Missing: The Body of Evidence (8 page)

Thursday
afternoon brought Nancy a well-earned break, although she wasn’t looking
forward to her monthly visit to see her dad. The Ventura Freeway was light of
traffic. Nancy took the 13A junction, headed toward Pasadena, along West and
then East Colorado Boulevard. Starbucks came into view, she signalled left, and
turned onto North Meredith Avenue.

Overhanging tree branches and the
occasional tall palm tree cast shadows on the road. She eased off the gas,
braked, and parked under the shade of a tree. Nancy looked across at her dad’s
white painted apartment block. It seemed to be a world away from Compton. Fond
memories of her childhood, what little she could remember of living on Meredith
Avenue, flooded through her mind. Most of her early life she’d spent travelling
on army postings with her dad, or living with her auntie after her mom died.

She always liked to spend a moment dwelling
on the good times, to psyche her up for the visit. Nancy let out a long sigh
before steeling her nerves, hopping out of the car and heading for her dad’s
first-floor apartment.

Checking to see that she had fastened the
top button of her blouse, she straightened her skirt and pressed the doorbell
of the blue painted apartment door.

The door opened.

‘Oh, it’s you. Come in.’

I love you, too, Dad.

She followed him down the hallway and into
the living room. He sat in his favourite red-leather armchair that had seen
better days. The dye on the arms had worn away with years of use, and the seat
cushion didn’t look as though it could afford much comfort. But then,
everything in the apartment was exactly the same as it was when her mother
passed away, just after Nancy’s eighth birthday. Nancy sat facing him.

‘I made detective.’

He gave a token grunt in reply. If she had
been the son he always wanted, to follow in his footsteps as a marine, she
thought, maybe he would have at least smiled. It wasn’t Nancy’s fault he’d
given up his career in the army to take up a job at SIA as a security
specialist, but he always made her feel like it was her doing. She leaned
forward.

‘I said… I’ve made detective.’

‘What do you want me to do, give you a medal?’

He was incapable of showing her any love or
credit. Goodness knows she had tried to live up to the standards he would have
expected of a son, but she always had the feeling she came up short in his
eyes.

‘It’s time you gave up cops and robbers and
started a family. A grandson wouldn’t go amiss.’

Her eyes moistened, she sucked on her top
lip, stood and headed for the kitchen.

‘Coffee?’

‘Yeah.’

Nancy placed both hands on the worktop,
bowed her head and wanted to scream. Just once, she wanted him to greet her
with a hug and a smile, or maybe just compliment her for turning up to visit
him. Nancy made the coffee and returned to the living room.

‘Black, no sugar and a cookie,’ she said

They sat in silence, sipping coffee and
nibbling at their cookies.

‘Did Mom ever have any psychic experiences?’

He choked on his cookie.

‘Why?’

‘Just something a medium said down at the
station when I interviewed her. She reckoned I have a gift.’

‘Mumbo Jumbo if you ask me. I don’t know
about a gift, but you had an imaginary friend as a child. We seriously thought
about getting you to see a shrink. You used to sit and tell us those imaginary
places you’d visited with your
friend.
Luckily, you grew out of it over
time.’

‘And Mom?’

‘Your mom was a God fearing woman. Don’t go
speaking ill of the dead.’

He placed his coffee mug on the floor.
Picked up a newspaper and buried his head in the news.

Subject closed.
Nancy sat dutifully, watching the clock on the wall as he read his
newspaper. A framed family photograph on the wall caught her attention. She
thought she looked more like a boy in the picture, with her short hairstyle,
posing next to her mom and dad in front of an RV. Her dad was holding a hunting
rifle. Recollections of the last vacation she had with her mom were getting
harder to recall as the years passed. The silence in the room was broken with
the annoying rhythmic ticking sound coming from the clock on the wall. The
hypnotic effect from the sound of the ticking took hold, and her eyelids grew
heavy as she stared at the photo.

Her vision blurred and there was a
sensation she was moving at speed. Suddenly, she stopped and opened her eyes.
She was standing on the spot where the RV had been on the edge of the woodland.

‘Be back before dark you two,’ she heard
her mother’s voice calling at the back of her mind

‘Stay close behind me and be quiet,’ she
heard her dad’s voice whisper.

Nancy set off walking into the woods
along a trail. It was eerily quiet. There were no birds singing, not even the
sounds of her footsteps, as if someone had turned off the volume. A majestic
stag appeared in a clearing. Its eyes seemed to hold the very essence of the
nature around him.

