by Beverly Long
“No. Listen, I understand the confusion. I spoke with Sam. Who was also a little confused.” She offered up a smile. “My husband is a great guy. Works hard. Is going to school to get ahead. But he’s not good with details or quite frankly, anything financial. I pay all the bills in my family. So those discussions I had with the bank about refinancing were done without him even being aware. It didn’t go anywhere so there really wasn’t a need to tell him after the fact.”
Again, Rena thought, such a fucking reasonable explanation.
“I guess I’m having trouble with your earlier explanation that you don’t recall who you spoke to at the bank. You see, I’ve refinanced,” A.L. said. “And it’s sort of a process. And I can’t help but think that it would have been unnecessarily complicated if you were talking to several different people.”
“Not really,” she said. “But truthfully, I never got very far in the process. My questions were mostly the exploratory variety. And a couple times, I know I just slipped them into conversations I was already having with Steven.”
“Steven?” A.L. asked. He was, quite frankly, surprised that she’d offered up the connection.
“Steven Hanzel. He’s a loan officer at the bank and was my cochair for the Fourth of July Activities Committee. So we were going back and forth on that.”
He had some familiarity with Baywood’s Activities Committee. If they’d been cochairs, there would be some public record of that. “That was convenient for you,” he said.
“Very.”
She was one of the best liars he’d ever interviewed or she was telling the truth. He just didn’t know. He decided to poke her with a stick.
“Do you happen to know Shana Federer?”
“I know that she has a child at the learning center. But not in my class.”
“But you’d recognize her if you saw her.”
“I think so.”
“And she’d recognize you.”
“I don’t know, Detective. I really don’t understand the question.”
“No question,” he said easily. “Just conversation. Let’s go back to the Activities Committee work that you were doing with Steven. Most of your communication done on the phone?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?” A.L. asked.
“Well, no. We met in person sometimes. Our whole committee did.”
“Oh, sure. That makes sense,” A.L. said. “Probably some emails, too.”
“I guess. I don’t really recall.”
“Texts?” A.L. asked.
“I... I don’t really know. I do text a lot. Everybody does, right?”
“Phones, an extension of our hands. You have just the one cell phone, Kara?” A.L. asked.
“Yes,” she said. Then she yawned. “I really am sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I’m so tired. Is there anything else?”
Rena shook her head. A.L. stood. “I’ll walk you out.”
When he got back to the conference room, Rena was on the phone. Listening intently. All the color had drained from her face. And her hand was shaking. “Thank you,” she said. “Appreciate the call.” She carefully put her cell phone on the table.
“Fuck,” A.L. said. “They found her and she’s dead.”
“No. No,” she said. “It’s not about Emma. It’s...”
“Gabe? One of the Morgans?”
“No.”
“Tell me what the hell is going on, Rena. You look as if you’re about to slip out of that chair.” He wasn’t exaggerating.
“Remember that I told you that we had selected somebody to be our carrier for the pregnancy? And that she lived with a lowlife?”
“Yeah.”
“I put a tag on the lowlife, so that I’d get notified if something came in on him.”
Cops did that, especially on people of interest in ongoing investigations. It wasn’t quite kosher that she’d done it for personal reasons but nobody was going to get too upset about that. Privilege of the job in a job where there weren’t that many privileges. “What showed up?”
“He got arrested last night. Narcotics. Unlicensed firearms and other explosives.” She looked up. “Felony charges. He’s has a previous record.”
“So he’s pond scum. It’s not his sperm making the baby.”
“I have to tell Gabe.”
“Info probably isn’t in the public record yet,” A.L. said gently. Until then, she had a responsibility to only share it on a need-to-know basis.
“I don’t care. Listen, I need a half hour.”
“Go.”
“I knew something like this was going to happen. I just knew it.” She laughed shakily. “Maybe I’m the psychic.” She got four steps. Turned. “We need to verify Kara’s story, that she was working as a cochair with Steven Hanzel.”
“We will. Now shut it off. Go talk to Gabe.”
Ten minutes later, she wasn’t sure if she was grateful or not that Gabe’s car was in the driveway. It might have been good to have a little more time to compose herself, to think of the best way to offer up the information.
To come up with a plan, a solution.
But then again, it couldn’t be her plan. It had to be their plan. Just like it was their baby.
She opened the door and was surprised to see him sitting at the kitchen table. Dressed. In dark jeans and a button-down shirt. His hair, which hadn’t been cut for months, was pushed behind his ears. Another month or two and it would touch his shoulders. It was too long but he looked good. Always had. Probably always would.
“What’s going on?” she asked. She’d talked to him two hours ago, told him that she’d be working late. He’d said not to worry about it, that he was on his way to bed.
“Just getting ready to go out with some friends,” he said. “It just came up. I was going to text you.”
Right. “Who?”
“Tom and Rick. You don’t know them.”
“From school.”
“Yeah. Did you get done early?”
“Something came up.” She pulled out a chair. “I needed to talk to you.”
He stared at her. “Are you okay? Did something happen at work? Is it A.L.?”
She held up a hand. “It’s Matthew Stahl.”
