It wasn’t an easy thing to knock out three people simultaneously, or four if I counted my father, even if two of them were children.
“When I was in the car, the man mentioned ghosts.”
My daughter’s words caught me off guard. “What?”
“He was talking to someone, and he mentioned whining ghosts.”
I knew Audrey was getting her words mixed up, probably because of the sedative, but I pushed. “He was talking to someone on the phone?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did he say a name?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Do you remember anything else?”
“Just the ghosts. Mommy, where’s Leo?”
My head swam with questions and with thoughts so dark that, for a moment, I could see nothing else. But I forced myself back into the moment and to the question I had asked myself moments earlier: Who could I trust with Leo’s life?
I picked up the handset of the clinic’s landline and dialed Detective Rico, but the call was interrupted by the jingle of the bell attached to the front door. Though the clinic was closed, someone had just entered the building.
41
I squeezed my daughter’s shoulder with a hand gone suddenly clammy. “Stay behind me, okay?”
I grabbed a pair of bandage scissors and moved into the lobby, where I found Detective Rico standing near the pet food display. He was back to wearing a tie, this one covered in rubber ducks. He tried out a smile, but it strained his cheeks, adding tension to his face.
“I was just calling you,” I said.
“Were you?” He gestured toward the scissors I held in my fist. “What are those for?”
“To stab someone in the neck, but apparently I won’t be needing them.” I slipped the scissors in my pocket. “Why’re you here?”
“You weren’t hard to find. Your name’s on the door.” He motioned toward the broken window. “Plus, there’s the alarm you triggered.”
I leaned against the wall to steady myself. “How are they?” I asked, my voice weary.
Rico stared at me, unblinking, eyes no longer hooded. “Your father and Daryl? They’re okay.”
So my father had been drugged too.
I hesitated, uncertain how much to tell him.
Talk to the police and Leo dies.
“What’s going on here, Cassie?”
I wanted to trust him, needed to trust somebody, but I knew that a missing adult and an abducted child were two very different police matters. The moment I told Rico that Leo had been taken, the case would get loud, quickly: An Amber Alert would be issued; details about that white sedan carrying my son would be flashed across digital billboards and cell phone screens. The Feds would be called in, and all available law enforcement would be alerted to my son’s disappearance. Rico would probably request the records of the number that had texted me, even if it was likely a fruitless search.
Then there was Audrey, who would become a witness. Would Rico be the one to interview her? A child psychologist? I didn’t know.
But I did know that even if every law enforcement official between here and Canada mobilized, even if the whir of a thousand helicopter rotors lent the sky the appearance of Armageddon, and, hell, even if the goddess of luck herself materialized in my lobby with a satchel of rabbits’ feet and four-leaf clovers and promises of good fortune, it wouldn’t be enough. This was Leo. My son. He had been taken, and there was nothing I wouldn’t do to get him back—and that included trusting Rico.
Aware that the note I had been given warned against it, I nevertheless took a breath and said, “Leo’s been taken.”
Though Detective Rico didn’t move, not at first, the pulse of the room quickened.
“I figured it was something like that,” he said, his voice as weary as mine had been moments earlier. At my look of surprise, Rico’s lids lowered again until only small wedges of his eyes were visible as he laid it out for me. “You got to Daryl’s ahead of us. You were in his Honda, found disabled at the scene, and now you’re driving his truck. I ran the plates. You wouldn’t have walked away from Daryl and your dad, unconscious like that . . . unless someone took your children,” he said, looking at my daughter, “and then pushed one of them out of the car.”
In my mind, I saw it again: Audrey tumbling onto the road, discarded from the moving car like a fast-food wrapper or the butt of a cigarette. I assumed the driver would just as quickly dispose of my son if he no longer served a purpose.
“I guess this means Leo’s no longer a suspect?” My voice cracked on the question.
“I had to consider all the angles.” A hint of an apology. He tightened his rubber-duck tie and started in on the questions:
What happened?
What did you see?
What direction was the white sedan headed?
Can you describe the driver?
Then he excused himself to make some calls. I used the break to place my own call, to my father.
When Rico returned, I knew that in telling him, everything had changed. What little control I’d had I had just yielded to the Santa Rosa Police Department. I didn’t know how I felt about that.
The detective’s gaze dropped to my daughter, pinned to my side.
“Audrey, right?” He didn’t lean down or soften his gaze when addressing her, as other adults might have done.
She tucked herself mostly behind my back, only her head and one shoulder visible to the detective. He motioned to her hidden arm. “With all that gauze, that must be a terrible injury.”
“I fell,” Audrey said. Exhaustion made the simple explanation sound like deceit, even to me.
“Oh?”
“I think I was pushed from a car.”
Rico’s jaw clenched, but he kept his tone neutral. “Who pushed you?”
I was as interested as the detective in my daughter’s answer, but she just shrugged with her uninjured arm.
Rico’s eyes narrowed, an expression I had come to recognize: he was preparing to ask a question I wouldn’t like. I braced myself, but instead of asking his question, he looked down at Audrey. I knew what his silence implied.
“Why don’t you draw a picture?”
I ushered my daughter to Zoe’s desk, tucking her into a chair with a fistful of pens and a notepad.
With Audrey out of earshot, Rico continued, his voice quiet. “No chance Sam did this?”
It was a challenge to keep my own voice from rising. “Of course not.”
“You sure?” When I remained silent, he said, “I once arrested a guy who tried to smother his toddler because his ex-wife got custody. She thought her husband was a bastard, but she never imagined he’d do anything like that.”
“Sam’s not a bastard.”
“He might not be, but do you know what makes a good cop? A good cop doesn’t assume. You see a guy pushing a car down the street, you don’t assume he ran out of gas. Maybe he stole the car. You stop that guy pushing the car, and you ask him what’s up. So I’m asking. Could this be a custody thing?”
I glanced at the exit. A thickening gloom had settled against the glass, the tall hedge outside the door blocking all light, erasing all that had existed beyond the clinic lobby. A cold wind breached the shattered window, but I fought back the shiver.