Gone The Next Read online

  “What, the floor?”

  I laughed. I liked this girl.

  She said, “I think he tore the ligaments or something.”

  “Oh, well. Guess I’ll catch him next time. Haven’t seen him in like forever.”

  “How do you know Brian?”

  “We went to the same high school.” I could see her checking me out, looking slightly puzzled, wondering why, if I was the same age as Pierce, I looked ten years older. “I was several years ahead of him, though. He hung around with my youngest brother.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “I saw on Facebook that he worked here, so I thought I’d drop by and see if he was around. Surprise him, if he even remembers me. No big deal.” I tried to get an amused, sort of gossipy look on my face — one that said: This is just between you and me. “How did ol’ Brian turn out, anyway? He was sort of a strange little kid.”

  She grinned. “I don’t really know him that well.”

  “Yeah? But you’re smiling. Is he like a major loser or something?”

  Her grin got even larger, though I could tell she was trying to suppress it. “That’s mean. Brian is fine.”

  “Big hit with the ladies? You and him are an item?”

  “No!” Boy, did she say that quickly.

  “Well, I guess that answers my question.”

  “No, Brian is just a little quiet, that’s all.”

  “You mean creepy.”

  “I didn’t say that.” She was keeping her voice low, glancing around, worried about being overheard.

  “So, deep down, he’s a rock-solid, salt-of-the-earth type, huh?”

  “You got me. He’s a good dishwasher.”

  “Wow. A good dishwasher. High praise. So he is absolutely, without question, not creepy?”

  She squinted her eyes at me, playful, like, Why are you trying to get me in trouble? “I’ll be back to check on you later,” she said.

  She was true to her word, and when she returned, midway through my meal, I changed courses. “Listen. I wasn’t totally honest with you earlier.”

  “Oh, yeah? About what?”

  I handed her one of my cards. “I’ve never met Brian Pierce in my life. I’m a fraud investigator. Kind of. I was hired by the restaurant’s insurance company to double-check on him. To make sure he really did injure his arm.”

  It was a gamble — she might get pissed that I’d misled her, and she could even alert Pierce that I’d been there. I was hoping I’d sized her up right.

  “You’re a pretty good liar,” she said.

  “Well, I prefer actor or even performance artist.”

  “No, I think liar sums it up pretty well.” But she seemed like she was teasing me, rather than being spiteful.

  “The truth is, sometimes I have to be less than honest about who I am. Like a cop working undercover.”

  “Wait a sec. You’re trying to catch a guy who might be scoring a paid vacation by faking a wrist injury, and you’re comparing yourself to a policeman who might catch a murderer or bust a major drug ring. Really?”

  “I know. It almost makes the cops sound a little silly, doesn’t it?”

  Finally, she laughed. A small laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.

  I said, “Here’s what I’d like to do. Let me take you out to dinner. My way of apologizing for unleashing my powers of deception on you.”

  She didn’t say anything. Just set my card down on the table and walked away. But when she gave me the check, she’d written her phone number on it.

  12

  What he hadn’t expected was how paranoid he became after he had the girl. Emily. That was her new name. He had been nervous in the planning stages, and terrified during the actual execution of his plan, but he had assumed he would be calm and collected afterward. He wasn’t. If anything, he was even more on edge, because now he had so much more to lose. Especially now that Emily was adjusting. Asking about her parents less often. Starting to seek his attention. His approval. Settling in. It was all working exactly as he had hoped, and the thought of losing it now made him frantic.

  So he became anxious.

  Suspicious.

  And eventually he began to feel that he was being watched.

  Every car that passed was a cop, in plain clothes, trying to catch him during a moment of carelessness.

  Neighbors were spying on him from a distance through binoculars, or attempting to peek through the fence.

  The mail carrier had been tipped off. Same with the UPS driver. The meter reader. They had all been told to keep their eyes open and report what they saw.

  Every incoming phone call was a test, with the caller hoping to hear the babblings of a little girl in the background.

  It wasn’t true, though. It couldn’t be. He knew he was letting his imagination run away with him. He took Xanax, and that helped. Besides — even if it was true, which it wasn’t — what could they do if they did in fact suspect him?

  Absolutely nothing.

  They’d need evidence to do anything more than watch, and he hadn’t given them any. No matter how anxious he became, that was one thing he never doubted. He had left no evidence. And without evidence, they couldn’t get a search warrant. All they could do is put him under surveillance.

  He could handle that. It was important to go about his usual routine. Do the things he normally did. Don’t cut off contact with the outside world. Pretend that nothing had changed.

  And if worse came to worst, he was well prepared for virtually any scenario. He had a range of options and alternatives that nobody could imagine. Some were simple and pragmatic, while others were more drastic and potentially heartbreaking.

  But he was prepared to use any of them.

  13

  “So you picked up the waitress?” Mia asked. “Wow. You don’t ever give it a rest, do you?”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘picked up.’”

  “Close enough. She gave you her number. Not exactly playing hard to get, either of you.”

  We were on her apartment patio, kicked back in lounge chairs, enjoying the relatively cool afternoon. She was drinking a beer in a frosty mug. I was drinking a Dr Pepper in an attractive aluminum can.

