Abducted: A Jake Badger Mystery Thriller (2 page)

Chapter 2

Late Monday Morning

Alex
and I drove to Monica's office. Alex didn’t say much. He knew I was worried
about Monica. Who could have taken her? Where’d they take her? Had they hurt
her? Would they contact anyone? If their motive
was
revenge for something she had done, they wouldn’t contact anyone. They’d just
do whatever they were going to do. We had to discover who had taken her and
find them before they had time to carry out their plan.

When
we got to the business complex where Monica had her office, we went to the
building manager’s office. Alex explained that there was an ongoing FBI
investigation involving the disappearance of Monica Nolan. The manager, a young
woman in her late twenties, was only too happy to cooperate. She opened
Monica's office and provided us with a key so we could come and go if need be.
She also volunteered that she was unaware of anything inappropriate occurring
in or around Ms. Nolan’s office. We thanked her and she went away, leaving us
to the task at hand.

Alex
went straight to the file cabinets. I took Monica's iPhone out of my pocket, and
called her mother’s cell. I didn't want to make the call, but someone needed
to. I didn't want it to be the FBI or LAPD. When I was an agent, I’d had to
make some of those kinds of calls. I wanted this one to be more personal.

“Hello.”
The voice was friendly.

“Hello.
Mrs. Nolan?”

“Yes.”

“This
is Jake Badger. I’m a friend of Monica's.”

“Oh,
yes. Mr. Badger. Monica has told me about you. How are you doing? I hope you
are recovering. You gave her quite a scare.”

“Uh,
yes, ma'am. I’m fine. Monica took good care of me. She’s probably the reason
I'm still here.”

“According
to her, you're the reason she's still here. She says you took a bullet for
her.”

“She’d
have done the same for me. We care about each other a great deal.”

“That's
good to hear, Mr. Badger. Very good to hear.”

“Please,
call me Jake.”

“All
right, Jake. And you should call me Patty.”

“Okay.”
I swallowed and then went on. “Um, I'm wondering if you've heard from Monica in
the past twenty-four hours.”

“No.
Why? Is everything all right?”

I
took a deep breath. “Well, actually, no, it's not. It appears that Monica is
missing.”

“Oh,
my Lord,” she said, the shock evident in her voice.

“The
FBI and the LAPD are working together to locate her,” I said.

Fighting
through the fear, she said, “What can I do to help?”

“The
most important thing you can do is call immediately if she calls you or if anyone
else contacts you about her.”

“What's
your number?”

I
gave it to her.

“If
I hear from her,” she said, “or from anyone else about her, I'll call.”

“Thank
you, Patty.”

It
was evident from the way her voice trembled that she was fighting back the
tears. She asked, “Why would someone do this? We don't have any money.”

“I
don't think this is about money,” I said. “I think this may have to do with one
of Monica's cases.”

“Revenge?”
Patty asked.

Smart
lady. She connected the dots quickly. “Maybe,” I said. “We're looking into it.”

“Will
you keep us informed?” she asked, her voice filled with fear.

“Of
course.”

Losing
the battle against the tears, she sobbed, “Please find my little girl.”

“We'll
find her,” I said. “I promise.” I don’t normally make promises like that, but
these were not normal circumstances.

After
I disconnected, Alex asked, “That Monica's phone?”

Alex
rarely overlooked a detail. He had asked his forensic people if her cell phone
was in her purse. It hadn't been.

“Yeah,”
I said.

“We
gonna be able to go through it?” He was now at Monica's computer.

“Yeah.
Soon as I get her contacts list downloaded.”

He
nodded. He wasn’t going to harass me about having taken the phone.

“Her
paper files are well-organized,” he said, as he continued to type. “But I
suspect she may have a lot of her files stored electronically. Which do you
want to take, the file cabinet or the computer?”

“You're
the computer expert,” I said. “I'll take the file cabinet.”

Eventually,
we'd move the files and the computer to FBI offices. But we wanted to get
started immediately, so we jumped right in.

It
only took Alex a few minutes to bypass Monica's security and access her files.
He said he'd have to show her how to beef it up a bit. I went through the hard files,
making notes as I went, looking for people who might hold a grudge. Alex began
a similar list from her computer files. After an hour we had a combined list of
two persons of interest. Not a lot to work with. Most of Monica’s cases had been
background checks, investigating insurance claims, recovering stolen property
and such. Not a lot of stuff that causes people to seek revenge against the
investigator.

The
one I found had to do with a college that had hired Monica to investigate sexual
harassment charges. This had been a year and a half ago. Evidently, one of the
professors, a guy name Jonathan Cary, who had just received tenure, had been
accused of sexual harassment by two of his female students. According to the
young women, Cary had suggested that he could guarantee them an A in the course
in exchange for sexual favors. There was evidence that the charges were true.
Evidently other young women, when interviewed by Monica, told a similar story.
The professor was fired. He'd been very angry, accusing Monica of manufacturing
evidence, extorting testimony, and so forth. This had ruined his career and he vowed
revenge.

Bingo.
Candidate number one.

