Jex Malone (8 page)

My dad writes that they'll need to track down the boyfriend and the best friend and notes that's usually all they need to do to find missing teens. It's his first wrong assumption.

I flip a few pages and read about the rest of the neighbors who were home on that Saturday gathered in the middle of the street for a Fourth of July block party. Some were wondering if this was serious or just another call about some kind of trouble that happened regularly at the Matthews's address.

Oh, this is interesting—a copy of an older report stuck haphazardly in the file. It turns out this was not the first police visit to the Matthews's house. The cops had been by there a few months before when the neighbors complained of loud fighting between the parents, Ricki and Frank Matthews.

No one left in handcuffs.

The police report noted that Frank was unemployed and known to have a drinking problem. A jail-booking sheet attached to the police report showed Frank had been arrested many times. A copy of his mug shot shows him glaring at the camera with an animalistic look in his black-brown eyes, which were also vaguely bloodshot. You could tell he had been drinking.

Dad talked to Frank, who informed him he'd spent much of the evening at a friend's house where they drank until they passed out. He couldn't remember which friend or how he got home the next day. Dad signed and dated the report.

I let my fingers walk through the rest of the paperwork. Apparently, Patty hadn't been seen by anyone at the actual block party. Some neighbors noted that in years past, she loved the block party and usually stayed until it was over.

My dad circled that in red pen to highlight the obvious discrepancy.

More notes: At midnight, Ricki went to sleep, not bothering to check on Patty or her younger brother, Cooper, because she was “beyond exhausted” and they were “good kids who tucked themselves in.”

I flip through more pages of reports in triplicate. They're getting awfully repetitive. “My daughter doesn't have tons of friends,” Ricki reported. “She doesn't have many friends at all and she likes to wander around with her sketchbook and draw pictures of natural stuff like trees and flowers.”

“Did you see her before you went to bed that last night?” Dad asked her.

Again.

Very
Law & Order
.

Trip her up, Dad. Go for it.

“I don't know,” said Ricki. It was noted that she lit up many Marlboros during this little talk.

“How could you not know?” Dad said. “She's your teenage daughter. She must have had a curfew. You must have checked every night and made sure your children were safe and at home before you locked your front door.”

Dad noted that Ricki just took a drag of her cigarette, blew a smoke cloud into the air, and looked away.

Guilty. Wait. I can't go there yet. There is another suspect, a guy, and a former boyfriend of Patty's. At least she had a boyfriend named Billy, but I can't be too jealous because maybe he killed her.

C'mon Billy, what do you have to say for yourself?
I keep reading.

Billy, seventeen and a local football legend, claims he didn't make it to the block party. The police officer that questioned him noted that Billy had an alibi. He and Patty had argued earlier that night, and he told the officer that he “blew off the party” but spent the rest of the Fourth of July with another friend from school.

Billy added that he didn't know what happened to Patty and the last time he had seen her she told him that she never wanted to talk to him again.

Okay officers, so where's the question about who this other friend is?

Great police work guys … I mean, Dad.

Okay, stop being so snotty.

More random stuff: I guess everyone knew Patty was really into art and carried her art supplies in her backpack, which they all say was blue.

Weird—they noticed that about her but otherwise thought she was invisible. Dad somehow found, or should I say detected, some neighbors who seemed to know more than others. Mr. Bill Foster, then fifty-five, lived next door and was known as the chronic neighborhood complainer.

Or as Dad notes, a “frequent caller to the Metro PD.”

In the end, Ricki and Frank made some tearful appeals on TV for Patty's return. “If you have our little girl, please return her in one good piece and not ten million pieces,” Ricki blathered. So, she wasn't exactly a poet, but she got the point across. The minute they were done with their front-lawn press conference, the cameras swung around to Dad and the reporters shoved their microphones into his face.

I can almost hear them shouting questions at him:

“Why aren't you out there looking for her? Do you think she's dead?”