‘Get down.’

‘Don’t shoot him, Dad,’ Nancy heard a
young girl’s voice begging, followed by a piercing shriek.

The stag’s ears peaked. Nancy blinked
and in that instant, the stag was gone.

Her entire vision clouded, replaced with
the contorted features of her dad screaming obscenities at her.

‘...You stupid, useless, excuse of a
girl.’ He snapped his hand in a curt gesture, as if he were about to strike.
There was no follow through, but the damage was done.

Her head pounded as if a base drum thumped
the inside of her brain. Nancy shook her head and the beating of the drum
settled to the sound of ticking. She opened her eyes and glanced at the clock.
The fifteen minutes that had passed since walking through the door was as if
she had suffered a lifetime of penance.

‘I have to be going, Dad.’

‘See yourself out.’

He shook the leaves of the paper without
looking at her, his head still buried in the news.

Tears streamed down her face as she trudged
back to her car. She had never felt so alone, as if her entire existence in the
scheme of life was meaningless. When she arrived at her car, she opened the
door and slumped on the seat. The sobbing had stopped, but the anger she felt
welled inside. She fumbled to put the key in the ignition and fired up the
engine. The tyres of the car scorched two lines of rubber on the asphalt as she
made a U-turn, braked hard and parked her car in the opposite direction.

Her vision blurred and she didn’t feel able
to drive. She dropped the sun visor and checked her eyes. Streaks of mascara
ran down her cheeks. A wipe with a tissue from her purse soon cleared the
blotches, but she could do nothing about the pounding in her head. Her fingers
pressed PLAY on her CD player. Nancy listened to the lyrics of the Westlife
song,
Flying Without Wings.
She couldn’t understand why the boy band
hadn’t made it big in America, or why she was drawn to the words of the ballad
of late.

Vehicles zipped past the end of the avenue.
Nancy engaged first gear, checked her rear-view mirror and set off. A black car
caught her attention in the mirror as it pulled out behind her some distance
back along the Avenue. Nancy slowed down to a crawl as she approached traffic
lights on red at the junction, and signalled right. The lights turned green.
She cancelled her blinkers, stepped on the gas pedal, took a sharp left at
DuVac Electronics instead, and accelerated along East Colorado Boulevard, past
Psychic Visions, the Spiritualist Church. The lights at the junction of North
Parkwood Avenue were on green; she turned left and swung a hard right into the
European Auto parking lot. The tyres screeched as the car came to a halt and
her body lurched forward, her head almost coming to blows with the windshield.

Nancy sat watching the traffic go through
the lights. A black Toyota turned into Parkwood. It was travelling too fast to
get the plate number, and the windows were tinted black, so she didn’t get to
see the occupants.

Why the hell am I being followed?
Her hands trembled, holding the steering wheel. It didn’t make sense
that someone would be following her, and she thought that maybe she was being
paranoid.

Kyle’s
cell phone went straight to voice mail. Nancy typed him a message that she was
on her way home and for him to call her. She felt naked without her 9 mil, and
wished she had someone with her. It wasn’t as if she could call for backup. The
whole episode with the Toyota, she guessed, was just another of those hunches
that made her imagine she was being followed. Looking over her shoulder, she
reversed out of the parking space, stopped and dropped the car into first gear.
She drove slowly out of the European Auto parking lot, pausing briefly, and
looked along Parkland. The Toyota was nowhere in sight; she pulled out and
drove back the way she came.

If only she had someone to confide in, she
thought maybe she could unravel the direction her life was taking. The visit to
her dad’s had unsettled her. She wasn’t sure Kyle would be the right one to
lean on, and thought maybe Claire would be a better option, but then she didn’t
really know her. Bill had made clear his thoughts on the subject of her future
and his vacation had taken him out of the equation.

Nancy pulled up alongside Psychic Visions.
The words of the medium after her interview crossed her mind. She took a pen
and her notebook from her purse and jotted down their number from the
advertising board. The road was clear. She pulled out and drove on, all the
while, checking her rear-view mirror.

The paranoia subsided. She began to feel
foolish at having jotted down the number of Psychic Visions.
Maybe talking
to a shrink would be a better option, more the Hollywood way
. Better still,
she wondered if now was the time to start finding friends and a life outside
work. Then the thought struck her that maybe her dad and Bill were right and it
was time to settle down. She shuddered at the notion of having to surrender her
wellbeing to the trust of a man. Nancy turned onto the freeway and headed home.
As soon as she turned off the freeway and onto the short stretch of highway
toward home, she started to relax. At least, that was, until she noticed a car
trailing her into her cul-de-sac.

