Missing: The Body of Evidence (26 page)

Thinking about the high-velocity shot
brought a furrow to Nancy’s brow. Driving the car at speed, her body muscles
tensed, with a grip on the steering wheel that would have been hard to pry off
with a shoehorn. She found it difficult to turn her stiffened neck to check the
side mirrors. To compensate for the tunnel vision, her eyes constantly flitted
to the rear-view mirror from the road ahead and she prayed that whoever the
shooter was, they were not following her. It was common knowledge there were
some pretty mean guns with awesome firepower in the hands of street gangs.
Maybe, she thought, the youths running away had fired off a shot. Then again,
she couldn’t help wondering if her attempt to drive around incognito had
failed, or if someone had rescued her with a well-aimed warning shot.

Her thoughts rolled around to her dad. He
had the firepower, and she wouldn’t put it past him to be stalking her as part
of a mission. The notion gave her the need to touch base with her dad, if only
for the security blanket of someone to lean on, and to ask him outright if he
was acting as backup without telling her. First, there was a call she had to
make. She couldn’t contain her curiosity any longer. Without signalling, Nancy
spun the wheel and drove up a mountain road. At the top, the road levelled out
and she pulled into a rest area. She was no stranger to the area, having had
her first tryst with Kyle there on the back seat of his car. It was a good spot
to make sure no one was following and she eased out of her seat to look around.
There were no headlights following up the mountain road, and the tension washed
from her body. Stooping to reach the cloned-cell phone from the passenger seat,
she straightened up and dialled Kyle’s number. Looking out over the sparkly
lights of Los Angeles, it reminded her of standing there with Kyle looking out
over the view, her head on his shoulder. Everything had seemed so perfect back
then.

As the phone rang, her heart started to
palpitate. Kyle answered the call.

‘Hello.’

‘Kyle it’s me, I got your message, but I didn’t
get to read it.’

‘Thank God you called. I have been trying
to get hold of you all afternoon and going outtalk my mind with worry. Where
are you?’

Nancy could not stop the tears flowing at
the relief of hearing his words. All she could do was to blubber a reply.

‘Mi…missing ya.’

‘I’m missing you too. Listen, we need to
meet.’

The words stuck in her throat when she
tried to engage her vocal chords. All that happened was sobbing when she tried
to reply.

‘Nance… you okay… Nance, speak to me.’

‘What… about… your… career?’

‘That’s the last of our problems. Look, try
to get a hold of yourself and calm down. We can work this out. They’ve put an
APB out for you and I’ve been taken off the janitor’s case. They’re on their
way to your apartment with a search warrant.’

Her jaw slackened and her eyes popped at
the craziness of what he was saying. The jolt to her mind stopped the
stuttering along with the tears.

‘What the hell…why?’

‘You gotta trust me. It’s best if I bring
you in voluntarily rather than a uniform bringing you in shackled in cuffs.’

‘Cuffs? Kyle, just listen. Contact the
search team, tell them to check the next cul-de-sac to mine, there’s a black
surveillance van parked and they’re monitoring my apartment. They’ve got a
surveillance virus on my computer. Then get them to look for listening devices.
There’re quite a few, including one behind the frame of the picture with the
cabin, in the living room. Now tell me why they want to have me brought in for
questioning, but be quick and make the call before they reach my apartment.’

‘Never mind why, no time. I’ll make the
call, but first tell me where you are. I’ll pick you up and I can explain back
at the station.’

The hairs on Nancy’s neck bristled. She
held the phone to her ear with one hand, placed the other on her hip, and with
a flick of her hair, she stamped a foot.

‘Pick me up? Back at the station? So you
wouldn’t fill me in on the way there. I take it you’re back at work. What you
really mean is, you want the credit for arresting me… is that it? Ya treacherous
piece a dog dirt. I guess Logan’s listening in?’

‘Nance, it’s not like…’

Nancy ended the call and launched the cell
phone with all her strength into the abyss. Normally not one to regret her
actions, Nancy slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand.

‘Oh no.’ Her shoulders sagged. ‘Damn, I
needed that phone.’

Dropping to a haunch, she covered her face
with her hands, shook her head and then looked up at the heavens.

Damn it, you’re down to base instincts
now, girl. Him taken off the janitor’s case can mean only one thing, seeing as
how we were an item.
A primeval growl escaped
through gritted teeth.

‘This is no time for feeling angry. It's
time for me to get to work, before they lock me up and throw away the key.’

Nancy’s head throbbed at what she was sure
was the onset of a migraine. Angst at a feeling of helplessness sent her brain
into survival mode. A psychopathic mist descended, leaving her devoid of all
emotion. As if in a trance, she rose to her full height, smoothed down her
jacket, rolled her head and reached into her car for her dad’s cell phone and
her purse. Pressing the power button, she opened Kyle’s message, which simply
said, ‘phone me’. She scrolled to and pressed the button for ‘return message,’
typed, ‘chew on this’ and then pressed SEND. From her purse, she took out a
condom and opened it as she walked to the stone wall at the edge of the rest
area. Placing the condom on the wall, she put the cell phone on top of it to
hold it down.