Alex
found candidate number two in one of Monica's computer files. This one was more
recent, eight weeks ago, and I knew about the case. Monica had been working on
the recovery of a stolen Andy Warhol painting valued at ninety million dollars.
The thieves wanted to ransom it for a paltry ten million. The insurance company
had hired Monica to handle the exchange. They offered her ten thousand for the
job. She, however, wanted to recover the painting and collect the ten percent
recovery fee. She had asked me to provide backup during the recovery, which the
bad guys, Edward Benson, James Benson, and Richard Colette, thought was simply an
exchange. They made the mistake of underestimating her. Happens a lot when guys
get a look at her. During the recovery, two of the thieves were shot and
killed—Richard Colette by me, Edward Benson by Monica. Edward was James'
older brother. James saw Monica shoot Edward. James vowed he’d get her. He was
in prison, but his cousin, Kyle Dell, had just been released three weeks ago
from the same prison where James would be spending the next ten years. According
the file, Monica had been monitoring the situation and was aware of the Kyle's recent
release.

I
needed to talk to Kyle Dell as well as Jonathan Cary.

Chapter 3

Monday Afternoon

By
the time we had current addresses for Cary and Dell it was noon.

Alex
said, “There's still several hours of work to do here. I'll have her computer
and her hard files sent over to our office and assign a couple of agents to go
through everything. Want me to come with you?”

“Actually,”
I said, “I'd feel better if you stick with Monica's files. With your eye for
details, you're less likely to overlook something that could be important.”

He
studied me for a brief moment. “Okay, I can do that.”

“Thank
you.”

Just
as I was turning to leave, Alex's cell rang. I waited.

“Watson,”
Alex said, when he answered. Unless it was a call
from me or
his sister Susan,
he always answered with his last name.

He
listened and then said, “Okay. Keep me updated.”

He
clicked off and looked at me. “The blood on the floor was not Monica's. Monica
is O positive. The blood on the floor is
A
positive.”

I
nodded. “She got in a shot,” I said.

“What
do you think happened?”

“She
was probably in the shower and two or three guys came in.”

“Why
two or three?”

“Because
one guy, unless he was very good, couldn't take her. There were at least two,
maybe three. They underestimated her because she's a woman. Probably distracted
by her body. She was getting out of the shower or drying off. They weren't
looking at the right parts.”

“The
right parts?”

“Her
hands, elbows, knees, or feet. They were probably looking at her breasts. She
got in a shot.
Probably to a nose.
May have done other
damage that didn't result in blood flow. Somehow they eventually contained her,
knocked her out or stunned her, got some clothes on her and carried her out.”

“Without
anyone seeing,” Alex said.

“Probably
just a little after six a.m.
Wouldn't
be that hard.
Couple of guys put some jeans on her and a shirt and carried her out between
them.”

Alex
nodded. “Plausible.” Then, studying me another moment, he said, “You sure you
don't want me to go with you?”

“I'm
sure,” I said. “The FBI doesn't need any negative press related to brutality
charges.”

“That's
exactly why I need to go with you.”

I
understood his concern. I'm not easily angered. But when I do get angry, I
don't always control it well. That was the reason I quit cage fighting. But I'm
aware of the problem and I'm working on it.

“I'll
be fine,” I said. “I'll feel more confident if you stick with her files.”

“All
right. Will you call me after you talk to each of them?”

“Sure.”

The
information I had on Jonathan Cary said he was forty-seven years old and had a
Ph.D. in history from UCLA. He had taught at West Coast University, a small
private university where he had just achieved tenure when the charges of sexual
harassment were made against him. His salary had been one hundred and one
thousand dollars a year. Now he made thirty-two thousand dollars a year as the
assistant manager of Cheap Books, in Camarillo, part of an up and coming
national bookstore chain. He had been married, living in a three thousand
square foot home in Agoura Hills. Now he was divorced and lived in a
one bedroom
apartment in Oxnard. His wife ended up with
their assets, he ended up with their liabilities. Jonathan Cary would be an
angry man. How angry?

Traffic
on the 101 had been slow in spots and it took me a little over an hour to make
the forty-eight mile drive. All I could think of during the drive was the last
time I’d seen Monica—Sunday night as she’d walked to her car. She’d waved
to me as she’d driven away. I kept seeing her face as she waved to me. She’d
smiled. Her whole face lit up when she smiled. But mostly it was her eyes.
Those green eyes, against her ivory skin, framed by her red hair: mesmerizing.
She could communicate more with her eyes than most people could with a whole
paragraph of words.
She’d said the words
,
I love you
. But it
had meant more when she’d said it with her eyes.

It
was a little before one thirty when I got to the Cheap Books store where Cary
worked. I went to the help desk and asked the sloppy overweight nerd manning
the desk if I could talk to Jonathan Cary. He told me Monday was Jonathan's day
off. He'd be in the store tomorrow. I thanked him and headed off to Cary's
apartment in Oxnard.

Cary's
apartment was about as far away from the ocean as you can be and still be in
Oxnard. The complex looked like it might have been built in the nineteen
seventies. Over the years there had been some attempts at maintenance, but none
recently. His apartment was number one eighteen.

