Jeff Abbott: Panic

‘I don’t know. Maybe she was going to Australia. To see my dad.’

‘So she begs you to come home, but she’s getting ready to leave. With a suitcase for you, and with a gun.’

‘I… I can’t explain it.’ Evan wiped his arm across his nose.

‘Maybe this crisis was all a ruse to get you home for a surprise trip.’

‘She wouldn’t scare me for no good reason.’

Durless tapped his pen against his chin. ‘And you were in Houston last night.’

‘Yes,’ Evan said. Wondering if now he was being asked for an alibi. ‘My girlfriend stayed with me. Carrie Lindstrom.’

Durless wrote down her name and Evan gave him her contact information, the name of the River Oaks dress shop where she worked, and her cell phone number.

‘Evan. Help me get a clear picture. Two men grab you, hold you at gunpoint, but then don’t shoot you, they try and hang you, and another man saves you but then tries to kidnap you and takes off when you run.’ Durless spoke with the air of a teacher walking a student through a thorny problem. He leaned forward. ‘Help me find a line of thought to follow.’

‘I’m telling you the truth.’

‘I don’t doubt you. But why not just shoot you? Why not shoot your mother, if they had guns?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You and your mother were targeted and I really need your help to understand why.’

A memory crowded back into his head. ‘When they had me on the floor… one of them started up my laptop. Typed on it.’

Durless called in another officer. ‘Would you go find Mr. Casher’s laptop, please?’

‘Why would they want anything on my computer?’ Evan heard the hysteria rising in his voice and fought it back down.

‘You tell me. What’s on it?’

‘Film footage, mostly. Video-editing programs.’

‘Footage?’

‘I’m a film-maker. Documentaries.’

‘You’re young to be making movies.’

Evan shrugged. ‘I worked hard. I finished college a year early. I wanted to get into film school faster.’

‘More money-making blockbusters.’

‘I like telling stories about people. Not action heroes.’

‘Would I know any of your movies?’

‘Well, my first movie was about a military family who lost a son in Vietnam, then a grandson in Iraq. But people probably know me for Ounce of Trouble, about a cop in Houston who framed an innocent man for a crime.’

Durless frowned. ‘Yeah. I saw it on PBS. The cop killed himself.’

‘Yeah, once the police investigation into his activities started. It’s sad.’

‘The guy he supposedly framed was a drug dealer. Not too innocent.’

‘Ex-drug dealer who had served his time. He was out of the business when the cop came after him. And there was no supposedly about it.’

Durless stuck his pen back in his pocket. ‘You don’t think all cops are bad, do you?’

‘Absolutely not,’ Evan said. ‘Look, I’m not a cop basher. Not at all.’

‘I didn’t say you were.’

A different kind of tension filled the room.

‘I’m very sorry about your mom, Mr. Casher,’ Durless said. ‘I need you to come downtown with us to make a more detailed statement. And to talk to a sketch artist about this bald man.’

The officer dispatched to retrieve the laptop stuck his head back in the door. ‘There’s no laptop out here.’

Evan blinked. ‘Those men might have taken it. Or the bald guy.’ His voice started to rise. ‘I don’t understand any of this!’

‘Neither do I,’ said Durless. ‘Let’s go downtown and talk. Get you to work with an artist. I want to get a sketch of the bald man out on the news fast.’

‘Okay.’

‘We’ll go in a minute, all right. I want to make a couple of quick calls.’

‘All right.’

Durless escorted Evan back outside. The local TV stations had arrived. More police. Neighbors, mostly stay-at-home moms, watching the activity, their children wide-eyed, the mothers keeping the kids all close.

He turned his back on the chaos. Tried his father again on his cell phone, no answer. He dialed Carrie’s apartment. No answer. He dialed the dress shop where she worked.

‘Maison Rouge, this is Jessica, how may I help you?’ Chirpy and cheery.

‘Is Carrie Lindstrom in? I know she’s not working until two, but-’

‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said. ‘Carrie called in and resigned this morning.’

E van had never felt so alone. A shiver took hold of him and he willed himself to calm down. He had to find Carrie and his father. He’d left messages for Carrie; surely she’d call back soon. Her quitting her job stunned him, and a sick twist roiled his gut. She left you a note, she quit her job, maybe she doesn’t want anything more to do with you. He didn’t want to consider the possibility. So he focused on finding his father. An itinerary, penned in his father’s tight, precise handwriting, wasn’t on the refrigerator in its usual spot, but he found it folded underneath the phone. The itinerary listed a number for the Blaisdell Hotel in Sydney.

‘Mitchell Casher’s room, please,’ Evan said to the clerk.

The night clerk – it was almost four in the morning Sydney time – was pleasant but firm. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t have a guest by that name.’

‘Please check again. C-A-S-H-E-R. Maybe they registered him wrong, put Mitchell as the last name.’

A pause. ‘I’m very sorry, sir, we don’t have a guest here named Mitchell Casher.’

‘Thanks.’ Evan hung up. He looked at Durless. ‘He’s not where he’s supposed to be. I don’t understand this at all.’

Durless took the itinerary. ‘Let us find your dad, Evan. Let’s get a statement and a description while your mind’s fresh.’

Fresh. It’s not likely I could ever forget, he thought. Evan leaned back, staring up at the smoke-colored clouds through the back windshield of the police cruiser as it drove away from his house. His mind whirled in a strange, panicked dance of logic and emotion. He wondered where he would spend the night. A hotel. He would have to call his family’s friends; but both his parents, though successful, tended to keep their circle of acquaintances small. He would have to make funeral arrangements. He wondered how long it would take for the police to do an autopsy. He wondered at which church he should have his mother’s funeral. He wondered how it had been for his mother. If she had known. If she had suffered. If she had been afraid. That was the worst. Maybe the killers had come up behind her, the way that they had on Evan. He hoped she never knew, never suffered a pitch-black terror overpowering her heart.

He closed his eyes. Tried to reason past the shock and grief. Otherwise he thought he might just break down. He needed a plan of attack. First, find his dad. Contact his dad’s local clients, see if they knew whom he worked for in Australia. Second, find Carrie. Third

… he closed his eyes. Make sense of the horror as to who wanted his mother dead.

But they looked on your computer. What if this isn’t about her? What if it’s about you? The thought chilled him, infuriated him, broke his heart in one swoop.

The police car, driven by a patrol officer who had been a responder to the initial 911 call, with Durless sitting in the front seat, turned out of the Cashers’ quiet, bungalow-remodeled neighborhood onto Shoal Creek Boulevard, a long thoroughfare that snaked through central and north Austin.

‘They staged the scene,’ Evan said, half to himself.

‘What’s that?’ Durless asked.

‘Staged. I mean, the killers murdered my mother, then were hanging me to fake a suicide. So you, initially, would think that I killed her and then killed myself.’