Thread of Hope jt-1

by Jeff Shelby

  I did know. I thought back to when Lauren and I were engaged. If anyone had suggested that I needed to check her history, I would’ve thought they were insane. But I wasn’t putting together a multi-million dollar fortune and I hadn’t met my future wife, by chance, in Las Vegas.

  “He had security people before you, right?” I asked.

  “I met the guy I replaced,” she said, shrugging. “I don’t know anything about the ones before him. I’m not sure how long ago he created the position.” Her mouth twisted into a frown. “And it’d be a little hard for me to find out now.”

  An elderly couple moved slowly through the lobby toward the check-in desk, a bellhop lugging two large suitcases behind them.

  “Was he pissed?” I asked.

  Gina hiked her shoulders and rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. I guess.”

  “Did he argue? Want you to stay?”

  “At first, yeah,” she said. “Offered me more money, apologized, blah blah blah. Then he got mad, told me fine, I was done as of right then. Made me give him the keys to the car and he took off.”

  “Keys to the car?”

  “It’s leased to the company,” she said, waving a hand in the air. “Wasn’t mine to begin with.”

  “And he just left you here?”

  “Actually, he left me in Coronado. I called a taxi to get me here.”

  “Nice.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just as well,” she said, shaking her head. “I couldn’t do it anymore, not for any amount of money.” She paused. “I think I always knew it was them that attacked Chuck, in the back of my mind at least. But when you laid it out for him at the house and I saw those assholes lying on the ground, I knew I was done.” She stared at me. “I knew I was done.”

  I had underestimated her and I felt badly about that. Jordan didn’t deserve her.

  “I’m sorry it shook out like that,” I said.

  “I’ll survive,” she said with a tight smile. She leaned forward and rapped her knuckles on the table between us. “So where do we go from here?”

  The bellhop led the elderly couple and their luggage toward the bank of elevators.

  “There are two big questions that we don’t have answers for right now,” I said. “Who told Meredith about Olivia? And who else besides Derek was Meredith working for?”

  “You think one and the same?”

  “Maybe. But I’d think one at least might tie to the other. Were you able to find out anything about her computer password?”

  “No. Jon didn’t know it. He was going to give it to some computer guy he works with to have him check it out.”

  “What about her cell phone records?”

  “He was getting them pulled for me,” she said. “Not sure what he’s gonna do now.”

  “I need to go talk to him,” I said. “There has to be something in her cell records, either a number she called or texted, that might point us to one of the answers.” I paused. “I need to tell him what Meredith was doing, too.”

  She let out a hissing sound through her teeth. “Better you than me.”

  “You wanna come along?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you have stuff you need to get from his place?” I asked. “Might go quicker if I’m there to run interference.”

  “I wanna go see Chuck,” she said, her mouth settling into a firm line.

  “I can drive you.”

  “No,” she said. “You go. I’ll find a ride over there.”

  I was going to offer again, but the look on her face told me she wanted to be alone in prepping to see him. I could understand that.

  “Look,” I said. “If you’re not working for Jordan anymore, there’s no reason you need to stay in this. If you wanna spend some time with Chuck, look for a job, whatever, I understand.”

  She stood and rubbed her palms together like they were cold. “I’m in. Regardless of how I feel about Jon, I like Meredith a lot and I’m worried about her.” Something flitted through her eyes.

  “What?”

  She stared at her hands for a long moment before moving her gaze to me. “And I owe Chuck.”

  SEVENTY

  “You could’ve saved us both a lot of time if you’d told me we were gonna need to talk again,” Jon Jordan said. “Or did you just come here to order me to do something else?”

  He was still in the driveway of his home, sitting in the passenger seat of the BMW. A small pile of papers sat in his lap and he was rifling through a black book.

  “Making sure Gina can’t claim the car as hers?” I asked.

  He pulled a white card from the book, zipped it back up and threw it in the glove box, slamming it closed. “She no longer works for me. The car is no longer available to her.”

  “Afraid she’ll try to steal it?”

  He slid out of the car, shoved the car door shut and glared at me. “What do you want?”

  “Gina asked you to pull some cell phone records,” I asked. “Did you do that?”

  The glare lost a fraction of its intensity. “Yes. They’re inside.”

  I followed him in, down a long hallway toward the back of the home. We turned into a small office with bookshelves, several easy chairs and a neatly maintained desk.

  He grabbed several sheets of paper off the top of the only pile on the desk and thrust them at me. “Here.”

  I pointed at one of the chairs. “You’re gonna wanna sit down.”

  The anger flashed again in his eyes. “You know what, Tyler? Unless you’ve got something to tell me about Meredith…”

  “I do,” I said.

  He lowered himself into the chair across from me and the anger had morphed into an expression of equal parts hope and desperation.

