by Geonn Cannon
She carefully made her way back across the icy pavement. She noticed the wet footprints just inside the door so she wasn't surprised to find a walk-in client waiting in the office. The woman stood and turned to face the door when she came back in, and Dale offered an apologetic smile and waved.
"Sorry about that. I just had to step out for a second. Hi, I'm Dale Frye."
The woman was gorgeous, with waves of black hair that had hints of going lighter brown at the roots. Her smile dimpled her cheeks and chin, and just before it crinkled her bright blue eyes Dale thought they looked oddly familiar. She wore a black silk blouse open at the collar to reveal a sapphire pendant on a gold chain at her collar, and her skirt looked like it cost more than everything Dale was wearing combined. The woman was tall, most likely even without the dangerous shoes she was perched upon, and she made Dale feel puny in front of her.
"Hello, Miss Frye. Would it be all right if I refrained from introducing myself for the time being? It's nothing personal..."
Dale cut her off with a wave of her hand as she walked around her desk. "It's fine. A lot of our clients request anonymity. You can give me whatever name you like, or you can refrain from giving a name until Ms. Willow is back. I understand the need for privacy. You can wait for her if you'd like. She shouldn't be too long."
"Thank you very much." The woman smoothed a hand over the back of her skirt as she sat, crossing her legs and lacing her fingers in front of one knee. "Ms. Willow is, um, out on an investigation, I presume?"
"She is." Dale gestured at the window as she took a seat. "We lost a week due to the storm so she's trying to make up for it by jumping right back on the horse, as it were."
The client nodded. "Yes. We all lost time during the storm. Sometimes it's not so easy to get it back."
"I'm sure. Ari will do her best to help you."
She smiled. "You have a lot of faith in her, don't you?"
"Of course. She's an amazing detective. In fact, the case she's on right now is one that was officially closed. She's not getting paid to follow up on it, but she has to make sure everything is tied up to her satisfaction before she can let it go."
"Mm." The woman nodded slightly and scanned the office as if she was appraising it. "A worthy aspect in an investigator. How long have you worked with her?"
"Five years. Feels like longer." She smiled. "In the best sense, I mean. I can't imagine not doing this, or not having Ari in my life."
The woman's expression softened slightly and she made a quiet sound in her throat as she examined the floor beyond the pointed toe of her shoe. "You obviously care a lot about her. Could you tell me - if it's not overstepping - how far exactly she would go in order to close a case? You mentioned she's working on something now without getting paid. How long will she pursue it if she doesn't get an answer?"
Dale considered the question, wondering how much she could reveal. "This is kind of a special case. A little girl was endangered, and even though she's safe now, the police didn't catch the man who endangered her. So Ari is going to stick with it until the man is apprehended or else until she's positive the girl is safe."
"I see." She checked her watch, glanced toward the door, and uncrossed her legs. "Ms. Frye, thank you for your hospitality, but I'm afraid I have an appointment I can't miss. Can I come back later this afternoon to speak with Ms. Willow?"
"Of course. I'll make sure she's free. Say four o'clock?"
The woman nodded as she stood. "That would be ideal." She shook Dale's hand over the desk and smiled before she left the offices. Dale watched her go, admiring the line of the woman's body before she marked the appointment on Ari's calendar. Gorgeous woman, stately and elegant, refined. Since the Gavin case blew up all over the papers, they had been getting more and more calls from the elite parts of town. Dale had always had a thing for rich, done-up women so she was enjoying the procession of finely perfumed and beautifully jeweled clients that had passed through the door.
Alone again, she started polishing up the report on the Jenna Morris case with the speculation they had done at the apartment. All their theories had been shot down, but some bit of logic they had used might lead to the truth in an unexpected way when they had more clues to work with. Part of her mind was occupied with thoughts of her attraction to rich women to the point where she was imagining Ari as an heiress and wondering if anywhere nearby rented French maid costumes.
