The Disappearance

by Franklin W. Dixon

  “That something is the part only you boys know,” Gomez added.

  McGill nodded. “Then you returned to the scene of the crime in the morning to report it—throwing suspicion off yourselves.” He looked from Joe to me, smiled coldly, and sat back in his seat, splaying his hands. “The perfect crime.”

  “Or so you thought,” Gomez commented.

  I looked at Joe like, What now?

  “But we have alibis,” Joe said smoothly, his cool expression giving away none of the panic I knew we were both feeling. “We did go home that night. We can prove it!”

  “Can you, though?” asked McGill, resting his elbow on the arm of his chair. “Your alibis come from your parents and Frank’s girlfriend—people invested in keeping you out of jail.”

  I felt my jaw drop. “You’re saying our parents lied to you about where we were?” But that’s our whole alibi.

  “We’re saying your alibi looks a lot flimsier in light of this new evidence,” Gomez replied.

  Joe glanced at me, and I could see in that moment that he was beginning to panic. But he didn’t show that to the police. “You can’t seriously think that,” he said, looking first at Gomez, then McGill. “Our father—”

  “Look,” Gomez said sharply, suddenly rising to her feet, knocking our file off the desk. Papers scattered everywhere, but her glare didn’t waver from us. “Your fingerprints—both of you—were found in the apartment. We have a neighbor who reported that you were in the apartment with Harper late the night before she disappeared.”

  Complainy Guy. “But that guy—” I began.

  “I don’t want to hear it!” Gomez shouted. “A girl is missing! Her aunt and her boyfriend are scared sick! I don’t want to dither around with you boys any longer. I want you to tell me what happened to her, right now!”

  “We don’t know!” Joe cried, and now I could hear the panic in his voice.

  “I think you do!” Gomez yelled.

  Joe looked at me, and the desperation in his eyes matched what I was feeling. What do we do? We had nothing to tell them. But it was clear they weren’t going to believe that.

  “Listen,” I said, “we’re just as worried about Harper as you are. I know this looks bad, but we’re telling the truth. If you just look at the list of guys we brought—”

  “Why should we believe you?” McGill asked with a sneer. “You’re the most likely suspects, and you reported the crime to the police, which makes me think you think you understand law enforcement. Why wouldn’t you lie—”

  As my heart rate was climbing, there was a sudden knock on the door. McGill stopped mid-rant and turned toward it.

  “I’ll get it,” Gomez said. She walked over to the door and opened it. I couldn’t see who was on the other side, but Gomez leaned her head out, talking in hushed tones with what sounded like another woman.

  “As I was saying,” McGill went on, “we know you think you know how to play us. But what I want you to understand is, we’re on—”

  “Ahem.” Gomez closed the door and looked at McGill. “We need to stop.”

  McGill looked up at her, clearly disappointed. “What do you mean?”

  Gomez looked from me to Joe. “The boys’ father is here,” she said curtly.

  7

  TRUTH AND LIES

  JOE

  I LOVE MY FATHER, BUT I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see him in my entire life as I was when he walked into Gomez’s office at the Margate police station.

  “Detectives,” he said, nodding at McGill and Gomez. “Boys.”

  They’d taken us out of the little interrogation room, and now we were crammed into Detective Gomez’s not-large-or-luxurious office. I noticed photos of her with two smiling kids, around preschool age, on her desk. There was also a little statue of Snoopy dressed as a police officer.

  These things made me like her more, I’ll admit.

  McGill cleared his throat. “I understand you have some information for us,” he said.

  “Better than that,” Dad said, pulling a flash drive out of his shirt pocket. “I have hard evidence. Evidence that I think will make clear what these boys were up to that night.”

  Gomez took the drive. “Let me plug this into my laptop,” she said, sitting down at her desk and opening up the slim Mac she’d brought with her from the interrogation room. There were a few weird moments where she fiddled around on her computer, and we all looked at one another awkwardly.

  “You made good time,” Frank said to my dad, all faux-casual.