I
found his door and knocked. A guy with tired gray eyes who looked to be in his
early fifties opened the door. He was barefoot, wore a pair of blue shorts and
a green tee shirt that said
,
life is a terminal disease for which there is no cure
.
His recently acquired outlook on life, perhaps.
He was maybe
five-ten, one seventy.

“Yeah?”
he said.

“Jonathan
Cary?”

“Yeah.”

I
handed him my card, which he read while I said, “I'm Jake Badger. I need to ask
you some questions. May I come in?”

“What
does my ex-wife want now?”

“Not
about your ex-wife. This is about Monica Nolan.”

“What
does that bitch want?” He growled. “She cost
me ...”

I
shot a sharp, fast jab into the middle of his face, knocking him on the floor
of his messy apartment. Blood spurted from his nose.

“
Ahhh
...
”
he moaned, putting his hands to his face. Blood began to seep through his
fingers.

I
stepped inside, kicked his legs out of the way and closed the door behind me.

“Monica
Nolan is not a bitch,” I said, standing over him.

“Yeah,
yeah,” he said, the words muffled by his hands. “I'm sorry, okay. I didn't mean
that. Okay? All right? Don't hit me again.”

I
stood over him a moment and then said, “Get up and go wash your face.”

He
got up and went to the kitchen sink. I stood near a small dinette table in the
eating area next to the kitchen. Once the bleeding had subsided to a slow
trickle, I said, “Come over here and sit down.”

He
brought a wet towel to hold under his nose and sat down. I sat opposite him.

“I'm
going to ask you some questions,” I said. “And you're going to answer them
honestly and without commentary. Understand?”

“Yes.”

He
was in pain, but he wasn't afraid. Interesting.

“Where
were you this morning between five and eight a.m.?”

“Here,
in bed.”

“Can
anyone confirm that?”

“My
girl friend.”

“What's
her name?”

“Lisa.”

“Lisa
what?”

“Lisa
Mendez.”

“Where's
Lisa now?”

“At
work.”

“Where's
she work?”

“At
the post office.”

“Here
in Oxnard?”

“Yeah.
What's this about? Why do you want to know where I was?”

“Monica
Nolan was abducted.”

“And
you think I had something to do with it?”

“You
threatened to get even with her for exposing you. You're obviously still angry
with her.”

“You
bet I am. She cost me everything I had.”

“Your
own stupidity cost you everything you had,” I said.

“Those
girls were screwing half the guys on campus for nothing but the fun of doing
it. I offered them a grade for the same thing they were giving away. And for that
everything I had achieved is taken from me?”

“Pretty
much, yeah. And you're blaming Monica for it.”

“I
didn't have anything to do with her being kidnapped.”

I
studied his eyes. Eyes told the truth more often than tongues.

His
eyes held mine for a moment before he said, “I told you,
I
was here. Go ask Lisa. I didn't have anything to do with her being taken.”

“You
could have paid someone else to grab her.”

He
sighed, as if indulging a stupid proposition. He may have lost his tenured
professorship, but he still had the attitude of the Ph.D. “If I had any money,
I could have, theoretically, at least. But I don't have any money. My ex-wife
has all of it. I was not in any way connected with Ms. Nolan’s kidnapping. I
had nothing to do with it. Why would I?”

“Revenge.”

“Revenge?
And then what?
Kill her? Because she was the
investigator who interviewed a bunch a little whores who got me fired?
Gimme
a break.
I'm not a killer.”

“Why'd
you call her a bitch?”

“Because
she enjoyed what she did to me. She said I was a moral degenerate and a slime
ball. Those little
whores
were on their backs or their
knees more than they were on their feet and she lectures
me
about being a moral degenerate? She had no right to judge me like that.”

I
didn't like him. I wanted to hit him again. The thing was
,
I was beginning to think that he hadn’t had anything to do with Monica being
taken. I did need to talk with Lisa Mendez, though.

“Go
wash your face again,” I said. “Put some shoes on.”

“Why?”

“We're
going to see Lisa.”

I
didn't want to have a phone conversation with her. I wanted to talk with her in
person. I wanted to look her in the eye. If I left Jonathan in the apartment
while I went to see her, he could call and tell her what to say. So I walked
him out to my Jeep and we drove to the post office.

I
walked Cary into the post office. There were two people working the counter.
Only one of them, an old skinny guy with thinning gray hair, had a customer.
The other was a chunky Latina in her late twenties.

Cary
and I approached the counter. When she saw him, she gasped and said, “Jon, what
happened?”

I
said, “He ran into an object that was harder than his face.” Then I asked, “Where
was Jon this morning between five and eight a.m.?”

“Who
are you?” she asked.

I
kept my voice down but hard. “Right now I'm a guy asking you a simple question
and you should answer it.”

Her
eyes went to Jon's. He nodded.

Bringing
her eyes back to mine, she said, “He was home. With me.”

“He
make or get any phone calls?”

“No.”

“Text
or email?”

“No.”

Her
eyes held on to mine. She was telling the truth.

I nodded. “Thank you,” I said. Then, to Cary I said, “Come on, slime
ball. I'll take you home.”