Goodbye Sister Disco Read online

  Amy was five when George met Eileen. Eileen had had her unwed. A smart girl from a moderately wealthy family, maybe looking for a husband, maybe not. Good-looking and clever. George fell in love with her when he met her. They married a few months later and he formally adopted Amy a few months after that.

  He had wanted to have more children with Eileen, but it wasn’t what she wanted. Whatever else could be said about her, she had never deceived him about that. And when she’d left George a few years into their marriage, she had taken steps to make sure that he would have joint custody of the girl he had quickly come to think of as his own. Even when he got angry at Eileen, Hastings would remind himself of that.

  George kept their condo in St. Louis Hills. Eileen moved into her next husband’s house. A rich personal-injury lawyer, living in West County. Harmless enough guy, though Hastings was relieved that Amy had never taken to him.

  Amy was looking at Hastings now, as he walked back in the door.

  She said, “Was that Mom on the phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s bailing on me, isn’t she?”

  She always had been a smart girl.

  “She’s not bailing on you,” Hastings said. “She just—”

  “Got a better offer?”

  “She’s going to Jamaica with Ted. You can go with them, if you like. But she didn’t think you’d want to.”

  She was looking at him now. Her lip didn’t tremble; perhaps she’d grown used to this.

  Finally she said, “She’s right, I don’t want to go with them. I just think it’s shitty, that’s all.”

  “All right, let’s not use language like—”

  “Well, it is. She doesn’t even tell me herself.”

  Hastings said, “Well, we’ll figure out something to do.”

  A lovely holiday season. Depression, anger, and now anxiety over what to do. Hastings had never cooked a big turkey dinner in his life. Pasta and simple meat dishes were the most he’d ever undertaken. Apart from Eileen’s parents, there was no family for either of them. Not in St. Louis. Both of Hastings’s parents had passed away. And he had never really gotten along with his father anyway. He had some cousins in Nebraska, where he had been raised, but they were relative strangers to him. His father hadn’t been too popular with his siblings, either.

  Amy said, “Dad, don’t worry about it. I don’t mind spending Christmas here. Really, I don’t.”

  So now they were both lying. Hastings fabricating that thing about Eileen saying Amy could come with her to Jamaica, Amy saying she didn’t mind spending Christmas in what would suddenly become a very small, very empty condominium. Gifts of the Magi.

  Hastings looked at his cell phone.

  Shit. He’d missed a call. It was from Karen Brady, the captain of detectives.

  He walked into the kitchen as he pressed her number.

  She answered before the second ring.

  “George?”

  “Yeah, Karen. What’s up?”

  “We’ve got a murder and an abduction. In Ladue.”

  “Ladue?”

  “Yes. Happened a few minutes ago. Or, the body was found a few minutes ago. George, it was right outside this lawyer’s house during his Christmas party. There were judges and some city leaders there.”

  “Happened at the party?”

  “No. Outside. About a hundred yards away. Chief wants you there.”

  “Have you called Joe?”

  “No. The chief said to call you.”

  “All right. I’ll call him.”

  When he got off the telephone, he looked at Amy with an apologetic expression.

  Amy said, “Do you have to go?”

  “Yeah. It could be all night.”

  She sighed and stood up. “I’ll call Randi.”

  Randi McGregor was a friend who lived down the street. They went to St. Gabriel School together. When Hastings had a call, it was understood that Amy could stay the night at Randi’s house. In exchange, Hastings had cooked many dinners for Randi—her parents were lousy cooks—and there was the small payment of having to listen to Randi’s dad talk about Cardinal baseball and whatever else came to his mouth whenever they ran into him at Francis Park. A fair trade.

  Hastings was off the phone with Joe when Amy came out of her bedroom with her overnight bag.

  FOUR

  Sergeant Joe Klosterman was a few years younger than Hastings. He was bigger and heavier and, with the mustache he had worn most of his adult life, looked more like a policeman. Hastings, a lieutenant, was senior to Klosterman. But they were friends. Neither one of them abused his rank.

  Earlier in the year, Klosterman had had a cancer scare. The tumor had been successfully removed and he was back at work now and liking it. While he’d been sick, he’d been replaced by Sergeant Bobby Cain. Cain had been an unlikable man but a good detective. Cain was dead now. Murdered.

  If Klosterman thought there was anything ironic about it—his replacement dying of gunshot wounds while he had feared dying of cancer—he had not said so.

  Hastings arrived at the Fisher house in a brown 1987 Jaguar XJ6. It was his police unit, the product of a seizure made pursuant to the RICO Act, which the department had given to his homicide team. The previous owner had replaced the stock engine with a Corvette V-8. It was a fast car and it made a beautiful burble when it idled.

  There was a police tag in his windshield and they let him drive through the front gate and up the driveway. When Hastings got out of the car, he had a sense of being early. Not that there was a lack of people. In fact, there were too many. Civilians, that is. Too many civilians. Goddamn party. He saw a middle-aged man talking to a couple of uniformed police officers. He went up and identified himself.

  The man extended his hand and Hastings found himself shaking it.

  “Sam Fisher,” he said. “And you are?” Asserting authority to civil service.