“Shannon’s husband.”
“He’s been arrested,” she said.
“You arrested him?” Gabe asked.
“No. Another officer. But it’s serious. Charges are getting filed. Drugs. Guns and other explosives. He already has a felony record. If he’s convicted, he’s going to prison.”
“Did Shannon call you?” Gabe asked. “Did she want your help?”
“No. I just found out.” She paused. “I had a tag on his name. So that if anything came in on him, the arresting officer would know to contact me.”
“You were watching him.”
She threw up her hands. “Gabe, you’re missing the point. We have chosen these people to shepherd our child into the world.”
“The last I knew he didn’t have a uterus,” Gabe said. “Shannon is probably going to want to do this more than ever. They’ll have some legal expenses.”
“We can’t use Shannon,” she said. “That’s out of the question.”
“The paperwork, all fucking nineteen pages of the contract, have been reviewed and initialed. We can’t stop now, Rena.”
“Our unborn child will be going on visits to the state penitentiary. Is that what you want? Is that what you’d be satisfied with? Happy with?” She got up, too agitated to sit. “People talk and have long memories. Years from now, it’ll get thrown in our kid’s face. People will say, oh, you were that baby.”
“Rena,” Gabe said, his voice low, his tone even. “Is it possible that you’re overreacting?”
She didn’t know. The idea that their child would ever be c
onsidered less than...perfect. Or that he or she might actually be less than perfect. After all, who knew exactly how much a fetus absorbed from the outside world while in the womb? She just couldn’t take that chance. Not on something so important. “This breaks the morals clause in the contract.”
“Is that what you want?” he asked again.
She didn’t know what the fuck she wanted. “We’ll find someone else,” she said.
He shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“We will,” she insisted.
“We’ve already spent a lot of money on this. And with me being back in school for a job that’s going to pay less than what I was making, it maybe wasn’t a good idea to begin with.”
It was what she’d been afraid of. He was going to back out. She felt sick. All their planning, all their hoping. It would fall apart.
She would fall apart.
“I have to go back to work.” She picked up her keys. They felt heavy in her hand. “We can talk later.”
“Seems as if you’ve made up your mind,” he said. “I’ve got to go, too. I’ll be home late.”
He walked out the door, leaving her in her silent kitchen. Her phone buzzed. It was A.L. Are you coming back tonight? No problem if you’re not.
On my way, she texted back.
We’ve got bus video of Coyote Frogg was his response.
Eighteen
“Everything okay?” A.L. asked.
Hardly, thought Rena. “Yeah, fine.” She couldn’t even remember the drive back to work.
A.L. studied her. He likely didn’t believe her but he also understood that sometimes it really was better to compartmentalize. To give your full attention to something else besides what was troubling you. And right now, it was almost 11:00 at night and she’d been up since 5:00. She should be tired. But the thought that they’d found Coyote Frogg was exhilarating.
The door of the conference room opened and in walked an analyst who often helped them with video evidence. “Hey, Louisa, thanks for hanging out with us tonight.”
“No problem. My thirteen-year-old son is having a friend over tonight. Lots of yelling and screaming at the video games. My husband is better suited to dealing with that.”
“I get it.” Would Gabe be that kind of dad? If she backed out of this deal, would he ever be any kind of dad? Damn. Compartmentalize. “What are we looking at?”
“We worked with the city to get video of bus 13, which runs along Clayton Avenue. The stop you were specifically interested in was Wake Street. And we’re pretty sure we got your boys jumping on there once but got them another time a little farther down the line on Poke Street.” She was pulling up video as she talked.
It was gray and a little grainy but there they were, about halfway back, slouched in a seat. “That’s Coyote,” A.L. said.
He looked as if he was sleeping. The guy next to him was awake but barely. He was just staring ahead. “Date and time, Louisa?”
The woman pointed to the bottom of the screen. That’s last Monday, about 16:20 hours.”
The kid had said that he’d seen them between 4:00 and 4:30. He was proving to be a good little witness.
“I’m going to fast-forward to where they get off,” Louisa said. “Here we are twenty minutes later and they’re getting off at the corner of Willow and Spring.”
“What’s at Willow and Spring?” Rena asked. She had a rough idea. There was a three-or four-block radius of manufacturing companies that had many decades back strategically located near the rail line. Trains no longer ran, however, and many of the businesses were closed up. A few had been turned into cool loft apartments, but it was a work in progress. The homeless liked to hang out there, especially under the Oaken Bridge.
“We picked them up on street cameras heading north,” Louisa said. “We lost them when they turned the corner, but perhaps they were headed here.”
Here was an old three-story brick factory. It was a long rectangular shape with a row of very small windows across the front. It would not have caught the eye of a developer looking to turn the property into upscale housing. Some of the glass appeared to have been knocked out. “Nice,” Rena said sarcastically.
“Yeah. The city is working to get this one torn down.”
“We need to search that building,” A.L. said.
“Already done,” Louisa said. “I showed my boss this information before I came to you and he greased the wheels. They found some homeless. They did not find these two guys or a five-year-old girl.”
