Little Girl Gone

by Gerry Schmitt

  Afton spotted Max, bundled up in a dark green parka, standing right at the edge of the steep, wooded cliff. She jogged down to meet him.

  “The Tactical Squad is already down there,” Max said. They both leaned forward and gazed down into the deep chasm, though it was so dark, there was nothing to see.

  “Any word yet on whether it might be the Darden baby?” Afton asked. She stared at the array of ropes that led over the lip of a rocky cliff, wishing she had police clearance to rappel down and help in any way she could. She figured she was just as experienced with ice climbing as any of the team. And she was a certified Outward Bound instructor to boot.

  “No word yet,” Max said. “We’re still waiting.” He dug the toe of his boot in the snow. “Problem is . . . it’s so damn cold.”

  Afton knew it was an oblique reference to the baby’s chance of survival, which wasn’t good. “I wish I could . . .” Afton was itching to scramble down there, but she knew Thacker would burst a blood vessel if he found out she’d clipped in and rappelled down the hill.

  She also prayed that whoever had stolen Elizabeth Ann had simply thrown up their hands, scared off by the tremendous hue and cry set up by the FBI, police, Amber Alert, and frenzied media. Often, that’s how child abduction cases were resolved. The abductor was just too terrified by the tsunami of angry police and citizens chasing after his sorry ass or on the lookout for his car. Once word was broadcast, abductors often hit the panic button and abandoned the captive child.

  “Any word yet?” a smooth, female voice asked. Portia Bourgoyne, a features reporter for Channel 7, had edged her way into the fray. She was a cool-looking blonde with slightly almond eyes and a pale complexion. Despite the freezing temperature, she wore a very haute couture fringed tweed suit with a pussycat bow tied at the neck, and an impossibly short skirt that showed off her long legs. Afton wondered how Portia had managed to maneuver the slick slope in four-inch-high stilettos.

  “They’re coming up!” yelled one of the Fire and Rescue Squad members who was manning the ropes on top. An excited buzz rose up as everyone shuffled closer to the dangerous precipice.

  A bright light suddenly flashed on, illuminating the entire area, and Afton realized it was Portia’s gaffer, holding up a column of lights while her cameraman crouched in position and adjusted the focus on his lens.

  Then a grim-looking man in a black neoprene suit clambered up over the edge, and a firefighter, who’d also been manning the ropes, said, “Damn.”

  Dear Lord, please don’t let this child be dead, Afton prayed.

  There was a cry and a high squeal and then, as the second climber scrambled up, someone from the rescue squad said in a disappointed voice, “It’s a dog.”

  There was a cacophony of groans and the crowd took a collective step backward.

  “A dog?” Max snorted. “I crawled out of a warm Barcalounger for a damn dog?” He wasn’t angry at the dog; he was frustrated with the situation.

  The second climber from the Tactical Squad who’d rappelled down into the gorge was up on top now, the head of a small dark dog peering out from between the folds of his jacket. Disappointment was palpable on the man’s face.

  Portia Bourgoyne dropped the carefully arranged look of concern on her face and ran a painted red index finger across the front of her throat, indicating for her cameraman to cut. “Nothing here,” she said, sounding infinitely bored. “Just a stupid dog.” Then Portia was hurrying up the slope to the street, where her nice warm TV van was parked.

  “Abandoned,” said an ambulance driver who was standing at Afton’s elbow. “People do that all the time. Just toss out animals to freeze to death when they don’t want them.”

  Afton moved through the crowd, toward the two rescuers. “What are you going to do with him?” she asked the man who still held the big-eared puppy in his arms. The dog uttered another squeak then squirmed around as if trying to figure out what all the fuss was about. For a little dog that had been tossed down a rocky hillside, he was certainly giving lots of attitude.

  The rescuer shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably drop him off at the nearest animal shelter.”

  “Here,” Afton said, reaching her arms out. “Give him to me.”

  Max’s big shoulder nudged hers as she gently accepted the dog. “You want to take the dog? I thought you once told me your husband was allergic to dogs.”

