Little Girls Lost (Carson Ryder, Book 6)

by J. A. Kerley

  Truman heard the balls bounce dully on the floor. Rose slipped to the computer, staring at the faces on the monitor.

  “Which one’s Lorelei?” Rose whispered.

  Truman looked curiously at Rose. “What’s wrong with your voice?”

  Rose closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I asked, which one’s Lorelei?”

  “Her,” Truman said, tapping the brightest smile on the screen. “Jacy Charlane.”

  Marie wiped the table to a gloss, then slid the salt and pepper and condiments back to its center. Sandhill sat two tables away in a chamois vest and crown. He’d stashed produce in the coolers, rotated the inventory, and was currently itemizing needs, scratching on a yellow pad with a failing ballpoint pen. Every few seconds he’d curse and bang the pen against the edge of the table. The restaurant was empty save for three anglers lingering over beers and lies.

  “You like having that little girl around, don’t you?” Marie said.

  “What?” Sandhill grunted, not looking up. Marie tucked the towel into her apron strap and sashayed to Sandhill’s side.

  “Jacy. You like having her around. Already you not acting half as crazy as usual; all calm-down quiet and, I swear, even polite a time or two.”

  Sandhill smacked the pen against the table and scowled darkly. “What are you babbling about, Marie? Have you been at the wine?”

  “Taking her to the movies. Fixin’ ice creams. She said you been telling her stories every night ’fore bed. What kind of story did you tell her about a ball of string and a cave?”

  “Theseus and the Minotaur, from Greek myth. Theseus went into the Minotaur’s labyrinth to slay it and—”

  “Whoa … what’s a Mina, mino …”

  “Minotaur. A beast with the head and shoulders of a bull, the torso and legs of a man. Theseus unwound a ball of string to keep from getting lost in the labyrinth.”

  “Jacy thinks that story is the coolest thing she ever heard, Conner.”

  Sandhill growled and threw the pen across the room. “I’m just doing what Nike wants, Marie, trying to keep the kid entertained. I’m probably boring her senseless.”

  “Ha! You that girl’s hero. She follow you around like you carrying a sack of gumdrops with a hole in it.”

  “I am a guy who fixes her two meals a day. Nothing more and nothing less.”

  “You got starry eyes for her, too, don’t you?”

  Sandhill pulled a fresh pen from his pocket and reconvened scratching at the pad. “I’m working here, Marie.”

  Marie stepped close and clapped her hand over Sandhill’s wristwatch. “Tell me what time it is.”

  “That does it. I’m hiding the sherry.”

  “Come on, Conner Sandhill. What time is it?”

  Sandhill sighed as if indulging a madwoman. “Three-fifteen or so.”

  Marie lifted her hand, checked the time, and laughed.

  Sandhill said, “Why are you braying?”

  “Last week you’d been lucky to know what hour it was. Now you almost exact on the minute.”

  “I know I’m going to love your theory on this.”

  “Jacy gonna walk in here prompt at three thirty. You counting down the minutes. That little girl done stole your heart.”

  Sandhill’s neck reddened. “Could you bring me the phone book, Marie? I want to call the Mental Health Hotline. You need help.”

  Marie kissed the tip of her finger and pressed it to Sandhill’s forehead. “You cute when embarrassed, you know that?” She spun, clapped her hands and sashayed to the kitchen. For a moment the anglers forgot their fish. Sandhill rolled his eyes and returned to his list. He wrote for several seconds before glancing at his watch.

  “What time is it now, Gumbo King?” Marie called through the server’s window, giggling like a schoolgirl.

  Truman Desmond slid the white van down the alley toward the inner-city park. He pulled his wide-brimmed straw hat over his sunglassed eyes and sank lower in the seat.

  The park was surrounded on the sides and back with an eight-foot cyclone fence. There was a sitting area of benches, the area studded with shade trees. The playground and basketball court was a hundred feet away. Truman idled down the alley, moving his eyes between the slender alley and the park. He saw a small figure perched cross-legged on a bench.

  Jacy Charlane.

  She had a book in her lap, her eyes intent on the pages. Truman’s heart jumped into race mode, almost palpitating. If the fence wasn’t there he could have driven right up to Jacy Charlane, put on his best concerned smile.