  Dad looked at him, stone-faced. “I had good reason,” he said simply.

  “Aha,” said Gomez, clicking a key and turning the laptop around to face us all. “Here we go.”

  The screen showed a window of footage from a security camera. In black and white, it showed our driveway, our basketball hoop, Aunt Trudy’s rosebushes. A clock in the lower right-hand corner kept track of the time. We watched for about thirty seconds until Frank’s car pulled into the driveway at precisely 11:08 p.m. The car was parked and the lights went out, and then Frank and I climbed out and walked toward the house.

  “Huh,” said McGill. He didn’t sound entirely happy.

  “Yes,” said Dad.

  McGill coughed. “Do you have the raw footage from the camera?” he asked. “We’ll have to look it all over, and just make sure it wasn’t doctored. . . .”

  Dad nodded at the flash drive. “It’s all on there,” he said. “You can watch the entire night, if you like. It will show that the boys didn’t leave the house until the next morning at precisely 7:12 a.m. Which means . . .”

  Gomez looked at McGill. “Frank and Joe were telling the truth. They went home that night.”

  McGill did not look happy about this. He didn’t meet Gomez’s eye, and instead seemed to stare into some middle distance, his expression souring. “They could have . . . ,” he began.

  “Snuck out the back door?” Dad supplied. “And gotten there how—taken a bus? A train? From Bayport to Margate, in the middle of the night?” He shook his head. “Unless you know of a different New Jersey Transit system that runs twenty-four hours a day, I think they were out of luck.”

  McGill looked even more annoyed. “Another car?” he suggested.

  Dad shrugged. “I guess,” he allowed. “They could have snuck out a back door into a waiting vehicle elsewhere on the block and gotten a ride. Considering that my sons didn’t know I had this security camera installed, that would show remarkable foresight on their part. And I’m sure the security camera from the apartment complex would show an unidentified car arriving.” He paused, and McGill cringed. “Right?”

  McGill shook his head. “What about—Uber?” he asked.

  “Sure, Uber,” Dad said. “The ride-sharing service. If you subpoena their records, I’m sure they would show whether anyone was picked up around our neighborhood in Bayport and driven to Margate in the wee hours of Saturday night.” He nodded at Gomez, then McGill. “When you have that evidence, we’ll happily hand over the boys. Until then . . .”

  McGill groaned.

  Gomez stood up, nodding back at my father. “Thank you, Mr. Hardy,” she said, glancing awkwardly at McGill. “I think you’ve made your case. And I’d like to apologize on behalf of the Margate PD for any inconvenience to your boys.” She looked at Frank and me. “I’m sorry, boys. I think it’s clear now that you’ve been pretty up-front with us. You’re free to go.”

  Frank and I stood eagerly. “You know,” I said, unable to stop myself from looking at McGill, “one of the guys on the list we brought you might be tall and lanky, like the guys in the video.”

  McGill glared at me, but muttered, “We’ll look into it.”

  • • •

  Frank was allowed to drive a very relieved Jones home, but Dad insisted that I ride with him. And he gave Frank pretty clear instructions to drop off Jones and immediately head home.

  “Um,” I said, as Dad pulled onto the highway after approximately ten min
utes of sitting in silence. Ten minutes that felt like ten hours. “Thanks, Dad. You really saved us in there.”

  Dad glanced at me from the driver’s seat. His mouth was set in a grim line. “Your mother told you boys not to go in there alone,” he said after an excruciating pause.

  “I know,” I said. “We just . . . we had some information we thought they would want to pounce on. We got the usernames of at least ten more suspects—members of the InkWorld online forum—that Harper owed money to. I mean, there’s no way they would have found that without us.”

  “And I suppose you thought the police were your friends? That they’d never suspect you?”

  I stared out the windshield at the passing signs. “Sort of,” I admitted. “Okay, yeah, we did. It just made sense that we should work together! We’re all looking for the same thing.”

