Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4) (13 page)

Naya snorted, and the woman
looked at their table. Sasha saw a sadness and a resignation in her eyes, as if
she knew the architect lacked a soul, but her options were sufficiently limited
that she was willing to settle for this loser.

Sasha wanted to shout at her. Presumably,
he was on his very best behavior, trying to make a good impression. This
display was as good as it was going to get. What was this woman thinking? How
could she ignore the red flags that were popping up over his head?

 “Are you done with your coffee?
I can’t bear to watch any more of this horror show,” Naya said.

Sasha drained her mug and gave
herself a moment to reconsider what she was about to do.

Then she stood and squared her
shoulders. She strode toward the couple. When she reached their table, she
stopped beside the man’s chair.

He twisted in his seat to look up
at her with a mixture of annoyance, confusion, and interest, “Can we help you?”

Sasha smiled at him and then
turned to the city attorney, who was discreetly checking her watch. She waited
until the woman glanced up and met her eyes, “I realize I don’t know you, but
my friend and I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. I’m a lawyer, too,
and I know the hours can be brutal on a social life. And, I’m not lucky enough
to have children, but I have to tell you this: there are worse things than
being alone.”

She tilted her head toward the
guy, just in case her message wasn’t clear.

The woman gave her a half-smile
and a nod. Naya choked back a laugh.

Sasha walked away with Naya trailing
her.

“Lesbians,” the architect
muttered behind her.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Leo was surprised
to hear peals of laughter floating down the hall from Sasha’s office. In light
of the stress and time constraints they were under, he expected Sasha and Naya
to be intent and subdued.

“Hey,” Sasha managed, wiping
tears from her eyes with her finger.

“Hey, yourself. What’s so funny?”
he asked.

Naya shook her head. “Long story.”

She pulled a sheet of paper from
the printer and handed it to him. “Here, sign this verification.”

Leo skimmed the document, which
required him to verify the factual truth of the motion for a temporary
restraining order.

“Shouldn’t I read the motion
first?” he asked.

Naya shrugged. “Good point.”

Sasha printed the document, and
they watched in silence as Leo read it carefully.

When he got to the end, he looked
up. “Okay. Looks good to me. Can I have a pen?”

Sasha tossed him a blue ballpoint
from the Prescott & Talbott mug that sat on her desk. He scrawled his
signature and passed the paper to Naya.

Naya gathered a stack of printed
pages and disappeared into her office.

“Now what?” Leo said.

“Now we file. This part’s done,”
Sasha said, standing and stretching.

She bent at the waist then
turned, with her head resting on her ankle, and peered up at him. “Did you get
a meeting with the task force?”

“Tomorrow morning. Are you stiff?”
he asked.

“A little bit. I haven’t been to
class in nearly a week,” she said. She stretched her other side and then stood
up straight and rolled her neck.

Leo felt himself frowning. “That’s
not good. You need to stay sharp.”

Sasha was a danger magnet. He
already worried about her nearly constantly. The only saving grace was that she
was a skilled Krav Maga student and could take care of herself capably. But, it
wouldn’t do for her to get rusty or soft. Not with the country teetering as it
was on the edge of crisis. If there were a societal breakdown, a small woman
like her would be viewed as easy prey for any number of evil acts.

She wrinkled her brow at him. “I
know. I’ve just been busy, and I guess I’m going to miss class tomorrow
morning, too, if we’re heading to D.C. You want to spar?”

She dropped into a defensive
posture, legs shoulder-distance apart, arms raised in a block.

Leo laughed. “No. I’m not crazy.
Just … don’t get complacent.”

She smiled up at him, and his
heart squeezed.

“Get your stuff together. We need
to make a stop before we get on the road,” he said.

Gavin rapped on
the bowed aluminum screen door, hitched his thumbs through his belt loops, and
waited. He stood on the small porch, more of a covered step, really, of a small
rancher. Its aluminum siding had once been white but was now a dingy gray, scratched
and dented. An old broom rested against the exterior wall, right next to the
door. The concrete space where he stood had been swept clean. Was probably
swept clean each day as part of a morning routine.