Ari came in just as Dale was finishing up the report. "Hey, puppy. I'm glad you're here. I have something I want to run by you." She looked up and saw Ari was standing just inside the door and slowly scanning the room as if she'd misplaced something. "What's wrong?"
"Was someone here?" She slowly took off her scarf and unbuttoned her jacket as she continued to look around suspiciously.
"Yeah. She wanted to talk to you about a case, but she had another appointment."
Ari shut the door. "Did she touch anything?"
Dale stood up. "I don't know. What's wrong?"
"I need... your hand, you shake hands with the clients." She gestured for Dale's right hand. Dale furrowed her brow but offered it. Ari took Dale's hand in both of hers and brought it to her face, breathing deeply.
"Ari, what's wrong?"
She exhaled and opened her eyes. "That wasn't a client, Dale. That was my mother."
Dale's eyes widened and she pulled her hand away, suddenly wanting to run into the en suite to wash the scent off.
"What did she say she wanted?"
"Sh-she didn't. I thought she was just... I respected her privacy." She tried to remember exactly what they had discussed. "We talked about you. How long I've worked with you, what kind of detective you were, that sort of thing." She realized something else. "Oh, God. She was in here alone. I went next door to borrow a shovel for the sidewalk, and she was already here when I got back. Could she have planted something?"
"Like what?"
Dale shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. A bug? A camera?"
Ari smiled and cupped the back of Dale's head. She pulled her forward and kissed her forehead. "That's not her way. Relax." She dropped her hands to Dale's shoulders and squeezed. "She just asked about me?"
"Yeah. I thought she was a potential client so I may have gushed a little. But otherwise I just told the truth. She said she was going to come back at four. Do you think she'll actually keep the appointment?"
"I think we have to act as if she will." She looked at her watch. "Okay. We have a couple of hours until we have to worry about that. Come on into my office, and bring your notepad. I found out some interesting stuff at the bar."
Dale picked up a pad off paper off the desk and followed Ari into the main office. She caught Ari scenting the air to see if her mother had snuck into the inner office, but she didn't seem to find any evidence of her intrusion. She sat on the couch and, when Dale was settled next to her, Ari recounted what she had learned from Nicky at the bar.
When she was finished she sighed and shook her head. "I thought it would clear things up, but I'm even more confused now than when I started. Why would someone go to all the trouble to kidnap a random little girl? If the Mystery Man wanted to get at Jenna, he would have gone straight to Brandon Kent. But instead he goes to Huey Onatero and asks him about anyone with access to kids. Beyond the creepiness factor, that doesn't tell us anything. Why would you do that and immediately give the girl back unharmed?"
"Maybe you're compounding your errors."
Ari looked at her. "What does that mean?"
"You're trying to figure out the logic of the scenario. But whoever the Mystery Man is kidnapped a little girl. Took her away from her mother for reasons unknown. Since you can't fathom doing that, you can't extrapolate to a scenario where you would give her back. You and Mystery Man are standing on separate islands. His crazy island has a bridge that leads him to the mainland, and you can't figure out how he got over there from your little sane archipelago."
"Okay. So how do I get to his island?"
/> "You can't. But you can change the situation so that it works for your island." She put down her pad and turned to face Ari. "You can't imagine taking a little girl, so change it from a kidnapped little girl. Let's say you stole, I don't know, the last slice of pecan pie from the fridge."
Ari blinked in surprise. "I can't believe you're bringing that up."
"It's a hypothetical." She tapped Ari's thigh with her fingers. "Okay, so instead of trying to figure out the logic of a kidnapper, imagine you're hungry and you go to the fridge--"
Ari interrupted, "And I see the pie you told me earlier you weren't planning to eat."
"Hush. I'm doing your job for you. We don't need to worry about the logic of why you took it right now. That will come later, and it's more important to figure out the second part. After you've gone to the effort of taking the pie, what would make you give it back? No arguments, no negotiations, no fight. You just randomly decide to give it back to me."
