The Final Twist by Jeffery Deaver (free ebooks romance novels txt) 📕

it and still they’re suing us! I never wanted a big house in the first place. But Eduardo . . .” She shook her head, as if exhausted at replaying the car crash of her last twelve months. “And now this.”

Tears formed, and she found a tissue in a battered, cracked beige purse with an old-style clasp on top. She blotted her eyes.

From a pocket in his leather jacket, Shaw extracted one of the 5-by-7-inch notebooks in which he jotted information during interviews like this. His handwriting, like his father’s, was extremely small and precise. The notebooks were not ruled but each line of his script was perfectly horizontal.

He used a Delta Titanio Galassia fountain pen. The barrel was black and it featured three orange rings toward the nib. Occasionally an offeror or a witness might glance at the pen, which was not inexpensive, as if using it were pretentious or showy. But this wasn’t the case. The pen was largely practical; filling page after page of notes in Shaw’s minuscule script was tough on the hand and the gold-tipped fountain pen eased words onto the paper smoothly and with less effort than the best ballpoint. It was also a pleasure to use the fine device.

Someone once asked him why he didn’t just use a tape recorder or at least type answers into a computer or tablet. His response: Speaking or typing creates just a glancing relationship with the words. Only when you write by hand do you truly possess them.

Shaw said, “Let me tell you who I am and what I do. You can look at me like a private investigator that you don’t pay until I’m successful. I’ll try to find your daughter. If I do that, you pay me your reward. You don’t have to pay for any expenses.”

A reward is, under the law, a unilateral contract. The offer is made but there is no enforceable bargain until one party—the reward-seeker—successfully completes the job. Then an enforceable contract comes into existence.

Vasquez nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Two days ago Tessy was gone when I got home from my shift. She was supposed to be at work at six but she didn’t show up. Her phone doesn’t ring. It just goes to voice mail. She didn’t show up for work that night. I called her friends . . . Nobody’s heard from her.”

“Was she going someplace before work?”

“I don’t know. She played guitar with friends some.”

He asked if she’d talked to the police.

At this she grew silent for a moment. “Not yet. I heard with someone who’s older, the police won’t be interested for a few days.”

They might be interested. But what she was really saying was: mother and daughter were undocumented and the cops might report them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That was a big concern he’d found in the immigrant community; while some police departments might not report them, by federal law they were required to.

“Did you have a fight? Did she run off?” The most common cause of missing youngsters.

“Oh, no, no. We are very close. We never fight. She’s the love of my life!”

Parental kidnappings were the most common form of abduction. Even with children above the age of majority, like Tessy, a mother or father might coerce the youngster to come live with him or her. More and more were living at home until later in life nowadays. Vasquez was a widow but the general principle could apply.

“Have you had a partner or someone you’re seeing who might’ve had an interest in her?”

She gave a laugh. “I work twelve-hour days, two shifts. That is the last thing on my mind.”

“So you think someone forced her to come with them.”

She sat forward, her hands shredding the tissue. “Here’s what I’m worried about, sir. Tessy had some drug problems a few years ago. She fought it and won. She goes to meetings. She’s a good girl. But there was this man, older. They dated. Mostly she went out with him because he supplied her. After she got sober, her sponsor told her she couldn’t see him anymore. She broke up with him. He got furious. He stalked her.”

“When?”

“Six months ago.”

“What’s his name?”

“All I know is Roman. I think it’s a nickname.”

“Address?”

Vasquez shook her head.

“Arrests?”

“Probably. I think so.”

“Describe him.”

“He’s about thirty, no, probably more. Not tall, slim. Has a shaved head. Or he did. He’s white but has a darker skin. There’s a tattoo of a cross on his neck. An old-fashioned cross. Like the ancient times.”

Shaw took a few moments to jot these notes. Then he asked, “Where does she work?”

“In a folk music club, in North Beach.”

Shaw got the name.

“Every time I look at those, I want to cry.” She waved at the photographs on the wall.

“She took those? She’s talented.”

A nod. “She studied, art school. And she can sing too. She has a nice voice.”

She looked out the window. Her jaw was tight. “I wasn’t there for her like I should have been. So expensive here . . . Working two jobs, both Eduardo and me. We weren’t there . . . She got into trouble.” She touched a finger to a lower lid and examined it—for running mascara. Of which there were some streaks. She grimaced and, taking a compact mirror from her purse, examined the damage and blotted some of the stain away.

Her hands were delicate, her skin smooth. She must have been in her early twenties when the girl was born.

Shaw asked questions he’d developed over the years in cases involving missing young people and jotted down her answers in his distinctive handwriting.

Friends’ names and numbers. There was no find-my-phone app on her mobile. The phone was in her name, so her mother couldn’t have the phone company ping it; only the police could and even then only with a warrant. Tessy had one of her mother’s credit cards, but she hadn’t used it.

“When was your last contact?”

“A phone call. She left a message. I couldn’t pick up.” Her lip trembled. She’d be thinking that maybe it was the last chance