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In the Bruckman and Myers parking garage, I started up the Bomber and let the engine idle with the AC on. Then I dropped a few keywords into an anonymous search on my phone.
Although it was almost five o’clock in Austin, I knew I still had a few of hours of daylight left and meant to use them wisely. Reasoning I was an amateur about to go snooping after a missing person, there was no better place to begin than at the beginning. That meant, based on what little I knew up to that point, I needed to head to the University of Texas campus and find the parking garage where Vicki had been last spotted. Better yet, I hoped to find her car there and possibly some cops watching over it.
In mere seconds, my first web search pointed me to a campus map of UT. I was only vaguely familiar with the campus from a few visits, so my memory of it was foggy.
I opened my phone’s browser to search up speech and language pathology, therapy, and communications. Vicki was a speech therapy professor, so logically her garage would be near the building her office was housed in. I assumed a communications department building, but I needed to be certain.
Department of Communications Sciences and Disorders. Sounded right. Professor Victoria A. Lott; Moody College of Communication. Jesse H. Jones Communication Center. Bingo!
I scanned a campus map and found the block housing the communications buildings wedged between Guadalupe and West 25th streets.
Another search and I found what I was looking for. San Antonio Garage. It was due west of the communications college. Not a sure thing, but it was the garage closest to Vicki’s office.
My freshly signed contract with LMG lay on the floorboard of the passenger’s side. I stared at it for a few seconds, almost expecting it to chastise me for being such a gigantic idiot.
But the contract was just a contract. I snapped on my seat belt and got the Bomber rolling.
***
I REALIZED, AS I WAS crawling north through rush-hour traffic, that I was bound to end up on the suspects list. ‘Old friend’ comes creeping around the scene of the crime. The same day Vicki goes missing. No cop wouldn’t suspect me.
So, I decided I couldn’t disclose more about myself than was necessary. I’d be the ninja. Part of my mission to the parking garage would be to assess the security scheme there. And the failures especially. This meant I’d be looking for cameras, scanners and drones. It also meant I’d have to avoid the damn things if I could.
Yeah, nothing suspicious about me at all.
The harsh reality about life in the United States was that every ‘authority’ I might run across would be just as suspect as any random college student or campus employee. Police violence against civilians and criminal violence against police was commonplace, so I’d learned to avoid confrontations. You stayed alive if you did.
Not to say there aren’t good cops out there. There are. I’d dealt with plenty of upstanding police and sheriff’s deputies while playing my gigs. But in recent years, the ‘Police State of America’ mentality had washed down even into independence-minded Texas. You had to watch your ass, keep aware, or end up in a jail mighty quick. After that, you stood a decent chance of getting dead.
***
AFTER TWENTY MINUTES of traffic I reached the exterior of the San Antonio Garage. The parking facility was sturdily built of gray concrete floors and red brick walls, punctuated with glassless windows on the sides, so I could see vehicles within. I counted seven parking floors, including the rooftop.
Students were walking the sidewalk outside, but not too many. I expected the garage would be fairly vacant. Spring classes were out, and the summer session hadn’t started up either.
Along Nueces, parallel to the sidewalk, was a line of parked cars. Among those were a campus police car and a Channel 42 news van. The van had an opened side-door, and several crew members milled about.
Just past the van, I stopped the Bomber in the road and carefully scrutinized the entryway. Luckily there was no traffic behind me.
There weren’t any security cameras evident at the entrance. That was a surprise. There had to be cams somewhere inside, and I knew that, by law, there would be signs warning of video surveillance. There were plenty of signs on the exterior warning about towing—shocker—but none outside about monitoring my every move.
I silently cursed the fact that security wasn’t tighter. That had contributed to Vicki’s disappearance, but I also recognized one big advantage for me—that I might drive into the garage without being immediately recorded on a campus-cop DVR.
But I got an even bigger break. I noticed a sign on the corner building straight to my left, next to the parking garage, so I drove up to read it. Fricano’s Deli. With a parking lot. More cop cars and news vans. And a car vacating a parking spot!
I drove in and quickly grabbed the parking space directly in front of the deli, then locked the Bomber, despite the cop presence. Yeah, I’m the cautious type.
The small corner plaza also had a Smoothie King and a Starbucks. So, three places in total where I could easily ask questions, without attracting the attention of the cops. I couldn’t believe my good luck.
“What is hip?”
My text message ringtone sang at me from a jeans pocket.
I fished the phone back out. The text was from Tabor. It read something like:
OMG OMG OMG!1! Yes yes yes!!
