Mercy Dogs Read online

  He tried to play into her mistake. “Oh, okay.” That seemed to satisfy her.

  They were quiet for a moment and Amy finally took a sip of her drink.

  “When was the last time you talked to her?” he asked.

  “Friday, maybe? We were supposed to go to the movies, but she cancelled. She wasn’t feeling good. Then a couple of days later, when she didn’t answer my texts, I started getting worried. Even went by her place to check one night, but she wasn’t there.”

  Ben’s stomach tightened. “What kind of car do you have?”

  “A Prius.” She smiled. “Same color as Grace’s, even.” Apparently, she could read the relief on his face. “Why?”

  “I saw a car in the alley one night. I wasn’t positive, but I thought they were checking out the studio. Wasn’t a Prius, though.”

  “What was it?”

  “A Camaro.”

  Amy narrowed her eyes. “That’s weird.”

  “Why?”

  “One day when Grace and I got off work, we walked out back through the parking lot and one of our managers was just parking there for the evening. Grace got this really intense look on her face as we watched him walk inside. I asked her what was wrong and she said, ‘Is he an asshole?’ and I asked why and she went, ‘Camaros are for assholes.’”

  On the way back to the Volvo, Ben passed the little parking lot. He hadn’t asked Amy specifically, but he assumed, because she walked up the block in the opposite direction, to where she’d parked her car, that only managers got a spot behind the restaurant. He saw what he was looking for, backed into the corner spot nearest the back door—a gleaming yellow Camaro.

  He didn’t believe there was any connection. Camaros weren’t that popular, but there were enough of them around that they didn’t seem unusual. What had caught his attention, though, was Amy mentioning the strong reaction Grace had to the make of the manager’s car. The kind of reaction that came from personal experience. Grace didn’t hate Camaros. She hated one specific Camaro. And Ben was certain the one she hated was red.

  He’d tried to get as much information as he possibly could from Amy before they left the Library, but Grace hadn’t shared much about her past, and the only person she seemed to be spending any time with was Amy. He’d hardly written anything at all in his notebook.

  Fri 1/13

  Coffee w/Amy—Grace’s friend

  Grace doesn’t like Camaros

  Look up BUSKERFEST

  As he reread the entry behind the wheel of the still-parked Volvo, he realized he’d forgotten to ask Amy about the Post-it he’d found when he searched Grace’s room. Call Amy about job, it had said. What could that mean? Hadn’t they met working at the Attic? Was it something about her job there, or was it another job altogether?

  Shit. Ben had exchanged numbers with Amy. He thought about texting her right then. She’d probably be driving, though. He’d wait. He added another line to the notebook entry:

  ASK AMY ABOUT JOB

  He made good time getting home. It was still too early for the after-work traffic on Cherry to have really started to stack up, so it had been just over ninety minutes since he’d left. A car he didn’t recognize had parked at the curb in front of the house and left him a smaller spot than usual. He’d always hated parallel parking, and he seemed to be getting worse at it since the injury. It took him three tries to get the tires close enough to the curb that he wouldn’t worry about anyone judging his competence.

  Inside, he expected to find Peter in the living room watching Ellen like he usually did at that time of day. But his father wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the dining room, the kitchen, or the bathroom, either. Just as the worry began to wash over him, a blur of motion out the back door caught his attention. Someone had thrown a tennis ball onto the patio. It thumped off of the door and rolled back toward the grass. Before it could get there, though, Sriracha came scrambling into view, jaws opened wide like a feeding shark, and scooped it up. She spun and bounded off back in the direction she had come.

  Ben went into his father’s bedroom and peeked out between the slats of the plantation shutters. Peter was standing near the back fence and Sriracha had just dropped the ball at his feet. He picked it up and hurled it across the lawn again.

  Bernie wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Did he just leave them out in the backyard like that? Where the hell was he? Ben wasn’t sure what to do. Just go out and ask where Bernie was? He looked through the window again. They were still going at it—Peter tossing the ball and Sriracha fetching it. Neither one showed any signs of slowing down. His dad seemed so happy. It didn’t look like anything hurt. So normal. It seemed wrong to interrupt them.

  His phone pulsed in his pocket with a text message. Maybe it was Amy getting back to him. He checked the screen. It was Bernie.

  you home?

  Yes. How did you know?

  your cars out front

  Where are you?

  over on the side by the kitchen

  Instead of replying, Ben went back through the house and out the side door.

  Bernie was standing there, a grin widening his face.

  “What are you doing over here?” Ben asked, his voice lowered. He didn’t think Peter would hear them, but he didn’t want to take a chance.

  “Jorge called. Welding thing at the shop. So I came around here and talked to him for a minute, and when I started to go back, I saw the two of them going like that and thought, why not let them go a while?”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Twenty minutes, maybe?”

  Bernie fiddled with his phone, then turned it around so Ben could see the screen. It was Peter and Sriracha playing. “I recorded it in case you didn’t get to see it.”

  “Would you send that to me?”

  “Sure.”

  “And could I get the name of your friend with the puppies?”

