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Stallings said, “Any new leads?”

“No, but you know what a bulldog Tony can be.”

“Yeah, a regular Rottweiler.”

“I wish you two could learn to coexist more peacefully.”

“Tell him to stop being such an asshole.”

“He said the same thing about you last night.”

Stallings stopped and turned, making a face like he was hurt. “You don’t really care what an asshole like Tony Mazzetti thinks of me, do you?”

“He doesn’t know you well enough to realize what an asshole you can be.”

Stallings laughed as they kept walking, happy he had a partner with a decent sense of humor.

An hour later, John Stallings sat at a picnic table across the street from the Police Memorial Building or PMB. It was one of the places that many of the detectives used to get away from the office without being away from the office. He considered some of the things Patty had said about being edgy and latching on to the Leah Tischler case like a shark chomping on a chummed baitfish. He knew why he was acting like a maniac. It was the same reason Maria had been even more distant to him. The third anniversary of Jeanie’s disappearance was quickly approaching. Next Wednesday would be three long years without his oldest daughter in the house. The first year had gone by so fast it hadn’t hit him. He’d been so busy searching for his daughter and so hopeful she’d still somehow be found it didn’t seem like a big deal. By the second anniversary everything around the house had settled down and Maria had slipped into that odd, computer-support-group cocoon of hers. They were barely speaking and the daily activity of taking care of Charlie and Lauren kept him so occupied he didn’t dwell on it.

This year was another story. The kids didn’t need him as much and he wasn’t even living at home. He avoided the lonely two-bedroom house he’d rented except to sleep and occasionally eat. So he’d had time to think about his missing daughter and what it was like three years ago. The wave of fear washing through him, the devastating aftermath of the empty bedroom at the top of the stairs, the feeling of failure and despair.

The day Jeanie went missing was easily the worst day of his life. He was once stabbed in a fight with a drunken homeless man. That moment of realization when the blade seemed to appear out of nowhere and plunge into the left side of his stomach was terrifying and painful beyond words. He’d take a knife in the gut every day if he could just have Jeanie back.

He liked to focus on the good times he’d had with his daughter. Not the fights or sleepless nights after he had found a small bag of marijuana in her purse. One of his favorite memories was when she had turned twelve and joined a lacrosse club at her school. One game into the season the coach lost his job and had to move to Dallas. Stallings stepped in as the coach even though he didn’t know the rules, strategy, or goals of the game. But all the girls, especially Jeanie, appreciated his effort and he’d never forget those sunny Sunday afternoons when they had practiced until no one had the energy to run up and down the field.

His first week coaching he tried to adjust and not yell at the girls like he had the boys’ football team he coached a few years earlier. It didn’t take him long to realize the girls were tougher and smarter than the boys their own age. Finally he followed his instincts and the team became one of the most feared lacrosse clubs in the county.

The highlight of the season didn’t come after the championship game. It was much earlier, after the second win, during a long Wednesday evening practice. The girls were filling out an order form for photos with the team mom, a lovely woman from East Arlington. Jeanie walked over to her dad and plopped down next to him, just off the field. For no reason she reached across and gave him a big hug. All she said was, “Thanks, Dad.” It was among the most precious moments of his whole life and it was the moment he chose to reflect on while sitting on the hard bench across from the Police Memorial Building.

He was glad no one was around when he had to use his shirttail to wipe the tears off his cheeks.

FOUR

After lunch, John Stallings and Patty Levine sat in their office at the Police Memorial Building. The detective bureau on the second floor of the PMB was affectionately referred to as the Land That Time Forgot because the detectives rarely saw the new equipment and innovations the rest of the building enjoyed. Stallings didn’t mind it; he had never cared about the condition of the office because he felt like a real detective needed to be out on the street working cases, not sitting around a plush office, chatting with the other cops about how much work they did. In fact, he usually felt antsy at his desk, but it was a necessary evil to keep track of all the leads he and Patty followed every day. He rarely paid attention to the detectives’ comings and goings, but today he did notice the bureau was empty and their sergeant, Yvonne Zuni, was not at her desk in the small, separate office at the end of the squad bay.

His cell phone rang and he took a second to screen the call, seeing the name of the lead homicide detective, Tony Mazzetti, appear on the small Motorola phone. He considered not answering because he hated talking to the smug son of a bitch. Then he realized Tony Mazzetti didn’t enjoy talking to him either and decided it might be important.

Stallings answered the phone and said, “What’s up, Tony?”

“I need your help.”

A small smile spread across Stallings’s face. “Really now? You need my help? This is an interesting situation. Do you mind saying it again? I like the sound of it.”

“I need your help, Stall. That’s as much as I’d like to banter back and forth with you. I need your fucking help right now.”

Stallings knew when it was time for fun and games; now Mazzetti sounded serious. “What’s wrong, Tony?”

“I have a body at a construction site in the south end of town.”

“You need help on a homicide?”

“Patty gave me one of the info sheets you made up on the missing girl, Leah Tischler.”

“Oh God, you found her body?”

“No. This victim is named Kathy Mizell.”

“I don’t understand. What’d you need me for?”

“We identified the belt used to strangle her. It’s from the swanky private school the missing girl attended.”

Stallings didn’t say anything as silence held on the crackle of static over the cell phones.

Mazzetti said, “I think it’s Leah Tischler’s belt.”

Patty Levine sat in the passenger seat of John Stallings’s county-issued Chevy Impala. She didn’t try to engage him in small talk; she knew him too well. His mood always turned dark after hearing about the death of any young woman. This one was more devastating because of the implication that Leah Tischler was dead as well. No cop took a missing girl more seriously or her death harder. Unfortunately it was an all too common event. And that was just one of many concerns Patty had for her partner, who’d endured far too much stress in recent months. Patty looked across at Stallings, who focused his attention on the road, moving fast but not recklessly. His normally short, brown, curly hair barely touched his collar, and his handsome face, with the scar over one eyebrow and a slightly broken nose, gave him the look of a former football star who’d stayed in pretty good shape since college.

He rarely spoke to her about his problems with Maria, but that wasn’t the heaviest weight on him right now. Patty didn’t think he or his wife had ever moved past the disappearance of Jeanie. No parent really did, and Maria and John Stallings weren’t just any parents. They were both trying to change the world in their own ways: Maria by involving herself in peer counseling for other grieving parents and Stallings through his work in Missing Persons. Now Stallings had set up house not far from the family and had been working hard to make time for the kids. Any time something like this happened, Stallings tended to tune out everything by finding the person responsible. For his sake Patty hoped they had a suspect in custody already.