Method 15/33 Page 5

  “No idea, Mr. Liu.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I parked the van on the curb with a sign, ‘For Sale.’ Had an ad in tha paper too. Guy shows up. Said he’d hitched a ride from the train station. Gives me cash, twenty-two hund-erd. Tha’ end.”

  “What about the registration? Did you talk to him about changing it?”

  “Sure. He said he’d take care a ‘dat. Don’t know much about no paperwork since my Lucy died. She gone, three years ago come next month. God Rest Her Soul. She took care-a all that mumbo jumbo. What, I screw up bad with the law cuzathat, Mr. Liu. This why you here? Don’t the FBI got bigga fish ta’ fry and all is what I mean, but mean no trouble, Mr. Liu. Whatever you want. Like I said, I’m an open book, now.”

  “No, no. Nothing like that, Boyd. What did the buyer look like?”

  “Hard ta’ say. Sorta’ nondescript to me, yeah. Got himself a belly, as I rememba. Not real handsome, no. I think he probably had brown, yeah, brown hair. Hmmph. Whole transaction took about ten minutes. I showed him she could start and all, showed him the manual tucked up in her glove box. Said I’d throw in the stove as well. I had an old stove in the back a’ her. That was about it.”

  “Did you have one of those specialty frames on the plate that says ‘Hoosier State’?”

  “Sure as heck did. Cousin Bobby’s boy useta play on the Indiana University basketball team. Proud of him. Proud of them. Proud of my state, Mr. Liu.”

  “I don’t doubt you. This is real helpful, you confirming all this.”

  “This guy who bought my van, he did something bad, didn’t he?”

  “You could say so, Boyd. A girl’s gone missing. Trying to track him down as fast as possible to ask him about her. Anything else you can remember about him or the transaction?”

  I studied Boyd’s reaction and body language, as I was trained to do. Since I had just confirmed his vehicle played a part in a serious crime involving a child and this was no joke and we at the FBI were hot on the trail, if Boyd had something to hide, he likely would have crossed his arms, scrunched his eyes, averted mine, and looked up and to the left when he spoke again, all of which being the tell-tale signs of a liar creating answers. Boyd did none of this. He set his palms gently on the table, rounded his shoulders sad, and peeked into my eyes like a tired, old bear.

  “I can’t thinka one thing, Mr. Liu. I’m real sorry. I want to help this girl. Ain’t there ina-thang you can ask me ‘bout I shoulda noticed? Maybe something will spark some kinda memry.”

  I surveyed the log of prior cases filed in my mind, thinking of past clues that led to past clues. I’d been in this situation before.

  “How much gas was in the van? Do you remember?”

  “Sure as heck I remember. Damn thing was damn near bone dry. I had just enuff gas in my shed to get her started.”

  “What’s the closest gas station?”

  “R&K’s Gas & Suds. End of the street. Matter a’ fact, he asked the same thing, and I said the same thing to him, R&K’s Gas & Suds. End of the street.”

  Bingo.

  “Did he sign anything? Touch anything in your home? Was he only ever outside or did he come in?”

  Boyd turned to look behind him, swiveled back to face me, smiled, rocked his head, and pointed a finger in my direction, proud of me, his child-detective. “Oh, you’re good, Mr. Liu, you’re good. I never woulda thought of it, but you know what? You know damn what. He used my bathroom.”

  Bingo, again.

  “I don’t mean to be rude, here, Boyd, but I have to ask. Have you cleaned the bathroom at all since then?”

  Boyd laughed. “Mr. Liu, look at me, I’m a widower. Hell no, I ain’t cleaned no bathroom. Don’t even use ‘er neither. I use ‘er upstairs. Plus I been gone, visitin’ my brother and Mama down in Lou-c-ana, where this Boyd was born, now. In fact, took off the night I sold the van. Jus’ back ta-day.”

  “Anyone used the bathroom since he did?”

  “Not a soul.”

  Bingo, bingo, bingo. Buyer used bathroom, hasn’t been cleaned, no one else used it since.

  “A couple of requests, Boyd. First, I’d like your permission to seal off the bathroom and dust the whole thing for fingerprints. Second, I’d like the name and addresses of your brother and mother down in Louisiana. Okay with you?”

