Reality Check (2010) (22 page)

They sat in a trailer behind the North Dover police station--Cody, the sergeant, and Vin, the tech guy. Vin peered at the screen on Clea's cell phone, now charged and running again. "Tattoo, sarge. Tattoo of some kind."

The sergeant gave Vin an impatient glance that Vin missed but Cody caught. "Any possibility of blowing it up on a big screen?"

"Nice idea," said Vin, and less than a minute later he had the wrist photo displayed on a big screen. "Looks like a fish," Vin said.

"Maybe one of those dolphins," said the sergeant. "It's a shark," Cody said.
The two men had another look. "Yeah," said Vin. "A shark,

but kinda crude."
"Prison work," Sergeant Orton said. "See how that's his left
wrist? Most likely did it to himself." They gazed at the shark
tattoo. "Vin," said the sergeant. "Send an e-mail to all staff,
anybody come across some ex-con with a shark tattoo." Vin turned to a keyboard, muttered along as he typed,
"Any-body come a-cross some ex . . ." His voice trailed off. "So it's a kidnapping?" Cody said.
"Can't say," said the sergeant. "All we got for sure is the
phone in that hut, and this picture."
"The last picture," Cody said. Sergeant Orton had no reply.
Cody stared at the screen, memorizing every detail of that
wrist--strong and thick, with a bulging vein--and of the shark
tattoo.
A uniformed cop entered, handed the sergeant a sheet of
paper. "Transcripts, sarge," he said.
The sergeant ran his eyes over the page, then turned to
Cody. "Hungry?" he said.
"Not really."
"I am," said the sergeant. "You can watch me eat." He rose.
"And when you're done, Vin, start checking inmate descriptions in the databases of all the state prisons for, I don't know,
past five years."
"For an itty-bitty tattoo like that?" said Vin. "I've seen them
screw up on missing limbs."
The uniformed cop laughed. "Missing out on missing
limbs," he said. "That's a good one." Sergeant Orton gave him
a look and his mouth closed. Vin's fingers moved to the keyboard.

Sergeant Orton, wearing street clothes--he looked smaller out of uniform--drove Cody in an unmarked car to a doughnut shop just over the town line and went inside. He came back with coffee and a bag of pastries--cheese Danishes, crullers, bear claws. Cody bit into a Danish, found he was
hungry after all.
"Try those bear claws," said Sergeant Orton, mouth full. Cody tried a bear claw: delicious.
"Best bear claws in the state," said Sergeant Orton. He
sipped his coffee, wiped his mustache on his sleeve. "Any bear
claws where you come from?"
"No," Cody said. "But I had one in San Diego." "When was this?"
"Long time ago."
"Your family travel much?"
"No."
"Got any brothers or sisters?"
"No."
The sergeant reached into the bag for a cruller. "So it's just
the two of you? You and your pop?"
Cody nodded.
"What happened to your mom?"
Cody stopped eating. "She died."
"How?"
"Cancer." The bear claw was getting sticky in his hands but
he didn't want it anymore. "Shouldn't we be doing something
right now?"
"Like what?"
"Looking for Clea," Cody said. "With this new evidence." "Crime scene's out at the warming hut as we speak," the
sergeant said. "And we're working on the tattoo, as you know.
Not much you and I can do." He paused--was he giving Cody
a chance to talk about his family? Cody thought so. He said
nothing. "Suppose we could go over the transcript," Sergeant
Orton said at last. He took the paper from his pocket, put on his
glasses, cleared his throat. "'Contents of your trust fund.' Any
idea what kind of money we're talking about?"
"I don't know about any trust fund." Cody didn't even know
exactly what a trust fund was.
"She never mentioned it?"
"No. Clea's a normal kid."
"What do you mean?"
Cody shrugged.
Sergeant Orton turned to him, his voice sharpening. "I
need you to do better than that."
A little jet of anger spurted inside Cody and he almost said
Tough shit. He decided at that moment, once and for all, that
Sergeant Orton was nothing but a user, never to be trusted. But was there any way of getting Clea back without his help?
Cody forced himself to find words, the right ones.
"You wouldn't know she's rich," he said. "Not from her
herself."
"But from her house, her parents, things like that?" "Yeah."
"Fran is actually the stepmom?"
"Yeah."
"Where's the mom?"
"She died a few years ago."
"How?"
"A skiing accident," Cody said. "In Switzerland, I think." "Interesting," said the sergeant.
"Huh?"
"The similarity and all--what with your own mom." Cody set his coffee cup on the floor; he wanted his hands
free. "So?"
"Just filling in the blanks."
Cody sat back, folded his arms across his chest. His mom's
death was nobody's blank. The sergeant went back to the transcript. After a while Cody picked up his cup, drained what was
left.
"I put in a call to Mr. Weston, of course--about this trust
fund," Sergeant Orton said. "He's still in a coma." The sergeant tapped the transcript sheet with his finger. "The question is--
why was she asking about it in the first place?"
Cody shrugged.
"She into drugs?"
"I already answered that."
"Does she owe anyone money?"
"Why would she borrow? She always has enough." The sergeant folded the transcript, stuck it back in his
pocket. "How'd you feel about that?"
"About what?"
"Her always having enough and you not."
"I always had enough too," Cody said.
The sergeant turned to him, seemed about to say something, but then his police radio crackled. He took it off his belt,
pressed a button. "Yup."
"Sarge?"
"Yup."
"Got a preliminary out of ballistics. We're lookin' at a
thirty-eight."
"Start checking permits."
"Already on it."
Sergeant Orton clicked off, turned to Cody. "One little
thing. These--don't want to call them breaks in the case, let's
just say developments--"
"The phone and the ballistics?"
The sergeant nodded. "We keep that news to ourselves for
now."
"Meaning you think whoever we're looking for is close by?" Sergeant Orton closed his eyes in a strange kind of way,
longer than a blink; almost like a little kid who didn't want to
see what was happening, if that made sense, and how could it?
"Didn't say that," said the sergeant.

