Wall of Glass (29 page)

“Of course it was Killebrew!” He pointed to the note. “He knows your bloody name, for godsakes! He's trying to get away, that's what the newspaper said. He needs money, and so the sonofabitch has taken my daughter to get it.”

“Mr Leighton, if it is Killebrew, and I think you're probably right, it is, you've got to remember that the man's not stupid. He knows that his best chance of getting away with this is to keep her alive and well.” I hoped that was true. I said, “You've got to call the police.”

“Are you
insane
? Didn't you read what he said. He'll
kill
her.”

“Kidnapping is a federal offense, Mr. Leighton. Any evidence of it and the F.B.I. can come in right away. They've got equipment, resources—”

He sat up. “Absolutely not. I forbid it, Croft, do you hear me? This is my daughter we're talking about, and I've got the right to make the decision. If you won't carry the bloody money, I'll carry it myself.”

“Nothing's going to get accomplished here if we don't stay calm. Are you positive that Miranda is actually missing? When was the last time you saw her?”

Another deep breath. “Last night. She went over to a friend's house, Nancy Garcia, over on Gonzalez. I called there after I called you. Miranda left there this morning to go to school.”

“This friend of hers, Nancy. She and Miranda went to school together?”

“No. They both have their own cars. And I called the school right after I called you. Miranda never showed up for classes.”

“We'll have to talk to Nancy.”

“I did, I insisted on it. She said that the last time she saw Miranda was when the two of them left her house this morning.”

I sighed. None of it looked very good.

“Well, Croft,” said Leighton. “Are you going to help me? Are you going to carry the money?”

“Can you raise that much by four o'clock?”

“Of course.”

Of course.

I thought about Killebrew. As Rita had said, the man had no reason right now to like me. And he was running scared. I thought about the note; it's telling me no guns. I thought about the girl. Just another adolescent girl, a bit gawky, a bit awkward, just another pair of pale gray eyes blinking behind thick horn-rim glasses.

I sighed again. “I'll carry it,” I said.

L
EIGHTON WENT OFF
to talk to bankers and brokers. I went off to talk to Rita. She had some ideas, and she made some suggestions.

By three o'clock I was back at Leighton's house. He had the money, one hundred thousand dollars, mostly in small bills, neatly piled inside a Lufthansa flight bag.

He waited. Neither one of us said much. The call came exactly at four, and Leighton answered it.

“Hello?” His voice was ragged and his knuckles were white as his hand gripped the receiver. His face lit up. “
Miranda!
Miranda baby are you okay?” He canted his torso to the right, leaning into the phone. “Okay baby, it's going to be okay, I promise. Okay, okay, baby. He's right here. I'll put him on.” He held out the receiver to me, his lips compressed, his brow furrowed.

I took the receiver, put it to my ear. “Hello.”

“Mr. Croft?” The voice was thin and frail.

“Yes, Miranda.”

“He says to bring the money to the Cerillos turn-off on Route Fourteen. At six-thirty. He says no policemen, Mr. Croft. He says he'll kill me.”

“Is Killebrew there, Miranda?”

“Yes, he—” And the line went dead.

NINETEEN

T
HE
C
ERILLOS TURN-OFF
had been a good choice. South of Santa Fe on Route 14, it stood on a rise of land with a view for miles in every direction. There was no traffic this time of day, and if you saw more than one car coming to the drop, or spotted a helicopter clattering in your direction, you could simply drive away and give it a shot some other time.

It was high desert country all around, rocky and gullied, crisscrossed by narrow arroyos, barren except for the occasional piñon or mesquite. Far off to my right as I approached, the sun was setting behind the Jemez Mountains and a bright red stain was spreading across the pale blue sky.

At the top of the incline, on the far side of the dirt road that led to the small town of Cerillos, was a ragged jumble of rock maybe fifty feet high. I saw no car parked nearby, but if people were waiting for me, they were waiting in there, hidden.

I swung the Subaru off the road and parked it. I lifted the Lufthansa bag from the seat and got out, closed the door.

A narrow passageway led between the rocks into thickening shadow. The rocks were boulders, all piled helter-skelter atop one another, each big enough to hide someone with a gun.

I shifted the flight bag into my left hand and took a step into the the passageway.

And stopped. And called out: “Killebrew.” Playing it according to the script. And hoping that Rita had been right about it.

There was a sound up ahead, a click and rattle of stone, and then suddenly, as though she'd been pushed, the girl lurched out from behind one of the rocks. Fifteen feet away. She wore running shoes, khaki slacks, a silver Porsche racing jacket.

She adjusted her glasses and I could see a movement in her throat as she swallowed. She said, “He has a gun, Mr Croft.”

I reached into my windbreaker and slid the .38 free and held it out. “So do I.”

Her voice went higher. “Mr. Croft, he'll shoot you.”

“I don't think so, Miranda.”

She pleaded. “Mr.
Croft.
”

“Forget it, Miranda. I know what happened.”

She shook her head, her arms pointed straight down, her hands balled into fists at her sides. Confusion twisted her features. “What are you talking about?”

“Did Biddle figure out that you stole the necklace? Or did you tell him?”

She shook her head, pale brown hair flying, “Mr. Croft, honestly, I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Where's Killebrew, Miranda? How come he hasn't shot me yet?”

Abruptly she straightened up, crossed her arms over her breasts. She said nothing. The light was fading more quickly now, all the color in the world moving toward gray.

When Rita had laid it all out for me this afternoon, my first reaction had been disbelief. The girl had seemed, the two times I saw her, too young and too vulnerable. Too innocent. And maybe those of us who see so little of it are the ones who most want to believe in innocence.

