False Witness Read online

  Who gave a rip? These men were bounty hunters, not the type to get hung up on legal technicalities, especially when the Green Lady whispered seductively in their ears. Clark would be coy in his e-mail; his friends could read between the lines.

  Every bounty hunter would immediately run a background check on Kumari and realize there were no criminal charges pending and, thus, no bond contract. Still, for the right reward, Clark’s friends would produce Kumari and risk a wrongful arrest charge. To do so, each bounty hunter would e-blast his or her own database of shady characters, offering to split the reward with anyone who found Kumari. That layer of greedy individuals could be expected to do the same, until half the pseudo–law enforcement characters on the West Coast would be looking for one man. The trick, of course, would be a bounty large enough to attract their interest.

  Clark ran down a mental list of available assets—his business accounts and credit line, his checking and stock accounts, a home-equity loan he could take out, even the twenty thousand or so he had secretly squirreled away for some home improvements Jessica had been hinting about. The total came to nearly three hundred thousand dollars. He would also need to borrow from friends or talk his banker into an unsecured loan. It would take half a million to get the undivided attention of the top bounty hunters. His e-mail offer was simple: Attached is information about Professor Moses Kumari, a man I have been contracted to bring in. Within thirty-six hours of this e-mail, bring him to me ALIVE or provide information leading to my apprehension of him and earn $500,000 U.S.

  By 4:05 p.m. the hunt was on.

  In less than thirty minutes, Clark received his first call, an unknown number with a Vegas area code that made his heart jump. It turned out to be Joe Peters, from the repair shop where Clark had left the Cadillac that morning. Was that just this morning? It seemed like a different life.

  The car was ready, Peters said. With the clock ticking for Jessica, the Cadillac had been the last thing on Clark’s mind. But the next step in Clark’s investigation required a return trek to L.A., and Peters’s garage was only ten minutes out of the way. Clark might need the ready cash the Cadillac could provide. Besides, Clark could make up the ten minutes during the three-and-a-half-hour drive, testing the Cadillac’s upper limits. If he averaged ninety, he could do it in three.

  His stopwatch showed an elapsed time of two hours and twenty-six minutes. The vise in his stomach tightened.

  5

  Los Angeles

  Clark entered his house by the side door, covering the doorknob with his shirtsleeve so his fingerprints wouldn’t smudge those of the last person to touch the door. It felt surreal: his own house a crime scene—one that couldn’t even be reported to the cops. He stepped into the mudroom and called out her name.

  “Jess?”

  His voice echoed in the stillness. He waited, not even breathing, as if the whole thing might be a bad dream after all. Maybe somehow Jessica would come bounding around the corner and wrap her arms tightly around his neck, kissing him eagerly, expectantly, the way she did when he had been gone too long.

  But he knew in his heart it wouldn’t happen. He walked slowly from room to room, accompanied by the sound of blood rushing through his ears, heartbeat by heartbeat, as the reality of his desperation took root. He didn’t even really know what he was looking for. Perhaps he’d see some small hint of where she might be now. Anything out of place.

  It all looked depressingly normal. The mail haphazardly spread on the counter as if Jessica had pulled a prized magazine out of the batch and left the bills unopened, hoping they would pay themselves. A blanket wadded up on one end of the couch, the pillow on the other armrest—vestiges of Jessica nestling down for a television show the night before. An exercise ball tucked away in a corner of the room, evidence of his wife’s infatuation with flat abs.

  He surveyed every piece of furniture, every trinket and paper, and the sandals that had been kicked off next to the back door. The house looked exactly like it did on every other day. And every detail reminded him of Jess.

  He slipped into the first-floor office and checked the computer. The last e-mail had been sent at 9:05 that morning. She had not logged off. The computer file on Johnny Chin remained undisturbed, as far as Clark could tell. He checked the front door and the back, confirming that both were locked. Jessica’s car was still in the garage. It seemed as if somebody had just transported her away—as if she had vanished without leaving a trace.