Back in the barn, Cody found Ike on his hands and knees in Bud's stall, scrubbing the floor with a stiff brush. "Otherwise," he said, looking up, "they'll pick up the smell of blood, spook 'em forever."

"Who else? Can you smell blood? Gotta take care of the horses."
Cody glanced at the horses. They didn't seem spooked, anxious, or even attentive; all of them just standing in their stalls, doing nothing except twitching their tails or shifting around. Cody walked over to Townes's horse.
"This one Midnight?"
Ike rose, picked up his bucket. "Yeah. Champion of the barn."
Midnight was big and black, with a shining coat and a glossy mane. "How much would a horse like this cost?"
Ike came over, stood beside Cody. "More'n you or me can afford, tell you that."
"Just out of curiosity."
"Ten grand. Maybe thirty."
Cody took a quick sideways look at Ike, trying to see if Ike was ragging on him or something. No sign of that; maybe Ike had even less feel for math than he did. But at that moment Ike surprised him. "We could look up the exact figure, we had a mind to."
"Yeah?"
"Just so happens Midnight got sold not so long ago."
"Townes doesn't own him anymore?"
"What I just tol' you," Ike said. "Don't believe me, I can prove it--show you the books."
"I believe you," Cody said. "But I'd like to see the books."
"Curiosity killed the fuckin' cat--you don't know that one?"
"I never believed it."
Ike gazed at him. "Maybe you're right." He checked his watch. "Slow day, what with the snow. We can spare a minute or two."
They went into the office, a small space off the tack room. Ike sat behind the desk, took a big leather-bound book from a drawer, licked his finger, paged through. "Here we go," he said, turning the book so Cody could see.
He studied a page labeled
INVENTORY
, all the writing in blue ink, small and neat. There were two columns, on the left the names of the horses, with a brief description--Bud, for example: "chestnut gelding, age 9"; on the right, names of the owners: "Mr. Win Weston, Little Bend, CO." The horses were listed in alphabetical order. Cody ran his eyes down to Midnight. "Black stallion, age 13." And in the right-hand column, "Townes DeWitt, Dover Academy." Under that, another notation, dated three weeks before: "Papers transferred to LB Corp., North Dover."
"It doesn't say the price."
Ike turned the book, moved his finger on the line, followed it with his eyes, lips moving. "No, it don't. But ten grand at least, take my word for it."
"What's LB Corp.?"
Ike shrugged. "Some business deal." Ike closed the book and put it away.
LB Corp. Cody had a flash of inspiration, maybe the first of his life, a three-part inspiration, kind of complicated, but it made sense. One: LB stood for Little Bend. Two: Something had gotten Clea interested in her trust fund. Three: LB Corp. had to be some--what was the expression? holding company?--belonging to the Westons, set up in North Dover for some reason, the important point being that Clea, or Mr. Weston, or both of them, now owned Midnight. But why?

ture. Why had Clea been asking about her trust fund? Did it have something to do with buying Midnight? How could her interest in the trust fund relate to any kind of ransom? That would put things in the wrong order: The kidnapping had to come first.

Cody sat in the office at the barn, trying to organize everything he knew on a sheet of paper. He was alone; Ike had driven off to the feed store, would be gone for a stretch, as he'd put it. For the first time in his life, Cody made lists, drew connecting arrows between this and that. He got nowhere. He couldn't escape the feeling that no more facts were needed, just more brainpower. After a while he crumpled up the sheet of paper, tossed it in the wastebasket.

Cody walked into the main part of the barn, past Bud's empty stall, stopped in front of Midnight. Midnight, so tall, gazed down at him, nostrils widening. Cody reached out to pat his face. Midnight turned his head, shied away.