Bryce nodded. “Yeah. She told me to go home.”
“Are you going to?” I asked. “Go home?”
He shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know. Not sure what else to do.”
I grabbed a notepad from the dresser, a thin white pad with the hotel logo. I scribbled my number on it and held it out to him. “My cell. If she calls you, I’d like for you to call me.”
He took the paper, studied it for a minute and then shoved it in his pocket. “She’s not gonna call me. Ellie does what she says she’s gonna do. We aren’t going to be getting back together.”
“I understand. But just in case.” I hesitated. “You need money? To get home?”
He shook his head. “I got the credit card. As long as my mom hasn’t canceled it.”
“I’ll call your parents,” I said. “Tell them you’re okay and that you were helpful. You should call them, too.”
He nodded, unenthusiastically.
I knew we needed to go, to track down Morgan, but I sat down on the edge of the bed instead. “Can I ask how you met her?”
“At a party during the summer.” He leaned back in the chair. “We were just talking that night, then she needed a ride home. Her friend left without telling her. I gave her a ride home. I got her number. We went to the movies.” He shrugged. “That was it.”
“You’re older than she is,” I said.
“So?”
“I’m just making an observation.”
He gave a half-eye roll. “I liked her. She liked me.”
“She ever mention being adopted?” Lauren asked.
“Only recently,” he said. “But like I told you before, she didn’t talk a whole lot about herself. I thought she was exaggerating when we took off. So, no. She didn’t really mention it.”
I nodded. I believed him. I didn’t think he had much to offer. And much of my curiosity felt like it was simply from wondering what Elizabeth had been doing rather than gathering information that might be useful in finding her.
“We should go,” Lauren said, glancing at me.
I stood up, the map of Colorado clutched tight in my hand. Elizabeth may have left, but she was still within reach. We didn’t want to miss her again.
“You hear from her, please call,” I reminded him.
He nodded, a frown creasing his face. He was another person on the list. Another person missing Elizabeth, another person who’d lost her.
SIX
“Can’t you call Mike?” Lauren asked. “Ask him to run names in Castle Rock or whatever he does to help you find people?”
We sat in the rental car at the parking lot of the hotel, the heater slowly coming to life, taking the edge off the interior of the car. The lot had emptied considerably since we’d first arrived; we were only one of half a dozen cars still parked at the hotel.
I put my hands on the cold wheel. “No.”
“Why not?” she asked. “You were all weirded out when we left the hospital room in Minneapolis, but you didn’t explain anything. What exactly is going on?”
She was right. I hadn’t explained anything. We’d flown to Colorado in near silence, both of us lost in a world of memory and fear and excitement as we flew to Denver, hoping to find Elizabeth. But I’d had one other thing on my mind, too.
The man who helped me in Minnesota, Rodney Gorman, had inadvertently opened my eyes to something I’d never seen before regarding Elizabeth’s abduction. The picture of my daughter had been sent to the police department in Coronado years earlier. Most likely it had been sent to someone who should’ve followed up on it immediately or, at the very least, passed it on to me. I’d never trusted Lieutenant Bazer, but I’d never thought he’d withhold evidence from me. I never thought he might somehow be tied to my daughter’s disappearance.
And I’d always trusted Mike Lorenzo. Always. He’d been the person I’d confided in the most, the one that helped me do the digging on Elizabeth’s case, the one who worked it like I did. Not in a million years would I have ever thought he could somehow be tied to Elizabeth being missing. But after a brief conversation with Rodney?
Now I felt like I knew nothing.
And I trusted no one.
“I can’t call Mike,” I said.
“Why not?”
“You won’t believe me.”
Lauren shifted in her seat. She took a deep breath, exhaled, and leveled her eyes at me. “Joe. You and I have had a lot of disagreements over the years. About a lot of crap. And especially since she’s been gone. But not once have I ever said to you or even hinted that I didn’t believe anything you’ve ever told me. And if I had? I wouldn’t be sitting in this car with you right now.”
I hated when she put her lawyer voice on. When she sounded calm, cool and reasonable, as if there was no possible way to argue with what she was saying. It made me feel dumb and incompetent and, more often than not, wrong.
Which she had just very succinctly pointed out.
I put my gloveless hands in front of the vent, trying to warm them. “You’re going to think I’m nuts.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But I won’t dismiss what you tell me, especially if it’s somehow tied to Elizabeth.”
I considered my words carefully before I spoke. “I don’t trust Mike right now,” I said slowly. She looked at me, her eyes questioning, and I continued. “The old guy in the hospital in Minneapolis? He told me something that makes me think it’s possible Mike could’ve had a hand in Elizabeth’s disappearance. Or is covering it up. Or something.”
She digested this, blinking several times, then nodded. “Okay. Explain.”
The car continued idling while I told her about my conversation with Rodney and why it had left me so unsettled. She listened closely, not interrupting, not calling me crazy.
“So it’s not just Mike,” she said when I was done. “Could’ve been anyone in the department. Bazer, anyone.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
She leaned back in her seat, crossed her arms across her chest and stared straight ahead. Her mouth was set in a firm line. “You know, it’s always bothered me.”
“What has?”
“The idea that she would’ve gone with someone she didn’t know,” she said. “I told you that the first night.”
She had. I remembered it clearly. We’d been sitting at the kitchen table, both of us numb, staring at the phone, waiting for it to ring, for someone to tell us that she’d been found.
“She wouldn’t have gotten in someone’s car she didn’t know,” she’d said, her hands flat against the kitchen table, her fingers trembling. “Never. We’ve talked about it with her.”
“Safeside Super Chick,” I’d whispered.
Lauren nodded, a ghost of a smile on her face. It was a DVD that had come home from school about safety, about identifying who the ‘safe’ people in your life were. Parents. Relatives. Friends your parents told you were safe. The narrator was this ridiculously costumed super-hero girl and she was accompanied by hokey scenarios and horrific music. Elizabeth loved the DVD and even after we’d gone through it with her, she’d insisted on watching it over and over because she loved Super Chick. She’d gone as Super Chick for Halloween that year.
She knew who her safe people were.
“We’ve called everyone we know,” Lauren had said, her voice breaking.
“So it’s not someone we know. It can’t be.” I said it for me than for Lauren, trying to convince myself.
We’d continued staring at the phone, but it had never rang and now, nearly ten years later, I could remember that conversation like it had just happened.
“I’ve thought about it so many times,” Lauren said now. “How did we not hear something? Did someone she recognize pull up at the curb and pretend to ask directions? Did they use chloroform?” She shook her head, her entire body shuddering. “I’ve thought about it so much it makes me ill. But I’ve never thought she would’ve gone with a stranger or walk up to a car with someone in it that she didn’t know.”
“She would’ve come running in,” I said, gripping the wheel.
Lauren nodded. “To get one of us. To tell us someone needed directions or had a question or whatever. She would’ve. She wouldn’t have been careless.”