The Single Staircase (4 page)

“Got it. Anybody else you want under watch?”

Owl looked at Raccoon. It was quiet in the room. Raccoon thought hard, struggled and then shrugged, helplessly. He shook his head.

Owl
looked back at Jefferson and
said, “No.”

Chap. 22

Raccoon had a date with a girl he’d met at the gym. Not the police gym, which was free but which he didn’t go to because there were too many cops there. He went to the gym with the pumping bass and girls with tight tummies who didn’t mind going out with a tall, handsome guy who was ex-army, ex-SWAT, made detective, got to carry around handcuffs.

Late dinner, 9 o’ clock. She was pretty. She asked Raccoon what he did all day. He had no answer for her.

Chap. 23

Owl didn’t have a date, other than that he went home to his wife. They ate soup quietly. The photos of their two children were framed on the wall. One, the older one, was in college. The younger one had graduated high school the year before, enrolled in community college, dropped out, taken a job waiting tables downtown. Owl looked at the photos as he ate and wondered what his children were doing and if they were ok.

Mrs. Drazen never asked how Owl’s day was. She never liked the answer. But she did pass her hand over his shoulder when she went to put the dishes in the sink. Owl had big shoulders.

“Thanks for making soup,” he said and she smiled.

That night, they were watching television. They weren’t saying anything, but they sat together on the couch. Owl held onto his phone all night, turning it around and around in his hands.

Then a picture of Sophia was on the TV. She had a bit of dark hair, a light green onesie. She was on her belly on a blanket, back arched, eyes opening, focusing on things for the very first time. “Oh my god,” her bright new eyes seemed to say. “What is this place? I wasn’t here three months ago! When did all this sound and all these colors get here?”

“Police have issued an Amber Alert for Sophia Grey…”

Mrs. Drazen looked at her husband. “How do you identify a baby? They all look alike.”

And Owl thought, fingerprints, feetprints, DNA. But he didn’t say any of that. He just said, “I don’t know.”

WEDNESDAY

Chap. 24

Sophia had been missing one day. Too long. In two more days,
Raccoon and Owl would
lose the unis and the extra team and the evidence collection help from the state bureau. Another two days after that, they’d lose surveillance on the Greys.

There were lots of Amber Alert hits. All described a baby. Little-to-no
hair. Caucasian. Small. Crying.

From eight to nine, though, Owl and Raccoon sat at their desks and went thro
ugh them.
When they were finished, Owl said, “That was stupid. Let’s do mom.”

“OK,” Raccoon said. “Where do you want to start?”

“Find someone who knew her. Really knew her. Before she knew David.”

Raccoon went through
Daphne
’s Facebook account. He picked one of her friends, a woman who
posted
to
Daphne
’s wall often
, went to the same college,
and lived in the city. Her name was
Josie
. They tracked her down to a job managing a women’s clothing store in a mall.

She
was slender and angular. Sky-high, patent leather high heels. Her hair up in a loose bun. She was dressed in the clothes of the store she managed, but Raccoon
couldn’t tell if
that was because she was advertising her wares or because she got a discount.

The store
pounded
with
electronic dance music played so loud the concrete floor throbbed, but Josie
seemed not to notice. She spoke quietly and walked with small steps, straightening piles of clothes
as
she
went
.

“What did you want to know?”

“What can you tell us? You knew
Daphne
Grey well?”

“We went out some. I knew her enough that I still can’t get used to peopl
e calling her Grey. She was Leve
ts, when I knew her.”

“How did you meet?”

“We used to go out. That’s all.”

“In college?”

“A
nd after. In college we’d just drink and go dancing. After that, we all started to go different directions. But she would come by the mall and a bunch of us used to go across the street to
Club
Club or Undertech or wherever to dance.”

“Who?”

“Me. Her. Five or six other girls. It was kind of a rotating cast of characters. We weren’t especially close. Just girls who liked to have fun.”

“And then she got married.”

“Then she got married. She started to go out with people from her work a lot and she fell for David.”

“What was he like? Did you ever go out with him?”

“
Yeah
, he was fun enough. He knew how to show a girl a good time. He could buy us a bottle of wine or get us a VIP table at Carrot Room. He wasn’t like the ball players some of the girls got in with, but he was a good catch, for sure. Just keeping up with
Daphne
,”
Josie
shook her head and smiled to herself, letting the words hang in the air.

“She was a party girl, huh?”

