Doubt (Caroline Auden Book 1) (24 page)

“Gotcha,” Caroline said aloud, a bolt of joy lancing her chest. Mendocino was one of the towns near a lighthouse!

Still, she restrained her celebration. She had one last step: finding Annie’s address.

Surely the Mendocino pharmacy kept Annie’s address on file. As Caroline searched for the pharmacy’s website, she considered how hacking a second pharmacy didn’t seem like much of a sin after hacking the first one. Funny how the conscience dulled with repeated transgression.

But her search for Arborville Pharmacy in Mendocino retrieved general hits on third-party websites. Yellow pages. Trade associations. Consumer reviews. There was no website for Arborville Pharmacy itself.

Caroline huffed in frustration. Arborville Pharmacy was probably a small-town mom-and-pop shop, where all of the customer information was kept in a file cabinet. Or on the owner’s private laptop. Either way, Caroline recognized she’d reached the limit of what she could discover via the Internet.

With no obvious solution presenting itself, Caroline shut down her laptop and slouched low in the chair. She’d planned to end the day with an address. A destination. Now she had a thousand-person town to search. In two days.

The laptop’s screen blinked off, and soon darkness reigned again in the study. The ambient warmth of the computer dissipated under Caroline’s hands, which still hovered over the now-sleeping keyboard.

Without the hum of the laptop, she could hear her uncle moving around downstairs.

Perhaps Uncle Hitch would have some advice. He was an ex-cop. He had to know something about staking out people and approaching witnesses.

Then again, he was also an alcoholic. The difference between the Uncle Hitch she’d known growing up and the Uncle Hitch clanging around in the kitchen, looking for booze, was stark. He’d once been a fulsome, real person to her. She’d shared her stories. She’d listened to his. Now he’d become his pathology. His life’s purpose had shrunk down to scoring his next bottle. And to his niece, he’d become someone to manage. Someone to humor. Not someone to trust.

And yet, pathologies were not immutable. Her mom had made the round trip, returning from illness to form healthy, current relationships. Maybe Uncle Hitch would, too, someday. Meanwhile, maybe he could help Caroline figure out how to hunt down a reluctant witness.

Or maybe he could convince her not to try.

Uncle Hitch stood at the kitchen counter. The highball glass in his hand rested on his hip. His gray hair stood out in a halo of frizz around his balding head. He wore drawstring pajama pants and a stained undershirt.

If Caroline squinted, she could still see the build of a very strong, very thick cop, but if she didn’t, he just looked fat and disheveled. His glassy eyes and slight sway told Caroline he’d already had too much to drink.

“Just me down here,” he said, catching sight of his niece. “Your mom’s still camping somewhere in the wilds of Oregon. Dunno when she’s planning on getting back. Maybe next week.”

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you,” Caroline said, sitting down on a stool at the kitchen counter. “I need some advice. Police advice.”

Raising an eyebrow, Uncle Hitch planted himself on the stool beside her and rested his elbows on the counter.

“What do you need to know?”

“I’m trying to locate a witness. She’s somewhere up in Mendocino.”

“Mendocino?” Uncle Hitch swiveled his stool around to face Caroline.

“Yeah, and I’m not sure she even wants to talk to me.”

“Ah, she’s hiding out,” Uncle Hitch said.

Caroline nodded.

“You sure you need her?” Uncle Hitch asked.

“She’s our key witness. I need to find her. After I find her, I’ve got to figure out how to talk to her without spooking her into running again. And then after that, I need to get her to fly cross-country to New York with me and testify. Easy, right?”

Uncle Hitch took a slow sip. The highball seemed dainty in his large hand. When he went to place his glass down, a sudden jerk sent a splash of vodka onto the counter.

“There’s an art to approaching skittish witnesses,” Uncle Hitch said, ignoring the puddle. “You need to find a place that’s public, so they feel safe, yet invisible so they’ll talk freely. For instance, I once had this potential informant I needed to interview. I found out he was a baseball fan. So I ambushed him at the stadium’s urinals during the seventh-inning stretch. Told him to stick around a little so we could chat after he finished up doing his thing.”

He chuckled to himself at the recollection. But then his expression grew serious.

“Are there other people, um, interested in this potential witness?” he asked.

“If you mean, did this witness skip town because she maybe got bribed to bail or maybe she thought people were trying to kill her, the answer is yes.”

Caroline watched a full harvest of worry blossom on her uncle’s face.

“What’s going on, Caro?” Uncle Hitch asked. Even despite his inebriated state, his words were clear and his worry was evident. The line of his mouth pressed together, grim and tight.

In broad brushstrokes, Caroline painted a picture of all that had happened in the last weeks. When she finished, Uncle Hitch stood up. He swayed and almost fell over. Gripping the stool, he caught his balance and carefully perched himself back in front of the counter.

“Christ, Caro. This is serious,” he said.

“I know.”

“We need to leave this house. We can’t stay here. If they come for you, they’ll come here. I’ve got this buddy downtown we could—”

“No,” Caroline said. “I’m not staying with one of your drinking buddies.”

“Fine, get a hotel room. Whatever. Just lie low for three days and this will end. Come home after that hearing’s over and this whole thing has blown over. Promise me.” He stared her down, his mahogany eyes holding hers, the frizz of his unruly hair making him look like a deranged guardian angel.

At Caroline’s silence, her uncle jutted out his jaw.

“Then I’m going with you,” he said.

“No. You’re not healthy enough to go,” Caroline said. And he wasn’t. In addition to his tremor, Uncle Hitch’s body showed signs of buckling under the strain of his alcohol addiction. His skin hung pallid and loose on the sharp angles of his face.

