by Leslie Wolfe
Ah, the bloody male ego. Holt was asking for help and was fine receiving it, as long as no one called it help. As long as he didn’t really have to ask, and other people offered. I figured it might’ve been the right moment to up the ante.
“Why not bring some more people into this? Not just Fletcher, but the captain, Anne, a few others we can trust?”
“No.” The reply came quickly and unequivocally.
“What are you afraid of, Holt? Any parent in your place would call everyone and their mother, and wouldn’t think all five thousand LVMPD officers are enough to search for their kid, even if they dropped everything else they’re doing.” I watched his brow furrow as I spoke, and allowed him a few seconds to mull things over, but no words came out of his tense mouth. “Tell me, what are you anticipating will happen?”
He took the exit and headed into the city, following the directions I’d put into his GPS, driving to Fletcher’s home address with lights flashing and siren blaring.
“I think I know what this is about,” he eventually said.
“You think?” I reacted, feeling my gut churn. “You’re willing to risk your daughter’s life on a hunch? What if it’s whoever it was the girls saw last night in the men’s restroom, and you’re wasting precious time?” What the hell was he hiding, that was so important?
“If I’m right and this gets out, they’ll kill her,” he said, his low voice tinged with rage. “They’d have no more use for her.”
“What in bloody hell are you talking about, Holt?”
He drove the rest of the way to Fletcher’s place in perfect silence. I didn’t insist; I could tell he wasn’t ready to trust me. I’d been there myself and knew how much I’d wanted him to stop asking questions when the roles were reversed. One thing I did want to mention, if only to put the thought in his mind.
“We could at least issue an AMBER Alert.”
“Too late for that,” he said, cutting the engine and rushing toward the apartment building entrance, while I was only one step behind. “By the time we found out she was gone, they wouldn’t still be roaming the streets with her.”
He called the elevator with impatient, forceful gestures, pressing the button repeatedly as if that would’ve made it come faster. When it eventually arrived, he let out a long breath loaded with frustration. We walked in and I pressed the button for Fletcher’s floor.
As soon as the doors closed, and the cab set in motion, he turned to face me and said, “Listen, I know what you’re trying to do, and I appreciate it. But let me run point on this one, Baxter. She’s my kid.”
All the more reason why he shouldn’t run point on the investigation, but I knew he wouldn’t listen to reason. I already knew him well enough to recognize that once he set his mind on something, a herd of wild horses couldn’t hold him back.
Surprisingly, I respected that, although under the current circumstances it drove me bloody insane.
“Okay,” I replied calmly. “Just tell me what you need, and I’ll do it.”
“Why don’t you start by telling me why Fletcher, an analyst you only met a couple of weeks ago, was willing to leave work early, rushing to help you, off the record, without any questions asked? And why does my partner know where he lives, when I’ve been working with the guy for years and had no idea?”
Was he jealous? I had to wonder, although it seemed wrong, being that Fletch was just a kid and that Holt had other, more important things on his mind.
“Don’t worry, it was all work,” I replied with a coy smile, thinking a break in the tension wouldn’t hurt. “Unofficial, but still work.”
“The type of work you get so secretive about?”
My smile widened. It was hard to admit, but it felt good knowing he knew about my extracurricular activities, at least in some measure, and had my back nevertheless. “Precisely,” I replied. “He’s the best analyst I’ve ever worked with, so I figured I’d want him on my team when, um, I’m working overtime.”
“Yeah,” Holt replied, shooting me a weird glance. “Right.”
My smile lingered as I rang the doorbell but quickly vanished as the reality of what had brought us here hit me again like a punch in my solar plexus.
“It’s open,” we heard Fletcher shouting from inside.
I entered without hesitation, because I was familiar with the place. Nothing had changed since my last visit a week ago; his entire living room was dedicated to the pursuit of entertainment with the help of technology, and that’s probably where the bulk of his paycheck went. A huge TV took up the back wall, and a gaming station with six monitors occupied a big chunk of the living space, installed on a massive desk and fitted with an ergonomic gaming chair, the kind that tilts back to deliver an immersive gaming experience. The screens displayed various scenes from Call of Duty: Black Ops, frozen mid-action, probably by our arrival.
