When All The Girls Have Gone (8 page)

Max was rinsing off the dishes he had used for the tuna fish sandwiches and contemplating another beer when the doorbell chimed. He glanced at the clock. It was still early.

He wiped his hands on the dish towel and went to open the door. Anson Salinas stood there. He looked like the hard-core lawman he had been for most of his life. His hair had gone gunmetal gray and his lean, wiry frame had softened a little over the years, but his dark eyes were still cop eyes. His hard face, with its high cheekbones and grim jaw, was as intimidating as it had always been.

You had to know Anson awhile before you understood that appearances did not deceive. The man was as tough as he looked.

He was also lonely.

That makes two of us, Max thought.

“Come on in, Anson,” he said. “Beer?”

“Won’t say no.”

Max headed for the kitchen. Anson closed the door and followed him. He lowered himself into one of the old chairs at the kitchen table.

“Well?” he asked. “Did you take the Flint case?”

“I did.” Max carried two beers over to the table and sat down across from Anson. “Started out simple but it got interesting in a hurry.”

“Yeah? How’s that?”

Max gave him a brief rundown.

Anson drank some beer while he processed the details.

“Complicated,” he said.

“At this point, yes. But sooner or later I’ll find the trigger event. And when I do, everything will fall into place.”

Anson snorted, amused. “You and your theories. That kind of thinking might have worked well when you were with that fancy profiling outfit, but out here in the real world you’re gonna find out real fast that you don’t always have time to find the trigger. Mostly you have to act on the information you’ve got.”

“I know. I’m not ignoring the facts on the ground, believe me.”

Anson’s eyes glinted. “What’s she like?”

“Louise Flint?”

“Not the dead woman. I’m talkin’ about the one that turned up at the scene.”

“Charlotte Sawyer.”

“Yeah. Charlotte Sawyer.”

“She’s . . . interesting.”

Anson nodded. “Pretty.”

“I said interesting.”

“Don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but you know what they say about the first person who shows up at the scene.”

“She wasn’t the first person. Technically it was Louise Flint’s housekeeper who was first on the scene.”

“Still, from the sound of it, this Charlotte Sawyer showed up with a full set of keys. That raises questions.”

“Yes, it does,” Max said. “I’m looking for answers, trust me.”

“I do. But you know me. I like to talk shop.”

“I know. You need to find a job, Anson. You’re going to drive yourself crazy if you don’t. Probably drive me crazy, too.”

“Got any suggestions? There’s this thing called age discrimination. I’m too old for law enforcement. And I sure as hell don’t plan to work nights as a minimum-wage security guard at some office building.”

“We’ve talked about this. You should look into volunteer work.”

Anson shrugged and drank some more beer. “I’m thinking about it.”

“Good.” Max leaned back in his chair. “I was about to turn on the game,” he said, lying through his teeth. “You want to watch?”

“Sure. Not like I’ve got anything better to do.”

*   *   *

The game ended around ten thirty. Anson pushed himself up out of the recliner.

“That’s that,” he said. “Good game. Reckon I’ll head back to my place. You’ll be wanting to get some sleep tonight. Sounds like you’ve got a lot of interesting work ahead of you tomorrow. Let me know what you find out about that missing woman.”

“Jocelyn Pruett,” Max said. “I’ll do that.”

He got up and followed Anson to the door.

Outside Anson stopped and eyed the rain that was dripping onto the front porch.

“Porch roof leaks,” he said.

“I know. I’ll get to it. Got other priorities inside that need to be fixed first. Namely the plumbing. Speaking of which, you okay with supervising the plumber tomorrow?”

“Leave it to me,” Anson said.

“Promise me you won’t tell him how to do his job.”

“’Course not. But I’ll keep an eye on him.”

Anson went down the front steps and walked quickly through the light mist. At his front door he paused to raise a hand in a casual good night and then he disappeared into his house.

Max closed his door and went back into the kitchen. He thought about the day Anson Salinas had, quite literally, crashed into his life.

He had been a terrified ten-year-old kid and he had not been alone. There were seven other children with him. They had all been locked in the old barn for the night. Quinton Zane always locked them up for the night.

Zane said it was for their own protection. He said it was to help them overcome their fears. He said it was to make them strong.

But what they really feared was Quinton Zane. He was the real-life monster in their world; the young, charismatic, terrifying leader of the cult.

On the night that shattered Max’s childhood forever, Zane told his followers that he’d had a vision in which he would soon disappear. And he did—but not before he had triggered a series of explosions that set fire to the buildings in the compound, including the barn where the kids slept.

Max and the others awakened to find themselves locked in a structure that was in flames. And then, as they huddled together in the middle of the barn, frozen in terror, aware that they were going to burn alive, a hero arrived to rescue them.

Anson Salinas, the chief of police of the nearby town, had used his vehicle to smash through the old barn door. He leaped out from behind the wheel, rounded up all eight kids, crammed them into the SUV and roared out of the blazing barn. Moments later the entire structure came crashing down.

Several of the adult members of the cult perished that night. Max’s mother was one of them.

