Their sergeant had assigned it to another pair of detectives, knowing that Mason had worked with Josie several times for information during a prostitute murder case. Detectives Duff Morales and Steve Hunsinger were the team chosen to find justice for Josie. Mason would look over their shoulders and ride their asses the entire time.
“You got your look. Now get out of my crime scene,” Morales said from the hallway.
Mason glanced back at the man but didn’t move. He and Ray were still studying the scene. Josie had broken fingers. She’d tried to protect herself against the bat, perhaps even tried to grab it from her attacker. Once she was on the bathroom floor, the attacker had continued to beat her. Arcs of blood trailed up the walls to the ceiling, where the weapon had flung blood as it was whipped up for another swing at her head.
“What are the bits of broken green metal by her head?” Lusco asked.
“Earrings. Christmas balls,” answered Morales.
Mason silently swore. Did Josie’s family expect her for Christmas next week? Did she have family? He’d seen the decorated plastic tree in her living room. A few presents were stashed below, waiting for eager hands to rip them open.
Mason closed his eyes, remembering the last time he’d met Josie at the Starbucks four blocks away. She’d ordered the biggest, most sugary Frappuccino on the menu and talked a mile a minute. Had she already been using meth? He’d assumed she’d been overcaffeinated and lonely. Even prostitutes get lonely for conversation. They’d been an odd pair. The perky prostitute and the cowboy detective.
He’d followed her back to her tiny apartment because she had some twenties from a john who was part of a recent big drug bust. Mason wanted to tell her the bills probably wouldn’t have prints or aid the investigation, but he went along because she wanted to help and seemed to need some company.
Being in her home had been a bit awkward. He’d been hyperaware of the intimacy of simply standing in her feminine space. She’d offered him a soda, which he’d declined, but he’d accepted her suggestion that he grab a bottled water from the fridge for the road. Her fridge held water, soda, and milk. Nothing else. What did she eat? He should have known then that she was using drugs instead of calories to function. He’d exchanged her bills for some out of his own pocket and offered her sixty dollars extra. She’d politely turned it down, but he’d tucked the money under the saltshaker on her kitchen counter, and she’d pretended not to notice.
Mason had seen enough of Josie’s blood. He turned and pushed past Lusco and the other pair of detectives, avoiding eye contact. He strode into her tiny kitchen. The kitchen was a nasty-smelling pit of dirty dishes and take-out containers. On his previous visit it’d been immaculate.
The saltshaker was still there—part of a set of silver cats—but the money was gone. He scanned the sad room. It wasn’t even a room, more like a large closet with a sink and small microwave. He wanted to open the fridge to see if she’d finally added food, but he knew he couldn’t touch anything until the crime scene unit had processed the apartment. The kitchen showed cracks in the counters from age and heavy use. Sort of how Josie had always looked. Her cracks had shown in the stress lines around her eyes and mouth. Lines that shouldn’t have been present on a woman younger than thirty.
Who slipped through your cracks, Josie?
She’d told Mason she never brought johns back to her apartment.
She’d kept a careful line between her work and where she lived. Had she broken her own rule? Or had someone followed her?
“Just another dead hooker,” said a voice behind Mason.
He whirled around to find an unfamiliar Portland police officer studying him with sharp eyes.
“Show a little respect,” snapped Mason.
The officer smirked, and Mason wanted to use the bloody bat on his head.
“She’s been picked up three times in the last month. Twice for public intoxication and once for a catfight with some other hookers. I have a hard time feeling sorry for her,” the officer stated.
Mason was taken aback. That didn’t sound like the Josie he knew. Why hadn’t she reached out to him if she was having problems? He’d smoothed her way out of small jams before. Had she gotten into something she didn’t want him to know about?
“Let’s get out of here,” said Ray. Mason’s partner had silently moved to the doorway of the closet-size kitchen and had probably witnessed the anger on Mason’s face.
Mason shoved his hat on his head and moved past the uniform.
The officer barely turned to give him room to get by.
“Nice hat,” the officer muttered at Mason’s retreating back.
Mason ignored him. He didn’t mind the occasional jabs about his hat. Or his cowboy boots. He was comfortable with his clothes. Cowboy hats were rare on the west side of the Cascade mountain range, but when he headed back to his hometown of Pendleton on the east side of the state, they popped up everywhere.
Right now he was upset that he hadn’t checked up on Josie.
Usually he heard from her about once a month with information she wanted to sell. He hadn’t heard a peep from her in three months, and she hadn’t crossed his mind.
Guilt.
He followed Ray out the apartment door and down the dark stairwell. They avoided the elevator in the old apartment building. The stairwells might stink of piss, but it beat getting trapped for a few hours in an old creaking elevator. It’d happened twice to other detectives in other buildings. Mason didn’t care to share the experience.
He pushed through the outer door into the bright sunshine and sucked in a breath of icy air. It was one of those rare clear winter weeks in the Pacific Northwest when residents dug out their sunglasses and pretended not to need heavy coats. Mason’s skin soaked in the sun that’d been hiding behind dark-gray rain clouds for months. He’d nearly forgotten that the sky could be such an intense blue.