  “He is,” Afton said as one of the paramedics slipped her a blanket. “But we’re divorced now, remember?”

  “Still gonna cut down on the number of visits to the kiddies,” Max said, staring at the dog. “Jeez, look at the ears on that thing. Like a freakin’ bat. What kind of mutt is that anyway?”

  “Not a mutt at all,” Afton said. “This happens to be a French bulldog.” She’d seen one at a dog show once and been impressed by the big personality that was packed into such a small-statured animal.

  “Ah,” Max said. “Then you’re probably going to name him Marcel or Jacques.”

  “Something like that,” Afton said, thinking a small dog with this much attitude should rightly be called Bonaparte. “Anyway, the girls will love him. They’ve been asking for a dog.” Cuddling the little dog close to her chest, Afton was suddenly aware of a commotion at the top of the hill. She and Max turned at the same time to glance up there and see just what the hell was going on.

  “Shit,” Max grunted. “It’s the parents. They showed up.”

  “Oh no!” Afton gasped as Susan Darden’s face suddenly appeared, a pale oval, looking scared and strained amid the too-bright lights.

  “Is it my baby?” Susan pleaded. Her voice was high and tremulous. “Dear God, will someone please tell me what’s going on?”

  “They found Elizabeth Ann?” a frantic Richard Darden asked. They were standing on the sidewalk at the top of the hill, clinging desperately to each other.

  “Somebody’s got to set those poor people straight,” Afton said.

  “I’ll do it,” Max said. “You’ve got your hands full with the dog.”

  Max nodded and hastily scrambled up the slope, desperate to head them off. But Portia Bourgoyne, who was already up top with her camera crew, knew a heart-wrenching sound bite when she saw one and immediately sprang into action. Bright TV lights flashed on again as Portia stuck her microphone in the Dardens’ startled faces before they knew what was happening.

  “My baby, my baby!” Susan shrilled. “Is she here?” She was in the throes of a full-blown panic attack.

  “We’re standing on a rocky precipice overlooking the Mississippi River in Saint Paul,” Portia Bourgoyne began. “Waiting to see if the plaintive cries coming from below this steep embankment could possibly belong to Elizabeth Ann, the three-month-old baby girl who was snatched from the Kenwood home of Susan and Richard Darden as she slept in her crib last night.”

  “Oh shit,” Afton said as disgust rose up inside her. “Portia’s running a con on the Dardens,” she said to one of the paramedics. “She knows damn well that we hauled up a dog.”

  Max was already up top now, trying to break up Portia’s phony, highly staged interview. Afton heard a babble of angry, high-pitched voices, heard Portia scream something about first amendment rights. Then the gaffer, the kid who was wearing a battery pack around his waist and muscling a rack of heavy TV lights, was shoved out of the way and the lights flickered off.

  “It’s not her,” Max tried to explain to them in a soothing voice. “It’s a mistake, there’s no need for you to be here. Please, go home. We’ll call you as soon as we know something.”

  Susan Darden’s face collapsed. “This is all your fault!” she screamed at her husband. “It was your idea to drive over here!”

  Richard Darden looked stunned. “I thought for sure it was Elizabeth Ann,” he said. “I wanted to be here, to be able to put her back in your arms where she belongs!”

 
; “Please,” Max said, trying to interject himself in their conversation. “Everybody just calm down.”

  But Susan Darden continued to rail against her husband. “You told me it was her! You promised me.”

  “This is bad,” Afton muttered. “We need to have these people working with us, not against each other.” She scurried up the hillside as fast as she could, still carrying the dog wrapped in a blanket.

  “Oh my God!” Susan Darden cried when she caught sight of Afton. “Is that her? Did you find her? Is that my Elizabeth Ann?” Hope flooded Susan’s face as she rushed up to Afton and clawed frantically at the blankets before Afton was able to stop her. Then the little dog’s head popped out and he gave a sharp yip.

  Susan Darden reacted as if she’d been slugged. Her jaw went slack, her eyes flooded with pain, and she staggered backward. Flailing and stumbling, she nearly fell down. But when Max shot out a hand to steady her, she frantically batted him away.

