The Fall Moon Read online

  “The disappearance of a car is very relevant to an abduction or a disappearance. Where does the aunt live?”

  She scrabbled through bits of paper, talking as she did so. “N-J-A-L-S-E-N, that’s an old Icelandic spelling. Did you know that? It’s Christen’s maiden name. Ingrid never married. She lives in the family home in…”

  My memory was creaking into action. I vaguely remembered there had been a sister. “Midwest? Illinois? No...”

  She nodded. “Iowa. Town called Garrison.”

  “Garrison. We need to go and talk to her.”

  She ripped a croissant in half, put most of it in her mouth and said, “Be meeff choo challchoo dge cheeff…”

  We stared at each other while she chewed. I said, “We need to talk to the chief?” She nodded and grinned.

  We climbed the stairs to the deputy inspector’s office and knocked. On his command, we entered and he smiled with pleasure as we stepped in and closed the door.

  “Carmen, John, how can I help you? What are you working on at the moment?”

  He gestured at two chairs and we sat. Dehan sighed. “The Redfern case, sir.”

  His eyes narrowed at the ceiling. “Karl and Christine…? Seven years ago…?”

  “Christen, yes, sir.”

  “And how is it proceeding?”

  She looked at me. I said, “Well, sir, Dehan unearthed what may prove to be a very important clue. It seems the Redferns owned a car. That was not established at the time. No papers or keys, or anything of relevance to the car was found in the apartment, and Christen’s sister, Ingrid Njalsen, the Redferns’ sole heir, never reported the car as missing when she took possession of the property. So until today, we had no idea there was a car.”

  He nodded. “That is quite important. Talk me through it.”

  “Well, sir, we also discovered that Amy Redfern…”

  “The daughter whose body was never found.”

  “Exactly. She and her boyfriend, Charlie, had been stashing away money for the six months prior to their disappearance.”

  “Oh, indeed?”

  Dehan took over again. “So we think it’s important that we go and speak to Ingrid Njalsen. The fact that she never reported the car as missing suggests she might have known where it was and didn’t want it found because her niece had it.”

  “The youngsters fled in it. I see. So where is this Ingrid Njalsen?”

  “In the village of Garrison, Iowa.”

  He sighed rather noisily. “Can you telephone her? Or Skype? I hear a lot of people are doing that these days.”

  Dehan blinked several times very quickly, then grinned. “No sir, phoning is probably not a good idea. The idea is to turn up without warning, unexpectedly…”

  “Catch her by surprise and rattle her… yes, I see. I suppose you’ll want to fly…”

  I shook my head. “We can drive, sir. It’s about fifteen hours, three five hour shifts, save the department some cash and you can add it to our Christmas bonus.”

  He laughed like I was joking and told us he expected us back in a couple of days. “And please, don’t get lost and wind up in California.”

  We reciprocated by laughing like he was joking and told him we’d head right back as soon as we had spoken to her.

  On the way down the stairs, Dehan spoke to me over her shoulder. “You figure fifteen hours?”

  “I-80, fifteen hours, maybe a little more.” I looked at my watch. “If we make an early start, we’ll arrive in time for dinner. You want to pack? I’ll try to find a hotel…”

  She had her phone out. “I’m on it. You drive, I’ll book. And put out a BOLO on the Impala. I’ll call the sheriff and let him know we’re coming. What do you reckon, eight tomorrow evening?”

  I shook my head, and as we stepped out into the warm, copper afternoon I said, “No, don’t do that. These are tight communities and we don’t want her alerted in any way that we’re coming. We’ll talk to her in an unofficial capacity. If she’s uncooperative, then we’ll approach the sheriff.”

  She made a skeptical face. “You sure about that, partner?”

  I nodded as I opened the door to the Jag. “We have too much to lose if we go by the book.”

  She shrugged and climbed in. As we accelerated onto the Bronx River Parkway, she said, “OK, there are no hotels in Garrison. The nearest place is the Cobblestone, eight miles away, in Vinton.”

  “That’ll do. I doubt we’ll be there more than twenty-four hours.”

