Hank Mossberg, Private Ogre: Murder in the Boughs Page 17

  “I guess we survived, huh?” said a weak voice behind me. I turned to see Annie staring at me with half-lidded eyes. I settled into the chair next to her bed.

  “I’m sorry, Annie,” I said. “I had no idea Brutus would pull something like this.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Did you get him?”

  “Yeah. He’s gonna pay for what he did to you.”

  She smiled weakly, and reached up to pat my arm. “Don’t carry that anger with you,” she said. “Please?”

  “Always the pacifist,” I said. “How do people like you survive in this world?”

  “You survived,” she said, “and you weren’t always a big, tough ogre. As I recall, you were once a sickly little weakling.”

  I felt my face warming. “Ah, you heard that,” I said quietly.

  “You can’t take it back now. I know everything.”

  “Well, it’s just between you and me then,” I said. She smiled and nodded weakly. “You need to rest,” I said. “I have something I need to do. The doctors will take good care of you.”

  She was already asleep.

  I left the hospital and drove straight to Roxy Paton’s office. “What happened to you?” the secretary said. I’d changed my clothes but my face still looked like I’d been hit with a tire iron.

  “You should see the other guy. Is Roxy in?”

  “Yes, but she told me not to let you in the building.”

  “Tell her I can get her daughter back.”

  She looked me up and down and then nodded towards Roxy’s office doors. “Tell her yourself.”

  I tipped my hat to her and walked into Roxy’s office. She was staring at a stack of papers on her desk, and it took her a second to register that I’d come into the room. She looked up, blinking. “What the… what are you doing here? I told security not to let you in here.”

  “Do you want your daughter back, Mrs. Paton?”

  She eyed me suspiciously. “Is that your idea of an apology?”

  “I know you didn’t do it,” I said. “But I had to ask. You understand that, don’t you?”

  Roxy had the look of a woman on the verge of a breakdown. The loss of her daughter had taken a lot out of her. The loss of hope had taken more. When Roxy fired me, she knew I was her last chance. I was the only one who had believed in her. Without that support, Roxy had nothing. Even now I saw a glimmer in her eyes, a hint of the belief that she refused to abandon.

  “Where is Jenny?” she said. “Did you find her?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. But I do know how to find her.”

  “And how is that?”

  “I need you to come with me.”

  Her face hardened and her gaze went distant. I could see her shutting down. Roxy was afraid to believe me, afraid that this was some sort of trick, some way of leading her down a path of false hope. Every time she had to abandon hope Roxy lost Jennifer all over again, and Roxy was afraid of that pain. One more time and she’d lose it. I could see that in her eyes.

  “Mr. Mossberg, I have a very important meeting this afternoon. If you don’t even know where she is-”

  “Is your meeting more important than your daughter?” I said, interrupting her. “Because if it is, maybe she’s better off without you.”

  Anger flared in her eyes, but only momentarily. “You’re serious?” she said, rising from her desk. “You really think you know how to find her?”

  “Yes, but we have to go, now.”

  “Where?”

  “Hawaii.”

  “I already told you, Jenny’s father doesn’t want anything to do with her. He’d have nothing to gain by kidnapping her.”

  “He didn’t,” I said. I grabbed her coat off the rack by the door and threw it at her.

  “Then what are we doing? I don’t understand!”

  “You’re just going to have to trust me,” I said flatly. “You hired me to find your daughter, and I have. So do you want her back, or not?” I knew Roxy wouldn’t believe me if I told her the truth, but I also knew I couldn’t get Jenny back without her.

  She pressed the intercom button on her phone and leaned close to the speaker. “Lexi?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Paton?” said the secretary.

  “Cancel my meeting. It appears that Mr. Mossberg and I are going to Hawaii.”

