The Wrong Side of a Gun Read online

“I’ll tell you when it’s safe. You have to trust me.”

  For half a minute neither spoke and the former Helen Quinn drove at exactly the speed limit, no more, no less.

  “I don’t like my new name,” Nicole complained. “I don’t want to be ‘Elaine.’ I want to be Brittany, or Kristen. Why can’t I be Kristen?”

  Helen compressed her lips into a tight line.

  “Because your new birth certificate says that your name is ‘Elaine’ so that’s what it has to be.”

  “Can’t we get another birth certificate but this time make my name ‘Kristen’?”

  “No, Elaine, we can’t.”

  “But–”

  “Your name is ‘Elaine’ and my name is Phyllis and that’s all there is to it. Forever. No matter what. And I never, ever want to hear ‘Helen’ or ‘Nicole’ come out of your mouth for as long as you live. Do you understand me!” Helen, now Phyllis, shouted.

  “Yes,” Nicole, now Elaine, said in a whisper.

  “What’s my name?” Phyllis demanded.

  “Phyllis.”

  “I can’t hear you. What’s my name?”

  “Phyllis.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Elaine.”

  “Louder. Say it like you mean it. What’s your name?”

  “Elaine!” her little voice shouted from the shadows shrouding the passenger seat.

  “That’s better. Now push the button on your seat and move it back. Try to get some sleep. We have a long way to go before we can stop. A long, long way.”

  As Elaine Derwent lay back and closed her eyes, Phyllis Derwent’s three year-old silver Camry raced across the desert and bored off into the night.

  Chapter Three

  LOS ANGELES, NOVEMBER, NINE YEARS AGO

  “You know,” Virgil said, fighting a yawn, “sooner or later the Internet’s going to screw us over.” He waved his fingers vaguely in the direction of the China Girl Massage Studio.

  “Meaning what, exactly?” Janet asked.

  “How many targets have we caught coming out of strip clubs, massage parlors, arcades, movie theaters, wherever?”

  “I can’t wait to hear where this is going.”

  “Think about it. What happens when everybody does all that kind of crap on-line? You want to get laid? Click the mouse and an hour later the girl shows up at your door. You want to see naked women? Click the mouse. You want to watch the new Bourne movie–”

  “Click a button. I get it.” Janet glanced at the Crown Vic’s clock. Across the street the China Girl’s sign flickered and then went dark. “Maybe tonight our guy just clicked the mouse,” Janet said.

  “This moke? No, we just picked the wrong joint. Tomorrow we’ll stake out the Thai place.”

  “I can hardly wait. You want to get something to eat? I’ve got a roast chicken in the fridge. I could heat up some mashed potatoes.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got something I have to do.”

  Janet reached over and took Virgil’s hand. “You’re the best tracker in the Service, Virgil. It’ll work out. You’ll find her.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Quinn said, staring straight ahead at the darkened storefront.

  “Helen running away? You said it yourself. She’s–”

  “Not her running away. I know she’s a crazy bitch. I just didn’t know how crazy, how close to the line she was but. . . .” Virgil pulled his hand away in frustration, “What I can’t figure out is how she’s managed to stay hidden for this long. I should have found her in six days, hell two days, and it’s been six months!”

  Janet was quiet for a moment and almost took Virgil’s hand a second time, but then pulled back.

  “Maybe it’s what you just said.”

  “What I–”

  “The Internet. Maybe she found some specialist in disappearing and she hired him to help her. Maybe you’re up against a pro who did it all for her.”

  “That can’t be cheap, and there weren’t any big withdrawals from our account. Where would she get the money?”

  “Jeez, Virgil,” Janet said, half-laughing, “from you of course.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “How does she buy gas? How does she buy Nicole’s clothes? She gets cash from the ATM, right, or cash back from the Safeway? Then she buys stuff with it. You don’t have a CPA auditing every grocery bag, do you? Twenty dollars here, forty there. Maybe she lies to you about the car needing a new fuel pump and she pockets the money. Maybe you gave her a nice Christmas present and she returned it for cash. Week after week after week, it adds up. Before you know it she’s got three thousand, four? That ought to be enough to buy her some expert help and a new identity.”

