by Alex Gates
The lines in Riley’s face actually deepened as he shuffled his butt to the machine, grumbling under his breath. Falconi, fresh from his victory lap, returned to his desk a richer man. His smile faded as I dropped the folder into his hands.
“Any news on our John Doe?” I asked.
Falconi took the coffee cup from Riley, accepted the obligatory profanity, and sent his partner for another cup. “Coroner’s got the body now.”
“Anything on his prints?”
“Nothing in the system.”
“DNA?”
He snickered. “You want the results in this lifetime or the next? Get in line, darling.”
Riley returned, jealously guarding his coffee. He read my notes and nodded. “Did good today, McKenna. Hand this off to my sergeant and go home. You look like shit.”
Felt like it now too. “What do you mean…hand it off?”
“Give him whatever you have from the scene and the file on Cora Abbott.”
Oh, hell no. “I have work to do on the case yet. A couple more leads. Her family. A couple friends.”
Falconi waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. We can take it from here.”
“Can…or will?”
“You did more than enough. Thanks for the help.”
Riley took his chair and promptly spilled most of his coffee. His curse echoed. Mine would too.
“I can still work this case,” I said. “Just because she’s dead doesn’t mean I can’t investigate—”
“Investigate what?” Falconi shrugged. “There’s not a case to solve here. John Doe killed his mistress, turned the gun on himself.”
“But why?” I flipped through the folder, tapping Cora’s schedule, credit card invoices, and the few cryptic messages I’d found on her phone. Without dumping the logs to see who exactly she’d called, I had nothing, save for the slew of friends who spent more time rescheduling plans with her than actually hitting the bar. “She was hiding this affair for a reason. And this man, whoever he is, is more covert than an undercover agent.”
“Great. He’s CIA now.” Riley didn’t buy it, no matter how hard I sold it. “London, come on. He was banging her. They had to keep it on the DL. She wanted to avoid the gossip. Maybe he was getting a divorce and any time spent with Cora would line his ex’s pockets. They met up. He lost his cool. Now they’re dead.”
Falconi shook his head. “Didn’t even get some before he died. If he did, you might have had a cause to investigate.”
“I can handle more than sexual assault cases.”
“Then we’ll call you when we get one.” Riley tapped his watch. “Go home, London. We’ll find our John Doe’s name, notify the family, and close the case. You did your part.”
“You can’t take my case from me.”
“Your case?” He laughed. “Cora Abbott stopped being your problem the moment she became our victim.”
“She’s my missing person.”
“And now she’s our corpse. Talk to your sergeant. He made the call. Homicide is taking lead from here.”
Getting pissed off would only reveal that I had a bad temper.
But I wasn’t rolling over because someone commanded it.
Cora Abbott was my case. My responsibility.
My failure.
It was only right that I try to figure out what the hell had gone so wrong, so quickly.
“The case is strange,” I said. “The John Doe. The Bible. No cellphone.”
Falconi chuckled as he tossed a worn stress-ball from hand to hand.
“Serial adulterer.” His diagnosis would certainly save the station overtime hours. “Case closed. Enjoy the rest of your night, Detective.”
I didn’t run my mouth, but nothing stopped me from exacting an imaginary revenge involving my two favorite homicide detectives and a trusted nightstick.
I’d already let Cora down once. I wasn’t going to disappoint her again.
And my sergeant knew exactly what I was going to say before I spoke—or, at least, a Rated-G version of the events. I slammed the door to his office behind me.
Bruce Adamski glanced up from his paperwork. “It’s been a good week since you’re feathers got ruffled.”
“Yeah, and somehow, I always get plucked.”
“I know what you’re thinking.”
“That you’re going to buy me my choice of lunch every day this week and next?”
Adamski had just turned fifty-seven. He was twenty years past his prime, fifteen from the station’s good ol’ boys club, and ten from retirement. Only repetition moved his chair-flattened butt out of bed at six every morning, served him lunch at noon, and gave him a second wind at five-thirty, every day, come rain, sleet, flu, or hellish efficiency meetings.
“We’re backlogged,” Adamski said. “I need you working Missing Persons, not investigating homicides. We’re supposed to find our victims before this happens.”
Not fair. “This wasn’t my fault.”
“No one said it was.” Bruce hiked his pants, but he’d hit that age where he gained a gut and lost his hips. The belt had to sit at either his navel or knees. “Relax. It’s too early in your career for that chip on your shoulder.”
“It’s not a chip.” It was Cora Abbott’s body. It wasn’t the first I couldn’t find—most of our cases were unsolvable. But this one hurt. “We’re missing something about these deaths.”
“Then Detectives Riley and Falconi will figure it out.”
Because Frick and Frack had been so thorough before. Bruce read my mind. He pointed a prematurely arthritic finger at me, the rheumatoid swelling the knuckles badly today. “You’re gonna see enough trouble in your career. Don’t go poking around for more.”
“But—”
A woman’s shrill scream echoed through the office. I flinched, my coffee spilling over the floor. Bruce didn’t have the reflexes to leap to his feet anymore, but he grabbed for both his gun and the nearest blunt object. His potted cactus would not serve him well in emergency situations.