  We had an early dinner and an early night, and next morning we were up at five, dumping our bags in the trunk. The slamming doors made a desolate echo in the pre-dawn street and we sat a moment, cocooned in the close darkness of the car while Dehan took a pull of coffee from the flask. I fired up the engine and we pulled away, out of the sleeping street, toward Iowa and the small town of Garrison.

  We drove in silence until we had crossed the Harlem and the Hudson, we had left the Jersey suburbs behind and we were pushing deep into the outer darkness toward the Midwest along the I-80. Then Dehan inched around in her seat and frowned at me, fingering strands of hair from her eyes.

  “So, talk me through this, Stone. There are lots of pieces that seem to kind of connect but actually don’t; for instance: we have Karl and Christen’s death, a seriously brutal murder by somebody we agree seems to have had a special hatred for Christen, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And we have Charlie and Amy, for six months, preparing to make a run for it…”

  “Apparently.”

  “OK, apparently preparing to make a run for it. That suggests that they knew there was some kind of danger, something bad was going to happen. Did they warn her parents and get ignored? Did they just withdraw into themselves and keep it a secret? That troubles me, but it’s a side issue, for now let’s just say that it looks like they knew something bad was coming, and they prepared for it. They may or may not have warned her parents.

  “Meantime, there is the question, did they cause this to happen? Remember, it is just six months earlier that Charlie approached Camacho and asked about getting into the business, and Camacho, directly or indirectly, had his boys put Karl in hospital. So is there a trigger around this time? Is that—itself—the trigger? Is that what scares them into making plans to run? But if it is, why did they wait six months?”

  Sleeping houses shrouded in limpid amber light slipped past outside. I sighed. “Something strikes me about that. When Charlie approached Feliciano, if he was approaching him about getting into the business, that meant he had already decided he needed to increase his income—significantly and at a high risk.”

  “That’s true. And we have to assume Adolfo and Mateo were instructed to say no, and that’s why they put Karl in hospital…”

  I nodded. “But it starts to get confusing. First of all, if they put Karl in hospital, it means that they saw him as Charlie’s partner or even senior partner. So, if he was involved in the plan to go in with the Camachos and spread their turf, and got put in hospital for it, why was he not just as aware as Charlie of the coming threat?”

  I glanced at her. She was nodding. I went on.

  “More than that, why was there still a threat? The Camacho boys give Karl a beating and put him in hospital, after telling him, ‘stay out of our business.’ So he does, he stays out of their business. Charlie stays out of their business too. Neither Charlie nor Karl was known to the NYPD as a trafficker. So why, after six months, after he comes out of hospital, do they suddenly decide to kill him?”

  “And how did Charlie and Amy know, six months in advance, that they were going to have to run?”

  I shook my head. “It really doesn’t make a lot of sense.” I gave a small laugh, more in frustration than humor. “Leaving aside the fact that the threat, all along, was to Karl and Christen—in particular Christen—not Charlie and Amy.”

  She was quiet for a long while. Outside, in the dark passing world, the buildings were becoming more sparse an
d the woodlands more dense and abundant. Then she shook her head. “No, Stone. That can’t be right. It’s simple logic. If you flee, it’s because you perceive a threat. It’s that simple.”

  I nodded. “I can’t argue with that.”

  “So the next logical step is to conclude, inescapably, that they were aware of a threat.”

  “OK. I like these baby steps.”

  She ignored me. “But they were aware of a threat that we are not aware of. And that leads us irresistibly to the conclusion that the threat to Karl and Christen was not the same as the threat to Charlie and Amy.”

  I didn’t answer. There was no answer. The logic was flawless. The logic also meant that we had barely progressed an inch, unless Ingrid was able to help us. What had happened to Charlie and Amy was still unknown, and all we had on Karl and Christen was pure speculation.

  We stopped at midday outside Cleveland and had lunch at a roadside diner. We drank a couple of gallons of coffee and then Dehan took over the driving. Her driving, like everything else about her, was urgent, direct and to the point. She stayed closer to 100 MPH than she did to the speed limit, but she was safe, never took risks and was always cool and in control.

