Just One Bite Read online

  I actually think making tea or coffee might help her—sometimes having something to do with your hands can ease trauma. When my dark thoughts get the better of me, I solve Rubik’s Cubes. But I take the hint.

  “No thanks,” I say. “My name’s Timothy Blake. I’m a civilian consultant, assisting with the search. I was hoping you could tell me a little about Kenneth’s home life?”

  Gabriela fiddles with a gold chain around her wrist. “Of course,” she says again.

  It looks like she doesn’t want to sit down until we do, so I lower myself into an armchair. The cushions are so soft they threaten to swallow me. Thistle sits on a nearby chair. Gabriela descends back to the couch. Hope lingers in the doorway.

  It’s hard to decide which angle to target first. “What was Kenneth’s mental state like in the last few weeks?” I ask.

  “Good,” Gabriela said quickly.

  I wait.

  “He had suffered from depression in the past,” she finally admits. “But not lately. He had been happy. Like he had much to look forward to.”

  Hope nods, confirming this.

  “Okay. How does he usually spend his free time?”

  “He works a lot,” Gabriela says. “Even when he is at home, he is usually reading scholarly papers on the internet.”

  “What about on weekends? Does he go camping, or hiking? I know someone else in his office is a skier.”

  “You mean Shannon? Kenneth is fond of Shannon. I think it was his endorsement that got Shannon the job.”

  I resist the urge to glance at Thistle. Luxford is a bad guy. If Biggs liked him, that could make Biggs a bad guy, too. At best, he’s oblivious.

  “But they never went skiing together,” Gabriela continues. “My husband, he is not very...outdoorsy.”

  “How much cash did he usually carry?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Not very much. A hundred dollars? Perhaps two hundred?”

  Strange to think of a world where that’s not much money. But it puts the ATM withdrawal in context. Definitely not run-away money.

  But if he had two hundred on him already, and withdrew two hundred more, that would be suspect. I’ll have to ask Thistle when he made his second-last withdrawal.

  “Does he own a gun?” I ask.

  Gabriela stiffens. “He has a permit for it.”

  “A hunting rifle?”

  “No. A handgun. He has never fired it. I would like to get rid of it, except they are hard to dispose of safely, and...” She gestures at the TV, looking tormented. “Every night there is a story about a home invasion or a kidnapping. I wanted to install a panic room, but we could not get approval for the renovations. The building’s management is very strict.”

  It’s hard to blame her. My parents were killed by a would-be burglar, and I nearly was, too. It’s not as common as the news makes it seem, but it does happen.

  “Anyway,” she finishes, “Kenneth does not go hunting.”

  Hope turns, walks away toward what I guess is the kitchen. As she passes me, some of her hair shifts and I get a better look at the bald patch on the back of her head.

  It’s scar tissue. It looks to me like an exit wound.

  Some statistics flash through my head. Of those who are shot in the head, five percent survive the injury. And in the USA, most gunshot wounds are self-inflicted.

  It no longer seems strange that Hope works from home, even though the company she works for has an office not far from here. It’s so her parents can keep an eye on her. She and I have something in common. We’ve both survived a suicide attempt.

  I wonder if she, like me, has mixed feelings about it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Jon comes home to find Cleo dead, surrounded by broken glass. He accuses Tom, who doesn’t deny killing her. Why is Tom never arrested?

  “Have you checked that the gun is still here?” I ask Gabriela.

  “Yes,” she says. “Agent Thistle asked me to confirm that none of my husband’s belongings were missing. I checked that the gun was still in the safe.”

  “Any bullets missing?” I ask.

  She hesitates. “I didn’t check.”

  Hope returns with a glass of water. She doesn’t drink it. I guess she just wanted to be out of the room while the gun was discussed.

  “Do you mind if we have a look now?” Thistle asks.

  “That is okay. You stay here, Hope.” Gabriela stands—again I’m struck by how small she is—and leads us to the stairs.

  A wrought-iron spiral staircase leads to the second floor. Christmas lights are wrapped around the banister. They must throw parties sometimes.

  Gabriela climbs slowly, looking more reluctant with every step. I suspect I know why.

  When we reach the top, she leads us into the master bedroom. A king-size bed with a thick mattress and high-thread-count sheets. Cat hair on the duvet, white. Bedside tables with thick books piled atop them. Some of the books on one side are in Spanish. The ones on the other side are popular science. I don’t see anything about cryptography, though. Nor is there any sign of a wheel cipher to match the one Luxford has on his desk.

  Gabriela opens the walk-in closet, revealing dozens of dresses, several suits and a gun safe. I’ve only seen Biggs naked. Strange to think of him in one of these suits.

  Gabriela punches in the combination—6565—retracts the bolts and heaves the door open.

  Like she said, there’s a single handgun in there. A Ruger LCP—inexpensive, reliable and compact, although I’ve heard gun enthusiasts say the trigger-pull sucks, whatever that means. There’s also a box of .380 ACP cartridges.

  “You see...” Gabriela begins.

  I pick up the box and open it. The bullets are lined up in rows and columns like lipsticks in a department store. One is missing—I assume it’s the one that went through Hope’s head. Bullets are easily replaced in Texas, but I can see why Gabriela and Biggs wouldn’t go out and buy a new box right away.

