‘Let’s go talk to her about her recent employer.’
‘She cleared out last night. Manager said she was on a week-to-week. Waiting to time a meeting with you, I’m thinking.’
Ten minutes prior Shep had texted Mike from downtown saying that his contact couldn’t get anywhere tracking Annabel’s stolen cell phone. William and Dodge either had dumped it or were keeping it mostly turned off, so there was nothing anyone could do. Mike’s frustration had hit a high-water mark, but now it looked like it had plenty more room to rise.
‘So she’s gone?’ Mike asked.
‘Into the ether. We’ll have to wait for her to rear her head. Good news is, we know she uses her real name now and again.’
Mike glanced down at the fat telephone directory spread on his desk. For the hell of it, he’d flipped through the white pages and circled a few names. Thirty-seven Gages, four Trenleys, none with first initial J or D.
‘How about Gage?’ he asked. ‘A Gage family lived next door when I was a kid. I know she didn’t make that up.’
‘Yeah, but we need a first name, and I’m guessing she invented the Dana. I checked anyway, and I’m getting no Dana Gages who fit our demographics. And when we start looking at Gages, no first name, without specifying region… well, you can imagine what those numbers look like.’
As bad as John and Momma.
Mike asked, ‘You get anything on John and Danielle Trenley?’
‘Nothing helpful,’ Hank said. ‘There are a handful of John Trenleys, but race and age rule them out. The only Danielle Trenley the database turned up is a teenager in South Carolina.’
Mike thumped a fist down on the phone book, the sound echoing through the office, causing heads to swivel. Mike did everything he could to keep his voice low. ‘How about the law-enforcement alert?’
‘I’m making some headway – emphasis on “some”. I got to a desk officer at Sheriff’s Headquarters Bureau. I guess because they oversee Lost Hills, your hometown, the stations were put on alert. Thus the warm reception you got from Elzey and Markovic. There’s a standing request for any deputy who comes into contact with you to obtain biographical details from your childhood.’
Mike realized he’d stopped breathing. So William and Dodge had baited him into going to the sheriff’s station, where Elzey and Markovic had been instructed to hammer him on his past. But were the four of them working in concert? It seemed a stretch that a law-enforcement agency would use muscle like William and Dodge to intimidate a family.
‘And report back where?’ Mike asked. ‘Who put the alert out on me? Which agency?’
‘I still don’t have an answer. It seems there’s a weird routing request-’
‘What does that mean, “routing request”?’
‘What it sounds like, son. Take a breath. We’re working around some clearance issues here, and a misstep could draw the wrong attention and shut us down. Catch more bees with honey and all that. Plus, I’m trying to see if LAPD or anyone else is looped in on it, too. These things take time.’
Mike signed off, pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, and ground at them.
His nerves were frayed – another restless night, another 5:00 A.M. wake-up augmented the whole day long with coffee. He’d been running on caffeine and adrenaline for too long now, and he felt his mood getting wobbly.
Sensing his workers’ eyes on him, he rose and headed out to the weed-scraggly front lot. He climbed into his truck, turned on the radio, scrolled through a few commercials and shitty songs, and smacked it off angrily. He gripped the wheel hard and took a few deep breaths.
His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He hoped it was Shep with an update on something.
The words blinking on the screen of his cell sent a wash of coldness over him.
A’S CELL.
He clicked ACCEPT.
The screen pulsed, then went live with a video feed. Through his shock it took a moment for Mike to recognize the cracked asphalt, the laughing children, the wooden benches.
The playground at Lost Hills Elementary.
His heart felt like a pulsing fist in the base of his throat.
The image tilted jerkily up. There Kat was, jumping rope.
Mike’s mouth was moving, sounds coming out.
A hulking figure stepped out from the cover of a jungle gym behind her, his features lost in the glare of the midday sun. The man moved closer.
Dodge.
Mike’s foot dropped like a weight onto the accelerator, his tires spinning in the dirt before finding purchase.
Dodge headed for Kat briskly. She continued to play, oblivious.
Mike was shouting at the phone, crushing it in his hand, juggling it against the wheel so he could steer and watch at the same time.
Dodge was five feet away and closing fast from behind. Kat was giggling, counting as she skipped, the rope tracing a rainbow arc overhead.
Mike screeched out of the lot, swiping the gate, throwing up rooster tails of dirt and rock.
Dodge came up on top of her, barely brushing her with a hip, knocking her to the ground.
Mike bellowed.
The screen went black.
Chapter 27
He remembered calling 911 and shouting for the cops to get to Lost Hills Elementary, though his office was seven blocks away and he knew he’d get there first. He remembered reaching the school’s answering machine two, three times and bellowing at the electronic voice reciting endless options. He remembered calling Annabel’s cell phone, instinctively. When the voice mail kicked on – ‘Hi, it’s Annabel. I’m probably digging around for’ – he recalled that they had just contacted him from the very phone he was calling and, cursing his stupidity and horn-blaring through a red light, he dialed home. Voice mail there, too. Annabel wasn’t back from practicum? At the beep he heard himself saying, ‘-they got her at her school I called 911 I’m three blocks away now two goddamn it I knew we should’ve kept her out of school-’ He was furious with himself for letting Kat out of his sight, for listening to Annabel, all that blind fear and rage seeking an outlet to blast out of him.
He skidded into the school parking lot, narrowly missing a mom unloading a birthday cake from her trunk and Kat’s first-grade teacher, who stared after him as he left the truck with two tires up on the curb. Door open, dinging behind him, he sprinted through the attendance office – ‘Where’s Katherine Wingate my daughter where is my’ – and through the side door onto the playground, leaving behind a panorama of startled faces. No kids – recess was over.
The multicolored jump rope lay on the asphalt, limp and snakelike.
His shirt plastered to his body, he dashed over, spinning circles, shouting his daughter’s name. He crashed to his knees over the jump rope, hard ground tearing his jeans, and lowered his head.
Through the cacophony in his brain, he thought he heard her voice, high and pure. Daddy?
And then again, ‘Daddy!?’
He turned. She was on a picnic bench at the edge of the quad, the nurse crouched before her, tending to a bloody knee.
It couldn’t be true.
He was running to her, but he wouldn’t believe it until he touched her.
The nurse stood, startled, as he approached.
‘Hey, Dad – your knee’s cut up. Just like mine.’
He gripped Kat’s arms, clutched her to him.
‘Ow. Dad. Dad. My knee. That hurts.’
‘How did this happen?’ he said.
‘Kids skin their knees on playgrounds,’ the nurse replied dryly.
‘No, there was a grown man who knocked her over.’
‘How did you see?’ Kat asked. ‘He was huge. He just kept walking. Didn’t say sorry or anything.’