by A J Rivers
"Essentially," Noah sighs. "People from all over the country are involved in this group and ones like it. They network and use their own resources to figure things out."
"And this is the kind of information you use to build your cases?" Dean asks.
I happen to know of some of the ways Dean does his own investigations, and while not all of them are completely on the up-and-up, at least he doesn't have a shield to uphold.
"Sometimes," Noah says. "It's not our sole source of information, but there are times when things like this can prove very helpful. Such as this situation. If he hadn't been included on this list, we wouldn't know he was missing."
I scroll through the information posted about Mason under a grinning picture of his face. Something catches my attention, and I point to it.
"Look. This is the date when he was added to the database," I say.
"Two days ago," Dean notes.
"Did you notice that?" I ask Noah.
"We were paying attention to the date he went missing and the contacts provided in it," Belmont says defensively.
"So, no," Dean remarks.
"That information wasn't given to me in the report," Noah says, glaring at the younger officer.
"When the name was added to the database didn't seem as important as the other information," Belmont protests, trying to defend himself.
"A man who has been disconnected from everyone and everything for over a year shows up on a missing persons database for the first time, then two days later is found dead?" Noah asks. "Yes. That's important. Somebody's calling attention to it."
I nod. "They wanted him to be identified."
"Where was the wallet found?" Dean asks.
Noah looks at him with the same hesitation he did at the bank.
"I don't know if I should be discussing the details of the case with you," he says.
I set my jaw, stand up straight, and cross my arms over my chest.
"Dean has been instrumental in solving multiple murders and imprisoning extremely dangerous, conniving criminals. If you want my help, you'll want his, too. He knows far more about Mason Goldman and his wife than you do. He's also seen some shit."
"Emma," Dean starts under his breath.
"It's true. Do you want our help?"
The detective looks at us, then gives a sharp nod. "Yes. You are now consultants on this case. But you understand that comes with responsibilities and restrictions."
"Yes," I say. "Now, tell us."
"The firefighters found the wallet several feet away from the body after extinguishing the fire. It was burned, and the inside melted, but it was intact enough to remove the identification card and credit cards. There were a couple of badly damaged photos, some burned money, and a hotel room key card inside."
"Credit cards and money?" Dean asks. "So, robbery wasn't the motive."
"Do you have the pictures?" I ask.
Noah walks over to one of the bulletin boards and gestures for me to come with. I stand beside him, and he points to a series of small plastic bags pinned to the board. Each contains a darkened, water-warped picture. I look closely at the images to try to decipher them through the damage. One is of a man who looks like Mason in profile, kissing a woman with dark hair.
"That's his wife," Dean says, pointing to the picture.
"How do you know?" Noah asks.
"Security footage from the bank."
"That must be her, too," I say, pointing to another of the pictures that's too burned to clearly see the face. There's just enough of the hair in the corner to suggest it's the same woman.
"This one looks like it's from a national park or some sort of hiking trail," Dean says, pointing to another image.
It's dark, but I can make out what looks like a large wooden sign held up by two stone pillars with a woman standing in front of it. The picture is from a distance, and the damage makes it hard to see, but it does look like the same woman from the other two pictures.
"None of his son," I comment.
"What?" Noah asks.
"Not many people carry actual pictures around in their wallets anymore. But he does, and these are the ones he picks? Him kissing his wife, just her, and her in front of a sign. Yet, not a single one of his son? No school picture? Not even one of those little tee-ball cards they make up. Nothing."
"Well, you did say he hasn't been in touch with them. If he ran away from his old life, maybe he wanted to just leave it all behind."
Chapter Twenty-Two
"The pictures were scanned into the computer, and I have some of my guys looking to see if they can clear them up a bit," Noah explains. "We've also contacted the credit card companies to get records of recent transactions."
"Have you run the address on the ID card?" Dean asks.
"Yes. It gave us an associated phone number, and that's the one we've been using to try to get in touch with his wife," Noah nods. "Some guys also went up there, but she didn't answer. There were no cars in the drive, so she must not have been home."
"What did you find out about the house?" I ask.
"It's a rental in Salt Valley. The public records show it's been owned by the same woman for fifteen years."
"Have you spoken to the owner?" Dean asks.
"They can't," I tell him. "Until Eleanor is notified of his death, they can't ask questions that would lead someone else to believe he's dead."
"Don't you want to talk to Eleanor about why her husband became a campfire on a barely-used road fifty miles from his house?" Dean asks.
"Yes," Noah responds.
"Isn't that probable cause? You don't have to tell the woman what you want to talk to Eleanor about. Just that you need to speak with her."
Noah clearly doesn't like having someone else tell him how to do his job, but Dean is right. If they're able to approach the owner of the Goldman rental, they might be able to find more contact information that will lead them to Eleanor.
I see Dean looking at the computer with the database again. He reaches for his phone in his pocket, and I turn my attention back to Noah.
“I'm assuming there's going to be an autopsy,” I say.
