Finding Claire Fletcher (A Claire Fletcher and Detective Parks Mystery Book 1)

by Lisa Regan

  One day I spied her latest list:

  Sneekers

  Wakman

  Beretts

  Makup

  Joolree

  She caught me standing with the list in my hand. She snatched it from me.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

  I looked at her blankly. She settled onto the couch with her blanket and a box of half-eaten chocolates.

  “I could teach you to spell,” I said.

  “I don’t need you to teach me anything,” she replied haughtily. “Besides, what do I need to spell good for?”

  I shrugged.

  “You think you’re smarter than me ’cause you read all the time?”

  Finding no response that might suit her mercurial nature, I shrugged again.

  “Only retards stay in their room with their face in a book all day,” she said.

  She stretched, catlike, and smiled wickedly. “You can’t even talk,” she said. “How could you teach anyone anything?”

  Still, I said nothing.

  She picked a small, square chocolate from the box. Holding it between two fingers, she licked the edges of it. Then, eyes narrowed at me, she threw it. It pinged off my chest and fell to the floor. She laughed. Then her face hardened abruptly.

  “Pick it up, retard,” she commanded.

  “What?” I said.

  Her face creased. “I said pick it up, retard. I swear you’re totally deaf sometimes.”

  “No,” I said.

  She plucked another brown square from the box and popped it into her mouth. She worked it around in her mouth, cheeks wiggling furiously. She spit it at me with a swift tooft sound. This time it left a dark-brown smudge on my shirt. She smiled, satisfied with her ingenuity, as though she had just created a new game. I suppose she had.

  I turned silently and went back to my room. Later, she lamented to him that I had called her dumb. She also claimed that I had stolen her chocolates and ground them into the carpet one by one.

  Sure enough, after I was chastised for being cruel and hurtful toward my sister, I looked at the carpet and there were big brown flaky splotches ground into its shabby orange fibers.

  As he lectured me, I thought only of how Sarah’s legs had dangled uselessly over the carpet, kicking the side of the couch with muted thuds as she fought desperately for air, eyes locked on mine in our mutual death.

  Prior to the chocolate incident, I had thought only of her eyes, death opening her face into a wide yawn. Then the dirt filling her putty-thick mouth and clinging in tacky misshapen globules to her pupils.

  That day I began to think of her feet. They were much smaller than mine. Dainty in perfectly white, virginal sneakers and white anklet socks circled by a black stripe. He had killed someone in this spot, and now he was worried about chocolate.

  At Tiffany’s insistence, he ordered me to clean the carpet, but I refused, even after he slapped and punched me and pressed my nose into one chocolate lump. I was confined to my room for several days, and when I was finally allowed back into the rest of the house, the stains were gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Connor went directly to the division after dropping Mitch off. He held the piece of paper Mitch had given him with the name and descriptors of Rod Page. Not that Connor needed it. He wasn’t likely to forget anything about the case.

  Boggs and Stryker sat at their desks facing each other, both their heads bent over reports.

  “Boy, you girls work a lot,” Connor said as he approached.

  They looked up at him in unison. “The same could be said for you,” Stryker said. “For a desk jockey you sure are out a lot.”

  “You worried about the review board?” Boggs asked.

  Connor had almost forgotten about it. “Yeah, I guess,” he said.

  “Fuck ’em,” Stryker said. “Let those suits go storming a house one time looking for some asshole who’d shoot his own mother. They have no idea.”

  Boggs looked pointedly at Stryker, who was at least fifteen years Boggs’s junior. “Checks and balances, Stryke. Checks and balances. Someone’s gotta make sure we’re not out there shooting off our guns like vigilantes.”

  Stryker looked appropriately admonished. Boggs turned to Connor. “What time does that start?”

  Connor shrugged. “Nine, but I don’t have to be there till noon. They’re debriefing the other guys first.”

  Boggs looked serious. “We’ll be there, man.”

  “Yeah, we’ll be there,” Stryker chimed in.

