Always Love a Villain on San Juan Island (28 page)

A short hallway with stairs leading to the second floor. Coltrane continued past them into a living room. Three couches surrounded a large coffee table like a U. Beyond, a deep built-in fireplace. To its right a cabinet with doors open, revealing a large-screen TV, fifty inches at least, muted. Coltrane turned it off. “Have a seat.”

They both chose the couch at the bottom of the U.

“Get you something to drink? Beer, wine, coffee?”

They declined. Kyra said, “Thanks for seeing us so quickly.”

“Nothing's quick about this case,” said Coltrane. “Nothing's much of anything about it.”

“Except a missing young woman.”

“You got that straight. So Larry's hired you to do what we don't seem to be getting done, is that what we have here?”

“Look, Sheriff,” Noel said, “we don't plan to step on your toes. We're just a couple more pairs of eyes and nosy dispositions. We want to work with you.”

“Yeah, well, and I guess I appreciate it. But we don't have a clue where to go. We need for the kidnappers to make the next move, give their hand away.”

Noel now wished he had a drink to hold on to. He realized he was ripping at a cuticle. He stopped himself. “What have you learned?”

The Sheriff repeated what they'd learned from Rossini. “What else we've learned? Nothing. We can't give the local paper a press conference asking for help from people or send out an APB to the State Patrol, see if they've found an unidentified female body—” He rubbed his knees. “Without witnesses or others who might have seen her, it's near impossible.”

“So you haven't even contacted the State Patrol?”

“Oh, yeah, they have her description. She's officially a missing person, low priority. But Susanna's kidnappers have tied all our hands. Larry won't even let us borrow a photograph of her.” He sighed. “Here's something I haven't told him yet. Couple of days ago the State Patrol found her car.”

“Where?” Kyra asked.

“Long-term parking at Sea-Tac.”

Noel said, “The airport?”

“Right. Seattle's and Tacoma's.”

“What did the car tell you?” Noel clasped his hands together to keep them still.

“Nothing. No prints, no DNA possibilities. Vacuumed, washed and wiped clean.”

Kyra didn't quite believe the Sheriff's
nothing
. Something must have been left by whoever had parked the car. She wondered how good the State Patrol labs were. “So you figure whoever grabbed her took her far away?”

“Or you can double think that. Could be she's right next door but we're supposed to think she's been shipped out of state, out of the country even.”

Noel said, “I figure transporting someone who's been kidnapped can get dangerous. Best to lock her away, move her as little as possible.”

“Even taking her off the island could be tricky,” Kyra added.

“Yeah, that's what we guessed. Maybe get her into a boat at night; that'd be possible. Or in the trunk of the car and onto a ferry. But all that's more complicated than leaving her here on San Juan. We've been trying to learn if anything suspicious has been happening around the island.” He clicked his tongue. “Be a lot easier if we could tell people to be on the lookout. We've talked to a few prudent folks, not mentioning names, just advising them to let us know if something's out of the ordinary. We've checked empty summer homes. Nada.”

Kyra felt discouraged. If the Sheriff who knew the island hadn't learned anything, how could they be of help? But right now that was a problem for tomorrow morning. Noel said, “Don't know if Larry told you. Susanna called him. So she's alive.”

“Yep, mentioned it when he said you two were coming over here. One of my deputies is seeing what he can find out.”

Kyra stood. “Thanks for your time, Sheriff. We'll stay in touch. And if anything breaks at your end, please let us know.” She took a Triple I card from her purse and handed it to him.

He too stood, and Noel followed. “If we're going to work together,” he glanced at the card, “Kyra and Noel, you better call me Marc.” He took his own card from a folder on the mantelpiece and handed it to Kyra.

Kyra watched Noel out of the corner of her eye as he drove them back to the visitors' house. The baby question was burbling within her. She wished he'd start the discussion, but in fairness why should he? It was hardly his problem. Though she remembered his reaction when she'd said—and the idea had come out of nowhere—that if he didn't provide the sperm, she'd just have to get it from someone else. Mentioning Peter at that moment had been an unplanned stroke of genius. Noel had looked—what? Hurt? Disgusted? Maybe jealous? If he wouldn't provide the sperm out of generosity, maybe he would out of self-defense?

She liked this idea, Noel begging:
Please, Kyra, don't take a chance with someone you don't know; you trust me and even like me, and if the Institute says my sperm are healthy then you'll know it'll be a fine baby.
His words—even if only projected—played like a lullaby in her ear.
And I'll come to visit often and maybe one day he or she will call me Daddy—

No way could she guilt Noel like this! Then he'd be right, it'd break up their friendship completely. She better not raise the issue tonight, not coming from where she just was. She squeezed her eyes shut, clamping down on donor thoughts. Back to the kidnapping. The car at Sea-Tac, all prints wiped off, any threads vacuumed away. Who—and where—were these people who had taken Susanna?

