by Beverly Long
Until he realized that someone had turned on a light. And there she was. Still on the floor. No longer flat on her back but sitting up. There were tears running down her face and her shirt was ripped.
But she was alive. So very alive. He stumbled toward her. Stopped a foot away.
“Did he hurt you?”
“I’m okay,” she said. Her voice was hoarse.
He closed the gap between them. Sat on the floor next to her. As close as he could without actually touching her. Wanted to pull her into his arms but was aware of the others in the room. Maybe they had a future. He hoped so. But it would be her decision if she wanted to make it public. “I thought I was going to be too late,” he admitted.
“He was waiting until midnight. Had to be on May 20, ten days after the last one.”
He looked at his watch. “It’s 12:07.”
Tess smiled. “I told him I couldn’t get my clothes off by myself. It threw him into a tizzy. He lost minutes pacing around the room. It really seemed to short-circuit his ability to think.”
“This doesn’t excuse what the bastard has done but he was a sexually abused child. Before that abuse occurred, his father made him undress and fold his clothes.”
“Oh, God. That makes me sick.”
A.L. looked over at Sean Mallor. He was handcuffed, sitting on the floor, surrounded by Rena and five other police officers. The paramedics had also arrived and one of them was giving him first aid to stem the bleeding from his nose, which A.L. was pretty sure he’d broken.
Another paramedic was headed toward Tess. “I’m fine,” she said, shaking her head at the young man.
“Let him check you out,” A.L. said.
“I’m going to have some bruises and maybe a few aches and pains from getting tossed around in the back of a van, but I’m fine. Really.”
A.L. reluctantly waved the paramedic off. He’d watch her. If she showed any signs of being hurt, he’d insist that she be seen. “I’m so sorry that we lost you at BHP.”
“He sent me a photo of Marnee. Said that I needed to come outside right away or she was going to be hurt. I went outside, intending to find you, but he grabbed me so quickly.” She licked her lips. “That’s how he did it. That’s how he got the women to cooperate. He showed them pictures of their children and promised that they wouldn’t be hurt if the women cooperated.”
That made sense. Sean Mallor had very definite ideas of what a parent should do for a child. Very definite ideas of where his own parents had failed him. “He shot and killed his father when he was ten. Then twelve years later, killed his mother and stepfather in a car accident. Kept his sister quiet for forty-some years by threatening to kill her, too. He tried to buy the Gizer Hotel to tear it down but was unsuccessful.”
“I know. He was very angry about that. And he wanted to punish people who supported the hotel. He told me that he was already working on another way to buy the property.”
“He might have managed to do so. He’s not stupid.”
“But you were smarter. I didn’t want to risk Marnee by fighting but I had to. I knew you’d find me. I just knew it.”
Her confidence humbled A.L. “I’ve never been more grateful for anything,” he said.
“I’m grateful, too,” she said. “To be alive. To be able to see my daughter next week when I visit her at school. To be able to...get back to living. I think I may have forgotten how to do that these last few months. You reminded me, A.L. I’m terribly grateful for that.”
Rena was turning in their direction. “Maybe we’ll have a chance to work on a couple more things on your bucket list,” he said tentatively.
“I’d like that,” she said. “And I still haven’t guessed your full name. Perhaps you’re feeling grateful enough to share that,” she added, a smile on her face.
A.L. felt good. A serial killer had been stopped. Tess had been saved. And the future looked different than it had just days ago. “We can talk about that. Maybe over dinner tomorrow night?”
“I know a good supper club,” she said. “It’s a bit of a drive, though.”
* * *
Detectives A.L. McKittridge and his partner Rena Morgan are in a race against the clock when a little girl goes missing from her daycare center. No one claims to have seen anything and everyone’s a suspect. It’s up to A.L. and Rena to investigate every clue...no matter what dark path they must follow to get answers...
Read on for a sneak peek at Beverly Long’s No One Saw...
No One Saw
by Beverly Long
One
With a week’s worth of mail in one hand, A.L. McKittridge unlocked his apartment door with the other. Then he dragged his carry-on suitcase inside, almost tripping over Felix, who had uncharacteristically left his spot by the window where the late afternoon sun poured in. He tossed the collection of envelopes and free weekly newspapers onto his kitchen table and bent down to scratch his cat. “You must have missed me,” he said. “Wasn’t Rena nice to you?”
His partner had sent a text every day. Always a picture. Felix eating. Felix taking a dump. Felix giving himself a bath. No messages. Just visual confirmation that all was well while he was off in sunny California, taking a vacation for the first time in four years.
I can take care of your damn cat, she’d insisted. And while he hadn’t wanted to bother her because she’d have plenty to do picking up the slack at work, she was the only one he felt he could ask. His ex-wife Jacqui would have said no. His just turned seventeen-year-old daughter Traci would have been willing but he hadn’t liked the idea of her coming round to an empty apartment on her own.
Baywood, Wisconsin—population fifty thousand and change—was generally pretty safe but he didn’t believe in taking chances. Not with Traci’s safety. She’d been back in school for just a week. Her senior year. How the hell was that even possible? College was less than a year away.