"This is a tortured comparison, Dale. It has no bearing on why Mystery Man took Jenna or why he gave her back."
"Just play along, Ari."
She sighed and closed her eyes. "Because I felt bad about taking the pie away from you. Which I would then extrapolate to the kidnapper feeling remorse for what he had done. But I didn't feel remorse about the pie until you caught me, and... what are we saying, that the kidnapper didn't realize he was doing something wrong until the moment he had Jenna?"
"Maybe he was worried about eventually getting caught."
Ari shook her head. "He planned too much to just suddenly change his mind once he had the girl. He had to know that he was risking prison the moment he took her. People who plan kidnappings this thoroughly don't suddenly realize it's a felony and then repent."
"Okay. Back to the pie..."
Ari groaned in frustration and stood up. "Enough with the pie, Dale! It's not an appropriate metaphor. The reasons for giving back pie are incongruous with giving back the little girl you kidnapped. You give back pie because it doesn't taste good, or because it's not the right kind, or it..." She trailed off, frozen in place. Outside they could hear the rhythmic scrape of the shovel as their neighbor cleared away the slush, snow and ice.
"What?"
"It's not the right kind."
Dale tilted her head to the side. "I'm not following you."
"Let's say you're a kidnapper, but you don't have a specific victim in mind. You want to kidnap someone because... hell, who cares about the why. It's on your bucket list. You find a guy with access to a kid, you pay him upfront to commit this felony. He stakes out the victim, sweeps her up, takes her to your evil lair, and you realize she's black."
"Why does that matter?"
"I don't know. I'm not that far across the bridge yet. But that's gotta be it. Huey and Nicky both said that Mystery Man came in looking for anybody. He wound up with Brandon Kent, who was Asian but might have passed as white if the lighting was bad enough. Maybe Asian would even have worked for whatever Mystery Man wanted. The point is, whatever he had in mind, black wouldn't work."
"So... what, he's a racist on top of everything else?"
Ari began to pace. "I don't know. But the ransom amount didn't matter, the identity of the girl didn't matter, so what's the only thing he could have been disappointed by?"
"He wanted someone like Missing Melody?"
"Sure." She flinched and shook her head. "No. It's not like an iPhone or something. You don't see someone with a kidnapped girl and think, 'Ooh, I gotta get me one of those.' It's not a competition or a status thing. And besides, people don't imitate a crime three days after it happens or while it's still being investigated. Why would two different people kidnap two different girls in the same week?"
"Are we sure it was two different people?"
Ari looked at her. "You think someone kidnapped them both but decided they didn't want Jenna?"
Dale dismissed her own comment with a wave of her hand. "I'm thinking about the story again, sorry. Johanna and Agatha, the wolves leaving dead bodies of children lying around to rile up the villagers."
"Wait," Ari whispered. "Wait, wait." She pressed her thumb between her eyes, a pose Dale knew meant that she was thinking hard. "This isn't canidae and hunters, but what if it's something similar? Missing Melody was kidnapped three days before Jenna got taken. But Brandon Kent staked out the house for at least a couple of days before there was an opening to take her. So maybe we can presume that he was paid to take her around the same time Melody was taken. They weren't taken at the same time, but maybe they were supposed to be."
Dale looked down at her notes. "Is there anything to connect the Scott and Morris families?"
"No, but that's the point. They're strangers. Melody Scott is like one of those Precious Moments figurines. Whoever took her knew that there would be an exhaustive hunt. They knew there would be posters and news updates. They knew Melody's picture would be all over the city until she was found." Her eyes snapped open. "So the kidnapper planned to make sure she was found. Oh, God. Melody wasn't taken to be ransomed. Whoever took her wants to keep her."
Dale stood up. "Jenna was supposed to be a decoy."
