Little Girl Gone

by Gerry Schmitt

  “Yes, sir,” Afton said. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it for now,” Thacker said.

  Afton got up and started for the door. Then she paused and turned around. “Sir?”

  Thacker was back staring at his computer screen. “Yes?”

  “Thank you for sticking up for me.”

  “You don’t have to thank me for doing the right thing,” Thacker said. He lifted a hand to shoo her. “It’s my job.”

  * * *

  BACK at her desk, Afton found that someone had removed the dog and the note. Either they were destroying evidence or had grown tired of the joke.

  Afton wasn’t thrilled about being assigned to do research, but it was better than being flung down to the basement to work in the property room, amid a bunch of overweight, semiretired cops. Besides, Thacker had stuck his neck out for her and she didn’t want to disappoint him. Max had once told her that real detective work was done in the shadows. Answers were usually gutted out by staring at a flickering computer screen or poring over notes. That’s where she was now.

  Two and a half hours later, the clock on her computer said 11:35. Afton could hear chairs squeaking and people filtering down the row of cubicles, heading toward the exits. The first lunch shift was under way, but there’d be no lunch break for her. She was only a quarter of the way through Muriel Pink’s list, and not much had turned up. Only two exhibitors on the list had an arrest record, and only one of the two was serious—a DWI. Another exhibitor ran a licensed day care center out of her home. She made note of these three, though none of them had been exhibitors at the Skylark Mall. They’d all exhibited at a place called Sundown Shopping Center over in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

  Still, Afton plugged ahead. She wanted some nugget of information to emerge from all this drudgery. There was a missing baby out there, a set of grieving parents, a teenage girl who’d been assaulted, and a community that was nearly rabid for answers.

  She wondered again how a baby could be snatched from her parents’ home. And in Kenwood yet. Was careful planning involved, or was it just a spur-of-the-moment crime? Being a parent herself, she could feel the stab of paralyzing panic that was starting to creep through the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. A predator was out there, one who was bold and crazy enough to break into a private home and steal a baby. If Elizabeth Ann hadn’t been safe in her crib, then no one’s child was safe.

  Knuckles wrapped on her outer wall.

  Afton turned to find Max standing outside her cubicle. Most of her coworkers simply barged in unannounced and started barking orders at her. But Max carried himself in an old-fashioned, almost dignified manner.

  “May I come in?” Max asked.

  “Sure,” Afton said. As he eased himself in, she noted that his khakis didn’t have the razor-sharp pleat that Thacker’s dress slacks always had, and it was obvious that his shirts were machine washed and not dry-cleaned. Max was rumpled, but comfortable.

  “I’ve been working on that list we got from Muriel Pink,” Afton said.

  “Whatcha come up with?” Max asked.

  “There are three names that might be worth checking out.” Afton handed him her notes and the partial list with three names highlighted in yellow. “One’s a DWI conviction from back in 2012, another was busted with some of those Occupy Wall Street protesters that camped out in Loring Park a few years ago, and the third one runs a day care center.”

  “Day care,” Max said.

  “I thought maybe her contact with kids . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “I never considered that angle. But it’s good. Okay.”

  He started to leave, but Afton said, “I appreciate your trying to make me feel better. I felt like a bit of a screwup today, so thanks. You made me feel . . . well, normal again.”

  “Why would you want to feel normal?” Max asked. “I’ve seen how you operate. You’re definitely not civilian-type normal. You’ve got fairly good instincts that can probably be honed a lot sharper, so you’re selling yourself short if you just want to be normal.”

  Max gave an abrupt nod of his head and left. He seemed to have a knack for getting in the last word. But that last word had inspired Afton to keep working.

  * * *

  AT 3:09, Afton looked up blurry-eyed from her computer. Except for a quick trip to the break room for a granola bar and a Diet Coke, she’d been working steadily for well over six hours. And she’d still only come up with three names, the same three she’d given Max earlier today. All her fancy data mining had turned up a big fat zero. The rest of the people on her list appeared to be upstanding citizens, organ donors, and careful drivers. None had been arrested, declared bankruptcy, been foreclosed on, or landed on Homeland Security’s watch list. Heck, maybe they were all eligible for sainthood.