I’d called him less than thirty minutes earlier, asking him to leave work early and meet me at his apartment. When did he have time to get home and start playing?
“Make yourselves at home,” he shouted from the kitchen. “Wanna grab a cold one?”
“No, thanks,” I replied. “We’re working.”
“I thought you two were off today,” he said, appearing from the kitchen with a beer and two bottled waters in his hands.
He’d just come home from work but looked as if he’d barely gotten out of bed. Long, curly hair in disarray, frizzy spirals popping out in all direction as if he’d never run a comb through it. He wore a long-sleeved shirt printed with a colorful message reading, “I’ve gone insane. Be back soon,” and a pair of track pants at least three sizes too large, hanging over his ankles as he walked, completely indifferent that he was at risk to trip and fall over the loose, frayed hems with every step he took.
“We were,” I explained, “but we’re still working, and this one’s on the QT.”
“You got it,” he replied, handing me a small bottle of Perrier. “What’s up?”
I looked toward Holt, waiting for him to say something, but he seemed engulfed in his grim thoughts.
“Holt’s daughter’s been kidnapped. We need—”
His eyebrows popped up, and his jaw slacked for a brief moment. That was his only reaction.
“Yeah, yeah, I know what you need,” he cut me off while taking his seat in front of the monitors. All the gaming screens disappeared, replaced by various database windows he brought up one by one, crazy fast.
“What’s her phone number?” he asked, and Holt dictated the digits quickly, pacing the space behind the desk, not taking his eyes off the monitors.
“This is the moment you wished you’d bought your kid the latest iPhone for Christmas,” he said, flipping through various screens. “The phone last pinged here,” he said as he pointed at a map. “A warehouse on Bruce Woodbury Beltway. Now the phone’s off, so she could be anywhere.”
“Can’t you turn it on remotely?” Holt asked. “I remember you did that a few months ago, for that missing persons—”
“If there’s power left in the battery, and if it’s got coverage, at least two bars. Already trying.” Fletcher scratched his head, then took a sip of beer. The bottle had left a wet circle on the desk, but he didn’t seem to mind. “Why aren’t the feds on this yet?”
Holt groaned, exasperated. He was probably getting sick and tired of that question. “I’d rather keep it this way for now,” he replied coldly, and Fletcher raised his hands in the air.
“You’re the boss,” he said. “Nope, we can’t turn it on remotely, but we’ll know the second it’s turned on by someone,” he added. “We’ll try street video next. When did they take her?”
“This morning, from her school. She goes to Western High.”
“Got it,” Fletcher replied. He started typing commands in his system, turning on various camera feeds, traffic monitors, ATMs, even some networked private security cameras from business buildings and construction sites. “Let’s see,” he muttered, then started
whistling a familiar tune, an action movie score, if my memory wasn’t playing tricks on me.
“That’s them,” Holt reacted, tapping his finger against one of the screens showing an older model, unmarked police cruiser pulled up at the curb in front of Western High. “Fletch, make sure there’s a BOLO on that car.”
“For what?” Fletcher asked. “Aren’t we’re keeping this quiet?”
“Aiding and abetting, impersonating law enforcement,” Holt replied.
We watched in silence how the two men dressed as police officers escorted Meredith to the car. There was some back-and-forth conversation, a dialogue we couldn’t hear; eventually, one of the men took her backpack and loaded it in the trunk after locking her inside the vehicle. While she appeared to have climbed into the car on her own, by the time they drove off she was pounding against the side window with both hands. Fletcher stopped the video and enhanced a particular frame. Blurry and distant, taken as the car had left the school drop-off zone and turned right, the image showed Meredith screaming, her mouth wide open and her eyes enlarged with fear.
“She already knew,” Holt said, his voice tinged with rage but also with a hint of paternal pride. “She was in that car for mere seconds, and she made them.”