“Help me!”
The frantic woman’s wails were haunted with agony. She raced past our receptionist and collapsed in the middle of the unit.
“My sister’s been kidnapped!”
3
I selected you specifically. I wanted you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone else.
Don’t cry. You should be flattered.
-Him
Terror did terrible things to victims, families, and the responding officers futilely balancing impartiality with the cold spike of helplessness driving into their spine.
It was even worse when thrust into the middle of the station with no warning.
“I’m sorry!” Linda, our twenty-year veteran receptionist, swaddled herself in a knit cardigan and rushed to contain the sobbing woman. “She wasn’t supposed to come back here.”
Linda juggled both her coffee and an iPhone still connected to her current call. I’d take a wild guess how the frantic woman had bypassed our crack security.
“It’s okay.” My heart minced against my ribs, but at least my words steadied. “I’ll talk with her. Follow me, ma’am.”
“London.” Linda tapped her temple, pressing hard against curls dyed an unnatural shade of melted-popsicle red. “She’s…having a hard time.”
Crazy then. That I could handle.
I’d dealt with my share of hysterical woman. Crying. Screaming. Collapsing at my feet and begging any god above to help find their missing loved one. They’d be pale and frenzied, frazzled and stumbling over their memories repeated so many times even they jumbled details.
But this woman…
She wasn’t hysterical. Or terrified. Or even insane.
A pure determination strengthened her with grim purpose and desperate intentions.
“Please, listen to me.” She clutched my arm with nails chewed to the quick with worry. “You’re my last hope, Detective McKenna.”
Was I already working her case? “Have we met before?”
No pressure.
Adamski gestured from his office, silently asking if I needed assistance. But if I couldn’t handle this, I didn’t deserve the damn badge. The lady was wound up, but she wasn’t a danger. The true crimes were the dark circles under her eyes. She looked exhausted. Judging by the wrinkled blouse under her grey peacoat, the messy ponytail losing a ridge of looped hair by her ear, and the Kleenex and papers spilling from her purse, she probably slept the last time I did—and I doubted either of us could remember when that was.
“Let’s…take a seat.” I showed her to my desk. “Can I get you—”
“I only want answers. It’s been so damn long since…” She shivered in the chair, rubbing away the winter’s redness prickling at her nose and cheeks. “I need to know where she is. I can’t stand not knowing.”
Panic had aged her. At first I thought the woman was older—late forties maybe. But as she scattered the stray pencils, pens, and papers off my desk to make way for her purse and photographs of her sister, her hands betrayed her true age. Smooth, taut skin—the same as her face if only she had reason to smile for once. She must have been my age, but thirty had hit her harder than me.
“I have information…” She rummaged through her bag, abandoning recipes and tiny notepads to dig under her cell phone. When that didn’t work, she dumped the contents on my desk and handed me her prize. A photo album. The organized collection of sorted photos featured the same smiling girl, a pretty thing no older than fifteen.
The album was labeled Anna, and the woman protected the book with her life, cautiously placing an arm between the pages and my lidless coffee cup.
“It’s up to you, Detective,” she whispered. “No one else can find her.”
“Okay…” The authority in my voice was masked as a soothing whisper. “Let’s start at the beginning. Take a deep breath for me, and we’ll talk—”
The woman shook her hair. Even the cocoa curls bounced with a forlorn futility. “I have pictures. Dates. Times. Everything. Just tell me what I can give you that will help.”
Easy enough. I grabbed a pen and scribbled a blot of ink in the corner of the page. “Let’s start with your name.”
“Louisa Prescott.”
Good. Her wild-eyes began to soften, losing the feral hardness.
“Okay, Louisa. You said your sister has gone missing…”
“No! Not missing. She’s been kidnapped!”
“What makes you think she was kidnapped?”
“I don’t think it, Detective. I know.”
It was hard to fake that sort of sincerity, but grief made fools of us all. At least Louisa’s words were no longer a tumble of panic. We’d come back to the kidnapping angle. First, I needed a missing person.
“What is your sister’s name?” I asked.
“Anna. Anna Prescott.”
“And how old is she?”
“Thirty.” Louisa didn’t wait for my next question. “She’s about five eight, was around one hundred and thirty five pounds. Chestnut hair, lighter than mine. Freckles. Pale complexion. She has a birthmark on her neck—a port wine stain, the red blotchy type. There’s one on her shoulder too. She has no illnesses or allergies and was not mentally ill. She had every reason to come home and no reason to run away or leave her family.”
Louisa wasn’t crazy, but it was rare for anyone to come to the station prepared with anything but the usual lies, deceit, and stubborn refusal to admit anything to us which might have gotten the missing person in trouble. Saving lives was secondary to sparing reputations, despite my best efforts.
But with Louisa? Hell, I might have learned Anna’s preferred drugs and sexual positions if I’d promised it’d help find the girl. Fortunately, I didn’t need all her secrets yet. Just the basics.
“Where did she go missing?”
“Outside our house. In Braddock. We were walking together. Talking. Not paying attention. I didn’t see the man behind us. He knocked me to the ground, and my head hit the concrete. It all happened so quickly. I couldn’t stop him from taking her.”