Kyle? What’s he doing here?

Nancy parked her car, dropped the sun visor
and checked her makeup. She felt, and thought she looked, like crap. Her
fingers located her mascara and lipstick from her purse and she applied both in
quick succession. Knuckles wrapped on the side window, and Kyle’s face
appeared. If someone had stamped, ‘I’m concerned’ on his forehead, he couldn’t
have looked more worried. She pressed the button for the window and it whirred
open.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘You sounded distressed in your message. I
was in the area. You okay?’

Nancy thought it was sweet of him, but
wasn’t sure that now was the right time.

‘I’m fine.’

A warm smile appeared on her outward
appearance, but inwardly, she was zonked out.

‘Look, that’s not the only reason I was in
the area. We need to talk.’

He opened the car door for her and she
stepped onto the asphalt. They both headed for the apartment. Neither of them
spoke. The notion that he was going to break it off with her crossed her mind.
She wasn’t about to prompt him, and thought it better that he spoke first,
seeing that she had acted the bitch. The feeling came over her that the short
walk from her car and up the stairway to her apartment must be what it feels
like for the last walk on death’s row. Her life may not have depended on it, but
to her, it felt like her life would be over. By the time she put the key in the
door, she visibly shook.

They made their way to the living room.
Nancy sat on the sofa, head bowed and he stood in front of her. She knew she
was messed up when tears began to well in her eyes
. For God’s sake, get it
over with, please.
His expression looked serious as he opened his mouth to
speak.

‘I need to tell you about Tracy.’

Nancy
wondered what Kyle wanted to tell her about Tracy
. You’ve been shafting
Tracy. Is that it?
It would have explained Tracy’s initial attitude toward
her
.
Nancy lifted her head and gazed at Kyle in stunned silence.
Nah,
don’t be stupid.

‘Jesus, Nance, what’s wrong?’

Emotional floodgates opened, with tears
streaming from her eyes, and she reached past him to grab a tissue from a box
on the coffee table. He tried to take hold of her hand with his, but she pushed
his him away.

‘It’s just a woman thing.’

Nancy hauled herself up from the sofa and
headed for the bathroom. Given the events of the day, she wasn’t surprised at
her reaction. A splash of cold water from the tap and she buried her head in a
bath towel. This moment had been spoiling for a while, but she had hoped she
could have suffered it alone. She put the towel over the side of the bathtub
and returned to the sink. The reflection staring back at her in the mirror was
of a broken woman. She placed her hand on the basin and squeezed her eyes
close. Her eyes opened at the touch of hands caressing her shoulder.

‘Listen, if you...’

‘Shhh.’ Nancy turned, placed a finger on
Kyle’s lips and then threw her arms around him, burying her head in his chest.
Fingers ran through her hair; she raised her head and they joined in a
passionate kiss. As their lips broke apart, his arms held her tight. She had
never felt so wanted, as if she was drifting weightless in a good place.

‘And here’s me thinking you were crying
because you were going to dump me,’ said Kyle. She lifted her head, gazed into
his eyes, and started to snicker and cry at the same time. ‘What’s so funny?’

He grabbed a hand towel and dabbed her
tears. The truth was finding it hard to escape her thoughts and to convert to
words, as if there was some magical force preventing her saying what she really
felt. She gained some semblance of composure.

‘Don’t be so soft, I’m not dumping
anything, only my emotions. What’s this about Tracy? You do mean Tracy as in
CSI?’

‘Yeah, CSI Tracy. She’s in the hospital.
I’ve just visited. She said I had to tell you to be careful.’

‘Hospital?’

She took his hand, led him back to the
sofa, her entire body felt as though she had run a marathon and she sat down.

‘What’s wrong with her? What does she mean
‘be careful’?’

‘Don’t know what she meant, they wouldn’t
let me stay, she was delirious. I thought you two weren’t best buddies? She
mumbled something about visiting you last night.’

‘We weren’t buddies until last night, when
she called at my apartment.’

‘What time?’

‘Nine-thirty, I guess.’

‘Hmm, she must have gone back to the lab,
because at ten-thirty she was caught up in an explosion.’

‘How did it happen?’

‘Power surge they reckon is a possibility;
igniting some chemicals she was working with on her bench.’

‘What did the doctors say?’

‘She’ll live, but she won’t be back at work
any time soon. Logan wants to know why she visited your apartment.’