She felt the car come to a stop and heard Noel say, “Like a nightcap and a what-do-we-know?”

“Sure,” she said and glanced at the dashboard clock in the darkening twilight. Couldn't be after 9:30. “That'd be great.”

Toni showered after their lovemaking. She came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel.

He asked, “Why bother? You'll just have to take another shower in the morning.”

She giggled. “I'll put my suitcase in the guest bedroom—don't worry, I'll sleep here. But I can lay my clothes out overnight.”

“Of course. Be my—haha—guest.”

She took her suitcase and disappeared. When she returned, she was dressed in jeans and a white blouse. In her right hand, a pair of sneakers.

Larry lay, still naked, under the sheet. “Going visiting?”

“I thought I'd go outside and breathe deeply. The air feels so soft.”

“Want me to join you?”

“If you'd like. But you don't need to. I'll be back in a few minutes.”

“I will wait for you here longingly.” He paused. “You want me to take a shower?”

She stepped over to the bed and sniffed. “You smell perfect.”

He took her hand and kissed her fingers. “Come back quickly. I'll miss you.”

She stroked his cheek. “I'll breathe fresh air on you shortly.”

In the kitchen Noel poured them both vodka-tonics. They toasted each other. He said, “I've been thinking about these cases. In one way they're similar.”

“Plagiarism and kidnapping? Pretty different, I'd say.”

“Not in the way we're expected to handle them. I couldn't tell any of Beck's friends and acquaintances why I was asking about him, and we and the Sheriff can't let on anything about Susanna.”

“Oh yeah, that. Tie our hands and bind our lips. But I was thinking, maybe there's another way to figure this.”

“Yeah?”

“What do we know about the kidnappers?”

“Nothing. That's the trouble.”

Kyra took a large swallow. “But we do know something. They want Larry's Dream Visualizer. That means they have to know such a thing exists. Who knows what it is, what it does? One of them's the kidnapper.”

“Except that anyone who knows might have mentioned it to other people. Information disperses quickly.”

Kyra drained her drink. “Still, it's a place to start. First conversation for the morning, with Larry.”

Noel picked a small piece of ice from his drink, dropped it on his tongue and let it slide against his cheek. “There's another thing too, now that we're thinking this way. Whoever kidnapped Susanna because he wants the Visualizer has to know a great deal about the science behind it. So we need to find someone who's on top of those algorithms and carbon nanotubes and the biology and chemistry of the protein synthesis and the engineering of the machine itself.”

“Yeah, but maybe not a single someone. Maybe a team.”

Noel sat down at the table. “Yeah. Damn.” He stared into the middle distance.

After a minute of silence, she said, “Anyway, we know the questions for tomorrow.” She took her drink to the kitchen counter.

He noticed. “Another?”

“Enough for today. Going to get some sleep.” She pecked him on the cheek. “G'night.”

He sat a moment longer, then went to his room, brought out his computer, set it on the table. He needed to know more about this Dream Visualizer phenomenon. He plugged the computer in—save the battery—and turned it on. He googled
dream visualizer
. Well how about that! 919,000 results! Dream visualization might be the new super-technology. He checked through the listing of the first ten. Lots of repetition. Four were blog segments, people talking about how visual their dreams had become. Six were variants of something called Max My Dream. He clicked on it. In a box, a command to complete the sentence, “I dreamed that . . .” Okay, why not. He typed: “I dreamed that I arrived at the station just as the train was pulling away. I ran after it but couldn't catch it.” The command box disappeared, replaced by a clock, bouncing about on the screen. What, please wait? Yes, because a few seconds later he watched a running shadow of a man, and a cartoon cutout of a train, red and blue and black, both racing across the screen—but it looked like the man was running away from the train, getting ahead of it. Hmm. The “dream visualization” lasted for about ten seconds, giving way to a blank screen and suddenly the words,
Start dreaming, heartburn free, with maximum strength Pepcia.
Not exactly the kind of project that Larry Rossini seemed to be working on.

Noel flipped to the second page, ten more listings. Mostly variants of either the blog self-aggrandizements, or referring back to the Pepcia ad. Ditto pages three, seven and fourteen. One new recurring reference: Sekath Thinkgear API demo applicator. He selected it. The screen showed a man lying on a bed. On his head, a kind of skullcap with wires coming from it. A monitor stood on a table by his side, the screen blue. At the bottom of the screen, a dozen or so white balls lying still. The balls suddenly rose, not together or in any obvious pattern, and fell again. More rising and falling. A note on the screen:
Gravity is removed from the balls with raised brain-wave activity.
Noel watched for three or four minutes. Rising and falling and over again. Made him sleepy. Way tamer than what Rossini was describing, but possibly of the same ilk. He closed the site.