  I wasn’t exactly sure how to explain what Meredith was doing. I didn’t like Jordan, but I hadn’t know him outside of the context of our situation. What he’d done to Chuck was wrong, but at the core of all of his actions was the fact that his daughter was missing and that he believed Chuck had hurt her. He was wrong, but I tried to put myself in his situation. If I thought I knew who was responsible for my daughter’s disappearance, what would I have done?

  Far worse than what he had done to Chuck, I knew. Far worse.

  I tried to be mindful of all of that as I explained to him that his daughter had entered the world of prostitution.

  He didn’t react the way I anticipated. I expected a lot of anger, some denial, something close to a complete meltdown.

  What I got was a father who was stunned into silence, his shoulders slumping further down with each mini-revelation, the realization that he no longer had a good handle on who his daughter was, hitting him squarely in the gut with the force of a medium-sized bomb.

  But he didn’t say a word. He just listened, a distraught expression crystallizing on his face as I told him. I left out the parts about Olivia because I wasn’t sure her past was at all connected to Meredith’s disappearance. Yet.

  When I finished, he sat there for a long minute, his eyes away from me, staring out a window on the side wall that looked out on a heavily-treed area of their property. With the index finger and thumb of his right hand, he traced an invisible circle around his mouth and chin, as if he was waiting for a beard that had yet to grow in.

  Finally, he turned back to me, his face looking like one I saw in the mirror almost every morning.

  “I just want to find her,” he whispered.

  He was back to being the defeated father in the parking lot the night he hired me. No bullshit, no arrogance, no attitude. Just a father who wanted more than anything else to see his daughter again. I hadn’t found much to like about Jon Jordan, but I sympathized with him, probably more than he would ever know.

  And I was going to find his daughter.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  Jordan excused himself from the room for a moment and I took the time to scan through the papers he’d given me.

  They were phone records from Meredith’s cell phone from the pre
vious three months. Given the time frame I’d put together of when she’d started freelancing, I bypassed the furthest month back and worked over the previous two months. I pulled two pens from the holder on Jordan’s desk and started making circles and notations to detail numbers that were popping up on a regular basis. I figured many of those I’d be able to eliminate quickly, as they probably belonged to friends she spoke to on a normal basis. I was looking for abnormalities, a number that showed up where it shouldn’t have.

  “What are you doing?” Jordan asked, startling me as he came back into the room.

  “Checking the numbers.”

  “What can I do?”

  I gave him half the stack. “Mark anything you recognize. Circle numbers that you see called repetitively. Anything that doesn’t look right to you, mark it.”

  I expected an objection or a question, but he took the papers, grabbed a pen and went to work.

  We worked for nearly an hour, mostly in silence, save for when I asked Jordan to identify a number for me, which he did so without complaint, checking his Blackberry on occasion to verify. When we were done with our respective stacks, we compared what we had and arrived at three numbers that stuck out from the others.

  “Recognize any of them?” I asked

  He studied them for a moment, then shook his head.

  I pointed to the area code of the first one we’d identified. “Not a San Diego area number, right?”

  He glanced at it. “No.” He flipped open the laptop to his left, waited a moment, then tapped the keys. “It’s an Oregon number. No info on it, just the origination point.”

  I pulled out my cell and started punching in the numbers.

  “Wait,” Jordan said.

  I looked at him.

  “My line is blocked,” he said. “So the other end can’t see who’s calling.”

  I nodded. “Put it on speaker.”

  He pushed a button on the phone next to the computer and a dial tone jumped loudly through the speaker. He punched in the number and it rang twice.

  “Powell’s Books,” a male voice answered.

  “I’m sorry?” Jordan said, looking at me.

  “Powell’s Books,” the guy said again, not bothering to hide his annoyance. “Can I help you?”

  I signaled to him to cut the call and he pushed a button on the phone.

  “Meredith read a lot?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, the faint hint of a smile fighting to reach his face. “Constantly.”

  “It’s a bookstore up in Portland,” I said. “She’s probably ordering from them.”

  I’d spent a couple months up in the Pacific Northwest and remembered drinking coffee and thumbing through books, my eyes on the pages, but not really absorbing anything.

  Jordan blinked several times. “I think I’ve seen it on boxes that have come to the house.”

  “She has her own credit card?”

  “No. She would've used one of Olivia's.”

  “We can cross-check the billing against when the calls were made, just to be sure,” I said. “Next one.”

  He punched in the numbers and it went immediately to an automated voicemail. He looked at me and I signaled to him to cut the call.

  “I’ve got a guy who can run the number for us,” I said, thinking of Mike. “No need to give anything away by leaving a message.”

  Jordan nodded, glanced at the third number and dialed it. It rang twice before the voicemail kicked in.

  We both listened to Kelly Rundles tell us that she couldn't get to her phone and to leave her a message. Jordan touched the screen on the phone and ended the call. He reached for a rolodex next to the phone and began flipping through the cards, his eyebrows bunched together in confusion.

  “What?” I asked.

  He found the card he was looking for and plucked it from the roll. He laid it next to the phone bill and spun them both in my direction. “The number I just called isn’t the number she’d given me to contact her.”