‘Let’s see if he can work out the irony in
that.’

Nancy strode over to her car and climbed
into the driver’s seat. The drive to a gas station defied time and space, with
the journey a blur as she pulled into the parking lot. Her head throbbed with
pain as she made her way to the bathroom. At the sink, she ran the water and
splashed her face. Logan’s and Kyle’s voices from their telephone conversations
spun in her mind and fought for attention as they both vied with one another
for the trophy of arresting her. She hoped they would seethe on their wasted
journey tracking down the cell phone. The indignity of both of them thinking
she was stupid enough for them to trick her into telling them where she was,
and not telling her why they wanted to question her, brought her to boiling
point.

With a pounding head and fiercely flushed
cheeks, she glared at the mirror… when it cracked. Nancy took a step back. A
spider’s web of frost appeared to spread over the surface of the mirror, and
then it vibrated, shattering in to shards that filled the bowl.

‘Holy shit, did I just do that?’

On the drive over to Dad’s apartment, it
was hard for Nancy to take in the possibility of having some kind of magnetic
force power and being able to resonate glass at will, to the point of
destruction. The incident in the bathroom at the gas station was outside the
realms of coincidence in Nancy’s mind, especially when added to the other
occurrences. Short of an earthquake causing a tremor that smashed the mirror,
she was at a loss to come up with a logical explanation. Add to that the
rambling of Dora, the spiritualist, telling her she was an alternative with the
gift of astral travel—for all the good
that
would be to her plight—and
the whole idea made her skin crawl. It all seemed ridiculous and like winning
the lottery, except then developing amnesia and not knowing what to do with the
ticket.

Meredith Avenue was devoid of traffic and
pedestrians. Turning off the car headlights, she crawled along the avenue, and
driving past her dad’s apartment saw that his car was in view in the parking
lot. Some distance from his apartment, she pulled over to the sidewalk and
parked. With one last look around, she locked her car and walked along the
sidewalk, hugging the shadows of the hedgerows, and then darted across the
parking lot. Her hand felt the hood of her dad’s car. It was warm, at best, and
probably had been parked for some time. A glance at the jeep parked next to his
car and she moaned. Tuesday night was staying at home drinking night with his
home defence buddies.

With a knock on the door, a rattle of
chains and the key turning, the door opened.

‘What the hell are you doing here, why
didn’t you phone?’

Dad grabbed her hand and yanked her inside.
He stepped out in the corridor to look around and returned to the hallway,
closing and chaining the door. She wondered if he had to practice to produce
the sour look on his face, or if it just came naturally.

‘Why is Logan phoning me, telling me if I
see you, to tell you to get your ass down to the station and sayin’ it’s for
your own good.’

‘I don’t know for sure, but they’ve got an
APB out for me and they’re on their way to search my apartment, so I’m in some
kind of crap. Any luck with the registration check from the surveillance van?’

‘No. It can’t be internal affairs. It’s
registered as a company car, so it must be false. At least when they search
your apartment they should find the bugs, though what it’ll prove, God knows.
Did you get all your tasks done?’

‘Yeah, and the rest.’

‘Come on in, the boys are here.’

‘Hi, Nance, we got your back, hon,’ Uncle
Dave said.

Jim, Ben, John and Dave, she called them
all Uncle out of respect. Dad served in the army with them and they had formed
their own home defence team after demobilization, convinced they needed to
prepare for either the Russians, or the Chinese invading. It all seemed so
serious when she was a child, but now she thought it was just grown men playing
cowboys and Indians.

‘Hi, everyone.’ She took hold of Dad’s
shoulder. ‘A word in private.’

He followed her into her bedroom. She
closed the door and stood with arms akimbo.

‘What does Uncle Dave mean, ‘We got your
back’?’

‘He just means we’re looking out for you.
You know, making enquiries and standing by if needed.’

A flick of the hair, with a sideways sway
of the head, followed up by a stamp of a foot, and Nancy retorted.

‘And does that stretch to slitting the
throat of the guy who was trying to frame me, or stalking me earlier tonight
and firing off a shot at a gang of youths who were going to rob me?’

Her lips tightened and her foot tapped out
a rhythm. Her dad had a look of bewilderment.

‘What the hell are you talking about? We’ve
been here all night planning a weekend mission in the forest. The young punk,
okay, I know about. Dave found out from his contact down at the station when he
did the registration check. As for the rest, you’d better fill me in.’

Nancy gave him a sideways glance, hoping to
Christ that they’d not murdered him; not sure if she had done the right thing
involving her dad and his cronies.

‘Promise me you had nothing to do with his
murder.’

‘What? Do you take me for an idiot, for
God’s sake?’