‘Wait a minute, is that why you’re here...
for work?’

Nancy felt deflated as if someone had
started to tear apart the secure cocoon her emotions had started to weave
around her as a security blanket. Part of her wanted to go off on a rage, but
something at the back of her mind told her to cool it.
Get a grip, girl.
Take a breath.
Kyle dropped to his knee in front of her, took her hands and
gazed into her eyes.

‘Listen, I’m here for a million reasons,
one of which is that Logan asked the question, but the other nine-hundred and
ninety-nine-thousand, nine-hundred and ninety-nine reasons are because...’ He
seemed to be having difficulty in spitting out the rest of the words as if his
gullet had clammed up and cleared his throat.

Please, not the ‘L’ word.

‘Because, I care for you.’

A gentle smile appeared on her lips and a
feeling of wellbeing washed through her body. He had an expression of the
little lost puppy that she recalled begging her dad to buy her as a young girl,
when her father had dragged her from the pet shop window crying. Her instinct
told her the usual sarcastic flippant reply was not called for. Staring into
his eyes, for the first time she could see into his soul. Perhaps, she thought,
they were more of a kindred spirit as a couple than she had given them credit.
It was just that one in a million reasons he gave that bugged her. She placed
her hands on his shoulders and gazed into his eyes.

‘I care for you too, and I’m sorry for what
I said yesterday.’

She pulled him towards her and they shared
a lingering kiss. As their lips parted, he squeezed her hands. Her heart was
pounding so hard, she was sure he could hear it.

Kyle spoke first. ‘I don’t know what’s
going on in your mind, but honestly, if it’s not, you know... right for you,
just tell me.’

She could see he was pleading for
reassurance. This was the first time she had seen him act so insecure.

‘I’m just in a bad place right now; be
patient. I think you’re right, I need some time off. I think the stress of the
six-month probation period has caught up with me.’

He gave her a sort of ‘told you so’ look.

‘Good, glad you agree, because I’ve booked
a log cabin for us in the Pine Mountain area for this weekend. We go tomorrow
at five after work. Now, tell me why Tracy was here last night. I have to get
back to work.’

He seemed so cock sure of himself, like
he’d switched to another persona, and she wondered if she had just been played.

‘Really? I mean great... can’t wait.’

Nancy gave him all the details from Tracy’s
visit. She found it hard trying to switch from her private life to work; it was
like turning a tap on and off, but he seamlessly glided along like spreading
butter. The weekend was sounding more and more like a good idea. Without work
distractions, she was thinking maybe they would discover each other for who
they truly were. She saw Kyle to the door and he turned to her.

‘Listen, Logan said to make sure you knew
the case on the professor is closed. He’s got something else lined up for you.’
He put his hands on his hips and cocked his head slightly to one side.

‘Nancy?’

‘Yeah, yeah, case closed.’

‘Listen, I’m on a stakeout tonight, but
I’ll leave my cell phone on vibrate. If you need me, call me.’

They shared a last kiss and she locked and
bolted the door after he left.

Why is Logan so insistent?
Nancy returned to the living room and dialled CSI, only to be
surprised when someone answered. The woman on the line told her they were still
operational and when she asked about the file on the professor’s case, the
woman at reception passed her through to Tracy’s boss.

‘Sorry, the file was lost in the fire after
the explosion,’ he said. ‘Her findings were still on her PC and hadn’t been
uploaded to mainframe. The PC’s hard drive was destroyed in the explosion.
Luckily, I have enough background to write up the professor’s case as
‘spontaneous combustion,’ by causes unknown.’

‘I have a copy of Tracy’s file.’

‘No need, but you can send me a copy. I
didn’t get a chance to tell Tracy the CIA had sent prints and a DNA sample to
me and they proved it was the professor’s remains at the apartment. The file is
on its way to the Coroner’s office now.’

Nancy replaced the handset.
It may be
over for him and Logan, but it ain’t for me.
She took the pen drive from
her purse, inserted it into her computer and downloaded the file. Nancy made
two paper copies, attached the downloaded file to an email and sent it for the
attention of Tracy’s boss. She picked up the copy of Tracy’s report from her
computer desk and hid it under the cushion of her sofa. The other copy she
placed in an envelope ready to take to work. Nancy removed the pen drive and
placed it in her purse.
At least I know the professor must have been one of
theirs, or at least one of their targets. Interesting, now I just need to find
out where the janitor and his son fit into the scheme of things.