Josie
kept her eyes down, big, pretty eyes with long lashes, moving about the store, looking everyw
here but at the two detectives.
She remembered something, laughed a quiet laugh, and then she said, “Let’s just say she’s the only girl I ever knew who liked getting roofied.”

Owl and Raccoon looked at her. And finally
Josie
looked up.

“That’s a joke. She said she got roofied once and liked it.
S
he was
totally
kidding.”

“And having a child? What was that like?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her much since she found out she was pregnant. A couple times, right at the beginning. A few times she’s been in here shopping. I guess you stop going out once you have a kid.”

Chap. 26

Back on the sidewalk, Owl’s cell phone rang. It was Samuelson from the bureau.

“Computer’s back. It’s clean, pretty much. Dad had a little porn in his search history. Mild stuff. Nothing underage. Nothing violent. Other than that it was bank statements, news sites. Celebrity gossip blogs, I guess that’s mom. Lots of stuff. Nothing for us.”

“No searches for post-partum depression?”

“No.”

“Unsolved murders?”

“Nope.”

“SIDS”

“No.”

“How about map requests? Searches of the surrounding area for parks, malls, anything?”

“Oh. It didn’t pop up. We can go through it again.”

“Do it.”

“On it. See you tonight.”

Chap. 27

It was about eleven in the morning. Too early for lunch. Owl and Raccoon got coffee at the Starbucks drive-thru, pulled into a parking space, and sat in their car. Both of them stared out the window, their eyes searching the
parking lot for anything. Just
anything.

Raccoon said, “For just a second, just while we’re sitting here, can we
just blue sky some stuff
?”

“You
blue sky
all you want.”

Raccoon said this:
“Perp is in the attic. He drops down, grabs the kid, takes her back to the attic, waits f
or the parents to discover she’
s missing, and slips out while they search for her.”

“That’s stupid thin. How’d the perp get in the house?”

“Open window earlier in the day.”

“Who’s the perp?”

“I don’t know. But look at this.” Raccoon put a piece of paper down on the dash. It has a list of names on it. “Seven registered child sex offenders within three miles of the Greys.”

“You took the time to do this?”

Raccoon nodded.

“No good. Sex offenders grab kids off the street. This? This is different. To go to so much trouble, it’d have to be someone who stalked Sophia. It’d be someone who knew the Greys.”

“Someone who had a thing for Sophia. That’s good thinking.”

“It’s not. It’s still stupid thin. She was a three-month old baby. Three-month-old babies all look alike. I might buy a predator with a crush on a five-year-old. But nobody fixates on a specific baby. Not for sex.”

“Maybe it’s a kidnapping.”

“No ransom note.”

“Not yet there’s not.”

“Or maybe it’s not for money. Something else
. Maybe.
” Owl trailed off.

Raccoon said, “I am going to have someone run down the sex offenders. Yeah?”

“Knock yourself out, Raccoon.”

Chap. 28

Owl’s cell phone rang. This time it was the station.

“The search of Geraldine is done. There’s no body, no nothing.”

“You sure?”

“We combed it twice. Dogs.
Ten
men. Sorry, Owl.”

Owl hung up his phone and slid it into his pocket. He took a drink of coffee. And he muttered, almost to himself, “Where the hell did they put that body?”

He started the car and backed out of the spot.

“Where are we going?”

“The Grey place,” Owl
muttered
. “
Who knows?
Maybe they put her in the refrigerator.”

“I’m sure
we
looked in the refrigerator,
Owl,
” Raccoon said.

But
Owl kept driving.

Eggs. Two bottles of wine. Hummus. Tea. Yogurt. Organic peanut butter.

“Goddamn it.”

Owl shut the refrigerator. Then he opened the freezer and slammed that shut too. He folded his arms and scowled at the window. “Ok, it wasn’t an accident. Mom wants to drink and
dance
all the time. Dad never
really
wanted a
family
, just a
permanent
fuck buddy for corporate travel.”

“Stop,” Raccoon said. “That’s not what
Monica
said. She said they wanted this baby.”

Owl said, “
Monica
’s getting past marrying age and she had a thing for David. She doesn’t even like to think of herself as his boss. They were dating. Or
fucking
. Whatever. To let him go be with this younger girl, maybe
Monica needs
to build a
romantic story in her head.
David and
Daphne
are meant to be together and have kids together. In
Monica’s
head, letting
David
go was
a
sacrifice
she had to make for
the sake of true
love. She had to let him have his white picket fence, his perfect family.”

Owl looked at Raccoon.
He squinted, h
is eyes
saying
, “Are you buying this?”