It wasn’t exactly a promise, but knowing he
was unlikely to own up if he had; she gave him a summary of events since the
last time she had seen him, including the visit to Dora’s, and opened up about
her weird dreams and events with the glass breaking. The only thing she left
out was her encounter with Bill. When she had finished, he sat on the corner of
the bed and sighed.

Her dad said, ‘Look, I’ve not been honest
with you. I suppose you’d better know.’

He patted the mattress and she joined him. ‘Your
mother said she had a gift, and she suspected she had passed it on to you, but
I never believed in all that mumbo jumbo. It wasn’t that you just had imaginary
friends. You used to tell us about places you’d visited. I came home on leave
one time and you described the canteen at Fort Bragg, but you’d never been
there. Gotta say, it knocked me back. But, like I say, you grew out of it. Then
the weirdest of things happened. I was in a tight spot, held down by sniper fire.
Long and short is, I heard your mom’s voice and she guided me away from the
danger. Trouble is, when I returned home she was in a coma in the hospital and
never recovered, so we never got the chance to talk about it. Damnedest thing
is, a few nights back, I dreamt she came to me in a dream and asked me to help
you. I guessed I owed her that for all the shit I gave her.’

His eyes glazed, and he averted his gaze,
but continued.

‘I wouldn’t put too much on the mirror
breaking. Maybe someone was drilling the wall from the other side, and as you
say, all the other incidents have explanations. Anyway, back to business. Best
you make your way to the Motel and first thing in the morning you need to see
what your attorney has to say.’

Nancy nodded in agreement, and smiled that
Mom had listened to her plea. However, just what he meant by ‘all the shit I
gave her’ she thought it best to leave well enough alone. Thoughts that he was
helping out of some sense of guilt to Mom and not for any paternal feelings
stabbed at her gut.

‘I’ll use a payphone to contact you.
Tomorrow, I’m going to check out Mary, the spiritualist. She’s the only one who
has a link to Astral. Maybe if I follow her, she can lead me to where they’re
based.’

‘I don’t like that idea. Why don’t we set
up surveillance through the boys? Maybe if we check her garbage it will throw
up some clues?’

Nancy chuckled.

‘Boys? For God’s sake, Dad, you’re all due
for retirement.’

‘Don’t mock, we can still give the
youngsters a run for their money.’

‘Yeah, but these aren’t war games.’

He stroked his chin.

‘Maybe, listen, I don’t have another cell
phone, but I have a kind of pager. If you are backed into a corner and can’t
get to a phone, activate it and it’ll send me your GPS coordinates. I still say
you should wait for us to follow that Mary. If you find where they’re based,
report back, and for Christ sake don’t go in on your own, poking your nose
around.’

‘I’ll be fine, don’t worry.’

‘Okay, say goodbye to the boys and I’ll dig
out the pager.’

Nancy followed him into the living room and
left him rummaging in a chest of drawers.

‘If you’re in a tight spot, you can always
stay in the bunker,’ Uncle Dave said.

‘No thanks, I had enough of that
rat-infested-damp-hell hole when I was a kid.’

He roared with laughter. ‘Time for a beer?’

‘Sorry, things to do.’

Nancy wasn’t surprised he’d confided her
circumstances to his lifelong buddies, but it still peeved her.

‘At least that punk isn’t around to testify
against ya.’

He ran his fingers across his throat and
grinned. A shudder ran through her body at a vision of Uncle Dave skinning a
deer with his hunting knife when she was a child. Her head shook the vision
loose as her dad escorted her to the door. He handed her the GPS pager.

‘I know what you’re thinking, it’s written
all over your face,’ Dad said.

‘Yeah, well, let’s just hope I’m thinking
wrong, ’cause Uncle Dave, or not, when this is over there’ll be questions to
ask.’

‘The question you need to be asking is why
the hell that shit Logan and his buddy are stalling internal affairs, when
Bill’s statement could probably clear you.’

‘What is it with you, Logan and Bill?’

He opened the door and peeked out into the
hall without answering.

‘All clear. Let me know how it goes with
your attorney.’

By the scowl on his face, he didn’t seem to
be able to hustle her out of the nest and through the door quickly enough. At
the bottom of the stairway, Nancy opened the exit door to sheets of rain
pounding the parking lot. She cursed at having parked so far away. Pulling her
jacket over her head, she made a dash for her car.

Soaked through to her skin, the drive to
the Motel was as uncomfortable for her body as it was for her mind dwelling on
events. A glance in the rear-view mirror and her heart skipped. Flashing lights
and the sound of a siren grew closer and louder. Tempered with the chances of
crashing at speed on the wet road surface, the temptation to make a run for it
was short lived and she slowed. The police car pulled out alongside her and
sped past. Her entire body sighed and merged with her seat at the relief of
seeing his taillights disappearing in the swirl of the downpour.

She pulled in to the motel parking lot,
parked outside the office and dashed inside. The guy at reception handed Nancy
a key to her room. His gaze lingered longer than she was comfortable with and
made her nervous. His fingers trembled and his cheeks flushed.

‘Is there a problem?’ Nancy asked.