  “Sure as hell is, sir. But am I in trouble here?”

  “Boyd, as long as your story checks out and my partner doesn’t find anything suspicious in your barn, you are not in trouble. In fact, we really appreciate your cooperation. Incidentally, do you own any property anywhere other than this house?”

  “No, sir. This here all I got.”

  “You ever go by any aliases?”

  “Boyd L. McGuire is what my mama calls me, and I don’t have no right ta’ go changin’ it, now do I? Mama, she mad enuff I came to live by my Daddy’s side of the family in this here Indiana all those years ago. Can’t be changin’ my name now, can I, Mr. Liu?”

  “I suppose not, Boyd. I suppose not.”

  I rose and walked to the bathroom and sized “er” up. With Boyd’s help, I roughly calculated the square footage for the forensics team, who would later in the afternoon dust for fingerprints. I sealed the entrance with the yellow tape we had in our field car.

  In order to generate a thorough report, I inspected every micro-meter of Boyd’s house, gun drawn, and with Boyd agreeably outside, leaning against a tree that I could check from nearly each one of Boyd’s twelve, curtain-less windows. This guy wasn’t hiding a damn thing, except maybe the piles of laundry, which I assumed had been abandoned since his wife died. This chicken-farming bachelor is as innocent as Land O’ Lakes butter.

  My partner returned, sloshing through Boyd’s side yard in her gait of choice: cowboy. She advised me—outside of Boyd’s earshot—how she had walked the whole property, looked everywhere, high and low, and even pressed on walls in the red barn to make sure none were false. “Nothing,” she reported. Nothing to indicate a crime within. “Smells like endless whorehouse ass in his barn though—the cheap whore smell, the ones you find on the outskirts of Pittsburgh,” she complained, much like the man-woman she was and as if I would know whatever the hell she meant.

  I didn’t give one shit about the smell of Boyd’s barn unless it was the odor of death, which I knew wasn’t there because Lola’s nose was trained to ferret out corpses upon even minor whiffs of rotting flesh. Despite my unwillingness to care, however, she complained for the next two days about chickens knee-deep in their own crap. “I can’t get the stench of those chubby, clucking, shitty chickens out of my damn nose,” she said, at least one hundred times. She even took to our emergency smelling salts to erase the malodorous memory. “Better not harm my hunter nose,” she warned.

  Although I didn’t suspect Boyd of anything, one quandary sticks with me about him: Who cared for his livestock while he was in Louisiana? It doesn’t matter, of course, but I’ve always wondered. By the time Lola had returned from her inspection, I had already cleared Boyd, so I thought it would be rude to inquire about the attention he did or did not give his chickens. So I didn’t ask. And if this upsets you, too bad. I chase lost children, not neglected poultry. Go cry to PETA.

  Boyd L. McGuire did, in fact, not own any other property. His brother and Mama in “Lou-c-ana” checked out as well. But Boyd checking out clean was the best break of all, for elimination of suspects is just as important as finding them. Plus, I got two great clues from our Boyd visit. First, forensics lifted three matching, non-Boyd thumbprints off the doorknob and black rubber toilet plunger—of all things—in Boyd’s bathroom. Second, down at R&K’s gas station, “at the end of the street,” I was shocked to find that the owner actually changed the tapes in his three security cameras every night and kept them all. Most owners overwrite their tapes. Not this fantastic man. “This way, here, I’ll show you where they are,” he said.

  Not only did he have the tapes, they were stored chronologically and l
abeled, down to the second. I wanted to kiss the man. And what we saw on one tape in particular, well, now this is why people become detectives, for moments like that.

  On the night of our productive day with Boyd and the miraculous gas station owner, I called my wife Sandra after a brief celebratory dinner. I had ordered a well-done filet and a Bloomin’ Onion at a not-so-nearby Outback Steakhouse—Lola insisted. Lola ordered two rare steaks, three Guinness, two loaded, baked potatoes the size of footballs, and extra rolls. “Hold those darn veges,” she said to the waitress, “and bring two slices of peanut butter pie too, please.”

  “You know, someday this diet of yours is going to catch up with you,” I said, as I often said.