  Afton pushed back in her chair, trying to stretch out the kinks. Her back felt knotted and sore—a result of hunching over her computer terminal since early this morning. Or maybe it was from that crappy ice booger she’d tried to skitter around yesterday.

  Had it really been just yesterday that this entire scenario kicked off?

  Yes, it had. Even though she felt like she’d been working this case for a week.

  Groaning, she raised both arms over her head and stretched carefully. Sighing deeply, she relaxed into the stretch. And felt instantly better.

  She’d just finished checking the last half dozen names on the list—again nothing—when Max once again ghosted in. Seems he was going to be her only real visitor today.

  “You still hard at it?” he asked nonchalantly. He’d tugged on a bulky, army green snorkel parka over his equally bulky sweater and slacks.

  “Almost finished,” Afton said.

  “How about a field trip?” He twisted a pair of suede gloves, what folks in the Midwest called choppers, in his hands.

  Afton’s eyebrows shot up. “Huh? Sure. What’s up?” He was clearly going somewhere. Somewhere important?

  “I’m heading over to Novamed, Darden’s old employer. See if they’re in the mood to dish a little dirt on him. Anyway, long story short, Dillon’s not feeling up to snuff. I suspect it was the tamales du jour that he wolfed down for lunch at Taste of Salvador. That place is always high on the health inspector’s naughty list, but Dillon keeps hoping for the best.”

  “I’d like to go,” Afton said, buoyed by the fact that he’d actually invited her along. “But I’ve been grounded by Uncle Thacker.”

  “That’s old news, because I just cleared it with him,” Max said. When she started to say something, he said, “Hey, cheer up. Your sentence has been commuted. You’ve paid the price for your heinous crime.”

  11

  MAX insisted they take his car, since he’d just been out driving and the car’s engine and heater were still tepidly warm. So Afton found herself scrunched into the passenger seat of his Hyundai Sonata, amid a clutter of Red Bull cans, McDonald’s wrappers, and assorted tube socks. A hockey puck was half wedged between her seat and the seat back, so she dug it out and tossed it behind her, where it clunked against a trio of hockey sticks.

  “Hockey season,” Max said as he shot past the new Vikings stadium and slid down an icy freeway ramp. He punched his defroster button, which had the reverse effect of clouding the interior of his windows with a thin skim of ice.

  Afton grabbed a plastic ice scraper and attacked the windows, as Max, a notorious speeder, hurtled north on 35W at seventy-five miles an hour. He passed traffic and wove in and out of lanes like he was lounging at home in his sweatpants playing Grand Theft Auto. Afton felt a different kind of worry creeping up on her. The kind where you feared you might end up in a ditch waiting six hours for a tow truck to arrive.

  “If you’re going to survive in Minnesota,” Max said as he hammered down on the accelerator. “You have to have seat warmers. In fact, you have to have—at a mini
mum—front-wheel drive and seat warmers.”

  The car exited 35, looped around an on-ramp, and swerved onto 694 West. When they finally slowed behind a line of cars that were clogging the left lane, Afton let out her breath slowly. A thermometer on a sign read 15 below.

  “Legally, the guys at Novamed may not be able to say much,” Max said. “Even if Darden really did steal their company secrets and jump ship.”

  “Do we know that for a fact?” Afton asked as tiny ice pellets began to beat fiercely against the windshield.

  Max turned on the wipers, swore when the entire windshield smeared horribly, and then cut over into the right lane. His defrosters sputtered and the interior was starting to ice up again. “Scrape off that gunk right in front of me, will you?”

  Afton scraped.

  “Good,” Max said as ice chips flew. “Thanks. Anyway, Darden as traitor. That’s been the party line so far at Novamed.” He shrugged, the shoulders of his parka rising and making a swishing sound. “We’ll see if they’ve changed their tune.”