  Janet watched Quinn’s expression slip from confused through thoughtful to concerned.

  “That doesn’t mean you won’t find her. And think about the bright side.”

  “The bright side! What the hell would the bright side be?” Virgil almost shouted.

  “Once you find the crazy bitch you’ll be guaranteed sole custody. No big battle in family court. No visitation every other weekend. She’ll be locked up and you and Nicole will be able to move on with your lives, make a clean start.” Janet pulled Virgil’s hand between her two palms. “You’ll be able to be with someone who’ll treat you right, who’ll love you the way you deserve to be loved.”

  For a couple of seconds Quinn stared blankly at the deserted street, then turned toward her.

  “Janet, you know, you and me, we. . . .” he began but let his voice trail off.

  After a couple of heartbeats Janet forced her lips into a weak smile and released Virgil’s hand. “That’s OK, Verg. We can leave all that for later, for after you find them. After we find them.”

  “I can’t drag you into this,” Virgil said hoping that she would let it go.

  “We’re partners. I’m here for you.”

  “I appreciate that. If I come up with a lead you can help me with, well, that would be great. . . . What do you say we call it a night?”

  “Actually,” Janet said, drawing out the word, “I’ve been thinking about this and I had an idea.”

  “What kind of an idea?”

  “I was thinking about Helen’s disappearance from the other end. Her phone, her credit cards, her car, they were all dead ends, but that makes sense. Whoever helped her knew that they’d be the first places you’d look so he had her dump them and he got her new ones.”

  “I figured that much out for myself. What does ‘the other end’ mean?”

  “Her picture went out to every cop in the state. Before she did anything else, she had to get out of Southern California, otherwise she’d be running the risk that somebody might spot her. So how did she leave? She didn’t fly. The ID checks on planes are too tight. Trains are almost as bad. A bus? She was still a middle-aged woman with a ten-year-old child. People would notice her. There are surveillance cameras in bus stations and whoever helped her would know that we would check all of them out. So, what’s left? She had to drive. It was the only real option.”

  “Again, I figured that out for myself.”

  “OK, so you checked car sales for the week or two before she skipped. But you didn’t find anyone who sold a car to a woman matching her description. Right?”

  “Janet, where are you going with this?”

  “A lot of cars are sold in Los Angeles and you had to narrow down the list. You put limits on the ones you checked out.”

  “Sure. It had to be all-cash because she wouldn’t have had an identity that would have stood up to a bank credit check,” Virgil agreed.

  “And because it was all-cash it had to be a cheap car. What, two thousand or less?”

  “Three. . . . Wait, do you think it was more?” Virgil asked, shaking his head. “I don’t care how much she skimmed from the grocery money, there’s no way she could have come up with more than that and still have had enough left to live on while she was on the run.”

  “W
hat if she had more money than you think? Maybe a lot more. What if she was planning this for years?”

  “No, no way!” Virgil snapped, waving his hands like an umpire calling off a pitch.

  “What about her friends? Was she close to anyone who could have financed her?”

  “Friends? Helen?” Virgil gave a sour laugh. “It was all I could do to keep her from putting security bars on the windows and home-schooling Nicole. People terrified her.”

  “Family then?”

  “Her father and mother were divorced. She was on the outs with her mother and her father died two years before she ran.”

  “Did she inherit any money from him?”

  “No,” Virgil said, half an answer and half a question.

  “How do you know?”

  “She told me he was broke, living on social security.”

  “What if she lied?” Janet asked in a voice barely above a whisper.

  Virgil’s lips parted slightly and his eyes seemed to lose focus.

  “Jesus,” he whispered. “What if she lied?”

  * * *

  Janet clicked the mouse and ran through the same trail she had blazed seven months before. Her U.S. Marshals’ password and a few keystrokes got her access to the California DMV database. A few more clicks brought up the contents of the form 138s, “Notice Of Transfer And Release Of Liability”, filed during the month before Helen vanished. Next she exported the list of the transferee’s names to a script that ran them against California drivers’ licenses and flagged the buyers who didn’t have a driver’s license. And . . . bingo, there was Helen’s new name – Susan Carey Meadows!

