“Why would you ask that?” Luke said.
“I’ve seen the news.”
Nick said, “We don’t have any reason to believe that. But it turns out that she never was found. She’s still missing.”
The two girls gawked for a minute—Elizabeth gaping in earnest and Shea seeming to have trouble wrapping her mind around anything.
Luke prompted, “So did she? Ever have any connection to Hilltop House?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Not that I kn—”
“Yes.” Shea.
“She did?” Elizabeth asked.
“She applied for a job there. Said she wanted to work the night desk or gift shop or something, get a little cash for—” She stopped. Oops.
“Drugs,” Luke said.
“Maybe.”
Nick felt a tingle. “Are you sure? I mean about going for a job at Hilltop House.”
“Yeah. One of the other girls on our floor worked there, helping out with breakfasts on weekends. That’s what gave Shelly the idea. But I don’t think she ever worked there. She just… inquired.”
Luke said, “Did you mention that to the agents you spoke with? Two FBI guys came from Pittsburgh and interviewed you.”
“I don’t think so,” Shea said. “I mean, you two asked specifically about Hilltop House. They didn’t.”
“Did Shelly meet Jack Calloway?” Nick asked. “Did she say anything about him?”
That question seemed to give Shea a headache. “Geesh… I don’t know. Not that I remember. I think she just talked to Mrs. Calloway.”
“Listen, girls,” Nick said, and got the feeling Elizabeth was insulted by the characterization. She stuck out her boobs a little. “You gotta think about this hard. Could Shelly have struck up a relationship with Jack Calloway around that time? Did she have something sexual going on with him?”
Elizabeth grimaced. “Ick. He’s like, old.”
“Did she?”
The roommates looked at each other, clearly baffled.
“I don’t think so,” Elizabeth finally said. “I mean, Shelly was a lesbo.”
Nick blinked.
Whoa
.
He and Luke poked around a little longer but in the end, the only thing the roommates seemed sure of was that Shelly
hadn’t
had an affair with Jack. “
With his
wife
she might’ve… Not with
him…”
Nick stood, pocketing the find from the sofa, and looked down at Shea in the gaudy mushroom chair. “I want you to come downtown tomorrow morning and give a statement about Shelly going to Hilltop House. Can you do that?”
She hauled herself out of the chair. “I guess so.”
“No,” Nick said, putting a little edge in his voice. “I mean, can you do that
straight
?”
Caught. She swallowed. “I’m… okay.”
“Bullshit.” Nick got in her face, wagged a finger. “Don’t touch another joint or drink before you come to my office tomorrow, do you understand? I want you clear. If you’re hazy, or if you don’t show up at all, I’m coming back here and I’m gonna bust you both for possession and anything else I can think of. Fuck up your senior year.”
“There’s nothing here…”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Nick said. He held up the baggie of grass he’d pulled out from between the couch cushions. It was the pipe that had poked him in the hip. “You might’ve at least put it in the freezer, down your bra or something.”
Elizabeth shrugged. “I don’t wear one,” and Shea pouted, “Okay, okay, I’ll be there…”
Nick hit the office, waiting for Schaberg to bring in Ace Holmes, and called Pittsburgh. He woke up Louis
Feldman to confirm that Shelly Quinn had been a lesbian. If so, then she probably hadn’t been a lover of Jack’s.
“Well, could be, maybe,” Feldman said, groggy. “She was getting high with men and women alike. But I always did wonder why there was no boyfriend. She was a looker.”
E
RIN AND
H
ANNAH
formed little chunks of dough into balls, then rolled them in a bowl of cinnamon sugar and set them a couple of inches apart on a cookie sheet. “Dad’s not gonna believe this,” Hannah said. “He doesn’t think you know how to cook anything.”
“I can do cookies,” Erin said, though if she thought about it, she hadn’t done any in… about twelve years. “These were my brother’s favorites. Snickerdoodles. He didn’t like fancy cookies with lots of stuff in them like chocolate chips or nuts or anything. Just liked plain old sugar cookies with cinnamon.”
And when the first batch came out of the oven, Erin poured two glasses of milk and they ate Snickerdoodles and talked about cooking and school and Hannah’s grandparents, and eventually, her mom.
“She was really pretty. Daddy says he can see her in me.”
“I don’t doubt it. You’re awfully pretty yourself.”
“No, I’m not. I’ve got these crooked teeth right here…” She bared her teeth and poked her finger at them.
