Dead Heat (12 page)

“Anna is baking with Isabella. She’s a sweet kid.”

“And CeCe?” Jennifer asked.

“Hasn’t left her room. Angry. Scared. Defiant.” He said it in a way that told Lucy he was familiar with this behavior.

“I’ll talk to her before I leave,” Jennifer said.

They walked into the kitchen. Bella had flour on her face and wore a checked apron that was several sizes too big for her. She was watching Anna roll dough with big eyes, asking questions about why she put flour on the rolling pin and how long it was going to take to bake and why there was salt in pie when pies didn’t taste salty.

“We have company, Anna,” Karl Grove said.

Bella looked, her face frozen for a brief moment, and then she burst into a smile that melted Lucy’s heart.

“Lucy! You came!”

“I told you I’d try.”

“I’m so glad!” Every sentence was an exclamation. Lucy loved young children. They adapted to changes so much easier than the older kids, like CeCe. “We’re making apple pie! And apple cobbler for the people next door. Mr. Pa-pa-paop—” She glanced at Anna.

“Mr. Papapoulous,” Anna said.

“Yeah, he had a heart attack last week and just came home from the hospital and we’re making sugar-free apple cobbler for him with homemade ice cream. Can you believe that you can have something taste good without sugar? And I never had homemade ice cream.”

As she spoke faster, she reverted to Spanish.

“I’m sorry I’m going to miss that,” Lucy said.

“Why? Why are you going to miss it? Aren’t you visiting?”

“Yes, but we can’t stay long.”

Jennifer smiled. “Remember me?”

“Yes. You brought us to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Grove until my mama isn’t in trouble anymore.”

“How do you like your room?”

“I miss my toys.”

“If you make a list for me, I’ll bring you what you want.”

Bella frowned. “Does that mean I can never go home?”

Lucy’s heart twisted. But before Lucy could say anything, Jennifer said, “I know you want to see your mom and sleep in your own bed. And everyone is working hard to make that happen. But I don’t know when, and I want you to have everything you need while you’re staying here with the Groves.”

The little girl bit her lip, but nodded.

Lucy began to like Jennifer, her attitude outside notwithstanding.

“Agent Kincaid has a couple of questions for you. You’re not in trouble, Bella. But Agent Kincaid thinks maybe you can help her find someone who needs help.”

Bella nodded.

“If you want to stop, just say the word, okay?”

She nodded again and straightened in her chair. “It’s about the boy,” she whispered.

“Yes,” Lucy said.

“I might get in trouble.”

Lucy took Bella’s hand and said, “I promise you, cross my heart, that you will not get in any trouble.”

“Not from
you
,” she whispered.

Jennifer said, “You’re safe here. No one is going to get you in trouble.”

Bella looked pained.

“How about this,” Lucy said. “What if you don’t have to talk at all, but I’ll ask questions and you can nod or shake your head?”

She glanced at Anna, then nodded.

Lucy took out a photo of Michael Rodriguez. “Is this the Michael who was in your basement?”

She stared at the picture and nodded.

“Good,” Lucy said. “That’s great.”

“Can I finish the pies now? Mrs. Grove needs my help.”

“In just a minute, promise.”

She sighed but didn’t move.

“You told me yesterday that you thought Michael had been in the basement for three or four weeks. Right?”

She shrugged, then nodded.

“Had you ever seen Michael before then?”

She shook her head.

Lucy asked, “You told me that sometimes there were other boys who lived in the basement. Do you know how many? Three? Five? More?”

She shook her head, then bit her lip. “Lots,” she whispered.

“Were any of them recent? Like, while Michael was there?”

She shook her head, then shifted uneasily in her seat. She kept looking at Anna Grove, as if to beg her to let her get up. Lucy wanted to ask more questions about Michael and what he did for Jaime, but Bella was getting skittish.

Jennifer said, “Bella, you’ve done good. I’m proud of you for being so brave. Agent Kincaid and I just want to find Michael and take him home.”

Her eyes grew wide. “His daddy’s bad. He said so.”

Lucy said, “His daddy is in jail, and will be there for a long, long time. Michael has a new mama and papa. They love him and miss him.”

She still looked worried. “He was afraid of the bad place.”