“You should see a doctor,” she said.

“No doctors.” Uncle Hitch’s nostrils flared, his expression defiant and ready to push back against whatever harsh dose of reality his niece tried to force feed him.

But then his shoulders slumped, the fight going out of him. He looked down at his glass.

“I’m doing the best I can here,” he said. “Things just haven’t been . . . good . . . lately.”

“I know,” Caroline said softly. She watched him wrap his thick hand around the glass and tip his head back, taking another drink. Obliterating awareness. She couldn’t stop him. She couldn’t make him go to the doctor. She couldn’t change any aspect of her uncle’s trajectory in even the smallest way. But she could find Annie Wong.

“If I leave tonight, I can be in Mendocino before dawn,” she said. “I know where the pharmacy up in Mendocino is—the one where this woman gets asthma meds for her kid . . .”

“What are you going to do?” Uncle Hitch slurred. “March in there and ask them to give you her home address?”

Caroline dug at the oak countertop with the tip of her nail. Hearing her uncle say it, her plan sounded even lamer than it did in her mind.

“I don’t know yet.” She shook her head and answered without looking up. “Mendocino isn’t that big of a place. Maybe someone up there knows Annie Wong or her son.”

She met her uncle’s eyes. “All I know is, I’ve got to try. I need to talk to her.”

“What happens if you don’t find her?”

“I still go to New York for the hearing, but it’ll be a trip across the country for nothing . . . We’ll lose.”

“If you’re going out east, you should stop off in Connecticut,” Uncle Hitch said. “Your dad would be glad to see you.”

Caroline’s face flushed. “No way.”

“Suit yourself,” Uncle Hitch muttered, taking another sip while Caroline returned to the splinter she’d been prying from the edge of the countertop.

Uncle Hitch coughed, clearing phlegm from his throat. “If this witness is so important to your case, you can bet your opponent’s looking for her, too. In fact, you should assume they’ve beat you to her.”

Caroline’s finger froze on the countertop.

“You’ve got to be careful,” he said. “Watch out for people following you. Be aware of any anomalies. Things out of place. That’s the cardinal rule of policing. When something seems out of place, it probably is.”

Caroline nodded her understanding.

“Do you want a gun?” Uncle Hitch asked.

Caroline considered the offer. She’d never fired a gun in her life.

“I don’t need one,” she said.

She hoped it was true.

Caroline looked up from the splinter and studied her uncle’s face. His tremor. His balance.

“Are you going to be okay if I go?” she asked. She’d promised her mom she’d look after him.

“I’ll be fine. I’m going down to the Ivy Lounge to see some friends.”

Caroline shook her head. Uncle Hitch’s friends were a group of veterans who hid out in the Ivy Lounge’s dark recesses, sipping hard liquor and reminiscing about their misadventures. He always drank more when he was with them. If that was even possible. And if his friends weren’t there, he always seemed to find someone else to buy his drinks. A world full of enablers . . .

She exhaled her consternation.

“Or I may stay home tonight,” Uncle Hitch said quickly. “I was thinking of maybe staying in.”

Caroline met his watery eyes, searching for truth in his words. She wanted to believe.

“Please text me to let me know, okay? Let me know where you are so I don’t assume the worst. I’ll be back home in just a few days.”

She hoped that was true, too.

Caroline pressed down on the accelerator. The engine of the Mustang responded, the deep bass rumble vibrating up through the car’s frame, more felt than heard. The sensation soothed her nerves. She had nine hours of driving ahead, capped by a frantic and dangerous search for a woman who didn’t want to be found.

The car traversed the early-evening freeways, roads filled with taillights and headlights. Soon, the Mustang broke free of the gray landscape of human habitation. Tawny hills rolled out into the dusk, the first tinge of night settling onto their eastern slopes.

Caroline relaxed at the sight of something grander than the world of human things. The view was a rarity. Though mountains ringed the Los Angeles basin, she rarely saw them. Most of the time smog obscured the view, reducing the aperture on her world down to the near view. She’d heard it said that Los Angelenos didn’t trust air they couldn’t see. Personally, she preferred taking air on faith.

She eyed the moon hovering over the hills. Not yet full, it competed with the sun’s waning light and lost. In three days, it would be full. On the same day as the
Daubert
hearing.

An omen, Caroline decided. She was a logical person. She prized reasoning. Cause and effect made manifest in the empirical world. And yet, she still looked for signs. For the innate poetry of the universe. Connections, ephemeral yet real, beyond the ability of feeble human senses to detect. And this rising moon felt like a potent portent, there to shepherd in the ending. Caroline hoped this moon would favor her, bringing at its zenith a harvest of justice.

When she hit the long, straight shot of road that would carry her through the Central Valley, Caroline’s mind turned to her uncle. Hopefully he’d be okay. She couldn’t shake off the heavy shroud of guilt she wore for leaving him. It was difficult to keep her eyes trained forward when she knew things were falling apart somewhere behind her.

She’d seen them fall apart before.

Two years after her dad left, her mom had hit bottom. Depression. Alcohol. And the meds the doctor had given to Joanne hadn’t helped.

In fact, they’d made things worse . . .

Caroline’s mom’s voice sounded all wrong on the phone. Hard edged and husky, the voice tortured its way out of her mother’s throat like a piece of metal caught in a circular saw. The words hadn’t made any sense, either. Babbling and paranoid, Joanne’s demands that Caroline come home immediately sent Caroline into a panic.