Free She's Not There by P. J. Parrish Page B

Hospital.” He frowned. “No one told you any of this yet?”
    “Someone from your office called me four hours ago, Mr. Tobias, and hired me to come down here for a consultation about finding a missing woman. That is all I know. Maybe you better fill me in.”
    Tobias sighed, seemingly frustrated he had to tell his story again. Buchanan figured he’d already been grilled by the doctors at the hospital and the cops. He’d cut him a break and get him a drink. Loosen him up a little. Buchanan caught the blonde server’s eye and she came over quickly.
    “Another bourbon?” she asked him with a smile.
    “Club soda for me.” He looked to Alex. “What are you drinking?”
    “Armadale on the rocks,” Tobias said.
    The server left and Buchanan leaned back in his chair. Armadale vodka. Just like the man himself—corporate-clean and a little too polished.
    Buchanan had always been good at reading people. It was just like watching birds, really. He could identify almost any bird just by being patient and looking for the details—its shape, size, voice, coloration, or flying style. Birders called it jizz , that special vibe you got when you watched a bird that helped you figure out its species even if it was hiding in the trees. The word was supposedly an acronym used by WWII pilots—“General Impression of Size and Shape” of an aircraft. Now it was a porno term, but birders didn’t care . Jizz was theirs. And it was never to be ignored.
    Right now, Alex Tobias was putting out some weird jizz —confusion, anxiety, worry, fear, and a musky bass note of desperation to keep things under control.
    The drinks arrived. Tobias took a long swig of his.
    “What exactly happened to your wife?” Buchanan asked.
    Tobias set the glass down. “Four days ago, Mel was in a car accident. She was alone when it happened, but some guy in a truck found her and left her in the emergency room.”
    “Police find the guy?”
    “No. They have his truck on the security camera but no plate number. They think he was an illegal immigrant and was afraid of getting busted, so he left Mel and ran.”
    “Why’d your wife leave the hospital?” Buchanan asked.
    “I don’t know. No one seems to know anything.” He took a big drink of vodka. “She has a brain injury, a concussion. She has amnesia.”
    “Amnesia?”
    Tobias nodded. “Yesterday, she finally remembered her name and they called me. When I saw her, she was asleep and they made me leave. But when I came back twenty minutes later, she was gone.”
    “Has she called you?”
    “No.”
    “You’ve tried to call her, of course.”
    “I haven’t stopped. But it just keeps going to voice mail.”
    “Does it ring?”
    “What?”
    “When you call her phone, does it ring before it goes to voice mail?”
    Tobias shook his head. “The police told me the phone was turned off. They said that’s why they couldn’t use the GPS to find it.”
    “They can trace the phone’s last location. Have they told you anything?”
    “Yes. They said the last known location of the phone was about two miles from where her car was found. But they never found the phone or her purse.”
    “What about the car’s GPS?”
    “It doesn’t have one.”
    “And you don’t know where your wife was going?”
    Tobias shook his head slowly. He picked up his glass, stared down into it for a long time, and then finally took a drink.
    “What do you know about the accident?”
    “Not much. They said the car spun off the road in the rain and went into a ditch. It happened out on some road in the Everglades.”
    “Everglades? What was your wife doing driving alone in the Everglades?”
    Tobias stared at him for a long time, as if he were trying to figure something out. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know.”
    What the fuck did this guy know?
    “I’ll need to see the accident report,” Buchanan said.
    “Why?”
    When Buchanan gave him a hard stare, Tobias held up a hand. “I’ll get it to