The Children's Cop
Page 9
Lucy shook his hand and produced her identification once more. “I’m Detective Lucy Montalvo, Houston Police Department. I’m trying to locate one of your students—Angelina Beckett.”
“Ah, yes. Angel.” His smile softened with recognition, and he sank into the chair behind his desk. “She’s a fine student. But the police… Is there some kind of trouble?”
“I hope not. We’ve had a report that Angel might be missing, but I’d like to determine whether or not she’s in class this morning before we jump to conclusions.”
His smile evaporated and he sat back hard in his chair. “Missing? But how…? Who…?”
“We don’t know anything yet, Mr. Smith. If you could check her schedule and contact her teacher, that would be a big help.”
He came out of his trance and rolled toward his computer terminal. “Of course. That’s easy enough.” He clicked through a couple of screens, then glanced back at her. “She’s supposed to be in English right now. Mrs. Hawthorne’s class.” Scooting back toward his desk, he flipped on the intercom system and pulled a microphone toward him. Disembodied voices floated in the air for an instant before he called “Mrs. Hawthorne?”
The voices fell silent for a moment, then, “Yes?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but could you please send Angelina Beckett to the office for a few minutes?”
With her eyes locked on the far wall, Lucy prayed silently for the right response. Please, she begged, let Angel be there. But even before the teacher’s tinny-sounding voice reached her, she had a feeling that she knew what the answer would be.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Smith. Angel isn’t in class today.”
His gaze shot to hers and she saw the worry and concern in them that she knew must surely be showing in her own. “I see. Sorry for the interruption.”
Sighing heavily, he turned off the intercom and turned to face her fully. “We have a problem, don’t we.”
Lucy nodded. “I’m afraid we may. There’s still a chance she’s with her mother, but we can’t locate her, either. There’s no need to panic yet, but I would like to talk with Angel’s teachers and some of her friends. Maybe one of them can tell us something helpful.”
Mr. Smith nodded eagerly. “Of course. For that we’ll need permission from parents, but I’m sure some will agree.”
“Thank you. Do you know Angelina well, Mr. Smith?”
His kind eyes locked on hers. “Fairly well. At least I like to think so. I like to think I know all of my students.”
“Have you noticed anything different about her lately? Has she been moody? Distracted? Has she changed friends or lost interest in school?”
Mr. Smith gave that some thought, then shook his head. “Not particularly. She’s a friendly girl. Bright and cheerful, and she’s well liked by the other kids. She’s a good student, too, which doesn’t always follow on the heels of popularity, and she’s extremely focused for a girl her age.”
“Do you have any reason to believe Angelina would run away?”
“I don’t know much about her home life. She doesn’t talk about it a lot, and her mother hasn’t been able to attend any parent-teacher conferences since Angel started here. But if you’re asking if she seemed dissatisfied with her life, I’d have to say no. No more than the average kid, anyway.”
Lucy desperately wanted to feel relieved at hearing that, but it only opened the door on possibilities she didn’t want to seriously consider.
“Do you know who her friends are?”
“Some of them. I’ll be glad to give you names.” He turned away again and pulled his computer keyboard closer. “I’ll print Angelina’s schedule. That will give you teacher names and classroom numbers, but the school year has just started, and her teachers probably don’t know her very well.”
“Good point. Could you give me last year’s schedule, too?”
“Absolutely.”
“Thank you. I’m sure that will be a big help. Can you tell me about her friends? What kind of kids are they?”
He shrugged. “A mix. Mostly good kids from regular families. Some from single-parent homes. Mostly blue collar. There’s not a lot of money in this school, but that puts most of the kids on equal footing.”
“Do Angel and her friends get into trouble?”
“Not really. Oh, they might occasionally skip a class. Grades not as high as they could be. The usual teenage trouble, but nothing hard core like drugs or gang activity. They’re good kids, really.”
Again, that odd mix of emotions rolled through Lucy. Jackson would be glad to know she was in with a good crowd, but that only drove the chances that she was in danger higher.
“What about boys? Is she involved with any?”
“Not that I’ve noticed. She likes them well enough, but she’s not as involved as some of the girls her age.” Mr. Smith retrieved the schedules from the printer and slid them across the desk toward her. “I can let you use one of the offices in the counseling center to talk with people if that will help. Just let me know who you’d like to see and I’ll make sure they’re available.”
She couldn’t have asked for more. Cooperation, answers, information. But there was only one thing that could have made her feel better, and that was if Angel walked through the door right that minute.
Like it or not, she was going to have to accept that it wasn’t going to happen.
Chapter Six
LUCY’S STOMACH WAS GROWLING again by the time she left the high school that afternoon. Though she’d been at it for hours, she’d made little progress on the list of friends and teachers Mr. Smith had given her. Unless Jackson had something concrete to report, she’d have to come back tomorrow and do it all again.
She wasn’t looking forward to meeting Jackson later, telling him she’d come up empty. He was so determined to find Angelina. So convinced that she’d left a trail. So absolutely unfaltering in his determination not to fail another member of his family, she wasn’t sure he’d accept the truth.