  He imagined the scene: a UPS truck pulling into the side driveway and the driver knocking on the mudroom door with a package. Jessica, who never met a stranger, greeting him with a smile. “Sign here,” he says, and while she scribbles her flowing signature, he elbows inside and overwhelms her. Not without a fight, of course. His Jess would definitely have put up a fight.

  But he couldn’t find any evidence of it.

  Clark climbed the stairs to the bedroom, struck by the tranquility of the scene there. The setting sun illuminated the room through the window on the west wall, silhouetting particles of airborne dust in their evening minuet. The bed was made, and Jessica’s worn teddy bear, the one her mom said had been Jessica’s favorite since first grade, rested contentedly against the pillows. As was her habit, Jess had neatly folded her pajamas and placed them next to the bear. Clark picked them up, held them to his face, and breathed in Jessica. Clutching the pajamas with both fists, he promised himself that nothing would happen to her. He wouldn’t let it.

  I already have.

  He rejected the thought and placed the pajamas back on the bed. He wanted to collapse and weep, or maybe go ballistic and punch the wall, but this was no time to get emotional. “I’ll get her back,” he said to her teddy, as if the words could make it happen. “She’ll be all right.”

  He headed out to the fenced-in backyard and nearly came unglued. Here, too, everything was in order, but he had let his emotional guard down a little when he stepped out back. And now, staring at the trampoline, the tears started rolling down his face.

  He remembered her the way she might never be again. Confident, effusive, untroubled by the cares of their dysfunctional lives.

  Jess, bouncing on the tramp and displaying the form from her competitive diving days, doing full layouts and back twists, her body ramrod straight as she flies through the air. “Come on, you big baby,” she taunts. Clark, his manliness challenged, mounts the trampoline and tries to muster the courage for a single backflip.

  “I’ve got you,” she says. “Trust me.” One strong hand is on his right hamstring; her other hand rests against his lower back. She stands beside him, gently bouncing. “Remember: get good height and then pull your knees up and kick back. I’ll throw your legs around if I have to.”

  One minute Clark is trembling, bouncing, Jessica urging him higher. The next she’s counting: “One . . . two . . . three.” He jumps and pulls his legs in, losing all balance and perspective, while Jessica whips his legs around. Next thing he knows . . . he’s landing on the trampoline feetfirst. Off-balance, he falls forward, but Jess grabs his shirt and catches him, laughing. They hug . . . kiss.

  She breaks it off. “Next time, get a little more height. And jump straighter up, not backward so much.”

  “There’s not going to be a next time,” he says, climbing down.

  After a few minutes the memory was gone; Jessica’s blonde hair had morphed into the twilight haze of a Los Angeles night. She was a thirty-two-year-old kid, the trampoline her one release. He wondered if they would ever be that carefree again.

  6

  After Clark finished canvassing the house, he checked with the neighbors. Nobody had seen Jessica since early morning. Nobody remembered any delivery trucks or strange cars or other visitors to the Shealy house. Two of the neighbors hadn’t been home all day. Clark thanked them, his throat growing tighter with each visit, then returned to his house to think.

  He slumped into the desk chair in the cluttered office he shared with Jessica. He glanced
compulsively at his watch, the tenth time in the last few minutes. It was nearly nine o’clock. He changed modes to the stopwatch: 7:13:23. He wrestled with the idea of calling the police, letting the experts start their own investigation. But the threats of Jessica’s captors kept him from doing so.

  Though he had watched his mirrors all the way and found nothing when he checked the house for hidden cameras, Clark still had a sense he was being monitored. Based on their capture of Jessica, these guys were pros. They had left a cell phone to track his whereabouts. Somehow, they would know if Clark called the police. Besides, he had worked with law enforcement enough to realize that speed was not their specialty. The investigation would be out of his control.

  He couldn’t take that chance. Instead, he decided to take a chance of a different sort. He pulled up Outlook and e-mailed the bounty hunters he had contacted that afternoon, increasing the bounty on Kumari from five hundred thousand to a million. He would figure out where to get the money later. He also broadened the net. He attached pertinent information and a photo of Johnny Chin, offering a bounty of five hundred thousand. He finished the e-mail with the biggest gamble of all.

