He was just the first one Ben decided to play dirty with. Oh, he’d certainly hacked a few accounts in the past, that was true enough, but he’d always done it for what he considered a good reason. When his uncle Dominick had run into troubles paying his house notes, Ben had fixed the problem long enough for the man to recover and go about his life. When the insurance companies had refused to pay a few claims that were due to his father, he’d fixed that too. It was easy when you had the right equipment and the proper tools.
Ben had both and knew how to use them. Danni had been the latest trick he turned. He’d even promised himself he’d stop after that, because sooner or later even the best hackers got themselves busted and he wasn’t dumb enough to think it wouldn’t happen to him if he kept it up.
But this was different. He could deal with an occasional beating; they happened every day to people just like him. He could even deal with the threats of more beatings, because he never intended to announce what Maggie did; if she’d thrown rocks at him and called him the worst names she could come up with when she found him on the sidewalk the night before, she still would never have had to worry about that.
So she was a prostitute. It was a job. He could deal with that and he would pretend the knowledge didn’t bother him in the least, because he never wanted to hurt her.
But Tom? The very thought that Pardue would ever strike her in anger, would ever touch her or know her body . . . that was exactly enough to make him want the man to suffer.
He started with the bank accounts. After that he moved on to land deeds and credit cards. When he was done there, he moved into the police databases in the area and added a few minor, niggling warrants to the list of outstanding orders; nothing that would get Tom on “America’s Most Wanted”; just the sort that would cause him to be pulled over. He also cancelled Tom’s car insurance and revoked his driver’s license.
When he was done, Pardue had twelve thousand dollars to his name. It was enough to let a few days or even weeks pass before the man discovered he was broke.
All of Pardue’s money went into a series of legitimate trust funds. They’d been established a long time ago, under several different names.
When he was finished, Ben set aside his laptop and disconnected the cell phone. He stared out the window and squinted against the glaring reflection of the sun on Maggie’s side of the building.
“Fuck with me again, Tom. Fuck with me again, and you’ll see how nasty I can get.”
Ben closed his eyes and went to sleep on his couch. It had been a long night and he was tired. In his dreams Maggie was with him as she had been the previous afternoon: she was sleeping and he watched her while she dreamed.
IV
The International House of Pancakes was paradise: The food was plentiful and fattening and the coffee flowed in great rivers of caffeinated pleasure.
Boyd needed the caffeine and so did Holdstedter. Old Danny was looking about as white as toothpaste from lack of sleep. Real toothpaste, not that gel shit everyone thought was so cool.
“This shit ever gonna stop?”
“What? The disappearances?” There was already a backlog of cases to investigate and seven more people had vanished and been reported since midnight.
“No, Richie, the unclean love you have for Whalen. Of course the disappearances.”
“Sooner or later the town’s gonna run out of people to have disappear. But don’t worry, Danny. Our asses will be long fired before then.” He poured more syrup over his pancakes. Sugar and caffeine, those were the secrets to keeping him happy. “And Danny?”
“Yeah?”
“You go ahead and keep it up about Whalen and me. You just do that. It gets funnier every time you say it.”
Danny grinned. “Doesn’t it though?”
“Not as funny as the look on Freemont’s face last night.”
Danny nodded and broke into a bright, sunny smile. “Does my heart good to know he shit himself.”
“Boy has a bad case of the stupids going. Gonna be fun to see what O’Neill does to his sorry ass.”
“Did you want to shoot him as bad as I wanted to shoot him?”
“You kidding?” He held his index finger and his thumb a quarter inch apart. “This close to popping an eye out the back of his fucken head.”
The man in the booth behind Danny was looking green. Boyd savored the expression. It was never wise to eavesdrop on cops.
“See? That’s the problem with you. You always gotta take the hard shots. I was gonna go for the gut. I like to see pricks like him squirm.”
The excitement was getting to Danny. He had color coming back into his cheeks. “What hard shot? His eyes were bugging out.” He shrugged and cut another wedge out of his remaining pancakes. “I was waiting to see if they’d just fall out on their own, but they didn’t. I gotta tell you, I was disappointed.”
