False Positive

by Andrew Grant

  Devereaux didn’t respond.

  “Cooper? Did you hear me? Everything’s been taken care of. You’re back on rotation.”

  “The accusation was dropped.” Devereaux blasted the Porsche through a tight curve, enjoying the way the firm leather pressed against his back. “Why?”

  “The woman who started all this? She called again. Last night. Admitted she’d been lying. Claimed she’d been paid to smear you, and wanted to clear her conscience before starting a new life in California.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. We triangulated on the place where she made the call. It was a roadside bar, thirty miles outside of the city. The right direction for someone heading out west. We found the phone she used. It was in the parking lot. Broken. Snapped in two. There were no prints. But there was a witness. He gave us a description. Too generic to be much help on its own, but he thought the woman was driving a minivan. There’s a lot of road between here and the coast, Cooper. We’ll find her. Make sure her story adds up.”

  “I told you.” Devereaux wove his way through a pack of gray-bearded bikers on rumbling, antique Harleys. “I did nothing wrong. This was down to someone I sent to jail, carrying a grudge. Or a relative of someone I locked up, out for revenge.”

  “You did tell me. I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Leave it to me.” Devereaux glanced in his rearview mirror, checking that all the bikers were still on two wheels. “I’ll come up with some names. Knock on a few doors.”

  “Good approach. But that can wait. Have you got a bathroom fixed up at your atrocity of a cabin yet?”

  “No. Why?”

  “When did you last wash? Change your clothes?”

  “Tuesday. Fashion and hygiene aren’t big priorities when you get wrongly put on suspension.”

  “OK. Then go home. Shower. Shave. Do whatever you need to do to make yourself presentable. And get to my office, like ten minutes ago.”

  “Where’s the fire?”

  “You have a new case, Cooper. I’ll tell you everything when you get here.”

  “Tell me now.”

  “When you get here.”

  “You know, Lieutenant, I don’t appreciate this. One minute you suspend me over some anonymous bullshit, and the next you want me jumping through hoops and won’t even tell me why. So here’s the thing. I may not be feeling too good. I may need to take some sick leave.”

  “You’re not sick, Cooper.”

  “I may need some personal time, then. You know my atrocious cabin roof needs fixing. You’ve seen the state it’s in.”

  “Someone else can fix the roof, Cooper. OK? You want the bottom line? We have a missing person. A kid.”

  Devereaux didn’t reply.

  “A little boy. He’s seven years old.”

  Devereaux felt like he was being pulled back into his dream.

  “An orphan.”

  Chapter Five

  The woman woke at first light and checked her phone. There were no new messages.

  So far, so good.

  She had no interest in going back to sleep so she reached for her book—a lighthearted introduction to what regular folk can learn from psychopaths—and spent the next couple of hours quietly reading. Then she felt the buzz of an incoming text:

  Devereaux’s been reinstated. He’s en route to Hale’s office. Apparently a kid’s missing and she wants him on the case. Unbelievable!

  The woman smiled, pulled on a fresh pair of surgeons’ gloves, and got out of bed. She took her case from its place next to the door. Carried it to the bathroom. Took out the Ziploc bag she’d prepared five hours earlier. Removed the empty hydrogen peroxide bottle. Dropped it in the trash. Sprinkled a few bleached hairs in on top of it. Set the bag down next to the basin, ready to be used again. Placed a bottle of Rich Mahogany hair dye next to it. Then went back to the bedroom. To rouse the small, newly blond figure curled up in the other twin bed.

  Chapter Six

  Saturday. Morning.

  The cabin had originally belonged to Devereaux’s great-grandfather.

  Devereaux had traced it through old city records fifteen years previously, and bought it in an attempt to reconnect with his family heritage. He slept there at least once a week, but Devereaux’s real home was an apartment in the City Federal building on Second Avenue, a stone’s throw from the police department headquarters in the heart of downtown Birmingham. He liked being close to the raw heartbeat of the city. He liked the building’s height. The way it dominated the skyline, turning up its neo-classical nose at its plain, modern neighbors. He liked its polished white terra-cotta cladding (which was no longer falling off) and its balanced, elegant proportions. The bold neon sign that once again blazed extravagantly on its roof at night. But most of all he liked the fact that it had started its life as an office building. It’s still the same on the outside. But inside, it’s completely different. It had started over. Remade, top to bottom.