  “With what I got to see in basements and crawl spaces, Liu, spare me the pleas about my food. Now shut up and buy me a Guinness, boss,” she replied, as she often replied. And then she burped.

  What a charmer, that Lola.

  Sandra was on an East Coast tour of comedy clubs and bars. I caught up with her after her last set at some watering hole in Hyannisport.

  “Hey, darling, you make them laugh tonight?” I asked.

  “Oh, you know. Same old stuff I always say. Old material. I’m getting old to me.”

  “You don’t ever get old to me. I miss you.”

  “When you coming back? Where are you anyway?”

  “Same place I always am, knocking on the devil’s door, darling. One of these days, he’s going to answer.”

  “Don’t be so sure he is a he. Could be a she.”

  “Could be a she.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DAY 20 IN CAPTIVITY

  It takes a long time to knit a full-size blanket. The red knit blanket, Asset #5. Now, mind you, I had a lot of assets. Some of them I did not even use. Some of them I used only partially. Some of them were prepped and ready for use on the Day Of, but became superfluous or irrelevant in the final moments. Like my makeshift slingshot. The red knit blanket, however, was a pure gem. I used every last fiber of that twisted cotton. If I ever had any blood on my hands, it was just the red lint of a beautiful, poetic, knitted piece of art. Bellissimo, bravo to you, red knit blanket, I owe you my life. I love you.

  On Day 20, I awoke to our regular routine, with three days to go until the Kitchen People would return, and no apparent threat that The Doctor or The Obvious Couple would grace my room. I felt pretty secure in the routine at this point, so I did not expect any houseguests. I was wrong.

  In any event, my captor arrived on Day 20, as scheduled, with my breakfast. 8:00 a.m. on the nose. The Kitchen People had made another quiche and, as I expected, that’s what I had for breakfast, again, on the, you know it, toile china plate. As you are well aware, I had developed a severe hatred for that ridiculous plate.

  Unable to withstand touching the plate for another meal, on Day 20, I picked up the quiche as though my fingers were tongs, unwilling to even brush the china with my skin. I set the slice on top of the television as a new place setting, and, using my sleeves as gloves, placed the plate on the floor where it belonged, with dust bunnies and mouse droppings, to await the hands of a villain, the only attention it deserved. Of course, I laughed at myself, for, rationally speaking, the china held no blame. Nevertheless, I needed some diversion and I did hate the toile.

  In sitting on the floor with the quiche on the television, I had a changed perspective on the room. The vantage was only slightly different, yet still, the alteration in my eating routine and my stance caused a shift. Perhaps the vertical course of blood in my brain sparked the idea or maybe looking at the bed at a different angle jolted the solution that must have lain dormant from the moment I walked in and saw those three exposed beams. The blanket can be turned into a rope. Everything seemed so clear, finally, on Day 20, that I became disappointed with myself for failing to note the obvious earlier.

  Sometimes, I think, we prevent ourselves from admitting inevitable conclusions because we are not yet ready for whatever task is at hand. Our vision becomes blocked to realized knowledge. For example, my mother, a woman who bore a child herself, neglected to admit her own daughter was a full seven-months’ pregnant until the OB forced the truth upon her. Perhaps the mind holds us back from connecting the dots so we do not take conscious steps toward difficult changes until we are ready. I must have been ready on Day 20, because I finally achieved in a crystal vision, my entire plot. Until this point, I had put into place only pieces of the puzzle. I previously thought my resolve was hardened, but not until I envisioned the blanket as a weapon, did I realize just how far I was absolutely going to go to free myself and my baby and exact revenge.

  You are kidnapped. They will steal your baby and sell him to monsters. They will throw you in a quarry. No one knows where you are. You must save yourself. This is the truth, accept it. Your only tools are the tools in this room. Figure this out. Execute the plan.

  I finished the quiche with a smile on my face. Not one crumb cluttered the television top.

  It takes a long time to knit a full-size blanket. It takes even longer to unravel. Somehow I knew this innately, and so I wanted to get started immediately. I waited until my jailer came for my breakfast tray and went through the whole bathroom routine. When that ordeal was complete, he left, and I thought I had three-and-a-half hours until lunch in which to un-knit and un-purl. I removed the bucket handle and began the de-knotting.