“You think he did the Lister woman?”
“Nah. He’s too sweaty right now. I bet he was figuring out whether to offer his mouth or his ass to O’Neill.”
“So I guess he’ll be using both today. Captain’s luck just got better.”
“You ever see the captain’s wife?”
“Nope.” Danny went to sip at his coffee.
Boyd waited to make sure his timing was just so. “Then you have no idea how true what you just said is. Gawd almighty, that woman could scare a dildo.”
Danny coughed coffee out of his nose as he tried to laugh. “Oh fuck, that burns . . .”
“Schmuck. The captain isn’t even married.”
“Then whose picture is that on his desk?”
“The commissioner’s wife. He has to pleasure her at least once a week or his life goes to hell.”
“You lie like a rug.”
“You don’t believe me, you go ahead and ask him.”
“Anyway. What have we got on Freemont?”
“We got DNA evidence that should get him in jail nice and easy.”
“So where is this evidence?”
“Not with us yet.”
“See? There you go getting all cocky again.”
“It ain’t cocky. That little shit is up to something. I don’t think he did his wife, but I know he did something. And did you see his face right before he blew his dinner? He was ready to run home to momma.”
“Oh, and I saw it after he tossed, too. Man, I wish I had a digital camera. He’d be all over the Internet on that one.”
“So, what happened to Michelle Lister, Danny?”
“She wasn’t abducted. Or if she was, she didn’t get taken from the car.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Automatic transmission was still in drive.”
“Good point. You know, with everything that woman has gone through, I gotta wonder if her family is really dead. This could be a kidnapping of some kind.”
“I thought the boy was confirmed dead.” Danny put a thoughtful look on his face. As far as Boyd was concerned, it didn’t fit. Danny never had to think hard.
“He is. By the same people that lost him.” More coffee to wash down the paste his pancakes had become. “It could be an inside job.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Neither do I, but I had to put it out there.”
“Okay, so the kid is still dead, at least as far as the hospital is concerned. We just don’t take them at their word.”
“Anything on the rubbers?”
Danny looked at him without any comprehension for about seven seconds and then nodded. “Oh,
those
rubbers. I was thinking galoshes.”
“You would.”
“Anyway, yeah, they’re a match for the one found near Veronica Miller. Circumstantial, but a nice addition.”
“Not so circumstantial if we work this all out. Nice catch yesterday.”
“Oh, I was fishing. I wanted to find something on that fucker.”
“Don’t worry. He’s ours. Guilty as sin, you ask me.”
Danny wiped his mouth and pushed his empty plate away. “Oh, he’s ours. Even if he isn’t, he’s mine.”
“I’m sensing hostility.”
“Yeah, well, creeps like him give creeps like me a bad name.”
Boyd was about to answer when his cell phone went off. He answered that instead.
“Boyd.”
“Where are you?” It was Nelson on the switchboard.
“Eating, and off duty.”
“You wish!”
“What now, Nelson?”
“We’ve had a total of nineteen missing persons reported today. You need to get down to the station now.”
“NINETEEN?” His bellow cut through the breakfast crowd and a few people dropped utensils or in one case, a glass full of orange juice. “You better fucken be kidding me, Nelson.”
“I wish I was, Boyd. Nineteen.”
Boyd pushed away his pancakes. Suddenly he had no appetite.
V
Kelli spent half the morning pacing, waiting to be questioned about Michelle’s disappearance. She felt like she was going to throw up. Tension did that to her, it always had. Right now, tension was her middle name.
The entire family she had been living with for the last few years, ever since she moved up to Black Stone Bay, was missing. Not really a stretch to find that the police wanted to talk to her about it.
That didn’t make her any more comfortable with the idea.
Detective Boyd said he’d be coming by to talk with her, and she was waiting. He’d also said it might take him a while to get to where she was. It seemed there were a lot of people missing in Black Stone Bay.