  Just like him.

  When Devereaux graduated from the Academy he bought a small, discreet studio on the sixth floor of a converted warehouse at Sixth and Sixth. He got it for a song, which was good because he hadn’t wanted to invite questions about how a rookie street cop with no inheritance and no record of any legitimate employment could afford to live in a higher-profile place. He stayed there, even after he made detective. But his eye had been caught when the renovations began at the City Federal. His mind was made up by the time the neon sign was re-lit. And finally, he treated himself. He moved to a three-bedroom unit on the twenty-fifth floor. He was the first resident to occupy the newly refurbished building, and he added stunning city views—all the way south to the giant cast-iron statue of Vulcan, god of the forge, standing proud on his column at the foot of the Red Mountain—to the list of things he liked about the place. But that was the best part of ten years ago, and two of the bedrooms remained empty.

  Devereaux unlocked his door and hurried inside. He stepped over the work clothes that were scattered across the dark walnut floor where he’d flung them on Tuesday night when he’d stormed home after Hale broke the news about his suspension. He peeled off his jeans and his Clash “I Fought the Law” T-shirt—which had been torn in a fight years ago with a couple of old-timers who didn’t appreciate the irony of him wearing it to a cop bar—and quickly hit the shower. He was tempted to skip his shave, but the quantity of gray staring back at him in the mirror changed his mind. Finally, he grabbed a blue button-down shirt and a pair of khaki pants from the freestanding rack he kept in his bedroom in place of a closet. Pulled them on. And was good to go inside ten minutes.

  One advantage of living in an ex–office building is the plentiful supply of elevators at your disposal—a holdover from the days when they were needed to whisk the eager wage-slaves to their desks as quickly as possible. But that day it seemed to take an eternity for one to arrive. The bank of polished brass doors seemed to be frozen in time after Devereaux hit the Call button. Eventually a pair slid open and Devereaux rode down alone in a car, willing the antique indicator needle to move faster and replaying Lieutenant Hale’s parting words in his head. A little boy. Missing. Runaway? Alone and vulnerable? Or worse?

  Devereaux stepped out into the marble-lined lobby. He skirted around a little knot of older residents who were spending their Saturday morning standing next to the building’s twin stacks of mailboxes and complaining about the fares on the DART trolleys. He headed for the exit.

  Then he stopped.

  Something about one of the seniors had caught Devereaux’s eye. An old man. Maybe in his early eighties. He was standing apart from the rest of the group, leaning—almost hunched over—against the round font-like table in the center of the lobby. His thin gray hair was uncombed. His lean face was grizzled with white stubble. And he was wearing a light-colored raincoat, which made no sense on such a sunny June day.

  The rest of the seniors drifted into an elevator and the doors closed, leaving Devereaux an
d the old guy staring at each other, twenty feet apart, like weary gunslingers in an old Western. Then the guy pushed himself away from the table and took an unsteady step toward Devereaux. His coat sagged open, revealing the dried bloodstain on his shirt.

  “Cooper?” He was swaying on his feet. “Cooper Devereaux?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Son, be careful. She knows.”

  Then the old guy sank to his knees and pitched forward, face-first onto the hard, tiled floor.

  Chapter Seven

  The woman pulled up alongside the black M-Class Mercedes and killed her engine. She knew she was out of range of the security cameras so she checked that no one was watching from the other parked vehicles, then wiped everything she could have touched inside the Honda clean of prints. She got out. Unlocked the Mercedes. Helped the little boy and his tiny knitted monkey switch vehicles. Scooped up the cuddly rabbit he’d dropped on the back seat. Then moved her case and his backpack from one trunk to the other.

