by Lorie O
“I’m sure. What’s up?” He hated how hard Megan worked when she had to come home and jump into raising and dealing with teenagers. Megan was the most impressive woman he’d ever known in his life, but he hated how she fought him when he tried shouldering some of the concerns and worries that went along with bringing up her daughters.
“I don’t know if anything is up, Perry. And I won’t know until Dani gets home. You’re not going to start yelling at her until I have the facts straight, and then I get to yell first.”
He knew something was up when Dani told him Kylie wouldn’t be coming to dinner tomorrow night. Call it a gut instinct, but Kylie wouldn’t have canceled. Not only did she want to know the girls better, for whatever reason he still needed to find out, but beyond that, there was a level of interest there. He might not be an expert on relationships, but he recognized the attraction between them. No matter if she tried meeting another guy. Kylie was interested in him.
Perry heaved out a loud sigh. Not only did he have absolutely no interest in a serious relationship, but he couldn’t flatter himself into thinking that after knowing him barely a week Kylie would want to set up housekeeping. At the same time, though, it would surprise him if she came up with a lame excuse to get out of going to dinner. If it weren’t because of him, she wanted to spend time with his nieces. She had a paper to write, and he had all the research she could ask for in his nieces.
“Is something wrong?” Megan asked.
“Nothing. What do you know?” he asked, keeping his tone neutral. He got a lot further with Megan when he kept his cool.
“Hearsay,” she snapped. Denise said something in the background and Megan snapped at her, too, telling her to go unload the dishwasher and quit eavesdropping.
Denise announced in the background that if it weren’t for her eavesdropping they wouldn’t know right now that Dani was about ready to go do something stupid enough to get herself killed.
“What did Denise tell you?”
“Apparently she overheard Dani on her phone talking to one of her girlfriends about meeting a boy she’s been talking to on the Internet.”
“What?” Perry turned around quickly in his living room, the sudden urge to destroy something, pick something up and hurl it, or better yet send his fist crashing through anything hit him hard enough that it made him dizzy. “How long have you known this?”
“Since I got home. And I’m dealing with it,” she said, using her “I’m the mother” voice on him. “I will not have you reaming her out before I know completely what is going on.”
“I can tell you what’s going on!” he yelled, his voice bouncing off the walls. “Girls her age are disappearing! I helped peel a teenage girl off the asphalt the other day, beaten damn near beyond recognition, and dead, because of some online stalker.”
“Which is why you are not going to talk to Dani about this,” Megan yelled right back at him. “You’re jaded, Perry. There’s no way you can’t be with what you do for a living. Dani isn’t stupid. I will take care of this.”
“She’s more than stupid if she’s considering meeting someone off the Internet.”
“I said I’ll take care of this.”
“What are you going to do?”
Megan didn’t say anything for a minute, proof enough that she didn’t know what to do about it. He needed to talk to Dani; the sooner the better.
“I’m going to find out the truth of the matter first.” Her tone turned cold. “And then I’ll handle it. In fact, she just came home. I’ll see you and your lady friend tomorrow night.”
Megan hung up on him. She never hung up on him. Perry turned, fisting his hands with enough pressure that he felt the pain in his palms from his fingertips. It didn’t help his anger subside. Megan had the power to push him out of his nieces’ lives. They were her daughters. But damn it to hell and back, he wouldn’t stand around and watch if Dani were about to do something so idiotic it could risk her life.
Stalking into his kitchen, he grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator and returned to his couch and the remote. The beer wouldn’t help. Maybe something harder, with a fierce bite, might numb his aggravation and outrage.
“Goddamn it,” he grumbled, sinking into his couch but unable to get comfortable. Tilting the chilled bottle, he poured half the brew down his throat. He needed to call Kylie and figure out what the hell was going on with her supposedly backing out of dinner tomorrow night. The sooner he had answers the better. More than likely, Dani would tell Megan the same thing she told him; if anything, his niece would use the topic as a shield against her mother to prevent getting yelled at for talking to boys online that she didn’t know.