  They turned off at the 129th Street exit, and then wove their way down Larch Lane. After slip-sliding for a mile or so, they passed a stand of birch trees that was too perfectly geometric to be natural, then turned at a large silver sign that said NOVAMED, and into a driveway that was surprisingly clear of snow. In fact, Novamed’s entire parking lot had been scraped clean. There was barely a glimmer of any snow or ice at all, which probably accounted for the two large piles of snow, pushed to the side of the lot and towering almost twenty feet high.

  Novamed’s large ochre-colored building was built in the form of an immense letter U. Though invisible now, the grounds were spectacular in summer—a large pond buttressed against a cobblestone patio, crab trees that flamed pink and red in spring. Large silver placards on the side of the building listed the various entrances: VISITOR ENTRANCE, DELIVERIES, EMPLOYEES ONLY. It looked to Afton that one entire wing was designated as offices, while the other wing consisted mainly of laboratories. Probably for R&D, research and development.

  They parked and, ducking their heads into the wind, headed for the front door. Once inside, it was like entering a pristine art gallery of some sort. White marble floors, white walls, a white modular seating arrangement—not really couches, not really chairs—and a wall of windows that looked out over the grounds. No artwork, no area rugs, nothing but a large white front desk staffed by two young men in dark suits. Everything sterile, cool, and clinical.

  Max flipped out his badge to show the two receptionists, who might, or might not, double as a security detail. “Max Montgomery and Afton Tangler,” he said. “We have a three thirty appointment with your CEO, Bruce Cutler.”

  One of the men glanced at his computer screen and said, “Yes, we have you here. And you’re right on time.” He seemed pleased at their punctuality. The other man slid a black leather book across the counter and asked them to sign in and note the exact time of day. Then he gave each of them a plastic visitor ID badge to clip on to their clothing.

  The computer screen guy said, “Andrew will show you to your meeting.”

  “Thank you,” Afton said.

  They followed Andrew down a hallway, where he badged them through a set of sturdy-looking security doors.

  “As you might have guessed,” Andrew said, “we’re in a secured area now, with this hallway running past our outer ring of bio-labs. Clean rooms, as they’re more familiarly known to the public.”

  They stepped along and passed a row of rooms that were white, brilliantly lit, and filled with complex-looking instrumentation. Inside, workers moved about purposefully. All were clothed in Tyvek jumpsuits, latex gloves, booties, and head coverings.

  Afton wondered how anyone could work that way. The starkness of everything was intimidating and put her on edge. It was like staring into an impossibly brilliant void. If there had been a cold metal table with an alien autopsy going on, it wouldn’t have surprised her.

  “All our clean rooms are Class one hundred,” Andrew said. “That means we allow only one hundred particles—point five microns or larger—per cubic foot of air.”

  “That’s good?” Max asked.

  “Compare that to a typical office space that has between five hundred thousand to a million particles per cubic foot of air,” Andrew said.

  “In other words, no dust,” Afton said.

  Andrew smiled faintly. “No dust.”

  “And you manufacture what?” Afton asked.

  “Medical test kits,” Andrew said.

  “So you do animal testing?” Afton asked.

  Andrew ignored her question.

  “Human testing?” Max asked.

  Andrew led them through another set of doors. “Almost there.”

  Underfoot, the hard marble floor changed to carpet and they suddenly found themselves in the executive wing. But unlike the lavish wood-paneled offices typical of law firms or Fortune 500 companies, this was still relatively Spartan. All white with a modular reception desk at the center of what was a hub of offices and meeting rooms.

  “And this is our conference room,” Andrew said, stopping abruptly in front of an elegant beech wood door.

  “Take notes,” Max whispered to Afton. “I’ll do most of the talking, but you pipe in wherever.”

