Robert Crais - Sunset Express

When the little tractor pushed the airplane away from the dock and out to the taxiway, I said, 'Damn.'

An older gentleman was standing next to me. He was stooped and balding, with a thin cotton shirt and baggy old-man pants pulled too high and a walking stick. He said, 'It's never easy.'

I nodded.

He said, 'Your wife and son?'

'My friends.'

'With me, it was my grandkids.' He shook his head.

'They come out twice a year from Cleveland. I put them on the plane, I always think that this could be the last time. The plane could crash. I could drop dead.'

I stared at him.

'I'm not a young man anymore. Death is everywhere.'

I walked away. Too bad you couldn't get a restraining order against negativity.

Joe picked me up outside the terminal and we drove directly to Louise Earle's. We parked at the mouth of her drive, again went up to her door, and once more rang the bell and knocked. If we knocked much more we'd probably wear a groove in the wood. I was hoping that she might've returned home, but the drapes were still pulled and the house was still dark, and there was no sign that she had come back, then left again. While we were standing there, Mrs Harris came out of her house and made a nervous wave at us. Pike said, 'Looks worried.'

'Yeah.'

We walked over to her. I could see that her face was pinched and frightened, and that she was cupping one hand with the other, over and over. She said, 'That man came back this morning. I thought it was the milkman, they came so early.'

'They.'

'There were three men. They were walking all around Louise's house. They walked around the side. They went in the back.'

Pike looked at me, and I showed her the photograph of Kerris. 'Was this one of them?'

She squinted at the picture and then she nodded. 'Oh, yes. That's the one who was here before.' She bustled to the edge of the porch, wringing her hands, flustered by the dark thoughts. 'They were in her house. The lights came on and I could see them moving.'

'Did you see them leave?'

She nodded.

'Did Mrs Earle leave with them?'

She looked at me with large, frightened eyes. 'What do you mean by that? What are you saying to me?'

'Did she leave with them?'

Mrs Eleanor Harris shook her head. Just once. Imperceptibly.

I said, 'Had Mrs Earle come home?'

She was looking at her friend's house, wringing the hands, shifting in a kind of encompassing agitation.

'Was Mrs Earle at home?'

She looked back at me with big eyes. 'I don't know. I don't think so, but she may have.'

Pike and I trotted around the side of Louise Earle's house and into her backyard. I felt washed in a cold air, the hair along the back and sides of my head prickling, and scared of what we might find. Pike said, 'The door.'

Louise Earle's back door had been forced. We slipped out our guns and went in and moved through the house. It was a small home, just the kitchen and the dining room and the living room and two small bedrooms and a single bath. Papers had been pulled from drawers and furniture shoved out of place and closet doors left open, as if someone had searched the place more out of frustration than with a specific goal. I was worried that we might find Mrs Earle, and that she might be dead, but there was nothing. I guess she hadn't come home, after all. Pike said, 'First Lester, now her. Green's tying off the loose ends to protect himself.'

'If she got scared, then she ran. If she ran, she might've bought tickets and they might show up on her credit cards. Also, she might've called a guy named Walter Lawrence.'

Pike said, 'I'll take the bedroom. You start in the kitchen.'

We went through her house quickly and without speaking. She had two phones, one in her kitchen and one in her bedroom. The kitchen phone was an older dial-operated wall mount with a little corkboard next to it filled with notes and clippings and Prayers-for-the-Day and messages that she'd written to herself and probably not needed for years. I looked through them all, then checked the Post-its on her refrigerator door, and then I went through the papers that Kerris's people had left on the floor. I was looking for a personal phone book or notes or anything that might help me find Walter Lawrence or point to where she might've gone, but if there had been anything like that Kerris and his people had taken it. When I finished in the kitchen I went back through into the bedroom. Pike was working in the closet. He said, 'Credit card bills by the phone.'

I sat on the edge of the bed by the phone and looked at what he'd found. There were five past Visa and MasterCard bills, three Visas and two MasterCards. Charges were minimal, and nothing on the bills gave any indication of where Louise Earle might've gone, but then I didn't expect them to. Tickets purchased within the past few days would not yet have been billed to her, but I didn't expect that, either. I picked up her phone, called the toll free number on back of the Visa bill, and said, 'Hi. I'm calling for my mom, Mrs Louise Earle.' I gave them the credit card number that showed on the bill and the billing address. 'She charged a plane ticket yesterday, and we need to cancel, please.'

The Visa woman said, 'Let me punch up her account.' She was very pleasant when she said it.

'Thanks. That'd be great.'

Maybe three seconds later, she said, 'I'm sorry, sir, but we're not showing an airline charge.'

'Gosh, she told me she'd bought the tickets. She always flies United.'

'I'm sorry, sir.'

I said, 'You know, maybe it wasn't an airline. Are you showing a bus or a train?'

'No, sir. I'm not.'

I made a big deal out of sighing. 'I'm terribly sorry. She told me about this trip and I got concerned. She's a bit older, now.' I let it trail off.

The Visa woman said, 'I know how that is.' Understanding.

I thanked her for her time, and then I called MasterCard and went through it again, and again I learned that Louise Earle had bought no tickets. Of course, she might've paid cash, but since I couldn't know that, it wasn't worth worrying about. Like most other things in life.

When I hung up from MasterCard, Pike was waiting. 'Looks to be some missing clothes. No toothbrush.'

'Great.'

'She has to be somewhere.'

I picked up the phone again, called my friend at Pacific Bell, gave her Louise Earle's phone number, and asked for every call that Louise Earle had made in the past five days. Her records would show only toll calls, so if she'd phoned someone the next street over I'd never know it. But, like paying cash for airline tickets, it wasn't worth worrying about.

My friend read off twelve numbers that I dutifully copied, nine of which were in local area codes (310, 213, or 818), and three of which were long distance. The long distance calls were all to the same number, the first two of which were collect calls that she'd accepted the charges on. The third time she'd dialed the number direct. I thanked her for the help, then hung up and started dialing. Minimum-wage detective work.

I called each number and got two answers out of the first five calls, one from a pharmacy and one from an elderly woman. I hung up on the pharmacy and asked the elderly woman if she knew where I could find Mrs Earle.

She didn't. The sixth number was long distance. The phone rang twice, and a male voice said, 'Federal Correctional Facility, Terminal Island.'

I didn't speak.

The voice said, 'Hello?'

I told him I was sorry, then hung up and looked at Pike. 'LeCedrick.'

Pike said, 'She probably didn't go to stay with him.' Everyone's a comedian.

'She didn't call LeCedrick. LeCedrick called her. LeCedrick calls, and she changes her story. She wouldn't do it six years ago, but she does it now. What do you think he told her?'