  Janet printed out the Meadows’ seller’s 138 form and dropped it on Virgil’s desk.

  “What’s this?” he asked, looking at her over his shoulder.

  “Two weeks before Helen disappeared the seller, Hector Ramirez, sold his 2005 Honda Civic to Susan Meadows but as far as the DMV is concerned Susan Meadows doesn’t exist. I think we should pay Mr. Ramirez a visit and show him Helen’s picture.”

  A search on Ramirez’s name and address turned up his social security number which gave them his employer’s name. The address came back to a furniture distributor on Industrial just west of Mateo.

  Virgil pulled around an eighteen-wheeler cautiously backing up to a loading dock and he and Janet headed for a door marked “Receiving & Pickup.” Inside a brown-skinned man so huge that his clipboard looked like a toy glanced first at Virgil then at the star in his hand and took half a step back.

  “U.S. Marshals,” Virgil said. The man looked nervously to his left. In the shadows between towering rows of shelves half a dozen men scurried toward the back door.

  “I’m looking for Hector Ramirez,” Virgil told him.

  “Hector’s a citizen.”

  “I don’t care about that stuff. We,” Virgil nodded toward Janet, “don’t have anything to do with ICE. We just need to talk with Mr. Ramirez.”

  “You’re not from immigration?”

  “Worlds apart,” Virgil said and decided that the guy was from Samoa or maybe Tonga.

  The man paused for a moment then picked up a phone.

  “Say, uhhh, Hector, there are some people here in Receiving who want to talk to you. . . . U.S. Marshals,” he whispered. “Uhhh, OK. . . . He says he’ll be right here.”

  A couple of minutes later a chunky man with oiled, wavy black hair emerged from between two rows of steel shelves.

  “Hector Ramirez,” he said, holding out his hand. “Deputy U.S. Marshal,” Ramirez mumbled, reading Quinn’s ID aloud. Then he looked up and laughed.

  “How’s that funny?” Janet asked.

  “Man oh man, you scared the shit out of my guys,” he said smiling. “I should be pissed. Half my crew just ran out the back door. It’s gonna take an hour to round them all up again.”

  “Sorry about that,” Virgil said with a shrug.

  “Well, hell, they work cheap, so there’s that. Anyway, what can I do for you?”

  “It’s about your car, the Civic,” Virgil said, holding out a copy of Ramirez’s Notice Of Transfer form. Ramirez gave it a quick glance then handed it back.

  “Was it involved in an accident or something, because it’s not my responsibility what the buyer did with it. It says so right there on the form, ‘Release Of Liability.’“

  “We’re just trying to identify the buyer, Susan Meadows. Could you look at these pictures and see if you recognize her in any of them?”

  Virgil pulled six 3 X 5 photos from his coat pocket. Hector leafed through them one-by-one then stopped at number four.

  When he said “Yeah, this is her,” and tapped Helen’s photo, Virgil let out a sigh of relief. “So, what did she do?” Ramirez asked.

  “We just need to talk to her,” Janet repeated. “When she bought your car did she show you any identification?”

  “No, just the money. She paid in cash so I didn’t really care who she was.”

  “Where did you get the buyer’s information you put on the DMV form?” Virgil asked.

  “From her. I printed the form off the Internet in advance because I knew I would have to fill it out. That wasn’t the first car I had ever sold, and I didn’t want to get stuck with any parking tickets or whatever bills she ran up.”

  “So, you just asked her for her info and wrote down what she told you?”

  “More or less. Why? Did she rob a bank or something?”

  “No. How did she get to your house? Did she drive or did someone drop her off?”

  “My house? I don’t let anybody off Craig’s List near my house. No, I met her at the Home Depot on Slauson. She gave me the cash and I gave her the keys and I signed the Pink Slip. She got in and drove away and my son, Oskar, took me home in his car. . . . Was it drugs? Was she smuggling drugs in my car, well, what used to be my car?”