No wonder his knees ached. He was getting old.
Or maybe it was flying coach for four hours. But the trip had been worth it. Tess had wanted to see the ocean. Wanted to face her nemesis, she’d claimed. And she’d been a champ. Had stood on the beach where less than a year earlier, she’d almost died after a shark had ripped off a sizable portion of her left arm. Had lifted her pretty face to the wind and stared out into the vast Pacific.
She hadn’t surfed. Said she wasn’t ready for that yet. But he was pretty confident that she’d gotten the closure that she’d been looking for. She’d slept almost the entire flight home, her head resting on A.L.’s shoulder. On the hour-plus drive from Madison to Baywood, she’d been awake but quiet. When he’d dropped her off at her house, she hadn’t asked him in.
He wasn’t offended. He’d have said no anyway. After a week together, they could probably both benefit from a little space. Their relationship was just months old and while the sex was great and the conversation even better, neither of them wanted to screw it up by jumping in too fast or too deep.
Now he had groceries to buy and laundry to do. It was back to work tomorrow. He grabbed the handle of his suitcase and was halfway down the hall when his cell rang. He looked at the number. Rena. Probably wanted to make sure he was home and Felix-watch was over. “McKittridge,” he answered.
“Where are you?”
“Home.”
“Oh, thank God.”
He let go of his suitcase handle. Something was wrong. “What’s up?” he asked.
“We’ve got a missing kid. Five-year-old female. Lakeside Learning Center.”
Missing kid. Fuck. He glanced at his watch. Just after six. That meant they had less than two hours of daylight left. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
* * *
The Lakeside Learning Center on Oak Avenue had a fancier name than building. It was a two-story building with brown clapboard siding on the first floor and tan vinyl siding
on the second. There wasn’t a lake in sight.
The backyard was fenced with something a bit nicer than chain link but not much. Inside the fence was standard playground equipment: several small plastic playhouses, a sandbox on legs, and a swing set. The building was located at the end of the block in a mixed-use zone. Across from the front door and on the left were single-person homes. To the right, directly across Wacker Avenue, was a sandwich shop, and kitty-corner was a psychic who could only see the future on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
A.L. took all this in as he beached his SUV in a no parking zone. Stepped over the yellow tape and made a quick stop to sign in with the cop who was at the door. The guy’s job was to ensure that there was a record of everybody who entered and exited the crime scene.
Once he was inside, his first impression was that the inside was much better than the outside. The interior had been gutted, erasing all signs that this had once been the downstairs of a 1960s two-story home. There was a large open space to his right. On the far wall hung a big-screen television and on the wall directly opposite the front door were rows of shelves, four high, stacked with books, games and small toys.
It was painted in a cheery yellow and white and the floor was a light gray tile. There was plenty of natural light coming through the front windows. The hallway he was standing in ran the entire length of the building and ended in a back door.
There was a small office area to his left. The door was open and there was a desk with a couple guest chairs. The space looked no bigger than ten feet by ten feet and was currently empty.
He sent Rena a text. Here.
A door at the far end of the hallway opened and Rena and a woman, middle-aged and white, dressed in khaki pants and a dark green button-down shirt, appeared. Rena waved at him and led the woman in his direction. “This is my partner, Detective McKittridge,” she said to the woman. She looked at A.L. “Alice Quest. Owner and director of Lakeside Learning Center.”
A.L. extended a hand to the woman. She shook it without saying anything.
“If you can excuse us,” Rena said to the woman. “I’d like to take a minute and bring Detective McKittridge up to speed.”
Alice nodded and stepped into the office. She pulled the door shut but not all the way. Rena motioned for A.L. to follow her. She crossed the big room and stopped under the television.
“What do we have?” he asked.
“Emma Whitman is a five-year-old female who has attended Lakeside Learning Center for the last two years. Her grandmother, Elaine Broadstreet, drops her off on Mondays and Wednesdays between 7:15 and 7:30.”
Today was Wednesday. “Did that happen today?”
“I have this second-hand, via her son-in-law who spoke to her minutes before I got here. It did.”
The hair on the back of A.L.’s neck stood up. When Traci had been little, she’d gone to day care. Not at Lakeside Learning Center. Her place had been bigger. “How many kids are here?” he asked.
“Forty. No one younger than three. No one older than five. They have two rooms, twenty kids to a room. Threes and early fours in one room. Older fours and fives in the other. Two staff members in each room. So four teachers. And a cook who works a few hours midday. And then there’s Alice. She fills in when a staff member needs a break or if someone is ill.”
Small operation. That didn’t mean bad. “Where are the other staff?”
“Majority of the kids get picked up by five thirty. According to Alice, she covers the center by herself from 5:30 to 6:00 most days to save on payroll costs. Emma Whitman is generally one of the last ones to be picked up. Everybody else was gone tonight and she’d already locked the outside door around 5:45 when the father pulled up and pounded on the door. At first, she assumed that somebody else had already picked up Emma. But once Troy called his wife and the grandmother, the only other people allowed to pick her up, she called Kara Wiese, one of Emma’s teachers, who said that Emma hadn’t been there all day. That was the first time Alice had thought about the fact that the parents had not reported an absence. She’d been covering for an ill staff member in the classroom that Emma is not assigned to.”