  Traffic was light and we made it to the airport with time to spare. The security lines were short and we got through in a hurry. I was glad, because I could feel the shortwave radiation bouncing off the x-ray machines and I was anxious to get away from them. Humans don’t notice it, apparently. To me, it’s like standing in a spotlight. I can feel the heat washing over me. I suspect it’s not very healthy for me. Are intense beams of radiation healthy for anything?

  Within the hour, we were in the air. Roxy tried to manage some of her workload through her laptop, but the internet connection was spotty and I could tell that it was hard for her to concentrate. She kept turning to me and asking where we were going, what we were going to do, but I refused to answer. “It will make sense when you see,” I said. “I can’t explain it now, but you’ll understand when we get there.”

  We arrived in Hawaii just before noon. I hailed a cab and asked Roxy for directions to her ex-lover’s office. That was when she got angry. “Tom doesn’t have anything to do with this! How many times do I have to tell you that?”

  “You’re wrong,” I said flatly. “And I’m going to prove it to you.”

  She was aghast. “Didn’t you already agree that he didn’t do it? Why are you changing your story now?”

  “I’m not,” I said. “Tom didn’t do it. Not the way you think.” She was about to jump out of the cab. The driver was watching us expectantly in the rear view mirror.

  “I’m gonna need an address,” he said. “Or I’m gonna start the meter now.”

  I gave her a look. Roxy was about ready to get back on the plane. “I know it sounds crazy, but what if I’m right?” I said. “What if? Are you really willing to walk out on this chance and never find out if she was here? You’re so close, Roxy. You’re so close to having Jenny back, it’s crazy to give up now.”

  “If you’re wrong, I’ll have you killed,” she said. I could see in her eyes that she was serious. I knew better than to take it personally. Roxy was desperate, and she was in a great deal of pain. She’d reached the end of her ability to cope.

  “Roxy, if I put you through all this and didn’t produce your daughter, I wouldn’t blame you for taking out a hit on me. I’d deserve it.” That settled her down. At least it gave her something to think about, some semblance of control over the situation. “So what’s the address?” I said.

  She turned to the driver and told him.

  Fifteen minutes later, we walked into a plush downtown office with an open atrium like an oasis. A waterfall spouted up in the center of the room, surrounded by palm trees and glistening white sand. It was nice, but didn’t quite make sense to me. A person could walk five minutes and see the exact same scene for real. Why bother to reproduce it here? Why not make the office into something different, unique? I guess I just don’t get humans.

  A woman at the front desk looked at us expectantly. “Do you have an appointment?” she said.

  “We’re here to see Tom Blackstone,” Roxy said.

  “Is he expecting you?”

  “No. Just tell him Roxy’s here, please.”

  She dialed him up. “Yes, I have a Roxy here for you, sir. Of course, right away.” She hung up and turned her attention back to us. “Second floor,” she said. “Room two-eleven.”

  As we climbed the broad, shallow staircase I looked down on the oasis and couldn’t help but wish I was anywhere else. As certain as I was that I was doing the right thing, there’s always a margin for error. “What if?” I had said to Roxy. Now I asked myself the same thing: What if?

  If I was wrong, there would be hell to pay. I wasn’t worried so much about myself as I was about Roxy. She couldn’t handle it. She�
��d go over the edge, probably try to commit suicide or maybe end up in a loony bin, and it would all be because of me. Tom wasn’t going to respond well, either. In fact, this wasn’t going to be easy for him either way. If I was wrong, he’d be justified in having me kicked to the curb or arrested. But I wasn’t wrong, and that was going to be even harder for him.

  As we approached Tom’s office, my heart was beating in my chest like a drum and I was sweating all over. I couldn’t help but marvel at the fact that I’d faced down a robotic assassin without flinching, but now, moments before walking into that office, I was terrified.

  I pushed the door open and saw him waiting for us next to the front desk. He was not quite what I expected. Broad shoulders, strong jaw, taller than average. He didn’t seem like the pencil pushing type. “Roxy,” he said with a worried tone in his voice. “What a surprise.”