  We didn’t discuss the case. There was nothing more to be said until we had some concrete evidence. We chatted sporadically about nothing much and the hours ground by slowly. The landscape was increasingly flat and unremarkable.

  Finally, at shortly before seven that evening, we passed Iowa City and turned north on the 380. At Cedar Rapids, we turned west again onto the Lincoln Highway and eventually, at shortly before eight PM, we turned onto 24th Avenue, and drove through endlessly flat country, on an endlessly flat, straight road, under an endless blue-white sky, for thirteen miles, until at long last, we came to the small town of Vinton.

  The Cobblestone was a large, gabled building standing at the center of a large parking lot. We checked in, dumped our bags, wandered into town for a burger and collapsed into bed at ten thirty. As I drifted into sleep, I could still feel the road speeding beneath me.

  EIGHT

  Over breakfast the next morning at seven forty-five, I suggested to Dehan that nine AM might be a good time to go and see Ingrid Njalsen. She had shaken her head vigorously, draining her coffee at the same time, and got to her feet. She was like a thoroughbred with an adrenaline syringe up her backside.

  “Country folk!” she said loudly. “Also: Scandinavians. All that cold, snow and ice. It gives them a tough, vigorous constitution and makes them rise early, for their saunas. Come on, Stone. Git yer ass in gear. We’ll be there by eight.”

  So I too had drained my coffee and gotten to my feet, realizing too late that she had my keys.

  Eight miles and six minutes of flat land, vast horizons and sunshine later, we rolled into Garrison. Garrison is a small town that looks like a large, industrial farm. Broad fields and copses of tall, copper trees surround and encroach on the houses dotted with enormous, steel silos, barns and tractors. We cruised past rickety, clapboard houses in green and white and red that had been placed and built more in obedience to the needs or whims of the builders than the arbitrary grid system that had mapped out the roads: a system that fit people into towns, rather than towns around people. Here and there, there were bits of sidewalk, but over time, trees and other imperatives had replaced them with roots and beaten tracks.

  Ingrid Njalsen’s house was at least a hundred and fifty years old. It stood at a crossroads at the center of town and gave the impression of being two large, white, clapboard houses joined in the middle by a small cottage. It was set back from the road, amid a large area of lawn, flanked by chestnut trees and copper birches. A stone path led to four broad steps that climbed to a wooden veranda. Beside the house, there was an American flag flying on a tall pole, and sitting on the steps, watching us, was a small black and white dog.

  I scanned the area for a twenty-year-old Impala. I didn’t see one, but I noted there were a couple of outbuildings that could have held an automobile.

  We climbed out of the Jag and made our way across the grass, then up the steps to the veranda. The dog watched us do it and twitched its tail; like its tail held hope we might play, but the rest of it had given up on people long ago.

  There was a door behind a screen, but no bell, so I knocked on the frame. A moment later, the door opened and I saw a tall woman frowning at us through the mesh. It made her look oddly like a ghost. I said, “Good morning. I hope we haven’t come at an inconvenient time. Are you Ingrid Njalsen?”

  Her frown deepened. “Yes…” She said it almost like a question.

  Dehan showed her her badge. “Good morning, Mrs. Njalsen. I am Detective Carmen Dehan, this is my partner, Detective John Stone. We are here in an unofficial capacity from the New York Police Department. I wonder if you could spare us five minutes?”

  She blinked a few times, then said, “Well, surely. Won’t you come in?”

  I pulled back the screen and she led us through a dark, spartan entrance hall to a parlor on the right. Like the hall, it was sparsely furnished with a sofa, an armchair by a fireplace which looked about as old as the house, and a wooden rocking chair where some sewing had been laid, presumably when she came to open the door. She gestured me to the armchair and Dehan to the sofa. She sat on the rocking chair with her sewing on her lap.

  “I can offer you coffee,” she said, “but I usually break fast at five. I don’t usually eat again until eleven…”

  We assured her we didn’t want coffee and before Dehan could speak, I gave a small laugh and said, “This may seem like a strange question, Mrs. Njalsen…”

  “Miss.”