  I cover the missing cartridge with my thumb and show Thistle. “All still there,” I say. Then I close the box and put it back in the safe.

  Gabriela looks at me questioningly. I give a slight nod. She doesn’t have to talk about her daughter’s suicide attempt if she doesn’t want to.

  She gives me a grateful nod in return, and closes the safe door.

  When we get back downstairs, Hope has turned off the TV. “You think Shannon has something to do with what’s happened to my dad?” she asks.

  “We interviewed him this morning,” Thistle says carefully. “At this stage we have no evidence that he did. Why do you ask?”

  “Just not sure who to trust,” she says.

  A grandfather clock ticks softly in the corner.

  “Can I make a private recommendation?” Thistle asks. “Off the record?”

  Hope crosses her arms. “What kind of recommendation?”

  Thistle looks like she’s struggling to find the words. She can’t warn them about Luxford without getting into trouble.

  But I can.

  “Stay away from Shannon Luxford,” I say. “We don’t have any evidence that he’s connected to your husband’s disappearance. But he didn’t strike me as a good guy. If you hear from him, I think you should call us.”

  Gabriela looks shocked. Hope doesn’t. I wonder if she’s heard rumors about what he does in his office.

  “Was Kenneth especially close to anyone in your extended family?” I ask.

  “Most of his family, they live in Tennessee,” Gabriela says. “We never hear from them.”

  “Was there a disagreement?” Thistle asks.

  “They thought I was marrying Kenneth for a green card. They tried to talk him out of it. After the wedding, we lost touch.”

  “Hope,” I say, “can we talk to your mother in private for a second?”
/>   “Why?” Hope asks. A challenge.

  “Suit yourself,” I say, and turn back to Gabriela. “How are things in the bedroom? With your husband?”

  Thistle winces. Gabriela’s cheeks redden.

  “You think he abandoned us,” Hope says. “Ran off with some woman.”

  “No,” I say. “In fact, I’m pretty sure he didn’t. A few more questions and I can rule it out entirely.”

  Gabriela clears her throat. “We have been married for many years,” she says. “We do not...make love as frequently as when we were newlyweds. But still sometimes.”

  “He never cheated on you in the past?” I’m sure Thistle already asked this, but I want to look her in the eye when she answers.

  “No,” she says, and I’d bet my life she thinks she’s telling the truth. “He is a wonderful husband. He stood up to his family for me. He leaves romantic messages around the house for me to find. He throws the most wonderful surprise parties for my birthday—every time he convinces me that this year there will be no party. He loved Tennessee, but when I said I wanted to move to Texas, immediately he started looking at houses here, and jobs. Ever since Hope was born, he has been the most wonderful father to her.”

  I realize that Hope is quietly crying.

  Gabriela looks uncomfortable. Is she hiding something, or just feeling her daughter’s pain?

  “I saw a very glamorous woman in his department this morning,” I say. “A tall blonde, in her thirties, large breasts. You seen anyone like that hanging around?”

  I bring this up mainly to see if she looks suspicious about it.

  “No,” she says, open-faced and anxious. A woman used to trusting her husband.

  I look from her to Hope and back. I can’t tell them Kenneth will be okay, because he’s dead and in my freezer. There’s only one worry I can help erase.

  “Kenneth sounds like a good man,” I say. “He didn’t run away.”

  They look relieved, until they realize what this means.

  I stand up. “Can we borrow his computer?”

  * * *

  Not even lunchtime yet, but I’m desperately hungry by the time we get back to the field office. I’m fidgeting, anxious, distracted. My favorite food is waiting for me at home, and I can’t get to it.

  You’d think that knowing so much about Biggs might stop me from wanting him. But it doesn’t. Most people know that pigs feel stress and that cows grieve when their calves are taken away. They might feel guilty, but they still eat bacon and drink milk.

  So what use is the guilt?

  “I have to tell you something,” I say to Thistle as we carry the computer inside. I have the tower, she has the keyboard and router. No prints on the monitor, so we left it behind.

  Thistle raises an eyebrow.

  “Hope attempted suicide,” I say. “That bald patch on the back of her head was an old exit wound.”

  Thistle frowns, maybe picturing Hope’s hair. “With whose gun? There were no—”

  “I lied. One bullet was missing. The wife looked like she really didn’t want to talk about it, and I didn’t want to push her over the edge, so I pretended they were all there. But I also wanted you to know all the facts.”

  This is true. I may want to sabotage the case, but I also need to know what happened to Biggs. And I’m fast running out of leads. We’re nowhere. I need Thistle’s help.

  “Since when do you care about hurting people’s feelings?” Thistle asks.

  “I guess I felt sorry for her. For both of them.”

  This statement hangs in the air.

  “You picked a hell of a time to go soft on me,” Thistle says finally. “Don’t do that again. I get it—but don’t. Okay?”

  She’s right. I don’t know what got into me. It was easier to be a monster when Thistle wasn’t around, reminding me that I could have turned out different.

  “Okay,” I say.