  “Hi, Jacy, want to help me find a lost puppy?”

  No, that line would never work on her. Too bright, too cautious, probably turned wary by some oldster’s warnings. He’d already checked her address. She lived on the second floor, front, which ruled out a window entry. A shame; it had worked perfectly with LaShelle Shearing.

  During the photo session Truman discovered the Shearing girl’s mama spent a lot of nights out, daddy long gone. He’d also found out her windows were grated. But Rose prybarred the grating from the window in seconds, and in went Truman.

  Shearing had been a cakewalk, a muscle job. Maya had been snatched from the sidewalk at night. Jacy’s abduction would be a bit more difficult—having to come off in broad daylight—and perhaps necessitating a mixture of guile and muscle.

  Desmond stopped the van a hundred feet away. He slipped a pen and notepad from his pocket and started sketching a map. The main problems, he could see, were the heavy chain-link fence and, of course, making sure no one saw a thing. There were no windows on the buildings siding the park, and the bench was tucked back in the bushes, far from the activity on the playground and basketball court.

  The heavy fence? Desmond allowed himself a brief smile; when you have a brother with arms like phone poles, you simply give him a boltcutter and a dozen seconds.

  Truman tugged the hat even lower and pulled past Jacy and into the street. Rose could cut the fence that night. Get everything ready for The Acquisition.

  Chapter 19

  “All this crap and an election year, too.”

  Mayor Philips turned from the center window of her office. The protestors below took her back as an insult and chanted louder, thrusting their signs like battle pikes. FIND OUR CHILDREN, read one; another said, PHILIPS = SELLOUT! A third proclaimed, FIGHT THE POLICE.

  Philips shook her head at the angry sounds bleeding into her office, the third day of demonstrations organized by Reverend Turnbull. The deep-voiced, bantam-built minister stood at the point of the crowd—restrained by a sawhorse barricade—waving his fist and leading chants through his bullhorn. Philips leaned against the front of her desk while Squill took his turn at the window, gritting his teeth at the spectacle.

  “I could have that bastard with the fight-the-cops sign arrested for incitement to mayhem.”

  “Good idea. When that’s done you can shoot flares into a refinery.”

  “It’s an insult to me and to every cop on the force.”

  “It’s a First Amendment right. You remember the First Amendment? Free speech and all that?”

  Squill started to argue, but checked himself. Philips crossed her arms. “Let’s talk about the abductions. What happened with that ex-detective looking at the files?”

  “Sandhill. He produced what I said he would. Nothing. Zero. A waste of time.”

  “Have the rest of you found out anything? Please tell me yes.”

  “The girl in the house wasn’t killed there. Chances are she was killed somewhere else. Since no other bodies have turned up …”

  Philips’s eyes widened. “The other girls might be alive?”

  Squill shrugged.

  “Something to pray for,” the mayor said. “What else?”

  “The medical examiner’s office found evidence suggesting abduction by someone who’s into athletics or strength training. We’re checking peds known to be into sports and weightlifting. We’re also working closer with Mississipp
i and Florida.”

  Philips arched an eyebrow. “Sounds like a bit of headway. None of this came from that guy you had in to look at the cases?”

  Squill prickled. “I told you, he was a waste of time.”

  Thomas Clay, the mayor’s assistant, knocked and entered, looking harried as usual, his wispy comb-over bouncing as he crossed the room. He held a sheaf of computer printouts under his arm and a dozen pieces of mail in his hand. He tossed the letters into the inbox on the mayor’s desk.

  Philips nodded at the mail. “Anything need fast attention, Tom?”

  “Usual speaking invites. A certificate of appreciation from the Sierra Club. Two pieces of hate mail quoting scripture, knew you’d enjoy them. Notice of a mayors’ meeting in Montgomery next month—you should go; I’ll keep you updated. I round-filed the rest, the usual junk.”

  “Thanks, Tom.”

  Clay moved to the window. “I’ve been watching from my office. It’s getting heated out there. Turnbull’s whipping them into a frenzy.”

  “I can deal with Turnbull,” Squill said. “Chill his black ass in jail a few days.”