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Njalsen, have you a car?”

  She looked startled. “Why, no. I don’t drive. I…” She faltered, smiled. It was an attractive smile, but also an uninviting one. “It is a strange question,” she said at last. “Why does the New York Police Department want to know if I have a car?”

  Dehan gave her the dead eye for a moment, then said, “The thing is, Miss Njalsen, we are reviewing the case of your sister and her husband’s murder, six years ago.”

  She paled visibly.

  “And we noticed that there were several things that were not followed up in the original investigation. One of those things was that your sister and brother-in-law had a car.”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew that?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You, as the next of kin, came into possession of all their things, including, presumably, the car…”

  She paused there and waited for Ingrid to fill in the silence. Ingrid gave a small shrug and fingered the sewing in her lap. I saw it was a small child’s dress.

  “But when I got there, the car was missing, also all the papers and the keys.”

  “Did you report them missing?”

  She looked directly at Dehan. “No.”

  “Why not, Miss Njalsen?”

  Another small shrug. “I don’t drive. I was very upset about my sister’s death. It was very traumatic. I have nobody to help me with things. I don’t know about reporting a car stolen, insurance…” She gestured to the simple, clean, spartan home around her. “This is my world, Detective Dehan. New York…!” She shook her head. “It was very frightening.”

  Dehan smiled sympathetically. “I can understand that, and New York cops can be a bit intimidating, right, Stone?”

  I nodded and smiled too. “They can, sometimes. That’s true. However, there is something that I find a little confusing. The police must have talked to you several times when you arrived. They must have taken a statement from you about the last time you saw your sister and brother-in-law…”

  “Yes. I spoke to them twice, first when I had just arrived, they came to the house, and then they asked me to go to the station house and make a statement.”

  “Didn’t it occur to you on that second occasion to mention the car?”

  A flash of irritation contracted
her face. “No. I have already told you, I don’t drive. A car would have been a nuisance for me. I was happy to let it go.”

  I nodded. “Yes, I see. I understand that.” She studied my face a moment with no expression on her own. I asked her, “Do you know what a BOLO is, Miss Njalsen?”

  She frowned. “A bolo? No…”

  I gave a small laugh. “It’s one of those endless acronyms that people like so much these days. BOLO stands for Be On the Look Out. We have issued a BOLO today, nationwide, so that all law enforcement agencies will be on the lookout for a silver Chevy Impala, 2000, fitting the description of your sister’s car.”

  “After six years? Surely whoever has it will have changed the plates by now.”

  “Oh, that’s OK,” I said. “We are also looking into that, to see if that car has been reregistered anywhere else.”

  She was very still, staring at me. I held her eye. After a while, Dehan said, “Ingrid, has Amy got the Impala?”

  Her eyes shifted away from me, but she didn’t look at Dehan, she looked out her window at the vast flat plains of Iowa. “How could I possibly know that? I thought Amy and Charlie were presumed dead.”

  “Maybe. We’re not sure. But I did notice, Ingrid, that you said earlier that you were traumatized by your sister’s death. You didn’t say anything about your niece.”

  She sighed. “You are trying to trip me up and trick me with words. Why don’t you just tell me what you want?”

  I spread my hands. “We simply want to know where Amy and Charlie are. And I have to say, I am becoming more and more curious as to why you would want to keep that a secret.”

  She gave her head a small shake. She was cool and unruffled. “You are the one who says I am keeping it a secret, Detective Stone. I have no idea what happened to Amy and Charlie. I have no idea of what happened to the car. If Amy and Charlie used it to escape, then I can only hope they are alive and safe somewhere. I certainly have no idea where.”

  Dehan frowned. “Forgive me saying so, Ingrid, but, considering that we are trying to find your niece, as far as I am aware, your only living relative, you don’t seem very keen to help us.” She waited. Ingrid did and said nothing. Dehan pushed a little harder. “In fact, I would say I am picking up a distinct sense of hostility.”