Joel Goldman - Shakedown

“Are you saying that Colby had something to do with that?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to tie all this together and I can’t make it work. There’s too much I don’t know.”

Wendy’s desk was on the wall opposite the balcony. A computer sat on it.

“Go through these papers on her desk,” I told Joy. “I’ll look at her computer.”

“What am I looking for?”

“Anything about Colby, anything about going away, anything that will help us find her.”

Fortunately, Wendy had ignored everything that I’d taught her about security and hadn’t protected her documents, e-mail, or bank records with passwords. Nothing jumped out at me, but I didn’t have time to read much of it.

“I’d take her computer with us, but that’s the first thing Troy will look for when he gets here.”

“No problem. Back it up with this.”

Joy tossed me her key ring. It had a?ash bar on it with four gigs of memory.

“You are really something.”

“That’s the second time this week you’ve said that. Keep it up and I’ll start thinking you believe it.”

I looked at her. Her eyes had softened. The corners of her mouth had dipped. She wasn’t?irting. She was hoping.

“There’s nothing here but bills and junk mail,” Joy said.

I finished downloading the contents of Wendy’s hard drive to the?ash bar. “Let’s get out of here.”

We had found as much good news as bad. No signs of forced entry. No signs of struggle. No signs she had planned to leave. No signs she was coming back.

“What now?” Joy asked.

We were sitting in her car, the engine idling. I wanted to run in a dozen different directions, but I didn’t know which one to choose.

“Who did Wendy hang out with? Who were her friends? We should talk with them. Maybe she said something to one of them.”

“There’s a woman at work she’s mentioned quite a bit, Julie Rutherford. I’ll call her,” Joy said, pausing and then adding, “Isn’t that awful?”

“What?”

“Between the two of us, we only know about one of her friends. We don’t even know if she has any others. Where have we been?”

“It doesn’t matter. We can beat one another up about being lousy parents when this is over. We don’t have the luxury of doing that right now.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to talk with Jill Rice again. Tell her about her husband, if she doesn’t already know. See if his death refreshes her recollection. Then I’ll take a look at whatever was on Wendy’s computer. I’ll just keep pushing until something breaks.”

I fought to get the last words out, my shoulders twisting one way, my neck and head yanking me the other like I was being wound in opposite directions by dueling corkscrews. Joy leaned over, holding me, just as Wendy had, as if she could squeeze the demons out.

“You don’t have to do this, Jack,” she said, her lips to my ears. “We can leave it to the Bureau.”

“You know I do,” I managed when the spasm released me. “Ben Yates will make certain that Troy follows standard procedure, which means focus on the high-priority target. That’s Colby Hudson. Troy will let things unfold until he knows where Wendy fits into the picture. It’s what I would do if I were in his position. But that might take too long.”

She let go. I held her hands, looking at them, avoiding her eyes. When Kevin was taken, I had told Joy not to worry, that I would get him back, that he’d be okay. I was afraid to make the same promise again, knowing how hard it would be to keep it. There was too much that could go wrong, beginning with me. She needed to know that.

“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” I said, my voice still wobbly. “And I’m scared that I won’t be able to do what I have to do.”

“Jack…”

“No, let me finish. I’ve been afraid before. When Kevin was taken, I was crazy scared. But I could do what I had to do then even if it wasn’t enough. I haven’t been that scared again until today. When I shake, I don’t know what I am or who I am. I only know that it can’t be me that’s doing it. Then it stops and I know that it is me, it’s who and what I’ve become. I don’t know why and I don’t know if I can do what I have to do.”

She cupped my chin in the palm of her hand, bringing her gaze to mine. Her eyes were full. She blinked back tears, a few escaping across her cheeks.

“We’ll do the best we can and we’ll live with the rest. We’ve never had the luxury of doing anything else.”

I called Marty Grisnik on my way to Jill Rice’s house to let him know that Detective Funkhouser was about to find himself in deep shit.

“You’re going to get a call from Troy Clark.”

“At last. Is he going to ask me out on a date?”

“He’s going to ask you about Detective Funkhouser.”

Grisnik hesitated for an instant. “Why would he do that?”

“Troy ordered everyone on the squad to take a polygraph so he could find out if one of us tipped off the drug house killer about the surveillance camera I put in the ceiling fan.”

“Including you?”

“Excluding me. Movers and shakers need not apply.”

“Makes sense. It’s hard enough to tell when someone is lying without all that going on at the same time. But if you’re not taking the test, how will Troy find out about Detective Funkhouser?”

“An agent named Colby Hudson didn’t show up for his polygraph.”

“Any chance he’s the same agent who bought Rice’s house?”

“Hundred percent. Two agents went to his house to check on him. He wasn’t there. They found drugs and cash. Troy is coming back with a search warrant. He’ll probably find records showing that Colby bought Rice’s house and car. Then he’ll find out that you and Funkhouser went to see Rice and that Rice is dead. Then he’ll call you.”

“What do you want me to tell Troy?”

“Tell him the truth. Tell him that I asked you to help me and that, as far as you knew, I was acting in the course and scope of my official duties.”

“You call that the truth?”

“I call that enough of the truth. You helped me out. I’ll take the heat.”

“Is that all of it?”

“No. I told you before that I had a personal interest. Colby Hudson is involved with my daughter. We can’t find either one of them.”

“You think she’s in trouble?”

“Until I know otherwise.”

“Any reason to think she was a victim of a crime committed in Kansas City, Kansas?”

“No.”

“Then I can’t help you officially, but if you keep me in the loop, I’ll do what I can.”

“Thanks. You’ll know what I know.”

“That’s what I’m looking for.”

I started to tell Grisnik that my daughter’s name was Wendy, where she lived and worked, and what she looked like, but he’d already hung up. Either his offer to help was perfunctory, a cop’s version of “drop by anytime, we’re always open” or he had that information already. If it were the former, I’d misread him. If it was the latter, he was doing a better job than I was.

Jill Rice came home at four-thirty. I’d been waiting in front of her house for an hour, ignoring the neighbors who’d slowed down as they passed me by. She slowed down as well, giving me a curdled look as she pulled into the driveway. I followed her into the garage and opened her car door.

“We need to talk.”

Her makeup was intact, her tennis clothes unwrinkled and unstained by sweat. Her perfume was mixed with wine. My guess was that she’d spent her tennis game gossiping at the net and drinking in the clubhouse.

She stayed in the car. “What about, Detective Funkhouser?”