Promise Not To Tell(74)

“Hang on,” Anson said. “I’m coming with you.”

“No,” Cabot said. “Two reasons. First, I need you to keep an eye on Virginia. I can’t look after her and deal with Tucker Fleming at the same time. Also, someone needs to be here in case we’re wrong about what is going on. Who knows? Xavier might actually be at the top of the Space Needle snapping pictures. Call me if he decides to wander back into the office.”

“How are you going to find Tucker Fleming?” Virginia asked.

“That’s the easy part,” Anson said. He turned back to his computer. “Fleming should be on the list of Night Watch employees that I compiled after you found Sandra Porter’s body. Yep, here he is.”

“Give it to me,” Cabot said.

Anson jotted down the address on a sticky note and handed it across the desk.

Cabot took the note, opened the door and let himself out into the hall. In a heartbeat he was gone, leaving Virginia alone with Anson.

Anson looked at her. His lawman eyes were bleak.

“The kid’s not at the top of the Space Needle,” he said.

Virginia thought about the carefully curated collection of destroyed objects that she and Cabot had discovered in Sandra Porter’s apartment.

“No,” she said, “he’s not. That poor kid is in trouble and it’s because of me.”

“Nope.” Anson shook his head. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let him take off like that. He’s a seventeen-year-old kid. They do dumb stuff, like try to play hero.”

Virginia gave him a rueful smile. “From what Cabot tells me, I gather you’ve had some experience with teenage boys.”

“Always figured it was a miracle that Max, Cabot and Jack made it to adulthood, what with having me for a dad and all. Not like I knew what the hell I was doing. My own pa took off when I was two. I just winged it with my boys.”

“I think it’s safe to say you figured it out.”

“All I did was try to give them the tools and the skills I knew they’d need to make it,” Anson said. “The rest was pure dumb luck. Gives me cold chills whenever I think of all the things that could have gone wrong.”

“There’s some luck involved in everything, but you didn’t just get three orphaned boys safely to adulthood. Judging by what I know about the situation, you created three good men. You were obviously an excellent role model.”

“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Anson said. “Role models or not, in the end every man has to decide for himself just what kind of man he will be.”

“I never thought about it but I suppose that goes for all of us, women as well as men.”

Anson nodded thoughtfully and gave her a long, knowing look. “It’s clear you made your choice somewhere along the line.”

“It wasn’t a conscious choice. I got lucky in my role model, too. My grandmother made it clear that you do whatever you have to do to be able to face yourself in the mirror.”

“Reckon that’s where it gets complicated,” Anson said. “Some people can live with a real murky version of themselves. Which brings us to this new, younger edition of Quinton Zane. Tell me what you found out about him.”

“If we’re right, Tucker Fleming is a chip off the old block.”

CHAPTER 53

Unlike the other aging bungalows on the street, Tucker Fleming’s house felt cold and empty.

Cabot stood in the living room and absorbed the vibe. He held Xavier’s sunglasses in one hand. There was an empty energy drink can on an end table. It was the same brand as the empties he had spotted at the Wallerton house.

Two minutes ago he had forced a bedroom window, expecting the screech of an alarm. The prospect hadn’t worried him because he was certain he could be in and, if necessary, out before the police or the neighbors bothered to investigate. Alarms went off all the time. People rarely reacted.

But there had been no blaring alarm. There was a security system installed in the house – a good one – but it had been deactivated. Evidently Fleming had left in a rush and had either forgotten to reset the device or hadn’t wanted to waste the time.

That made sense. A man who had been surprised by a kid who had tracked him to his home address would not have been thinking clearly. Fleming had believed himself to be in control of the game from the start. The realization that Xavier had found him would no doubt have pushed him close to the edge of panic.

Speed was the most important factor now, Cabot thought. But he forced himself to think through the logic of the situation. There was no way that Fleming could have had time to plan for such an unforeseen kidnapping scenario, let alone figure out how to dispose of a body.

He would head for a location where he felt safe and in control, a place where he could get rid of a teenage boy who was now a witness.

Cabot took one last look around the living room. The space was crammed with electronics – a massive, state-of-the-art television and various pieces of equipment designed for computer games. But there was no desk, no pile of magazines – nothing of a personal nature that might tell him where Fleming was headed with Xavier.

He had already done a quick prowl of the two small bedrooms, but he forced himself to take the time to go back through the house a second time. There was always something, he reminded himself, and the most likely place to find it was in the most personal space in a house – the owner’s bedroom.