mail onto one of the cans. When he pushed upward on the frame, it gave an inch or so before binding up. Casey wasn’t one of the people who left their bathroom windows unlocked.
Not that it mattered. From the way the sash had moved, he knew it was locked with a simple lever arrangement hooked into a plate in the sill. The largest of the blades in his Swiss Army knife slid easily into the crack. He maneuvered the blade against the lever, wiggled and prodded until it released from the plate. With his left hand he held it balanced on the blade while he pushed the sash up with his right.
It made a creaking noise, loud enough in his ears to freeze him for a few seconds. Closing the knife, he sidled over to the gate. There was a thin gap between two of the boards, wide enough for a view of the courtyard. Still nobody around. He stayed there for a couple of minutes, watching and listening. No one came out of the other bungalows or into the court from the street.
Back to the window. Illegal trespass: one more risk, one more felony added to those he’d already committed- and the hell with worrying about it. He hoisted himself into the opening, ducked his head under the sash, corkscrewed his body until he had one leg and then the other inside.
The bathroom was just large enough for a stall shower, sink, toilet. The toilet was positioned directly below the window, its seat lowered and hidden inside a furry pink cover. He stepped down onto the linoleum floor, then out into a short hallway.
Two small bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining alcove, a living area with a gas-log fireplace-all the rooms small, almost cramped, and smelling faintly of dust and the mustiness of places closed up for more than a few days. The bungalow had come furnished-the bland sparseness of the pieces told him that-and Casey hadn’t made much of an effort to personalize it. But she kept a neat house. Everything in its place, the kitchen sink and counters scrubbed clean, the beds made, the books and other kid things in Kevin’s room put away.
Fallon started in the living room, with no idea of what he was looking for. Something, anything-new information, a fresh lead, another straw.
In one corner was a secretary desk, a Dell PC and monitor perched on it. He turned the computer on, booted it up. Casey hadn’t installed a password; he was able to open her mailbox and document files. All of the E-mails she’d received during the past week were spam. And all that was stored on the hard drive were a tax file listing income and expenses, another file of PG &E online receipts, and a handful of video games. The Web sites she’d bookmarked told him nothing, either. Health sites dealing with asthma and women’s issues, YouTube, eBay, kid- related sites.
He made himself take his time going through the desk drawers and pigeonholes, putting whatever he looked at back where he’d found it. The usual paperwork: bills, receipts. A Book-of-the-Month Club flyer, a brochure from a youth camp. In one of the drawers was her checkbook, and a filled transaction register; the combined entries went back nearly six months. Rent, water and garbage, MasterCard, doctor, dentist, a day-care outfit that had probably looked after Kevin when he wasn’t in school and she was working. None of the checks had been written to private individuals.
He scanned through the deposits. On Friday of every week, she banked the salary and commissions she earned from Vernon Young Realty, noted as such in the register-all modest sums. But there were other deposits as well, regularly posted at the beginning of each month, each in the amount of $1,000. The source of that money wasn’t noted. He booted up the computer again, checked the tax file. No record of the monthly $1,000. So where did it come from and why wasn’t she listing it as income?
There was nothing else in the desk. Or in the rest of the living room; he opened every drawer, even lifted the cushions on the couch and two chairs and examined the backs of the pictures on the walls. The kitchen next. Drawers and cabinets, the refrigerator and its freezer compartment- nothing. He went from there into Casey’s bedroom.
The first thing that drew his attention was a silver-framed 8 ? 10 photograph on the nightstand. Professionally done head-and-shoulders color portrait of Kevin, his pale hair neatly brushed, his mouth shaped into a shy smile. In this photo you could see that his eyes were light brown, with long, fine lashes. Fallon felt his chest constrict. The boy didn’t look anything like Timmy, really. But the longer he looked at Kevin’s likeness, the more it seemed to morph into Timmy’s.
A dog-eared paperback novel, a package of tissues, a tube of hand cream, and a pair of nail clippers were the only contents of the nightstand drawer. He turned to the mirrored dresser. On top was a teakwood jewelry box that contained a tray of earrings, two bracelets, a necklace, and a brooch, none of the pieces expensive. The dresser drawers held nothing but lingerie and folded shirts and T-shirts.
The closet. Dresses, pantsuits, blouses, slacks, jackets, and a pair of raincoats on hangers; a rack of shoes, an umbrella on the floor; some boxes on the shelf above. All the clothing pockets were empty. He took the boxes down one by one. Some kind of fancy gown in the first, baby clothes in the second. The third contained mementoes, most relating to Kevin-a gold-plated baby spoon, a wallet of baby photos, a lock of fine blond hair. None of the other items meant anything to him, except for a woman’s plain gold wedding band without an inscription. He wondered fleetingly why she’d kept it. Not for sentimental reasons, not the way she felt about Court Spicer.
In the bathroom he scanned the contents of the medicine cabinet. The usual over-the-counter medicines and first-aid items, a prescription vial of Ambien, a packet of birth-control pills, an asthma inhaler.
Kevin’s bedroom. Fantasy books, a Nintendo Game Boy, a stuffed tiger with a torn ear, a poster illustration from one of the Harry Potter novels. The boy’s clothing neatly put away in his dresser and closet. Everything in place, awaiting his return.
Fallon went out of there, hesitated, then on impulse stepped into Casey’s bedroom again. He stood sweating in the stuffy air, looking around. He wasn’t sure why-just a vague feeling that he’d missed something the first time. Under the bed? He dropped to all fours, lifted the bedskirt to peer beneath. The only things on the carpet were a pair of skeletal dust mice.
When he straightened, his gaze was on the bureau-on the teakwood jewelry box. Its size registered on him for the first time: twelve inches wide, eight or nine inches deep. He opened the lid again. The tray with the earrings and other pieces was only a couple of inches deep, which meant another six inches or so of space. It took a little effort to lift the tray out; there was a fingertip catch that you couldn’t see unless you put an eye down close to it. And underneath- A ribbon-tied sheaf of handwritten notes, a wallet-sized photo album, two small jewelry cases. Casey’s secret stash, hidden away in the one place where a small boy was least likely to stumble across them.
Fallon opened the cases first, both of which bore Tiffany’s labels. Their velvet-lined innards were empty, the expensive jewelry they’d contained hocked or sold to finance Sam Ulbrich’s investigation. Presents from Spicer, bought with the blackmail money from David Rossi. That was what he thought until he read through the bundled notes, looked at the photos.
Those told a different story. The true story about the source of the jewelry, and a lot of other things too.
They told him what she’d withheld from Ulbrich and from him-some of it, anyway. Deliberate lies of omission that had led him in all the wrong directions and jeopardized his freedom.
They told him who might be responsible for Spicer’s death.
They told him the probable reason for her and Kevin’s disappearance, and how he could go about finding them now.
The notes were all brief, written in a precise, backslanted male hand, some containing promises and sexual innuendo. Only a few were dated; the earliest was October 2000. All were signed with a single initial. The color snapshots were of a lean, handsome man in his forties, of Casey, of the two of them together. Just them, nobody else. Several had been taken around a garden swimming pool with rows of palm trees in the background; in one of those, she’d struck a provocative pose wearing only a pair of bikini swim pants. Fallon took that one out of its glassine envelope. Written in purple ink on the back, in a different hand from the letters-Casey’s hand-was “V. and me, Indio, 7/03.”
V. The same initial that was on the notes.
V for Vernon. Vernon Young.
She’d been having an ongoing affair with her boss that dated back a long time before her divorce from Court Spicer.
FOUR