  Andrew pushed on the conference room door and it opened with a slight whoosh. Three men in expensive suits with equally expensive haircuts were already seated around a bare, glass-topped conference table. No coffee, tea, bottles of water, or elegant French pastries awaited them. It was fairly clear that Novamed wanted this meeting to be over and done with as quickly as possible.

  “Good afternoon,” Max said, striding in with confidence. With his height and bulk, he loomed over the seated men. “I’m Detective Max Montgomery, and this is my assistant, Ms. Tangler. He tossed one of his business cards onto the table. “We’re here to ask some questions.”

  The man sitting nearest to him popped up quickly and stretched out a hand. “Bruce Cutler, CEO.” Cutler was tall and trim with short gray hair and piercing blue-green eyes. He radiated a subtle vibrancy and looked as if he’d be equally at home in a boardroom, crewing on a sailboat, or swanning around a black-tie charity function. Afton could see why Cutler had made it to the ranks of CEO. He just looked the part.

  With the minimum daily requirement of mumbled pleasantries, the other two Novamed executives introduced themselves as well.

  Shou Vang, the chief financial officer, was a wiry-looking Asian man with a placid expression. Afton figured a CFO probably needed to have a good poker face. Edmund Nader, a rotund man with florid cheeks and nervous, slightly damp hands, was their chief information officer.

  Max and Afton took seats across from the men, and Max began. “So you know we’re here on a fact-finding mission concerning Richard Darden. We’re investigating the recent kidnapping of his young daughter.”

  Vang gave a sympathetic nod. “We’ve been following the news.” He looked pointedly at Afton and she wondered if he’d caught her on TV last night with the dog. From his disapproving expression, she guessed he probably had.

  “Our hearts go out to Richard and Susan,” Cutler said. “They were part of the Novamed family for a number of years.”

  “I admire your collegiality,” Max said in a slightly sarcastic tone. “Yet you have a major lawsuit pending against him.”

  Cutler’s jaw tightened. “That’s correct.” It was clear he didn’t want to talk about it.

  Max frowned. “If I’m to believe the news stories, you accused Richard Darden of reneging on his confidentiality agreement and walking away with trade secrets. It would help if you’d elaborate on that.”

  “I’m afraid our hands are tied,” Nader cut in. “Anything that deals with the lawsuit is proprietary information. You’d have to clear it through our attorneys.”

  Max gl
anced at Afton.

  “And those attorneys would be . . .” Afton asked, her pen poised to write.

  Cutler blanched. “We retain the firm of Baden, Barton, and Kronlach. They handle all our legal matters.”

  Afton jotted it down, thinking that Baden, Barton, and Kronlach sounded like a steamer trunk falling noisily down a flight of stairs.

  Max leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. “But this isn’t exactly legal business that I’m asking about. I’m simply trying to get a bead on Richard Darden. How long did he work here, was he well liked, that sort of thing.” He offered a thin smile. “It’s much more comfortable to talk here than in a stuffy interview room downtown.”

  Cutler sighed and tapped a manicured index finger against the glass table. “I suppose,” he said.

  Max proceeded to ask questions for the better part of ten minutes. While the Novamed execs were hesitant and sometimes bordered on snappy, he never lost his cool. Afton sat there, jotting the occasional note, fascinated by Max’s low-key interrogation, because, surely, that’s exactly what he was doing.

  When everyone seemed to relax, when they sensed that the meeting was coming to a logical conclusion, Max gave a slow, reptilian blink and asked, “Did Darden have any enemies?”

  Cutler tensed. “If you’re asking if someone here might have wished ill of him or his family, I would have to say no.”

  “Nobody was unhappy because Darden hopscotched them on his way up the corporate ladder?” Max asked. “Or because his departmental budget was larger than theirs? Or because someone on his staff got canned?”

  The three men looked at one another, then Cutler steepled his fingers. “Not that I can think of,” he said.

  “Richard was well respected,” Vang said.

  “He was beloved by everyone?” Max asked. “Because that would probably rank as a major first when it came to interoffice politics.”