Punctuated with a half-dozen emoticons.
And so it began. I put my phone away.
In the lot behind me there was a mixture of UT cops, Austin PD uniforms, plain-clothes detectives, and journalists with the occasional cameraman in tow. I wasn’t ready to deal with any of that crowd, so I marched straight for Fricano’s.
The deli was fairly busy with a happy-hour crowd of almost a dozen people. It was the humble, homey, college hang you’d expect. The Specials dry-erase board behind the counter had a Che Guevara face sketched in green on it. Because Marxist ghosts make everything taste better.
“What is hip?”
Another text. I grimaced but ignored it.
I approached the lighted, glass deli display and the lone cashier in the far corner. A round-faced, middle-aged woman walked up behind the register.
“What can I get you, handsome?” She offered a welcoming smile, but with a nervous edge. Not surprising, considering the action in the parking lot.
I eyed a short spinner-rack of chip bags.
“I’ll just take some salt and vinegar chips. And an ice tea, please.”
“Black or green?”
“Black, thanks.”
The cashier rang me up then poured my tea into a Styrofoam cup. “Go ahead and grab your chips,” she told me.
I plucked potato chips from the rack and then tore the bag open. I was hungry. “Have they had any luck finding the missing teacher?” I kept my tone casual.
“No.” The woman stopped pouring. “Word’s getting around. Talk of a volunteer search being put together.”
“Anyone from these shops see her on Friday?”
“Um, Vicki stops in here sometimes. Such a sweet girl. But I didn’t work that day. Haven’t heard of anyone around here talking to her recently. But like I said, word is spreading. So someone might have.” She pointed at my tea. “You want this sweetened?”
“Yeah. Any raw sugar?”
She picked up a brown packet and then shook it at me.
“Yep, that’s the stuff. One packet’s fine.” I ventured more questioning. “So, you know Victoria...”
“Uh-huh. But not very well. I’ve worked here for years. Meet plenty of professors. Vicki’s one of the newer ones.” She stirred the sugar into my cup.
Something tempted me to tell this nice lady a little more about my personal relationship with Vicki, but I reminded myself to shut-the-hell-up. Word was spreading. And I didn’t have time—Vicki didn’t have time—for hassles best avoided.
“I think I’d like to help out with that search. Any idea who I’d talk to?”
The cashier popped a lid on my tea then placed it on the counter. “That’ll be two seventy-eight. Sorry, I don’t know much else. You could go ask one of the cops outside?”
I handed her three dollars.
“Yeah, I’ll do that,” I lied.
“What is hip?”
Text message of insanely happy misspellings number three, I assumed. Again, I ignored it.
The cashier lady must have been very used to phones making odd and unexpected noises. She didn’t flinch and handed my change back. “Have a nice night. Come see us again. You should try one of our subs.”
“Thanks, I will.” I dropped my change into a beer pitcher marked ‘Tips.’
I headed for the exit and glanced around the deli one more time. Couples and singles, mostly of student age, but with a couple gray-hairs mixed in, hardly noticed me. They were either engrossed in a handheld device or reading one of the local newspapers. I took my chips and tea outside and headed around the corner, back toward the San Antonio Garage entrance.
The sun had dimmed, and some rainclouds were moving in. Brisk air left little doubt it’d get wet soon, so I hustled into the parking garage.
There was no guard kiosk. Instead, everything was automated with the standard ticket dispenser and seesaw gate. I adopted my best impression of a college kid with his drink and chips—okay, a college football player with his drink and chips—and began my exploration. Floor by floor.
Besides the yellow crime scene tape I expected I’d run into eventually, I looked for anything unusual and paid extra attention to stairway doors, elevators, and surveillance cams. The cameras were placed predictably on each floor, and, unlike at the entrance, I started spotting metal signs warning about video recording on the property. Each floor had an elevator in one corner, stairs in the opposing one. Security cameras were near the elevators and were angled out to take in the area in front of the shafts, as well as a good portion of the garage floor itself, especially the driving lane. I made sure to not get too close to the cams and didn’t stop walking. This made it tough to calculate the field of view of the cameras, but I got it done in my head anyway.
And I didn’t like my conclusions.
By the time I reached the mostly empty third floor, with only one car exiting past me, I noticed the cameras were all angled in such a way that the stairway entrances weren’t in view. The same thing held true for floors four and five. I mean, the cameras could have been pointed out across one half of each garage floor, in a straight shot between the elevators and the stairs. They just weren’t. And whether or not that was nefarious or status quo, it meant that if I wanted to, I could walk up or down those stairs and wouldn’t be recorded. Son of a bitch.