  Dad grunted. “That’s how it should work, yes, but you have to learn to think like a cop. They need to solve the case quickly, get the culprit off the street. They’re going to look at the most obvious suspects first. Which are you two.”

  I didn’t respond, just swallowed hard.

  “You were in the apartment that night. You had her phone. You were there when the crime was reported. Really, Joe: Why wouldn’t they suspect you?”

  I sighed, feeling silly. “I don’t know.”

  Dad shook his head. He was silent for a few seconds. Then he said, “Your problem, and your brother’s problem, is that you think you’re invincible. You’ve solved enough cases and come out okay, you think nothing can ever happen to you. Well, it can. It can, son.”

  He glanced over at me, and I met his gaze. He looked more upset than I was expecting.

  “I know, Dad.”

  “Do you?”

  I looked back out the windshield. The world was flying by at seventy miles an hour. I felt incredibly lucky to be in that car, on my way home, and not sitting in a bare cell at the Margate police station.

  “I do.”

  We rode in silence for a few minutes.

  “I didn’t know you had a security camera on the driveway,” I said finally, turning to look at Dad. “I didn’t know you had any cameras on the house.”

  The corner of Dad’s mouth turned up. “Yeah. Well. It really comes in handy, with you boys’ odd extracurricular activities.”

  I chuckled.

  “Weren’t you supposed to be studying for the SAT today?”

  Dad’s voice was just casual, no judgment, but it still made me feel bad. “I tried,” I said honestly. “I just couldn’t concentrate. You know what it’s like . . . trying to focus on anything else before a case is solved?”

  Dad shook his head, but then smiled. “I do know.” He paused, then added, “Listen. If I can’t convince you to stop thinking about this case, can we at least agree that you and Frank will never charge into a police station for questioning again without a lawyer? Or at least your dear old dad?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, Dad. We can agree to that.”

  We both watched the road for a while. All this talk about “the case” had reminded me that even after today’s crazy adventures, Harper was still out there somewhere . . . missing.

  Everyone knows that the longer someone is missing, the smaller the chance that he or she will be found alive.

  I shuddered, thinking about where Harper might be, who she might be with.

  I just hoped she was okay.

  • • •

  That night Frank, Jones, and I were are all sitting around the living room, trying (and failing) to pay attention to a movie. I’d decided to start fresh with studying in the morning.

  The movie was something about aliens. Or maybe cars that turn into aliens. I couldn’t really tell, because every time I managed to pay attention for more than thirty seconds, something would remind me of Harper, and I’d spend the next five minutes imagining some new terrifying scenario of what had happened to her.

  “What if she was trying to ditch her phone on purpose?” I said out loud, as something exploded on the television and no one seemed to notice.

  “What do you mean?” Jones asked. “I offered her mine. And she didn’t coordinate with me or anything.”

  “I know,” I said. “But maybe she . . . planned it?”

  “Why?” Jones asked. Her incredulous look made me realize I was grasping at straws.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, sinking down into the couch.

  Frank ran a hand through his hair and let out a sigh. “We all keep thinking about it. I feel like there’s a piece of the puzzle we’re missing,” he said. “Why did Harper collect the money? Was she working with Matt, or trying to escape him?”

  “We’ve all seen her messages on InkWorld,” I said. “Von was right, she told a different lie to every guy she asked for money.”

  “Right,” said Frank. “So it’s impossible to know whether any of those stories are true.”

  Jones lifted up her phone. “You guys . . . there is one person who could probably clear up a lot of these questions for us—and I just happen to have his number.”

  Frank stared at her. “Do you mean Matt?”

  Jones nodded.

  I shuffled my feet. “Guys, I don’t know. . . . We’ve already made some risky moves in this investigation.” I caught Frank’s eye, and he looked away. I’d caught him up on the Dad is majorly disappointed in us chat we’d had in the car. We’d both agreed it was time to start being more careful. “Matt could be dangerous. Maybe we should avoid getting too involved with him.”

  “But remember,” Frank said, “the police say his alibi is airtight. And Matt seemed sincere when he said he and Harper were working things out.”