  She opened her case. Took out a rectangular nylon bag. Flipped it over so that the word Worn was visible. Unzipped it. Took off her sunglasses, wig, and earrings. Placed them inside. Dropped the Honda key in with them. Zipped the bag up. Turned it over. Opened the side that said Clean. Took out a fresh wig. Brunette, this time. Another pair of sunglasses. Tortoiseshell, not black. New earrings. A chunky, turquoise necklace. A matching bracelet. Then she closed the trunk. Climbed in behind the wheel. Checked herself in the mirror. Flashed a reassuring smile at the kid, who still seemed a little groggy. And pulled back out of the diner’s parking lot.

  She had a new car. A new look. And a lot of ground to cover before her mission would be complete.

  Chapter Eight

  Saturday. Morning.

  Time slowed to a crawl as Devereaux knelt on the marble floor in the lobby at the City Federal building, keeping an eye on the old man’s vital signs and willing the paramedics to pick up the pace. After eight minutes—each one of which felt like an hour—an ambulance finally pulled up outside. Devereaux passed on what little he knew to the crew and asked which hospital the guy would be taken to. Then, too impatient to wait for the elevator again, he took the stairs down to the basement garage. He reluctantly ignored his Porsche and continued to the department-issue Dodge Charger he kept in the adjacent stall. He climbed inside, and seventy seconds later he was parking in a spot that had just opened up on the street at the side of the police headquarters’s sloping metal entrance canopy on First Avenue.

  The detectives’ desks were all empty when Devereaux pushed through the double doors from the elevator lobby on the third floor, but he could see Lieutenant Hale—five feet eleven, with swimmer’s shoulders and jet-black hair halfway down her back—standing in her office doorway and gesturing impatiently for him to hurry up. As he drew closer he realized someone else was there, sitting behind Hale. Another woman. She looked a good fifteen years younger. Her bobbed, blond hair was lacquered almost rigid. She had a plain, oval face. And she was skinny to the point of anorexia.

  “Cooper, this is Detective Jan Loflin.”

  Devereaux appraised Loflin for a moment, then held out his hand. “Cooper. Never Coop. Never Coops. Shame we’re not meeting under different circumstances.”

  Loflin stood, and as they shook Devereaux could feel the nervous energy running through her. It was as if there was too much for her small body to contain, leaving her muscles to burn off the excess like the flares at an oil refinery. Devereaux was a foot taller and seemingly three times as broad, and her rapid tiny movements made him feel clumsy and oversized.

  “Jan’s on loan to us from Vice.” Hale retreated behind her desk and scooped up a cup of coffee that had been perching on a stack of overtime authorization forms. “She comes highly recommended. And given that Tommy’s helping out Colton while Levi recovers from his rotator cuff, I’m pairing the two of you up. For now, at least. We can take another look at things once the kid’s safely home with his parents.”

  “Foster parents.” Devereaux took the seat nearer the door.

  Hale watched as Loflin shifted her chair a few inches closer to the window before sitting down and pulling a dog-eared Moleskine notebook out of her purse. She looked anxious. Hale hoped that was just down to Loflin being freshly back from sick leave, but she couldn’t quash the nagging doubt at the back of her mind. Not completely. Loflin came with a reputation. Picking her up, even on a temporary assignment, was a risk. But it had seemed like a risk worth taking, with the team left shorthanded. And Hale had dealt with odd fish before, she reminded herself. Successfully. Just look at Devereaux. Saving misfits’ careers was becoming her specialty.

  “OK.” Hale extracted a color, eight-by-ten portrait from the chaos on her desk and held it up. “This is our missing kid. His name’s Ethan Crane. Take a good look, guys. This picture’s only two weeks old.”

  Both detectives studied the image, praying that the next photo they saw of Ethan wouldn’t have been taken at a crime scene. He was a cute kid. He had fluffy, chestnut-brown hair. A smattering of freckles around his nose and forehead. A cheeky smile. Straight, white teeth. And a wary distance in his eyes that Devereaux would recognize anywhere.