I held my breath as Fletcher navigated from traffic cam to traffic cam, escorting the kidnappers’ car as they drove away. It felt as if I were watching a horror movie in slow motion, unable to intervene, unable to stop the terror of what was happening.
“And we lose them here, on the Beltway,” Fletcher announced. “It matches the location the phone pinged last. From here, that warehouse is less than five minutes due west, and there’s no camera feed anywhere along that route.”
“Okay, let’s go,” Holt said. “Thanks, Fletch.”
“Wait a second,” the analyst reacted. “Where do you want to go? There?” he pointed at the Google Maps image of the warehouse, shown on one of his monitors. It was a single-story, gray building that seemed abandoned or had been closed for an extended period of time. The front windows were dark, and the parking lot was completely empty. But Google Maps wasn’t real time; I’d read somewhere that the images could be as much as three years old.
“Where else?” Holt replied, checking the ammo in his gun. “I need a few Glock mags. Got any?”
“Yeah,” Fletcher replied, then he stood and rushed to the bedroom. He appeared within seconds carrying a couple of loaded magazines and handed them over. “This is crazy, Holt. There could be dozens of people in there. Let us help you. We can call the cavalry and safely obliterate that place. Or we could call SWAT; this is what they do for a living.”
I watched the interaction between the two men, hoping that Holt would listen to Fletcher’s logical arguments. But no, the determined expression on his face hadn’t changed.
“I know what I’m doing,” he muttered, then turned to me. “You coming?”
“Obviously,” I replied.
Then we heard a familiar chime coming from the computer. That sound sent chills down my spine. I looked at Holt and saw the blood disappearing from his face.
Fletch looked over his shoulder. “New murder case just popped. But you guys are off anyway, so—”
“Where? What?” I asked, while my thoughts raced. Please, God, don’t let it be Meredith.
He quickly clicked the mouse buttons. “They found a body in the Mojave, off the highway, a mile in.” He swallowed with visible difficulty, then added. “It’s a young girl, a teenager.”
Request
Ten hours missing
Holt was frantic. His eyes, wide open, stared into thin air but appeared laser-focused, as if he were planning his next move. His black hair fell in disheveled strands on his sweaty forehead, while a sickly pallor tinted his skin. I wondered why he hadn’t directed me to hell already, given that he didn’t agree with anything I had to say.
I still had to try.
Knowing what to expect, I tried to stop him from leaving Fletcher’s apartment, but he pushed me to the side.
“Get out of my way, Baxter,” he shouted. “I have to know!”
“And you will,” I replied, grabbing hold of his sleeve and delaying him a bit more. “I’ll go right now. You can’t just show up at a crime scene acting all crazed and not offer any explanations.” I grabbed his hand and squeezed his cold fingers. “I’ll go, all right? You stay here and wait for me. When I return, we’ll raid the warehouse together.”
For a brief moment, he stared at me with the eyes of a madman.
“Get out of my way, Baxter,” he repeated, and the second time I heard a warning in his voice. There was no stopping him.
“Fine, but I’m coming with you,” I insisted, and he didn’t push back. He just stared at me impatiently, but I found myself hesitating, caught in a maze of questions I couldn’t bring myself to voice, although one of them was causing my partner’s deep angst.
What if the young girl whose body was found in the Mojave was his daughter? The thought chilled my bones. I forced myself to cling to hope, to the idea of a coincidence, although cops don’t usually believe in such things. I understood how my partner must’ve felt, infinitely worse than I did, not knowing, wondering, terrified of what he was about to find in the desert. Before we could do anything else to try to find Meredith, we had to eliminate the paralyzing anguish that we both shared, the fear that everything was already lost, that she was gone.
“First, I have to make a quick call,” I added, then speed dialed the police Dispatch line.
“Dispatch,” a woman’s voice announced.
“Hey, Trace, it’s Baxter. Who caught the Mojave stiff?”
“No one yet, I don’t have anyone here—”
“How about you give it to me? It might be correlated with another case I’m working on.”
