by Jeff Shelby
The phone began buzzing again. I glanced down.
Mike again.
Lauren picked it up and held it out to me. “I don’t know. But you’ll think of something.”
EIGHTEEN
I touched the screen and held the phone to my ear. “Mike. What’s going on?”
“I might ask you the same question,” he said through the line.
“Oh, yeah. Why’s that?”
“Because I just saw some crazy news report about you almost finding Elizabeth,” he said. “Some retired cop in Minnesota.”
“You saw that?”
“Not live,” he said. “But the link showed up in my email ten minutes ago and I just finished watching it. What the hell is going on, Joe?”
Lauren was staring at me, craning her head toward me, trying to listen. It made me uncomfortable.
I looked away from her, out my side of the windshield, trying to focus my thoughts. “It’s been kind of crazy. I haven’t had a chance to call.”
“Catch me up.”
The wheels were spinning in my head. “I’m in the middle of something so I gotta be quick. I found the family in Minneapolis. The family that she ended up with.”
He let out a low whistle. “Wow. Yeah, I think I saw that in the news clip, but I was in such a rush to call you, I think I rushed through it.”
“Right,” I said, realizing this was the first time I had ever talked to him and not believed every word he said to me. “Bazer see it?”
“No idea,” Mike said. “I haven’t seen him yet this morning. Why?”
“Just curious,” I said quickly. “Anyway. I talked to the family. But she’s gone.”
“Gone?” he asked. “What do you mean?”
I hesitated. “She ran. From the family. Before I got there.”
“Dammit,” he said. “Why did she take off?”
I hesitated again. “I’m not sure yet. I’m still trying to find that out.”
“What's the story on the family? You never said...”
“I can't talk about it right now,” I said.
I glanced at Lauren. She widened her eyes at me.
“Hang on,” I mouthed.
“Okay.” Mike hesitated. “Any idea where she went? Can I help?”
“We’re still trying to figure out where she went,” I said, still looking at Lauren. “Hoping we can piece it together here today. And I’ll let you know.”
“I’ll do anything you need,” he said. “I’ll run traces on anything you want. I’ll hop on a plane. I’ll call in favors. You name it, I’ll do it.”
“Thanks, Mike,” I told him. “Look, I gotta run. I’ll let you know.”
I hung up and squeezed the phone for a moment before setting it down on the console again.
“You look like you want to throw up,” Lauren observed.
“That’s pretty accurate, yeah.”
“Why?”
“I’ve relied on him all these years,” I said, changing lanes to get around a slow pick-up. “He was my rock. I could bounce anything off of him. I trusted every word he said. I thought he was on my side.”
“He still might be, Joe.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I hate the doubt. I can’t count on him until I know for sure. And let’s say he isn’t involved. Then I’ve totally undercut our friendship and his help. All that trust? Gone.”
“You don’t think he’d understand?” she countered. “If he isn’t a part of it and you explain to him what you learned and why you had to be cautious, you don’t think he’d understand?”
“I don’t know. But it feels awful.”
“So what exactly did he say?”
I relayed our conversation word for word, as best as I could remember.
She thought about it for a minute before she said anything. “I just can’t believe he’d take Elizabeth.”
I nodded. The same thought was gnawing at me. I knew Mike. I knew him. And I’d seen too many things to forget that you never knew as much as you thought you did about people. But it was so difficult for me to look at Mike and think he played some role in my daughter’s disappearance. I wanted to tell him we were on our way to California and to have him make calls and have him go to L.A. and start looking before we got there.
But I just couldn’t take that risk.
“All he saw was the report?” Lauren asked.
“That’s what he said.”
“And he said he hadn’t talked to Bazer?”
I nodded.
“So then one of two things is going to happen,” she said, knocking her fist lightly against the window. “One, he either sits tight and waits for you to call back. Which to me means he’s clean and on our side. Or, two, he digs into the report and finds the Corzines pretty easily. Because that’s where it would start, right? If you had seen that report, that’s where it would have taken you.”
I nodded again. “I’d track the source which would take me to Rodney, who would have no reason not to tell me about the Corzines. So yeah. One or two.”
“I’ll call them,” she said. “Tell them to notify us if they’re contacted by anyone.”
“You think they will?”
“I think you scared the hell out of them and they’ll do whatever we ask at this point,” she said, reaching for her phone. “So I’ll call them and we’ll wait to see what happens.”
I stared at the long stretch of highway in front of us. The red rocks were getting taller and we were close to the Nevada border. Then we’d cruise through Las Vegas and into the high desert of California. Then head toward the ocean and Los Angeles.
We had plenty of time to wait.
NINETEEN
The red rocks in Utah gave way to wide open deserts and then the massive hotels in Las Vegas. After the city, a vast expanse of nothingness greeted us. We drove further, approaching the gateway into the part of California that didn’t look like California. Flat, brown and sandy. Baker and Barstow were about as un-Southern California as you could get, working class cities that housed the people who couldn’t afford the homes closer to the ocean. I’d been through Barstow numerous times in my life, but the only place I’d stopped was the McDonald’s housed in an old passenger train. It was a place you passed through, not a place you stayed and I held to that rule, pushing the rental up to eighty as we flew down the highway.