  “Thanks,” Connor said, encouraged by their support.

  Connor sat at his desk, booted up his computer, and rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt. He and Mitch were both working on the assumption that Rod Page was still living in the state. If he wasn’t, it would be far more difficult for Claire to come to the city in search of unwitting men and disappear before the night was through, particularly if Page was still monitoring her.

  In addition, Mitch had pointed out that if Page had been kidnapping other girls since he’d snatched Claire, he might not want to risk taking them over state lines because then he’d be looking at federal charges.

  Not that Page seemed particularly concerned about getting caught, Connor thought. He’d already molested Noel, abducted Claire, and in all likelihood murdered at least two of the men Claire had been with in the last ten years. Connor had an ugly, creeping suspicion that the fire that had killed Speer was not an accident either, which would make three murders. Besides that, if Noel had not been his first victim, who knew how many girls Page had victimized before he moved into the Geary household.

  Connor worked for three hours before driving over to Mitch’s office. They locked the front door and went to Mitch’s back room, settling on the leather couch and spreading their respective printouts on the table.

  “I have good news,” Mitch said, bobbing up and down with excitement, like a large dog. “My artist friend is between jobs. She’s over at Geary’s place now working on a composite.”

  Connor smiled and patted Mitch’s shoulder. “That’s great. As soon as you have it let me know. We can talk about how best to use it once we’ve got a sketch.”

  “Sure thing,” Mitch said. “What about you? What have you got?”

  Connor frowned. “You’re not gonna like it,” he said.

  Mitch’s upper body sagged. “It’s an alias, isn’t it?”

  Connor shrugged. “Hard to say, but I’m thinking yeah.” He handed Mitch a sheet of paper. “There are two Rod Pages in the state. One is black so that rules him out. The other is only twenty-one. I pulled up both their driver’s license photos and neither one fits the description.”

  He handed Mitch another sheet of paper. “There’s one Roderick Page and one Rodney Page. Roderick is eighty-six years old, and he lives right here in the city. No good. Rodney Page is fifty years old, which is probably within the age range—Noel said her Rod Page was in his midthirties at the time she knew him, but she couldn’t be entirely sure.”

  “So what’s the catch?” Mitch asked. He was looking at the sheet Connor had just handed him with Rodney Page’s driver’s license photo on it. “He’s a little gray but he fits.”

  Connor handed him another sheet. “No, he doesn’t fit. The guy is a big research doctor for a pharmaceutical company on the south side. He’s highly visible. He has a wife and two kids, and he’s lived in the same house for more than twenty years. I checked back in the company’s press release archives, and he was receiving some award in New York the week Claire was abducted. He’s too stable.”

  Mitch frowned. “Okay,” he said. “So the guy wasn’t using his real name, which means he’s probably got priors. Anything?”

  Connor shook his head. “No. I checked the whole state for the last thirty years looking for priors on everything from forcible rape to indecent exposure for guys who would have been in his age range. I got nothing. But I did find this.”

  He handed Mi
tch a final sheet of paper. “This guy died in 1992. His name was Rod Page; he was thirty-three. Car accident.”

  “You think our guy was cruising the obits?”

  “Claire’s abductor? Probably. He may have had priors in other states or maybe just arrest records under his real name or other assumed names. He might have moved here about ’92, looking for a new identity. The real Rod Page died in ’92, and I’m betting Claire’s abductor took over his identity.”

  “If Claire’s abductor took over Rod Page’s identity, then he might have tried to get a driver’s license with it,” Mitch said, eyes widening with excitement.

  Connor shook his head and grimaced, extinguishing the flicker in the older man’s eyes. “I already checked. Claire’s abductor never renewed the driver’s license in Page’s name, so I couldn’t get a photo. The DMV sent out a renewal form to a post office box registered in the city, but he never got the photo taken. But he did file taxes as Rod Page from the post office box until 1994.”

  “So we can find out where he worked,” Mitch said.

