made him think she’d be on duty?
“I’m doing your job, Detective. Do you have anything new?” The edge to his voice made her bristle. Curiosity wrestled with insult as she struggled for an appropriate reply.
“I can’t do a job that I’m not authorized to do, Dr. Frank,” she said more sharply than she meant to. What did the man think he was doing in San Diego? He must be crazy.
“I’m sorry,” he amended hastily. “I meant the police, not you.”
“Okay.” She accepted his apology. “Then the answer is no. I tried to call both you and your wife, and neither of you has returned my calls.”
“You called my wife?” Now he was surprised.
“Was that a wrong thing to do, Doctor? I thought it might help to get
“Well, I think I might have something.…”
“Oh? What do you have?” Crazier and crazier. How could he have something?
“I have a name, but I can’t locate the guy. He doesn’t seem to be around. Do you have any suggestions?”
“What do you think you’re doing?” April demanded.
“I thought I’d pay him a visit, but he doesn’t seem to be around.”
Pay him a visit? Was he crazy? April’s heart constricted with anxiety. This was her case. Sergeant Joyce had given it to her and told her to be diplomatic. She had failed, and now the doctor was out there looking for some letter-writing lunatic on his own. What if he found him and got his head bashed in?
“You can’t do that,” April said loudly. “Come home, get a lawyer. Get an injunction against him. Dr. Frank, please listen to me. You can’t help your wife this way.”
“There may be more to it.”
“What do you mean?”
“He may have done some … other things.”
April took a deep breath. “What kind of things, Doctor?”
“I talked with his aunt. He has a psychological profile that definitely indicates he was a troubled boy. He set fires. He threatened other children. He may have been institutionalized somewhere. Maybe nobody’s been paying any official attention to him for a while. Maybe they have.”
“Okay,” April said, quickly pulling herself together and making up her mind. She didn’t like the urgency in the doctor’s voice. When civilians got involved in police business, things always went wrong. “The thing to do is call Sergeant Bob Grove of the San Diego Police Department. I’ve been in contact with him. Ask Grove to check if this guy has a sheet, a criminal record.… But, Dr. Frank, even if this man doesn’t have a sheet,
“Uh-huh. Sergeant Grove? What’s that number?” Dr. Frank asked.
April looked up her notes on the Ellen Roane case and read the number to him. “Uh, Dr. Frank. What’s the man’s name? The man you think is writing the letters. I’ll try to work on it from here, see what I can find.”
He told her the name. She wrote it down on a fresh sheet of paper. Troland Grebs. She hung up and looked at it. What kind of name was that?
Sanchez had long since finished his conversation with his mother. He leaned over April’s desk. “What’s going on?”
“Can you believe this? That crazy doctor went out to San Diego,” she said, her nose wrinkling up with deep suspicion and concern. “And unless the wife doesn’t like the police or doesn’t return her calls, I bet she’s gone somewhere, too.” It was all very difficult and out of control.
A few minutes later a call came in about a robbery on Central Park West, and Sergeant Joyce sent them out on it.
43
Jason broke the connection, then dialed the number Detective Woo had given him. Her advice not to look for Grebs came too late. He had already gone to the address the aunt gave him. He had driven all the way up the coast to Queen Palm Way, off Crown Avenue. It wasn’t easy to find. He had to cross the small bridge over a dry gully twice before he located Queen Palm Way, so well was it hidden behind a short street of slightly dowdy stores and restaurants, not too far from the beach. When he got to Grebs’s apartment building, the manager told Jason he hadn’t seen Grebs for nearly a week. There were no lights in the place, no sounds of running water. No Harley- Davidson.
Jason was in his room at the Meridien, puzzled now. He had called Emma a dozen times all afternoon, and she still wasn’t home. It wasn’t like her. Six hours had gone by since she left a message for him to call her right away.
He had his notes spread out on the desk. In the mirror he could see out the window behind him to the bay and the docks on the other side of the water. Funny city. The skyline was dominated by the view of navy shipyards and warships of various sizes. He had no idea which were which.
The fact that he didn’t know which ship was which suddenly pierced him with sadness for Emma. He felt a lot of sadness out here. Emma had spent her childhood watching these ships, drawing pictures of them when she was little, counting the days she was allowed to visit on them as the most exciting of her life. All she ever wanted was to be the one to get on a ship and sail away from those faraway places she didn’t choose to be. He reached for the phone.
“Missing Persons, Sergeant Beasly.”
“Uh, I think I’ve got the wrong department. I’m calling for Sergeant Grove,” Jason said.
“Who’s calling?”
“It’s Dr. Jason Frank from New York.” He added, “Detective April Woo of the New York Police gave me his name.”
“I’ll see if Grove’s here.”
Missing Persons. Why did she give him the name of someone from Missing Persons? Jason tapped his pen against the table nervously. Where was Emma? Emma waited for him. That was what she did when she wasn’t working. She waited for him to come home, or call. Occasionally she went to the theater with a friend, but she didn’t go out alone at night.
He wanted to kick himself. He always assumed Emma was all right because she never complained and whined the way Nancy had. Acid roiled around in his empty stomach. The corn muffin was long gone, replaced with burning guilt for neglecting his wife and insisting all was well in their world because all was well in his.
What if Grove wasn’t there? What if he was wrong and it wasn’t this Grebs person? What if it was somebody else and he was wasting his time? What the hell did he think he was doing? Was he altogether crazy to be out here?
He shook his head, ran his hand through his hair. Had to be this guy. But where was he?
“Grebs takes off for days sometimes,” the manager at Grebs’s apartment building had told him. It wasn’t at all unusual.
“Takes off? Where does he go?”
“I think he likes to go down to Mexico.” The manager was a small freckled person with a red nose and thinning red hair.
“Why?” Jason asked.
“Who knows?” The man looked off into the middle distance. “I just get that feeling. Strange fella.”
“Strange in what way?” Jason’s anxiety escalated, but he kept his features neutral.
“You know, those eyes, like marbles. See right through you. Pays on time, though. And he’s a terrific mechanic, always out there working on that bike. Hell of a bike, ain’t it?”
Yeah. Jason nodded. He’d heard it was a hell of a bike. He wondered where it was. And where was Grebs, with the eyes like marbles.
