Vanished in the Night (6 page)

“So did the police ask you any questions?” She walked into the living room. Her father was tying his shoes. She glanced at the clock. It was after eight. In a few minutes, he’d be heading to the Jiffy Lube, where he’d change oil and check brakes for the next eight hours.

He shrugged. “A few.”

Veronica perched on the arm of the sofa next to him. “Like what?”

He shot her a look. “Like why I still have to tell my grown daughter not to break my damn furniture by sitting on the arm.”

She stood. “Seriously, Dad, what did they ask? Do you think they’re even going to try to find out what happened to Max?”

Osborne finished tying his shoes and stood. “How the hell should I know, Ronnie? Why the hell should I care? Why should you?”

“I care because he was my brother. You should care because he was your son.” She crossed her arms over her chest as if that way she could keep her heart from cracking.

“He wasn’t my son. Wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out. Max wasn’t even light enough to pass.”

Veronica clenched her fists. It made her almost physically ill when her father said things like that. “When was the last time you saw him, Dad?” She’d never asked before because Max wasn’t exactly a topic you brought up for fun.

“Same time as you. When they hauled his sorry ass out of this house and up to that reform school.” He stood, hitched up his uniform pants, and headed toward the door. “You coming? Or are you going to hang around here a little?”

“You never heard anything from him again? What about Mama? Did he ever call or send a letter or anything?” she pressed.

“Ronnie, don’t dig into this. What happened, happened.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s good riddance to bad rubbish. The cops stopped by. They asked their questions. They’re probably going to drop the whole thing and forget about it. I mean, what else can they do?”

Veronica followed him toward the door. “Don’t you want to know why, though? Don’t you want to know what happened to him?”

“Why? It wouldn’t make any difference. Besides, it’s not like he was going to find the cure for cancer or make peace in the Middle East. He was a fuckup and was going to stay a fuckup. It was probably some giant fuckup that landed him wherever they found him. Let it drop, Ronnie. Nobody cares what happened.”

They were interrupted by a loud knock on the front door. Osborne threw his hands in the air. “
Now
what? I’m going to be late for work.”

He marched to the front door and pulled it open.

Cops on the doorstep. Again.

Veronica’s presence made Zach pause for a second as he served his search warrant. “George Osborne, I have a warrant here to search your home.” He handed the papers to Osborne and then shouldered past him. “Good morning, Ms. Osborne. Nice to see you again.”

She pressed her lips together and moved out of the way. She was wearing scrubs and looked tired. Right,
she worked the night shift at St. Elizabeth’s. Her hair was pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail.

Zach nodded to his small group of officers and they fanned out through the house. He didn’t have a lot of boots on the ground since this case was so cold.

Osborne gave him a disgusted look. “I’m going to work. Don’t break anything or I’ll sue your asses from here to kingdom come. Ronnie, lock up when they leave.” He marched out of the house.

Veronica sank down on the couch as if someone had let the air out of her. “Have at it. I don’t know what you think you’re looking for, though. Max hasn’t been here in twenty years.”

Most likely, Max hadn’t been anywhere in twenty years. Zach headed out to the backyard. It was too much to hope to find a freshly dug pit there, but he had to check.

Frank followed him. “She has a good question, Zach. What precisely do we think we’re going to find here?”

Zach stood in the yard with his hands on his hips, taking in its complete lack of places to hide a body. “We don’t go in looking for something specific. We gather evidence and let the evidence point us in the right direction. Remember?”

“That does ring a bell.”

“We have the stepfather of the victim with a drinking problem and a violent background.” Veronica had
been truthful when she said her father had a minor record. It looked mainly like bar fights. Most of the time, charges had been dropped after Osborne agreed to make reparations. Still, it was a pattern of solving your problems with your fists, and it would be irresponsible to ignore it.

On the other hand, say Max had come back to this house after he ran away from the Sierra School. What evidence would there be of that? Hairs and fibers didn’t hang around for twenty years.