  I could see in his face something that I felt often enough on my own. Any small incongruity, anything that looked like a tiny step forward provided you with a shot of adrenaline. The feeling that maybe all wasn’t lost, that maybe the answer was closer than you thought.

  I looked at both numbers. “When did she give you the one in the rolodex?”

  “When the school hired her.”

  “Three years ago, right?”

  He nodded.

  “When was the last time you called her on this number?”

  His expression sagged. “Probably a year ago. I generally reach her through the school.”

  “She could’ve changed numbers in that time,” I said. “Changed cell providers maybe.”

  “You can keep your number.”

  I nodded. “Sure.”

  I scanned the phone bill again, checking the times that Meredith had apparently called Kelly Rundles. They were all over the map. Morning, middle of the day, several after midnight.

  “They were pretty close?” I asked. “Meredith and Kelly?”

  Jordan hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. Meredith really looked up to her. Kelly has far and away been the best coach Meredith has ever had.” He fought off what looked to me like a grimace. “We encouraged the relationship.”

  “Look, this is something to take a look at,” I said quickly. “But it might not mean anything. All of these calls may be legit and she may have just not gotten you her new number. I’ll find out. But don’t start thinking that Kelly had anything to do with what’s going on with Meredith until we know something for certain.”

  Jordan exhaled and stood, walking over to a window on the far side of the room. He stayed there motionless, his hands in his pockets, his back to me, staring out the glass.

  “Ever get easier?” he finally asked.

  “No,” I said. “Not for a second.”

  “It’s not even that she’s gone,” he said. “It’s…”

  “It’s the not knowing,” I said. “Not knowing what’s going on with her.”

  He turned to me, his face pale, the skin drawn tightly around his eyes and mouth. “Yes. The not knowing. It’s…brutal.”

  “It is.”

  “I can’t imagine what it’s like for you,” he said.

  “And I hope you don’t have to.” I stood up, unwilling to get into a conversation about what it actually was like for me.

  Jordan pulled his hands from his pockets but seemed unsure what to do with them. He settled for putting them awkwardly on his hips. “What should I be doing?”

  “I’m going to head over to the school,” I said. “Get ready for the game.”

  “Should I go with you?”

  “No. Stay here. I want you to recreate the forty-eight hours before Meredith disappeared.”

  “Recreate?”

  “On paper,” I explained. “Everything you can remember from two days prior to her disappearing. Try to account for every second of each of those days. Nothing is too immaterial. What time you woke up, what you ate, exact conversations you had with her, what she was wearing. Every detail of every second, as best you can.”

  He nodded slowly, probably already trying to line up details. “Alright.”

  “I’ll call you after the game,” I said. “We can go over what you’ve got.”

  I said goodbye and found my way back outside. The evening air was settling in, cooler than normal for that time of year. Fog hung at the edge of the sky and I could smell the dampness working itself down to the grass and the pavement.

  The forty-eight hour diary was to keep Jordan busy. Most likely, it wouldn’t do a damn thing to help us find Meredith. But it would occupy him, give him a task, help him push forward, mute the pain of not knowing where she was for the moment.

  Someone-I could no longer recall whom-had given me the same exercise during the first week of Elizabeth’s disappearance. I had scribbled furiously, recording every detail I could remember. It kept me busy, occupied, made me feel lik
e I was doing something toward finding Elizabeth.

  As I got into my car, I hoped that I could provide Jon Jordan with a better outcome for his efforts than I had received.

  SEVENTY-TWO

  Athletic Director Robert Stricker was standing near the entrance to the gym when I arrived at the high school. He raised his eyebrows. “Wasn’t sure if you were coming tonight.”

  “I told Kelly I’d be here,” I said. “You seen her yet?”

  He tilted his head back toward the locker room. “She’s been here for awhile.” He held a hand up and waved at someone as they passed in behind us. “Anything on the Jordan girl?”

  “Nothing right now.”

  “Her father driving you nuts?”

  “He’s just worried about his kid.”

  Stricker nodded. “Understandable.”

  “You think of anybody, anybody here at the school who might know something?” I asked him. “Someone who you saw her with that seemed out of the ordinary?”

  “Why?”

  “She just had some things going on in her life that were definitely not ordinary,” I explained. “I’m just wondering if there was a connection here or if it was all outside of school.”

  “Not ordinary how?”

  “I can’t really say right now,” I said.

  He nodded, then shrugged his large shoulders. “I can’t recall seeing her with anyone other than her boyfriend and teammates. Pretty tight group, you know?”

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks. I’m gonna go find Kelly.”

  “Good luck tonight.”

  “You said she was in the locker room, right?”

  He smiled. “I meant good luck with the game.”

  “Oh. Right. Thanks.”

  I saw Megan entering through the far door at the end of the hall and hustled to catch her before she entered the locker room. She saw me coming, gave a half-wave, took a step as if she was unsure of what to do, then waited on me.