The newspaper report the next day read: “Det. John Malone refused to comment on what steps law enforcement have taken to find the missing girl and would only say the case remains an active investigation. Meanwhile the Matthews family can do nothing but sit and wait for any sign of their beloved daughter—dead or alive.”

The last pages of the file are nothing but copies of the earlier reports and some time sheets. Odd, but it still doesn't look like Dad interviewed the boyfriend or the best friend who was supposed to be with her.

C'mon, Dad. That's a glaring omission.

I turn to the last page. It's a white evidence sheet that's filled out when police check something into the evidence room. It's kind of like a receipt.

Dad's handwriting again: Backpack, blue, JanSport. The date says it was found in a dumpster behind the Mandalay Bay Casino on the Las Vegas strip on July 6. That would be two days after Patty disappeared. It has the initials PM written in marker on the front in big letters.

That's weird. How'd it get to a garbage bin on the strip 10 miles away?

I flip the page. Oh God, that's disgusting.

The backpack was covered with a dried substance.

Wham! Ding! Chirp!

A car door slams outside the house. The dog thumps her tail on the floor with another loud bump.

With one swift motion, I flick off the flashlight and slam the folder shut and shove it under my body.

Pulling the covers higher over my head, all I can think about is the last line I memorized before I shut off the light.

The dried substance on Patty's backpack was blood.

“I got my nameplate. I got my badge. Just point me to the bad guys.”

—Sabrina Duncan,
Charlie's Angels

“And we'll both be here at the house by seven. Maybe you could put on a dress or something nice,” Dad is rambling and I want to put up the hand. Instead, I just blink and nod. A lot.

Talk, talk, talk, pause, blink, pause, nod, sip milk.

It's a sign that I'm comprehending and caring, even if I'm not. What kills me is he actually woke me up to have apple pie–flavored breakfast Pop-Tarts with him. Is he trying to torture me or is the man simply insane?
Nice way to turn an eight-hour day into a twelve-hour one, Dad.

“Honey, did you hear me?” Dad says in this husky, manly, loud voice that jolts me awake as he sits at the tiny wooden kitchen table looking annoyed and hopeful at the same time. Mom knows there is no talking until 9
A.M.

It's an unspoken house rule.

“Uh, yeah, whatever you say,” I say in a vacant, groggy voice and nod my head just in case he doesn't recognize my early morning mumbling.

I take a slurp out of a glass of chocolate milk Dad has put in front of me. Say what you want about the man, but pairing chocolate milk with faux-apple toaster pastries is all right by me.

“So what I was thinking is we can go to the strip in Vegas—there's this great place I've been dying to show you. I think you'll like it—it's Mexican, but not like what we have around here. It's—how do you describe it—fancy. They make the guacamole right at your table,” Dad says, clearly putting the hard sell on this upscale Taco Bell wonderland.

“It's Sandy's favorite place,” he adds sheepishly.

Wait just a second here. The morning fog is lifting off my brain.
Sandy?
Was I not paying attention earlier, because this is the first I've heard him speak of this Sandy character and now she is being offered as some sort of a side dish? She is the new bean dip.

Pop-Tarts are dangerously distracting.

I look at Dad and he's got his eyebrows raised in that questioning way, waiting for my response. Hmmm, speak now or forever hold my peace and taco chips.

“Uh, sure, whatever.” The words tumble out of my mouth before I have a chance to stop them.

No fair; he plied me with Pop-Tarts and sugar milk. He's good.

I demand a do-over.

Too late.

“Okay great!” Dad says in a satisfied voice. “Be ready at seven and, you know, dress up a little bit, honey, because like I said, this place is fancy, but not that fancy, so use your own good judgment.” His voice is cheerful now and he fumbles for the right words.

Oh man, now what have I gotten myself into if he's this happy?

Must. Not. Think. About. Girlfriend. Happier thoughts: The. Dead. Girl.

The words in the case file come flooding back into my brain.

