by David Bell
Griffin heard the skepticism in her commander’s voice. It made her reluctant to go on, but she did. “It seems worth exploring. If Erica was upset enough about the miscarriage and the breakup, maybe she acted rashly.”
“So how does that lead to Felicity disappearing now?” Reddick asked, her voice level.
Griffin felt stuck for an answer. She both loved and hated being surrounded by people who were equally as smart and analytical as she was. “I don’t know. I just . . . The miscarriage and the divorce. It could send someone . . .”
Her voice trailed off. She saw the sympathetic looks from her partner and her boss. She knew what they were thinking: You’re taking this too personally. You’re thinking with your heart instead of your head.
She was. They were right. But she couldn’t help talking about it.
“We’re not ruling anything out yet, but we’re stretched thin,” Reddick said. “I want the two of you to get in early tomorrow and assist Phillips and Woolf again. We still have to talk to Erica Frazier more, if she ever turns up. And we’re still trying to find Jake Little. The volunteers will be back out as well. It’s going to be a long one. Dawn to dusk, so go home and get a little sleep.”
“What about you, boss?” Twitchell asked.
“I’ll sleep at some point.”
They both knew she was lying. And Griffin wondered why she should get to sleep if her boss, the woman she admired the most, was choosing not to. Shouldn’t she be doing more?
“What if we . . . ?” Griffin started to ask, and then stopped herself.
“What?” Reddick asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “That kid is out there. I just want to do something.”
“We all do. We all are. Tomorrow’s a big day.”
“Boss?”
Detective Phillips filled the doorway, his tie undone, his jacket off.
Reddick looked up, her eyes expectant.
Phillips said, “Better flip on the TV. Breaking news. Check this out.”
chapter
thirty-two
11:53 P.M.
Angela resisted having another glass of wine.
She’d decided to take other steps to calm herself down before trying to go to sleep. She checked every lock in the house, even the ones on the windows that hadn’t been opened for weeks because of the early-summer heat. She activated the alarm system they rarely used. She’d insisted on having it installed as a measure of safety for when Michael traveled and left her home alone, but despite having asked for it, she almost never used it. But that night, she turned it on.
She took her time washing her face and brushing her hair, and then she settled into their comfortable bed, propping herself on a stack of pillows. She needed to read the latest selection for her book club. They met in two nights, and she’d barely had time to open the title they’d chosen, a thriller about a teenage girl disappearing and the alcoholic, haunted female detective who tried to find her. Angela read a few pages, reached a part in which the narrator described in detail how the missing girl vanished from her bedroom while her parents slept down the hall, and decided to close the book.
It wasn’t an escape. Not even close.
She turned off the bedside lamp and pulled the covers to her chin. It was pleasantly cool in the house, thanks to the air-conditioning. She wished she were tired, wished she could fall asleep like a child, her mind untroubled by anything resembling a nightmare. Angela could tell that wasn’t going to happen. She stared at the ceiling, the faint glow from a streetlight falling across her body.
What was Michael doing right then?
She never worried about him cheating, even though they had witnessed the marriages of several friends fall apart over infidelity. She wondered if she was a fool to trust her husband as much as she did. Given what she’d seen and learned on his computer earlier, maybe she was.
But Michael? Reliable-as-the-sunrise Michael?
She’d noted his reluctance to talk about Erica or the divorce over the past few years, and while she found his desire to avoid talking about the past very different from her own approach to life, she took it as a good sign. Didn’t it mean he valued the present and the future more than the past? But would he have been so eager to have another child if he’d known about the one he’d had with Erica?
She pounded the mattress with her fist. She couldn’t say. She couldn’t say, and she didn’t know. And until Michael came home and the two of them engaged in one of those long, “Let’s get it all out in the open” conversations, the ones that seemed to keep a healthy marriage alive, she wouldn’t.
She just hoped he did come home and the conversation followed.
She reached up and flipped the light back on. She fumbled on the bedside table, her hand passing over the novel, a tube of ChapStick, and a balled-up tissue before finding the remote control. She clicked the power button.
Michael liked having a TV in the bedroom so he could watch sports or news as he drifted off to sleep. Angela hated it. According to her, the bedroom should be for only two things: sleep, which they didn’t get enough of, and sex, which had recently turned into more of a duty as they tried to conceive a child.
When she flipped the TV on that night, she had a specific purpose. If she couldn’t sleep and was going to turn the TV on, she might as well see if there was any news out of Trudeau. They sometimes replayed the late broadcast, and she wanted to know the most recent information about the missing child, Felicity.
Michael’s child? My . . . stepchild?
Angela never planned to raise a stepchild.
Does anybody plan it? Doesn’t life just hand people circumstances they have to adapt to?
She flipped through the channels until she found the news, except it wasn’t a replay. A banner on the bottom announced Breaking News, and a photo of Felicity looked out at the world from the upper-right corner of the screen. A reporter stood in a park, her blond hair perfectly sculpted, her manicured nails holding the microphone and a piece of paper. She told the anchor back in the studio—and everyone watching as well—what Angela feared to hear: There had been no significant leads in Felicity’s case. The child remained missing, and the search for her, conducted by police and volunteers, had been called off for the night.