He looks at me quizzically. “Of course. I think it's safe to assume his death wasn't of natural causes. It’ll probably take several days until all the information is available.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice the board several feet away. I hadn't even paid attention to all the notes and displays in the war room. Noah is giving a list of orders to officer Belmont, including an instruction to search out the owner of the house, so I walk over to the board to get a better look at it. I'm a few steps away when I see a familiar face looking back at me. Lakyn Monroe.
The bulletin board looks like a giant high school yearbook collage; all focused on this one girl. Dozens of pictures show her in all aspects of life, from glamorously dolled up for award show appearances to candid paparazzi shots showing her more casual and realistic.
Noah comes to stand beside me, and I glance up at him.
“She changed so much,” I note.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
I point to pictures of her walking down the street or having coffee with friends that look to be a couple of years old.
“She's posing here,” I say. “Look at her. She's walking like she's going down a catwalk. Everything about her is choreographed and precise. Her clothes, her shoes, her makeup. Even the way she brushes her hair back away from her face. Look at how she's holding that cup of coffee. The label is turned, so the camera sees it. Everything she does is with complete awareness that people are watching her, and she loves it. She’s trying to get as much attention as she can and pushing this image of who she is.”
“Yeah,” Noah nods. “I think that comes along with the territory of being a celebrity.”
“Right, but now look at these. These are more recent, right?”
I point out pictures of her in almost the same places and situations, but they look completely different.
“In this one, she has a hood pulled up over her head. But everybody around her is wearing shorts and t-shirts. And then this one, she's trying to hold that menu up so nobody can see her. She's hiding. Not because she doesn't want anybody to know what she's doing, but because she just doesn't want to be watched anymore. This is a woman who's tired of being out in the public eye, and just wants her own life.”
“I can see that,” Noah acknowledges. “But what about this picture? She's at a victims’ rights conference speaking out in support of defending those who have been wrongly convicted and spent time in prison. Does she look like a shrinking violet to you there?”
The picture shows Lakyn in a sleek suit; her hair pulled back into a bun, and her makeup toned down and sophisticated. She stands behind the podium with her shoulders back, her spine straight, and her chin lifted. There is an expression of determination and drive in her eyes. She's confident and strong.
Another picture beside it shows her in the same outfit having a conversation with a few people. Something in the background of the picture catches my eye, and my heart clenches, but I don't mention it.
“She's not performing,” I point out to him. “She's doing something that matters to her.” I look over at him. “You went to the jail yesterday to do an interview."
"Yes," he says.
"And it was about Lakyn's disappearance," I say.
"It was. But I didn't get much out of it."
"Who was it?" I ask.
He shakes his head. "It really doesn't matter. It was a dead end. I should have known better than to even bother in the first place."
"Who was it?" I ask again.
"Just a guy trying to get attention."
"Noah, you're the one who asked me for help with this. If you were being honest about that, then you need to be upfront with me. Who were you speaking with at the jail?"
"His name is Xavier Renton. Look him up. I need to get back to work. I'll walk you out."
His mood has shifted. Whether it was finding out about his team's failure when reporting the information from the database, or me pushing about the man's name, something closed him off. I suddenly feel as if I'm on thin ice. It's a strange feeling to have, considering these aren't even official investigations, but I can't get rid of the voice in the back of my head.
It's the voice that sent me running into the woods. The voice that brought me face to face with darkness. The voice that sent me into the clutches of a cult and put me on a train I knew was careening toward chaos. This is the voice that leads me, and I have to follow it now.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The next day, I'm sitting at home, the air conditioner cranked to near treacherous levels so I can wear my favorite thick, cushioned socks. They are resting in Sam's lap as I sprawl on the couch, holding a Chinese takeout container in one hand and chopsticks in the other.
“I guess I shouldn't really be surprised that the people across the street didn't have anything to tell me,” I say. “But they seemed surprised I was even asking. The boutique owners told me that the detective had come by and spoken to them. But they seemed really shocked that I would come to talk to them again.”
“What about everybody else? All the other shops and things on that road?" Sam asks.
"Well, to be honest, there aren't that many. It's a pretty sparse stretch. But I went and stood in every single parking lot trying to figure out which ones of them had a good enough view of the bank to have possibly been where that picture was taken."
"And?"
"And as far as I can tell, it was either taken from the far back corner of the parking lot of the boutique, or from the middle of the road. The positioning just doesn't make sense otherwise. I guess it could have been taken with a really good zoom lens by someone moving, but that doesn't make sense, either. I talked to the people working there, anyway, and none of them had anything to say."
"They weren't being cooperative?" he asks.
"Not on purpose. They just genuinely had nothing to add to the conversation. Most of them knew who I was talking about when I mentioned Lakyn Monroe, but more than half of those said they only recognized the name because of the reports of her being missing,” I tell him.
“So much for being famous,” Sam comments.