She walked around the house until almost noon and then she stepped outside into the overcast weather. The air was thick with fog and the sound of the waves was a resonating hiss as the ocean attacked the land on the other side of the Soulis place.
The leaves were falling in greater numbers now, and the entire area was starting to look barren. Autumn always made Kelli feel a little melancholy, but this year, it was starting to frighten her.
Jason Soulis was across the way. She saw him in the front yard of the massive place and thought about waving, but changed her mind.
He was staring at the house she lived in, his face unreadable in the gloom. A moment after that, he moved toward the far side of his own place, pausing exactly long enough to give his usual wave and nod of the head.
There was something about him she found endearing and something else that she couldn’t hope to fathom; he was an enigma. He’d had a girl over several times now, but he never left with her and other than her he’d never had any visitors that she knew of. A man that good looking—even if he was miles too old for her—should have been going out and enjoying life. Instead, Jason seemed perfectly content to just sit inside that big old mansion and do nothing.
Who are you to judge? What have you been doing with yourself except babysitting since you got to school?
She did go out; she just didn’t do it often. Life kept getting in the way. First there was Teddy—brief pause for stomach lurch—and then there was school, and between the two of them she always found it was easier to get a good book and read than it was to go find a party. She didn’t think she was really designed for that life, anyway. There were girls who could go party every night and find a guy and have a blast, and then there were girls like her.
Kelli was not a victim of low self-esteem. She knew she was pretty enough, she knew guys looked; she just wasn’t really in it for a fast fling and a polite nod to whomever she had bagged a couple of weeks earlier.
A new car pulled up in front of Jason’s place. This was a muscle machine, a Camaro with a glass-packed muffler. She knew it well enough and seeing it made her want to throw rocks.
Tom Pardue was a sleazy bastard if ever there was one. He’d actually asked her once, right after she got into town, if she wanted to hook for extra money. One look from her and he’d tried to laugh it off as a joke, but she knew better.
Her interest was piqued, so she stayed where she was and waited to see what would happen between Tom and Jason. If it was what she suspected, her estimations of Jason were about to take a plunge.
Naturally, she never got to find out. Around the same time Tom was knocking on the man’s front door, Detectives Boyd and Holdstedter pulled into the long driveway.
They got out looking shell-shocked. She smiled and stood up. At least she wasn’t the only one feeling that way.
“Ms. Entwhistle, how are you today?”
“Okay, I guess.” She wasn’t, but it was the sort of lie you were supposed to tell; and really, it was less worrisome than screaming and ripping her own hair out, which was closer to how she felt.
“I’m sorry to bug you, we just had to ask a few questions, especially under the current circumstances. I hope you understand.”
“Of course, Detective Boyd.”
“Listen, just call me Boyd. It’s ‘detective’ if you’re a suspect, and you aren’t.”
“I’m not?” She felt a little of the storm in her stomach subside.
Boyd looked surprised by her response and Holdstedter answered for his partner. “No, not at all. We actually talked about it and decided you weren’t stupid enough to kidnap your own employers. Seriously, who would you ransom them to?” He had pretty teeth in between his perfectly kissable lips. She pinched her thigh to get those sorts of notions out of her head.
“Funny, man. Very funny.”
Boyd nodded. “He likes to think so. I like to keep him from crying, so I pretend he’s right.”
Holdstedter didn’t look at all offended by the comment. “No, you were never a serious suspect.”
“What we wanted to see you about is if you can think of anyone who would have reason to make the Listers disappear like this. Do you know if they had any enemies?”
She shook her head in an instant. “No. I mean I used to joke about them both being lawyers, but I don’t think either of them ever really got into the sorts of cases where they would make enemies.”
“Doesn’t take much. Do you remember if either of them were working on big cases?”
“The only thing they talked about since . . . since Teddy disappeared was going after the hospital. They wanted to make them suffer for losing their baby.” She looked away and had to fight hard to stop the tears. Damn, it was supposed to get easier, not harder.