Megan was one hell of a mother. He’d be the first to admit it. But his nieces were all sharp as tacks. Dani could take Megan on, tell her what she wanted to hear, and have her off her back in a matter of minutes. Perry would bet his paycheck on it.
“It won’t be as easy convincing me of your innocence, young lady,” he said out loud, and downed more of his beer.
His cell phone started ringing and he glanced around, then realized he’d left it in his den when he jotted down Kylie’s number. Once again removing the remote from his belly and pushing himself to his feet, Perry made it to his phone before the caller went to voice mail.
“Flynn here,” he said after noticing the caller was Dispatch.
“Flynn, I thought you might want a heads-up.” Cliff Miller didn’t usually work the night shift, but he spoke quickly, sounding pumped up and riding high on adrenaline, caffeine, or both. “Another teenager has just been reported missing. Her parents are at the station now. Their daughter, Rita Simoli, never came home and didn’t show up for her after-school job.”
“Is anyone doing a report?” Perry hurried to his bedroom and quickly stripped out of his sweats and got back into the jeans he had worn that day. Missing persons reports weren’t filled out until 24 hours had passed. Most cops hesitated in doing even that when it was a teenager.
“One of the clerks is talking to them, but Rad mentioned you were on the Olivia Brown case.”
“I’ll be there in ten. Keep the parents there.”
Barely ten minutes later Perry hurried into the station, nodding when Cliff gestured with his head in the direction of the administrative desks lined in rows in the middle of the station. He pushed the code into the panel alongside the door and shoved it open the moment it buzzed.
Cheryl Parker glanced up at him and looked noticeably relieved when he approached her desk. “Perry, this is Polly and Ricardo Simoli, parents of Rita Simoli.” She picked up several pieces of paper and tapped them against her desk, organizing them, and then handed them over to him. “I’ve taken their personal information but…” She broke off, shooting a side-glance at the Simolis’.
Ricardo stood and then put his hand on his wife’s shoulder when she slowly rose to her feet as well. “You’re going to fill out a missing persons report,” Ricardo Simoli didn’t make it a question.
“You’re going to find our daughter?” Polly asked, her eyes swollen and stained from running mascara.
“Yup,” he said, knowing from years on the force that parents asked the impossible questions first and telling them he didn’t have a clue whether he could find their child or not wasn’t an effective way to begin interrogation. “Thanks, Cheryl,” he said, glancing at her long enough to catch her smile and wink, and then turned his focus on the distraught couple.
“Let me know if there’s anything else you need,” Cheryl offered, never missing a chance to throw shameless suggestive comments in his direction no matter the seriousness of the moment.
He didn’t bother answering but gestured for the Simolis to come with him. “I’ll need you to help me get a feel of where to start looking,” he said quietly. “Do either of you need anything to drink?”
“No, we need our daughter,” Ricardo said crossly.
“We’ll get her,” Perry said without bothering to make eye contact. �
��Have a seat,” he said, moving around his desk in the “pit” and making a mental note of who all was in the building. Other than Dispatch and a couple administrative people, Franco helped himself to coffee and gave Perry and the Simolis a curious stare before taking his time returning to his desk. If Franco was going to rat him out for filling out a missing person’s report before the 24 hours was up, he could just go to hell. Perry turned his attention to Ricardo and Polly. “Let’s see what we have here.”
“Our daughter didn’t show up for work. She’s never missed a day on the job since she started.”
“At…” Perry glanced at the notes Cheryl had taken, hand written in neat block letters. “At Simoli’s Restaurant.” It dawned on him then why their name sounded familiar. They either owned or worked at a family restaurant that was fairly successful, with an unbeatable reputation for incredible Italian food.
“We let her start working there when she turned sixteen. Our daughter is seventeen now and not once has she missed a day on the job. None of our children are slackers,” Polly said, straightening. “Something terrible has happened to our Rita.”