  “Yeah. It might take a couple of days to find out and interview the employers, but we’re not dead in the water yet.”

  Mitch studied the sheets of paper Connor had given him. He pursed his lips, then spoke. “This guy has got to have priors,” he said. “Why else do you go looking for a new identity? I mean, he moved in with Irene Geary in 1994, so he probably wasn’t planning on abducting anyone at that time.”

  “He already had a twelve-year-old girl right there at home,” Connor agreed.

  “Did you check the violent crime database?” Mitch asked.

  Connor nodded. “ViCAP? Yeah, but I haven’t got any results back. But what about you? Find anything on missing persons?”

  Mitch slid two sheets of paper across the table. “Okay, in the last ten years, there have been seven girls between the ages of twelve and seventeen.” He tapped a finger midway down the list. “Now, two of them were thirteen, but they’re listed as custodial interference, and the parent who took them is listed along with them. One was twelve and one fifteen, but those two are custodial interference as well.

  “These two,” Mitch continued, tapping a finger at the bottom of the list. “Sixteen and seventeen, are listed as probable runaways. Both had a history of running away, drug use, trips to juvenile court, and dropping out of school—what you usually see with runaways. This last one …” Mitch indicated the first name on the list. “Seventeen-year-old Miranda Simon disappeared eighteen months after Claire was abducted. She drove to cheerleading practice, worked out with her team, stayed after to talk to her coach, walked back to her car, and was never seen again. She lived about twenty miles northwest of the city.”

  “Seventeen,” Connor said. “That’s a little old for our guy, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I was thinking that too, but I don’t think we should rule it out.”

  “All right,” Connor said. “What’s that?” He pointed to the last sheet of paper lying in front of Mitch.

  “Oh yeah.” Mitch slid the paper over to him. “This wasn’t in my search parameter, but I think it’s relevant. It’s been all over the news the last month.”

  “The Ward girl?” Connor asked.

  “Yeah, Alison Ward. Eleven years old. Went missing a month ago. Walking home from school. Never made it. No one saw or heard anything.”

  Connor studied the photo. It was a school picture. In it, Alison Ward showed off a toothy grin. Her long, shiny brown hair was partially pulled back, her thin arms resting in front of her in an artificial pose.

  “Where was this?” Connor asked.

  “It was over in Rancho Cordova,” Mitch said, referring to a nearby city in Sacramento Valley. “I’m sure your department was contacted on this one.”

  “Yeah,” Connor said, still looking at Alison Ward’s photo. “We were. I know a couple of guys who went down there and helped search. I didn’t go because I’ve been swamped with cases, although I might have all the time in the world after tomorrow.”

  “What time is the review board?” Mitch asked.

  “I have to be there at noon,” Connor said. He flashed the missing persons flyer at Mitch. “You think this could be our guy?”

  “I don’t know,” Mitch said. “Anything is possible. I wouldn’t rule it out. But we’re working on a theory here.”

  “That the guy who took Claire lived nearby.”

  “Yeah, which led us to Rod Page, who fits in a lot of ways—the description is similar, he had access to a similar car, he was a pedophile, and now it looks like he was using an alias. All very suspicious, but if the theory is wrong, we’re way off track.”

  Connor nodded. He knew that in the same way a case could be solved by looking into the smallest detail, it could also be hindered when an investigation focused on the wrong detail for too long and went on from there. He looked at Mitch. “I think we have it right, though,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Mitch said. “Me too. We still have a lot of work to do. We’ll see what ViCAP turns up. In the meantime, assuming that Claire’s abductor was using the Rod Page identity, we can try to get his tax records from ’93 and ’94 and see where he worked. Then we can go down there and start asking questions.”

  Connor nodded. “You still have a call out on those phone records?” he asked.

  “Yeah. It’s gonna take a few days, though.”