  Virgil gave Janet a quick glance then stuck out his hand.

  “We want to thank you for your help, Mr. Ramirez. Sorry about scaring off your employees.”

  “Independent contractors. We make them all sign an independent contractor form to keep the paperwork straight.”

  “Right,” Virgil said, catching a couple of faces peeking from between the massive shelves. “Independent contractors.”

  * * *

  “We’ve got her new name,” Janet said, smiling, once they were back in their car.

  “If that’s really the name she’s using.” Virgil frowned and turned left on Industrial. “You heard him. It was all verbal. If she was smart enough to get that far she was probably smart enough not to give him the real name she’s using on her new papers.”

  Janet nodded solemnly, but inside, her heart was singing. Susan Carey Meadows was the name Janet had helped Helen pick out for her new ID. Now it was all coming together. Janet would be instrumental in Virgil tracking Helen down and with Helen locked up and Virgil out from under their nightmare of a marriage he would finally see her clearly, realize what they could have together. For a moment she even allowed herself to daydream about maybe, someday, adopting Nicole, raising her as her own child. Mrs. Virgil Quinn. Janet glanced at Virgil when he squealed the tires turning right on Mateo, heading for the 10.

  “Why the long face? You should be happy.”

  “I don’t buy the Meadows name, not for a second.”

  “Even if you’re right, we’ve still got her car. We’ll put out a BOLO on the Civic in Oregon and Nevada, maybe Arizona and Utah too. Someone’s going to spot it sooner or later.”

  Virgil didn’t reply, just stared nervously at the landscape until they turned north on the 101.

  * * *

  The next morning Janet found Quinn slumped in his chair with the Marshals’ screen saver bouncing around his monitor. She grabbed a cup of coffee from the break room, doused it with a couple of tablespoons of powdered creamer, then gently shook him awake.

  “Were you here all night?” she asked, handing him the cup.

  “No, I left ar
ound midnight. I decided it would be a good idea to get drunk. One thing led to another and I never made it home. Home. That’s a laugh.”

  “Were you celebrating? Did you get a new lead?”

  “Oh, sure. I got a lead all right. . . . Straight down a well at the end of a dead-end street.” Quinn threw the mouse across the desk.

  “What happened?” A sour ache began to churn Janet’s stomach.

  “Two days before she skipped, Susan Carey Meadows sold the Civic for cash to a Scott Almonson who lives in Culver City. He likes it. He says it’s a great car except that the passenger rear tire had a slow leak. . . . Shit!” Virgil exploded and pounded his desk.

  Sold it? Janet’s mind was racing. When she had dropped Helen off to buy the Civic at the Home Depot the plan was for her to leave it in the Von’s lot near the airport then, when she was going to make her escape, she would dump her Subaru at LAX and take a bus back to the Von’s and pick up the Civic. From there she was supposed to park the Honda at the end of her block out of sight of the surveillance camera, get Nicole, walk to the Honda, drive to Vegas, and live under the Susan Carey Meadows name for at least a year. The bitch lied to me and switched up the plan!

  “What about the Susan Meadows name? Any credit cards, bank accounts or cell phones in it?” she asked, an edge of fear creeping into her voice.

  “Nada,” Virgil said, rubbing his bloodshot eyes.

  “OK . . . OK.” Janet’s head was spinning. There has to be something I can do, she told herself. “Then she bought another car. We can go back to the list of vehicle transferees and find another fake car buyer.”

  “I already did that. I found three, all males.”

  “Maybe one of them bought the car for her. We can add those plates to the BOLO.”

  “I already did that, but I’m not optimistic. She’s been this careful. I don’t think she would have hired some stranger to buy a car for her. First, she’d have to find someone to do it. Second, she’s terrified of strange men. And third, I don’t see her giving ten or fifteen thousand in cash to some guy off Craig’s List and trusting him to buy her a car and then meekly hand her the keys. Why would he when he could just keep the money and walk away?”