“You said that you had them jumping on the bus at another point. Can we see that?” A.L. asked.
“Yeah. This is Wednesday night. About 20:00 hours.”
“The night of Emma’s disappearance,” A.L. said.
“They’re at a bus stop on Poke Street, about eight blocks east of Clayton and Wake.” She pushed some buttons and the images on the screen flickered. “Here we go.”
Sure enough. Getting on the bus was Coyote Frogg and his friend, both looking as ill-kempt as ever. They took a seat but instead of sleeping, they were in an animated conversation. But not a happy one. Coyote looked especially pissed off.
“I wish I could tell what he was saying,” Rena said.
“Yeah. No audio and he’s not at a good angle to read his lips,” Louisa said.
Rena leaned forward. “What’s with their clothes?”
“Fuck,” A.L. said.
Both men were wearing exactly the same thing. Bib overalls over a long-sleeved red T-shirt with the word Wisconsin in white running down both sleeves. “Those look brand-new.”
“Brand-new clothes? Matching?” she said. “I don’t like it.”
“Why?” Louisa asked.
“Unless these two are secretly twins, and we’re pretty confident they’re not, it’s weird to dress alike. They weren’t dressed alike in the Monday video and their clothes weren’t new. So it seems as if these may have very recently been purchased from somewhere where there wasn’t much choice. Who does that? Purchases a whole outfit at one time?”
“Somebody who has to get rid of their clothes quickly,” A.L. said, his voice heavy. “Like somebody who had a kid’s DNA on them.”
No one said anything for a long minute.
Finally, A.L. motioned with his hand. “Let’s keep going. Where do they go?”
“Same place. But this time we got lucky. Well, sort of lucky.” The video continued, filming them getting off the bus and walking up the street.
“Definitely new clothes,” Rena said, pointing. Just barely visible was a tag hanging from the back of Coyote’s friend’s bibs.
Less than a half a block later, they approached a white Jeep, the kind the sides came off of, and got into the back seat. The car drove away.
The video stopped.
“That’s the vehicle that Gi-Gi and Barrett Thompson described. Do we pick it up later? Do we know where it went?” A.L. asked.
Louisa nodded. “We got a nice shot of the plates.” She opened the notebook that she carried and handed them a piece of paper. “Belongs to Pierce Dowl, who lives in Madison. We already passed his address along to our friends there and officers have checked his house. Vehicle is there. No sign of anybody in the house or that anybody has been there for several days. No milk in the fridge. No dirty dishes in the sink.” She stopped. “No odd men with matching clothes.”
“Where does this leave us?” Rena asked.
“I don’t know,” Louisa said. “I’ve looked at video of this same route for Thursday, Friday and today. They never ride that bus again.”
They were gone. Just like Emma. “Thank you, Louisa,” A.L. said. “This has been very helpful. Do you know if somebody is watching this house, seeing if Pierce Dowl returns?”
“They are. Normally, I guess it would be hard to get the resources to do that. But they know what we’re w
orking on here. Everybody is willing to help.”
Rena waited until Louisa was packed up and out of the room before saying, “We don’t need help. We need a miracle.”
“We keep working the case,” A.L. said. “And it’s time to make this official.” He typed on his computer keyboard for several minutes. “Coyote Frogg and his unnamed associate are now identified as Persons of Interest in the disappearance of Emma Whitman. We know that Coyote Frogg was in Baywood on both Monday and Wednesday of this past week. He’s living nearby. We need to get everybody looking and run him to ground.”
“There may not be much more we can do tonight,” Rena said.
“Two more things.” A.L. picked up his smart phone and started pressing keys. “Here it is,” he said. He held his phone out to Rena.
It was a web page for the city of Baywood.
“Look in the middle—there’s a section about the Activities Committee.” She looked and sure enough, it listed the cochairs of the group as Steven Hanzel and Kara Wiese.
“Kara was telling the truth,” she said.
“Looks like it,” A.L. agreed. “No affair, just innocent fun and community service.” He turned to his computer and started typing. Finally looked up. “That was the second thing. I just sent a message that will get distributed to every one of our officers, county and state, about the bib overalls and the red Wisconsin T-shirts. Somebody will know where those are sold.”
“Red Wisconsin T-shirts are sold everywhere,” Rena said.
“Yeah, but not with bib overalls, and we’re specifically looking for a place with limited choices. I put all that in the message.”
He leaned back in his chair and rubbed a hand over his face. “Let’s call it a night,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” It didn’t matter that it was Sunday. Nobody was taking any days off now.
* * *
A.L. drove home and parked in the lot outside his apartment. By habit, he scanned the area first, then opened his door. It was a clear night and the temperature was a comfortable fifty-six. He glanced at his phone, to check one final search update for the night.
Volunteers led by the FBI had searched the Harborview and Olive Grove subdivisions tonight. Both were on the eastern outskirts of Baywood. Every day they widened their circle, ticking off more and more of Baywood. Every day it became less and less likely that a five-year-old could have covered the distance without anybody seeing her. They’d ended the evening with thirty-two volunteers.