The captain nodded and looked back at me. “So my daughter follows celeb gossip. I don’t like it, and when she starts spouting stuff as fact, I make her start actually looking up the facts. That was the case when she got hooked on that pop singer...you know, that Canadian kid? Anyway, she used to be one of his believers or whatever they called themselves a few years ago. She was whining about how unfair it was that he got in trouble for one of his DUIs? So I made her write a report about drunk driving.” She gave me a slightly smug look. “It had to include images. She was fifteen, a cop’s daughter, so it’s not like she wasn’t aware of certain things.”
I really hoped she was going somewhere with this. My patience was about gone.
Her expression sobered and she looked out the window. “A week later, a friend of hers was killed by a drunk driver. She got rid of all of his music, tore up his posters, trashed it all. To this day, she gets hot if his name is even mentioned. We still have these discussions, though. If she goes on and on about how much she likes somebody, I ask her why.”
She looked back at me and my skin felt about two sizes to small now. Maybe I was slow, but I’d just figured where she was going with this.
“Which is why I was kind of surprised when she told me she was kind of rooting for this Cabby thing.”
Confused, I looked over at Ryan. He coughed. It didn’t do much to cover his laugh, though.
Getting irritated, I looked back at the captain. “I don’t know what in the hell this Cabby thing is and I don’t care. I want to know what we need to do to find my–” I stopped and blew out a breath. “How do we find Haley?”
“We’re working on it. This is just part of the team. We have a meeting in thirty minutes with the rest. Work with me, okay?” She glanced at Ryan. “Are you going to explain so I can finish?”
Ryan shrugged as he glanced at me. “Cabby is a mash-up of you and Carly. Bobby and Carly. It’s a…” He grimaced and smacked his hands together. “When people like a couple together, they say things like ‘we ship Cabby’… that means they like you and Carly together.”
“Fu–” I snapped my jaws together and looked at the captain. “Excuse me, ma’am.” Tuite made an odd strangled sound, but I ignored him. “Okay, I get that. Now, Haley?”
“In a few minutes.” She’d come in with a folder, and now she laid it down, flipping it open.
“You impressed a Lieutenant Todd Hollister quite a bit, I must say, Bobby...may I call you Bobby?”
I jerked a shoulder. She’d done her homework.
“As I was saying, Bobby. Hollister had some interesting things to say about you. Granted, he solved a number of cases with the evidence you gave over the months following your arrest, so perhaps he had reason to be partial, but he said if any of the kids he brought in had a chance at turning it around, he’d bet on you.”
She was watching me now. I could feel it, but I stared at the table top. It was some cheap kind of fake wood, typical cop shop décor. Maybe I’d start comparing all the cop shops I ended up in. I had Indiana under my belt – long story – Kentucky, and now California. Three out of fifty states.
“Why didn’t you just grab the kid?” she asked softly.
“What kid?” Witter asked.
Paper rustled. I stared harder at the table.
As the tension in the air grew thick and heavy, I scraped my nail over a minuscule indentation in the fake wood. Some sort of chip.
A few minutes passed and then I heard Tuite’s voice. “I’m already familiar with the basics too, John. My, um, well, my wife’s sort of into the whole Carly and Bobby thing too.” He cleared his throat.
I glanced up as the heat spread up my face and he was staring pointedly at the ceiling. Now John was eying me with narrowed eyes. Because he was there and I still didn’t like him, I shot him the bird. Again.
Ryan blew out an exasperated breath. “Bobby.”
I spun my chair to face the captain. “I want to know what we have to do to find Haley.”
She simply drew another piece of paper from the file she’d brought in. “Is he familiar at all?”
All the oxygen rushed from my lungs and my heart sank as I found myself staring at a skinnier, older, harder version of the man I killed.
“That’s...” I had to clear my throat twice to finish. “That’s Derrell’s father. Derrell Mitchell, Sr.”
She simply nodded and then leaned over, tapped the time stamp. “The photo was taken two days ago at a gas station about three hours south of here. A lot closer to your neck of the woods. The make and model of the van fits with what was seen near the missing child’s home.” She gestured to the front end of the van. “It looks like he was working his way north.”
Chapter 19
Eric Haskell should have been her dad, her birth dad. He was Haley’s real dad and I knew that. In all the ways that counted, he was her real dad.
He’d been there for her first word, her first step, losing her first tooth. He’d put band-aids on her scrapes and wiped away her tears. He would be the one to teach her how to drive, and shoot hoops, and glare at her prom date and all of that.
I wanted to promise him we’d find her so he could do all of those things, things it seemed to me that a good dad would do. But what did I know about good dads?
Even as I tried to find the words to tell him that, the fair-haired man came across the room to me, his hand held out.
“We’re going to find her,” he said softly.
I looked down at his hand, confused by it. He continued to wait. Slowly, I reached out and folded my hand around his. He squeezed lightly and shook. A good grip. He had a good grip, the kind of hand that told me he wasn’t afraid of work, either.
If I could’ve hand-picked a man to be my daughter’s father, I was pretty sure I would’ve picked him.
“We’ll find her,” he said again.
“Shouldn’t I be telling you that?” I said, my voice hoarse.
“We can tell each other.” He smiled then.
His hair was a few shades paler than mine, and instead of green eyes, his were blue. His features were broad and square and his nose looked like it had been broken once. Mine had too, but it had healed fairly straight. Still, we looked enough alike that somebody could mistake us for family. Haley would never have to worry about people commenting that she didn’t look like her parents.
My phone buzzed again and I tugged it out, checking the message from Carly.
I have to talk to you. Urgent.
Glancing behind me, I counted all the cops, eyed Ryan talking with Captain Grace Bauer.
“People!”
Witter and another cop – Lieutenant Rossini – were clearing the way toward the front, two techs behind them. They were adding to the wire taps on the phone and when we left, Witter and Rossini would stay here.
I’d been told Tuite would be coming with me to my hotel.
Fuck that. I wasn’t going to a damn hotel.
Hunching my shoulders, I hurriedly tapped in a response.
Don’t have much time. Cops here. Some sort of meeting. I’m supposed to go to a hotel with one of them in case I get contacted. They’re pretty sure they know who it is.
There was only the briefest pause before Carly’s reply came up.
That cache be right. Inn follows.
I scowled at the gibberish, but before I could ask what the hell she was talking about, the next message came up.
FUCKING AUTOCORRECT. That can’t be right. You need to call me. I’m following Ridley. He knows something about this, Bobby!
“WHAT!”
At the sound of my bellow, the entire room went quiet, but they could’ve been invisible for all I cared. I half-knocked one of the techs over in my rush to get to Ryan. One of the cops had a hand on his gun. I did notice that, the same way I saw Tuite stilling him with a hand on his arm. I grabbed Ryan by the lapels of his suit, shaking him.