Perfect fucking storm.
“She quickly called the other two teachers and the cook, everyone who’d worked today, just to verify that nobody had seen Emma. When they hadn’t, she called the police,” Rena said. “Officers Pink and Taylor responded and secured the scene and began a room-by-room search. I arrived at the same time as Leah Whitman, mother of Emma Whitman.”
“When the parent or grandparent or whoever drops off, do they deliver that child to the assigned room?”
“I asked that. Alice said that’s what they want to have happen. But there are times, when a parent is in a hurry, that they will leave the child in this general area.” She waved her hand toward the front door. “When they do that, they are supposed to do two things. One, sign a clipboard that normally hangs there,” she said, pointing to the wall, right outside the office door, “and two, make sure they connect to a staff person, that somebody knows there is a child who needs to be escorted to his or her room.”
“What happened with Emma?”
“Again, according to Troy Whitman, Mrs. Broadstreet supposedly arrived around 7:15 this morning. She walked Emma into the building. There she saw Emma’s teacher, Kara Wiese, standing in the doorway of the office, and left Emma with her. Then she went to work at her job at Milo’s Motors.”
He knew the place. It was a used car dealership on the south side of town. “Did the grandmother sign in?”
“There’s no record of it.” Rena crossed the room and picked something up from a table. She returned with the clipboard and sign-in sheet, already in a closed and tagged evidence bag. She showed it to A.L. There were two signatures. Neither of them were Elaine Broadstreet.
“I’ve also already bagged and tagged the sign-in sheets located in the two classrooms,” Rena said.
“Mrs. Broadstreet isn’t here?”
“No. She’s on her way.”
“Where are the parents right now?” A.L. asked.
“Troy and Leah are in Classroom 1. They’re shook.”
It was a parent’s worst nightmare. He studied the space. The office was maybe six feet from the front door. “You said that Alice called Kara Wiese to see if Emma was here today.”
“Yes. Because Alice already had Mrs. Broadstreet’s version of events via Troy, she asked Kara about it.”
“And what did Kara say?”
Rena’s eyes looked troubled. “That she never saw Mrs. Broadstreet or Emma this morning.”
Somebody was lying or had a real shitty memory.
“Height and weight of child?” he asked.
“Three-feet-two-inches and forty-four pounds. They had a well-child visit just three weeks ago,” Rena added, to explain the exactness. “She was wearing blue jeans, a pink shirt with a unicorn on it, a gray lightweight hoodie and pink-and-white tennis shoes. And we’ve got a ton of pictures, off the parents’ phones. I had them send me a couple of the best ones.” She held out her phone for A.L. to see.
He looked. Sweet kid. Brown hair to her shoulders, more curly than straight. Round face. Big blue eyes.
“Cameras?” A.L. asked, looking around.
“No.”
“The whole building has been searched?” A.L. asked.
“Yes. Inside and the immediate perimeter of the building.”
It would have been too fucking easy if she’d been hiding in a closet. “So we’ve got a five-year-old who hasn’t been seen for over ten hours?” A.L. said. That had to be their priority. Find the kid. Then figure out what had happened and who was at fault. The temperature in Baywood had been a pleasant seventy-six today, according to the weather app on his phone. He’d checked it at the airport. Tonight it would get down to midfifties. Not great for a kid wearing what Rena had describe
d.
He looked down the long hallway that led to the back door. Behind the center was a parking lot for staff and beyond that was rural Wisconsin—lots of corn and beans that hadn’t yet been harvested and even some pastureland for dairy cows. If the child had been dropped off this morning but never found her way to a classroom, was it possible that she’d somehow made her way out the door and wandered off somewhere? Or had someone taken her?
Both were terrifying thoughts.
“I’ve already reached out to the state police,” Rena added. “And made a request to the state Justice Department to issue an Amber Alert.”
That was how it worked. The police couldn’t unilaterally issue an Amber Alert. They requested and the Justice Department approved. Most people thought about Amber Alerts in connection to motor vehicles, assuming the purpose was to get as many eyes watching for a particular vehicle on the road. However, it could be used anytime a child seventeen or under was believed to be at risk of serious harm or death and if there was enough information to make it worthwhile. Here they had location and time of disappearance and a good description of the child. More than enough.
The Amber Alert would be broadcast on radio and television every thirty minutes for the first two hours and then every hour for the next three hours.
Also mobile phones would be lighting with a text message and signs on the highway would also share the information.
“Other social media?” he asked.
“Post is getting written right now, asking for volunteers to immediately report to this location, but once I knew you were on the way, I waited. Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page. I let Chief Faster know what was going on and he’ll contact the FBI.”
She’d accomplished a great deal in less than fifteen minutes. But that was how it worked with missing kids. Balls to the wall from now on out. And while he wasn’t a big fan of Faster, their new chief of police who’d been on the job now for about six months, he should be capable of reaching out to the feds. Getting resources quickly from them would be very helpful. They had experts who could lead the search activities and provide everything from flashlights and snacks to scent-trained dogs.