Chapter 8
Him
After going over every inch of the Tahoe, using nothing more than our flashlights, Oscar and I finally tarped the SUV and put it on a flatbed.
It’d make the journey to Salt Lake City for a thorough going-over at the FBI crime lab there.
Brice had pulled some strings to make processing it a priority, thank God.
“What next?” Oscar asked me while we watched the flatbed drive out of sight.
I had no goddamn idea. “We start asking questions.”
“What questions and who’re we asking?”
I sighed. I was tired. Exhausted, even. And definitely missing the adrenaline dump of earlier, when I’d found Abby’s note inside the baggie. “I don’t know, Oscar. Let’s start with reviewing who we’ve already asked and what questions we’ve already covered.”
“Sounds like a plan. Back to the hotel?”
I shook my head. “Let’s get something to eat.” It was well past one o’clock, and my stomach was grumbling, which I took as a positive sign because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt hungry.
I’d lost a good twenty pounds since Abby’s disappearance. It’s hard to eat when your heart is broken.
Oscar drove us to a bar down the street from the sheriff’s station that looked decent enough.
Making our way inside, I heard the bartender say, “Is that a baby? Man, you can’t bring a kid in here.”
I looked down at the sling that Eggy was cuddled up in, fitting his long sausage body perfectly against my rib cage. Since he was almost completely hidden, it was probably easy to see why he’d be mistaken for an infant.
“Not a baby,” I told him. “It’s my dog.”
After I pulled open the flap of the sling a bit to show him Eggy’s long nose, the bartender widened his eyes and said, “You can’t bring a dog in here either!”
I looked over my shoulder toward the door, then back at the guy behind the bar. Squaring my shoulders and lifting my chin, I said, “Seems like I just did.”
“Yeah, well, you can’t.”
“But I have.”
“Well, then, you gotta go.”
Oscar stood next to me, his eyes pivoting back and forth between me and the bartender like he was watching a pickleball match.
I moved over to a table—the place had only a few patrons—and pulled out a chair. It scraped along the wood of the bar’s floor, and I sat down like I owned the fucking place. “Make me.”
The bartender’s face flushed, and he started to sweat. Meanwhile, I mentally worked through how I’d fight the guy if he came at me. I’d have to take off the sling and hand Eggy to Oscar, but I figured I could do that before the guy had fully made his way out from around the bar.
“I can call the sheriff,” he snapped.
I plucked the small bar menu out of the metal holder in the center of the table and began to look it over. “Give Wheaton my best.”
Oscar still stood near the door, undecided, but then he must’ve finally made up his mind because he moved over to the bar and began to talk quietly to the bartender. I pretended not to notice when a couple of twenties changed hands. He then came over to the table and sat down.
“What looks good?”
I sighed and handed him the menu. “No idea. I left my reading glasses in the truck.”
He put his knuckles to his mouth to tamp down a snicker, then cleared his throat and began to read the tiny print made for younger eyes. “Cheeseburger sound good to you?”
“Yeah. That’s fine.”
The bartender came over to the table and set down two bottles of Michelob Light, slamming mine a bit before he muttered, “That dog better not come out of his harness.”
I didn’t even spare him a glance—or correct him for calling the sling a harness—and he left after Oscar gave him our order.
“He’s gonna spit on your burger,” Oscar said.
I grunted. “I’m not leaving Eggy in the truck. It’s cold out.”
“I know. I told him what the deal was.”
I grunted again. “How much did it cost you?”
“Forty.”
I sighed, reaching into my back pocket to pull out my wallet.
I then slid two twenties to Oscar. The least I could do.
He was using up all his vacation time to be out here with me, investigating Abby’s disappearance, and he and Nikki—his fiancée—were getting married in a few weeks.
I could only hope he had enough vacation time left to take her on a proper honeymoon.
While we waited for our order, Oscar and I went over the image on my smartphone of the note I’d found in Abby’s coat pocket.
I’d sent the note and the baggie on to Salt Lake to be analyzed there.
They’d match the blood on the note to Abby’s blood type first, then to her DNA just to be sure it was really her blood the lettering was written in.
It was a gut punch knowing she’d had to resort to using her own blood to scrawl out a message.
“It’s her writing?” Oscar asked as we stared at the photo on my phone.
