Page 19 of Pro Bono

“If you’re still in Los Angles say please.”

“Please listen to what I’ve got to say.”

The call went dead. He said, “Mrs. Ellis?” but he knew he was talking to nobody. He’d gone too far, and the kidnapper had been listening to her side of the call. But then he thought this was the moment when he had to verify the call. In a minute he would be calling the police, and they would need to know if it was Mrs. Ellis, or some other woman impersonating her because she was dead.

Warren set his cell phone down, plugged it into its charger, and used the house phone to call Tiffany Greene.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hi, Tiffany. This is Charlie Warren. I’m just checking again to see if you’ve heard from Vesper Ellis.”

“No,” she said. “I can’t imagine what she’s thinking. A simple phone call could save a lot of trouble.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m going to have to be able to get some more information from these companies directly. While I’ve got you, do you happen to know what her mother’s maiden name was?”

“Why do you need that?”

“You know what she hired me for, right?”

“Yes. She thinks a couple of her financial advisors are robbing her.”

“Right. I have the account numbers, but sometimes they ask for something that’s not on paper. Usually that’s the mother’s maiden name.”

“Her mother had a weird name too. Some kind of a family thing so when they were kids the other kids wouldn’t give them some common nickname, and as adults people would remember them,” Tiffany said.“Let me think for a second. It began with an ‘I.’ Iolanthe. Vesper’s maiden name was Rowan. Her mother’s maiden name I don’t think I ever heard.”

“Well, thanks. That should help.” Warren said. “We’ll talk soon.”

She hadn’t had the whole name, but it was close enough to indicate that the caller really had been Vesper Ellis. He also knew that he had been too aggressive when Mrs. Ellis had called, and the kidnapper had detected the attempt to subvert his plan. Warren didn’t move from his chair or set down the phone as he waited for her next call. It should come right away. This time he would not ask questions, just listen.

Warren waited, but the minutes passed and the call didn’t come. Ten minutes seemed like a long time. When thirty minutes came, then an hour, he felt as though he had taken a blow to the center of his chest. It was hard to expand his lungs to take in enough air.

Had he just listened to her frightened voice and then confidently thrown away her only chance to live through this? The kidnappers clearly did not intend to get fooled by an ad-libbed code that told him her location. As time went by, he was increasingly aware that he hadn’t told the police about her call. He had done what he was supposed to do so far, but maybe getting the police involved had been exactly the wrong thing to do. Things weren’t supposed to work like this.

Every expert had always said that the families or friends of kidnap victims needed to turn their cases over to the police instantly. The police would know what worked, and they probably would call in the FBI, because kidnapping was also a federal offense. But here he was. He’d called the police right away, before he’d even known there had been a kidnapping, and after that he’d gone to great effort and risk to get the police interested in Mrs. Ellis’s disappearance. Now that didn’t seem to have been the right thing to do. What should he do next?

He had a feeling that he should wait for Mrs. Ellis or the kidnapper to call back. He waited nearly two and a half hours, and the call didn’t come. He realized that as long as he had his cell phone he didn’t have to wait in his condominium. He had been preparing to go to work when Vesper Ellis had called. He picked up his cell phone and went out the door.

Warren drove toward his office, and as he drove, he thought about crimes against the weak. He remembered the way he’d felt when he had seen the true extent and nature of Mack Stone’s feelings toward his mother. Stone had devised ways to use her while also taking all her past and future savings so they could never be duplicated or recovered. He’d seen her as a resource to be fully exploited, like livestock. When the real estate broker had told Mack Stone her house wasn’t something he could steal from her, Stone’s impulse was not to just leave, but to punish her by burning the house down on his way out.

Now Warren couldn’t help feeling the same rage about this kidnapping. People who did this captured a living person who had feelings and converted that person into money. The abductors threatened to kill that person unless they were given a certain sum of money, and even after they received the money, lots of them killed the victim anyway because it was easier and safer than letting them go. As he drove, his anger grew until he forced himself to calm down. He needed time to think.

He pulled into the underground lot, parked his rental car in a visitor space, got out, and was suddenly between two men in their fifties or possibly sixties. One of them was Black and the other white. They were both unusually fit, with slim bodies. They both wore dark, conservative suits and neckties in muted colors. Both men produced identical black identification wallets with their pictures, the words Special Agent, a gold badge, and FBI printed on them. As they held the identification up sohe could see it, he also saw that they had shoulder holsters with pistols under their coats.

The Black agent said, “Mr. Warren?”

He said, “Yes.”

“Special Agent Stamford and Special Agent Foltz. We would appreciate it if you could spare some time this morning for an interview about the disappearance of Mrs. Vesper Ellis.”

“Of course,” Warren said. “I’d be happy to tell you everything I know.”

“The Bureau has set up a command-and-control post not far from the victim’s neighborhood, where we’re monitoring communications and doing our preliminary interviews. We’ll take you over there and then drop you back here afterward.”

They led him to a large sedan with little chrome or decoration, and he sat in the back seat. He looked at his watch. His call from Vesper Ellis had been hours ago. He was aware that he had better find an excuse for his silence about it.

Agent Stamford drove the car onto the 405 freeway and over the hill to the San Fernando Valley, then along a series of residential streets under big trees—sweet gum, Aleppo pine, camphor, magnolia—and Warren sensed he was getting closer to Vesper Ellis’s house. Agent Stamford turned into the driveway of an unremarkable single-family house in Sherman Oaks. There was a red brick facade and white clapboards around, with an attached garage. Stamford opened the garage with a remote control, pulled all the way in, and lowered the door behind them.

The garage was practically empty. There were no tools, and no stored supplies on the shelves. He tried to get out of the car, but the door had been automatically locked, a safety feature to keep passengers in their places. Stamford touched a button on the driver’s side, Warren’s door clicked, and he let himself out. He was standing by a big sign on twosharpened stakes. He was pretty sure it must sayFor Sale, but it was facing the wall. He supposed the FBI must make arrangements with real estate companies to lease houses when they needed them on a temporary basis. He thought about asking, but these two didn’t seem likely to want to engage in small talk about bureau procedures.

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