  In addition, for information concerning the present whereabouts of a man named Huang Xu, believed to be in the Los Angeles area, I will pay $500,000 U.S.

  Clark corrected a few words highlighted by the spell checker, promised God he would do anything God asked if Jessica came back safely, then hit the Send button.

  The replies were almost immediate. Xu is high-level Chinese mafia, one read. I don’t do mafia. Another came back more bluntly: Take me off your distribution list. And another: Xu and Chin are members of the Manchurian Triad. I don’t mess with the triads, even for a million bucks.

  Clark replied to everyone, asking questions and prying out more information. How do you know that Xu’s with the triads? What businesses are connected with him? Where does he live? Where is his office?

  I’m a bond enforcement agent, not 411, a man called Cyclone wrote back. But Clark was making progress. He learned that Xu was reputedly a lieutenant in the Manchurian Triad and that he was basically responsible for United States operations. Xu was young, tattooed, cold-blooded, and a martial arts expert, like a younger, evil brother of Bruce Lee. He has a thing for women, one e-mail said ominously, especially American blondes.

  Clark deleted it immediately.

  The e-mails seemed to indicate that Johnny Chin didn’t instill the same level of fear that Huang Xu did. Chin was just an independent contractor for the mob, a hit man with no personal loyalties. Apprehending Chin would not guarantee a mob contract on the bounty hunter’s head, though several of Clark’s contemporaries still thought someone would have to be an idiot to try it. Others seemed to believe that, for the right price, they could probably be talked into finding Chin.

  Five hundred grand was apparently the right price. The same guys who had turned up their noses when Clark had been hunting Johnny Chin for a bounty of a hundred and fifty were suddenly interested. Chin liked hanging around the Vegas casinos, they said, and had been known to go on gambling binges for weeks on end.

  By ten thirty, Clark had collected all the information he could gain online and started going stir-crazy again. He spent the next thirty minutes putting together one-page information sheets featuring pictures and identifying information for both Kumari and Chin. He ran off two hundred copies of each.

  He stuffed the tools of his trade into the back of the Escalade—handcuffs, a stun gun, a large black luggage trunk big enough to stuff an entire body inside, a slim-jim for breaking into cars, a baseball bat, glass cutters, pliers, screwdrivers, a ratchet set, his laptop and printer, a laminating kit for fake identifications, two handguns, and a Kevlar vest. He grabbed a Coke out of the refrigerator and pointed the Escalade toward Vegas.

  He couldn’t just sit around. He would be back in Vegas by 2:30 a.m., not too late to begin canvassing the major casinos. If he worked straight through the night and the next morning, he could speak to the security firms for most of the major gambling establishments on the Strip.

  He would find Johnny Chin no matter the cost.

  7

  Tuesday, August 10

  Las Vegas

  By 9:00 a.m., Clark had been to more than half the major casinos, passed out dozens of photos of Johnny Chin and Professor Moses Kumari, and still had nothing to show for it. He dropped onto a barstool at the New York–New York casino and checked his stopwatch: 19:13:54. Bone weary, he put his forehead in his hand and tried to think. His nerves had caught fire, the seconds ticking away with Jessica’s life on the line, while Clark kept striking out.

  If anything happens to her, I’ll hunt down Xu if it takes me the rest of my life. Kill him. Then kill myself. Through twelve years as a bounty hunter, Clark had never been forced to kill a man. But he had no doubt he could do it now. The pain and the hatred were feeding on each other. It felt like another man, cold-blooded and vengeful, had taken control of Clark’s body.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  Clark looked at the bartender. “Coffee. Black.” It would be his third within the last few hours. Even before this new shot of caffeine, his hands had started trembling a little. But he couldn’t afford to sleep. Not with the clock ticking.

