Gone The Next Read online

  That didn’t sound pleasant at all, especially since she wouldn’t be in a hospital setting. It would be slow. Painful.

  But, again, what could he do? He’d known from the start that there could be unforeseen challenges. Unexpected complications.

  Silly. Once again, he was overreacting. The odds that she had meningitis were small. Tiny. This was likely just a stomach bug, or even food poisoning, but it would pass.

  By eight o’clock that evening, Emily’s temperature was one hundred and four.

  19

  Mia had brought up a good point about the equipment I relied on in my line of work. I use quite a few gadgets, and some of them are damn expensive.

  Start with the laptop. Top of the line Macintosh. Three grand right there.

  Video cameras? Seems like I buy a new one every two or three years, because the technology is always changing. Each new camera is smaller, lighter, more powerful, more functional. The only brand I’ll own is Canon. My opinion, they make the best cameras around. Same for my still cameras and zoom lenses. It’s easy to spend a bunch of money very quickly on this stuff, so I have to remind myself I’m not shooting a feature motion picture. But I do insist on one of their pro-level high-definition camcorders, which cost a cool four thousand bucks. I also own one of their 35mm SLRs, which shoots pretty decent video, too, in a pinch, along with a pocket-sized point-and-shoot.

  It’s important to be intimately familiar with the operation of each camera and all the accessories so you can flip it on and start shooting in just a few seconds. You don’t want to be fumbling around while your supposedly injured target is hoisting a barbell or running to catch a bus. You have to practice regularly. And it goes without saying that you want to put freshly charged batteries in your cameras every time you go out. I keep a charger and back-up batteries in the van.

  Other gear includes a couple of kick-ass sets of binoculars, a police scanner, and plenty of high-quality flashlights. I also keep pepper spray handy — one of those big-ass canisters designed to ward off a bear attack — because, well, you never know. It’s not implausible that a target might spot me trailing him — “getting burned” is the phrase for it — and decide to get hostile. Hadn’t happened yet, but I was prepared. Better to use pepper spray than a Glock, that was my attitude.

  Then there are the devices that people tend to think of as spy equipment. A tiny video camera built into a baseball cap. Another one that looks like an electrical outlet. Another one that’s built into a teddy bear. Yeah, I have a lot of cameras. I also have a motion-activated GPS device that feeds real-time tracking information to my laptop or iPhone. And I have various listening devices, including one with a parabolic sound-collecting dish that lets me pick up and record conversations at up to one hundred yards. For more intimate conversations, I have another audio recorder that looks like a remote control for a vehicle. And another one that looks like a wristwatch.

  All told, I probably have twenty thousand dollars worth of high-tech toys, not counting the van itself. None of it is illegal. Your average Joe can hop online and order all of these things himself, or get them at a retail store. On the other hand, how you use some of this equipment — that’s what can be illegal. Or legal, but unethical. Which doesn’t necessarily stop me. Remember, I’m not a cop. And I’m not a private investigator, either, so I’m not bound by any particular professional code of ethics, except my own.

  After brunch, I checked Craigslist and found a non-working dryer being given away in South Austin. It was waiting at the curb, first come, first served. I drove to the address and there it was, ready to load.

  Then I returned to Thomas Springs Road, because now it was time to get serious. Instead of sitting and waiting, I was going to take action.

  Okay, actually, I would have to sit and wait at first, which is what I did, in the same old spot in the church parking lot. Another eight hours in the van, in the summer heat, watching Brian Pierce’s gate. And nothing happened, except for an occasional vehicle passing by. No county deputies. No Jetta. No Emma Webster.

  The sun set, but I waited another thirty minutes for good measure. Then I stepped out of the van and began walking toward Pierce’s place. There was just enough moonlight to make the landscape easy to navigate. I covered one hundred yards in just over a minute.

  I stepped over to a cedar tree about twelve yards from the driveway itself. Perfect. There, at the base of the trunk, I placed my rock camera. That’s right, a camera that looks like a rock. Not a fancy rock, just a rock. About eight inches tall. Totally self-contained. Records up to eighty hours of video on a 32 gig SD memory card. The battery can last up to a solid year. Is technology great or what?

  There were other rocks in the area, and this “rock” looked enough like those rocks to make it virtually invisible. Which was good, because if someone walked off with it, that was a loss of seven hundred bucks, not to mention whatever was on the memory card.

  I would have preferred to place the camera across the road — for a better chance of capturing license plates of any vehicles coming or going — but the camera was motion-activated, meaning every vehicle passing on the road would have set it off. This way, the camera would only activate when someone was coming or going from Pierce’s place.

  I walked back to my van, started it up, and pulled onto Thomas Springs. Drove the hundred yards to Pierce’s driveway, plus a few yards past. Then I backed into Pierce’s driveway.

  No traffic coming from either direction.

  So I hopped out, popped open the back of the van, and wrestled my recently acquired non-working dryer out onto the ground. Better a dryer than a washer. Dryers are much lighter, but this one was still heavy enough for my purposes.

