by PJ Fernor
“I wouldn’t suggest it at all,” Ben said. “How do we go back in there?”
“By pulling the handle on the door,” I said.
Which I did.
Connor jumped up from his seat.
Cat sat with her left leg crossed over her right, her foot bouncing fast.
“Where were you?” Connor bellowed. “You’re wasting time.”
“You’re absolutely sure there’s nowhere Jessie would have run away to?” I asked.
“What?” Connor asked.
“You heard me,” I said.
“There’s nowhere she would go,” Cat said. “You already checked into it. What is this? A joke?”
I glanced back at Ben.
He was thorough. Which was good.
What wasn’t good was that I wasn’t included in any of this.
“I’m being logical for a second,” I said. “She walks out of the dance studio. She’s standing on the sidewalk. Waiting for a ride. Like she always does.”
“Her phone,” Connor said. “Why wasn’t her phone on?”
“We tried to find the phone,” Ben said. “It’s not on or the battery died.”
“She charged it at my place,” Cat said. “I remember… the outlet. I wonder if she used the one that wasn’t working.”
“You have an apartment without working outlets?” Connor asked.
“I’m sorry,” Cat said. “My husband kicked me out.”
“We’re not doing this again,” Ben said.
“I’m imagining Jessie standing there. Waiting. How long would she wait until she started to walk on her own? Would she go back inside the dance studio? Would she walk to a house? A business?”
“This is your job,” Connor said, stepping toward me. “Quit asking us. My daughter knew to stay put until someone showed up. And I’m telling you right now, I’m suing that dance studio.”
“Stop it, Connor.”
“What?” he snapped. “She let my daughter leave and just closed up and left?”
“That’s true,” Ben said, knowing I was going to want to confirm. “That’s true. But in the past the same has happened and you’ve always shown up.”
“It was her turn,” Connor said, pointing to Cat to take one last shot.
I moved toward Cat before things got heated again.
The main door to the station opened and in walked four men and two women.
They were each carrying bags and had flashlights in their hands.
I opened my mouth to ask them to leave when Ben moved into action.
“Paulie, what are you doing here?” Ben asked. “Figured you’d be in the woods today. Nelson. Rich. Darryl.”
“We’re here to help,” Paulie said.
He had a round belly like Santa Claus and a trucker’s hat that was faded from a dark black to a sun stained gray. They were all dressed in jeans, flannels, wearing hats, and rain boots.
“Oh, Cat, come here,” one of the women said.
Cat jumped up and fell into the woman’s arms and wept.
Ben leaned toward me. “Small town, Allie Down.”
I nodded. “You’re all here to help.”
“Yes, we are,” Paulie said. “Between the four of us, we’ve walked a lot of these woods. You do your job on the streets and let us help search for Jessie in the woods.”
The idea of citizens helping with a missing girl’s case didn’t sit well with me.
But this was a small town.
They kept close and took care of each other.
I knew I had to go along with it.
The only problem was their faces.
Every single person standing there looked scared to death.
Chapter Eighteen
The front of station started to fill up pretty quick with even more people from town.
Before I could get my voice heard, Laura appeared and whistled as loud as she could.
Everyone shut up.
“Thank you for being here,” she announced. “We appreciate your time and willingness to help find Jessie. We are coordinating with several other towns to make sure we cover as much ground as possible. At this current time I ask everyone please gather outside so I can speak with Detectives Welloski and Down. And the parents of Jessie…”
“Come on,” Ben boomed. “You’re all amazing for showing up. Let’s move this outside like the chief says. Don’t get on her bad side.”
The townspeople all hesitated for a little before slowly shuffling back outside.
The woman hugging Cat broke the hug and whispered something.
Cat nodded.
Then the woman pointed right at Connor.
“No,” I whispered.
“You’re going to rot in hell for what you’ve done to your own family, Connor,” she said.
That set Connor off instantly.
He jumped toward the woman. “Who in the hell do you think you are?”
“Everyone out,” I said.
“They’ll find out the truth about you,” the woman said.
“I’ll smack your mouth shut,” Connor growled.
“Don’t you talk to her like that,” a man said.
A big, lumberjack looking man started to move at Connor.
Ben was there though, putting his forearm to the man’s chest. “Henry. Time and place.”
“I’ll catch him at the watering hole then,” Henry said. “I’ll leave him on the floor to be mopped up.”
“Don’t have a heart attack, old man,” Connor said.
I moved to Connor and pointed at him. “Last chance. Shut your mouth. Because right now, you’re not looking all that great here, Connor.”
“Is that so?” he asked me.
Again, his eyes were full of hate. But not violence.
Even still, that doesn’t mean he didn’t take her.
His own daughter?
Why not?
It would teach his ex a lesson.
Or maybe there’s money in the family somewhere. Even if Cat did say she has no family.
The questions collected in my mind as I stared back at Connor.