A few groups of people clustered on the sidewalk, squinting in the sun and speculating as they studied the four double-parked police cars. The Portland neighborhood was made up of dozens of short apartment buildings and old houses on narrow streets. It was a neighborhood known for its population of college kids and transient adults. No one stayed very long. Ray glanced at his watch.
“Almost noon. Want to grab a bite?”
Mason muttered that he wasn’t hungry as he pulled out his silenced cell phone. He had five missed calls from his ex-wife. Shit. Jake.
His heart sped up, and he returned the calls with abruptly icy fingers. “Something’s up with Jake,” he said to Ray. “Robin has called five times in the last half hour.”
“Is he home from college for winter break?” Ray asked.
“Robin picked him up from the airport two days ago. I haven’t heard a word from the kid except for a reply to my text asking if he’d landed safely.” His son lived with his ex-wife, her new husband, and their joint young daughters. Mason had planned to reach out to his son this weekend to see if he wanted to go to the next Trail Blazers basketball game.
Just as he expected Robin’s cell phone to go to voice mail, she finally answered. “Mason?” she asked.
Almost ten years had passed since their divorce, but he knew from the tone of her voice that she was terrified.
“What happened? Is Jake okay?” he barked into the phone.
“Jake’s fine.” Robin’s voice cracked. “It’s Henley. She’s missing.”
She burst into sobs.
Mason’s mind went blank. Henley? Who—
“Lucas is a mess,” Robin wept.
Aha. Henley was Robin’s stepdaughter. Mason couldn’t remember the girl’s age. Early teens? Jake rarely mentioned her, and Mason had met the girl only once or twice. She lived with her mother most of the time.
“When was she seen last? Did you call the police? How long’s she been missing?” Mason rapid-fired the questions at his ex.
“Of course we called the police. Clackamas County sheriff. She’s been missing since this m
orning. She left for school, but they say she never made it.” Robin’s voice was steadier.
“School’s not out for vacation yet?”
“Today’s the last day.”
“Okay. I’ll call Clackamas County and see what’s going on. How old is she?”
“Eleven,” Robin whispered.
Crap. Mason closed his eyes. “We’ll find her.”
Mason shifted his weight from boot to boot as he waited for Lucas Fairbanks to usher him into his home. The entryway of the accountant’s suburban house was huge, with a heavy wood-and-iron door that belonged in a castle. And the home looked exactly like the other fifty homes in the suburban upper-middle-class subdivision. Mason had never been a fan of Lucas, but he respected the man for doing a decent job of helping raise Jake. Robin had always seemed happy once she’d married the accountant.
Lucas had succeeded where Mason had failed. Robin had known she was marrying a cop when she married Mason, but she hadn’t understood how hard it would be to always come in second place to the job. Mason had tried to get home at a reasonable time each night, but it was rare. Crime didn’t work nine to five, and neither did he. During the divorce Robin admitted she’d spent years thinking of herself as a single parent to save her sanity. It was the only way she could mentally cope with his absences. Otherwise she was always waiting and waiting. In her head it made more sense for her to never expect him; that way she was never disappointed. When he managed to walk in the door in time for dinner, it was a nice surprise.
Mason followed Lucas into his formal dining room and tried not to gawk at the flashy chandelier. The room was packed with adults. Outside there’d been three cars from the Lake Oswego Police Department, two Clackamas County vehicles, an unmarked police car, and three generic American sedans that indicated the FBI had arrived. Mason scanned the room, searching for familiar faces. He didn’t know any of the officers. Robin sat at the table, gripping the hand of another woman, who spoke with two men in suits. Both women had a well-used pile of tissues in front of them. Mason figured the other woman to be Henley’s mother, Lilian.
Mason had never seen a slump in Lucas’s shoulders. His usual chipper greeting had been severely muted, and he looked like he’d been sick for weeks. “The FBI is sending more people,” Lucas said quietly. “I guess they have some sort of specialized team they pull from the other West Coast offices to respond to kidnappings.”
“The CARD team,” Mason answered. “Child Abduction Rapid Deployment. They take this shit seriously. We all do.” He swallowed hard and thanked heaven again that it wasn’t his kid who was missing.
He glanced at Lucas and felt instantly guilty. The man was staring at his ex-wife as she sobbed on Robin’s shoulder. Mason didn’t know how their marriage had broken up. He’d never asked and now it didn’t matter. They had a little girl to find.
The Oregon State Police would offer resources, but Mason couldn’t be one of them. As a family member, he couldn’t be an official part of the investigation. But he’d set a plan in motion to get around that rule. He’d already requested some time off. And God protect anyone who tried to tell him his help wasn’t needed.
“Tell me what happened,” he said in a low voice to Lucas.
Lucas glanced at the two women and then jerked his head for Mason to follow him into the breezeway between the kitchen and dining room.
