The Single Staircase (5 page)

And t
here were no bodies of water in sight.

“Lake?” Raccoon asked.

“It’s a
dvertising,” Owl answered.

They got out of the car.
If anybody had been watching
carefully,
they’d have
see
n
them brush their jackets back in unison, ensuring there were no obstructions between their right hands and their pistols. Raccoon and his USP Compact. Owl and his Commander M1911. “A .45 hits a body, turns it around, sits it down. One shot,” he’d told Raccoon.

Raccoon had rolled his eyes.

The sheet on Scoot H. Johnson included a flashing at an elementary school and then, a year later, an assault on an eight-year-old at a mall, a little girl who wandered off trying to find a bathroom while her mom was preoccupied with a dress.

The girl had screamed.

“You’re not my daddy! You’re not my daddy! You’re not my daddy!”

Smart girl. So lucky.

A mall security guard stopped them on their way to the parking lot. “But I am her daddy,” Johnson had protested. The security guard had seen through it, took him down and held him until the cops arrived. Johnson spent six years in jail and was serving
probation for another five.

“From eight-year-old girls snatched at malls to three-month-old babies taken from their parents’ home
s
in the most carefully plotted kidnapping
in history
? Not fucking likely,” Owl had said on the ride over.

Raccoon didn’t say a word. He wanted to run the lead down. He was getting what he wanted. He wasn’t going to jinx it by arguing.

The detectives made their way up the steps to an apartment on the second floor. It was an exteri
or door. Owl knocked on it.
Raccoon put a hand on his pistol.

“What?” came a voice.

“Mr. Johnson, this is Detectives Drazen and Boska from the police department. We need a word with you.”

There was silence. Then a step inside the apartment. Movement, not towards the door but not away from it.
Then silence again.
And Owl, too, brushed
his jacket back away from his right hip.

He knocked harder.
“Mr. Johnson, I need you to open the door, please.”

More steps. Raccoon tried to peer into the sole window, a wide pane with a crack in it. It was
mostly
covered
by a sheet. Through the edge
he could see a TV flickering.

Then the door opened, just a
crack
, and Scoot H. Johnson wedged himself into that crack. He was middle aged, out of shape, wearing jeans and an old t-shirt.
Dirty
and poor, but sober and alert. “What’s going on?”

Owl said, “Your parole officer said you didn’t check in today. Didn’t check in yesterday.”

“I’ve been sick.”

In his head, Raccoon said this:
“Sophia, if you’re in there, please, please cry. Cry so loud, as loud as you can. Just make a sound. Roll over, knock something over. Give us anything, sweet
baby
girl.”

But out loud, he said this:
“We need you to open the door, Mr. Johnson.”

Cautiously, Johnson let the door swing farther open. Another foot, then two.

And Owl bolted in, pushed past Johnson.

“Oh, thanks. Man, I have to use the bathroom so bad. Thanks, man.”

He hurried down a hallway. Out of sight.

“Hey, I…” Johnson stuttered and then watched Owl go, torn between following him in or staying at the door with Raccoon.

Raccoon snapped at him. “Hey, over here. Where you been?”

Johnson snorted. “I said. Sick.”

“With what?”

“A case of the I-lost-my-job. My boss found out what my felony was and that was it. I was out. He told everybody. The kitchen staff, the waitresses, everybody.”

“You’re supposed to report that to your parole officer.”

“And say what? Everybody needs to chill out and work with the… With me?”

“So you’ve been here? Alone? For two days?”

“Yep
.”

“Anybody that can vouch for that?”

“My TV.”

“How about your Internet? Been surfing the web at all?”

“Don’t have a computer. They monitor them anyway, if you’re me. It’s just me and my TV.”

“What’
ve you been watching on TV?”

Johnson didn’t say anything for a long time. And then he said, “They send detectives out
this time of night
to check on everybody that doesn’t call their parole officer? No way.
No way.
Why are you here?”

“Let us ask the questions.”

“Who is us, here? What the fuck is your partner doing back there?”

Johnson turned, started towards the interior of the apartment. And then, on cue, a flush.

Owl appeared. He gestured towards the TV and said, “Nickelodeon?”

Johnson looked at the floor. He’d dealt with the police before. There was nothing he could say to make things better. It could only get worse. And so
,
as quietly as he could without whispering, he said, “Is there anything else I can help you
detectives
out with tonight?”

Owl said, “Check in with your parole officer tomorrow. In person.”

“Yes,
sir
. Thank you.”

Owl walked out past Scoot H. Johnson and said to Raccoon, “Let’s go.”

Chap. 39

As they walked down the steps, Raccoon said, “How many people you ever wanted to kill on the spot?”

Owl snorted. “Today? Just that one.”

Chap. 40

They got back in their car.

“Nothing?”

“Sorry, Raccoon. I looked.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“
I wanted to find something. Maybe not Sophia but anything. Bedroom didn’t have anything but
a
mattress on the floor. Closet door was open, got a clear look. Nothing in the bathroom for sure. There was one cabinet in the kitchen, I didn’t get a clear peek in
that, I guess
. But I even got a good look at the couch – nothing under it, nothing.”

“He’s a time bomb.”

“
And if I could go put a bullet in him, I would. But come on, Raccoon. You know that guy didn’t take Sophia.”