  We take the elevator down to the basement. Vasquez has an office, but as usual, it’s empty. We find him wandering around the forest of desks, checking the work of his subordinates. Vasquez is a stickler for grammar.

  Basements make me uneasy these days. Nothing good has ever happened in a basement.

  “Maurice,” Thistle says.

  Vasquez says, “Agent Thistle. Didn’t expect to see you today.”

  “Well, here I am,” she says evenly.

  He forces a smile. “What brings you down into my lair?”

  I’m uncomfortably aware of his perfect teeth and muscular arms. When Thistle looks at him there’s a flicker of jealousy in my gut. Which is unfair. I pushed her away, after all. Just the same, I find myself selfishly hoping she realizes that he’s gay.

  “The Biggs disappearance,” Thistle says ominously, like it’s the title of a Ludlum novel. “Got a minute?”

  “Sure.” Vasquez turns to me. “Blake. You working a new case, after all?”

  “Looks that way,” I say. I raise the computer a little. “Got someplace I can put this?”

  “What is it?”

  “Victim’s computer.”

  “Okay. Right this way.”

  He leads us through the basement to an empty desk in the corner and helps us put everything down. He takes a bunch of small blocks—they look a bit like power adaptors—out of a drawer, and puts one on the end of each cable before he plugs it into the server under the desk.

  “What are those?” Thistle asks.

  “We can’t plug an unknown computer directly into our systems,” Vasquez says while he works. “These stop malware from getting through.”

  “Like a computer condom,” I say.

  Thistle stifles a laugh, giving me a warm feeling in my chest. But Vasquez doesn’t look amused.

  “You’re the fifth guy to make that joke, Blake,” he says.

  The monitor lights up. A log-in screen. The password field fills up with a long string of dots. A message flashes up on the screen—Police Bypass Accepted.

  “What exactly are you looking for?” Vasquez asks.

  “I want his emails and his browsing history,” I say.

  “We’d like his text messages, as well,” Thistle says. “I already filed a request upstairs.”

  “You got a warrant for all this?” Vasquez asks.

  “We got the wife’s written permission.”

  “How long will it take?” I ask.

  Vasquez is already hunched over the keyboard as if preparing to dive into the screen. “Depends on a lot of things,” he says. “Which web browser he uses. What his privacy settings are like. If he uses a password manager. If he sends normal text messages or uses an encrypted messaging app.”

  “He was a math professor,” I say. “Cryptography was his hobby.” As I say this, I realize we have only Luxford’s word for it. No evidence at the house.

  “Then it could take forever. That’s not hyperbole. I could use all the world’s computers until the heat death of the universe and not get through.” Vasquez gestures around the room. “I’m sure half these computers are filled with unspeakable videos. But if the suspect used the right kind of encryption, there’s no way I’ll ever prove it.” He scratches his chin. “In fact, I’m surprised the police bypass worked.”

  “Just get us what you can,” Thistle says.

  Her phone rings. She moves away to answer it.

  A flash of paranoia. The voice on the phone could be another cop, saying, We found Kenneth Biggs. He was in Timothy Blake’s freezer.

  Or it could be nothing.

  Vasquez is still tapping away.

  “You gonna work this personally?” I ask.

  “For a while. If it looks like it will actually take until the end of the universe, I’ll farm it out to an intern.”

  “Got it.”

  Vasquez glances up. “It’ll
take even longer with you looking over my shoulder.”

  “Okay, okay.” I back off.

  Thistle ends the call and comes over.

  “Blake,” she says. “We have a problem. A second guy has gone missing.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I have four legs at dawn, two legs at noon, three legs at night. What am I?

  Thistle is driving as fast as she can get away with, no siren. It’s hard for me to read the file with the car bouncing around. But she wants to get to where we’re going—she hasn’t told me where that is—before the trail goes cold.

  So do I. A second victim turns this whole thing upside down.

  “Daniel Ruthven,” I say, reading the missing-persons report aloud; Thistle didn’t have time to look at it before we jumped in the car. “Thirty-one years of age. Unmarried. Last seen two days ago. He’s a low-level construction worker, currently building a fast-food place in Hendrix.”

  “How long has he been doing that for?”

  “Doesn’t say how long he’s been building the fast-food place. But he’s been with the company six years.”

  It’s strange, reading to Thistle while she drives. Feels like the kind of thing a husband would do for his wife. I would feel melancholy if she weren’t driving so terrifyingly fast.

  “There’s a picture, right?” she says. “Does he look like the last victim?”

  The last case we worked together involved victims who looked nearly identical. I turn the page, revealing Ruthven. He’s tall, fat, balding and a decade younger than Biggs. I’m strangely relieved that he isn’t the other guy in my freezer, not that this would have made any kind of sense.

  “They’re both white males,” I say. “But different in every other way. How do you know the cases are connected?”

  Thistle takes another corner like a Nascar driver. “His phone signal,” she says. “The trail goes to a landfill and then just stops. Five days ago.”

  So he’s been missing longer than Biggs. There’s a stirring in my bones. “The same landfill as Biggs’s phone?”

  “Right. Someone is using it as a dumping ground.”

  “Is that where we’re going?”