Raccoon looked back and for a good ten seconds, it was silent in the kitchen of the Grey’s condo.

When they’d first started working together, Raccoon had asked Owl how he’d got his SWAT nickname. Owl had said he didn’t know. But over a few months, Raccoon figured it out. Owl was smart. Owl knew people upside down.

Owl never had to ask Raccoon about his SWAT nickname. As soon as they were introduced, Owl had said, “You’re sneaky and fast, huh?”

And Raccoon had said, “Something like that.”

Now Raccoon slowly nodded. “Ok, keep going.”

“Mom didn’t lose her cool and smother Sophia with a pillow. We’re looking at premeditated murder. The Greys had a plan. They planned carefully. They killed the baby together. She mixed up the house. He took off to get rid of the body. Somewhere they’d already selected. Not somewhere they thought of off the top of their heads. Where?”

“If I was
planning
to get rid of a baby’s body? Dumpsters. Plastic bag, throw the bag in, drive away.”

“Yes. OK. What else?”

“Open space? There’s tons of it around here. Take the body out, bury it.”

“Maybe the hole is already dug. You dig it the day before.”

Raccoon had watched a meth addict kill three innocent shoppers in a standoff at a liquor store before a go-order came. The meth addict had blown his brains out as SWAT had breached the front door. But now, for the first time ever, he felt sick. “Jesus,” he said, “I liked this better when it was an accident.”

Chap. 30

Five squad cars, three more unmarked vehicles, working in teams of two.
Twenty
officers spread across the neighborhood like locusts, working their way in circles out across every dumpster, every square inch of
the county
.

Owl and Raccoon were part of a line of four making it
s way across open space.

Kicking
at hamster holes and beer cans.

C
rossing bike paths and streams.

Peering into storm drains.

F
inding nothing.

Chap. 31

Owl and Raccoon’s shoes and pants were covered in dust as they crawled back into their car. It was three in the afternoon and neither of them had eaten lunch. Owl’s phone rang. It was the station.

“Carrier turned over everything. Both David and
Daphne
Grey’s phones stayed in the house all Monday
night
. No texts. No calls. No GPS location changes.
Hers has been off since. His has tracked with his known whereabouts.
”

“Copy that.”

Owl hung up the phone and said, “Raccoon, we’ve been idiots.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that we’ve been taking the Grey’s word for it that Sophia disappeared the night before last. But do we know that? No. No, we don’t. She could have been missing for a week, right?”

Raccoon snorted a bit.
“
Oh man. Yeah, I guess. W
e need to find out.”

Chap. 32

The surveillance car was parked outside the Marriott. Owl and Raccoon stopped by
it on their way i
nto the hotel. There was one detective in it. Jefferson. He knew who they were without
ever
having to look at them directly, his slow eyes staying locked on the front door of the Marriott. He unrolled the w
indow, spoke into the air. “Owl. Raccoon.
What’s up, men?”

“What’s up with them?” Owl ticked his head in the direction of the hotel.

“Them? So
they were
in the room. He’s watching TV. About noon she comes down to the hotel bar and starts getting loaded. Just pounding
away
. Four vodka Red Bulls in an hour. She goes back up. Ten minutes later they come down together and go back into the bar. Been there ever since.”

“I’d just murdered my kid, I’d be d
rinking
.”

“Yup. That’s how it seems. You going to talk to them?”

“That’s the plan.”

The
detective picked up his walkie-talkie, pressed the button, said, “What’re they at?”

And a voice crackled back, hushed, Mateo whispering into a lapel mike. “She’s put down a bottle of wine and he’s on his fourth whiskey sour.”

“Charming people,” Raccoon muttered.

“Owl and Raccoon are here. They want to bring them in.”

“To talk to them? Now?” The voice on the other end chuckled. “Good luck.”

Chap. 33

The atrium of the Marriott was bright and antiseptic, spiraling eight storie
s up to frosted glass ceilings.

Mateo was chatting up the pretty girl at check in. His eyes tracked Owl and Raccoon as they came through the door.

Tucked in the corner was the
entrance to the
bar.
Inside, l
ow
lights
and dark wood. A pit stop for two or three travelling businessmen, each sitting alone, having a drink to help summon the courage for a dinner with clients or prospects, hookers or whoever.

And one table filled with drinks, water beading on wood that had been wiped down over and over again with a wet washcloth, and the Greys.

Daphne
Grey looked up as the detectives walked into the room.

“You found her?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Grey, we haven’t,” Raccoon said.