“Let me ask you this,” Perry said, agreeing with Mrs. Simoli but not seeing the point in saying so. “Does your daughter spend a lot of time on the computer?”
“What kind of question is that?” Ricardo snapped. “All of us do. Part of Rita’s job is entering tickets on the computer.”
“I meant chatting, online chatting. Does she do a lot of that?”
Ricardo looked at his wife, who returned a concerned expression. She focused on Perry first, her expression sadder than it had been a moment before. “There was a time, not too long ago, when she appeared obsessed with talking to this boy on the computer. It wasn’t natural, or proper. Her father and I put an end to it.”
“Do you know who she was chatting with? The boy’s name?”
“Peter, Peter Rangari. We didn’t know his family, and he wasn’t from Mission Hills. There are good boys here from very successful families, plenty for our Rita to choose from.” Polly straightened, tilting her head slightly while pressing her lips together in a very determined-looking expression. “Why do you ask us this?”
“Peter Rangari,” Perry repeated, writing the name down. “I need as many current pictures of your daughter that you can provide, and also, with your permission, I need to look at the computer your daughter used to do her online chatting.”
“Our daughter obeys us.” Ricardo pushed his chair back and stood, then took his wife’s arm and encouraged her to her feet. “Don’t even think she would go behind our backs and meet a boy we demanded she sever all communication with. If you want to send a team over to our home, we’ll cooperate. But you’d better come up with a better lead than that, or I’ll insist another cop be given our daughter’s case, one who knows what the hell he is doing.”
A couple hours later, Perry walked out of the Simolis’ house, a nice two-story country home with a large landscaped yard, his mood more sour than it had been all day.
“Peter is hitting hard,” Carl said, scowling when he reached for the passenger door.
Perry looked at him over the top of the car. “She’d been talking to him for months, too. We’ve got the printed chats, but I think we need to subpoena their hard drive.”
“Going to have to. Mr. Simoli didn’t like us even going through the computer.” Carl slipped into the passenger seat next to Perry. “More than likely he was scared we’d stumble onto all of his souped-up accounting.”
Perry snorted, not giving a damn how the man ran his restaurant. “You’d think he’d be more cooperative in finding his daughter.”
“At least we know where she went to meet him.”
“And we’re heading there now.” Although arriving at the health-food grocery store where apparently Rita went on a regular basis to pick up vegetables for her family’s restaurant hours after she met Peter wouldn’t find them shit, and Perry knew it.
Kylie squatted in the dark, frowning at the asphalt in the parking lot as she glanced around at her quiet surroundings. Peaceful and serene, in the wake of a terrible crime. Another teenage girl had been yanked out of her world, taken from the safe and happy life she’d known for seventeen years. It wasn’t right that she would be exposed to the nightmares that would follow her abduction. Kylie’s heart hurt as anger and frustration bit at her, making the chill in the night air feel more like poison than cooling relief.
Cars drove up and down the main street, even at this hour. She looked in the direction of the intersection and her heart skipped a beat when she saw a city police car. She couldn’t risk being seen at a crime scene, even if the police hadn’t designated the place as such. When Paul called her, informing her about Rita Simoli, Kylie knew her time was limited before Perry showed up here.
Kylie straightened, not sure what she expected to find here. But a teenage girl had disappeared, possibly where Kylie stood right now, and it always helped her to physically witness where a crime took place. She bet Perry would feel the same way. Which was why she kept one eye on the road and all passing cars.
She looked across the empty parking lot, at the community grocery store and its dark windows. Ads covered the windows promoting healthy food and organic items for sale. Kylie walked toward the closed grocery store, hitting the wide sidewalk that ran along the building. There was a roof over the sidewalk, and signs on poles announcing no skate-boarding allowed.