  Philips’s gray eyes blazed at Squill. “You’ll do nothing of the sort.”

  “He’s close to inciting to riot. Like yesterday’s rally in Bienville Square. He’s right on the edge.”

  “Leave him alone.”

  Squill’s lips creased into a flat smile. “You’re telling me to overlook illegal behavior? Can I get that in writing, Mayor?”

  “He’s done nothing illegal.”

  “Not quite. But if he does, it’s my call how to deal with it, not yours.” Squill’s eyes smirked. “Is that all you wanted to talk about, Mayor?”

  “For now.”

  Squill wheeled and departed, ramrod straight, almost strutting. Clay pressed the door shut. “There goes a cottonmouth with a badge,” he said, unbuttoning his pale suit and sitting in the wing-back chair facing Philips’s desk. She sighed and nodded at the papers in her assistant’s lap.

  “The latest figures?”

  Clay’s manicured nails tapped the printouts. “Fresh from the pollsters’ prediction mill.”

  “What’s the word?”

  He unfolded several sheets, studied them. “You lead Runion by three points. With a—”

  Philips managed a weary smile. “Margin of error of about four points. I know.”

  “Right now I think you’d clinch it …”

  “I hear that ‘but’ sound in your voice, Tom. But what?”

  “There’s a wild card in the deck.”

  “Which is?”

  “The flint-edge conservatives’ll never vote for you, the la-la liberals always will. There’s a big middle distance, Norma. And in that wide, fence-sitting middle are folks who think the mayor’s responsible when a stray dog shits in their yard.”

  “And?”

  “No matter what happens or who starts it, it’s your fault.”

  Philips skirted the window and studied the hardest face in the crowd, the dark-suited, clerical-collared man waving his hands and brandishing a bullhorn, gold rings lighting his fingers. Reverend Turnbull saw her and pointed at the window, screaming, “Traitor!”

  She said, “So if even a paltry few of the black community get cranked up enough to bust some windows—”

  “The hard-cores will spit and sputter and say, ‘We told y’all so; let a fe-male in office and this is what you gonna get.’ Some of those folks on the fence will listen.”

  “And my election’s cooked.”

  Clay jabbed the air with an invisible implement. “Stick a fork in it, Norma; it’s done.”

  “I hate politics,” she sighed. “How did I ever get to be mayor?”

  Clay re-folded the printouts. “That’s the easy part: old Mayor Dobbins got caught with his hand in the till and you got appointed. The tough part starts with staying mayor.” He paused and stared sympathetically at Philips. “If that’s what you really want.”

  Norma Philips’s eyes were lost out the window again.

  “More than anything,” she said. “God forgive me for it.”

  Half past eight in the evening. The Gumbo King restaurant had a CLOSED sign in the window. Sandhill popped the caps from a pair of beers and brought them to the table where Ryder was leaning back and staring at the ceiling.

  “You look a little lost, Detective Ryder.”

  Ryder sat forward and took the beer. “I was thinking about a woman. She’s in Hawaii right now. At a symposium.”

  “You wish you were there, right? Wearing a lei and playing ukelele to your lady friend.” Sandhill made a strumming motion.

  Ryder sighed. “I was thinking more about pineapples.”

  Sandhill started to ask one question, let it slide, shifted to another. “So how goes the investigation?”

  “I dropped by to say you were right, Sandhill.”

  “I’m not surprised. What was I right about?”

  “Hembree Fed-Ex’d carpet and tack samples to the FBI lab. The carpet had been pulled from somewhere.”

  Sandhill leaned back and tented his fingers against his lips. “Two girls stolen a week apart, only one shows up in the fire. If the purpose was to burn the body beyond recovery of any evidence, DNA, a perp’s prints, and both girls were dead—”

  “We’ve been there. Likely they’d both have gone in the fire, but Maya Ledbetter’s still out there somewhere.”

  “So where is Maya? How is she being used?”

  “Used?” Ryder said. “That’s a grim way to put it.”

  “It’s the way we have to think. What else is there? Ransom? From what I get, neither of the girls’ families could scrape together more than twelve bucks and a fistful of food stamps. You guys manage anything else?”