Maybe he was used to women standing down when it came to him.
He had some size, thick shoulders, the suggestion of a body that maybe once in his day had been physically fit.
But I could take him to the floor in three seconds if need be.
“Look at the way you’re acting,” I said to Connor. “I know you’re upset. I can’t imagine what you must be thinking…”
“You know, I never wanted to live in this town,” Connor said to me. “But I did it for Cat. She wanted the small town feel. And now these rednecks are going to attack me?”
“Did he just say redneck?” someone called out.
I spun around and the handful of people left in the station broke out into a murmur.
I looked at Ben and he nodded.
He moved to the group and helped shuffle them out of the door.
“What are you going to do now, Detective Down?” Connor asked. “Go dig up my past and bring my broken family down here to attack me too?”
“They can’t help how they feel about you,” Cat said.
“That’s because you went and aired out our dirty laundry to all the wives,” Connor said.
“We need to calm them down,” Laura said to me.
I looked to the chief and frowned. “And I wasn’t informed last night?”
Her face tightened. She seemed like she was two inches taller. “Judgement call.”
“Remind me again, am I here as a favor?” I asked. “Because you feel bad for me?”
“This is not the time or place for that kind of conversation,” Laura said.
“I’m going to do my job now,” I said. “And remember the hours spent without me on this case. All my experience gone to waste while that poor girl is out there.”
“Are you two going to keep whispering or actually go to work?” Connor asked.
Ben came through the door again and stood there. “We’ve got a good gro
up out there. I’m figuring we’ll send them to the quarry and start there.”
“Whatever you want to do,” Laura said. “I need to make some calls. And I’m trying to keep the media quiet about this.”
“Why?” Cat asked. “You need to tell everyone!”
“Ma’am…”
I put my hand up, cutting off the chief. “Cat, I don’t want everyone to get worried. We have our ways of spreading the word without it being overdone.”
“Overdone?” Connor asked. “It’s my daughter that’s missing. Overdo everything.”
“So then the phones can ring off the hook without any viable leads?” I asked. “Chasing down ghosts and kids and someone that might have looked like someone?”
Connor clenched his jaw.
“So what do we do?” Cat asked.
“Give me a chance to find her,” I said. “I need to start from scratch though.”
“Great,” Connor said. “What a waste of time.”
“Watch yourself,” Ben warned.
“I have complete faith in Detective Down,” Laura said.
“So do I,” Ben said.
“There you have it then,” Laura said. “I’m going to go do my job now.”
She went back toward her office and Ben and I stayed in the front with Cat and Connor.
“Search parties will be formed,” Ben said. “They’ll scour the woods. We have patrol cars looking at all the local parks. Near the rivers. Creeks. We’ve got her picture and we’re going to canvas the entire town.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Cat asked. “I can’t go home. I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to be alone.”
“You live in an apartment,” Connor said. “You’re not alone.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah? You don’t want to be alone? Then you should have picked up Jessie from dance.”
“You’re going to pay for this,” Cat said. You know what you did. You ruined this family.”
“You ruined it yourself,” Connor said. “Can’t help you lost all your looks, Cat. Right?”
Cat started to cry.
“That’s enough,” Ben said. “Everyone needs to go their own way.”
“Yeah, let’s do that,” Connor said. “But look in her past. Make sure you do that, Detective Down. Find out why we got divorced. And look into the nosey neighbors and all the bullshit this town has to hide.”
“I’m at my breaking point,” I said.
“Good,” Connor said. “Maybe you’ll make an arrest and do your job.”
I jumped at Connor.
“Allie!” Ben yelled.
I grabbed Connor’s wrist and twisted it.
He yelped in pain as I reached for a set of handcuffs.
“Simple,” I said to Connor. “You won’t shut up? You’re going to take a seat in one of my special rooms.”
“Sounds kinky,” Connor said.
“Smart mouth,” I said. “You’re officially being questioned in the disappearance of your daughter.”
Connor’s face suddenly became serious. “What?”
Cat started to clap.
I wasn’t having it.
Not anymore.
Too much time had been wasted.
I pointed to Cat.
She showed her hands. “What?”
“You’re clapping because I arrested him?” I asked, nodding to Connor.
“Yes, I am,” she said.
“Good… because you’re next.”
Chapter Nineteen
We split the parents up.
Which very much needed to happen for everyone’s sanity. In my heart I couldn’t imagine what Jessie must have lived through with her parents. Going through a divorce was never an easy thing.
Alex and I would know.
There was a problem with putting too much heart into a case though. Becoming attached. Becoming a part of the family. The issues. The ups and downs. Letting the hurt and loss overtake your mind.
Time was truly an enemy. Especially in this case.
So many hours had ticked away with Jessie missing and nobody knowing.
I met Ben in the hallway as he looked up from his phone.
