Nick Stephenson - Eight the Hard Way

Just to be sure we were not overheard, I shut the drapes and turned on the stereo in the living room, hoping the two tactics would limit the ability of anyone to paint a windowpane with a laser pickup. Devices like that read the sound waves coming off the glass, but worked best with a quiet background.

Finally I sat down in the kitchen nook across from Mira and then buttered a bagel. “Okay, I think we’re clear. First,” I lifted a finger, “business. It’s a hundred an hour plus expenses, max a thousand a day, and I need five thousand up front as a retainer.” I’d charged more, and occasionally a lot less, but to a pharmacist that probably took down two hundred large a year, five should be doable.

Nor was I wrong. Mira nodded without flinching. “I’ll write you a check. Just help me, please.”

“Good. Now, tell me about this kidnapping. Start with why you haven’t called the cops.”

Mira gulped from her mug, her eyes bleak. “The people that took her said not to talk to police, but they didn’t say anything specifically about a...someone like you.”

My smile might have turned a bit strained, but I tried to ignore her words. The client was the client. “I used to be a cop, if that makes you feel better. So why did you wait two days to get in touch with me?” Or maybe she didn’t, I thought. The card could have been put into my drop box any time after Friday night.

“Cole Sage was the only person I knew that wasn’t police, that has...connections to...people like you...so I called him first and he referred me. I gave them what they wanted and thought I would get her back right away but it didn’t happen, and now it’s been more than an extra day and I’m about to lose my mind.” She lifted her mug, drank some more.

I fished the photocopy of the business card from a pocket, not letting Mira see the front as I unfolded it, glanced at it, then folded it over again. Something tugged at my cop sense, but wasn’t ready to surface. “Cole said to get in touch with me...how?”

“I put the card where he told me to, and he said you’d get it.”

Something about the way she said that seemed off, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it for a moment. Then I did. How did the card get to my office, if Mira was home all this time by her phone?

Cole Sage must have picked it up and dropped off. He did live in the City, just a couple of miles from the Mission District. It would be just like the journalist to do it that way.

While I was thinking, Mira finished her coffee, then went back to the machine for another fill-up. Her motions as she did it, the details hidden by her turned back, the stealthy clink of glass, triggered recognition in my brain.

“I’ll take some of that, if you don’t mind,” I said.

Slowly Mira turned, a half-filled bottle of expensive brandy clutched in her hand, and then she brought it and her coffee over to the table, setting the liquor in front of me. “I just...”

“You don’t have to make excuses. I’d be drinking too if I was in your position.” I splashed a bit into my cup for the sake of camaraderie, and maybe to help Mira talk. Fortunately I never had any trouble with alcohol abuse.

Adrenaline...that was another story.

Mira sighed. “I’m a pharmacist, you know.”

“Yes. It was on your card.”

“I don’t have enough money for anyone to make Talley a ransom target—that’s my daughter, Talley, she’s ten—but I am the assistant warehouse manager for the biggest distributor in the northern Bay Area. My building has a hundred million dollars worth of high-grade pharmaceuticals in it.”

“And they wanted you to, what, help them rob the place?”

“Yes. I gave them my keycard, my codes and they have my thumbprint on a silicone thingy, which I assume they were going to use on the scanner. They also have all my personal info like social, former addresses, family names...and they made me tell them what my security questions and responses were.”

“There’s a monitored alarm?”

Mira nodded, relaxing as the additional brandy hit her. “Yes. To open the warehouse you have to call them, identify yourself, give them a password, respond correctly to a security question, scan a keycard, put in a PIN code, and put your thumb on a scanner. Oh, and all of that is in front of a high-resolution camera with the monitoring center looking on. Otherwise they send a security team and call the cops.”

I sat back, taking a bite of bagel and sipping my slightly fortified coffee. It gave me time to think. “That’s a lot of security. They would have to have someone to double for you on camera. So right off the bat, we know there’s a Caucasian woman of about your age involved, maybe with dark hair. Of course, she could wear a wig. Did you see any of them?”

“No. Just a male voice, middle aged maybe, on the home phone. Blocked number.”

I took another bite and a sip while Mira fidgeted and then added more brandy to her mug. “But you say they haven’t pulled the heist?”

“I...I don’t think so. I had the grocery nearby bring me a prepaid phone along with a few other things—they do deliveries, costs an arm and a leg, but what can you do—and used it to call the security center and ask them for the exact time I’d been at the warehouse. I told them I needed it for my records, and they gave me the time. It was when I closed up Friday night. So they haven’t used my info yet. As far as I know.”

“Maybe you better start at the beginning and tell me step by step what happened.”

“But my daughter! Anything could be happening!”

I put my cup and bagel down. “Mira, I have to get all the details straight in my mind because any clue might be the one that helps me find Talley. Believe me, this will save time later, and, if you call the cops it’ll take them twice as long to get started on this, and there will be a lot of hoopla. Odds are very good that your daughter is fine. Because you have had no personal contact with them, there’s no reason for property criminals to kill, especially not a pretty little middle-class white girl. The public would eat it up and there would be a manhunt coast to coast. They probably don’t want that kind of heat on them.”

Mira’s face turned shocked and angry. “What does being a pretty white girl have to do with it?”

I sighed. “I’m just stating the bald, non-PC truth. Dozens of poor kids of color go missing every day in America, but only a handful of well-off white girls. Who gets on TV?”

Mira looked as if she was on the verge of tears. “That’s horrible. I never thought anything like this would ever happen to us.”

“No one ever does.” I projected my best professional sympathy, to get the client back to the vital topic. “Take a deep breath and tell me what happened from the beginning. Give me details if you can.”

Mira took that deep breath and spoke. “Friday night after work I drove home and parked in my garage. Talley should have been here waiting for me—she’s a latchkey kid. The school bus drops her off on the corner. When I got inside I found a note in the middle of the table. There was also a big envelope with a form to fill out with all the information they wanted, just like an application, and a little plastic box with silicone in it for my thumbprint.”

“What did it say? I don’t suppose you copied it?”

“No, I didn’t think to...It just said to fill out the form and put everything including the note into the envelope, seal it and put it in my mailbox. It said they were watching, and not to call the cops or anyone, or else , and that they would return Talley by Saturday evening.”

“What happened next?”

“I did exactly what they said. I filled in every bit of information and put my thumbprint in the silicone box.”