“Henley has been staying with us this week. Usually I get her one of the two weeks of winter vacation, but her mom asked me to add this extra week while she got some work done. Henley left for the bus stop like normal at about seven thirty this morning. Robin watched her walk out the door. A few hours later, her mom called, asking if Henley had stayed home sick from school, because she was getting automated calls and emails that Henley wasn’t at school.”
“The school will contact you if your kid doesn’t show up?” Mason asked.
Lucas nodded. “You’re supposed to call in on a special line if your kid will be missing any part of school that day. I know we forgot once or twice with Jake when he stayed home sick, and so we got a bunch of notifications. It’s a good system.”
“But it still takes a few hours to process.”
“Well, they have to compare the attendance to the sick calls. That’s entered by hand. Discrepancies trigger the calls and emails.”
“What happened when Lilian called here?”
“Robin assured her Henley had gone to school and immediately called the school to confirm that she was there. I think Lilian called them too. Henley’s homeroom teacher said she hadn’t shown up.”
“What about the school bus driver? What about the other kids on the bus? Anyone talk to Henley’s friends?” Mason rattled off question after question.
Lucas seemed to deflate more. “They’re working on all that.”
“Wait. How does Henley ride the bus if she doesn’t usually live with you?”
“We live in the same school district and have the same elementary school boundaries.”
“I didn’t know you lived so close to your ex. Has it always been like that?”
“Yes, Lilian has a place about five minutes from here. It’s really convenient for Henley. Lilian and I get along pretty well.”
“Is she remarried? Do they have more kids?”
Lucas shook his head, and his gaze went over Mason’s shoulder as the volume rose in the dining room. Mason turned around to see more people joining the group—judging by the dull suits, FBI agents.
Good. No one knew more about child abductions, and the unique skills the FBI could offer to the local police were gold. Depending on its size, a police department might deal with one major child abduction over a decade. The FBI dealt with them monthly. Mason had never seen the CARD team in action, but he’d heard good things.
Mason turned back to Lucas. “Officially I can’t join whatever task force they set up, but I can help as a family member. I’ll be the family voice for the media and the liaison to the police and FBI. Let me do this for you guys. I’ve already told work I’m taking some time off. However long it takes to bring Henley home.”
Lucas started to refuse, and Mason put a hand on his shoulder, giving the man a little shake. “Listen to me. Your wife and ex-wife are gonna need you for support. You don’t have time to deal with the politics of the situation. I know how these guys work. Let me handle that. Everything I find out, I’ll immediately pass on to you. Robin, Lilian, and you are going to want to be in the center of the investigation, and that’s not going to help.”
Lucas’s eyes looked bleak. “Will they let you do that?”
“If you back me up. Make it clear you’ll step back a bit, and they might be more accepting.”
Desperation lurked in Lucas’s gaze as he looked into one of Mason’s eyes and then the other. “I don’t know what to do,” he whispered. “I have to help. I have to know what’s going on. She’s my daughter, for God’s sake. I can’t just step back and do nothing.”
“You won’t be idle. They’re going to interview the heck out of all of you. Over and over. Everything you can tell them will help, but they’re not going to let you look over shoulders in the command center. I’ll do that and report back to you.”
“Command center?” Lucas’s voice cracked. “You think they’ll need—”
“They’ll set up something within the hour, I’m sure. You need to let them do their job. That’s going to be your hardest role.” Mason frowned as he glanced back at the growing crowd. He’d originally hated Lucas with a passion, ever since he’d first heard Jake excitedly talk about the man. Lucas was everything Mason wasn’t. He’d coached every boy sport in existence, and Mason had never heard a foul word from the man’s mouth. Lucas always had a big smile. Until today. Mason had fought the urge to wipe the smile off Lucas’s face the first few times he’d met him, believing the man was gloating. But it had turned out he was one of those rare always-happy guys. Lucas wasn’t a faker. It’d taken years for Mason to accept that the man was the r
eal thing. He couldn’t have asked for a better man to help raise his son.
Didn’t mean they had to be best friends.
Guilt swept through him again as he remembered all the resentment he’d held against the man. Part of Mason had been jealous that he hadn’t created the type of picket-fence family with Robin that she had with Lucas. Now he wouldn’t want to be in this man’s shoes for anything.
“Where’s Jake?” Mason asked. His son hadn’t made an appearance.
“In his room. He was down here for a while but said he couldn’t handle seeing his mom fall apart. I don’t blame him,” Lucas said with a glance at his wife. She and Lilian were still clutching hands but paying close attention to the man speaking quietly with them.
A dizzying need to see his son swamped Mason. “I’ll be right back.” He left Lucas behind as he headed for the stairs.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2016 Rebekah Jule Photography
Kendra Elliot has landed on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list multiple times and is the award-winning author of the Bone Secrets and Callahan & McLane series, as well as the Mercy Kilpatrick novels. Kendra is a three-time winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award, an International Thriller Writers Award finalist, and an RT Award finalist. She has always been a voracious reader, cutting her teeth on classic female heroines such as Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, and Laura Ingalls. She was born, raised, and still lives in the rainy Pacific Northwest with her family, but she looks forward to the day she can live in flip-flops. Visit her at www.kendraelliot.com.
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