“Plus, this’ll shake Osborne up a little. That’s a pleasant by-product,” Frank observed as he walked toward a toolshed at the back of the yard. “How ’bout we see if Osborne’s been digging recently?”

It was as good a place to start as any.

McKnight hadn’t expected to see her here. Veronica had noticed his careful, blank expression when he’d seen her behind her father, and his momentary hesitation. It gave her a small sense of satisfaction. He’d shaken her up plenty in the last twenty-four hours. She was glad to have her turn.

McKnight hadn’t answered her when she’d asked what they were looking for. She hated that. She hated not knowing. It didn’t make her a control freak; she just needed information. It was her number one frustration
in the emergency room. Patients lied. Or they left things out. Or they played things down. Or up. She could deal with anything the world threw at her, if she had the information necessary to process it.

She needed information now. What were they looking for? What did they need? She glanced at her watch. It was eight forty-five, and she longed for her memory foam pillow and the Tempur-Pedic topper on her bed. She heaved herself up off the couch and went out to the back porch in time to hear Rodriguez tell McKnight that it would be nice to shake her father up a little.

She stared after them in disbelief as they headed into the toolshed. The bastards. All they wanted to do was yank her father’s chain?
That
was what this was about?

She marched after them to the doorway of the shed. “You can’t seriously believe that my father is a suspect, can you?”

Rodriguez and McKnight both turned to look at her. “What makes you think that he’s a suspect?” McKnight asked.

“Because you’re searching his house. That was kind of my first clue.” Did he think she was dim?

“It was also Max’s last-known residence before he was sent away. There might be some clue as to where he would have gone after he ran away.” McKnight came to the doorway of the shed, blocking her view into it and her entry.

“In my father’s toolshed?” She knew he was trying to get her to back away from the door by standing so close. To hell with him. She stood her ground.

“In your father’s toolshed, under your father’s floorboards, behind your father’s dryer. Wherever we need to search.” He didn’t raise his voice, but he didn’t back down, either. “We have a warrant. You need to let us do our jobs.”

Fine. She could be reasonable, too. “Look. I understand that my father is . . . difficult.”

She heard Rodriguez snort from inside the shed and ignored it. She knew another side to her father, though it didn’t come out much. “He wouldn’t have done anything to Max. If he says Max never came back here, then he never came back.”

“With all due respect, Ms. Osborne, you know full well that your father is a violent man. How many fights has he been in over the past six months? Is it him paying off the bar owners, or is it you? What about bail? Who posts that? Based on how you greeted us yesterday, I’m pretty sure it’s you and that you’re tired of it. With your father’s track record, yeah, he’s a suspect.” He looked down at her. His eyes were not unkind, but they were unflinching. “Coupled with what you already told us about your brother and father not getting along . . .”

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You’re
using my words against my father? Isn’t there some kind of law against that?”

“You’re thinking about husbands and wives in a court of law. They don’t have to testify against each other,” Rodriguez called from the back of the shed. “Not applicable in this case.”

The urge to tell them both what they could make applicable to themselves and where they could apply it was damn near overwhelming. She walked away, her clenched fists down at her sides.

Zach watched her walk away. Not many women could fill out a set of scrubs in a way that interested him. This one did. Too bad she was clearly furious. It would have been so much better to meet her, say, through work. Maybe he’d be coming in to question a gunshot victim and she’d be there. Their eyes would meet, and . . .

Damn, his fantasy life was nearly as pathetic as his actual love life. He’d just gotten bored. Hookups with Badge Bunnies were too easy and didn’t mean crap. He’d rather watch the game than deal with the drama and the bullshit that seemed to go along with it.

He turned around to Rodriguez. “Anything?”

“Nothing that looks like it’s been used recently, except the lawn mower. I don’t think Osborne is a member
of the garden club.” Rodriguez exited the shed, blinking in the sunlight. “Wanna see what’s doing inside? Or do you want to hide out here and try to avoid the dragon lady?”