  “Hard for any mortal to resist my charms,” I said. Mia and I frequently shared the details of our dating lives. Okay, maybe I did a little more sharing than she did.

  “You gonna call her?”

  “Well, yeah, that’s the idea. I want to ask her some more questions about Pierce.”

  “I thought she hardly knew him.”

  “Doesn’t mean she can’t be useful. She might overhear something one of the other employees says. Or she might agree to do some digging around. Maybe I can sucker her into helping me out the way you do.”

  I knew immediately that I’d crossed a line. Just a little, but enough. Something in Mia’s face changed.

  “Hey, I was just kidding,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know. You jerk.” She was playing it cool. Acting like I hadn’t just hurt her feelings.

  “My idea of a little humor. Very little.”

  “Relax, Roy. It’s okay. I’m used to your swipes.”

  That made me feel worse. I took a big swig of cold Dr Pepper. Sat quietly for a few minutes, trying to enjoy the warmth of the sun.

  “I think I’m going to take a nap,” Mia announced.

  “Can I take photos?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “You work later?” I asked.

  “My day off, remember?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Can I give you a little friendly advice?”

  “Sure.”

  “You might try paying attention to what other people say once in awhile.”

  Whoa. My earlier remark had definitely pissed her off. I was about to respond when my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. Incoming email. I pulled it out and checked the screen.

  Brian Pierce had just accepted my friend request.

  What I hope to find, when I first
gain access to someone’s Facebook page, is immediate and undeniable evidence that that person is committing insurance fraud. It’s nice when the proof just falls into your lap. Does this mean I’m lazy? Possibly.

  For instance, I had a case involving a woman who was a personal trainer for wealthy folks in Austin. (If I mentioned the names of her celebrity clients, you’d recognize them, as well as their highly toned buttocks.) Early last year, she claimed to have injured her back when her Jaguar was hit from behind by a Miata going about ten miles an hour. She said she couldn’t work, so she couldn’t haul in the two hundred dollars an hour that was her usual rate. The doctors said she might have a disc injury, hard to tell. Of course, in her line of work, making connections and being visible is important. Privacy is not a priority, as evidenced by her 3,672 friends. So she granted my friend request within hours. After all, I might be someone important, right? Everything looked legit on her page, including status updates in which she complained about her sore back. But eleven days later, someone posted a video from a party on a houseboat. It wasn’t even her own video, but someone had tagged her in it, so it showed up in the newsfeed for all her friends to see. In the video, she dove off the side of the boat several times, and she even slid down the water slide, letting out an excited whoop in the process. Perfect. The video disappeared less than an hour after it was posted (I can imagine the frantic phone call she made to the friend who had posted it), but I had already used some handy specialty software to download a copy. Slam dunk. Case closed.

  Unfortunately, Brian Pierce had not been invited to any houseboat parties, at least not recently. While Mia napped, I hung out on her patio with my laptop and explored Pierce’s Facebook profile.

  He appeared frustratingly normal. Boring, even.

  Music he liked: Foo Fighters, Rolling Stones, Green Day, George Strait, Katy Perry.

  Television shows: Tosh.0, Modern Family, NCIS, Breaking Bad.

  Books he liked: Well, like a lot of people on Facebook, he hadn’t listed any.

  I could go on, but you get the idea. No help at all. His most recent status update, from just yesterday afternoon, said, “We sure could use some rain.” I kid you not. Weather talk. We were in a drought, but come on. Three people had given him a thumbs up, but nobody had commented.

  I scrolled downward, and thus backward in time. The day after his alleged accident at the restaurant, Pierce had written, “tore some ligaments in my wrist, typing with one hand is no fun.”

  Some guy had responded, “Wait till you have to go to the bathroom.”

  Another guy had said, “at least it won’t affect your relationship with rosie palm.”

  Witty bastards with their high-brow banter.

  A young girl had said, “Ouch. What happened?”

  Pierce: “slipped on a wet floor at work and landed wrong”

  The girl had responded with a sad face icon. The empathy was palpable.

  I scrolled back further and saw that Pierce didn’t post often, but when he did, it was about as banal as it gets. Lines from movies. Quotes from famous people. Comments about sports. Lots of re-postings of other people’s posts. Very little substance. In other words, Pierce’s page was about like everyone else’s.

  Most of his photos weren’t original; they were things he’d lifted from around the web. No help there, either.

  I closed my laptop and went inside Mia’s apartment. Her bedroom door was closed. I scribbled a quick note: Sorry. Sometimes I am a horse’s ass.

  Then I changed my mind and crossed through the word “sometimes.”

  As I approached my van, I noticed that I had a flat tire. Then I came to a full stop. It wasn’t just one tire. All four were flat.

  Son of a bitch. That was my first thought.

  Wade Gruley. That was my second thought, remembering the voicemail Spence had left me yesterday. Spence works in the Travis County jail system and he warns me when certain inmates are going to be released. He does it out of the goodness of his heart, and because I give him a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue for each heads-up.