On the fifth floor, I entered the stairway. No camera greeted me inside the shaft. I walked down a floor. No camera. Up to the sixth floor. Nada.
I took a deep breath, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I was sure I’d just solved part of the mystery.
I exited the stairs on the sixth floor. All that was left from here was the rooftop, so it was no huge surprise when I practically tripped over yellow and black tape attached to orange cones all surrounding a single car and blocking off two adjacent, empty parking spaces. I was willing to bet a million bucks, not a camera in range either.
I moved around the perimeter of the police tape a few feet. Then I saw the police car.
The driver’s side door opened on the police cruiser. A thirty-something, Hispanic woman in University of Texas Police Department uniform stepped out. Shit.
“Hi, can I help you?” She sounded friendly enough.
I feigned surprise. “Ah! Hi, officer. Didn’t expect anyone up here.” I meant to divert her from asking the questions. “What’s happened? Something I should be worried about?” I waved my iced tea in the direction of Vicki’s car, which was a new-looking silver, four-door, Kia sedan.
The policewoman relaxed her stance a little. To help her along, I donned my best expectant puppy dog gaze and waited.
“Abandoned vehicle. A faculty member in a missing person’s case.”
“That’s awful. Who? Hope not one of my old profs.” The implication was that I was a UT student. Again, to calm her. But I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t a UT student currently. It allowed me some outs if I had to do any dancing around the hard truth.
“Professor Victoria Lott,” she said. “Report came in this morning.”
“That explains why I haven’t heard about it,” I lied. I glanced at the Kia. “Looks practically new. So, not a carjacking...” I took two casual steps closer to the officer to get a look at the driver’s side. The policewoman didn’t appear to mind. In fact, she’d been more talkative than I would have expected. Being stuck at the top of a parking garage, I could imagine why.
My phone chirped, “What is hip?”
I rolled my eyes and swore silently to Jesus Christ.
I gave the policewoman a sheepish look and held out my bag of potato chips. “Would you mind? I need to check this text.”
The officer laughed and held the bag for me.
I smiled, reached into my left hip pocket for my phone, and said to the officer, “Feel free to have some of those.”
The text messages were each from Tabor, Lindie, Jaz and Running Bear, in that order. I would read them carefully later, but a quick scan showed me they were all basically along the same emotional high as Tabor’s had been, the exception being Running Bear, who was always pretty chill.
I tucked my phone into my jeans and used yet another opportunity, and my free hand, to my advantage. I introduced myself.
“I’m Lochlan.”
The campus policewoman nodded. “Alejandra Gomez—Allie.” We shook hands. Then she handed my chips back. She hadn’t eaten a single one.
I ventured another line of questions: “How long has Professor Lott been missing?”
“Last known whereabouts...right here in the garage. Friday night. So, over forty-eight hours. She was on video walking from the elevator to her car.” Allie pointed at the Kia.
“Were you working Friday night?”
“No. I’m off on Fridays and Saturdays. Usually.”
“But these garages are pretty safe. Campus police patrol, right?”
“Uh-huh, in cruisers or carts. But sometimes on foot.”
Sometimes on foot. I wanted to bless Officer Gomez. I looked over at the stairway entrance. My mind was racing.
I sipped some iced tea and gave Allie a sincerely serious look. “I wanna help. Any volunteers getting organized?”
“Nice of you to offer. Don’t know of any civilian search yet. But talk to campus PD. They’ll have an email list. Or ask the Austin officers. Some of them are downstairs. Near Starbucks.”
And there was my exit strategy, neat as you please. But I wasn’t quite done.
“Sorry, my criminology professor would punch me if I didn’t... There doesn’t appear to be any sign of foul play around this Kia. Did you manage to check the insides?”
“Austin PD did, when the detectives were here. It was a pain in the ass—the battery’s dead. No Onstar.”
“Dead battery? Really?” I looked at the Kia again. If I had to guess, it was last year’s model.
Allie shrugged. “Yeah, probably a defective unit.”
Probably not.
I took another shot. “Nothing of real note in the vehicle?”
“I can’t discuss much, but there weren’t signs of a struggle or robbery.”
“So, Professor Lott somehow vanished from this parking garage without a trace, on a Friday night, and nobody figured it out until today. Damn, that’s not good, is it?” A rhetorical question, but I had to keep selling my detachment.