  As the bartender retreated to the coffeepot, Clark caught his own reflection, just above the liquor bottles, in the mirror that lined the back of the bar. He looked like death on a bad day. Matted blond hair. Bloodshot eyes underscored by dark circles. Bagging eyelids. In his younger days, he had been something of a ladies’ man. Now, at age thirty-six, an all-nighter made his haggard face look like it belonged on a hostage. Even the piercing sky blue eyes, accentuated by colored contacts, seemed hollow and lifeless. He needed to get the contacts out, but his glasses were in the rental car. Dry eyeballs were the least of his worries.

  Two sips into his coffee, Clark decided to take a step he had been contemplating all night. If nothing else, he had to at least know that Jessica was still alive. He blew on the coffee, took another sip, and played out the next conversation in his mind. He ran through it three times, then placed a five-dollar bill on the bar and took a few steps away. He felt his gut tense, the coffee and bile working overtime. He pulled out the black Motorola Razr phone that had been left on the seat of his car and speed-dialed 1.

  “I assume you found Kumari,” said the same voice he heard yesterday. Perfect diction. Huang Xu.

  Clark took a breath, told himself to stay calm. “I’m making progress, but I’m going to need more time. And first, I need to speak with Jessica.”

  “I told you to call when you have Kumari,” Xu replied firmly. “Not before.”

  “If you want your man, let me speak to my wife.”

  Xu scoffed at the suggestion, waited a beat, and lowered his voice. “This call will cost you twelve hours. We start pulling her teeth tomorrow morning at 1:45 a.m.”

  “Wait!” Clark shouted, his mind reeling. He hadn’t anticipated this. He swallowed the curse words, reaching for something that might stop the madman. “I’ve got a lead, but these things take time. If you touch her, even one small cut, I’ll stop hunting Kumari and start hunting you. I’m willing to do this deal, but I’ve got to have a little more time.”

  “Nineteen seventeen thirty,” Xu said. He paused. “Nineteen seventeen thirty-five. . . . Nineteen seventeen forty.”

  Clark cursed loudly into the phone, threatened Xu again, and drew a number of concerned stares from those around him. He took a breath and listened. Dead air had replaced the counting, but the relentless march of seconds continued unabated in Clark’s mind.

  Nineteen seventeen fifty-five. In less than seventeen hours, they would start on the teeth.

  8

  Out of options, deep in despair, Clark climbed into the Escalade and made his way toward the North Vegas police station. His instincts told him this was a bad move, but he knew that if he wanted the police to help, he couldn’t wait until the las
t minute. He had thought about trying to contact Silvoso but rejected that idea. Jessica’s captors would probably be watching the plastic surgeon like hawks.

  Driving north on the Strip, just past the Riviera Hotel, Clark received a text message on his cell phone. I’ve got the drop on Johnny Chin, the message read. Call me. It was signed by a bounty hunter named “Bones” McGinley, one of the add-ons to Clark’s original list, a notoriously shady operator who made his reputation hunting down reprobate Vegas gamblers. Clark dialed the number and felt the adrenaline surge through his sleep-deprived body.

  “Quad-A Bail Bond Office,” said a deep female voice at the other end.

  “I need to speak to Bones McGinley.”

  “He’s not in right now. Can I take a message?”

  “This is Clark Shealy. He just sent me a text message. Can I get his cell phone number?”

  “Mr. Shealy!” the woman exclaimed as if they were old friends. “He said to put you right through.”

  The bounty hunters quickly exchanged greetings. “You know where Chin is?” Clark asked.

  “They say he’s got mob connections,” Bones replied. He had a gravelly smoker’s voice, but higher pitched than Clark expected. Clark had heard that Bones weighed in at over three hundred. “You know anything about that?”

  “Every hit man has mob connections,” Clark said, trying to sound casual. Bones himself was rumored to have connections with a few Italian mob families in the casino business. He probably wanted to avoid a conflict of interest. “But I don’t think Chin’s are anything special. He was apparently working for the Russian mob when he first got busted.” Clark deliberately left out Chin’s suspected connections with the Manchurian Triad.