What Comes Next (42 page)

Adrian wasn’t exactly sure what all this had to do with him, but he heard Brian’s voice saying, “You know what’s about to come, don’t you?”

Seconds later, Wolfe turned to Adrian.

“I know we had an agreement, but…”

He could hear his brother’s snorted laugh.

“… I need more. Just promising you won’t go to the cops isn’t enough. I need to be paid for what I’m doing. It takes up a lot of time and energy. I could be working an overtime shift at work, making extra cash.”

Wolfe moved into the living room. He took out his mother’s laptop computer from the knitting bag and began to wire it into the flat-screen television.

“What makes you think—” Adrian began before he was interrupted.

“I know about you, professor. I know about all you rich academic types. All of you have money socked away. All those years getting government research grants, all those state benefits. Your colleagues over in the business school probably steered you into some pretty good investments. You know, that old Volvo. Those ratty clothes. You might look like you haven’t got a dime but I know you’ve probably got millions socked away in some account.”

Adrian thought that people who say
I know all about
something or someone generally didn’t know anything. He kept this opinion to himself.

“What are you looking for?”

“My share. A proper fee for my time.”

Brian was whispering instructions in Adrians ear. Adrian could sense some glee in his brother’s voice. A lawyer’s delight: setting a trap.

“This sounds to me like extortion.”

“No. Payment for services rendered.”

Adrian nodded. Everything he did was at the direct behest of his brother, who was filling his ear with rapid-fire instructions. “
Get his phone!
”

Adrian did as he was told.

“Well, do you have a cell phone—I’m afraid I never carry one—so I can make a call.”

Wolfe smiled. He reached into a pocket and produced the telephone. He tossed it to Adrian. “
Start to bluff.
”

“Call away,” he said.

Adrian was momentarily confused by what his brother meant by a bluff, but he saw his own fingers punching numbers on the keypad. For a second, he thought it was Brian’s hand that was steering his. He dialed 911.

“You know who to ask for,”
Brian said briskly.

“Detective Collins, please.”

Wolfe looked surprised.

“
Maybe
I’ve found her,” he spoke rapidly, almost panicky. “But if that call goes through,
maybe
I haven’t.”

Adrian hesitated, heard a distant hello, and immediately clicked the phone shut.

“
That will make things tricky,”
Brian said softly.
“Pay attention. I’ve done this before. Step one: make him get specific.”

“Well, Mister Wolfe, which is it? Have you found her or not?”

Wolfe shook his head. “It’s not that simple.”

“Yes it is.”

“Good,”
Brian said.

“Have you found her?” Adrian persisted.

“I know where to look.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Yeah,” Wolfe said. “But it’s close.”

“Okay, Audie, keep going. You’re controlling things.”

“Do you have a proposal?” Adrian asked abruptly.

“I just want to be fair.”

“That’s a statement. Not a proposal.”

“Professor, we both know what I’m talking about here.”

“Well, Mister Wolfe, then why don’t you describe to me what you think is fair?”

Wolfe hesitated. He was grinning. He had a look like the old Disney version of the Cheshire cat, who faded into nothingness, leaving only his wide, unsettling toothy smile behind on the movie screen. Adrian remembered watching
Alice in Wonderland
with Tommy, and then remembered spending more than a few hours trying to explain to his small son that the likelihood of him falling down a rabbit hole into a world where a Red Queen wanted to cut off people’s heads prior to trials was small. When his son was very young, fantasy scared him, not reality. He could watch a show about shark attacks in California or hungry lions on the Serengeti and it would fascinate him. But hookah-smoking caterpillars left him tossing and turning and crying out in the dark instead of sleeping.

“Audie, don’t let your mind wander!”

Brian was insistent. Alert.

“You know, professor, I’m not exactly sure just how much my time is worth…”

“Well, you put a price on it yourself. Double time at the store where you work.”

“But this is specialized work. Highly specialized. That requires some”… he hesitated… “premium.”