Officer Allie Gomez frowned. “No, not good at all.”
“Well, I’m gonna take your advice, Officer Allie, and go volunteer at the campus PD. You sure you don’t want the rest of these?” I held up what was left of my bag of chips. “I won’t rat on you, I swear.”
Allie looked around, then grinned and nodded. “Okay. I’m starving. Thanks, Lochlan.”
“My pleasure. I’ll see you.”
“Adios.”
With that, I waved at Officer Gomez and made my way back down the stairs, checking for cameras every floor, until I reached the bottom. There were no cameras.
I walked back out of the entrance without incident, then turned left, back toward Fricano’s Deli and the Bomber.
Next up was Starbucks. I was searching for a Friday night cop. Where else would they go around there for coffee?
When I reached the parking lot outside the deli again, a light rain pelted the blacktop. I hurried down the corner plaza sidewalk, watching police and reporters in the lot scramble for cover from the downpour. A few of them marched straight for Starbucks. Not exactly what I had in mind, but I could work with it. I hoped.
I killed my tea then dumped the cup in a trash can before entering Starbucks. Some Austin police and reporters reached the doors just ahead of me. We bunched up and filtered inside in an awkward and fruitless attempt to avoid a few raindrops.
Once inside the shop, I hit the men’s room to relieve myself of the iced tea and to kill a little time.
I reentered the long shop and then scanned a menu. Two Austin cops were in line ahead of me. Outside, the rain was light but still steady. A few more damp people, none in police uniform, straggled in.
I wasn’t sure what band was playing over the shop’s PA speakers, but the music calmed me down some. My thoughts cleared, and I focused on my next move...to inconspicuously collect more info from the night of Vicki’s disappearance.
I could’ve worked the police inside Starbucks for clues, but I’d decided to treat law enforcement as suspect after conversing with Officer Gomez. In fact, I’d already scratched Allie off my list. She hadn’t worked Friday.
Applying Occam’s Razor, I sliced away the idea of focusing on the student body too. Obviously, there were far more students at UT than campus cops or Austin police. I didn’t have the resources to tackle all that, so I’d have to rely on the police to do their jobs.
Also, I reasoned out that Vicki’s vanishing late on a Friday, a Friday that had been the closing day of dorm housing for the season, dramatically cut chances that students would be hovering around campus—not when they’d likely be moving out or celebrating in good-old college style. Like they’d done with my band on Sunday night.
The security cam footage I’d seen at lunch backed up my theory. The San Antonio Garage had been fairly empty of cars. That held even more true when I’d done my sweep of the facility.
But I’ll just call it what it really was. An old-fashioned hunch.
The two cops ahead of me ordered coffees then went to join the former parking lot crowd that had taken over the round tables between the shop’s line of booths. The noise from all the chatter going on at those tables helped me out considerably. Nobody gave me a second glance, which was a welcome change.
I approached the Starbucks dude at the register. Upon his green apron, his name tag read ‘Owen.’
“Welcome to Starbucks,” he said.
“Hey—” I made a point of reading his name tag again. “—Owen. I’ll have a tall cafe latte please. And...hoping you could answer a couple of questions.”
“Sure thing. But if it’s about the police...”
“Sort of. I got filled in by them already. The missing professor.”
“Yeah, some of us are pretty sure she’s been here before. Sucks, man.”
“Did she come in Friday night?”
“No. Campus cops already questioned all of us who worked that night. Austin PD, too.” He pressed keys on his register. “Your latte’ll take a minute.” Owen leaned left to glance past me. There was still a short line of customers. “That’ll be two eighty-five.”
I paid. “I’ll wait over there. Do me a big favor and ask your manager to come talk to me?”
“Yeah. No prob.” Owen turned to whisper to a coworker, a girl younger than me. She hustled into a back office.
“Thanks, Owen.” I moved to the waiting area.
“What is hip?”
Jeeze. I sighed.
“What is hip?”
I grabbed my phone. One text from Kat and another from Jaz. That was everybody, meaning everybody left in the band who would feel the need to gleefully text me. I’d celebrate later.
The manager came out of the back of Starbucks at the same time as the cute girl behind the counter pushed my latte at me. I grinned at her. She returned a blushing smile then scurried back to mixing coffees.
The manager, an average-sized, well-tanned Latino whose name tag read ‘Roddy,’ surprised me.
“Trip the Shark!” he said, grinning broadly and reaching over the counter to shake my hand. “I’ve seen your band a thousand times, Loch. Awesome.”