  Had to move quick. You never know when a car might come along. Every second counts. Which is why I had situated the camera before unloading the dryer. Even those extra few seconds, with my van sitting there as plain as day, could’ve screwed me.

  I maneuvered the dryer close to the gate, so that a vehicle couldn’t squeeze around it. Then I jumped back into my van and took off. Total time spent in Pierce’s driveway: about thirty seconds.

  Here’s something most people know if they’ve driven enough rural county roads: Every now and then, some pinhead who needs to get rid of a large item will simply abandon it on the side of the road. A worn-out couch. A busted refrigerator. A soiled mattress. An old stainless steel sink. Rather than taking it to the dump or a recycling facility, or giving it away, the idiot just pulls over and leaves it. Now it’s not his problem. Eventually, someone from the county comes and removes it. Not quickly, though. So it would be up to Pierce to move the dryer himself, with my rock camera recording the action. Would be difficult for him to do it if his wrist was really injured.

  I felt pretty good about the arrangement, so I went home, went to bed, and crashed for a solid nine hours.

  The next morning, I slept late, had a big breakfast, then went out to my van, where I saw that all four tires were flat again.

  Gruley. That son of a bitch.

  This was getting old fast.

  20

  “This is the second time this has happened?”

  I said, “Well, it’s the second time recently. The first time was on Thursday.”

  “Three days ago?”

  “Yes. Thursday.”

  “Same thing then? Flat tires?”

  “Yep.”

  “All four?”

  “Yes. All four.”

  This particular Austin cop — who had shown up an hour and a half after I called — couldn’t have been more than 25 years old. Probably a rookie. But what do you expect for a call about a vandalized van? Not like they’re going to send detectives and a forensics squad.

  “Any idea who might have done it? This time or the one three days ago?” He had that expression that I had seen before on other cops’ faces. The one, semi-amused, that said, What did you do to piss someone off?

  Patience. This happened every time. I h
ad to repeat myself. So, just as I had done with the cop on Thursday, I proceeded to tell him the abridged version. What I did for a living. Why some people were prone to get angry with me. How the van was a regular target. Then I gave him the name Wade Gruley, and told him why Gruley had just spent three months in the county jail.

  “So he got out, when, middle of last week?” he asked, as he made detailed notes. The funny thing about rookies is that they aren’t all jaded and cynical. They still think they might actually make a difference in the world. They write paragraphs when a veteran would write a few words.

  “Pretty sure it was Thursday. Same day my tires were flattened the first time.”

  “Can you spell his name for me?”

  “W-A-D-E,” I said. He didn’t get the joke at first. Too intent on his note-taking. Then he got it and smiled. I spelled ‘Gruley’ for him. “Might be easier to check the report from Thursday,” I said. “It’s all in there. I was hoping someone from the department might’ve spoken to Mr. Gruley, but I haven’t heard from the responding officer.”

  It was a subtle jab. Not that I really expected anyone from APD to track Gruley down and give him a lecture on the evils of vandalism or to even question him. Hundreds of incidents like this happened every single day. The cops were way overloaded. Some scumbag went on a shopping spree with my credit card number a few years ago, and the investigator on that case said she had more then four hundred open files. That was her way of saying, Don’t expect to hear from me again. Ever.

  The cop said, “I’ll make a note that you think the two incidents are related.” He glanced around the apartment complex’s parking lot, inspecting the light poles.

  “No video,” I said, before he asked.

  “Any cameras at the front entrances?”

  “Nope.”

  “Maybe this will inspire the management to install cameras. You should tell them what happened.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said. I would not do that.

  “Do you know if any of your neighbors saw anything?”

  “Haven’t heard from anybody.” But you are free to ask them.

  “Has this guy Gruley contacted you?”

  “Not since he got out.”

  “Before that?”

  “Yeah, he called a couple of times when he was a guest of the county. Made some vague promises to come see me.”

  “But no outright threats.”

  “No, he’s just this side of being that dumb.”

  “Did he say he was gonna flatten all your tires?”

  “Nope.”

  “So there is no actual evidence that he did this.”

  “Well, it’s just a hunch, but my hunches are so eerily accurate, they are admissible as evidence in most courts of law. Except in Arkansas. Those guys are really strict.”

  He got the joke this time and gave me a halfhearted grin. “You know, without a witness...”

  “Yeah, I know. And I know you have better things to do. I really do. I just need the report for the insurance company.”

  So he finished it up, handed me a copy, then whipped out a business card with his numbers on it. “If you hear from Gruley or see him hanging around, give me a call.”

  It was like bad dialogue from a cable-channel cop show.

  “You can count on it,” I said, because that would’ve been the next line from the script.

  I went back inside and planted myself on the couch. The tow truck driver would call my cell when he pulled up outside. I’d been going at it pretty hard for the past week, so I figured it was time to just take a break, even for a few minutes. I tuned the TV to a Texas Longhorns baseball game.

  But my break didn’t last long.