  Christ, Hastings thought. He said, “Lieutenant Hastings. Sir, is this your home?”

  “Yes.” Fisher seemed almost taken aback by the tone.

  Hastings said, “Would you help us out, please? If these people haven’t witnessed anything, would you please get them out of here? Now.”

  “Well, sure.”

  “Thank you.”

  Hastings said, “I’ll want to talk to you later. Is that all right with you?”

  “Well, sure.”

  He went on his way, his ego a little less bruised by Hastings’s parting deference. Hastings turned to the patrol officers.

  “Where’s the sergeant in command?”

  “Over there, Lieutenant.”

  With the patrol sergeant’s help, they got the area thinned out and cordoned off. Yellow tape went up and the medical examiners and technicians relaxed. Somewhat.

  By the time Hastings got to the body, Klosterman was already there.

  On the ground was a corpse of a young man. White male, midtwenties, good clothes. Most of his face was gone. The police photographer was walking around the body, snapping shots of visible wounds, bloodstains, stepping near him for the close-ups.

  Klosterman said, “Shot three times. Once in the face.”

  Hastings looked up and down the road. Different-colored mansions on both sides of the street. Ladue. Some of the most high-dollar real estate in the Midwest.

  Hastings said, “Out here?”

  “Yeah,” Klosterman said. “It’s strange. It doesn’t seem like a domestic assault or drug feud. We don’t know … there was a girl with him.”

  “Who?”

  “Young lady. Name is Cordelia Penmark. Recognize that name?”

  “No.”

  “Her father is Eugene Penmark. That’s what I’ve been told anyway.”

  “By?”

  “A couple of the guests. Attorneys who knew this young man.”

  “Who is he?”

  “His name was Tom Myers. Young attorney, starting out his career.” Klosterman paused. Then said, “It’s a fragile thi
ng, isn’t it?” He had a son of his own, in high school.

  “Yeah,” Hastings said. They were neither one of them given to being maudlin. The nature of the work made that impossible. But looking at the young man, Hastings thought of his own age. Forty now. Not old enough to have a son of that age, but old enough to have a grown son. Hastings said, “Shit.” He turned to Klosterman. “You said something about a girl?”

  “Yeah. People saw him leave with a girl. Cordelia—”

  “Penmark. Yeah, I got that. You asked if I recognized the name, though.”

  “Well, the thing is, she’s rich.”

  “So?”

  “No, I mean rich. Her father’s one of the Forbes 400.”

  “I don’t read that magazine.”

  “He owns some sort of software company. I don’t know the name. He’s a billionaire.”

  “Oh.”

  “So, what I’m thinking is, she left with someone else. Or she killed him and took off. Or…”

  “Or she was abducted.”

  “It seems likely,” Klosterman said.

  “For ransom?”

  “That, or it’s a coincidence.”

  Hastings said, “Man.”

  He saw a news-channel van parked in front of the house, a handsome young man positioning himself in front of the camera, lights outlining him and throwing a long shadow across the lawn.

  Hastings said, “Has the girl’s family been notified?”

  Klosterman turned to a patrol officer. The patrol officer said, “Yes. Delaney called them.”

  To Klosterman, Hastings said, “There’ll be a lot of people to interview. Will you call Howard and Murph for me?”

  “Yeah.”

  Hastings went back to the patrol sergeant, whose name was John Baumann. Each was vaguely familiar with the other, though they had never worked the same detail before. Sergeant Baumann was a younger sergeant; in his twenties, he’d had his stripes less than a year. Hastings believed that Baumann had screwed up this crime scene already by not taking adequate charge, but he still needed the man’s help. There was a certain way to discuss this sort of police procedure. Diplomacy, nuance, tact.

  “John,” Hastings said, “This is becoming a clusterfuck. Half the guys here don’t know where the crime scene sign-in sheet is. Please make sure every cop knows where it is and that they sign it. As for the rest of these people who aren’t witnesses and are just rubbernecking, we need to get them the fuck out of here. Now. Also, get barricades set up on the road so we don’t have media guys tromping all over the place. The guy that owns this house is some sort of big wheel, so more than likely the chief or deputy chief is going to show up here. If they see this, I’m going to get my ass chewed off. So help me out, okay?”

  “Sure, Lieutenant.”

  Hastings patted him on the shoulder as he left. “Thanks, John.”

  Hastings walked back to the front of the house. Sam Fisher was still talking to the two men he had been talking to earlier. Fisher turned to acknowledge him.

  Hastings said, “I need to speak with you.”

  Fisher hesitated, but the two men moved away from him.

  “Okay,” Fisher said.

  “You’re aware that the young man is dead?”

  “I know,” Fisher said. “It’s just a terrible thing. A terrible thing.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “Yes. He worked for the firm.”

  “An attorney?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you know about him?”

  “He was an exceptional young man. A good lawyer, a hard worker.”

  “No trouble that you’re aware of?”

  “Like what, sir?”

  “Drugs, gambling … that sort of thing.”

  “No. Not him. He had everything going for him.”