Our phones stayed silent and that was the most disconcerting part. Sure, no one was calling us with bad news, but no one was calling us with good news, either. We tried small talk, but Lauren and I were both wound too tightly at that point to even fake it so we kept our mouths closed for most of the drive.
We stopped once for food and once more for gas and by late afternoon, our highway speed dropped drastically as we became entwined in the gridlock that was Los Angeles traffic. The wide open deserts morphed into tight pockets of homes, long strip malls and not much open space. Despite having lived in San Diego for most of my life, I hadn’t spent much time in L.A. and it still felt like a foreign city to me. There was a vibe I’d never been able to identify, as if everyone else knew what it was and I was just looking around, clueless as to what I was missing out on.
“I don’t know where to go,” I said.
Lauren stretched in her seat. “I was just gonna ask.”
“We could go to the airport,” I said. “But according to Morgan, she’s already gone.”
She nodded. “She probably is.”
“So where?”
“Where would you go?” she said. “If you were her. You’d never been here before, your money is limited and transportation is probably limited to a taxi or a bus. Where would you go?”
I thought. And thought some more. I tried to think in terms of someone else, try to think about a different missing kid, to somehow distance myself and be able to come up with a rational thought, a plan of attack. But all I could think of was Elizabeth. My daughter. Alone.
“I honestly have no idea,” I finally said.
The traf
fic crept along slowly, marching us closer to the coast and the Pacific Ocean.
“Maybe I should call Mike back,” I said. It was the last thing I wanted to do but I was stuck. “Ask him for some help. Manpower to search, check surveillance at the airport. Rather than just take shots in the dark and drive around randomly.”
Lauren nodded hesitantly. “I guess.”
I glanced at her. “What?”
She waited a moment. “You’ve planted the seed with me. I don’t trust him. And I feel like bringing him in might jeopardize her safety. I mean, if he really was involved in taking her, there’s no incentive to find her. There’s actually incentive to make sure we don’t find her.”
“Unless he thinks finding her would completely erase any doubt there might be that he helped take her,” I countered. “Be the hero. No one looks at the hero.”
Lauren thought for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t think so. He doesn’t know that she doesn’t apparently remember much. If you were the guy that took her, you’d operate under the idea that she would tell everyone what happened and implicate you.”
“She hasn’t thus far.”
“But seeing him might trigger it for her,” she said. “I think the person who took her would do everything in their power to keep her away from us. Anything and everything.”
That thought chilled the interior of the car even in the California sunshine. And while I was trying to play devil’s advocate, I agreed with her. Anyone involved in the abduction would be paranoid that they would be exposed. If they were cold enough to take a child and sell her, they were cold enough to do whatever it took to protect their identity.
Which was just as unsettling as not knowing where Elizabeth was.
“There has to be something to do here other than just chase our tail,” she said. “We can’t just wait for Morgan to call us with updates. We don’t even know for sure that she will anymore.”
“Right,” I said. I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel.
“There has to be someone that can help us, someone who could do some of the things Mike might be able to do,” Lauren said, leaning against the window. “Another cop you know? Another investigator?”
I thought for a moment, then reached for my phone. “Maybe there is.”
Lauren turned to look at me. “Yeah? Who?”
“Hang on,” I said.
“Great. I love suspense.”
I thumbed through the contacts on my phone until I found the name I wanted. I let my thumb hover over it for a moment, then touched the screen. I watched the number pop up on the screen as the phone dialed it. It was worth a shot.
It rang one time before it was answered.
“Mr. Tyler,” John Anchor said on the other end. “Good to hear from you.”
Several days prior in Minneapolis, I’d helped Peter Codaselli reunite with his son. Codaselli was a reputed leader of organized crime in the area and his right hand man was John Anchor, a man who dressed more like an investment banker than an assassin. They had been grateful for my help and they knew about my search for my daughter. Anchor offered up any assistance in order to return the favor of finding Codaselli’s son.
He was worth a shot.
“Yeah,” I said into the phone. “Thanks. Mr. Codaselli doing alright?”
“He is,” Anchor responded. “He and Marc have spent a significant amount of time together the last two days. It’s going well and I think it has all helped keep his illness at bay.”
Codaselli was a late-stage cancer patient, one of the many reasons he’d been in a hurry to repair his damaged relationship with his son. Anchor had intimated to me that he didn’t have much time left.
“Good,” I said. “That’s good to hear.”
“Mr. Codaselli is enormously grateful,” Anchor said. “He credits you.”
“He should credit his son.”
“Perhaps. But he knows you were influential in getting Marc home. He’s very appreciative.”
I didn’t say anything.
“And we saw the news report this morning,” he continued. “We weren’t sure what to make of it, but we were hoping it was accurate.”
“Well, yes and no,” I said. “That’s why I’m calling.”