I shrugged. “Probably. The lettering is more of a scrawl than script, but I recognize that A. She rounds out her A’s to look more like O’s.”
“I wonder what she used to write out the message.”
“Besides her blood?”
Oscar nodded.
“Maybe a twig.” I enlarged the photo on the screen with my fingers and studied the script. There was a block-like quality to the letters. My gaze drifted up to the ashtray on the table and a set of matches set next to them with the name of the bar on the lid. “A match,” I said.
“What’s that?” Oscar asked.
I reached for the matchbook. Flipping open the lid, I could see the matches lined up. I tore off one and held it over my phone. “A match. But not one of these flimsy cardboard ones. One made of wood.”
Oscar peered at the screen, then eagerly nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I can see it now. Did she have matches on her at the time she went missing?”
I tried to think back to that day. I’d built the fire, but Abby knew—and liked—to build them as well. “She could’ve.”
Oscar merely nodded. “We gotta hope the techs can tell us how long the Tahoe was in the water,” he said next.
“That’d be a miracle.” Water often acts as both a preservative and cleanser.
It would’ve washed away any fingerprints, blood, and DNA—other than what was preserved on the note in the baggie—but it also would’ve locked the Tahoe into a time machine, making it difficult if not impossible to pinpoint exactly when the vehicle went into the river given the frigid temperatures,
where the oxidation on the metal frame would’ve slowed down.
“The note means that Abby’s alive, at least,” Oscar said.
I knew he was trying to lift my spirits, but other than my wife walking through the door, I didn’t know what else could. “If the note was from six months ago, she might not be,” I replied, saying the quiet part out loud.
“We dragged that river, sir. From top to bottom several times over. The Tahoe wasn’t in the water the last time we checked.”
The last time we’d checked had been late November. It was now mid-April. “A lot can happen in four and a half months.”
Oscar took a sip of his beer. “Maybe it wasn’t four months. Maybe it’s been only a couple of weeks.”
Oscar was mirroring my thoughts exactly. I felt the Tahoe had only recently entered the water. “You think the Tahoe was dumped to make it look like it went into the water at the time she disappeared?”
“Yep.”
“What’s your logic?” Mine was only a gut feeling, so I wanted to hear what he had to say.
“For one, the Tahoe didn’t have a lot of silt or debris in it. Sure, it was muddy, but with the way the river runs downstream, it should’ve had a lot more if it’d been in the water longer. The current should’ve funneled all kinds of shit into it…silt, debris,
maybe even bits of trash if it’d been in the water longer than a few weeks.”
I nodded, seeing his logic and knowing Oscar was right.
“If that’s true, then it means she was abducted last October, taken somewhere, and her kidnapper decided to dump the Tahoe within the past six weeks or so to throw us off the trail.”
“That’d be my guess. If she were dead, he would’ve disposed of her body by locking it in the SUV. We gotta believe she’s still alive, sir.”
Another solid point to Oscar.
Our food arrived, delivered not by the bartender but by a petite waitress wearing the nametag patty.
“Here you are, fellas,” she said. Then she slid another saucer-size plate onto the table that had what looked like some rare ground beef on it. “This is for your dog. I heard he’s not doing so great. Maybe this’ll perk him up.”
I stared up at her at a loss for words. Her kindness got to me because it was something Abby would’ve done. My wife is a kind, thoughtful woman, hypersensitive to those in need, including—and perhaps especially—animals.
I had to clear my throat and look down. “Thank you,” I managed. “He’ll appreciate that.”
As if on cue, Eggy poked his nose out of the sling, sniffing the air like he knew his lunch had arrived. Another wave of emotion hit me. As long as Eggy showed an interest in food, I was going to keep him alive.
I lifted a bit of the ground beef to his nose, and he took it greedily, poking more of his nose out of the sling.
I fed him another nibble, knowing I’d feed him before I even took one bite of my own burger.
“He’s my wife’s dog,” I explained as the waitress continued to hover and coo at Eggy.
“I’m watching over him until she comes back home.”
“She’s traveling?” Patty asked.
I traded looks with Oscar while he chewed the giant bite of burger he’d just taken. “No,” I said. “She’s gone missing.”
Patty gasped. “Oh! Wait, she’s the woman on all the flyers?”