  “A dog?” Susan cried. “A filthy mutt?” Her face had become a mask of horror and rage. “How cruel can you be? Is this some kind of sick joke, taunting me like this?”

  Afton knew the situation had suddenly turned bad. She’d had no intention of upsetting Mrs. Darden. She couldn’t believe someone would have even told the Dardens to come here. But now it had turned into an absolute fiasco, and there didn’t seem to be any way to back out delicately. Unless she . . .

  Richard Darden suddenly stepped in front of his wife to accost a stunned Afton. He thrust his arms out, punched her hard on both shoulders, and shoved her backward.

  “Get away from us,” Darden said, his voice a mixture of cold rage and despair. “Do you see how much you’ve upset my wife?” He licked his lips and then came at her again. “This will be the end of your career. I’ll see to that. No matter how long it takes, I’ll make sure you pay for this ridiculous stunt.”

  Susan Darden darted in to land a final punch. “We don’t need your kind of help,” she cried. “In fact, we don’t ever want to see you again!”

  10

  SOMETIMES the night is never long enough. Morning comes crashing in like an unwelcome guest that shows up at a party two hours early—and doesn’t even bring a decent bottle of wine.

  When the alarm did its 7:00 A.M. briiiing, Afton fought her way to consciousness. And as the fog lifted, tried to remember why she was feeling so tense and worried.

  Then she remembered. The Dardens. The dog. Definitely not her finest hour. Would there be repercussions? Oh yeah, probably.

  Stumbling out of bed, she slowly made her way to the kids’ room. Tess was curled up in Poppy’s bed, their identical blond hair tousled together on a single pillow. The little French bulldog, Bonaparte, lay snoozing at the foot of the bed in a pile of old blankets the girls had arranged as a cozy dog nest.

  Sleepy moans and groans ensued as the girls stumbled down the hall—Bonaparte padding after them—so they could brush their teeth and get dressed for school.

  After helpings of Cap’n Crunch and a quick dash into the backyard for Bonaparte, each girl solemnly kissed the dog on the nose and bade him good-bye. Then, in a flurry of red-and-yellow nylon parkas, they dashed outside to meet the yellow school bus that came lumbering down the street.

  After a bowl of kibble and a slurp of water, Bonaparte looked expectantly up at Afton as she shrugged into her coat and gathered up her keys.

  “I’m not kissing you good-bye, too,” she told him. Then, “Oh, okay. If you insist.”

  The dog had been the only good thing to come out of last night.

  * * *

  DESPITE having her Lincoln stashed inside the relative comfort of her garage, the car’s engine struggled to turn over in the bitter cold. And once she navigated the ruts down her back alley and swung out onto the street, she became intimately familiar with the sensation of the car’s back wheels sliding ominously on ice.

  Nasty day, Afton thought. She shivered as the heater spewed out chill air. With ice-glazed streets and a windchill that was off the charts, she passed three stalled cars on her way downtown, their bundled-up owners looking anxious as they waited for AAA to show up with an industrial-strength battery charger.

  The parking garage attached to the precinct building was nearly full, so Afton was forced to park on the exposed top floor of the ramp. Frigid wind whipped her hair and scarf into streamers as she hurried to the building entrance. The elevator down to the third floor was a morass of wet slush.

  Once inside, Afton was immersed in a frenzy of activity. Phones jingled, voices rose amid a din of noise, and people rushed about importantly. Hoping to avoid a walk of shame, praying she could remain relatively anonymous until last night’s mess blew over, Afton kept her head down as she hurried to her desk. She turned the corner, slipped off her coat, and sat down.

  The Force was not with her today.

  There on her desk sat a stuffed Beanie Baby, a floppy-eared brown-and-white bulldog. A sign taped to her computer screen said, ROOM FOR ONE MORE?

  Great.

  As if someone had given a silent cue, loud, yappy barking suddenly broke out all around her. “Arf, arf, arf.” Then the jerk three cubicles down from her broke into an off-key rendition of “Who Let the Dogs Out.”