  “Good.” Hale traded the glossy picture for a sheaf of creased papers and flicked away a crumb of chocolate that she’d dropped on the top page. “Here’s what we know about Ethan Crane. He’s seven years old. Orphaned. No living relatives. Placed in two previous homes before he was fostered, and subsequently adopted, by Joseph and Mary Lynne Crane. We’re tracing the previous families, but don’t have any information as yet. Joseph Crane’s a V.P. in charge of project management at the University of Alabama down in Tuscaloosa, so he leaves home early and gets back late. Mary Lynne’s a nurse, here in Birmingham. There are no red flags from any neighbors or co-workers. None that the uniforms have canvassed so far, anyway. They have a nice house over the mountain. The kids go to a good school—”

  “Kids?” Devereaux sounded surprised.

  Loflin carried on scribbling in her notebook.

  “Yes.” Hale reached out and prodded one of the slats in the vertical blind at the window, trying to block an offending ray of sunlight that had started to shine in her eyes. “Not long after adopting Ethan, Mrs. Crane—who’d been told she couldn’t—got pregnant. They have another little boy. A biological son, named Dillon.”

  “That cause any problems?” Devereaux frowned. “I bet they didn’t want the adopted kid around, once they had one of their own.”

  “Couldn’t say.” Hale paused. “Find out. So anyway, this Dillon, he’s four years old. He’s in pre-K, at the same school as Ethan. Uniform’s tracking down their teachers. As for the parents, last night Mr. and Mrs. Crane went to dinner at their neighbors, the Ketterbaughs. Apparently it’s a semi-regular thing. Four couples go, every few months. As they usually do, the Cranes put their boys to bed before heading next door at around seven pm. They kept an ear open for the boys by using an app on Mrs. Crane’s smartphone. And every forty-five minutes or so, Mr. Crane went back to check on them in person. He checked for a final time at about twelve-thirty, when the couple got home, and everything was fine. Both kids tucked up in their beds, snug as bugs. Then, this morning, Mrs. Crane—who always wakes at five-thirty, come what may—went into the boys’ room.”

  “They share?” Devereaux’s frown deepened.

  “Yes. So Mrs. Crane went in—for no special reason, she just wanted to see her kids—and found Dillon, thumb in his mouth, fast asleep. But no sign of Ethan. His comforter was kind of bundled up, to make his bed look occupied from a distance, but he wasn’t there. She searched the house for him, thinking it was a prank. Then she started to panic. She woke her husband. And at five fifty-eight, she called 911.”

  “Did the uniforms search the place again, when they got there?” Devereaux knew he was clutching at straws. That little boy was gone.

  “They went through all the usual hiding places. The attic. The basement.
The works.” Hale took a swig of coffee. “No dice. Nothing stood out from the parents’ initial statements, either, or from interviewing the neighbors. Uniforms are still out canvassing the area. All available K9 units have been deployed. And five of our own people have given up their days off to help check the kid’s favorite haunts.”

  “How about Find-a-Child?”

  Find-a-Child was a national agency Hale had used three times before when kids had gone missing on her watch. Based out of Miami, it used hundreds of specially trained volunteers to flood carefully targeted areas with phone calls, hoping to uncover snippets of information that could be passed on to the police and developed into leads. All three of those kids had been recovered safely—one had been snatched by his estranged father, who was trying to take him to Nicaragua; one had run away, and was hiding in an abandoned storage shed at the edge of a cotton field; and the most recent had been taken by a man who thought the boy was an alien newly arrived on earth to direct an extra-terrestrial invasion.

  “I authorized bringing them in, right before you got here.”

  “Anything from forensics yet?” Devereaux tried to push the edge of a carpet tile back into place with his foot, but it refused to cooperate.

  “No sign of forced entry.” Hale took another sip of coffee. “No blood. Plenty of fingerprints in the house, but no hits from any database. Still waiting on the rest.”

  “Any background on the Cranes?”

  “They were screened extensively before being allowed to foster Ethan, and nothing seems to have changed.” Hale was nursing her cup, anxious to conserve the final few drops of coffee. “No records of anything out of the ordinary, debt-wise. They denied having any enemies, and swore they haven’t been threatened by anyone. I’ve reached out to Vice and Narcotics, just in case there’s anything the Cranes aren’t telling us.”