  “Did he bring a date here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “He brought a young lady named Cordelia Penmark. She’s Gene Penmark’s daughter.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “I thought she left with him.”

  “Did you see them leave together?”

  “No, but I’m sure someone did. They came here together and she was gone when he was gone.”

  “Had you met the girl before?”

  “No. I met her for the first time tonight.”

  “Did he or she have an argument with anyone here tonight?”

  “No. In fact, I don’t think he had more than one drink the entire night.”

  “Excuse me, Officer?”

  Hastings turned to see another man who had just walked up.

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Ross Kaufman. I was talking with them both, shortly before they left. Is the girl dead?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The young lady, is she…”

  “We don’t know. We think she’s been abducted.”

  The man seemed shaken.

  Hastings said, “Did you know her?”

  “No. I just met her tonight.”

  “You did?”

  “She was in the back, smoking a cigarette. And I went out there to have a smoke and started talking with her. I’m a lawyer at Sam’s firm.”

  “Anything unusual?”

  “No. We probably only talked a couple of minutes. And Tom came up and said he was ready to go.”

  “Any sort of anger between them, then?”

  “Anger? No, I don’t think so. I think she’d’ve rather stayed. But that’s speculation.” Kaufman added, “Is she okay?”

  “We don’t know yet. Would you mind giving me a card, in case I want to ask you some more questions?”

  Kauffman handed Hastings a card. A middle-aged man looking distressed, missing the smile of young girl.

  Klosterman came over. Hastings turned his back to the attorneys.

  “George, we checked the young man’s body. His wallet, his money are still on him. He wasn’t robbed.”

  “Oh.”

  “Also, the girl’s mother is here now.”

  FIVE

  The woman was in her late forties. She wore glasses and her hair was long and gray and unfashionable. She did not look like the sort of woman who sat on a billion dollars. She looked like she worked at a library.

  This is what Hastings thought, anyway. Like most detectives, he’d take a generalized guess if nothing else was available, and right now there wasn’t.

  When Hastings was a young patrol cop, he responded to a call reporting an auto collision on I-64 near the Kingshighway exit. It was one of those bad ones involving an eighteen-wheel semi and a car. The car’s roof was completely sheared off; the sort of crumpled, twisted thing you see and you know that the odds of the occupant surviving the crash are slim. As he suspected, the woman driving the car had died upon impact, and the only positive thing you could think was that it had happened instantly without the person being burned first.

  A few minutes later, a man drove up to the wreck and got out of his car and ran toward the carnage. It was Hastings who stopped him before he could see anything. The man said, “My wife’s in there. My wife—is she…?”

  “Sir,” Hastings had said, “please step back.”

  And the man said, his voice shaking, “She didn’t make it, did she?” Knowing in the way people seem to know.

  Hastings paused for only a moment, wondering in that moment if someone else could do this, but knowing that he was there and he would have to. And he said, “No, sir, she didn’t. I’m sorry.”

  It was a nasty, necessary part of this business. Passing on tragedy and watching some poor man collapse with grief. But it had to be done.

  Hastings led the woman into Sam Fisher’s study, so they could talk alone. They were still standing when he said, “Are you Mrs. Penmark?”

  “No, my name is Beckwith. Adele Beckwith. I took my maiden name after I divorced Cordelia’s father.” She said, “Where is my daughter, Detective?”

  “We don’t
know, ma’am. She may not have been with the young man when—”

  “When he was killed?”

  “Yes. The good news is, there’s no evidence as of yet that she’s been harmed.”

  The woman stared at him. “No evidence? She’s missing, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “We don’t. I’m sorry.”

  The woman sat down on the couch. She put her face in her hands. Hastings could see that she was trembling.

  “Ma’am,” he said, “please don’t jump to conclusions.”

  She looked up at him, her face screwed up with grief.

  Hastings said, “We’re working on it.”

  “Work—there’s a young man out there who’s dead. And you don’t know where she is. You don’t know.”

  No, Hastings thought, I don’t. Because it wasn’t his daughter that was missing. He could empathize, but he couldn’t know.

  He said, “Can you talk to me?”

  After a moment, she nodded her head.

  “When is the last time you talked to her?”

  “… Yesterday … she called me yesterday.”

  “Did she seem okay?”

  “Yes … we talked about what we would do on Christmas.…”

  “Was she in any distress when you talked to her?”

  She struggled and then shook her head.

  “You sure?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you want to talk about this later?”

  She nodded again.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Beckwith. We’re going to do everything we can to get her back to you. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m going to bring an officer back here to sit with you. All right? She’s going to sit with you for a while. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He went out to the front of the house and pulled Officer Annie Soames aside. To him, it was not a chauvinistic thing to ask a woman officer to comfort a woman. He knew from experience that it worked, and few cops, men or women, would dispute it. He had just escorted Annie inside when he saw Murph running up to him.

  Detective Tim Murphy—Murph the Surf—had a build that was almost slight. But he possessed the air of fearlessness and menace that is inherent in Irish-cop DNA. Hastings had once seen him crook a finger at a man twice his size and say, “Come here,” and the man did. Quivering while he did so. In such circumstances, self-doubt was not an issue for Murph.