I nodded. We’d hung dozens of flyers all over town. “Abby,” I said. “Abby Cooper.” I flipped through more pictures on my phone until I got to my favorite of my wife, sitting on one of the Adirondack chairs in our backyard, enjoying the sunset.
Patty leaned in and looked at the image. “Oh, wow. She’s really beautiful.”
I nodded. “She is. Inside and out.”
Patty stood tall again, regarding me, and I could tell there was something she wanted to say but was thinking it through first. I’ve been an investigator long enough to know that the best thing to do in moments like that is to just wait expectantly and see what got said.
“You know…” she began.
“Hmm?” I asked.
She pressed her lips together pensively, then came out with it: “My sister swears she saw your wife fast asleep in a car headed out of town back in October.”
Oscar stopped chewing and we both stared at Patty. I thought we’d interviewed every person who’d offered up a lead in the past six months, but to my knowledge, no one had suggested they’d seen Abby in a car leaving town.
“Who’s your sister?” I asked.
“Gwen. Gwen Levandowski. She doesn’t live around here. She and I don’t get together as much as we’d like to. We’re both raising our kids by ourselves, and with work and such…”
I wanted her to get to the point, but I knew I couldn’t rush her or she might get spooked and clam up. “I feel you,” I said.
Patty nodded. “Anyway, Gwen had visited me the weekend your wife went missing, and then when she came back at Christmas, she said that when she’d stopped for gas here in town, she saw the flyers, and she recognized the lady in the photo. I told her to call the sheriff and report it,
but I don’t know if she ever did.”
I took out the small notebook and pen I always keep on me and laid it on the table, open to a blank page. “Could you write down your sister’s phone number?”
Patty eyed the notepad like she was afraid it might bite. “The thing is . . .” she said.
“Yeah?” Oscar asked. When Patty hesitated some more, he added, “We just want to talk to her, Patty. That’s it.”
“I know, but sometimes my sister’s kind of hard to pin down. She might not want to get involved.”
“We just want to talk to her, and whatever she tells us stays just between us,” Oscar encouraged, pointing back and forth to me and himself.
“I’d have to talk to her first to see if it’s okay to give out her number.”
I knew in that moment that Gwen was never gonna agree to Patty sharing her number.
Oscar pulled my notebook and pen over to himself and scribbled out his phone number. I knew he had cards on him identifying himself as an FBI agent and gave him a lot of credit for not whipping out one of those at Patty, which would’ve only spooked her and her sister even more.
Ripping out the page, he handed it to her. “My name’s Oscar.” He then pointed to me. “That’s Dutch. Call us anytime, day or night, and we’ll meet wherever your sister wants us to, or we can just talk it out on the phone.”
Patty seemed reluctant to agree that she and/or her sister would call. “Aren’t you guys with the FBI or something?”
I shook my head. “No longer with the Bureau, Patty.”
Technically, I wasn’t, and technically I never suggested that Oscar wasn’t. He kept mum, which was the smart thing to do.
And then he pulled another smart move by taking out his money clip and peeling off several more twenties from the roll of cash he’d walked in here with. “That’s for our meal. You can keep the change.”
Her eyes widened and she took the folded bills, tucking them into the pocket of her apron before picking up the note with his number and tucking that away as well.
“I’ll call her after my shift,” she promised, then waggled her finger between our glasses. “Another round?”
I shook my head. “We’re good, Patty, thank you. And thanks for bringing out lunch for the little guy. Abby would’ve been really grateful for it if she were here.”
Patty nodded, then left us to our meal.
Eggy, Oscar, and I finished lunch mostly in silence, and I knew exactly what Oscar was thinking.
When we made it back to the truck, he pulled his laptop from the back and did a search on Gwen Levandowski.
“She’s got a record,” he said. “She’s been popped for possession and prostitution a couple of times.”
I sighed. “Dammit.” Now we knew why Gwen was hard to pin down. “Last known address?”
“She’s in Missoula.”
I did a quick calculation. “An hour away.”
Oscar plugged the address into his phone. “Yep. An hour and twenty-two minutes, but who’s counting.”
“Think we can get to her before Patty makes that call?”
“Only one way to find out,” Oscar said, tucking his computer back behind the seat again and starting the engine.
“Gotta hope she opens the door when we get there,” I said softly, more to myself than to Oscar. That’s really all I had left at this point. Hope and determination. If only it’d be enough.