I probably looked happily shocked because I was. I shook Roddy’s hand gratefully. “Yeah? That’s a lot.” I chuckled. “I’ve got some good news.”
“Really? What?” Roddy seemed excited. This guy was a true fan, and I thanked God for it.
“We signed with LMG. Today.”
“No shit? Wow! Holy shit, man, that’s incredible! LMG? That’s crazy. They’re the biggest—”
“You’re the very first fan to find out,” I added.
“Hah! Too cool!” Roddy looked around and then back at me. “That’s all cool as hell, but you needed something, right? It wasn’t just that.” We both laughed. “What can I do for you, Loch? Something wrong with your coffee?”
I looked down at my cafe latte and grinned. “No, no. Nothin’ like that. I just need some info.”
“Sure thing. Ask away.”
“Were any of your people that’re working tonight, here on Friday evening? The night that UT prof disappeared?” I leaned over closer to him then, lowered my voice a tick, and took a chance. “She’s an old friend of mine, from the University of North Texas. The cops aren’t taking volunteers yet for the search, but I can’t wait, Roddy.”
“Oh, man. I feel ya. Damn. Yeah, Vicki, Vicki. Sorry to hear about that. Vicki’s good people. She’s become a regular.”
I shrugged. “Thanks. Yeah, she is. So...”
Roddy looked satisfied. “I worked Friday night. I’m here a lot, too. Too much sometimes.” He looked over his shoulder at the cute girl I’d made blush a minute before. “And Suzie over there. She was here also.”
“Great. Great,” I replied. “Okay, so what I need to know is simple. Did any campus cops come in here that day? Say...late afternoon, early evening? Somewhere between five o’clock and eight p.m.?” That created a cover story. The cautious type. Remember? “I’m hoping if I track one down, who was in the neighborhood, I might find a new lead.” And then some.
Another customer walked up near us to wait for her order. I looked uncomfortably at Roddy, who read my meaning right away and nodded his head to the right. I followed him.
“We can talk in my office, Loch,” Roddy told me. “Suzie, my office please.”
Suzie looked up from an espresso machine, then tapped on another girl’s shoulder, gesturing to take over for her.
Once the three of us were in Roddy’s office, he asked Suzie about police visiting the shop.
“There were a couple that day, sure. That night—” Suzie looked at me, tightened her lips, rubbed her hands and then looked up at the office ceiling as if it might have the answer written on it.
I waited patiently.
“That one woman with the platinum-blonde crop came in...”
“Officer Winter,” Roddy finished.
“Yep, her,” said Suzie. “She usually orders a Frappuccino.”
“Yeah. I think I remember seeing her Friday. It wasn’t dark yet, but it was late. Probably around seven,” confirmed Roddy. “Connie. I think her first name is Connie.”
“Officer Connie Winter,” I said.
I smiled down at Suzie. “Thank you, Suzie. This is a huge help.”
Suzie nodded happily. “Glad to help—”
“—Lochlan,” I finished, before she could even think about calling me ‘Sir.’ I put out my hand.
Suzie smiled and shook my hand daintily. “Lochlan.”
“Roddy, I owe you one. The band is at Emo’s this weekend. If you come by, I’ll take care of you and your guests. Like Suzie here, maybe.”
“Hell, yes! I’ll see you Saturday night.” We shook hands.
“Great, man. I need to get over to the campus PD now. It’s probably not far, right?”
“I’ll show you. Hold on.” Roddy grabbed a napkin off a shelf then scribbled a quick map. He gave me verbal directions once that was drawn.
“Gotcha,” I said. “Okay, you two. Great meeting you. Again, big, big thanks. I better scram—see you at the gig!”
“Bye,” Suzie said. “Nice meeting you, too.”
“Later, Loch! Good luck, man,” offered Roddy.
I left the office.
Through the front doors I could see that it had stopped raining, and it was close to sunset. I walked out of Starbucks then sipped my latte on the sidewalk for a minute. Cops and reporters were grouped up again in the center of the corner lot.
And I was starving.
But food could wait because Vicki couldn’t.
I pulled my phone out and then made a call.
“Hey, Lochlan!”
“Hey, Lois. I promised I’d give you updates.”
“You did.”
“Well, we signed the contracts...”
“Yay!” Laughter. “You must be so excited!”
I chuckled. “Well, obviously,” I snarked.
“Obviously,” retorted Lois.
We both paused.
Lois broke the silence first. “What about Victoria?”
I swallowed more of my latte. “I think I’m onto something.”