  “See?” said Jones. “And besides . . .” She paused, and suddenly a look of real worry came over her face. “He may be the only one who can tell us the truth about Harper’s life . . . before it’s too late.”

  Too late. I pictured Harper trapped somewhere, desperately pounding on a locked door, waiting for us to save her. Maybe we were really her only hope. Matt was a controlling jerk, and she’d made so many enemies . . . who else would try to find her?

  But then I remembered something.

  “That’s not true,” I said, pointing at Jones. “Matt isn’t the only one who can tell us about Harper’s life.”

  She looked nonplussed. “Who, then?”

  I turned to Frank. “Remember when we first discovered she was missing?” I asked. “We called someone. Her—”

  “Aunt!” Frank’s face lit with recognition. “Matt said her aunt raised her.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “And her number would be in Harper’s contacts.”

  Jones ran over to the desktop, where we’d stored the information from Harper’s phone. “I’ll look for it.”

  Frank was looking a bit more hopeful. “Right, her aunt,” he said. “I’d feel better about calling her than risking contact with Matt.”

  Jones was typing away on the computer. “I’ve got it,” she said.

  Frank stood up. “All right . . . let’s make the call, then.”

  Jones turned back to the desktop to read off the number . . . but then stopped suddenly. She paused, frowning, and then shook her head. “Some conversations are best had in person, don’t you agree?”

  I glanced at Frank. “Maybe?” I couldn’t help remembering that Harper lived in Pennsylvania. An even longer drive from Bayport than Atlantic City or Margate.

  “Just hear me out,” Jones went on. “Harper’s aunt has no idea who we are, or what our intentions are. I think we have to go there. Let’s call and try to set up a time to meet. I think we have to talk this out.”

  Frank looked thoughtful. “Maybe if we’re there, we can learn a little more about her life. Get a feel for it, you know? Maybe learn something no one else would have told us.”

  Jones beamed at him. “Exactly.”

  Frank looked at me, regret in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Joe,” he said. “Jones and I can go alone, if you li
ke. I know you still have to study for the—”

  “Don’t be silly,” I interrupted him. “When it comes to this case, we’re all in it together.” And there’s no way I’d get anything done, anyway.

  Frank nodded. “All right, then. Let’s call this woman. And tomorrow morning, we’ll head for Pennsylvania.”

  8

  THE TRUTH HURTS

  FRANK

  WELL, HELLO.” HARPER’S AUNT PATTY opened her screen door and stepped back to let Joe, Jones, and me inside. She was short and stout, with long, straight gray hair pulled back and clipped to the top of her head, and dark eyes with thick eyelashes. She was wearing a red T-shirt with a quilt design on it and some faded blue jeans. She sounded a little nervous, but I supposed I couldn’t blame her. All she knew was that we were here to talk about Harper, her missing niece. Joe thought it best not to tell her anything more. But I could imagine she’d probably spent a lot of time over the last twelve hours wondering what on earth we’d say, what we might know.

  We all walked into the small cape-style cottage, Joe stretching his back. It was his unsubtle way of saying Thanks for sticking me in the backseat again. But what was I supposed to do? Jones had called shotgun.

  It had taken four hours to drive to Pottsville, Pennsylvania. We’d left at eight in the morning, so it was now about lunchtime. We were smack-dab in the middle of the state of Pennsylvania, in a pretty remote, small town. I was pretty sure most of Aunt Patty’s neighbors were cows.

  Inside, the cottage was cozy and cramped. Boxes of what looked like craft supplies lined the walls. A sewing machine was jammed into the middle of the living room, facing a small TV. “Why don’t you come into the kitchen?” Patty asked, leading the way down a small hallway. “I made some sandwiches.”

  We all followed Patty down the hall to the rear of the cottage. We passed two closed doors off the hallway, which I guessed were bedrooms or bathrooms. The kitchen was sunny and decorated with wallpaper covered with lemons. Patty gestured to a small wooden table that had been set with four places, and a pile of sandwiches on a plate.