  Ben was surprised when he saw Becerra’s name on the screen of his ringing phone. The detective had told him he would call, but he didn’t expect to hear anything so soon. Or at all, really. Ben couldn’t shake the feeling that he was just being humored, that pacifying him was somehow more important than just another missing waitress.

  “Detective Becerra,” Ben said. He’d thought about answering with just a generic “Hello,” but he wanted to give the impression that he was more on top of things than he really was.

  “Detective Shepard,” Becerra replied.

  Ben wondered how calculated the use of his former title was. He tried to remember the old days. Had he ever referred to a retired cop by their title? It certainly wasn’t standard practice when he’d been working. He couldn’t think of a time when he’d done it himself. So what was going on? Was it an act of respect or was he just being patronized? Ben didn’t have any idea and he wished he could quit caring about it. Confronting his insecurity only ever made it worse.

  “Just calling with an update.” Becerra sounded as if he was reporting to his lieutenant rather than informing a concerned party about the progress of an investigation. “Detective Tanaka notified you about the lead we’re pursuing with the Camaro, right?”

  “Yes.” They really were communicating, and even more significantly, they really were keeping him in the loop.

  “Good,” Becerra said. “I have some new information for you. Grace hasn’t used her phone or accessed her bank account at all.”

  “Okay,” Ben said. Most people would find that alarming, and they would probably be right to see it that way. It could be read as evidence of foul play. But Ben was still working on the hopeful assumption that Grace had left on her own to avoid someone who was trying to find her, and to him it made perfect sense that she’d be careful not to leave a digital trail that someone could follow.

  “I don’t think we should worry about that too much, though.”

  Ben wondered why Becerra would say that. Simply to placate him, or because he suspected the same thing Ben did—that Grace was on the run? He tried to co
ax some more out of Becerra. “Why not?”

  “Well, for one thing, she’s a waitress, so she gets a lot of her income in cash, right? She probably hasn’t needed to make a withdrawal.”

  Ben knew Becerra would have checked her account activity, looking for patterns of transactions to get an idea of whether or not a few days of inactivity was normal for her. “How often did she make deposits?”

  “Usually at the end of the week.”

  “When was her last deposit?”

  “Ten days ago.”

  “Had she ever gone that long without putting something into her account before?”

  “No.”

  “But it’s a new account, right?”

  Becerra paused. “How did you know that?”

  A wave of anxiety rolled over Ben. Had he said something wrong? Revealed something he shouldn’t have? How did he know that?

  “Detective?”

  He knew but he couldn’t remember how. A drop of sweat fell from his eyebrow and rolled down his cheek like a tear.

  Becerra said, “Did she ever—”

  “Her rent checks.” Ben let out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. “The numbers were all like single digits. I remember thinking how odd that seemed, that it must have been a brand-new account.”

  “Yeah,” Becerra said, “that makes sense.”

  “And she hasn’t used her phone at all.” It wasn’t a question.

  “No.”

  Still, Ben thought, that fits. If she knew enough not to access her bank accounts, she’d know not to use her phone. “Did you try to locate the GPS?”

  “We did. No sign of it.”

  “When was the last hit?”

  “The night before you realized she was missing.”

  “Where?”

  “Your house.”

  Grace had turned off her phone before she disappeared. She knew she was going and she didn’t want anyone to be able to find her.

  Becerra broke the silence. “You know what that means, right?”

  “I know what it means for us,” Ben said. “What does it mean for you?”

  “If she chose to disappear, there’s no crime to investigate.”

  “So you’re done?” His voice was sharper than he intended.

  “Not yet. She probably took off of her own free will. But I’m not comfortable with ‘probably.’”

  Maybe Jennifer was right about him.

  As Ben got Peter ready for bed, he thought about Becerra’s call. He was glad to have received it and still surprised they were sharing so much information with him. Maybe if he’d been a family member or something, it would make sense. But it seemed strange to him and he couldn’t help wondering why Becerra was so forthcoming. He didn’t believe it was the hero shtick that the detective had mentioned when he came to the house.

  It had to be Jennifer. Nothing else made sense. One thing he remembered clearly from his days with the department was how fiercely he and everyone else had protected investigative details from anyone not directly involved in a case. Everything was strictly need-to-know. Did he need to know? It was hard to believe anyone would think he did, except maybe for his old partner.

  Rob had certainly known much more than he shared with Ben.

  That had to be it. Rob knew there was real danger out there for Grace. As far as Becerra and Jennifer knew, this wasn’t a big deal at all. Someone decides to go off the grid for a while, why not help an old colleague who’d had some hard times feel a little better?

  He needed to talk to Rob again.

  Ben picked up his notebook, opened it, and realized he hadn’t recorded his father’s evening meds.

  “Shit,” he said out loud.

  He wrote them down and added:

  ALMOST FORGOT AGAIN—DON’T FORGET!!!

  Then he went back to Peter’s bedroom to see if he was finished in the bathroom yet. He found him already in bed with the lights off and his blankets pulled up to his chin.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were ready for bed?” he asked.

  “I didn’t want to bother you,” Peter said.

  Ben leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “It’s never a bother, Dad.”

