Харлан Кобен - Run Away

Enid kept her head down.

“Can’t you at least tell me—”

“No,” Enid said. “She wasn’t there.”

“Is she still alive? Did she have any kind of relationship with her son?”

“I don’t know you, Mr. Greene.”

“Yeah, you do. I mean, you know enough. I don’t care what you do here or what’s going on with the inn or any of that. I don’t mean you the least bit of trouble. But at the risk of sounding one-note, my daughter is missing.”

“And I don’t see how that has anything to do with—”

“It probably doesn’t,” he interrupted. “Except that’s not how it feels, does it? The police think maybe Paige killed Aaron to save herself. Or maybe I did it. Or my wife. To protect our child. Or maybe it was a drug deal gone wrong. Those are all good theories, but I’m asking for your help.”

She started swirling her glass, her eyes on the liquor.

“Is Aaron’s mother alive or not?”

“The truth?” Enid looked up and studied his face for a very long time. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know if she’s alive or dead?”

“That’s right.” Enid turned to Gladys. “Get my friend here another beer and bring it to the corner booth. He and I need to talk for a bit.”

The entrance to Tattoos While U Wait was blocked off with old-school A-frame traffic barricades, the kind with slanted reflective orange-and-white stripes running across the horizontal beam.

Elena Ramirez spotted two fully emblazoned police cars plus two other vehicles that looked to be unmarked. She pulled her rental Ford Fusion with the overbearing cherry scent into the tattoo parlor’s entry between the highway and the barricades.

A cop frowned and started toward her.

“You’ll need to leave.”

“What’s going on here?”

“Please remove your car from the premises.”

Elena could wave her credentials, but they probably wouldn’t get her anyplace. She also had no idea what the situation was or why the police were here, and it was never a good idea to go in blind.

Time to do a little recon.

Elena thanked the officer, put the car in reverse, and got back onto the highway. She pulled off a hundred yards down the road at a Sonic Drive-In. She took out her phone and made some calls. It took maybe half an hour to get the details on the double murder from the day before.

The two victims were Damien Gorse, age twenty-nine, co-owner of the parlor, and eighteen-year-old Ryan Bailey, a high school senior who worked there part time. The initial report indicated that the two victims had been shot in a robbery gone wrong.

Wrong, Elena thought to herself, being the operative word.

She made a few more calls, waited, got the confirmation. Then she headed back down the highway and pulled up to those barricades. The same police officer moved one of them aside, so that she could pass. He pointed for her to park on the left. She nodded a thanks and did as requested.

Elena looked in her rearview mirror and tried on a sympathetic, we’re-all-in-this-together smile. Meh. This part would be a pain in the ass. Cops and egos. Tough recipe. Add in a dollop of territorial bullshit and customary dick swinging plus the rarity of landing a single murder case let alone a double murder, and Elena expected a shitshow of epic proportions.

A man Elena figured was midthirties, maybe forty, came out of the tattoo parlor’s front entrance, pulled off his crime scene gloves, and headed toward her. His stride was confident but not cocky. The guy was good-looking as hell. More lumberjack than pretty boy, what they used to call “rugged.” If she still had a type — and Elena had felt dead in that area since Joel’s death — this guy would be it.

The cop gave her a nod and a tight smile, an appropriate greeting under the circumstances.

“You must be Special Agent Ramirez,” the man said.

“Retired.”

She shook his hand. His hand was big. Like Joel’s. She felt another pang.

“I’m Detective Dumas. Everyone calls me Nap.”

“Nap,” she repeated, “like...?”

“A short sleep, yes.”

“I’m Elena. I work private now.”

“Yeah, my boss filled me in.”

“Would that be County Prosecutor Loren Muse?”

“It would.”

“I hear she’s good.”

“Yeah,” Nap said, “she is.”

No resentment in his tone at having a young woman over him. No faux virtual signaling over it either. Good signs.

Here was how it worked: Elena’s firm, VMB Investigations, was one of the most prestigious in the country, with offices in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Houston. Investigators like those at VMB need access, so they donate generously to political campaigns and police benevolent groups of various stripes. One of her senior partners, Manny Andrews, was a big backer of the current governor. That governor is the one who named Loren Muse county prosecutor. So Manny Andrews calls the governor, the governor calls Muse, Muse in turn calls the lead detective on the case, Nap Dumas.

The message: Cooperate.

Nothing illegal. If you gasp at this sort of favor exchanging, you are hopelessly naïve. The world had always been a place of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” When that breaks down, for better or worse, so does your society.

Cops often bristled at this particular back-scratch, however, which leads to the territorial dick swinging Elena had braced for. Nap Dumas seemed okay with it. For now.

“Follow me,” he said.

He began walking to the left side of the building. Elena, who still had the limp from a long-ago bullet, caught up with him.

“I just took over the case an hour ago,” Nap said, “so I’m still catching up myself.”

“I appreciate you letting me on the scene.”

A small, knowing smile came to Dumas’s lips. “No problem.”

Elena didn’t bother with a follow-up.

“Any chance you can tell me your interest in this?”

“I have a case,” Elena said. “There may be an overlap.”

“Whoa,” Dumas said, “let’s go easy on the specifics.”

She smiled at that. Up ahead Elena spotted a wood-paneled Ford Flex. Two crime scene technicians dressed all in white worked the scene.

“Can you tell me what kind of case?” he asked.

She pondered playing hardball, reminding him that his boss had already told him to cooperate and that she couldn’t talk about her case because it was attorney-client product, but that felt wrong here. This Nap guy seemed alright. More than that, actually. Good aura, Elena’s mother would tell her. Elena had always been skeptical of that stuff — first impressions, gut instincts — because, let’s face it, people can be complete psychos and fool you. But in truth, they rarely fooled Elena. As the years had gone on, she realized that her gut worked better than she imagined. The guys who gave her the creeps off the bat? They always ended up being creeps. The guys, the very few guys, who gave off this kind of positive aura? They ended up being trustworthy.

And Nap reminded her of Joel. Her Joel. God help her.

The pang moved to her heart and stayed there.

“Nap?”

He waited.

“I think it’s better if we wait,” Elena said.

“Oh?”

“I’m not going to keep anything from you,” Elena said, “but right now I’d like to hear what you think without any preconceptions.”

“Preconceptions,” Dumas repeated.

“Yes.”

“You mean like context and facts?”

“You seem like a straight shooter.”

“As do you.”

“Can we just play it my way for now?”

Nap hesitated but not for very long. He nodded his okay as they reached the Ford Flex and started right in: “The way we see it, the first shooting took place here, as Damien Gorse was getting in his car.”