Raccoon nodded. He whispered, “I know.”

Chap. 41

It was 8 p.m. when Owl and Raccoon got back to the meeting room at the station. The white board had been wiped clean and Owl had nothing new to write on it.

Jefferson and Mateo were there. They’d been relieved at the Marriott and if they were tired from almost 20 hours on watch, they didn’t show it. Atrex and Samuelson from the Bureau were there, too. But there were only two uniformed officers this time, men Owl and Raccoon recognized from the sweep of the open space.

Owl pointed at Jefferson. “What’s up?”

“After they got back, they went back in the bar for a minute. He caved in at 7, just before we switched out. He wanted to go back to the room. She went with him.”

“And, nothing?”

“They didn’t talk about it. We’ve got the whole thing on tape. Besides
to
you two, they didn’t say anything that sounded like anything.”

Owl looked at Raccoon. “Because they already know where she is.”

Raccoon had no other explanation. He nodded.

Jefferson also nodded.

Owl said, “No calls?”

Jefferson said, “No, no. Four calls. All to him, none to her. Cell phone company has four texts and three five-minute calls from a number in Indiana and one call from a local number.”

Samuelson spoke up. “The Indiana number would be his parents, most likely. Don and Margaret Grey. He is a retired veterinarian, she helped him in the office, ran the back end of his business. They were out here briefly after Sophia was born.”

“OK. Jefferson, transcripts of the calls?”

“I don’t have them printed out. They were all pretty much, ‘Anything?’ ‘Not yet.’ ‘Love you.’ ‘Love you.’”

“OK. What about the local number?”

“Cell phone registered to a
Monica
Peterson.”

Silence.

“Owl? Know her?”

Owl nodded. “We know her. She works with dad. Maybe his ex-girlfriend, we think.”

More silence. The detectives turned this information over in their heads and came up with nothing concrete. One by one, they looked up and around the room. No one voiced a new theory.

Owl said,
“Probably just checking in. Got a transcript of that one?”

“Nope. I can get it.”

“Do it.”

Owl looked at the white board and then slowly he wrote this:
Monica
Peterson.

And then he went on.

“OK, we talked his parents, they live in Indiana. What about hers?”

Atrex. “Dead in a car accident when she was 16.”

Mateo said, “That’s even worse than Indiana,” and the men laughed, a low rumble, a chuckle from the gallows.

“How about the sweep of the open space? Dumpsters?”

One of the uniformed officers said, “We’re still at it. But it’s been
eight
hours, Owl. I don’t think she’s going to pop up.”

“That’s not long enough,” Owl said. He turned around and wrote, “Sweep,” on the white board in all capital letters. Then he underlined it. And then he wrote, “Find the body,” and underlined that, too. He said, “You have no fucking idea how long this could take. He’d lived in that condo for years. He had a bike. The
re are bike trails all over that
open space.” He pointed at the white board and said, “Find the body. That’s all we have to do. She didn’t just vanish into thin air. Find. The. Body.”

“We’re trying, Owl.”

Owl was exasperated, maybe for the first time since Raccoon had known him. Owl yelled,
“So we don’t have shit.
We’ve been at this two days and we don’t have shit.”

“Here’s something new, Owl.” It was Atrex again. He was holding a bank statement.

“What is it?”

“It’s the Grey’s financial information. His information. David Grey’s.”

“And?”

“He’s rich. Worth almost
two
million. Two hundred thousand in checking alone. 401k’s and stocks and the condo was all paid for, free and clear.”

“How’d he get his money?”

“He
just
made it. There’s no one big deposit. No windfalls. He just saved his money. He was making almost two hundred at his job and he was just
sinking
it away. He made some good investments. It added up.”

“What about her?”

“Not much. A checking account with ten grand in it. Grocery money.”

Owl considered this. He stood at the head of the room, his eyes on the floor, tapping his marker against a table. Finally he said, “Raccoon?”

Raccoon replied, “It’s a lot of money, Owl. They could have been the target of a kidnapping.”

“Are we a hundred percent sure there’s no note?” Owl said.

Dead silence. So Owl asked again. “A note? Are we sure there isn’t one? A call? A text? Anything?”

Silence again.

And then Samuelson said, “How could we be sure?”

“Did anyone search them when we brought them in?”

The men looked at each other nervously.

Raccoon said, “Owl, no. They weren’t under arrest.”

Owl growled, frustrated. “What about her phone? How come no calls to her today?”

Samuelson. “It’s
still
off. The carrier lost the signal.”

“When was the last time we had it?”

“
B
efore we brought them in.”

Slowly, Owl turned around and wrote “Find mom’s phone” on the white board.

There was nothing else to ask. Barely audible Owl said, “The sweep is ongoing?”

“I swear, Owl. They have the dogs from the park in th
e open space right now. If she’
s there, we’ll have her by morning.”

Still not looking up, Owl muttered, “Go. We’re done here.”

Chap. 42

As the men filed out of the room, off to go see their wives or their girlfriends, head to a bar or a TV set or whatever the
y
did, Owl imperceptibly nodded to Raccoon. Raccoon stayed behind, tying a shoelace that didn’t need to be tied, and only looked up when Owl shut the door behind the last man.