Ari put a hand on her stomach, nauseated. "They were going to kill her. The plan was to grab a second girl, kill her, dump her somewhere, and let people assume she was Melody Scott."
"That would never work," Dale said softly. "There's DNA and dental records. The body would have to be identified by someone, a family member. And if the plan was to pass someone off as Melody, then the Mystery Man would have asked more questions about her. Height, age, hair color. He would want to make sure there was a resemblance."
"It depends on how much damage they were planning to do. If there were no teeth, no dental records. And DNA results take time in the real world. The truth wouldn't matter for the first few weeks. A little girl goes missing, and then all of a sudden a body turns up? If it's even close to right, the media isn't going to wait for DNA results before they declare a tragic end to the story. By the time the truth comes out, whoever took Melody is far enough away that they can't get caught. But if the body they find is black, the jig is instantly up."
"Oh, God, Ari, I don't... I don't like this line of thinking."
"Neither do I, but it explains everything. The timing, the set-up, the relatively easy ransom exchange. The second kidnapping was supposed to be a decoy to cover up the first. But Jenna didn't fit, so they gave her back as easily as they could without raising suspicion. Then Brandon was killed because he'd screwed everything up. Mystery Man didn't care about me, Jenna, or the ransom. The exchange was a trap, but it was for Brandon."
"Ari, it's been weeks since Melody was taken and Jenna was given back. If you're right, then whoever took Melody is long gone."
"No. They wouldn't take a chance while she's still in the news. There are still updates on KING5 every Saturday. The story went national. Everyone in this part of the country knows what Melody Scott looks like, so he has to bide his time. This is it, Dale. This explains everything. But if I'm right, then we've got bigger problems."
"I'm scared to ask."
Ari nodded toward the window. "A blizzard like this, it would be very easy to make a kidnapping look like a kid just wandered away from home and got lost. Now would be the perfect time for our guy to go hunting for a second decoy. He could be out there right now looking for another little girl to kidnap."
Chapter Twenty-one
Ari shrugged back into her jacket and took her scarf off the hook. "We have to talk to Detective Lorne and see if anyone's reported a missing girl since the storm passed. Mystery Man wouldn't make the same mistake twice. He'll be looking for a girl that matches Melody as closely as possible. She just has to look right and the story will fade away long enough for him to get away with her."
Dale said, "What do you need me to do?"
Ari put her hand on her forehead and thought for a moment. "Come with me to the police. If we're both telling the same story, it might
seem less crazy. Marginally."
"Okay." Dale shut off her computer.
As she was getting into her coat, someone knocked on the door and came inside without waiting for a reply. Ari tensed, smelling the intruder before she turned around. Dale took a step back, putting Ari between her and the new arrival as a way of firmly declaring which side she was on. Gwyneth noticed Dale's reaction and smiled.
"I see my daughter has told you who I really am. I apologize for lying to you earlier, Ms. Frye, but I just had to get a look at you. I was curious to see the woman who holds the fate of our species in the palm of her hand."
"Don't." Ari's voice was almost a growl. "Do not play on her guilt like that or so help me, I'll make you regret it."
Gwyneth eyed Ari and then looked back at Dale. "I also apologize for allowing your misconception to continue, but to be completely fair, I never lied."
"You said you wanted to hire us."
"No, actually, I didn't. I simply let you draw your own conclusions as to my presence. Dale Frye. Hm. Such an entitled little girl. Milo told me about your sham marriage idea. It won't work. This isn't a game, and it isn't posturing between two bored people. This is war. They want to kill us all. They want to eradicate us from the planet, and they will succeed unless you do the right thing."
"This thing has been falling apart for decades," Ari said. "As long as I've been alive. Well... since about nine months before I was born, right?"
Gwyneth's eyes flashed with anger mixed with enough shame that Ari almost felt bad for making the jab. "I suppose telling Milo was a way to get the information to you... I'm glad you know the truth after all this time, even if it doesn't change the way you feel about me."