A.L. was pushing buttons on his phone by the time Rena got into the passenger seat. To whoever answered, he said, “We need info on what is likely a cold case from about ten years ago. Dover, Wisconsin. Missing five-year-old. Similar circumstances to Emma Whitman. We’ll be back in the office in ten minutes.”
He hung up his phone. Neither of them said anything.
He drove and she tried to quiet her head, which was roiling with this new information. They parked in the lot and quickly walked inside. Then it was up the elevator. By the time they crossed the threshold of their office, they were practically running toward the manila folder that was on A.L.’s chair.
He opened it. Just one sheet of paper. He held it so that they could both read.
“Holy shit,” he said after another minute.
Indeed. Corrine Antler, age five, had been dropped off at a day care and discovered missing approximately ten hours later. No ransom. She had never been found.
Rena gripped the back of the chair. “So similar,” she said softly.
“Too fucking similar,” A.L. said. “We’re going to Dover.”
Six
The lead detective on the Corrine Antler case had been Doug Franklin. He’d retired from the Dover Police Department two years earlier and most nice days could be found on the golf course. A.L. got this from Franklin’s former supervisor, who was still riding a desk for the Dover PD.
“I wasn’t here when the Antler case happened,” Brent Smoke said. “I was hired three years later so it was technically a cold case. But I know that Doug Franklin thought about that child every day, that he never stopped trying to figure out what had happened to her. I’m sorry the two of you are mixed up in something similar. I’d be happy to let you look at our file.”
A.L. wanted to talk to Doug Franklin first. “I’d appreciate any help that you can give us to connect with Mr. Franklin. Perhaps his cell phone number.”
“We don’t, as a rule, give out a former employee’s personal cell number. Even to other officers. But I’ll give him a call. See if he’s available. Why don’t the two of you have a cup of coffee in the waiting area?”
Neither Rena nor A.L. was likely to turn down coffee. It was hot and slightly bitter but no worse than what was brewed at the Baywood PD. And they barely had time to finish a cup before Brent Smoke came to find them.
“He’ll meet you in the clubhouse,” he said, passing an address to A.L.
“Thanks for your help,” A.L. said. “We’ll likely be back later to look at the file. If you could grease the wheels on that, it would be appreciated.”
“Consider it done. Good luck.”
A.L. and Rena walked back to his vehicle and plugged the address into the GPS. Thirteen miles. They were halfway there when Rena turned to him.
“This makes me think of Golf Course John.”
Last spring, he and Rena had been investigating a serial murderer and had stumbled upon Golf Course John, a pleasant enough twenty-two-year-old man who worked behind the counter at the Baywood Golf Course, who A.L. had wanted to kill once he’d voluntarily disclosed that he was dating A.L.’s then sixteen-year-old daughter. “I try not to think of him,” A.L. said.
“You’re confident that’s over?” Rena asked.
“Traci says it is. I am bothered by the fact that she’s going to homecoming with the same boy she went to prom with.”
“Why does that bother you?”
“Well, she says they’re just friends.”
“I’m still unclear. That should make you happy.”
“You would think. But she went to prom with him because she couldn’t go with Golf Course John since he was too old. I can’t help but wonder if the same thing isn’t still happening.”
“So ask her?”
“I have to assume that she’s telling me the truth until I have proof that she isn’t.”
Rena gave him a look. “Tess is coaching you, isn’t she?”
He shrugged, keeping his eyes on the road. “She has a good relationship with her daughter. I could do worse than take her advice.”
“Agree. But I always thought you had pretty good parenting instincts.”
Now he glanced at her. “That sounds like a compliment, Morgan.”
She smiled. “What do you think Doug Franklin is going to tell us?”
“More than the file would. That’s why we’re going to see him.”
When they walked into the clubhouse, a man sitting at a corner table waved them over. He was sixty-something, wearing plaid shorts and a bright green shirt. He glanced at their badges and motioned for them to take a chair. “Tell me what’s happened,” he said, not bothering with any pleasantries.
Rena leaned forward. “Five-year-old female was dropped off by her grandmother at day care. At the end of the day, when her father came to pick her up, it was discovered that she hadn’t been there the entire day. Grandmother swears she handed her off to her teacher at the front door. Teacher says it never happened. She’s been missing for almost twenty-nine hours at this point.”
He nodded. Rubbed his forehead with his index finger and thumb. “Corrine Antler was dropped off by her father. He walked her into the building. She ran ahead. He was fifteen to twenty feet behind. Once he saw her enter her classroom, he left. This was the same routine that they’d followed for months. Her mother came to pick her up that afternoon. She wasn’t there and the teacher in her classroom said that she’d never seen the child.”
“You never made an arrest,” A.L. said.
Doug Franklin shook his head.
“Did you like anybody in particular?” A.L. asked.
“A few different people, at various times. There was a janitor who cleaned the building who had a short rap sheet and a belligerent attitude. But I turned over every stone in that man’s life. I found some shit but never any sign of Corrine.”
“You know where this guy is now?” A.L. asked.
“He’s dead. Three years now,” Doug Franklin said. “One of the last things I did before I retired was update the Antler file with his obituary.”
“Anybody else?” A.L. asked.
“There was a neighbor who lived across the street. Single lady. Never married, never had any children. I had a witness who claimed they thought they saw a child watching television in her living room. But we couldn’t find any physical evidence that tied Corrine to that house.”
“She dead, too?” A.L. asked.