Robyn made a whimpering sound, then sighed, then started dialing again.
“Leave a message if no one answers,” Jane said.
“But why would he call”-Robyn clamped the phone to her cheek, looked at Melissa with pleading eyes-“and not say anything?”
“It could have been a-” Melissa seemed to be searching for a word. “You know, he sat on the phone, it hit speed dial. Could be they’re fine. Maybe he didn’t say anything because he didn’t even know he had called.”
Possibly, Jane had to admit. But it didn’t explain where the two were.
“I’m calling the police.” Jane hit 22, Jake’s speed dial. Forget about asking permission. If she was wrong, Jane thought, fine. Happy to be wrong.
“Jake?” Hurray, no voice mail beep. Imagine, a phone call actually going through. “It’s me.”
Jane.
“Hey.” Jake turned off the ignition and opened his cruiser door, holding the phone against his shoulder. He’d parked in the police garage, a dankly crowded basement full of cruisers and memories. Just a few months ago, a bad guy had held a cadet hostage here. Another cop shot and killed him as Jake tried to defuse the standoff. The supe had called it a success, but to Jake, death never felt like success. He couldn’t step onto the oil-soaked concrete without thinking of it, wondering what he might have done differently.
“Hang on, just parking,” he said. Stalling.
Jane. He was supposed to meet her, and her family, at the restaurant in forty-five minutes.
He slammed the cruiser door. “One more second,” he said.
He hadn’t answered her texts. Here it comes. He grimaced as he walked toward the stairs. He had been kind of a jerk.
“What’s up?” he asked, trying to erase the past with a conciliatory tone. Might as well let bygones be. He and Jane would figure it out. “We still on for tonight?”
His frown deepened as he heard the story. Jane’s calls from her sister, and the distraught mother Robyn Fasullo Wilhoite, and the nine-year-old Gracie Fasullo, potentially missing, along with, perhaps, her stepfather Lewis Wilhoite. Or not.
None of the names pinged. Jake had the city’s “most wanteds” in his head, and a top twenty list of local sex offenders, as well as a roster of usual suspects, the gang members and losers and ex-cons and low-life local scumbags considered bad pennies at HQ and in the district courts. There was no Lewis Wilhoite.
He started climbing the stairs from the basement garage, rounded the landing to the lobby floor, still listening. Jane’s voice was guarded, he could tell. Stating the facts, without her usual appraising commentary or revealing inflection.
“Am I on speaker?” he asked. “Everyone in the room?”
“Nope.” She cleared her throat. “But yes, they’re here.”
“There has to be a potential abduction for an AMBER Alert,” Jake said. “Or a-”
Jane interrupted. “Yeah, I know. But no one is, uh…” She paused, as if choosing her words carefully. “No one is exactly saying that’s what happened. Apparently he takes her on ‘adventures.’”
“Well, yeah. So, problem. Although we don’t need a formal alert to be on the lookout for a missing kid, you know? We just like to be pretty sure the kid is actually missing,” he said. “Has-what’s her name, Robyn? Has she called everyone she knows?”
“She said so,” Jane said. “Hang on for a sec.”
Jake tapped his wallet against the flat black security pad designed to keep the stairwell free of intruders and opened the door in to the lobby of police headquarters. Built twenty years ago, it was still dismissed by the veterans as “new.” The marble-floored great room, which was designed to be intimidating and welcoming at the same time, failed at both. The ceilings were too high, the chairs too uncomfortable. Two-story windows let in all the light, so much that in summer it was glaring orange and hot, in winter freezing and gloomy gray.
“Jake,” Jane said. “They’re okay.”
He could hear hesitation in her voice. She didn’t sound quite right.
“Who’s okay? Wilhoite and the little girl? Are they there? With you?” If she was seeing them, case closed. Another family emergency resolved. Happened all the time. Panicked parents, missed connections, mixed signals, easy explanations.
“No,” Jane said. “Robyn has the stepfather-Lewis-on the phone, though. They-hang on. Sorry to keep doing this, Jake. Just hearing this now.”
“Sure.” Jake waited, watching the beams from the illuminating streetlights outside HQ on Schroeder Place create bands of light and shadow on the dust-streaked marble floor. Every passing footfall echoed in the cavernous lobby, whether the clack of high heels or the thud of the cops’ regulation black boots. The squeak of a rubber-soled running shoe distracted him. Jake looked up to follow the sound.
Bobby Land. Head down, walking fast. Almost to the revolving door.
“Hey, Bobby. Land.” Jake took a step toward him, then another. Jane was still away from the phone. At least now he could find out the latest. Calvin Hewlitt had been ordered to make it right with this kid. Jake still wondered what “make it right” entailed.
Land looked up, registered Jake. Stopped. And gave him a thumbs-up.
“Copa-cetic,” Land said.
He’d put his camo hat on, bill to the back. Jake tried to unsee his phony-rebellious Red Sux T-shirt. The kid had probably shelled out forty bucks for that get-up, all to prove his antipathy to “the man.” Did he ever consider who profited from the forty bucks?
“All cool, all set,” Bobby was saying. “You guys rock.”
Jake knew the cops didn’t “rock.” If this kid was happy, it probably had something to do with money. Calvin Hewlitt’s money, presumably. Jake was eager for details. Calvin Hewlitt’s hush money might pay for the camera, but it wouldn’t quiet Jake’s questions.
“Jake?” Jane’s voice in his ear now. “Here’s the scoop.”
“Hang on, Jane.” If the girl and her father were okay, Jane could wait a second while he corralled Bobby Land and set up a time for an interview.
“Is that Jane Ryland?” Bobby took a step closer, pointed to the phone.
Okay, that was interesting. The boy knew Jane? Oh, right. Land talked with Jane as Jake led him out of the alley, so the kid knew they were connected. Land might think she was calling as a reporter. Jake’s thoughts stopped, turned a corner. Was she a reporter? Not for the Register anymore, that was for sure. But Jake remembered she’d mentioned Channel 2, a reference he still hadn’t grasped.
“Excuse me?” Not answering the question was sometimes successful.
“Yeah, Jane Ryland,” Bobby said. “You know. The one you were talking to in the alley today. Wondered, because I was trying to call her, and she wasn’t where she said she’d be.”
“Which is where?” Jake asked.
“Who are you talking to?” Jane was saying.
“Channel 2.” Land held up two fingers. “She told me she was a reporter for Channel 2, but when I called there, they were, like, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Really?” Jake said. She’d told him she was at the station, too. Why would she say that unless it was true? But he didn’t want to discuss it in front of Bobby.
“Jake?” Jane made his name into two syllables, inquiring. “You hearing me?”
“You want to give me your phone number, I can have her call you,” Jake said.
“So that is her? Is she at Channel 2? Or not?”
Persistent kid.
“Jake? Are you hearing me? I guess everything is okay with Lewis and Gracie,” Jane was saying. “They went out to the mall to buy clothes for Gracie’s trip to Chicago, had a flat tire, then a broken jack. Phone battery died. But it’s all good. They’re at the repair place, and the guy there had a phone charger.”