Oh, Christ.
I leapt up, but my stomach dropped to my feet. I dove for my radio. “You were attacked?”
“Yes. And I know what the man looks like, but I blacked out when he hit me. I was unconscious long enough for him to take my sister and drive away.”
“You hurt your head?”
She tapped her perfectly smooth, unblemished, and uninjured forehead. “Yes. Right here. I went out cold.”
She didn’t have a mark on her. No bruising. Certainly nothing like a scrape of concrete or a bump from a swinging fist.
I lowered the radio, giving her a second, more cautious glance. “You don’t look hurt, Louisa.”
“I was.”
Was? “Why don’t you tell me what really happened?”
Wrong phrasing. Her voice shrilled, slicing over the precinct. “I told you! My sister was kidnapped!”
“Near your home in Braddock?”
“Yes!”
“By a man who attacked you, threw you to the sidewalk, and grabbed your sister?”
“Yes!”
“Even though you have no visible scrape, cut, or bruise from where you were assaulted?”
Louisa puffed an insulted breath. “It healed.”
My pen dropped. I frowned. “When did this all happen?”
“July 5th, 2002.”
Now I really needed another cup of coffee.
I’d had enough crackpots, conspiracy theorists, schizophrenics, and alien enthusiasts wander into the station with irrefutable proof of their particular oddity, deity, and abnormality. Louisa’s declaration didn’t surprise me.
The only thing stronger than the constant, forward march of time? Denial.
I tossed the pen down. “Louisa, that was…fifteen years ago.”
She didn’t blink. “And?”
Scratch the coffee. I needed a shot of whiskey.
Fifteen years ago I was some twerp in the marching band. I had the Rachael from Friends haircut, plastic bracelets on my wrists, and planned to graduate high school and study psychology. That was the year I started dating my first real boyfriend. Ricky Palmer, the only kid from Seneca Valley High School to get trapped on a sinking canoe during a thunderstorm as he attempted to retrieve a “left-handed smoke shifter” for his fellow boy scouts.
It had been a good time in my life, but any time before my kidnapping had been good years.
Louisa looked down, ringing her hands in her lap. The frantic tension melted from her with a long, weary sigh. “I know how crazy I sound. But I’m only asking for you to hear me out, to know the story. You can find her. I know you can.”
She squeezed my arm. I didn’t shake her off, but I abandoned my notes in favor of the computer. The database for Missing and Exploited Children should have had all the information we needed.
Sure enough, Anna Prescott was still listed, even age-progressed to look approximately twenty-five years old.
“This is her?” I angled the monitor so she could see.
She hesitated. “Yes.”
I hated this part. “I don’t know what else I can do. The police took your report. She’s entered into the database. If anyone found her or her remains—”
“She’s not dead!” Just the possibility cracked her voice and glistened her eyes with tears. “Why won’t you listen to me?”
Damn it. I hauled her back into the chair before she stormed off. “Sit. I didn’t say she was dead. But if we had any indication that she was, we’d have received notification. She might still be alive.”
“She is.”
“So what can I do? How can I help you?”
“You can find her.”
“Nothing would make me happier,” I said. “Honestly. But…” The stack of folders piled high on my desk. I pointe
d to each. “This case is a missing five-year-old girl, presumably abducted by a biological father who has skipped his last three meetings with his parole officer.” I tapped another. “This is an elderly, eighty-year-old man with advanced Alzheimer’s. He’s been missing since last month. His son forgot to tell us he had wandered off—but he made sure to cash his social security check at the beginning of January.”
“I understand,” Louisa said. “I really do.”
Maybe the workload, but not the pressure. Those two cases had the department running ragged every day, trying to investigate any missing angle while sacrificing sleep to follow up every lead we could concoct.
“And this is the weirdest one.” The last folder plagued me more than the others. “This girl ran away from home at age twelve. She was lost for two years before randomly appearing back at home. She wouldn’t say where she had been or who she had lived with. Then, after two weeks…she vanishes again. The family is worried sick, and we have no idea where she’s gone.”
That was the case that didn’t let me sleep soundly at night.
The mystery was like a popcorn kernel wedged in my teeth. It dug into me. Twisted me up. Whoever had taken her before had stolen her again.
God only knew if they’d punish the poor girl for daring to escape them. I didn’t have high hopes for finding her alive.
Louisa took a breath. “I know my sister was kidnapped long ago…”
I interrupted her before she even thought it. “No case is unimportant. Believe me.”
“But?”
“Some cases are more inherently dangerous than others. What happened to your sister is heart-breaking, but…” I ran my hand through my hair. “I’ll pull the old case files. I’ll talk to the officers who took the initial reports and run through the scene again. But the likelihood of solving a cold case—”
“Detective, it’s not cold. I saw the man who took her.”
The terror in her words rose the hair on my neck. “You saw him? When?”
“Today.”
I sucked in a breath. It lodged in my chest. “Where?”
“In the Strip District. He was getting into a white Dodge Grand Caravan, but I only caught two of the digits on the plate. GP.”