he wouldn’t have a record, or anything?” Rodriguez asked.

Veronica shook her head.

“So he was sent up to this Sierra School in 1990 and ran away in 1991. Is there anybody who might be able to nail the dates down a little more for us?” he continued.

Hoo, boy, here we go.
“Possibly my dad, but Max isn’t exactly a topic he likes to discuss.”

Zach looked up from the notepad and nailed her with those big brown eyes. “Your dad’s the one you thought we were here about when you answered the door.”

“Yeah.”

“He got a record?” Rodriguez asked, still from the doorway.

The guy liked his records, didn’t he? Veronica shrugged. “Yeah, he does. Nothing major. He’s had to pay some fines and spend a night or two in the drunk tank.”

Keep it even. Stay focused. You can get through this if you stay in the moment. Don’t relive the hearings in your head. Don’t replay the mental pictures of your father stumbling out of a jail cell, reeking of vomit and urine. Stay here in the clean kitchen with the nice police officers
.

“And he didn’t get along with Max,” McKnight said.

“No. He didn’t. Max was my mother’s son from a . . . a previous marriage.” That made it sound so
civilized, so modern. So entirely different from how it had really been.

“So he was your half brother.” McKnight’s gaze on her was unwavering.

She’d always hated that. Half of Max wasn’t her brother.
All
of him was. She was certainly all his sister, with her whole heart. That wasn’t what the cop was asking, though. There wasn’t a check box on a form for how much a little girl loved her big brother. She nodded.

“What was the beef between him and your dad?” Rodriguez came fully into the kitchen.

She blew out a sigh. “I wish I knew. From the time I can remember, they were always fighting. I don’t think Dad was all that crazy about raising someone else’s son, especially one who was part African American. Max’s biological father was black. He died in Vietnam before Max was even born.”

The cops exchanged glances. She knew that look; they already knew all about Max’s dad. They’d made her hop through those hoops just to confirm the information for them.

“So after Max ran away, what did your parents do to try to find him?” Rodriguez pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table.

“I wish I could tell you. I was only eight. I remember my mother crying and my father yelling.” Of course, that could be pretty much any day from her
childhood. But it didn’t matter now. Max was dead. Her mother was dead. She’d learned to deal with her father, and was trying to learn not to let him get too close. She wasn’t always so successful.

“Any chance we could have your father’s contact information? It would help us narrow down the time frame we’re looking at.”

Veronica rattled off her father’s address and phone number.

McKnight snapped his notepad shut. “Thanks for your help. If you think of anything else that might help us figure out when Max ran away from school, or where he might have gone, would you contact me?” He pulled a card out of a case and handed it to her.

“Of course.”

Did she have anything that might help? “Do you want a picture of Max?” she asked. “Would that help at all?”

“We were gonna ask your father for one,” Rodriguez said.

She shook her head. “He won’t have one. I have the only photos of Max that are left. I’ll get you one.”