But the indications, the signposts, had been there all along. The clothes on the mother's floor, the earlier robberies, the necklace never turning up, the fact of Biddle's—and Killebrew's—fondness for young girls.

I asked her, “Did you know it was the real necklace when you took it? Or didn't you care? Were you just trying to hurt your mother?”

She spoke, and her voice was petulant. “I think you're going crazy, Mr. Croft.”

“The clothes, Miranda. Your mother's lingerie. Tossed all over the room. Killebrew wouldn't have done that. No professional burglar would.” There had been no vandalism at any of the houses Killebrew had actually robbed. That had been what Rita meant, that had been the thing that wasn't in the reports. Nolan hadn't noticed it, or hadn't cared; he had wanted to nail Killebrew.

She said nothing.

“Your friend Nancy Garcia,” I said. “Her family's house was robbed two years ago. It was in the police reports, and a friend of mine talked to her mother today. You knew what a real burglary was like; you knew the details. You knew how to fake one.”

She merely stood there, watching me.

“You came back to the house, punched in the right sequence for the alarm—your brother
had
set it, hadn't he.”

Still nothing from the girl.

“You knocked out the window in the living room, to make the burglary look real, and then you went upstairs and went through your mother's room.”

She said, and her lip was curled in a sneer, “You can't prove any of this.”

“I don't know why you were so angry at your mother—”

“You saw the way she treats me.” She spat the words at me, fast and vicious. Then, as though regaining control of herself, she began to speak calmly, deliberately. “She hates me. She orders me around. She makes me feel stupid and ugly and clumsy.” Suddenly the girl cocked her head and said, “Why does she do that, Mr. Croft?” Asking me with genuine curiosity in her voice, as though there were actually an answer, and I knew what it was.

“I don't know, Miranda. She's afraid, probably. Most of us are afraid of something. Of growing old. Of losing her control, maybe. Of losing her looks.”

I could hear the disbelief in her voice. “But she's
beautiful.
”

“But that won't last forever.”

I saw that she didn't really accept it. When you're sixteen, everything lasts forever.

“She sent Frank away,” she said.

“You and Frank were …” I hesitated, looking for the right word. There really wasn't one.

“He liked me,” she said. “He said he liked me a lot. He gave me cocaine. We had a lot of good times.”

It had been Miranda and Biddle talking about cocaine that her father had overheard, not Kevin and Biddle. And that had been, as Leighton admitted later, the reason he had fired Biddle.

“Your mother didn't send Frank away, Miranda.”

“Yes she did. She used him, she had an affair with him, and then she threw him away.”

“Did Frank tell you that?”

“He didn't have to. I've got
eyes
, you know.”

“Miranda, when did Frank find out about the necklace?”

“Two weeks ago. I told him.”

“You were seeing him again.”

“He came to the house and asked me to meet him. He said he still liked me.”

Had Biddle suspected all along that the girl had taken it? Possibly. He'd worked there, almost lived there for a long time. He must've seen how things were with the mother and the daughter.

“Why'd you kill him, Miranda?”

“I didn't mean to. I really didn't. He said he talked to you and found out we could get money for the necklace. He was going to sell the necklace back to the insurance company. He said we could go away together.”

I nodded. Although the air had grown cold, my hand was beginning to sweat along the grip of the revolver.

“But I didn't want to. The necklace is mine now. It belongs to me. I didn't want to sell it.”

“He threatened to let people know that you'd stolen it.”

“That was when I knew he was lying. About liking me. He only wanted the necklace. He wanted the money.”

“You had him meet you at the arroyo.”

“I wanted to frighten him away. I thought if I showed him the gun, he could see that I was serious and he'd leave me alone. But he only laughed at me, and then he kept coming at me. I really didn't mean to kill him. I swear I didn't.”

“What about Killebrew?” I said. “Did you really mean to kill him?”

She pursed her lips and shook her head, suddenly stubborn. “I don't have to answer any of your questions.”

“He has to be dead, Miranda. It's the only way you could make this work. Did you know him before this? Was he somebody else who gave you cocaine?”

“I've got to get away,” she said, and there was a frantic edge to her voice. “You don't understand. Nobody does. Nothing's right anymore. It's like, since it happened, since I shot him, it's like there's this glass wall between me and everything else, you know? Like I reach out to touch things, or be with people, and I can't get to them. I'm trapped inside there, and I don't want it to be that way anymore. I've got to go
away
, Mr. Croft. I've got to get
out
, and I need that money.”

She didn't understand yet, she might never understand, that no matter where she went, the wall of glass would be there, separating her from the rest of the world. It's the human condition—we're all of us separated, one from another, by those same walls. Miranda had just run up against hers earlier than most of us do.

I shook my head. “I'm sorry, Miranda.”

She frowned. “What's going to happen to me?”

“I think we've got to talk to the police. The two of us.”

“They'll tell my parents,” she said. “And then they'll send me away.”

“I think your parents will help you, Miranda.”

“Not
her.
She'll say it's what I deserve.” She uncrossed her arms and her hands moved toward the pockets of the racing jacket.

I knew what she was going to try. There was one other person who had to be out of the way before this thing would work. I raised the gun. “Don't, Miranda.”

“I'm cold, is all,” she said. She shrugged, and then she smiled. In the twilight, for a moment then, she looked the way she would in a year or two, still young, but tall and poised and very beautiful. “You're not going to shoot me just because I'm
cold.
” She put her hands in her pockets.