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  “Of course. Come into my office.”

  He guided us down the hall into a large room decked out with hardwood furniture and autographed sports paraphernalia. He motioned for us to sit on the large leather couch and then he settled behind his desk. “All right,” he said. “What’s this all about?”

  “Jenny’s been taken,” Roxy said.

  “Oh my God,” he said. “What happened?”

  He was genuinely concerned. Either that, or he was a brilliant actor. Roxy looked to me for help. She didn’t know yet why we were there.

  “Tom, it’s time for you to come clean,” I said.

  “What?” he said with an incredulous look. “Are you accusing me of taking Jenny? That’s ridiculous!”

  “That’s what I-” Roxy started to say. I cut her off.

  “No, we know you didn’t take Jenny. But we know you traded her.”

  His face wrinkled into a wild grin but his eyes were furious. “That’s insane,” he said, rising out of his chair. He pointed to the door and furiously said, “If you don’t get out of here-”

  “You were hungry, destitute,” I interrupted. “No one could blame you for promising something like that. After all, how could it even be real? How could the creature do what he said he could do? And your firstborn? What difference did it make? You didn’t have any children… in fact, you didn’t plan to ever have children. It was so easy, so simple. And the creature thought he was clever, but you knew you were smarter. Besides, it was probably all some kind of joke, right?”

  Tom licked his lips and glanced back and forth between us. I could see the truth catching up to him. He’d done his best to forget about it, to lock it out of his memory. They always do, but it never works. So I pressed him.

  “What was the creature’s name, Tom? Did you summon it, or did someone else? Or did it find you? Maybe when you were out in the woods, out hiking in the mountains somewhere?”

  He slumped into his chair and all the color drained from his face. I glanced at Roxy and watched her reaction to this change. “What did you do, Tom?” she said.

  “I… we were camping,” he said. His voice trembled as he spoke. “We were in the redwoods, up in the wilderness north of Ukiah. I was with my roommate and his fiancé. They’d just announced that they were going to move in together and start a family. It was our last big trip together. I had just lost my job at Big Burgers. I didn’t know how I was even going to pay rent that month.”

  “So what happened?” I said.

  “We hiked all day. We went way back into the mountains, until we found this little lake. There was a stream and a waterfall… it was so beautiful. I remember thinking that I wanted to stay there forever.” His mouth was dry, his voice cracking as he spoke.

  “What did you do?” I urged.

  “I think I was going to kill myself,” he said. His voice broke and tears rolled down his cheeks. “I never had a chance, you know? The other kids, they went to college. Their parents had money. They had scholarships and cars. I had nothing. I never had a chance. I saw that beautiful place and I just wanted to stay there forever.”

  He paused as he rose from the desk and went to stare out the window, towards the ocean.

  “I remember thinking that maybe I could just run off into the woods and they’d leave me there. I was thinking that maybe I could live off the land, forage and hunt for food, just never go back to civilization. Then we went to bed, and as I was laying there, I knew it wouldn’t work. I knew I didn’t have it in me. That’s when I decided to kill myself.

  “I took a camp knife and wandered away from the fire. I didn’t want them to find me. I wanted to get far enough away that the bears and mountain lions would eat me first. I walked around the lake and hiked into the woods for an hour or so…” Tom’s voice took on a distant quality as he spoke. I could almost see the place in my mind, the trees, the water rippling in the distance, the cool night air and the smell of the campfire in the woods.

  “I got lost,” he said. “I figured I had gone far enough. I was going to slit my wrists and bleed to death, but before I could do it, I started to hear things, strange noises. I heard voices and music. Naturally I figured I couldn’t kill myself there, not with people so close.”

  “And you were curious,” I said. “You wanted to see who they were, what they were doing way out there in the wilderness.”

  “Exactly. So I tried to sneak up on them. But every time I thought I was close, I’d get to the top of the hill or look around the tree and find nothing.”