“All ten-year-olds have crooked teeth. They come in wacky. If they don’t straighten, then you get braces for a while, and poof. Straight teeth.”
“Did you have braces?”
“Sure. ’Cause all these right here—” she rubbed a finger over all her front teeth “—were like this.” She cocked her finger sideways in her mouth and they were both giggling when the phone rang. Hannah picked it up, talked for two minutes, and hung up. She frowned. “Dad. He says I have to go to bed.”
Erin looked at the clock. Just after ten. “Uh-oh. We’re caught. You’ll be wiped out tomorrow if you don’t get some sleep.”
“I guess.”
“Do you need a bath, or shower?”
“I do it in the mornings. But…” she hesitated, mulling something over.
“What?”
“We’re reading these stupid stories in Ms. Moran’s class… It’s a unit on fairy tales, because The Ritz did
Hansel and Gretel
and we went to see it as a field trip, and I was wondering… Would you read a couple to me? I mean, I can read and everything, but sometimes Daddy still reads to me and I like it.”
“Sure, come on,” Erin said, amazed at how much the request touched her. “I like fairy tales.”
“You do?” Hannah’s eyes got huge, like she couldn’t believe that. “Have you ever actually
read
any?”
Erin chuckled. “Well, not for a long time, I guess.”
“That explains it,” she said, trotting up the stairs. “The Grimm Brothers were psychos.”
Ace Holmes was mostly sober but feeling like shit when he came in with Roger Schaberg. Schaberg had already interrogated the hell out of him.
“He was gonna meet Rebecca at five-thirty this morning, a block from her house. They were going to Buffalo.”
“Buffalo. Why Buffalo?” Nick asked.
Holmes said, “I got a cousin there, owns a bar. Becca could work there.”
Schaberg went on: “Ace says he went to pick her up, but she wasn’t there.”
“At five-thirty?” Nick asked.
“I mighta been a little late.”
“How late?”
“Ten, fifteen minutes. Not more.”
“So,” Schaberg continued, “since Ace was packed up and all, and Becca didn’t show, he decided to just go ahead without her. Thought she might’ve changed her mind and be pressing a rape charge. Then he got sidetracked in Elyria and couldn’t keep his temper in check. The cops up there wouldn’t’ve tagged him if he hadn’t been fighting.”
Nick said, “Thanks, Roger. You can go now.”
Schaberg lifted his eyebrows, catching on. He shifted his feet. “Uh, listen, Nick…” he said just under his breath. “I already got everything Ace kno—”
“I said, you can go.” Nick didn’t take his eyes off Ace Holmes as he said it. Roger gave a very believable impression of a man who was truly concerned, shot a worried look at Holmes, then sort of backed out of the room. Later, Nick would have to commend him for the performance.
When he was gone, Nick braced his hands on the arms of Holmes’s chair. “Now it’s just you and me, Ace,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “You, and me, and not a camera or tape recorder in sight. Do you know what I think should happen to men who kidnap girls?”
“I didn’t fuckin’ kidnap her.” Holmes was an asshole
and a bully, but he was a stupid son of a bitch, too. The idea of tangling with a psycho cop alone and off the record scared the shit out of him. Too much TV. “She wanted to go,” he said. “She’s been beggin’ me to go. Jesus fuckin’ Christ, man. I didn’t kidnap that cunt.”
His sincerity was almost believable. A boulder of fear dropped on Nick’s chest. “Then where is she?”
“Well, shit, you’re the cop. You figure it out.”
She wanted to go… She’s been beggin’ me to go… I didn’t fuckin’ kidnap her…
Ace was lying. He had to be.
Ten, fifteen minutes late. Not more…
You’re lying, Holmes. Where is she?
You’re the cops… You figure it out…
Twenty more minutes with Holmes, and Nick stormed from the interview room, reeling. Ace
wasn’t
lying. If Becca hadn’t met Ace, then she’d been missing since early this morning. Nineteen hours ago.
The rage jumped him.
Blind.
That’s what Erin had said of her mother and he was no better. Couldn’t see what was right under his nose, not even when Erin was screaming and pointing a finger at it.
Or
wouldn’t
see it. That was worse.