  The air that morning had a yellowy tinge, the melancholic glow that both deflates and sedates you. The sun was an even overcast, which tricked the mind to think the day held no surprise, the blah, the drag-down type of day with no promise. I was wrong about this too.

  I fought with a stubborn corner knot by jamming the bucket handle into its core and widening the gaps between strands of yarn, first with my pinky nail, then my whole pinky, and then ferreted the jumble out into a kinked, five-inch entrail. This took one hour, five minutes, and three seconds. At this rate, my projected timeline was already delayed. But before re-casting the completion projection, I figured I would collect de-knotting times over the course of the day to calculate an average. With one of the pencils from the two-horse, pink case, I plotted the first metric in a bar chart I designed.

  With the chart started, I began the first row’s deconstruction. La Boheme serenaded me from Asset #16, the yard-sale radio. Naturally, I chose the classical station: I needed passionate upheaval and eternal, unrequited longing—the kind of emotion you’d die trying to quell—as my motivation. Bubblegum pop-songs might have cost me the extra edge I required. Of course, the hard-core rap of Dr. Dre and Sons of Kalal that I prefer today, seventeen years later, could have done the trick as well as any love-sick opera. Currently, as an adult, I crank gangsta rhymes during my daily Marine-level boot-camp workouts, especially when the retired sergeant I hired barks in my face that I’m “slime.” But the grinding tunes work, because after a fifteen-mile sprint and on my nine-hundred-and-ninety-ninth stomach crunch, Sarge is hiding a reluctant smirk of pride from me. No one is ever going to take me again.

  Sometimes I like to spit a wad of blood at ol’ Sarge’s feet. It is done with the utmost of respect, like a cat delivering a decapitated mouse on his owner’s porch. Meow.

  But enough with the present. Back to the past.

  As Hour 2 set in on Day 20, a black butterfly slapped against the high triangular window and pasted itself in place, wings spread. Was he warning me? Are you warning me about something? The universe holds many unsolved secrets and invisible connections. So perhaps he was indeed warning me.

  I studied him whole, placing my red dismantling on the bed and tip-toeing toward the window for closer inspection. But because he was so high, the best viewpoint was from about mid-room. Are you visiting me? Sweet angel, fly to them, tell them I’m here.

  I slid closer, rubbing my belly, my baby, and stood beneath the window, leaning my face in until my cheek was flush against the wall. Due to my growing girth, I had to bend. With eyes closed, I tried to feel whatever
vibration the butterfly’s heart sent from above. Is this loneliness? Am I lonely? Please shake this wall with your wings, tell me you hear me, black beauty, black friend. Please anything. Tell me anything. Save me. Help me. Shake this wall.

  Since I allowed the emotion in, I began to sob. I thought of my mother. I thought of my father. I thought of my boyfriend, the baby’s father. What I would have given to have the touch of any one of their hands on my back or the brush of any one of their lips on my cheek.

  But this wallow into deep sadness didn’t last long. As though I had come to a right angle in the road, at the very height of my tears, the day, my plan, and the outlook took a sharp turn. While my shoulders slumped and my body heaved under the weight of depression and solitude, the stairs outside my room groaned under pounding footfall. A fast approach: I heard it. I ran back to the bed, the butterfly abandoned, folded the blanket, shoved my notebook with my chart into the mattress—which I had slit open about six inches on the side facing the wall—and with only one second to spare, lay the bucket handle atop the bucket as though it were attached. In he burst.

  “Radio off. Follow me, now. And keep your fucking mouth shut.”

  I detect fear in your voice, smell danger in your sweat, dear jailer. I wiped the tears with my sleeve in an exaggerated motion of confrontation, as though smearing blood in a heated street fight and in so doing, inviting the match to continue. Bring it.

  I slowly walked to the radio and with the lethargy of an obstinate, maniacal child, turned the dial to off, unwilling in my movement to meet his agitation.

  “Move your fucking ass. I will throw you down these stairs if you keep this shit up.”

  Having fun with you, imbecile, you make this so easy.

  I returned to the insipid, compliant captive I was supposed to play. With head bent and shaky voice, I delivered my catch phrase, “Yes, sir.”

  “Move.”

  You are so predictable, dumb beast. Throw me? As if. You’d lose your cush job.