“Do you know where the bad place is?”

She shook her head and seemed to crawl into herself. Jennifer said, “Bella, you’re safe here. And we want to make sure that Michael is safe, too.”

Karl Grove sat down next to her with a glass of apple juice. It was clear he wanted the conversation over, and hovered protectively over the girl. Bella drank. She touched Karl’s arm. That’s when Lucy noticed he had a long, jagged scar. Probably from a serrated knife. “That happened in the bad place.”

Karl shook his head. “That happened a long time ago, when I was a policeman.”

Lucy cut him off. “Did Michael have a scar?”

“Yes, right there.” She tapped on Karl’s forearm.

Lucy had read Michael’s file. He had old scars on his back, but there had been nothing about a gash on his arm. CPS had done a full medical on him when he became a ward of the state.

“Would all scars be documented in his records?” she asked Jennifer.

“Absolutely.”

Bella tilted her chin up. “I’m not lying.”

“Of course not,” Lucy said. She pulled out her notepad and a pencil. “Can you draw it for us?”

“How is that going to help find him?”

“Everything helps. You’ve already helped a lot.”

She reluctantly took the paper and pencil and stared at it for a minute. Then she drew what at first looked like a capital T with an extra line like a small t and an arrow at the bottom. She frowned, unhappy with the picture. “Sort of,” she said.

“That’s good, Bella.” She showed the picture to Jennifer, who shook her head, and to Karl, who was also perplexed.

Karl said, “It’s too specific to be an accidental scar.”

Bella looked from one adult to the others, then stared at Lucy. “He’s going to be okay, right?”

“We’ll do everything we can to find him.”

Bella bit her lip again. “What’s going to happen to me and CeCe? Are we going to go to the bad place, too?”

“No,” Jennifer said emphatically. “No one is going to hurt you. You’re safe here, with the Groves. Okay?”

She nodded, but she was uncertain. “When can I see Uncle George?”

Her uncle, not her mother. That was very interesting.

Lucy glanced at Karl and Anna. They knew about his murder, but no one had told the girls.

Anna said, “Let’s talk about that, Bella. You, and me, and CeCe.”

Karl walked them out. Lucy said, “I’m going to call about getting you some protection.”

“We have good security, this is a nice neighborhood. Neighbors pay attention.”

“These aren’t people who care about being subtle.”

“I understand, Agent Kincaid. I was a deputy sheriff for thirty-five years.”

Jennifer said, “We’re about as far as you can get from their old neighborhood without leaving the city limits. There’s no way the uncle can find them here.”

“There’s always a way,” Lucy said. “I’m going to work on it. They might simply increase patrols, but I’m going to try and get a unit twenty-four seven.

“And,” Lucy continued, “one more thing—CeCe is young, but she might have great loyalty to her uncle Jaime and her mother.”

“I’ve already taken away all the phones in the house,” Mr. Grove said. “I’ll do everything in my power to protect those girls.”

CHAPTER 10

Donnelly and Ryan were both gone when Lucy arrived back at SAPD headquarters that afternoon. She sat in the conference room that had been set aside for the task force and reviewed Michael Rodriguez’s file again.

She kept coming back to the father, Vince Rodriguez. She used the federal criminal database to pull up his record, and while there was no direct connection to Sanchez, there were many common associations. They had to have known each other—same neighborhood, same friends. Even though Vince was imprisoned four hours away, she wanted to talk to him in person. She’d need Brad Donnelly’s blessing first, and barring that she’d go to Juan Casilla. Her gut instincts told her Michael’s disappearance and captivity was at least loosely related to his father and it would be worth their time to talk to him. Sometimes, what
wasn’t
said was as important as what
was
said.

Lucy sent Donnelly a text message asking him to call her when he had the chance, then put the file and her notes aside. She wasn’t going to get anywhere until she had more information to plug into the holes.

She’d promised Charlie DeSantos that she would let him know when she had a confirmation on Michael Rodriguez’s identity. She left a message at the number he’d given her, relating only the basics, and telling him to contact Brad Donnelly if he needed more. She wasn’t going to get in the middle of some jurisdictional issue, and Brad was in charge. She’d learned the hard way that when possible, play by the rules or you’d get bitten in the ass.