Glancing at her watch, she slid behind the wheel of her car, rolled down the windows and turned the air conditioner on high in an effort to blow out some of the hot air that had been locked inside for hours. While she was waiting for the steering wheel to cool down enough to touch it, the cell phone in her pocket let out a chirp. She answered without looking at the caller ID, and immediately regretted it.
“Lucy?” A woman’s low voice came through the connection, and Lucy had a sick feeling she knew who it was. “Cecily Fontaine here. I hope you don’t mind, but Nick Vega gave me your number. He said you’d be calling.”
Lucy could have sworn that the temperature had just climbed by at least ten degrees. She sank back in her seat and rolled her eyes at the roof of her car. “That’s right, but we only spoke about this last night. I haven’t had time—”
“I hope you don’t think I’m trying to pressure you. It’s just that I had an unexpected cancellation this afternoon. I thought maybe you’d like to take advantage of the opening.”
“Today?”
“Incredible, huh?”
“Unheard of,” Lucy agreed. She tried not to let Cecily’s friendly manner and lilting laugh annoy her. She resented the head games, and was in no mood to play along. “I wasn’t expecting you to have free time for several days.”
“Neither was I,” Cecily admitted. “It’s quite a stroke of luck.”
That certainly wasn’t how Lucy would describe it. Nor did she think it was a coincidence. She’d have bet a month’s pay Nick had put Cecily up to calling.
“So what do you say?” Cecily asked. “Shall I put you down for five o’clock?”
“Five?” Lucy squinted at her watch and realized with a sinking heart that she could actually make it if she tried. “Shouldn’t you be out of the office by that time of day?”
“I rarely get away that early, I’m afraid.” Cecily’s tone changed subtly. “You might as well come. Avoiding our meeting won’t make it go away.”
So mu
ch for the friendly banter. “I’m not trying to avoid our meeting,” Lucy assured her. “But I’m in the middle of a case. I can’t drop everything to run downtown just because you have a free hour.”
“I see. I was under the impression you wanted this matter handled quickly. Did I get the wrong information?”
“No, but since you’re evaluating me to see what kind of cop I make, I’m assuming I should continue to treat my cases as if they’re important.” Lucy heard the challenge in her voice, but couldn’t seem to do anything about it. Just like the tears that she’d been unable to control yesterday, the anger she felt today seemed to come from someplace she couldn’t access.
“Well it was worth a try, wasn’t it? I guess I’ll have to catch up on paperwork instead. But while I have you on the phone, shall we set an appointment for a time that’s convenient for you?”
Feeling railroaded, Lucy rolled up the windows to trap the cool air inside. In spite of her assurance to the contrary, she would cheerfully have avoided a meeting if she thought she could get away with it. But the writing was on the wall, and Nick apparently wasn’t taking any chances.
“I don’t have my calendar with me,” she said. “Can I call you when I get back to my desk?”
“Will you call?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Of course.”
“Not if I want to keep my job. Trust me, I’ll call.”
“Great. When do you think that will be?”
The woman was a predator, circling relentlessly, trying to pin her down. A bell rang and kids began to pour out of the doors, and Lucy felt the sudden, intense need to get away from the noise and confusion. “I’ll call tomorrow.”
“All right, then. I’ll look forward to hearing from you. And Lucy?”
“Yes?”
“There’s no shame in coming to see me, you know. It’s more common than you might think.”
“Not to me.”
“You’re not alone in feeling that way, either. I just want to assure you that our sessions will remain completely confidential. No one has to know you’ve been to see me unless you want them to.”
“Except Nick.” And anyone else up the chain of command.
Cecily paused for a split second. “Are you worried about that?”
“Wouldn’t you be?” Even as the words left her mouth, Lucy wished she could call them back. She just couldn’t seem to control her resentment. She didn’t understand how this kind of pressure was supposed to help her. How was she to recover from the tragedy if people wouldn’t leave her alone?
“You’re worried that meeting with me may affect your future with the force?”
Lucy shifted into Reverse. “In a nutshell. I don’t think that a history of psychiatric care is going to work in my favor.”
“This isn’t exactly a history.”
“It will be in my file. What would you call it?”
“An incident.”
Semantics. But Lucy could play that game, too. “Well, then, I don’t think an incident of psychiatric help is going to work in my favor.”
“A little consultation after a case goes wrong isn’t a bad thing.”
The smoothness of her voice rankled. The unflappable answers grated on Lucy’s nerves. “Really? You can guarantee that nobody in the next twenty years is going to look at that incident on my record and wonder? That nobody’s going to doubt my ability to deal with a crisis? That nobody will think I’m unstable? Worry about me in a pinch? Pass me over when it comes time to work on a tough case? Because if you can guarantee that, then maybe I’ll stop worrying about it.”
“Are those your only concerns?”