He was about to knock again when
the interior door swung open, causing the wilted, red-bowed wreath that hung on
the door to bounce against the glass. A woman in her late sixties stood in the
doorway, blinking up at him from behind streaked glasses. She clutched a
housecoat around herself, defensive, but once she realized who he was, her face
relaxed into a smile.

“Gavin,” she cried, joy and
surprise coming through in equal measures in her tone. Her hand continued to
grip the robe closed, but he sensed it was now out of modesty, although he
could see she was wearing pajamas beneath it.

“Afternoon, Mrs. Gerig,” he said.
He gave her a reassuring smile.

“Where are my manners?” she
asked, moving aside. “Come in, come in.”

Gavin shuffled his feet on the
rubberized welcome mat and ducked his head.

“I can’t stay, Mrs. Gerig. I just
wanted to stop by real quick and ask if everything’s okay with Celia. I tried
to call her, but her number’s been disconnected.”

Mrs. Gerig’s rheumy eyes
flickered with hope. “You’re trying to get in touch with Celia?  After all
these years?”

Gavin cleared his throat. “I just
wanted to see if she’s okay.”

He didn’t see any upside in
explaining to his high school girlfriend’s aging mother that, after several
sessions of sweaty fumbling beneath the stadium bleachers after football games,
they’d both realized she was more interested in what was under her fellow
cheerleaders’ skirts than what he had to offer.

Celia had stayed the course until
graduation, attending prom on his arm and then drifting away gracefully,
instead of exposing herself to the special brand of cruelty practiced by
small-town high school kids. He’d always been surprised that she stuck around
town after graduation, given her preferences. But she was an only child, whose
father had died when she was twelve. She was close to her mom. Although
apparently the two weren’t close enough for Celia to share the truth about her
sexual orientation—the romantic reunion dancing in Mrs. Gerig’s imagination
would require a serious lifestyle change on her daughter’s part.

Mrs. Gerig’s smile faded. “I’m
not sure if she’s okay, Gavin. She was supposed to come up and take me to
church this morning, but she didn’t. I haven’t heard from her, and that’s not
like my Celia. She would never miss church during Advent. And to not call…” her
voice trailed off, wobbly and soft.

“Come up from where? She’s not
living in town anymore?”

Gavin hadn’t made any effort to
stay in touch with Celia, but he’d seen her around town from time to time—at
the post office or the diner, pumping gas at the Shell station, or when he was
shopping for groceries at the supermarket where she’d worked. They’d always
been cordial. Now, he tried to recall the last time he’d seen her, and he
couldn’t. Her vehicle registration still listed her mother’s address, so he’d
started here.

“Oh, heavens, no. She moved down
toward Pittsburgh just last month. She was staying with a friend and looking
for a job. You know, she felt this town didn’t have much to offer her. Wanted a
change, she said.”

That didn’t sound like the Celia
he remembered.

“What kind of change?” he
pressed.

Mrs. Gerig sighed heavily. Gavin
watched her struggle with herself. Her desire to keep up a brave front and
pretend that all was well with her only child was colliding with her niggling
concern that Celia was in trouble. The internal debate played out across the
old woman’s face. Gavin waited.

Finally, she exhaled and shook
her head, “I told her not to get mixed up with those Doomsdayers, but she didn’t
listen.”

“Doomsdayers?” Gavin repeated.

“They call themselves preppers,
but it’s just another cult if you ask me.”  Mrs. Gerig crossed herself hastily.

“Preppers,” Gavin said. “You
mean, like those folks who have the compound up past Firetown?”

“Those very same folks, as a
matter of fact,” she answered with a short nod. “She fell in with them a while
back. At first, it seemed harmless. She did ordinary things—kept her gas tank
full, batteries in the flashlight, an extra gallon of water. But, then she
started worrying about the collapse of the government and the monetary system.
Next, it was poisons in the water supply. Or a meteor strike. She was obsessed
with the fall of civilization, I guess. She bought a gun—Celia!—and learned to
shoot it.”

Gavin stared at her.

