Knox
“How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life.”
―Marcus Aurelius
HE RECOGNIZES DAWSON Healy’s unmarked car sitting in front of the retail store. He considers circling the block and waiting for them to leave. Healy won’t be a problem. But his partner will. Nonetheless, he’ll get information out of Healy he won’t be able to get elsewhere, so it’s worth the risk. And there’s the fact that Healy will probably talk his partner down from the ledge of reporting back to the chief.
He’s just cut the engine to the Jeep when Healy and Detective Marsha Rutgers walk out of the store, headed for his black sedan. “Stay here, okay?” he says to Emory and gets out, calling, “Hey, Healy.”
The detective turns, a smile accompanying his look of surprise when he spots Knox. “What are you doing here?” he asks, covering the sidewalk between them in a few long strides. He claps Knox’s shoulder with a wide-palmed hand. “That’s just shit about your disciplinary leave, man.”
“I’m calling it unpaid vacation.”
“The unpaid part sucks.”
“Thought I might head down to the Bahamas for some sun and fun.”
“You? Yeah, right.”
“Not convincing, huh?”
“Not in the least. So what are you doing here? I heard you’re temping for the sister of that missing girl.”
Knox shrugs. “Yeah. I assume you’re here on the murder last night?”
Healy nods. “Didn’t get anything promising in there though. What were you doing here last night? Some connection between the missing teenagers and this girl?”
“Maybe. She was seeing a Colombian guy who bought clothes here. I think he might be the same guy I spotted on security footage at the music festival the two girls attended the night they disappeared.”
“And he offed her for talking to you?”
“Looks that way.”
“Damn. Any leads on the guy?”
Marsha Rutgers saunters over, nailing Knox with a you-know-better glare. She’s five-five and bench presses three hundred and twenty-five. It’s a well-known fact around the department that Detective Rutgers will chase a perp down like a German-trained dog given the Fass! command. “What are you doing here, Healy?” she asks, even though it’s clear she already knows.
“Shopping. You?”
“Like hell you are. You’re on leave. Or did you forget?”
“I haven’t forgotten. Need some new clothes for my unexpected vacation.”
“You wouldn’t be in that particular boat if you hadn’t been dicking around with a senator’s wife.”
“Language, Rutgers,” Healy admonishes, folding his arms across his chest. “Helmer has a right to shop wherever he wants. I noticed they’re having a good sale.”
She leans back and gives him a silencing stare. “Do I look like I just fell off the turnip truck?”
“Actually, you’re looking pretty hot today, Rutgers,” Healy says, grinning. “If you’d like to practice that bench press, I’m pushing three hundred these days. I’ll volunteer my body.”
“You want me to get you written up too?” she asks without cracking a smile.
“No, ma’am,” Healy says.
“Afraid I’ll have to let the chief know about your shopping excursion, Helmer.”
“Sure thing,” he says. “Might want to let her know about the sale too.”
Rutgers turns around and strides back to the black sedan.
“You see the smoke coming out of her ears?” Healy asks with a grin.
“Yeah. She can’t stand me.”
“I think she has a crush on you, actually.”
“Right. I think she has a crush on the chief.”
“No way.”
“Way.”
“I didn’t see that one coming.”
“What are you, blind?”
Healy shakes his head. “I’ll see if I can get her to cut you a break.”
“Would appreciate it. You learn anything at all in there?”
“Seriously, no. No one knew anything about the guy except he was a rich Colombian who paid in cash.”
“Mind if I give it a try?”
“Not if you share what you get.”
“Will do.”
“Hey.”
Knox turns to find Emory standing beside him. “Hey,” he says. “Emory Benson, Detective Dawson Healy.”
“Nice to meet you,” she says, sticking out her hand.
Healy gives her a look that Knox recognizes. “You too,” he says. “All right then, better get going. Already got an irate partner.”
“Later,” Knox says, taking Emory’s elbow and heading toward the store. They’re at the door when his phone dings with a text notification. He glances at the screen and sees the one word message from Healy.
Snack.
He shoves the phone in his pocket and opens the door, waiting for Emory to step inside.
“Something wrong?” she asks, giving him a look of concern.
He wonders what she would say about Healy’s assessment even as he knows he would never tell her. Something about it doesn’t sit right with him, even though it is typical of something Healy would have said to him about other women they’ve encountered.
Besides, that’s not what he needs to be thinking about right now anyway.
“No,” he says, heading for the register. “Everything’s fine.”
A very tall, very thin, twenty-something man stands behind the counter, piercings in an array on both ears, each nostril, and his lower lip. His name badge reads Jason. He gives Knox a once over and says, “Can I be of assistance? We have a very cool, gray leather jacket just in that I am imagining would look fabulous on you.”