But there was one important development in the case, the reporter said.
Angela gripped the blanket tighter, wanted to pull it up over her head and cover her eyes. Her heart sank as she tried her hardest not to contemplate the possible scenarios—kidnapping, murder, even a horrible accident.
No, she told herself. The kid had to be alive. If they hadn’t found her yet, that meant they still would. And soon. Damn the statistics. They were just numbers.
She worried about what it would do to Michael if Felicity never came back. Whether she was his or not, he cared. She knew he cared deeply. Could he handle the heartache of another dead child?
As if on cue, Michael’s face appeared on the screen.
He blinked in the bright lights. His skin looked washed out, pale, the stubble on his face darker than in real life.
“She might be my daughter.”
And then the reporter was back, telling the viewers that while they had no idea what the current relationship was between Michael Frazier and Erica Frazier, or whether he had anything to do with Felicity’s life, it was clear he was distraught over the missing girl and wanted to do everything possible to get her back.
Angela flipped the covers aside and bolted upright.
“What?” she said, her voice rising louder than she intended. But she couldn’t stop herself. Had Michael really just gone on television, a broadcast everyone they knew would see, and claimed Felicity might be his child?
Her face flushed from both anger and embarrassment.
“Oh, Michael,” she said as the story on the screen shifted to something more
mundane. “Did you really just do that?”
Her phone pinged. She checked the screen. A friend from her book club: Just saw Michael on TV. WTF?
And then another: Everything okay, Ang?
She ached for the missing child. And she ached for Michael. She could see the pain in his eyes, the intensity of his desire to make everything right.
And there she sat in bed, unable to help.
Or was she?
She placed her feet on the floor, deciding as she did to ignore the texts from friends.
Just as she did, the phone rang. She wanted to look away, switch off the ringer. But she couldn’t. She saw Michael’s name on the screen.
“Thank God.”
But when she answered, she didn’t hear her husband’s voice. She only heard the muffled sound of the wind and something rustling like leaves.
“Michael? Michael, are you there?”
Finally a voice, faint and distant, said one word.
“Robyn . . .”
chapter
thirty-three
WEDNESDAY, 12:03 A.M.
When the segment about Felicity Frazier’s disappearance ended, and the news went to a commercial break, Reddick turned the TV off and tossed the remote back onto her desk. She turned and faced the three detectives, including Phillips who had stayed to watch along with them.
“Well, that was interesting,” he said.
Phillips appeared to be the same age as Twitchell, and he was aging much worse. He smoked constantly and wheezed when he coughed. Griffin always thought his photograph should appear alongside the definition of heart disease in the dictionary. He rarely wasted time on polite conversation, at least with Griffin. He’d been divorced twice and was now on his third marriage, this time to a woman half his age. Griffin had met her a time or two, and always thought she looked shell-shocked and stunned. Phillips seemed to possess little regard for women, beyond liking to marry them, and he frequently questioned Reddick’s decisions behind her back. Griffin looked forward to the day he retired.
“At least we know she hasn’t left town,” Griffin said.
“How did she get him to go in front of the cameras and say that?” Twitchell asked. “Say that this is his daughter who is missing?”
Reddick held up her hand and gave voice to Griffin’s thoughts. “How do you know anyone made anyone do anything? He’s a grown man. Did she force him to go along at gunpoint? He’s there of his own free will.”
“He looked a little spooked,” Phillips said. “Ambushed.”
Reddick was shaking her head. “For all we know, he knows he’s the kid’s father. It’s possible he’s been in touch with her for weeks or years. Maybe he accepted the fact long ago.”
“Even if he isn’t sure,” Griffin said, “he’s playing the believing game. He might hope she is his kid.”
“Well, everybody’s going to think it now.” Twitchell looked at Griffin. “I bet his wife was thrilled to see that on the news. She didn’t know he checked out her Facebook page. Now, she sees this.” His eyebrows rose comically to show the level of discomfort he thought the Frazier household would be experiencing. “His nightmare keeps getting worse.”
“It’s not our problem to worry about their marital issues,” Reddick said. “Our problem is finding a missing kid.” She tapped her wrist to indicate an imaginary watch, and then her words came out with an axlike sharpness. “And we’re under the gun. I’m not interested in finding a child’s body. That’s not the plan.”
The three detectives nodded their solemn agreement. They looked like nervous, obedient kids at a church service.
Reddick went on, pointing at Phillips. “Are you working through your list of known sex offenders in the area? Are you hitting any more tonight?”
“We have a couple of stops to make.” He rubbed his chin, his palm scraping against gray stubble. “There’s one interesting one. This guy, Todd Friedman. He’s registered, and his ex-wife, kind of a drama queen if you ask me, says he liked to hang around in the park where Felicity was supposed to be this morning.” Griffin didn’t like the snarky emphasis he placed on “ex-wife.” “We’re going to talk to him as soon as we get out of here. After that, there are the babysitters and friends Erica Frazier told us about, people from the school like janitors and support staff. We didn’t get to all of them yet.”