Ultimately the social workers were able to track down relatives for five of the eight kids. But three boys—Max, Cabot Sutter and Jack Lancaster—were all officially orphaned.

They had gone home with Anson Salinas the night of the fire because there was nowhere else for them to go. And in the end, they had stayed.

When it became clear that they were all headed for the foster care system, Anson had pulled some strings, twisted a few arms and completed the paperwork that made him a licensed foster parent.

Max cranked up the computer again and took another look at the data he had collected on the two murder victims and the three women who had been raped. Why had Louise Flint considered them so important she had hidden the file in a suitcase in a storage locker?

Now there was a connection to another rape victim—Jocelyn Pruett.

There was always a pattern. It was up to him to find it.

After a while he closed down the Louise Flint file and opened the one that he always checked before going to bed—the one labeled
Quinton Zane
.

He knew that each of his foster brothers also kept an open file on Zane. They rarely discussed the contents of the files with anyone outside the family. In the past, others, including his ex, had labeled the three of them obsessed and accused them of being paranoid. There were times when Max figured the critics were probably right.

He and his foster brothers had each paid a price for their pursuit of the ghost of Quinton Zane. In his case, the obsession had almost gotten him killed on his last case at the agency. It had destroyed his career, and his marriage had gone down in flames—collateral damage. He was well aware that as far as his former colleagues and his ex were concerned, he was no longer merely obsessed, he was burned out. They were convinced that he was at high risk of seeing patterns where none existed.

No one at the agency wanted to work with an obsessed, paranoid individual. No smart woman wanted to be married to one.

Over the years he and Cabot and Jack had pulled up occasional rumors, whispers and hints that indicated Zane was still alive. But they had never been able to nail down anything substantial. They had never found enough to reveal a pattern.

He closed the file and checked his e-mail before he powered off the computer. His in-box was empty except for the one e-mail that had come in a month back. He still could not decide whether to archive it or dump it into the trash, so he just let it sit in the in-box.

The message consisted of only two sentences and a signature.

Please be advised that you are not to contact me again. If you ignore this request, I will direct my attorney to take legal action against you.

It was signed
Davis Decatur.

His biological father.

Charlotte awoke to the ringing of her phone. For a few beats the reality of the gray light of dawn meshed with fragments of a dream in which she walked through a series of empty, fog-filled rooms searching for Jocelyn.

The phone rang again.

Jocelyn.
Maybe she was calling to check in at last.

She pushed the covers aside, swung her legs over the side of the bed and grabbed the phone. The screen name read
Cutler
. For a split second she didn’t recognize it. Then she remembered that Max had given her his card and she had entered his name and number into her contacts list.

“It’s a little early,” she said.

“We have another problem,” Max said.

It occurred to her that he sounded as if he had been awake for some time. She tightened her grip on the phone.

“What?” she asked.

“Jocelyn Pruett is not at the convent on St. Adela.”

Something inside her went very cold. She stood up quickly.

“How can you possibly know that?” she asked. “There’s no phone at the convent. Jocelyn said her own phone would be off the whole time because there would be no cell service and no Wi-Fi available.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Yes. Look, last night I sent a text to Jocelyn on the off chance that she
might have found a way to check her messages. I told her I had some bad news about Louise. There was no response.”

“How did Jocelyn book the retreat?” Max asked.

“She used a travel agency that specializes in various kinds of exotic trips and retreats. They book vacations all over the world that focus on yoga and meditation experiences—that kind of thing.”

“I just got off the phone with the chief of the St. Adela police department. He was very helpful. I told him we had an emergency on our hands and that we had to get in touch with Jocelyn Pruett immediately. He sent one of his officers out to the convent.”

Charlotte closed her eyes. “I’m an idiot. I never even thought about contacting the local cops.”

“You’re not an idiot. You would have come up with the idea eventually. Yesterday you were still trying to wrap your head around Louise Flint’s death.”

Charlotte opened her eyes. “Thank you for making excuses for me. Are you certain Jocelyn isn’t on the island?”

“As certain as I can be without getting on a plane to St. Adela.”

Charlotte sank back down onto the edge of the bed. “Oh, my God.”

“The sister in charge informed the officer that, yes, Jocelyn Pruett had booked a monthlong retreat and, yes, she had arrived and checked in on schedule.”

“What?”

“But she checked out the following day.”

“Crap.”

“Evidently she could not tolerate the lifestyle.”

“No kidding.” Charlotte brightened. “Maybe she checked into a beachfront hotel instead.”

“The sister didn’t know where Jocelyn went, only that she was gone. And before you ask, no, Pruett is not staying at any of the local hotels. The police chief looked into that possibility.”

Charlotte breathed deeply, allowing the implications to sink in.

“Jocelyn never meant to stay there at the convent,” she said. “She intended to disappear all along.”

“That’s how it looks,” Max agreed. “Evidently she planned to remain invisible for at least a month, but she didn’t want you, or anyone else, apparently, to worry about her.”