“The offer stands, Mr. Tyler,” Anchor said, as if he was reading my mind. “If we can help in any way, we’d be happy to. It’s the least we can do.”
“You have a few minutes?” I asked. “I can lay out where I’m at and why I’m calling?”
“I have as many minutes as you need, Mr. Tyler.”
As the traffic inched along on the freeway, I detailed what had occurred since I’d said goodbye to him in Codaselli’s building. I shared everything except my concern about who might’ve had a hand in her abduction. Lauren stared straight ahead as I talked, but I knew she was listening, probably wondering who the hell I was talking to. I just figured if there was anyone I could trust right at that moment, it was Anchor. It felt strange, but as I always said, you used the resources you had.
Anchor was a resource.
“Do you have the number from the phone that was stolen?” Anchor asked. “Or the number for the phone she purchased after the initial one was stolen?”
“I know we have the original number,” I said. “But not the second one yet. We’re hoping to get that soon.”
“Could I have the original number?”
“One sec,” I said, then motioned at Lauren. “Give me the number that Morgan gave you for Elizabeth.”
“Who are you talking to?” she asked, but she had her phone in her hands and was looking.
“Tell you when I’m done.”
She recited the number and I repeated it to Anchor.
“And do you have the flight information for the flight she was on? Out of Denver, you said, correct?”
“Yeah, Denver,” I answered and gave him the flight info.
“I’ll start with these and see what I can come up with,” Anchor said. “It’ll take a bit of time, at least a few hours, but I’ll get back to you.”
“Thanks.”
“And if you obtain any other pertinent details, don’t hesitate to call me back. I’ll be available.”
“Will do. Thanks, John.”
We hung up.
Traffic started to thin and our speed picked up. I set the phone down on the console.
“So?” Lauren said.
“So the kid I found in Minneapolis?” I told her. “The son of the mob guy?”
“Right.”
“That was the mob guy’s lieutenant. Or assistant. I don’t know what you call him.”
“Okay.”
I switched lanes and I could see the highrises in downtown L.A. start to pop up on the horizon. “They owe me. I called in the favor.”
“You called in a hit man to help us find our daughter?” she asked, her mouth open in disbelief. “That was the best you could do?”
I switched lanes again so we were now in the fastest moving lane on the freeway, almost up to the speed limit, the brownish smog breaking away into high white clouds in the bright blue sky hanging over the ocean.
“Yeah,” I said. “And I think he might be the best there is. Period.”
TWENTY
I wanted a shower.
We’d finally navigated our way out of the snarled traffic and we were both tired, hungry and in need of some rest after the long haul from the motel in Utah. With nothing to do but wait, neither of us felt like driving around randomly. Both of us were worried that it would just lead to more frustration and anxiety on our part, so we found a hotel near the airport and checked in, unsure of how long we’d be there.
I jumped into the shower first, Lauren wanting to check her work email and see if there was anything that needed a response. The hot water stung my shoulders and I tucked my chin into my chest, letting it pelt my neck. My muscles were stiff and sore from having sat in the car for so long, not to mention the tension I knew I was carrying in my entire body. I shu
t my eyes and stood there for awhile, rolling my shoulders, trying to let some of that tension wash out of me. After twenty minutes of standing there comatose, I grabbed the bar of soap and the shampoo, cleaned myself up and turned off the water.
The warm steam in the small bathroom felt good on my skin and exhaustion settled into me. It felt as if I hadn’t slept in days and my body was begging for a rest. I toweled off, pulled on my boxers and jeans and walked out into the room, still rubbing the towel through my hair.
Lauren was stretched out on the bed, staring at her phone. “Thought you fell asleep in there.”
“Almost.”
“I’m tired, too.”
I pointed at the phone. “Anything?”
She sat up. “Nope.”
I nodded, expecting that answer. “Okay. Bathroom’s all yours.”
She looked at me for a moment. “What are you gonna do?”
“Turn the TV on,” I said. “Lay down on that bed.”
She stood from the bed, laid a hand on my chest and kissed my cheek. “Okay. I won’t be long.”
It was an odd gesture, the kiss on the cheek. It wasn’t like her. Not that she’d ever been unaffectionate, but small things like that weren’t her. Or maybe I’d just forgotten them, it had been so long. She was strong and independent and those were two things I’d always loved about her. She could be defiant, stubborn, even more so than me at times. We’d always had a good balance in our relationship, but she’d never been dependent. And maybe that wasn’t what the kiss was, but it caught me by surprise and I wasn’t sure what to make of it.
I grabbed the remote, moved my phone to the nightstand right by my head and punched a button to turn on the TV. I flopped back on to the bed, my wet head sinking into the large, overstuffed pillows.
But I couldn’t sleep. As I flipped through the channels, I couldn’t stop thinking about Elizabeth and where she was. It was a helpless feeling to know we were so close but had no idea where to look. I couldn’t shut off my thoughts.
I flipped through the channels for a few more minutes before the bathroom door opened. Lauren came out, a towel wrapped around her, her hair dripping wet. “Can I have your towel? I couldn’t find another one.”