“Is there something wrong with her?” Griffin asked.
“Wrong with who?” Phillips asked.
“This guy’s ex-wife. Friedman. You called her a drama queen. Do you know this woman?”
Phillips looked around the room, first at Twitchell and then at Reddick. His eyes settled back on Griffin. “I called her what I thought. She’s acting that way, if you ask me.”
“Just go talk to him,” Reddick said. “Didn’t Erica Frazier mention having some contact with Michael Frazier’s family? His mother maybe?”
Phillips nodded. “She mentioned it in passing.”
“Really?” Twitchell asked. “I don’t know if Michael’s wife knows that.”
“We don’t know if Michael knows it,” Griffin said.
“Didn’t Woolf talk to the mother today on the phone?” Reddick asked.
Phillips took a moment to answer. He was still giving Griffin the staredown. She ignored him. “He did. She said she hadn’t spoken to Erica in a while, but she’s concerned about the missing kid. Naturally.”
“Interesting. Any other relatives?”
“Michael Frazier has a sister,” Griffin said. “A musician. She’s kind of well-known.”
“And what about this sister?” Reddick asked.
Phillips said, “She might have known about the kid, too, so we need to talk to her. But she’s out of town right now. Working. We reached out to her earlier today.”
“Might have to get her to come back,” Reddick said. “Is there a dad in the picture?”
“Deceased,” Griffin said.
Reddick pointed at Twitchell and Griffin. “You two go back down to Cottonsville and talk to them tomorrow, the mother and the sister too. Any red flags with them?”
“Nothing major,” Twitchell said. “Michael Frazier might have been connecting with Erica on social media. He was keeping it from his wife.”
“Could be major,” Reddick said. “Anything else?”
“The Fraziers lost a daughter years ago,” Griffin said. “An accident on a swing. The family is kind of haunted by it. And now this.”
“Go see if they have anything to say. We’ll have a boatload of volunteers showing up here in the morning, and history has shown that might be the day with the highest number. After the second day, they start to tail off.”
“What about . . . ?” Griffin looked around the room. They were all watching her. They all looked tired. “What about this thing with Tiffany Flowers? The missing infant. Are we going to look into that?”
Phillips made a snorting noise through his nose.
Griffin turned to look at him, but he refused to meet her eye.
Reddick looked at Phillips, an unspoken signal for him to answer the question. “I don’t see anything urgent there. Some missing kid from a decade ago? Basing it on what some lonely, deranged old lady says?” He stared at Griffin again. “She probably just wants someone to talk to. No dice.”
“But it was so close to where they lived,” Griffin said, realizing as she spoke that the idea was dead.
Reddick held up her hand. “I think that’s right, putting the Flowers thing a little farther down on the list for now. Our manpower is limited, so we need to be choosy. Okay?”
“Got it,” Phillips said, and it sounded as though he spoke for all of them.
They started to go, but Reddick said, “Erin, will you stick around for a second?”
Griffin looked at her two colleagues. Twitchell nodded, and Phillips refused to
make eye contact. She stayed behind while they filed out, and then she closed the door, leaving her alone with the commander.
“Have a seat,” Reddick said.
So she sat, like a little kid in the principal’s office. A principal she liked and respected as well as feared, but the principal nevertheless.
“Tough one, isn’t it? Missing kid.”
“It is,” Griffin said.
“How are you holding up?”
“I’m great.” She knew she sounded defensive. She took a deep breath, tried to maintain an even keel. “I’m tired like anyone else, but I’m holding up.”
“I’m not asking about you as a cop. I’m asking about you as a person. This might be hitting a little close to home, right?”
Griffin hated having her personal life leak over into the job. She hated to think her boss might have noticed, but she knew the feelings were there, just below the surface. Maybe not even very far below, like a wisdom tooth about to break through the gums.
“I’m fine. I’m pushing the Flowers thing because I think there might be something there. Hell, we don’t have anything else. We have a kid who went poof.”
Reddick nodded. Behind her on a shelf sat a picture of her family, her husband, Rich, and their kids. Three brown-haired girls with perfect smiles and bright eyes. Career, husband, children. Reddick had it all. “It’s tough for all of us when a child is in danger. But you’ve been through the divorce and the miscarriage. Very similar to what we’re learning about Erica Frazier. Some wounds stay raw for a while, so I wanted to check in.”
Griffin spoke in a harsh whisper. “I don’t want anyone to think that. If some of these guys get wind of it . . . well, you know what they’ll think. She’s a woman and she can’t handle the tough stuff. Hell, you know that as well as anybody. You’ve been there. I’m sure Phillips has thought that since I came on the job.”
“Nobody has said anything like that to me. And I’m not trying to start anything.”
“I’m fine. I’m doing my job like everybody else.” She pointed at the photos on the shelf. “By the same logic, couldn’t someone say you can’t work the case because you have kids of your own? Same with Twitchell.”