  “What about the lights?” I said. “Multicolored lights drifting through the trees? Voices, like children laughing?”

  “Yes,” he said. “How did you know?”

  I grimaced. “Go on.”

  “I chased them around all night. Before I knew it, the sun had come up and it was morning. Then the sounds and the lights were gone, and I was all alone. I was hungry and lost, and I still wasn’t sure if I wanted to die or not. I found a nice little ravine with grapes and blackberries and I picked as many as I could hold, and I started walking. After a few hours, I came to a nice shady creek under the trees. It was so peaceful. I made a little camp there. I made a fire and I ate, and then I fell asleep.

  “A few hours later, as the sun was going down, I woke to the sound of music. Only this time it wasn’t in the distance. It was there, right in front of me. I sat up and there was a man… no he wasn’t a man, but he was like a man. He was small and his face was strange. He had high cheekbones and a long, pointy chin. His eyes… I remember his eyes were so bright, so riveting.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “The fairies led you to him.”

  Roxy looked at me like I was nuts, but Tom just nodded. “I know. I think I may have figured that out. When I woke up he just smiled and said something strange. ‘Good morrow’ I think. Then he started playing that instrument. It was like a guitar, but it wasn’t. It was some sort of…”

  “It was a lute,” I said.

  “Yes. He played it, and the music was just…”

  “Enchanting?” I said.

  “Yes, that’s it exactly! It was enchanting.”

  “He played you a song and then he talked to you,” I said. “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him everything. I don’t know why. It was almost like I’d forgotten myself. Here I was telling this complete stranger every detail of my life. It was the oddest thing, and yet it didn’t feel odd at all. I just told him about my life, about my problems. He smiled and said he could give me everything I wanted. He said I’d have a big house and nice things. Pockets full of gold, he said.”

  “And you agreed?”

  Tom turned to us, a look of distant wonder in his eyes. Tears stained his cheeks. “I don’t know why,” he said. “It was so incredible. So impossible. You were right, of course. When you came in here and said that I’d thought I could trick him. I didn’t ever plan to have a child.” He looked at Roxy, a pathetically sorrowful glance. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to have a child.”

  Roxy was crying at this point too, thou
gh I’m not sure she really grasped any of it. Not yet. “What does this mean?” she said, glancing back and forth between us. “I don’t understand!”

  “It was such a silly thing,” Tom said. “He said he’d give me all that, everything I’d ever wanted, and all I had to do was promise him my firstborn. I didn’t think it was real! I thought he was just a crazy old man.”

  “This is insane,” Roxy said. She started to rise but I put a hand on her arm.

  “Wait,” I said. “Hear him out.” She rolled her eyes at me, but she settled back down. At a certain level, crazy as it was, she already knew this was true. After all, this wasn’t just me talking anymore. It was Tom.

  “The next thing I knew, I was waking up back at camp. I don’t know how I got back there. The whole thing seemed like a dream. When I got back home, there was a message for me on the machine. Someone had a job for me. A really good job.” He looked at Roxy, pleading. “What was I supposed to do? I didn’t go to college. I didn’t have money. Here was this chance, just staring at me. All I had to do was take the job.”

  “So you did,” I said. “And then, when the time was right, you met Roxy.”

  “It was love at first sight,” he said.

  “Of course it was. You came across her at a coffee shop or maybe in line at the supermarket, and you had to have her.”

  “It all happened so fast,” he said. “It was like I wasn’t even in control. I fell so in love with you, Roxy. I couldn’t stop it. I found out who you were. I found out that you were unemployed and I set you up with a job in my office. And then, just a couple months later, you got pregnant. I knew then I had to end it. I knew I couldn’t bear to watch it happen. I even asked you to end the pregnancy, because I was afraid this would happen…”

  “You really did this?” Roxy said in a whisper. “All along you knew, but you didn’t say anything? You didn’t do anything to stop it?”