“You scared of that little thing? The ex-husband of Doreen Winston?” Zach grinned at him.

“It’s not me I’m worried about, bro. You’re the one who went all tongue-tied.” Frank started toward the house.

“I wasn’t tongue-tied. I was being serious. It’s important she understand the gravity of the situation.” Zach followed him.

They walked in through the back door. “Anything?” Zach asked the first uniform he saw.

“No. Nothing obvious. But what did you expect?” The uniform shrugged and kept walking.

Zach wasn’t sure. Three people had asked him what he’d expected to find here, and he didn’t have a good answer for them. Still, it was the place where they needed to start. They needed to get to know the victim.

“Hey,” he called after the uniform. “You find any old yearbooks or anything like that?”

“Yeah. I think there’s a box down in the basement.”

It would probably be a whole ’nother load of nothing, but they should take a look.

*     *     *

Veronica was sure Max had never come to this house for help.

So where
would
he have gone if he’d come back to Sacramento? Who would he have asked for help?

Max had had lots of friends. He was one of those kids who was good at sports, and smart but not freaky smart. He was normal.

As she drove home, Veronica tried to remember their names.

On the radio on her way home, she heard: “A preliminary identification has been made of the bones found in the construction site in downtown Sacramento yesterday. Stay tuned for more.”

She sighed. Max had often told her he would be famous someday, a rock star or an NBA player. But his fame had come from a pile of bones trying to get his story told.

The cops were probably done with whatever investigating they could do. They didn’t seem to know when Max actually died, so how the hell were they supposed to figure out why and how?

Veronica still felt like she should have known, somehow. It had to have been after he ran away from that Sierra School. She made the turn into her condo complex and pulled into her assigned parking space. Instead of getting out, though, she shut her eyes, trying to remember the names of friends and teammates she’d
heard him talk about. Faces floated in front of her eyes and a few first names occurred to her. She’d been so much younger that their social lives hadn’t intersected. Max hadn’t brought friends around their house, nor had she. It hadn’t taken long for her to figure out that other little girls’ mommies didn’t take those long naps on the couch with empty bottles nearby.

She’d search through the mementos she had of Max. Maybe there would be something there. Because if the police weren’t going to try to find out what happened to her brother, then she would. If Max had come back to Sacramento,
someone
must have seen him. She just had to find out who that was.

Because her father couldn’t have killed Max. He wouldn’t have killed Max. Oh, dear God,
could
he have killed Max? Could he have lost his temper and by accident killed Max and dumped his body downtown somewhere?

She couldn’t believe it, wouldn’t believe it. The police had to be on the wrong track. She’d find out who’d seen Max when he’d come back to Sacramento and convince the police that her father was innocent.

And if she was wrong? Well, she needed to know that, too.

5

“You’re not going to believe this, but the basketball coach is still at the high school.” Frank stood up and stretched. “He said he could talk to us after school at about four thirty.”

It had taken a little over five hours to search George Osborne’s house. They hadn’t found much that was interesting. No one was surprised, though Zach was a little more disappointed than everyone else.

They had come away with only a box that held Max’s high school yearbooks, where he’d been prominently displayed with the rest of the junior varsity basketball team.

“Does the coach remember Max?” This could be helpful. Coaches tended to know the kids in their charge pretty well. Zach remembered a long string of
soccer coaches who seemed to know exactly what had made him tick. Most of them took some extra time with him, and he hadn’t questioned why at the time. He’d been too damn grateful for the attention. He supposed they knew that.

How many men had stepped in to fill the void after Zach’s father had died? Quite a few.

“He seemed to remember the kid. I guess we’ll know this afternoon.” Frank glanced up at the clock. “You hungry? I could use a burger. You want one?”

“No, thanks. I want to find out about that missing persons report that was supposedly filed.”

“Suit yourself.” Frank ambled out of the room.