He feels Emory’s smile but determines to focus on why they’re here. “Thanks,” he says, meeting the sales guy’s hopeful stare with a look that immediately squashes any visible hope of a sale. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Are you with the police?” he asks, fingering the loop in his lip and looking suddenly suspicious. “I told the two who were just in here what I knew, which is nothing really.”
“I’m not officially with the police,” Knox says, putting a hand on Emory’s shoulder to bring her into the conversation. “I’m doing some private work for Dr. Benson here. Her sister and a friend were abducted. I believe the man who murdered Madison Willard might have had something to do with their disappearance.”
“Well, that sucks, clearly,” Jason says, looking a little more sympathetic. “But after what he did to Madison, do you think it seems like a good idea for me to rat on the guy?”
“Did you ever meet him?” Knox asks.
“Once.”
“Here in the store?”
“Yes.”
“What was your impression of him?”
“Honestly?”
“Yeah.”
“Ice, man.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something in those eyes. Like there was nobody home.”
“So what did Madison see in him?”
“She liked the flash, I guess. She said he would take her out to dinner and pay for a three hundred dollar meal with cash.”
“She didn’t find that suspicious?”
He shrugs a narrow-shouldered shrug. “Not as much as she found it appealing, I guess.”
“She tell you what he does for a living?”
“She didn’t know. I said, girl, you don’t think he’s with the mob, do you?” He angles Knox a wide-eyed look. “I mean, is there a Colombian mob in our country? He certainly fit the make.”
Knox ignores the assessment, saying, “Did she tell you anything about where he lives? A place he might have taken her.”
“She said he only wanted to go to her place. She was curious about what kind of place he might have, but she said he kept putting her off when she’d ask to see it.”
“Can you think of anything she might have told you that could help us find him?”
He’s silent for a few seconds, then slowly shakes his head. “I wish I could. But no. Nothing.”
Emory has been standing next to him the entire time, silent. She steps forward, her voice low and urgent when she says, “Jason, my sister and her friend are seventeen years old. I am praying they are still alive. To think otherwise is unbearable. I will take any lead, no matter how small it might seem, if it gives us even the slightest hope of finding them. Please. Can you go over the times you saw him in the store just one more time. Anything that stood out about him? Anything at all?”
Knox stays quiet, letting Emory’s plea stand on its own.
Jason studies her for a long moment, taps the stud in his left nostril with his index finger. And Knox can see there is something Jason is weighing the wisdom of divulging. It’s a risk. Knox won’t lie to him and say it isn’t. The guy they’re looking for is clearly a psychopath and intent on cleaning up loose ends. Knox can’t blame Jason for not wanting to be one.
But decency wins out. Knox can see the moment the decision to reveal what he knows crosses Jason’s face. Knox keeps silent, waiting for him to leap the chasm of reluctance on his own.
“There is one thing,” he says in a soft voice, as if the Colombian might be hiding in the dressing room behind them. Knox and Emory both wait, even as he knows her patience is as thin as his own.
“Madison said he talked in his sleep. Some crazy stuff, mumbling about beatings, maybe when he was a kid. Or maybe not. I don’t know. But there was a place he talked about.”
“What was it?”
“Some place he called the hotel.”
“What kind of hotel?” Knox asks.
“No idea.” He hesitates and then pulls a phone from his back pocket. “She sent me a video one night of him talking in his sleep. She thought it was funny. We were fairly open with each other about our love lives, its quirks and whatnot.”
Knox feels his heart kick up a beat. “Could we see it, please?”
His hesitation is only a flicker of a second, as if he realizes he’s come too far to turn back now. He taps the screen, opens the text app, scrolls down, and clicks once, handing the phone to Knox.
Knox taps the play button and holds the phone closer to Emory. She’s so still, he wonders if she’s holding her breath. The video starts, the headboard of a bed is the first shot on the screen. There’s no sound. The camera moves to a man, sleeping, flat on his back, one arm thrown up above his head. Even in the dimness, Knox can tell it’s the same guy on the festival footage, the same guy who ran out of Madison’s apartment last night.
A few seconds of silence pass, and then he mumbles something that isn’t a recognizable word. His head moves side to side. The camera remains still on him. Hotel California. Back to Hotel California.
A low giggle follows. Madison’s giggle. “You want to go to Hotel California? That’s kind of a long way.” And then the camera turns off.
Knox looks up at Jason. “Will you send this to me?”
“Keep my name out of it?” Jason asks.
“Will do.”
Knox gives him his number and waits for him to send the video, before saying, “Thank you. I understand not wanting to be involved, but you’re a stand-up guy.”
Jason smiles, and it’s clear that the compliment means something to him. “Thanks, man. I hope you find him. Madison was a good friend to me. She shouldn’t have died like that. No one should die like that.”
“No,” Emory says. “No one should. Thank you, Jason.”
They leave the store then, and it isn’t until they’re back in the Jeep that Knox plays the video again. They watch it five times, back to back before Knox looks at Emory and says, “Next on our list. Figure out where the heck Hotel California is.”