“Mister Wolfe, if you’re going to try to extort money from me, please be precise.”

“Good,”
Brian said. “
That will upset him.
”

His dead brother, Adrian thought, knew much more about criminal psychology than he’d believed he did.

“Well,” Wolfe said, “what’s it worth to you?”

“Success is invaluable, Mister Wolfe. Priceless. But, on the other hand, I’m not willing to pay you for failure.”

“Put a price on it,” Wolfe said. “I want to know how hard to work.”

“You will merely change whatever number I come up with at a later point. I say a thousand, ten thousand, or a million and you are just going to double it or triple it when you have something for me. Isn’t that true?”

Wolfe turned away briefly. Adrian knew he’d scored.

He couldn’t believe he was coldly negotiating over something as elusive as Jennifer’s disappearance. It surprised him.

“Tell you what, Mister Wolfe. We shall have a reward. This is like those old-fashioned Wanted Dead or Alive posters from Western movies. Say twenty thousand dollars. That’s a substantial sum. If you develop information leading to her discovery and return home—that’s
if
—then I will pay you twenty thousand dollars. Help save Jennifer, make a pile of money. Play games, screw around, come up with nothing and you’ll get nothing. There’s your financial incentive. I doubt that if I were you I would take your pathetic efforts at extortion to her family or anyone else because the cops will be less sympathetic than I am, and you will land in prison. But I’m a little different, a little bit crazy…” Adrian smiled like the villain on a stage might. “So I will permit you to extort some money from me.”

“How can I trust you?” Wolfe said.

Adrian burst out with a harsh laugh. “That, Mister Wolfe”—he imposed academic stentorian sounds into his words so that he came across as a pompous lecturer at a podium—”is of course
my
question.”

Wolfe looked consternated.

“You aren’t really good at this, are you Mister, Wolfe?”

“Good at what? When it comes to computers and surfing the Web I’m a goddamn
expert.
”

“No. I meant being a criminal.”

Wolfe shook his head. He turned back to his computer.

“I’m not a criminal. I never have been.”

“We can debate that some other time.”

“It’s not a
crime,
professor. What I like. It’s just…” He stopped, but whether it was because he knew how stupid he sounded or not Adrian couldn’t tell.

“All right, professor. As long as we understand each other. Twenty grand.”

Adrian expected some additional threat, some sort of
if you don’t pay me, I’ll
… but he wasn’t exactly sure what either of them could do. Wolfe wanted the money. But Wolfe knew that Adrian could walk out the door. He thought they were ideally balanced. Both had needs.

So they would play a game.

He had no idea whether he even had twenty thousand dollars sitting in a bank account, and whether he would pay Wolfe
anything.
He doubted it. He could feel Brian’s hand on his shoulder and he heard his brother’s voice: “
He knows that, too, Audie. He’s not stupid. So that means he will have another move. You’ve got to be ready for it when he makes it.
”

Wolfe missed Adrian’s slow nod.

“I’m not a bad person,” Wolfe said. “No matter what those cops say.”

Adrian didn’t reply.

“I’m not the bad guy here,” Wolfe said, nearly repeating himself. He was talking quietly, as if he didn’t really care what Adrian thought.

“I never said you were,” Adrian responded. This was a lie and he felt foolish for saying it out loud.

The computer keys clicked like a soft drum roll leading into a symphony.

“Is that her?” Wolfe asked abruptly.

It was late in the afternoon and Terri Collins sat in her car outside the Riggins house mustering the confidence to walk up to the doorway and dispense bad news. On a nearby tree trunk someone—she assumed it was Scott—had stapled a homemade flyer with a picture of Jennifer and the word MISSING in large bold letters. It had a
Last Seen
section and an
If spotted, please call
followed by telephone numbers.

She was a little surprised that he hadn’t called the television stations yet. The natural inclination for people like Scott was to turn a disappearance into a sideshow. Mary would stand in front of the lights and cameras, teary-eyed, wringing her hands, begging whomever to
just let little Jennifer go.
This, Terri knew, was both useless and pathetic.

