Gone(12)

CHAPTER EIGHT / The House

The rain sluiced down the windshield as Rondeau sat in front of the Kemp residence, the color leached by the downpour, everything ashen.

He could see the shapes of the forensics team moving in the house. Britney Silas stood in the window silhouetted by bright lights. Special lights which could illuminate all sorts of things tungsten couldn’t. Mopped-up blood. Semen. Boot prints.

He waited for Silas to be ready for him and looked through the “Checkmate” file on Hutchinson Kemp.

Checkmate, a pet favorite of Detective Stokes’, was a new comprehensive personal history system. The web program filched through endless digital reams of data on a person, from criminal and court records to social media platforms, sex offender databases, realty information, and more.

Hutchinson Kemp was pretty clean. He had been popped for Driving While Intoxicated at nineteen, which was reduced to Driving While Ability Impaired. He got another one a few years later, and lost his license. He attended the drunk driver program to get it back. According to some social media information, he was open about it, and considered himself in recovery.

A kindred spirit, Rondeau thought. Another friend to Bill. Or, as they sometimes said in the program, at least “more than a passing acquaintance.”

Kemp had collected his share of traffic tickets, none outstanding. He’d been in one barroom scuffle — right around the time of his second DWI. So he was a bit of a scrapper, maybe. At least with a good head of booze on. Rondeau could relate to that.

At one time, Kemp had been barred from entering Canada. Canada had drunk driving laws which were harsher than in the States. Kemp had gone to the Canadian Embassy, jumped through a bunch of hoops, paid a couple thousand bucks, and gotten his right of entry restored. A filmmaker wasn’t worth much in the modern world if he couldn’t travel to a neighboring country for a shoot. And Kemp had been to quite a few places. He’d taken trips to Guatemala, he’d been to Spain, Portugal, Tunisia, and Jordan.

Rondeau mused over these last two countries. Jordan? That was an interesting place for a filmmaker to go. Yet he didn’t see anything in Kemp’s filmography involving the countries. Had Jordan been a pleasure trip then, to a resort? What about Tunisia?

Holding the thick Checkmate printout, it crossed his mind: The famous fruit vendor in Tunisia who had set himself on fire in protest of government, touching off the Arab Spring. Could the Kemp disappearance be linked to some type of terrorism? Was Hutchinson Kemp somewhere right now, being held up by chains, being interrogated? For what? His documentary on cattle farms? On household garbage? Going by the missing shifts at the hospital, and the neighbors’ last sighting of the Kemps at home, the family had been missing for three days. Yet there’d been no contact from a kidnapper demanding a ransom, no demands from a terrorist group looking to free prisoners or convert everyone to some backwoods religious fundamentalism. If the Kemps were alive, why were they being held?

The front door opened, and Britney Silas leaned out, squinting in the rain. She spotted him and waved him over. They were ready.

*

Silas gave Rondeau the guided tour. Some things he already knew from the night before: popcorn bowl downstairs, crayons scattered on the rug. In the kitchen, things were fairly neat, but there were more signs of a hasty departure.

“Coffee prepped and ready to brew,” Silas said, touching the stainless steel coffee maker with a gloved hand. Rondeau had slipped on latex gloves, feeling a bit like a man about to go into the operating room. Booties covered his shoes and a net over his hair. “Dishes in the sink,” she said.

He looked around the kitchen. “Nice stuff.” A brushed chrome stove, cast-iron cookery; even the slotted spoons hanging above the stove looked expensive.

“Here’s the history on the house,” Silas said. “Property was left to the wife, Lily, nee O’Connell. It was her father’s, Patrick O’Connell.”

“Was he Jewish?”

“Irish,” Silas answered, missing the joke. “The family had this house built five years ago.”

Interesting, Rondeau thought, looking around again. They’d kept it modest. The house didn’t look like much from the outside — new, but simple. Inside, he could see the craft: rustic hardwood floors, walls and trim painted in earthy tones. The fixtures were brass or wrought iron. Even the electric outlet covers were nice. Orange tags dotted the decor. Silas was logging anything that looked like it had been left unattended, evidence of an unplanned departure, like the coffee maker and sink. Or the mug which had been sitting outside, now bagged and sent to the lab.

She took him through the bedrooms. Their feet crunched over plastic laid over certain areas. Rondeau eyed the teddy bear on the bedroom floor and felt a kind of twist in his stomach. There was an orange tag on the ground next to it, marked “27.”

“The closets and drawers are full of clothes,” Silas said. “We found empty suitcases. Doesn’t look like anyone packed for a trip.”

“I want to see his office. His edit studio, or whatever you call it,” Rondeau dragged his gaze away from the bear.

Silas led him downstairs. “Cobleskill called me,” she said as she went down. Cobleskill was the DA. “She was surprised she hadn’t heard from you yet.”

Rondeau felt a sting. “Well, there’s nothing prosecutorial so far. When there’s a villain, she’ll be the first to know.”