“You got it,” she replied with a sigh of relief, then ended the call.
“There,” I said, looking at Holt. “Now we can go.”
Holt was halfway out the door when his phone rang. As if struck by lightning, he stopped, staring at the display showing an unknown caller. He turned and gestured toward Fletcher, who quickly sat at his computer and began the trace.
Holt rushed back inside the apartment, set the phone on the dining room table, and took the call on speaker.
“This is Holt,” he said, his voice steady, seemingly calm.
“There’s no need to attempt a trace, Detective,” the caller said. The voice belonged to a younger male, possibly African American, who sounded amused, speaking slowly as if he had all the time in the world. “Please tell Mr. Fletcher to stand down.”
Fletcher turned to look at Holt in disbelief.
“How did you—” Holt started to ask.
“Yes, we know where you are,” the man stated, “and yes, we have your daughter.” When he spoke, he sounded melodious, as if singing a half-baked tune, but the reason for his unusual intonation seemed to be his desire to convey condescension.
Holt clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white. “You took the wrong girl,” he said, his voice intense, menacing. “You hear me, motherfucker? Let her go now, or I’ll—”
“You’ll do what exactly, Detective?” the man asked with a quick laugh. “Try to find me? Rip my chest open and take my heart out?” He laughed again, and I heard an echo, as if he were in a vast room, maybe in that warehouse. “Don’t you get up in my grill. I’ve heard it all when it comes to threats, yet here I am, chillin’, enjoying my day. Are you enjoying your day, Detective?”
“Put my daughter on the phone,” Holt demanded.
“You don’t set terms, Detective, I do.” The man allowed a long moment of silence to go by. He didn’t seem concerned at all with the call being traced, and that was a bad sign. “She’s in one piece, for now, unharmed for the most part, but it’s tough, you know.”
“What?” Holt asked, his scrunched face turning livid.
“My crew, they’re all men, and them cats got needs, vyin’
for a piece of that young ass. Some of them just got out of the joint, and you know how tough life can be on the inside. Kinda dry, if you get my drift. Not sure how long I’m going to be able to hold ’em back.”
I thought Holt was going to start screaming. Thick veins were pulsating on his temples as if bluish, twisted ropes had come to life underneath his skin.
“What do you want?” he asked, managing to keep his calm for another moment.
“You,” the answer came right away. “Your life for hers.”
I froze.
“Deal,” Holt replied matter-of-factly.
He sounded almost relieved, possibly because that unusual request matched whatever scenario he’d assumed was the reason behind his daughter’s abduction. He must’ve known who the players were and what they wanted, and yet he chose to keep it a secret from me, his partner.
“Good,” the man said. “Now you wait for my next call. No cops, no feds, no SWAT or whatever other bitchin’ ideas you might get, or I’ll ship her overseas to please who pays the most. She’s still a virgin, isn’t she?”
“You son of a bitch,” Holt snapped, “I swear to God—”
“Goodbye, Detective.”
“Wait,” Holt reacted in a much different tone of voice, desperate and subdued at the same time. “When will you call?”
The man laughed. “When I damn well please.”
He hung up.
The three beeps marking the disconnected call resounded strangely in the room.
“No luck,” Fletcher announced from his desk, shaking his head slowly.
“Let’s go over—” I started to say, but Fletcher silenced me with a finger on his lips. Then he grabbed both our phones and examined them in detail. During all that time, I held my breath while Holt cursed a slew, going through an expansive repertoire of oaths and checking the time every five seconds.
I felt like doing the exact same thing. We were wasting so much time.
There was the slimmest of chances the kidnappers were still at that warehouse on the Beltway, maybe Meredith was there too. Holt was right to want to rush over there and put bullets in every single one of them. But the body found in the Mojave had thrown a wrench in that plan; we had to find out who that was, for Holt more than anyone else. I wished I could call the Crime Scene Unit and ask for an update, or at least a description of the victim, but the 911 call had just been posted, a minute before I’d called Dispatch. No; the quickest way to find out was to go there ourselves.