  Peter smiled but didn’t look like he believed the words.

  ELEVEN

  Ben texted Rob asking for another meeting not long after he put his father to bed, but he didn’t see the reply until he woke up at seven the next morning. According to the time stamp it had come at 3:37 a.m. The night had been all tossing and turning and worrying, so it was a surprise that the message hadn’t woken him. He would have sworn that he hadn’t slept deeply enough at any point to have missed the message, so at least he had slept a little better than he thought.

  He read the message one more time and copied the details into his notebook.

  Meet Rob. 10:00. Marriott—Room 406.

  It was raining again. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d had so wet a winter. When was the last big El Niño? There was supposed to be a very wet season last year, but the heavy rain had never come. This year was making up for it, though. Some people were saying it might even be enough to end the years-long California drought. That would make Peter happy. Ben had never had much success trying to explain the new county watering regulations to his father. Maybe now he’d be able to reset the sprinklers and keep the lawn as green and full as Peter liked it to be.

  Ben didn’t go out of his way to be quiet while he was making breakfast. He turned up the classic country music on the Echo and let the teakettle whistle for a minute so Peter would hear. The right balance was tricky. He had to be noisy enough for his father to hear if he was already awake, but not so loud that he’d startle him if he wasn’t.

  He knew he’d gotten it right a few minutes later, when Peter shuffled out in his thick gray socks and sat at the counter.

  “How’d you sleep, Dad?”

  “Good.”

  “Is your stomach okay? Did you poop yet?”

  Peter nodded. “Big one.”

  “That’s good.”

  Putting the half-full coffee cup and instant oatmeal on the place mat in front of him, Ben said, “Go slow, okay?”

  Peter nodded and lifted a spoonful to his mouth. “It’s good,” he said.

  Remember this, Ben thought. Remember what it feels like to do something right.

  Ben double-checked the room number and knocked again. Still no answer. He took the burner out of his pocket and called Rob. Just before it went to voicemail, he thought he heard something from inside the room. The second time he dialed, he held the phone down by his hip and put his ear close to the door.

  A phone was ringing inside.

  Rob wasn’t there and didn’t have his phone with him. Hadn’t he told Ben he’d have it with him all the time? He was sure he had.

  What should he do? Maybe Rob was in the shower or out on the balcony or something. Or maybe he’d gone downstairs for food or coffee.

  Ben thought about what to do. Should he be worried that Rob didn’t have the phone? Had something happened to him?

  All he could do at the moment, it seemed, was go downstairs and look for Rob. Maybe he had just stepped out for a minute. That would make sense, wouldn’t it?

  On his way back to the elevator, he passed a cleaning woman who’d just come out of a room and returned to her cart.

  “Good morning,” she said to him, smiling.

  Ben nodded and smiled back, hoping he didn’t seem too anxious.

  There was no sign of Rob downstairs. Not at the Starbucks stand in the lobby or in the restaurant or out by the pool.

  Think, he told himself, think. It didn’t seem likely that Rob would have forgotten their meeting or changed the plan without calling or texting him. What did that mean? Could something have happened to him? Maybe he was in the room. If he’d been asleep, surely the multiple calls would have woken him. What if someone else, someone he was looking for, found him here first?

  Ben’s hand
was beginning to shake. Sometimes mild tremors came with his anxiety. But why was he so anxious? Was it worry that something had happened to Rob, or was it just that the plan for the meeting was thrown off? He tried to breathe deeply and think it through. The last time he remembered noticing a tremor in his hand was at Ralphs not long ago, when he realized he’d forgotten the grocery list he’d made. Another deep breath. The feeling had been almost exactly what he was feeling now. This was what Emma had taught him to do. To examine the anxiety, to place it in context, to ascertain whether it was proportional to the situation. He took another deep breath and he was confident that it was just the plan going off track that was upsetting him. There was no real reason to be concerned about Rob, and no evidence at all that anything serious was wrong with the situation. He rubbed the back of his head and thought.

  Ben decided he’d have a cup of coffee and wait in the lobby for a while to see if Rob showed up or returned to the room.

  As the barista was making his decaf vanilla latte, though, he remembered the cleaning woman upstairs and got an idea.

  He added a muffin to the order, and in the elevator on the way back upstairs, he punched in the number to Rob’s phone again, but didn’t hit the “Send” button.

  The cleaning cart was still in the hall, one room closer to Rob’s door. Ben hoped that meant she’d spent the time he was downstairs cleaning that room and would soon be finished. He walked past the cart and waited in front of room 406.

  It was only about two minutes before the maid came back out into the hallway and found Ben, coffee and muffin balanced precariously in his left hand while he frantically pretended to search his pockets with his right.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  He gave her a befuddled look and said, “I’m expecting an important call and I think I left my key card inside with my phone.”

  She came closer and he found the “Send” button on the phone in his pocket and pushed. Just as she got to the door, the faint ring sounded from inside. Without hesitation, she slipped her master key into the lock and opened the door for him.

  “Thank you so much! You saved my life.” He slipped inside and let the door shut behind him before she could finish saying “You’re welcome.”