Charlotte was tempted to take his crisp, impersonal tone of voice as a sign of heartlessness, but something told her that it was just evidence of business as usual for Max. Finding answers was what he did for a living. As far as he was concerned, he was simply updating her in the most efficient manner possible so that he could get on with his job.

“She bought the ticket to St. Adela and went so far as to actually check in to the convent so that anyone who tried to search for her online would be satisfied that she had traveled to the island,” he said. “Most people would assume that she was where she was supposed to be.”

Charlotte gripped the phone very tightly. “Most people like me, you mean. But you took matters a step further. You checked with the local police. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“You didn’t call the St. Adela police because, until yesterday, there was no reason for you to think that your stepsister wasn’t where she said she would be,” Max said.

So now he was reading her mind, too.

“But you automatically assumed that Jocelyn probably wasn’t where she was supposed to be, is that it?” she asked.

“I didn’t assume anything one way or the other. I just like to verify details whenever I can.”

“So my stepsister really has gone off the grid.”

“Looks like it. If she wants to get in touch with you without using her phone, there are ways. Burner phones. Public library computers. But she hasn’t done that.” Max paused very deliberately. “Right?”

The realization that he didn’t entirely trust her hit her like a small electrical shock. Then she got mad.

“No, Jocelyn hasn’t gotten in touch,” she snapped. She paused. “Do you think she knows that Louise Flint is dead?”

“If she disappeared because she’s running scared, it’s logical that she would keep track of what’s happening back here in Seattle. I think it’s safe to say she is aware of Louise’s death, yes. Whether or not Jocelyn suspects that her friend was murdered, I can’t say.”

“Trust me, Jocelyn will assume that Louise was murdered. She certainly won’t believe that her best friend OD’d.” Charlotte shot to her feet again, her hand clamped around the phone. “Oh, God, do you think that Jocelyn is . . .”

She couldn’t bring herself to say the word, but Max evidently had no problem with harsh realities.

“It’s possible she’s dead,” he said. “But I think it’s unlikely. Dead bodies have a way of surfacing.”

She flinched and then told herself that was probably Max’s way of trying to sound reassuring.

“The way Louise’s body showed up, you mean?”

“Yes.” Max paused briefly. “At this point it looks like Jocelyn has gone into hiding. The fact that I haven’t been able to find her yet is a good indication that she knows what she’s doing.”

“She’s very tech savvy.”

“That’s obvious. What about the other members of her family? Is there anyone else she might have contacted?”

“There is no one else,” Charlotte said. “Her father died years ago. She has no brothers or sisters. Her father married my mother when Jocelyn and I were in our teens. The question is, who is she hiding from?”

“Maybe from the person who murdered Louise Flint,” Max said.

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

Charlotte gazed blankly out the window.

“Are you still there?” Max asked after a while.

She swallowed hard. “Yes. Yes, I’m here. I’m just having trouble trying to process all this. If you’re right, it means Jocelyn was keeping some huge secrets from me.”

“Yes.”

“She was trying to protect me.”

“Think so?”

“She’s always been that way. Almost from the start.”

“I don’t want to be the one to spoil your image of your stepsister,” Max said, “but there are other reasons why she might have kept you in the dark. It might be herself she’s protecting.”

“No,” Charlotte said. “If she’s keeping secrets, it’s because she doesn’t want to drag me into whatever is going on.”

“I’ll find out what happened to your sister,” Max said. “It’s what I do.”

“Well, you’re not doing it alone, remember? I’m part of this thing.”

“Got some idea of where you want to start?” Max asked.

He didn’t sound sarcastic or arrogant. He sounded curious and interested, as if he was paying close attention.

“During the night I suddenly remembered that note that Louise put into the envelope with the keys that she mailed to Jocelyn.”

“What about it?”

“Louise said that
her
hard copy of the file was in the storage locker and that it wasn’t online.”

“Which implies that your stepsister has a hard copy, as well,” Max concluded. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Exactly.”

Max was quiet for a few seconds. “Any idea where she might have stashed it?”

“Jocelyn keeps most of her important records and files online. But she also maintains one very old-fashioned storage system—a safe-deposit box.”

There was a short silence from Max’s end of the connection.

“We’d need a key,” he said finally.

“I’ve got one,” Charlotte said. “I’m the only person she trusted completely.” She realized with a shock of horror that she had used the past tense. “I mean, I’m the only one she trusts. Okay, she obviously doesn’t tell me everything, but she trusts me.”

“I understand,” Max said. “We’ll find her.”

She was surprised by the oddly gentle current in the dark tide of his
voice. He made the statement sound like a vow. But she also noticed that he didn’t go beyond that. He didn’t offer hope that Jocelyn was alive. He just promised to find her.

Max Cutler was not the type to make a promise he was not sure he could keep, she decided. On the other hand, something told her that if he did make a promise, you could depend upon him to walk into hell to fulfill it.

Then again, she had been wrong about men before. Brian Conroy was Exhibit A.

“I’ll call my boss and tell her that I’ll be late getting in to the office,” she said.