  A newsflash — in the form of a crawl across the bottom of the screen — caught my eye in the bottom of the third. The disappearance of Tracy Turner had grabbed the nation’s attention so absolutely, every new detail was disseminated via every possible media outlet as quickly as possible. The crawl said that a source in the case had revealed that, just last week, Kathleen Hanrahan had met with a divorce attorney.

  Whoa.

  That was big. Another bombshell, really. The circumstantial evidence continued to look really bad for Patrick Hanrahan. First he failed two polygraph tests, or at least he hadn’t passed them, then he cut off communications with police, and now this. His wife had been planning to leave him, or had been considering it.

  I flipped to CNN, knowing they’d be on it, which was an understatement. At this point, the Turner case was probably eating up half of their broadcast day. At the moment, one of their legal experts was conjecturing on the implications of the latest news.

  “...can only imagine how Patrick Hanrahan might’ve reacted upon hearing that his wife was thinking about a divorce. He has a lot to lose, because even though he is not Tracy’s biological father, as we’ve learned in the past few days, he is as close to her as if she were his own flesh and blood. He has been in her life, acting as her father, since she was one year old. One can only guess what — ”

  I flipped to MSNBC. They were interviewing one of Kathleen Hanrahan’s friends, but they were concealing her face and altering her voice for anonymity. The woman — at least, it sounded like a woman — was saying that Kathleen had been unhappy for several years and had spoken about divorce on many different occasions. Then the woman said that Kathleen had recently seemed even more troubled than before — like something traumatic had happened. I listened for a few minutes, but the woman never gave any actual reasons why Kathleen was unhappy, and it became obvious that there were no hard facts beyond what I already knew.

  I flipped to Fox News. They were doing a segment on how the secular left was taking God out of school and simultaneously pushing the radical homosexual socialist agenda.

  I went back to the baseball game just as my cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number. I answered anyway, expecting the tow truck driver, but what I got instead was a woman with a very nice voice asking, “Is this the Texas Restaurant and Innkeepers Association?”

  I’ll admit that, for maybe a full second, I had no idea who it was. Too distracted. But I recovered before it became obvious.

  “It is indeed. This is Roy Ballard, assistant vice president of the hospitality appreciation division. Who’s calling, please?”

  “Jessica Klein.”

  “Let’s see. Klein, Klein, Klein. Oh, Klein! As in the award winner.”

  “That’s me.”

  “Are you calling to schedule your acceptance dinner?”

  “Uh, that sort of depends.”

  “Oh? Depends on what, Miss Klein?”

  “Well, Mr. Ballard, let me ask you something. Are you asking me to dinner because you actually want to go out with me, or are you asking because you want me to snoop around about Brian Pierce?”

  “Wow. You cut right to it, don’t you?”

  “I think it’s a legitimate question.”

  “You know what? I do, too. The bottom line is I’d love to go to dinner with you, regardless of this thing with Brian Pierce. If you don’t want to talk about him, we won’t talk about him.”

  “Good answer.”

  “Honest answer.”

  “Okay, but if I had heard something about Brian, you’d want to hear it?”

  “Well, sure, yeah, I’m not gonna lie.”

  There was a pause, then she said, “I’m off today. Why don’t we meet for a drink later and I’ll tell you what I know. We can get that out of the way, and then, if you really do want to go out — ”

  “I do.”

  “One step at a time. A drink first. And don’t forget my trophy.”

  21

  “Brian Pierce did not want to apply for workers’ comp,” Jessica Klein said.

  I took a sip of my iced tea and let that sink in, wondering if my case had just come to an end. It was a little past six in the evening. We were sitting on the patio of a restaurant called the Iron Cactus in the shopping center — oh, excuse me, the “
lifestyle center” — called the Hill Country Galleria. Not far from Pierce’s house, and not far from La Tolteca, the restaurant where he and Jessica worked. Maybe she lived nearby, too, but I hadn’t asked her that yet.

  “He didn’t?” I asked, because my interview techniques are honed to a razor’s edge.

  She shook her head. “It sounds like he didn’t even know what workers’ comp was, or at least he didn’t know that it would apply to his situation.”

  Jessica looked even prettier than the previous time I’d seen her. Her blond hair, which had been pulled back the other day, was now loose and flowing past her shoulders. I was fairly sure she was wearing more makeup. The baby-blue V-neck tank top hugging her torso was a hell of a lot more flattering than her waitress outfit. It wasn’t easy to remain totally focused.

  “How do you know this?” I asked.

  “Manager told me. He said he had to twist Brian’s arm” — she grinned — “ha, no pun intended, but he had to twist Brian’s arm to get him to take workers’ comp. I didn’t really understand why, but Terry — that’s the manager — he said that the higher-ups would want Brian to apply for it. It was better if he did.”

  “Yeah, workers’ comp is a trade-off,” I said. “In exchange for benefits, you agree not to sue for negligence.”

  “Oh, is that how it works?”

  “Pretty much.”