  They sat silently for a few minutes. Connor felt exhausted even though it wasn’t quite evening yet. He also felt disappointed. He’d known the odds of actually finding and catching Claire’s abductor that night hadn’t been great but in a way, he really wished they had. He’d have to go home to his empty house again, worrying about an intruder or a fire, spend an hour looking at the phone, wishing Claire would call, and try not to think about the review board. It wasn’t a night he was looking forward to.

  “Wanna get something to eat?” Mitch asked. “My treat.”

  Connor smiled. “Sure,” he said. “My last meal.”

  Farrell waved a finger at him, brow furrowed. “Don’t joke about that, son,” he said.

  Connor rolled his eyes. “I meant my last meal as a detective.”

  “Oh. Well, don’t joke about that either. You’ll do fine.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  1999

  Tiffany put on weight in the months after her arrival. By the time the chocolate incident was over, her arms were thick and pudgy, and small doughy rolls of stomach announced themselves beneath her too-small shirts. I sat in a chair across from her permanent station on the couch. She did not look at me. We sat in silence for a long time, the television babbling endlessly at a lowered volume as the sunshine waned outside.

  I saw only her profile, which looked morose and slightly bored. She sighed loudly and flipped through the channels, finally returning to the one she’d been watching in the first place.

  “Where do you think he is?” she said abruptly, not turning to look at me.

  “What?” I said.

  “Where do you think he goes when he leaves?” she said.

  “I don’t know.”

  She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “Well, he has to go somewhere,” she said.

  “He’s probably out raping young girls,” I said.

  Now she looked at me. “What?”

  I looked straight into her eyes. “He’s a pedophile, Tiffany.”

  “A what? What’s that?”

  “A sicko, a pervert, a child molester. He likes little girls.”

  She crossed her arms in front of her. “That’s stupid,” she said. “You’re lying.”

  “No. It’s true. Why do you think he brought you here?”

  “He loves me. That’s why. He told me so.”

  I laughed, short and hard. “He loves any girl under fifteen. The only thing he loves about you is that you let him do things to you. He should be in prison.”

  She snorted. “You’re just jealous because he doesn’t want you an
ymore.”

  “Why do you think that is?” I asked. “I’m too old for him now. That’s why you’re here. He needs a little girl to satisfy his sick sexual fantasies.”

  She glowered at me. “I’m not a little girl,” she said.

  “Why did you leave home?” I asked. I expected her to tell me it was none of my business, which was her usual response to any questions I asked that were personal in nature.

  Instead, she said, “It was easier on the street. I got to do whatever I wanted. I didn’t have to take care of anyone’s babies, and I didn’t have to get beat up every day.”

  “Who beat you up?”

  “My mom. She was a real bitch. Real stupid too. She just kept getting pregnant, and men would always leave her because she was so stupid. So I had to take care of all those stupid babies all the time while she watched TV all day.”

  Sitting in front of the television with boxes of candy piled up around her, Tiffany did not see the parallel.

  “What about your dad?” I said.

  “I don’t even know who my dad is,” she said. “Like I said, she could never keep a man around. She used to keep me home from school a lot to take care of her dumb kids. I hated them. I think she used to be nice to me before she had them.”

  She told her story carelessly, as if it had happened to someone else: Her mother had gotten in trouble with Child Protective Services after sending Tiffany grocery shopping alone at seven years old. Tiffany had lived in a foster home for a while before being placed back with her mother. Her mother started going to church and taking better care of Tiffany and her siblings, but by that time Tiffany had no patience for all of her mother’s new rules.

  “So you just left?” I asked.

  “Yeah, well there was this other girl I knew at school who was running away. She was like thirteen and still in the same grade as me ’cause she kept getting held back. She said she had some boyfriend in the city and she was gonna go live with him. She said I could come with her, so I did. But that guy lived in a fucking car. He did all kinds of drugs, and when we got there, it turned out he just wanted us to hook so he could make money to buy drugs. After a while, I left. I figured if I was doing all the work, I should get to keep the money. So I found some other people to hang out with and went with them.”