He yanked open his desk drawer. Cigarette. They were there, a brand new pack, and Nick slammed the drawer shut again. Didn’t want one. Bad habit gone by the wayside. All it had taken was two men dead and a missing woman, a nice, juicy mystery to unravel and a first-rate villain to chase. Nick was in his element now. Hell, if another one or two of his charges got murdered, he could stop drinking tequila and shooting at demons.
What a sick son of a bitch.
He curled his fingers into fists, then forced himself to move. He found Luke firing up a fresh pot of coffee.
“I figured you were about to call a meeting,” Luke said.
“How soon can you get me some Feds?” Nick asked.
“Let’s find out.”
Luke left and Nick got on the phone. He sent four deputies to start searching the block where Rebecca had been planning to meet Ace and warned them the FBI would be joining them. To his office, he called in the core crew: Quentin, Schaberg, Hogue, and Jensen. Not Fruth; Fruth was posted at his house. Meeting in forty-five minutes, he told them. Come prepared for the duration.
No one would be going home again until Rebecca was found.
While he waited for the team to arrive, Nick made a quick run home. He wanted to see Hannah, and clutch her against his heart. Wanted to see Erin, and do more than that.
No time.
He stepped into his kitchen, and the aroma of hot baked cinnamon curled around him. A pile of cookies sat on a plate and another batch had been set out on a rack to cool. He dropped his jacket over a kitchen chair and popped a cookie into his mouth. Sweet, on the verge of gooey but not quite, and the delight of chewing it in his warm, safe kitchen brought a shudder of fear for Rebecca. Cold night, and she was out there somewhere,
not
running away with her boyfriend…
He discarded his jacket but not his gun or wallet. He wouldn’t be here long.
He went upstairs, planning to check in on Hannah and make sure Erin was willing to stay put until morning.
He paused in the hallway to shake off the tension. Didn’t want either one of them to see how worried he was.
Erin’s voice drifted to his ears first. “… the old woman had only pretended to be so kind; she was in reality a wicked witch, who lay in wait for children, and had only built the little house of bread in order to entice them there. When a child fell into her power, she killed it, threw it in an oven and cooked and ate it, and that was a feast day with her. Witches have red eyes, and cannot see far, but they have a keen scent like the beasts, and are aware when human beings draw near….”
“Nice,” Nick said, and Erin about jumped out of her skin. “You’re reading horror stories to my daughter before bed.”
“Daddy!” Hannah jumped to her knees on the bed, and D.D., who’d been lying across her feet, pumped his tail against the bed.
“Some watch dog you are,” Nick said, patting the dog with one hand. With the other, he hugged Hannah close. Hard.
D.D. got jealous, nudged them apart, and tried to lick Nick across the face.
“Yech,” he said to the dog. “You smell like cinnamon.”
D.D. seemed pleased with that, and plopped back down on the bed. Nick looked at Erin, cozied up in the rocking chair in his daughter’s room, a book in her lap, and a tiny smear of cinnamon on her chin.
Thmp
.
“Hannah told me she’s supposed to read these for school,” Erin said, defending herself.
“Psycho tales,” Hannah said.
“What the hell—”
“Quarter,” Hannah said, but Erin held up the book to show him.
“Oh, the fairy tales,” Nick said. “Quent was griping about Marissa reading those. Which one is that?”
“
Hansel and Gretel.
You know, Dad, if they made movies out of these, they’d be rated like double R or something. Witches with red eyes, moms who dump their kids in the forest so they don’t have to feed them, cats who pretend to be friends with mice and then eat them…”
“I don’t remember a cat in
Hansel and Gretel
.”
“That was another one,” Erin said. “This is our fourth.”
He grunted. “Obviously I wasn’t specific enough when I called and said, ‘Go to bed.’ I meant, ‘Go to sleep.’ ”
He kissed Hannah and turned off her light, followed Erin down to the kitchen. He knew he should tell her to get lost. He knew he should make her understand that someday she might decide to go to a restaurant and some bastard who hated him would pop her in the chest. He knew he should make her understand that he couldn’t keep her safe. Not even in Hopewell.
Instead, he pushed her back against the sink and kissed her. Thoroughly, desperately. A deep, turbulent kiss that turned her liquid in his arms and left him aching to possess her and protect her the way a man should.
“Okay, okay,” she said, pulling back. She was gasping for air. “I agree, wholeheartedly. But maybe we should wait until Hannah’s asleep.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I have to get back.”
She blinked. “Oh. Uh-oh. What happened? Something about Shelly?”