Is Patty dead? Why didn't they find her body? What about the blood? Did it match? Did Nancy Drew ever deal with real death? Back to Patty. Was her dad that scary? Did he kill her during a drunken rage? And what about the boyfriend? Something about him seemed fishy. Why was he spending a big holiday-bash kind of night with someone else? Was it another girl? What a jackass. Plus, how could the mom not know that Patty's bed was empty? What a crappy mom.

If this were a movie, the girl would be toast and her outraged father played by some over-thirty actor just developing fine lines and wrinkles would be kicking some major
bee-hind.
I banish that thought because this isn't a movie. It's real and it's scary.

A girl who wasn't much older than me was probably kidnapped and killed and she lived—emphasis on the past tense—right around the corner.

Why didn't Dad do something more back then? Why didn't he find the body? Maybe—just maybe—he's not just a sucky dad, but also a sucky cop? Wouldn't that just be my luck? He left us to be this great cop and he sucked at it.

“See ya at seven o'clock, not a minute later,” I hear him shout from the front door. “Text me if you need anything before then.”

Before I can reply, I hear the door slam shut.

Yeah, Dad. Don't even wait for me to say goodbye.

I text Cissy to come over and two seconds later: Bam! A hand raps hard on the sliding door and I almost jump out of my skin. “I just texted you,” I tell her.

“I know, but you sounded a little weirded out,” Cissy replies with that eager puppy-dog look in her eyes. It's nice and it makes me believe that she really cares.

It's like we're real friends and not like we just met five minutes ago.

“How can I sound weird in a text?” I ask her, but she's not hurt by my question.

“You just did. I'm not wrong, am I?” she answers. “Deva says I have very advanced emotional intelligence. Or at least that's what she said when I got my report card at the end of last semester and it wasn't very good.

“So, you know, I thought I'd just come over and see if you needed me,” says Cissy, looking hard at her flip-flops.

Cissy is looking so nervous, kind of like someone on the first day of school who doesn't know anyone in her class. She's sweet even if it's a little weird that she just materializes out of nowhere.

Two words come to mind:
Real friends
.

“It's kind of nothing. I just have to have dinner with my dad's girlfriend and I was just trying to remember what you told me about her,” I divulge.

Cissy rolls her eyes. Love. This. Girl. Already.

But let's not get too emotional when we have a murder to solve.

“Pop-Tart?” I offer. She nods her head vigorously and wiggles her body into a chair pulled up to the kitchen table. She whistles for the dog and when the big fur ball settles on Cissy's feet, she's happy—and I'm not talking about the dog. The dog rolls over, all four paws shooting straight up in the air, to obviously cheer Cissy's arrival.

She's ready to talk.

“What do you want to know?” Cissy eagerly offers. “I can tell you lots about her. I was an assistant in the PE office fall semester. I know
everything.
My mom says I have the hearing of a dog. No offense, Cody.”

“Well, what's she doing with my dad? I mean, he's told me nothing about her other than she's great—really great. Which of course makes me think she's not. I mean, why is he trying to put on the hard sell?” I ask.

“Well, she is very, very—um—fit, and I guess you could say she's a super-positive person,” Cissy describes in a sheepish voice. “And I guess she can be nice if you are super-positive and fit, too. She doesn't seem to like people who are—um—not fit.”

Great—Miss Fat Phobic is going to be in my life, which is disappointing, but doesn't destroy the mood as I smell the toasting Pop-Tarts release their sweet, chocolaty fragrance into the air. They should bottle this stuff and slap a Chanel logo on it.

“So what you are telling me is she's hot,” I quiz Cissy. “Is she supermodel hot or just better-than-average-mall-chick hot? And if she is in the supermodel category, what does she want with my dad? I mean, he's a dad.”

“Oh my God, haven't you noticed how great looking your dad is?” Cissy gushes, and then blushes because she clearly said something inappropriate. “I mean, your dad doesn't exactly look like the dads around here. Plus there's that whole detective thing—it's like he knows everybody's secrets, which is so intriguing and cool. And when it comes to Miss Zumba, it's not like they haven't known each other forever, too.”