“Those are the main ones.” She refused to admit her family’s prejudice against psychiatric care. Cecily would have a heyday with that, and Lucy didn’t want to hear all the arguments she knew the psychiatrist would offer.
“As I said, it’s more common than you might think. There are officers on active duty all through the force who’ve come in for consultations.”
“I feel so much safer now,” Lucy quipped. Swarms of children moved past the car, some laughing, some arguing mildly. One boy stopped in front of her windshield to throw something to a friend. His resemblance to Tomas made Lucy’s hands grow clammy. “I’ll call tomorrow,” she said again. “You can count on it.”
She disconnected before Cecily could prolong the conversation, but she wondered what was happening to her. She’d never run from an argument in her life—but lately it seemed that’s all she did.
MOONLIGHT SHADOWS DANCED on the walls as Lucy lay in bed that night, wide awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking about the future and wondering what it held. All afternoon and evening, the question had played through her mind, a never-ending tape casting doubt upon her past, making her question the future.
What kind of cop needed a head doctor? No matter how normal Cecily claimed it was, Lucy knew she’d never feel safe working with a fellow officer who broke down under stress. And what would Jackson think if he knew? How could she expect him to trust her? She didn’t even trust herself.
Maybe she wasn’t cut out for the job.
Just thinking that struck terror in her heart. She’d never wanted to do anything else. Never even considered another line of work. If she walked away from the department tomorrow, what would she do instead? Fold napkins? Learn accounting? Procreate?
She rolled from one side to the other, trying to find a comfortable position in the single bed that suddenly felt too confining. With a sigh, she got up and crossed to the window. Pulling back the curtain, she looked out over the quiet street. Could she be happy living a life like her mother’s? Could she settle down, have children, join the PTA and host family dinners every Sunday?
Jackson had walked away from his dreams. He’d substituted Wiley’s dreams for his own, and he’d survived. But Lucy had no idea how he’d done it. She felt lost. Completely adrift in a sea she didn’t recognize.
She stood that way for a while, watching trees swaying in the breeze and wondering where she’d be six months from now. When she couldn’t bear thinking about it any longer, she tiptoed from her bedroom, down the stairs and into the family room at the back of the house.
Praying that she wouldn’t wake her parents, she turned on one dim light just long enough to find the remote control. After flicking on the set and turning down the sound, she extinguished the lamp again and curled into her father’s easy chair.
Familiar things wrapped themselves around her—the spicy scent of her dad’s aftershave, the well-worn nap of the fabric, the shape of the seat beneath her. Her mother had redecorated the family room half a dozen times in recent years but, in spite of her arguments, this chair remained.
Yawning, Lucy aimlessly flicked through channels, finally settling on a rerun of Blackbeard’s Ghost, one of her favorite movies from childhood. But even that couldn’t hold her attention for long.
For some reason, watching the growing attraction between the characters played by Suzanne Pleshette and Dean Jones made her think about Jackson again. But she didn’t want to think about him.
Oh, sure, she found him attractive. Who wouldn’t? Those eyes. That smile. Those shoulders. She couldn’t even deny that the soft drawl of his voice did a little something to her when she heard it on the phone, but she wasn’t interested in that way.
Or was she?
Kicking her legs over the arm of the chair, she closed her eyes and tried to analyze her feelings. If only she hadn’t ruined everything with the six-pack. She’d give anything to talk to one of them right now. Abby, maybe. Though Risa had been Lucy’s closest friend, Abby had been the undisputed nurturer of the group. The one most likely to understand whatever Lucy was going through. Or maybe she was just the one least likely to be surprised by this abrupt and inexplicable shift.
She reached for the remote again, but when the light came on overhead, she let out a soft squeal of surprise and the remote dropped to the floor beside her.
“I guess your mother was right,” he said. “You are down here.”
Lucy swung her legs to the floor and scooped up the remote so she could turn off the television. “I’m sorry. I was trying to be quiet.”
“You can’t be quiet enough to get past your mother.” He came into the room, slippers scuffing softly on the carpet. “What are you doing down here in the middle of the night?”
Lucy shrugged and vacated his chair so he could sit. “I was having trouble sleeping but I was too tired to read. I swear I didn’t make a sound when I went past your room.”
With a laugh, her dad sank into his chair and raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m sure you didn’t, sweetheart. Your mother comes equipped with radar. I think all mothers do.” He put a hand over one of hers and added, “You’ll have the same thing once you start your own family.”
“If I start a family.” Lucy clutched his hand and stared at the familiar lines and the shape of his knuckles. They were so like her grandfather’s, it never failed to amaze her, and she realized, not for the first time, that if she never married and had children, everything that had been passed down for generations would disappear. No more slightly square fingers. No more middle fingernails that sloped toward the thumb. How sad it suddenly seemed to her.
She lifted her gaze and found her father watching her. His face was so dear, his love for her so obvious, that lump of emotion she’d been fighting since Saturday night filled her throat again.
“Will you be terribly disappointed in me if I don’t get married and give you grandchildren?”