after abandoning the Toyota. There wasn’t any child porn or sick souvenirs or anything along those lines-not that that meant much one way or another. Just those crayoned words on the closet wall. And they still weren’t enough to bring in the cops yet.
In the living room, while Runyon continued to poke around, I called Mick Savage on my cell phone. “New developments,” I told him. “Better you don’t know the details. How deep have you gotten into Robert Lemoyne’s background?”
“Pretty deep, but there’s nothing so far.”
“He own a second home anywhere?”
“No way,” Mick said. “He doesn’t even own the one in San Leandro. Long-term lease.”
“What about ties or access to rural property of some kind? A hunting or fishing club he belongs to, for instance.”
“Uh-uh. He’s not a joiner, isn’t even registered to vote.”
“His ex-wife, the second one, the mother of his daughter… what’s her name?”
“Mia Canfield.”
“Didn’t you tell me she’s from someplace rural?”
“More or less. Little town called Rough and Ready, near Grass Valley.”
“And Lemoyne lived there with her while they were married?”
“Right, he did.”
“See if you can find out if she’s still in Rough and Ready. If not, where she’s living now. In any case, on what kind of property and if it’s a house or a trailer.”
“You mean a mobile home?”
“Trailer,” I said. “Trailer in the woods.”
“I’m on it,” Mick said. “Call you back as soon as I have something.”
Runyon had been listening. He said as I pocketed the cell phone, “Stay here or wait outside?”
“In here. Lights off.”
We went around the place throwing switches, returned to the living room by flashlight. I checked the street outside. Quiet, sleeping. All the houses I could see were dark now. We settled down to wait on opposite ends of an old couch with squeaky springs.
Sitting there, I had a flashback to the time, years ago, when I was a kidnap victim-taken at gunpoint by a man I’d sent to prison, driven to a remote mountain cabin, chained to a wall, and left there to die. Three months I’d spent alone and shackled in that cabin, during which time I’d nearly lost both my sanity and my humanity. Time had built a wall around that period of suffering, brick by brick, and the wall had gotten thick enough so I seldom thought or dreamed about those lost months anymore. But Tamara’s abduction had breached the wall, allowed the images and emotions to leak through.
Here one day, gone the next-suddenly, without warning. Family, lovers, friends, business associates left wondering, desperate for news and dreading what the news might be. So much of that kind of lunacy these days, the high-profile cases like Chandra Levy and Laci Peterson, all the low-profile tragedies that never came to the attention of the media or were ignored because they weren’t sensational enough. Some disappearances never explained, others resolved after months or years and too often with grisly results. Even the high-profile cases quickly shunted aside in favor of the next one to come along; human beings forgotten except by their families and the compilers of statistics. That was what would’ve happened in my case, if I hadn’t managed to escape from that cabin and track down the man who put me there; and at that, the media splash following my return had lasted only a short while and now the incident was remembered by only the few who had been directly affected. It hurt like hell, remembering and thinking of Tamara going through the same kind of thing I’d endured, of her becoming just one more statistic-missing and never found, victim of foul play…
Runyon was saying something. “What was that, Jake?”
“Thinking out loud. If Mick can’t find a lead, then what?”
“No choice. We’ll have to take it to the law.”
“Could mean trouble for us. Tamara’s message might not be enough to justify criminal trespass.”
“I know it. Too many missing persons and child abductions these days, and in this goddamn litigious society everybody’s afraid of a lawsuit. The law can’t push as hard as it used to, or afford to give as much latitude to get the job done. They… ah, Christ.”
Runyon said nothing, but it was plain he felt the same.
“If they do try to bust our chops,” I said, “I’ll take full responsibility. Right now I don’t give a damn about my license, but there’s no reason you should have yours suspended.”
“The hell with that. Joint decision, joint responsibility.”
“Mick better come up with something, and fast. I want it to keep being up to us, Jake. Until we know one way or the other about Tamara and the child.”
“So do I.”
One way or the other. Alive or already dead.
When the cell phone went off, I was in that shutdown, half-dozing state you can sometimes drift into in a situation like this, brought on by a combination of inertia and an overload of tension. The noise sat me bolt upright on the couch, fuzzy-headed for a couple of seconds until I realized what it was. I muttered a profanity and dragged the thing out of my pocket.
“Got something,” Mick said. “Mia Canfield Lemoyne owns rural property in Rough and Ready, inherited it from her father. Looks like that’s where she and Lemoyne lived when they were married.”
“Still living there now?”
“I can’t find any record of her whereabouts after she divorced him three years ago. Probably means she moved out of state with the daughter. If he’s paying alimony or child support it’s not through his checking account, so I couldn’t trace her that way.”
“But she does still own the property.”
“That’s the interesting part. It’s still in her name, and the taxes are current. But her listed mailing address on the tax rolls is eleven-oh-nine Willard, San Leandro.”
“… So Lemoyne is paying the taxes?”
“Looks that way. Part of their divorce settlement, maybe. The records on that are sealed.”
“Important thing is that he probably still has access to the property. What’s the address?”
“That’s the bad news,” Mick said. “All I’ve been able to get off the Net is a parcel number.”
“What do you mean, parcel number?”
“That’s the way it’s listed on the tax rolls. Parcel 1899-A6. It’s in an unincorporated section near Rough and Ready, and Nevada County’s small-they don’t have data available online on property that hasn’t changed hands within the past couple of decades. Mia Canfield’s dad died in ‘sixty-five, when she was seven years old. She was raised by an uncle.”
“Then how the hell do we find out where it is?”
“I should’ve been able to get it from Dataquick or one of the other real estate databases, but there’s no listing anywhere. Same reason, probably-small county, same owner for nearly forty years. Either that or a glitch. The Internet’s not perfect, though if I have anything to say about it, someday it will be.”
“There must be some way to get the address. What about when she and Lemoyne lived there-utilities, banks, credit card companies would have records of it, wouldn’t they?”
“I checked,” Mick said. “Their mailing address the whole time was a P.O. box in Rough and Ready.”
“Dammit.”
“There’s a chance the P.O. would have a record of it. I could hack into their files, but that’s a federal offense. Even in a case like this… it’d jeopardize the agency and Sharon would kill me if she found out.”
“Forget it. I wouldn’t let you take that kind of risk. Isn’t there any other way we can get the information tonight?”
“Not without official help, through channels.”
“Take too long,” I said. “So the only option is to wait until morning, get it from the county recorder’s office.”
“Afraid so. The county seat is Nevada City, county offices open for business at nine o’clock. I checked that, too.”