“It’s true. She was spending all
her free time up at that compound, doing exercises and drills. So, when she
said she was moving to New Kensington, I was thrilled. Relieved that she’d be
getting away from those nutjobs, to tell you the truth. And, now she’s
disappeared.” The old woman’s face crumbled, and her chest heaved, but she held
back her tears.

“When did you last see her or
speak to her, Mrs. Gerig?” Gavin was careful to keep his tone neutral; he didn’t
want to get her any more worked up than she already was.

She thought back.

“Two Sundays ago, she came up,
and we went to church. Then, last week, she called and said she was very busy
and couldn’t make it, but she’d see me this week.”

“Did she say what she was busy
with?”

“A new job. She said she’d found
a job, something seasonal. She didn’t go into details because Betty Caponata
was here, waiting to take me to get my hair done. But she said she’d tell me
all about it when she saw me on Sunday.”  Mrs. Gerig huffed out a ragged breath
as she finished.

“Do you have a telephone number
for her? Or an address?”

She shook her head, a little bit
sad and a little bit embarrassed. “I had the long-distance service shut off
years ago. I never used it, why pay for it? And she was bouncing around,
staying with this friend, that friend … and she always called me.”

“These friends, were they
preppers?”

Her eyes met his, and he saw fear
and realization as it dawned on her how little she knew about her daughter’s
life.

“I have no idea,” she admitted.

And then, the tears she’d been
fighting back poured from her eyes and her frail frame shook. Gavin crossed the
threshold and stepped inside to comfort the woman, and she burrowed her face
into his chest and cried.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After Gavin had
calmed Mrs. Gerig with a promise to help her find Celia, he hurried to his car
and pulled up Sasha’s cell phone number while his engine came to life.

His call rolled straight into
voicemail and Sasha’s businesslike, but pleasant, voice urged him to leave a
message. He ended the call and drummed on the steering wheel, thinking. He
could try her office number. Then he glanced down at the clock on his
dashboard. It was not quite two o’clock. He didn’t have anything scheduled for
the rest of the afternoon. He might as well drive out to the compound and see
if any of those blasted preppers were around, on the off chance one of them
knew how to get in touch with Celia. Once he talked to Sasha, she’d probably
ask him to check that box. Might as well do it now, before it got any darker
and the promised snow started to fall.

His mind made up, Gavin turned on
the car’s heater and cued up
The Nutcracker
in the CD player. Next to
the perfect cup of coffee, there was nothing Gavin liked better than big,
sweeping orchestral scores, especially this one, especially during the holidays.
Well, that and Sunday Ticket. He checked his rearview mirror and pulled out,
leaving Mrs. Gerig and her worry behind.

The compound was way up in the
far northeast corner of the county. Bordered on two sides by state game lands
and more than thirty minutes from its nearest neighbor, the site was a perfect
place for the preppers to hole up, practice their idiotic war games, and avoid
complaints. They were in their own little world up there, which Gavin presumed
was the point. In fact, he only knew they existed because he’d stumbled across
their compound a few years back during a hunting trip.

Tracking a deer through the
woods, he’d come out into a clearing and bumped into an armed sentry, for lack
of a better word. The man wore some sort of makeshift uniform—army green cargo
pants and a tan flak jacket with a desert camouflage pattern. He sported a
graying buzz cut and a Ruger. It was evident that he was as startled as Gavin
was, but he recovered quickly, pointed his rifle at Gavin’s chest, and
announced that Gavin was on private property.

Over the guard’s shoulder, Gavin
glimpsed a large garden, several sheds, and an enormous stack of firewood.
Beyond that, in the distance, he could make out several log structures. In
light of the gun pointed at his center mass, he chose not to move in for a
closer look.

At the time, he had still been
with the Sheriff’s Office, but his jurisdiction was limited. He’d apologized
and backed away, back into the wooded game lands, his heart thudding and the
buck long gone. He’d tromped back through the woods, almost running, until he
found his hunting buddy—a state trooper—crouched in a thicket. When Gavin
described the man and the compound, Phil had nodded.