J. Jance - Long Time Gone

“Park here,” I told Mr. Ibrahim. “If you don’t mind, I’d like you to wait here with the meter running.” I reached into my wallet and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill. “This isn’t on the meter, by the way,” I added. “And there’s more where that came from if you’re still here when I get back.”

“Where y’all gonna be?” he asked.

“That house up there,” I said, pointing.

“The one with all the cameras outside?”

I didn’t want to think about what Harry I. Ball would do if one of the television cameras happened to catch an image of me wandering up to Ron and Amy’s front door. He would be pissed. So would Ross Connors.

“That’s right,” I said. “And since they’re out front, I’m going to try going in the back.”

Mohammad took the proffered bill and stuck it in his pocket. Then he leaned back in his seat. “Well, good luck to you, mister,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but it should be fun. I’ll be right here waiting whenever y’all get done.”

Lame as it may sound now, I did have a plan. I knew that Tracy had managed to sneak out of the house the night before without anyone being the wiser, and she had told me that Heather often pulled the same stunt. I took that to mean that there had to be some way for the girls to come and go without being noticed. Hoping to stumble on their secret route, I went in through the front yard two houses up the street. After leaving a very obvious trail in the snow behind me and falling once or twice, I finally clambered over the last fence and landed in Ron and Amy’s snow-clad but familiar backyard.

I was standing there reconnoitering when the back patio door slid open, and Molly Wright, Amy’s older sister, stepped out onto the snow-covered deck. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, pal,” she said, “but you’d better get your ass out of here before I call the cops.”

I was astounded at Molly Wright’s appearance. The last time I saw her, the woman had been dressed to the nines. She had definitely gone downhill since then. Out of the heady atmosphere of the public limelight and dealing with financial and marital issues, Molly had put on weight-lots of it. The tight sweats she wore made her look more like an overstuffed sausage than a fashion diva. Her hair flew in all directions like a fright wig, and her puffy white face was devoid of makeup.

“I am a cop, Molly,” I told her. “It’s me, J. P. Beaumont. Tracy called and asked me to come help out.”

She studied me narrowly for a moment or two. “Oh, that’s right,” she said. “Beaumont. I remember you. Weren’t you the designated drunk at Ron and Amy’s wedding?”

The wedding reception hadn’t been one of my finest hours. As Molly had so kindly reminded me, I had in fact tied one on at Ron and Amy’s reception. In the process I had ended up injuring three of my fingers and had come away with no recollection of how or why it had happened. That humiliating incident-of being hurt and not remembering why-had been the so-called tipping point in my beginning to sober up. It’s something I talk about in the privacy of AA meetings on occasion, but I resented the hell out of having somebody outside the program feel free to bring it up. If this was Ron and Amy’s star boarder’s typical MO, no wonder Tracy wasn’t fond of her stepauntie.

I could have said “I seem to remember you weighed about a hundred pounds less back then than you do now.” But I didn’t. My mother raised me to have better manners than that. Just because someone is rude first doesn’t mean you have to be rude back.

“Yup,” I admitted. “That was me, all right. Thank you so much for remembering. And, in case you’re interested, I’ve been pretty much sober ever since. Now is Tracy here or not?”

At first I thought Molly Wright was going to tell me to get lost, and slam the door in my face. Finally she shrugged and emitted a resigned sigh. “Tracy’s here, but Amy’s not.” She stood aside and reluctantly motioned me inside.

“Tracy’s the one I came to see,” I told her. “Where is she?”

“Upstairs in the family room with her brother, watching TV.”

“Good,” I said. “Don’t bother showing me. I know the way.”

As soon as little Jared saw me in the doorway, he launched himself off the couch and clobbered me in the testicles. “Uncle Beau!” he exclaimed as I struggled to catch my breath. “Are you here to help my daddy? That’s what Tracy said-that you’d come help.”

My eyes stopped watering as I wrapped Jared in a tight bear hug and then shifted him onto my hip. “I don’t know how much I can help,” I said. “But I’ll do what I can. How’s your sister doing?”

Tracy was sitting on the couch with a box of tissues in her lap and a pile of used Kleenex on the cushion beside her. She looked at me bleakly and shook her head. “Not very well,” she said.

“You should have seen it,” Jared continued excitedly. “It was just like Cops on TV. They came and put handcuffs on him and everything. Did they take him to jail, do you think? Will they let him out so he can come back home? I want him here. I don’t want him to sleep over.”

Jared’s five-year-old version of the unfolding family tragedy reminded me of Bonnie Jean’s remembrances of that long-ago murder, and it wrenched my heart. This was far more serious than a simple sleepover. Thank God it wasn’t up to me to tell him so. That tough job would fall to Amy.

Tracy cleared away the wad of used tissues so Jared and I could sit down beside her on the couch. “Where’s your mom?” I asked.

“As he was leaving, Dad told me to call Mom and have her get in touch with Ralph Ames. I called her and she called back a little later to say she was meeting him. She didn’t say where.”

“How long ago was that?” I asked.

“A long time,” Tracy said. “Hours.”

I was delighted to hear that Ron had come to his senses as far as calling Ralph Ames was concerned. As for where Mel and Brad had taken him for questioning? My best guess was that they would conduct their interview in the Squad B conference room. They sure as hell couldn’t question the second in command of the Seattle PD Internal Affairs Division in a cop shop interview room in downtown Seattle.

“That’s good news,” I said. “About your mom contacting Ralph, that is. He’s about the best there is.”

The front door slammed. “Tracy?” Heather called. “Where are you?”

“Up here,” Tracy called down. “In the family room.”

Heather was still talking as she pounded up the stairs. “Do you know the front yard is full of reporters? What are they doing out there? Why doesn’t Mom make them leave?” She rounded the corner and stopped just inside the doorway. “Where’s Dad? Some jerk outside told me they’d arrested him. I told him he was a stupid liar.”

I looked at Heather Peters and could barely believe my eyes. Her long blond tresses had been bobbed off. Her natural golden blond had been replaced by a hideously incandescent shade of red. Her shirt ended a good six inches above the dropped waistband of a pair of faded ragtag jeans. Something brilliant winked out at me from her belly button. And she had a nose ring, an honest-to-God nose ring! For all I knew, she probably had a tattoo as well. It just wasn’t visible. What the hell had happened to my sweet little Heather?

Behind her, hanging back in the doorway as if unsure of his welcome, stood a scruffy teenage boy. His hair was dyed the same appalling shade of red as Heather’s, and he wore a matching nose ring. Maybe this was how kids showed the world they were going steady these days-matching hair color and nose rings. In that moment the idea of letting a girl wear a class ring or a letterman’s sweater seemed incredibly old-fashioned and quaint. I was grateful the kid was wearing a knee-length T-shirt. If he had a bauble in his belly button, I didn’t want to see it.