Terri gathered up some police documents and copies of the “Be On the Lookout For” Missing Persons sheet. It was a collection that would create the impression that she had been busy working the case, when all it represented was frustration after frustration. She had left in her office anything about the security bus station tape and anything stemming from her conversations with Adrian Thomas.

She exhaled slowly and looked back at the Riggins house. She wondered what she would do if one of her children went missing. She would be caught, she understood, wanting to get away from every memory written throughout the house and unable to shed the hope that she
had
to be there, waiting, in case the unlikely actually happened and the missing child walked back through the door.

Impossible,
she thought.
That much pain and uncertainty.

She wished she were better at what she had to do.

As she stepped from her car and walked up the sidewalk to the Rig-gins house, she was struck by the isolation. There were people outside the other homes using the last hours of daylight to rake dead leaves left over from the winter or plant perennials in gardens that were finally stirring with spring. She could hear sounds of power tools and mowers as people finished up the inevitable suburban projects that had been postponed through the short dark days just passed.

The Riggins house, in contrast, displayed no signs of activity. No noise. No movement. It looked like a house that had been buffeted by high winds and torn at by the claws of winter.

She knocked and heard a shuffling before the door swung open.

Mary Riggins stood in the doorway. No greeting. No pleasantries. “Detective,” she said. “Any news?”

She could see both hope and terror in Mary Riggins’s eyes.

Terri looked behind her. Scott West was at a computer desk in front of a screen. He turned away from what he was doing to stare at the detective.

“No,” Terri said. “I’m afraid not. I just wanted to update you on what we’ve done.”

And then she asked, “You haven’t heard anything? Any contact? Anything that might…”

She stopped when she saw the emptiness in Mary Riggins’s face.

She was ushered into the living room, where Scott West showed her a Facebook page and a dedicated website that he’d established for information about Jennifer. So far, neither had produced much, but Terri dutifully collected a printout of all responses at either location. She knew that Facebook would cooperate with any police inquiry, and she also knew she could track any of the website connections if they appeared promising.

The problem was, most of the responses were along the lines of
We’re praying for her soul. Jesus knows there are no missing children, only children he’s called to him
or
I wish she was missing all over my face. Yum yum.
These vaguely obscene replies were utterly predictable, just as predictable as the religious ones. There were also some of the
I know exactly where she is
entries, but these all seemed to want money for a further explanation. Terri made a mental note to turn over anything that even smelled like extortion to the FBI.

She stared at all the material on the computer and realized that she could devote her life to chasing down every response. That was the problem—from a detective’s point of view—with opening those doors. If there
was
someone out there who actually knew something, it was hard to distinguish him from the nuts and the perverts who were drawn so readily to grief.
The world,
Terri thought,
likes to redouble tragedy. It’s not as if the first blow is enough. It has to add stings and insults to injury.

She wondered whether this was the unique province of the Internet. When you exposed something personal it allowed strangers to leap in.

“Do you think any of this can help you?” Scott asked.

“I don’t know.”

He looked at the computer screen. “I do,” he said glumly.

Scott hesitated as he looked across the room. Mary Riggins had gone to fetch coffee for the three of them.

“I did this for her. It made her feel like she was helping to do something to find Jennifer. It’s a little like driving around the neighborhood, as if we could spot her like a lost pair of gloves lying on the road. But it won’t work, will it, detective?”

“I don’t know,” Terri lied. “It might help. There are cases where it has. But then…”

Scott jumped in, finishing her statement, as he usually did, “…far more often it’s just a futile exercise. Right, detective?”

Terri wondered for an instant what sort of person used words like
futile exercise
in conversation. She maintained a calm, inexpressive look as she nodded in agreement.

Scott seemed to have a foundation in reality that played out as a kind of coldhearted, disconnected cruelty. She imagined this came through in his therapy sessions.