  See, one small problem with my line of work is that, on occasion, one of the scumbags who commits fraud gets upset with me. And they know exactly who I am, because my work isn’t always complete after I get the cheater on video. Sometimes I have to show up in court to testify. I’m not wild about it — I’d much rather remain anonymous — but some of my clients insist. That’s because video is great, but nothing beats a real, live person, as far as evidence goes. And I’ll admit, I’m persuasive, charismatic, and, let’s face it, ruggedly handsome up on the witness stand. I’m good with the jurors and the judge. Together, my eyewitness testimony and the video evidence can deliver a one-two punch: The cheater not only loses a monthly income, he might end up going to jail for six months or a year. Most of the cheaters spend that time coming to the realization that crime doesn’t pay, but a few of them spend the time daydreaming about ways to seek revenge.

  Wade Gruley was one of those people. During the first few weeks of his government-sponsored vacation, he’d called me up a couple of times and made veiled threats. How dumb is that, calling from jail? Those calls were recorded. He said things like, “When I get out of here, I’m going to look you up and let you know how much I appreciate what you did for me.” Very stupid to make the calls, but not quite stupid enough to say anything that would result in additional charges.

  The good thing is, these people are insurance cheats, not murderers or gangbangers, so none of them have ever come after me directly. Instead, they go after my vehicle. Flat tires are always popular. Sugar in the gas tank. Acid on the paint job. A hammer to the windshield. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. The van has a high-dollar alarm and security system, which prevents anyone from stealing it or its contents, but it doesn’t prevent this sort of petty vandalism.

  Most of the time, I suspect who the culprit is, but I never know for sure. That’s because they usually strike once and that’s it. For most of these losers, that’s enough. Sure, in jail, they might’ve vowed to themselves that they would hound me to my dying day, but after they’re released, their keen sense of focus wanes. They key my car door or snap my antenna and that seems to fulfill their need for payback. Their anger fades, then they get distracted and move on to other things, like, you know, day-to-day life.

  Doesn’t mean I’m not careful.

  I looked all around the parking lot, making sure Wade Gruley — who was a pretty big guy, if memory serves — wasn’t lurking behind a vehicle, and then I approached the van for a closer inspection. The left front tire had an inch-long slit in the sidewall. Someone had plunged a knife into it. Same with the other three. That kind of damage can’t be repaired, so I’d need four new tires.

  Know who pays for it? My insurance company, of course. So, assuming the vandalism had indeed been committed by Gruley or one of my other past targets, once again an insurance company would be coughing up cash to pay for his illegal transgressions.

  I called the non-emergency number for the Austin Police Department and asked them to send a unit. My insurance company would want a police report. Then I called to arrange a tow truck. I’d be good to go in a couple of hours. Which was just as well, because I was going to need my van quite a bit in the coming days.

  14

  The deputy wasn’t on Thomas Springs Road at seven o’clock the next morning. This was getting confusing. Were they checking Pierce out or not? I didn’t really need to know, but I sure wanted to know. I pulled over and placed a call that was answered by an actual live human being.

  “This is Ruelas.”

  “Good morning, Detective, this is Roy Ballard.”

  Silence.

  I said, “Remember? Tall, good-looking guy with a staggering intellect?”

  “You need something?”

  “Absolutely. A minute with the lieutenant. Holland?”

  “He’s on vacation.”

  “You mean, like, literally?”

  “F
lorida. Left this morning.”

  “Okay, then I’ll ask you instead. Yesterday morning there was a deputy parked at the church on Thomas Springs Road. Today he’s not there — at least, not right now. I know better than to ask what he was doing there, but you know what I do for a living, and I need to go about my business without interfering with your business. I’m sure you understand what I’m getting at.”

  He let out a heavy sigh. “I didn’t hear the question.”

  “Fair enough. My question is, do I need to stay away from the Thomas Springs Road area?”

  My assumption was that he wouldn’t tell me if they were watching Pierce, but he would tip me off if they weren’t, just as he had at the substation.

  What he said was, “Do whatever the hell you want. Makes no difference to me at all.”

  Good enough.

  “Thank you. So the deputy yesterday was simply running radar?”

  “Mr. Ballard, let me make a suggestion. Assume that everyone at the sheriff’s department knows exactly what they are doing. That way, you won’t have to lay awake at night wondering if we need your help.”

  “Good tip. Are you a Capricorn, by chance?”

  “What?”

  “With Mars in retrograde, that might explain your current irritability.”

  Dial tone.

  I saw an interesting newspaper ad once for one of the local news outfits. They liked to take credit for always getting the big scoop, no matter how hard the digging might be. The ad featured neatly arranged rows of ten-digit numbers — hundreds of them, or maybe thousands. The headline said something like, “If you want to know how exciting investigative reporting is, find the number listed twice on this page.”

  Same thing is true in my line of work. People think it’s a non-stop thrill ride, or that it’s at least mildly entertaining.

  Silly, silly fools.

  Sure, there are moments. But the rest of the time, it’s just a job, like any other. Repetitive. Not particularly challenging. Sometimes downright boring. More about grunt work than brain work. Show up, be persistent, and wait for your long hours to pay off.