Molina fetched two sets of latex crime scene gloves from the going-out-the-door supplies in a kitchen drawer.
“You can’t think—” Morrie began.
“Anything’s possible. One of the mothers I called tonight should have been able to pinpoint Mariah’s whereabouts. The kid wrote her destination on the fridge, as we agreed. It’s door-to-door pick up and drop off. Even if Mariah fudged things, someone should have a clue.”
By then they were stepping over books, and papers, and articles of clothing in Mariah’s bedroom.
“I’ve walked into a nightmare like this before,” Morrie said.
“Blair Witch Project?”
“My own teen daughter’s bedroom, years ago.”
The usual cop-shop black humor was rearing its macabre head. They’d both reverted to what gave them the distance that made efficiency possible instead of panic.
“Kids this age do tend to go a little AWOL,” he commented. “Testing the limits. They get crazy ideas.”
“And I haven’t been paying proper attention lately.” Molina brushed her thick hair back from her face, but it flopped forward again, thanks to its recent “disguise” as an actual hairdo. “You know teen girls better than I do, Morrie. Keep searching here and I’ll check with the next-door neighbors. Maybe they saw something.”
When she got outside, the sun was thinking about dropping completely behind the mountains. The streetlights were only faintly lit, also looking like they might change their minds any minute, looking like fancy entry hall lights in better neighborhoods.
The Vargas house on the right wasn’t lit inside for the evening yet. She was a nurse’s aide and he drove long haul.
Molina tried the doorbell, but heard no faint interior bing or buzz inside. These old fifties’ bungalows needed constant updating. So she knocked. Hard. The door cracked open on inner shadow. Slacker youngest son, the only one still at home, looked her over.
“If it ain’t the lady lieutenant, all got up to go boogying.”
She’d forgotten she wore her Carmen Miranda disguise. “I’ll go boogying down to the city jail with you someday, you don’t straighten up. Roberto, isn’t it?”
He leaned against the door jamb in his low-slung baggies and gang bandana. Almost twenty-one and had never held a job. “What can I do for you?” His smirk answered his question.
“I’m looking for Mariah.”
“The kid? She’s gettin’ kinda cute, lootenant. Still a little porky, though.”
Could an adult woman punch out a lippy twenty-year-old manboy? In her case, yes, but should she?
“You look like you’ve been hanging at home all day.” She sniffed. “Doing weed. You see anyone drive up to my place? Hear anyone, a car or van?”
“Nah. Your place is like a funeral home, usta be you had no traffic nohow. Lately been some dude coming and going at all hours, as they say on TV. Maybe the chickie baby made tracks because your new b-friends were going after her.”
He was hard against the doorjamb, her fist twisted in the sleazy fabric of his T-shirt and her knee cocked to ram him in the crotch. The searing pull on her healing cut only made her madder.
“Don’t mess with me, punk. I can have you up on all sorts of charges, but most of all I can have a lot more satisfaction leaving a lot of you on this door frame. Did you see or hear any vehicles coming and going at my address today, or not?”
“Not.”
She started to relax her grip.
“Bitch.”
Before she could ram and slam further, someone pulled her back.
“‘Buzz-E’ bad boy Vargas,” Dirty Larry said. “The lieutenant doesn’t know the half of what you could be put away for, including dustups in Aryan Brotherhood and Crips and Bloods land, but I do. Be a good niño and go suck on cannabis until you’re in a coma.”
“I ain’t queer!”
Larry’s chuckle was sinister, an older, wiser man’s threat. “You don’t wanna be, stay out of federal prison and shut up if you don’t have any news to offer.”
He pushed the punk back into the dark house and slammed the door shut on him.
Molina was fuming. “What are you doing here? I was handling it.”
Dirty Larry was chuckling again, this time admiringly. “A bit too much. You can practice your more aggressive moves on me sometime, if you want.”
He was called Dirty Larry because he worked undercover. He’d shoved his way into her life on his street cred and a certain sexy interest she didn’t trust and wasn’t even sure she was interested in.
“Why are you here?” she demanded.
“I was concerned about the LVMPD Iron Maiden being out sick and then sick on the job for so long. You don’t look ill, though. You look hot tonight. Now wonder you got scumbag sass.”
Walking back to her driveway, where Morrie’s hybrid Honda Civic sat uneasily next to Larry’s restored gas guzzler, a seventies Chevy Impala, he reached out to snap one of her big gold hoop earrings with his thumb and forefinger.
“You look like a Gypsy queen about to read tarot cards. Been on a date, Carmen?”
“Godammit, Larry! My daughter is missing. I don’t give a shit about your issues or inferences.”
His mocking attitude dropped like a john’s pants in north Las Vegas.
“Mariah gone? That’s bad stuff. Sorry. What can I do?”
She looked around, thinking. By then they were at her front door.
“Morrie’s going over her room for any clues. Go and hassle my neighbors. You seem to be good at it. Mariah was supposed to be picked up at four for a group study pizza dinner, but the mother-chauffeur says the pick up was called off.”
“By Mariah?”
“By her daughter, who said Mariah was going to another girl’s house instead. I called there. They had no idea on that end about anything, mother or daughter.”
“Hate to say it. Kid pulled a fastie.”
“I don’t care what she did, I want her found and back.”
“Hey.” His arm braced her shoulders. “It’s probably a stupid prank. I’ll pull fingernails all over the block to see if anybody saw anything.”
“They’re neighbors. Good people. With the occasional delinquent kid. Just ask.”
“Yeah. You go help Alch. He’s a thorough guy. I’ll cover the waterfront.”
She smiled weakly. “Thanks.”
“Working undercover, I see a lot of runaways. Your kid is not one of them. Trust me.”
She nodded.
No, she didn’t trust him. Couldn’t. Mariah was gone, and anybody fresh to their lives, Mariah’s or her own, was suspect. After all, a stalker had been loose in their house, several times. She’d been so sure who that was . . . .
Suddenly, what she thought or didn’t think about Max Kinsella and his disappearing act was irrelevant, immaterial, and a damned, delusive waste of time.
Lost in Cyberspace
Seeing Morris Alch’s iron-gray head bent over a laptop computer on a kiddie-size desk while his hands two-fingered their way across the keyboard was an oddly reassuring sight.
He looked up as Molina entered the bedroom, his face craggy in the unflattering light of a small desk lamp.
“Nothing in the room, though your daughter has the drugstore makeup concession knocked.”
“I only allow her some lip gloss.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not hip with the tween set these days. Who knows where those allowances are going, huh? Anything missing from the room besides Mariah?”
“Who could tell in this mess? There’s her school backpack, but she wouldn’t take that. Cell phone! It’d be on the bed table . . . no. Otherwise, on the desk.”