“It's a pretty specific type of fame, I think. Among those people who know who she is, the people who think she's relevant, she's everything. But you have to already be the type of person to put stock into that kind of thing. Fame isn't universal. I think people forget that sometimes."
"What do you mean?" he asks.
"There's this sense of shock that she's missing, as if somehow people should be able to keep total track of her existence. Or that there's nowhere on this earth she could go without every person recognizing her. But that's not the case. A lot of people recognize her, sure. But until Dean pointed the newscast out to me, I don't even know for sure I'd heard her name. I definitely wouldn't have been able to pick her picture out of a lineup. The point is, fame is transient and situational. Baseball players may be gods to people who follow the game but inconsequential to someone who doesn't watch sports. Writers get stalked by rabid readers but would go completely unnoticed around people who aren't into their books.”
Sam uses a fork to stab a shrimp out of the container of rice he has balanced precariously on his thigh.
“I don't know if I'm following you. Are you or are you not surprised they didn't seem familiar with her?” he asks.
“That's not it. I'm just saying, there's so much focus on how well-known she is. Almost as if everyone is motivated to look for her, but at the same time, nobody is. There's this assumption that if she was seen somewhere, everybody would know about it. But all it would take would be moving among the right people, and she would go completely unnoticed. You should see the pictures the detective has in the conference room.”
"What about them?"
I describe the way the pictures seemed to chronicle the way her perception of herself and her fame changed in such a short time.
“It's bizarre,” I say. “From the beginning of her career to a few months before she disappeared to when she's speaking at the victims’ rights conference, she looks like three different people. In one set, she's completely absorbed with herself and immersed in caring about what the world around her thinks of her. In the next, she looks as if she wants to disappear and not be thought of at all. Then in the third, she wants to be heard, and if she's seen at the same time, so be it. As if she's realized she can take control over the obsession. If people want to watch her, they'll have to watch while she's making a difference.”
"Your opinion of her is changing," he notes.
I snag a piece of broccoli with my chopsticks and look at him sarcastically. "You're putting more into this than needs to be there."
"Alright," he says. "Let’s put the brakes on this before it takes over our entire movie night." He sets his food down on the table, grabs the remote, and leans forward. “Now, were you thinking rom-com or horror?”
“Ugh, I’m so sick of horror right now. I deal enough with that in real life. Can’t we just put on something cute and fuzzy?”
“Man, if the others heard you just now, they’d have you committed. I can’t believe my ears. Hardened badass Emma Griffin wants something cute and fuzzy?”
I playfully punch him in the arm and rest my head on his shoulder. We pick out a movie and start it.
"I missed you," he whispers as the opening credits start.
"I missed you," I smile.
He kisses me, and everything else goes away. All around me is the smell of him, the warmth of him. It's the only thing that quiets that voice.
The next morning, I make an extra pot of coffee and pour as much of it as will fit into a travel mug for Dean. He meets me in the living room with his bags already packed. I hold the coffee out to him, and he takes it with a grateful smile.
"Sure you can't stay?" I ask.
"It's a bit of a commut
e every day," he replies with a soft laugh. "I need to be there."
"I know. You still have a disappearance to solve."
He nods, looking down at the mug, then back at me. "You were right about Mason."
"It's not exactly a victory I'm celebrating. And, to be fair, I thought he was dead a long time before he apparently was," I tell him.
"You still knew how it was going to turn out. I should have listened to you," he says as he looks down again.
"It wouldn't have changed anything." I tilt my head down to look at him. "Dean, this isn't your fault."
"Maybe if I’d found him sooner…"
"Stop. There's nothing you could have done to stop this. You don't know what happened, and you had no control over it. Just because somebody asked you to look for him doesn't mean that you were responsible for protecting him. It's horrible that he's dead. But you didn't cause it. All you can do now is try to find out who did."
He nods. "Thanks. I'll call you after I go to his house."
"Let me know if you need my help with anything," I say.
Dean smiles. "You know I will."
He hugs me and leaves. Last night he came downstairs and told me he had to cut his visit shorter than he’d thought. With the discovery of Mason Goldman's body, his focus has shifted. Now it's not about finding him, but about finding out what happened to him. It isn't lost on either one of us that his wife Eleanor is still unaccounted for. Even in the two days since his body was found, she hasn't made a move to report him missing or reach out to anyone about him, and just like before, nobody’s been able to contact her.
It begs the question: is she involved, or is she in danger, too?
As soon as Dean is gone, I pad into the bathroom for a shower, then grab a bagel and glass of juice to take outside with me. It's still early enough in the morning for the temperature to be reasonable. An impending storm has brought dark clouds over the sky that help to filter out the sunlight and pick up a nice breeze.
Sitting down on the glider, I take a bite of my bagel, then pull out my phone. It's been more than a week since I've talked to my father. In a way, I figure that's a good thing. The sudden and intense compulsions to call him at all hours just to make sure he's still there have faded. I'm comfortable now knowing that when I call him, he'll be there. And even if I don't call him, he's still there.