  Afton felt her stomach start to sink. She’d worked hard to try to fit in here and this was the crap she got? Jeez. She hadn’t screwed up on purpose. And they couldn’t just leave the dog out there to freeze to death.

  She heard a noise behind her and spun around. It was Max, looking tired and worn out as he clicked his tongue and said in a mild tone, “Don’t look so worried. It’s just a little friendly departmental hazing.”

  “Really?” Afton said.

  Max shrugged. “It means you’re part of the gang.”

  She loved him at that moment. Would’ve walked across hot coals for him.

  Max squeezed into her cubicle and wedged himself into an uncomfortable metal side chair. “You know, I’ve been with the department for twenty years, and the most important thing I’ve learned is that as long as you can meet your own eyes in the mirror every morning, you’re doing okay.”

  “It sounds as if you’re perilously close to being a glass half-empty kind of guy,” Afton said.

  “Maybe I’ll see if I can balance that out,” Max said.

  Afton crooked an eyebrow at him. “What’s up?”

  “I just spoke to Thacker. He wants to see you in his office.”

  “Oh boy.” Afton’s heart, which had suddenly felt hopeful, plunged again. She grabbed a notebook and pen and hurried down the hall to Thacker’s office. This was one guy who didn’t like to be kept waiting.

  His secretary, Angel, was nowhere in sight, but his office door was open halfway. Afton peered inside and saw that Thacker was wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing yesterday. It must have been a long, exhausting night for him again. Lots of explaining to higher-ups, damage control with the media, and dealing with the distraught Dardens as well as the ever-snarky FBI.

  Afton gave a tentative knock. She was half hoping he wouldn’t hear her.

  “Come in,” Thacker said. He was sitting at his desk, staring intently at his computer screen. When he looked up and saw it was Afton, he said, “Close the door behind you.”

  Definitely not a good sign.

  Afton took a seat across from Thacker in one of his two rump-sprung leather chairs. She instantly felt eight years old again, back in elementary school, sitting across from Mr. Murphy, the school principal, after she’d gone postal at recess and smacked Corey Miller in the face with an ice ball as retribution for sticking gum in her hair. Hopefully, the punishment meted out today would be the equivalent of one week without recess. A small price to pay.

  Thacker grunted, removed his reading glasses, and stretched back in his chair. He looked exhausted.

  “Last night wasn’t e
xactly our department’s shining hour,” Thacker said. “But I want to be clear on this. I don’t believe you did anything wrong. That said, I’m probably in the minority. Richard Darden has some fairly powerful friends, one of whom sits on the City Council. So if I appear a bit bedraggled, it’s because I’ve been up all night fielding calls.”

  “Sir . . . I . . .” Afton stammered. Her heart was a pounding metronome.

  Thacker held up a hand. “I said I’ve been fielding calls; I didn’t say I was taking them to heart. Most of the knee-jerk bureaucrats who made any kind of stink were chin deep in their down comforters last night and got the story secondhand. Hell, Richard Darden isn’t really mad at you. He’s mad at himself, his wife, the situation, the FBI, and most of all the kidnapper.”

  Afton felt the wire that had been strung around her chest loosen a degree. “Where does that leave me, sir?”

  “For one thing, you’re to have no more contact with the Dardens.”

  “I understand.”

  “And I’m putting you back on desk duty.”

  Afton’s knuckles flashed white as her hands crimped into tight fists. She’d been afraid this would happen. It was a kind of punishment.

  Thacker held up an index finger. “I want you to work backup for Max. We’re pathetically shorthanded so I need you to go through that list that you and Max—yes, I know you went to Hudson with him—got from that doll show organizer. What was her name?”

  “Muriel Pink,” Afton said in a humbled tone. Did nothing get past Thacker?

  “Right. Pink. We’ve got detectives and FBI agents out there interviewing a number of these so-called doll people, the ones who make the reborn dolls, as well as the Dardens’ friends, acquaintances, and coworkers. While they’re doing that, I want you to go through Pink’s list. Run it against DMV, arrest records, real estate, divorce, adoption, anything you can think of. See if you can find any sort of connection, no matter how tenuous. You got that?”