Officer Crane walked by the open door. She called out, “Do you know where Donnelly is? He and Ryan didn’t sign out.”

“They took a team to follow up on a lead. I don’t have details.”

She itched to be there, but she also had something else she wanted to do. She asked Crane, “How easy is it to get a sit-down with a prisoner at McConnell?”

“Have your boss call the warden’s office. Or Donnelly can do it. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem.” He eyed her stack of paper with curiosity. “Something come up? It’s not a pretty place.”

“We ID’d the boy who was kept in the basement. His father is in prison, and I might have found an indirect connection between the father and Sanchez.”

“Definitely talk to Donnelly.”

She thanked Crane then turned back to her notes. She had nothing else to do except wait for Donnelly and Ryan, so she looked yet again at the limited information they had.

Had Sanchez kidnapped Michael as payback for something his father had done? Why now, four years after the father went to prison? Michael had been in foster care since he was eight; he’d turned thirteen last month. He’d disappeared the month before his twelfth birthday. What was she missing?

Where had Michael been for the thirteen months before he was held in the basement?

Lucy had a vivid imagination, created through her own experiences and those of being a cop. She knew what horrors adults inflicted on children. She thought of the scar on Michael’s arm. She looked again at Bella’s crude drawing, then made a copy and posted it on the board. It had to mean something, and Donnelly might know. If not, they could consult the gang task force to see if this was a gang marking. It might not be a scar; it could be a tattoo. Bella was a little girl. She might not have been able to tell the difference, especially if the tat was homemade.

Brad would ask her what she hoped to gain from Rodriguez at the prison, and she had to convince him that they could gain insight into Sanchez. It was a long shot, so maybe they could develop an incentive to get Rodriguez to talk—particularly if Sanchez had, in fact, hurt his son.

She bit her lip. Would Rodriguez care? He’d abused Michael, had abused his wife, killed a man—was family important to him? If he had killed his wife, did he resent or hate the son she’d borne?

She wouldn’t know until she met him face-to-face.

She was staring at the whiteboard Donnelly had used to post information and leads on Jaime Sanchez, practically willing a clue to leap out at her, when her cell phone rang. It was Charlie DeSantos, returning her call.

“Hello, Mr. DeSantos. You got my message?”

“Yes. Thank you. What else did you learn?”

“I simply confirmed his identity. I sent a report to my supervisor as well. Michael’s file is very thin. Is there anyone from his past you think he might contact for help?”

“Only his foster parents. As far as I know, he cut all ties to his old neighborhood.”

“How much do you know about Vince Rodriguez?”

“The father? He’s in prison, twenty-five-to-life. It’s in Michael’s file.”

“Rodriguez and Sanchez are from the same neighborhood.” She was musing out loud, trying to get information from DeSantos without giving him more than she was allowed.

“I didn’t see any connections in the file. Rodriguez wasn’t affiliated with a specific gang, at least as far as I knew.”

“Fourteen months is a long time for a thirteen-year-old to stay in hiding. Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”

“None. I assumed, like the police, that he’d run away.”

“If you hear from him, please call me.”

“Likewise. And Agent Kincaid—Lucy—I want to help.”

“Talk to his foster parents again. Make sure they call you or me if they see him, if he makes any contact.”

“I’ve already done that.”

“Then maybe, since you were his counselor, if there’s anyone from one of his previous homes that he might have reached out to?”

“I can pull those records.”

She almost said her good-byes, then asked spontaneously, “Did Michael have a scar on his forearm that isn’t in his medical records?”

“What kind of scar?” he asked.

She looked at the picture Bella had drawn. “A double-crossed T, maybe, possibly with an arrow at the bottom.”

“I never saw anything like that. An accident?”

“I don’t know, it was described to me verbally. I’m just trying to put it all together. Do you think his father might have information that could help us track him down? I assume he knew his son was missing and presumed a runaway.”

“Yes,” DeSantos said. “I didn’t notify him, but I’m certain someone must have.”

“Maybe he knows something not in the records that might help us find Michael.”

“Vince Rodriguez has nothing but contempt for his son and the system. Even if he knew something, he wouldn’t share. Michael hated his father, never visited him in prison.”