“Good news is that search parties are out there,” he said. “The locals are going to work through the woods. I have officers with each group.”
“Just hope nobody gets lost or hurt,” I said.
“Why don’t we focus all of our hope on finding Jessie?”
“That too,” I said.
I looked at the interrogation rooms and nodded. “This all feels off. Way off, Ben.”
“I know,” he said.
“I’m going to get the truth. Right now.”
I walked to the first door.
“Allie, what’s the plan?” Ben asked.
“I just said what it was.”
I opened the door and Connor sat in the chair where I had put him. I took the cuffs off him but warned him that if he didn’t sit still I was going to cuff him again and keep him that way.
Could I legally hold him and Cat in the disappearance of their daughter?
That was for lawyers to decide. Or Laura to decide.
I was going to do my job.
And if one of them cried lawyer to me then I would have even more to go with.
Connor looked at me. “Did you find her?”
“Hard to do when so many lies are floating around, Connor.”
“What lies?”
“You and Cat wasted precious time,” I said.
Connor hung his head. “I know.”
“On top of that… your neighbor Margaret…”
Connor looked at me again. His lip began to curl. “What?”
“You said you were home. Watching a movie. Having a beer. Right?”
“Your point?”
“You’re lying to me, Connor,” I said. “You’re angry. You’re aggressive. You’re lying.”
“My daughter is missing,” he said.
He started to stand and I pointed to the seat.
He crashed back down.
“Margaret likes to pick fights,” he said.
“Just like the rest of the town does? I mean, let’s be real here, a lot of people don’t like you.”
Connor nodded. “I don’t care who likes me. I did not do anything to my own daughter.”
“Then where were you when she went missing?”
Connor put his head back and sighed. “I wasn’t home. Fine. You win, Detective Down.”
“Win? There is no winning here.”
“I was on a date,” Connor said. “Okay? On a date. With a woman.”
“Does this woman have a name?”
Connor shut his eyes and sighed. “Please don’t drag her into this. It wasn’t a good date.”
“I need a name to confirm.”
“Stephanie,” he said. “I have her info in my phone. You can call her. Whatever you need to do.”
“Where did you go on this date?”
“Over to Smith’s,” Connor said. “It was the first date I was on since… everything happened with Cat and I. I wasn’t sure what the timeline is on that kind of thing. I met Stephanie online and we decided to meet up.”
“Could she have taken Jessie?”
“What? No. She doesn’t know I have a daughter. I lied through my teeth when I met her. I was just looking for…”
“Right,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything to your other detective because I didn’t want it to get back to Cat. She’s crazy with that kind of stuff. It’s what led to our divorce. Forever accusing me of cheating. When I never did. Not once. She forever waited for me to fall into the footsteps of my family but I never did. I never got credit for it either. If she found out I was dating, she’d take Jessie. At least that’s what I was afraid of. I can’t lose…”
All emotion fell from Connor’s face.
The anger. The hate.
His face turned white. His lips slapped together.
; He was genuinely afraid now.
Knowing how much time had gone by since Jessie went missing and what that meant.
I had the urge to console him.
But I didn’t.
“I need proof of everything, Connor,” I said. “I want to see your conversations with Stephanie. I want to know where I can find her.”
“Of course,” he said. “It’s all in my phone. Take my phone. I don’t care. This is going to blow up in my face. I’m going to look like a fool in front of Stephanie and Cat is going to take this out on me.”
Connor put his phone on the table.
I swiped it and walked to the door. “I’ll be back in a few.”
Outside the room I tossed Ben the phone.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Look for Stephanie. Connor was on a date. Go have some guy talk with him and see what he says.”
“Why did he lie about that?”
I pointed to the next door. “I’m going to find that out next.”
Cat paced the room.
Wall to wall, biting her nails.
“You arrested me,” she said.
“I didn’t arrest you, Cat. I put you in a room. To calm down. It’s obvious you and Connor near each other is a bad thing.”
“That’s his fault.”
“Maybe so. But we have a bigger problem.”
“What? Is it about Jessie?”
“You lied,” I said. “You weren’t home. You weren’t in a bath. We confirmed it with the building manager and the maintenance worker. There was no water running. There was nobody in your apartment.”
“They’re lying.”
“What if I told you they were inside your apartment?” I asked. “Checking for a possible leak because the person under you had a complaint.”
Total lie on my part, but you never knew what would work…
Cat shut her eyes. “Okay. I lied.”
See?
I sighed. “You’re out there accepting hugs and having hate thrown at Connor…”
“He deserves what he gets,” Cat said.
“What were you doing, Cat?”
“I was meeting with someone.”
Tell me they were both on dates and afraid of one another.
“Cat.”
“I hired an investigator to follow Connor,” Cat blurted out.
“What?”
“You heard me. I hired someone to follow him. I don’t trust him. I hate him. And I need to get something on him.”