Kylie started down the sidewalk, her shoes clicking against the paved walk and echoing from the roof over her. There were two vending machines, one offering the standard assortments of soda pops, the next offering an array of juices and bottled water. After that there was a newspaper machine, which displayed today’s paper. She glanced at the machine, wondering when a newspaper boy would stop and refill it. Next was a pay phone.
“Interesting,” Kylie whispered, staring at the pay phone and the cord that hung from the receiver. It had been cut. Where it should attach to the phone it now hung to the ground, the receiver resting in its holder, but if it was lifted she could actually walk away with it. She wondered when it had been cut.
Walking up to it, instead of lifting the receiver she bent and studied the end of the cord. “Clean cut,” she said to herself. If it was yanked out of the phone, someone with some strength did the job.
Looking past the phone toward the next pole that didn’t have a sign on it, she noticed something else. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a small, flat, little camera. It was a good thing this baby took outstanding pictures in the dark. She snapped several pictures of the sabotaged pay phone and then moved closer to the pole.
It was painted bright red, as were all of the poles. She reached for the pole but instead of touching it stretched her fingers and moved them mere centimeters over the pole where it appeared there were several scratches in the paint.
“As if someone held on to the pole with enough strength that their fingernails dug into the paint.” She took pictures of the scratch marks embedded in the paint. “And what do we have here?”
Kylie looked at the curb, then knelt at the edge of the sidewalk. On the other side of the pole was a shoe. She touched her fingertips to the lady’s plain brown flat-heeled shoe. It wasn’t damp, implying it hadn’t been here long. After snapping several pictures of the shoe, moving into the lot and facing the pole and pay phone and shoe on the ground, and taking more pictures, she then pulled out her cell phone.
“Paul, we’ve got quite a bit of evidence here,” she said when he answered.
“What do you got?” It sounded as though there might be laser beams firing in the background and she pictured him sitting in front of his computer, challenging someone’s high score or defending his own.
“There’s a broken pay phone, indication of scratches on the pole at the edge of the sidewalk next to it, and a shoe. I have pictures of all of it. But if I bag the evidence, we’re going to have to go live about being on this case.”
“I’d say that’s already happening with John talking to the media,” Paul pointed out.
“He’s doing what?” Kylie ran her fingers through her hair, shaking her head in growing aggravation.
“They’re going public with this one. John and the Chief are meeting with reporters and the Simolis’ now.”
She wasn’t surprised, especially with Paul having told her the Simolis’ were a prominent family in the community. They were used to a high-profile life and probably would have gone public without the law if they hadn’t agreed. “It would have been nice to have a bit more time.”
“Want me to send out a forensics team?”
“Yup. The police will probably be here soon and I’d just as soon get a good sweep of the scene before they mess with it.”
“Sending them out now.” The sounds of explosions and continual laser fire never stopped. “Rita Simoli was talking to a guy named Peter on her family’s computer. Your cop, Mr. Flynn, just left there a bit ago and reported in to his Chief. We got the information a few minutes before you called. You need to narrow in on this guy and set up another meeting.”
“I’m working on it.” She grabbed the evidence bag out of her trunk, then locked her car, which she’d parked on the side street on the back side of the store, and sprinted across the parking lot. “So far we keep missing each other with instant messages, but I’ll see if I can lure him out later tonight. If I can, that means he’s either disposed of Rita or locked her up somewhere so he can focus on his next prey.”
“If the Web site is connected to him, he’s locking them up and not killing them.” Paul grunted. “At least not right away.”
“We also need to consider the possibility that Peter could be more than one person.” Her insides churned at the thought of these teenagers being locked up like animals and tortured. “How soon before Forensics is here?”
“You should have a couple agents there in a few minutes. I suggest you take off.”
She tried not to breathe too heavily into the phone after running from her car back to the sidewalk. But pulling on gloves and then sliding the shoe into the ziplock bag, she sealed it and grabbed the receiver from the pay phone, sliding it into another evidence bag. “I’m bringing the shoe and receiver in; then I’ll see if I can get Peter on the horn and arrange for a meet.”