  “We’re certain that Maya Ledbetter was snatched from Bix Street between Oak and Clary. A record store clerk at Bix and Oak was pretty sure he saw her the night she disappeared. You know the story …”

  Sandhill said, “Yeah. Mama hits Story’s Lounge on buck-a-beer Tuesday and drinks till she pisses herself. Maya always walks over to granny’s on Tuesday nights. Granny lives on Clary.”

  “So now we know the girl made it as far as Oak.”

  “Why’d the clerk wait to tell the story?”

  Ryder said, “Didn’t hear about the abduction. Been at a fish camp up the Tensaw.”

  Sandhill scanned the area in his head. “So instead of seven blocks to look at, it’s down to three. I know the area. It’s OK until you get to—”

  “The last block before Clary. An old warehouse. But still, the traffic’s steady on that stretch. Someone pulling a yelling kid off the street would have been noticed, unless she got in willingly, meaning she probably knew the perp. Or he knew the perfect place for the grab.”

  “Or both.” Sandhill was up, scrabbling through his pockets for his keys. “Let’s us go a-surveying, Detective Ryder.”

  They were walking into the street when Sandhill abruptly went back inside. He re-emerged a minute later carrying two plastic tubs of gumbo and wearing his crown.

  Chapter 20

  Sandhill and Ryder walked the route Maya Ledbetter had taken. A fast-fading sun bronzed a final corner of sky as night air lay hot and thick, sticky to the touch. Though a few people were on the street, most hunkered in bars, safe behind the neon windows. Sandhill’s crown gathered looks but, because wary eyes picked up cop vibes, no remarks.

  The pair walked past the two bar-lit blocks to a darker one occupied by a two-story redbrick warehouse, a FOR SALE OR LEASE sign faded almost white.

  “Think she walked this side of the street, Detective Ryder?”

  “The other side would have been out of her way.”

  They crunched across broken glass, the night darkening with distance from the corner streetlamp. Cars hissed by like so many anonymous boxes. Ryder pointed ahead.

  “The grandmother’s apartment is on the next corner. Which means the best place for her abductor to wait woul
d have been right here.”

  Sandhill stopped at the tight recess of a loading bay and slipped a small Maglite from his pocket. He walked back fifty feet to the dock itself, covered with rotting skids and scattered newspapers, his light reflecting from dead bottles of Thunderbird and Gallo port, here and there a bottle of gut-rip whiskey. The bay stunk of urine and feces and vomit.

  “Wino lair,” Ryder said. “Place to sleep it off. The recess is deep enough to avoid overt notice by the cops, plus the loading dock’s wood, easier sleeping than concrete. Not a bad crash, altogether. If you can get used to the smell.”

  A sound from the sidewalk. In an eye-blink Ryder had his back to the wall. He tiptoed over broken glass and garbage, then sprang, flinging an arm around the corner.

  He reeled in a skinny, wild-haired white guy dressed in Salvation Army motley: camo pants belted with clothesline, a stained white dress shirt, mismatched running shoes, an outsized black raincoat nearly reaching the pavement. Ryder pulled the protesting man into the bay by his shirtfront, Sandhill aiming the flashlight into red-threaded eyes huge with fear.

  “I know this guy,” Sandhill said. “Hey there, brother Franklin.”

  “Who’s talking at me?” the man said.

  Sandhill turned the flashlight on his face. The wino broke into a gap-toothed grin. Ryder released his shirt.

  “Yo, Gumbo King. What you doing back here?”

  “I’m checking into the disappearance of that little girl that lived a couple blocks from here, on Franklin.”

  The man frowned. “I heard ’bout that ugliness.”

  “What else you hear?”

  “I don’t tune in too hard to the news, you know what I mean.”

  “What were you doing around the corner, Franklin?”

  “Heard y’all back here rootin’ around. Just was listening.”

  “We in your living room?”

  “Here? Too damn stinkin’. I crib a couple blocks over. Got me a prime hidey-hole ahind a printing place. Got these big old bins of paper I can make my nest.”

  “You know anyone cribs here?”

  “Not regular.”

  “Any cops ask you if you’d seen or heard anything about the girl’s disappearance?”