David Grey’s eyes weren’t focusing on the detectives or his wife or anything in particular. He swirled the liquor in his glass. He was slurring. He pulled his phone from his pocket, looked at it, put it back in.

“We need to speak with you both again. We’d prefer to do it downtown. Would you come with us please?”

David Grey looked up quickly, worry poking through the alcohol haze. “Why? Are we under arrest?”

Owl shook his head.

David stood up. He put a hand on his wife’s arm. “Come on, sweetheart, we need to go back to the police station.”

Daphne
tipped her glass up, drank what was left and stood up.

Chap. 34

How quiet can a car ride be?
Daphne
Grey kept her window open, her long, long hair whipping back and around her neck. Her eyes, even glassy and drunk, moving quickly, looking eagerly out the window into the hot afternoon air.

Her right hand she kept extended into her husband’s lap.

David Grey never grabbed it, never moved to comfort his wife. He stared out the opposite window.

At one point, Raccoon said, “How did you two know you were meant to be together?
” And he was met with nothing, w
ith silence, with the sound of the wind in
Daphne
Grey’s hair.

Chap. 35

Owl sat down across the table from
Daphne
Grey. “Mrs. Grey, besides you and your husband, who was the last person to see Sophia before she, before Sophia
, uh
, vanished?”

Always use the name of the missing person. Sophia was a human being. A living thing. Remind them of that. Owl watched
Daphne
Grey carefully for cracks, sideways glances, anything.

But there was nothing.

Her eyes were glassy. She stared down at the table. “David went to work,” she said.

Owl said again, “Mrs. Grey?”

She said, “Jenny, Harper’s mom. We saw her at Sprouts when we picked up dinner.”

“When was that?”

“Before David got home. I don’t know. Five. Six.”

“Jenny…”

“Daring. Jenny Daring.”

Chap. 36

Jenny Daring had three kids and a big red house with a wide front porch. The
detectives could hear the
kids running
wild inside
.
The sound of toy cars and various things flying through the air and crashing on the ground.

Jenny seemed unphased. She had her hair in a ponytail. She was fit
as hell
for a woman with three kids.

“Yes, I saw them.”

“About what time?”

“About the same time it is now. Four-thirty? I can’t be sure.”

Chap. 37

The Daring’s house was three blocks from the Grey’s condo. Owl and Raccoon could see its roof from their car.

“Four-thirty is not six,” Raccoon said. “Could be a spare hour in there.”

“It’s close. Almost close enough,” Owl said. “Especially if David isn’t home from work yet to kill Sophia anyway. Besides, this is a good thing for us. You know that, right?”

“Yes,” Raccoon said.
“
It means they didn’t have days to hide the body. It means the body is somewhere within an hour of the house.”

“Exactly.”

“Except we’ve already looked everywhere.”

“We’ve missed something. We just have to figure out where to look.”

“Assuming there’s even a body. Because we’re still Missing Persons, not Homicide.
And you’re assuming there’
s a dead body.”

“Yes. Of course. Fucking, of course, Raccoon.”

“I’m not saying it’s not a good guess.”

“So you haven’t gone crazy.”

“But you’re assuming a dead body and you’re assuming you know who the killers are. But we haven’t proved either of those things. That the girl is dead or that her parents killed her. There’s no blood.
No evidence
of a homicide. And no body. And we’re Missing Persons detectives.”

Raccoon’s cell phone went off.
He answered it.
“Yeah?”

“Detective Boska? This is Officer Viggio. I have bad news. I think.”

“What is it?”

“I called the cable c
ompany like you asked. The Grey
s ordered
The Matrix
on-d
emand on Monday night, so I guess they did watch it.”

“Yeah, OK. Thanks for following the lead.”

“Hey, there’
s one more thing. I was running down that list of sex offenders you sent through.”

“
Yeah?
” Raccoon sat up, he looked interested. “What did you find?”

“I checked with all those guy’s parole officers. Only one said his guy is out and about, not at work, not checking in, no alibi.”

“Hit me.”

“Scoo
t H. Johnson. Address incoming to your cell.”

Raccoon’s phone beeped and he said, “Got it. We’re on it. Thanks, officer.” To Owl he said. “We got a child sex offender in the area with no alibi. Viggio ran it down for us.”

Owl said, “He wants to make detective. You can tell. You want to go say hello?”

Raccoon said, “I sure as fuck do.”

Chap. 38

The sun had set when Owl and Raccoon pulled into the parking lot of the Racine Lake Apartments. Walls painted beige,
peeling
green roofs, crumbly grey
sidewalks leading to creaky metal stairs
.