Vanished

by Kate Watterson

  Don’t fuck up translated to: don’t you dare take matters into your own hands even if you are pissed off, because I covered it once. Second time not negotiable.

  Jason had done some vigilante justice. So had Carl Grasso.

  “Grasso’s a talented detective.”

  “Oh, Jesus, are we having this conversation? Are you really telling me about my own investigators? I didn’t say he wasn’t. I was just pointing out that he’s a little too prone to let his emotions into the situation, like someone else I know, namely you.” The chief planted his hand firmly on the desk. “Find that girl, and I want cool heads all around. Got it?”

  “Kind of hard to miss.” Jason stood up. “Okay if I go now?”

  “Please do. I think that’s what I just ordered.”

  He and Metzger had a love/hate relationship that he wasn’t positive he ever wanted to resolve. As he stalked over to Ellie’s desk, he thought about his former father, and his possible father, and wondered if, even though he was a police officer, he just plain had a problem with authority.

  His partner was working on something, her lower lip caught between her teeth and a frown on her face. Jason said abruptly, “Game is on. Let’s go.”

  Whatever she was doing she stopped with a click of a key when she checked out his expression. They both should have left work about an hour ago. “What and where?”

  “Missing girl. I have the address.”

  Ellie furrowed her brow. “Just missing? Why are they are thinking homicide?”

  “Metzger wants us to go and see. There’s blood in the foyer. She is nowhere to be found.”

  Ellie closed the screen and grabbed her phone. “I’m ready.”

  If there was anything he could say about Detective Ellie MacIntosh it was that she was devoted to her career. He was too, so they had that in common. In his opinion, being a detective was more of a calling than a job.

  It was calling them both right now.

  “You have to drive?” He at least asked. This morning was fresh in his mind.

  “I actually don’t care as long as we get there quickly. I just needed to drive away from the doctor’s office. This is different. What’s the story?”

  “I don’t really know.” He caught up his keys. “All I know is a girl is missing and there is blood at the scene. Forensics is there already, and Metzger would like us to talk to the parents.”

  Ellie turned away, just briefly, her profile remote. “I hate cases like this. How young?”

  “Old enough to be left alone, evidently.” Metzger was his usual self and didn’t elaborate besides saying “teenaged.” “Need I say more?”

  “Okay. Let’s nail this one, right?”

  He gave her an ironic look. “I thought that was always our special purpose.”

  “It is.” Sarcasm, as always, was wasted on her. Ellie MacIntosh, he’d discovered over the course of their often-complicated relationship, did not pull punches. “I simply meant there’s a clock ticking.”

  Hopefully. He didn’t want to say it out loud. The blood was hardly a good sign.

  She got it from his expression anyway, her face somber. “I know. I wouldn’t want to be her parents when two homicide detectives arrive on their doorstep.”

  He pulled out of the lot. “Let’s just say ‘detectives’ then, okay?”

  “Yeah, better approach.”

  He shot her a sidelong glance. “You good with this? I mean first day back on active duty.”

  “I’m never okay with a missing teenaged girl, but if you mean, am I up for it? Yes, I am.”

  It was a good thing, for when they arrived, the scene was a mêlée. There was a lot of media sitting in trucks around, blocking the street, and Jason couldn’t help but wonder how they caught the scent of the story so quickly.

  Both he and Ellie had to flash their badges to get through, and they exchanged a glance as they approached the house. What the hell?

  * * *

  The place was palatial.

  No other word for it. Three stories of brick and columns, and a front porch that could fit a football team of hefty players, plus a long winding drive bordered by not one, but two fountains. Flagstone walk and excellent landscaping.

  Very chic.

  If you took out the reporters that were everywhere and vans with satellite capabilities and cameramen.

  “It’s just like my place,” Santiago remarked. “Well, if you’d just add some asphalt and about two dozen minivans in the parking lot. My entire apartment building is this size.”

  “I think I’m off a beat. Who was it that disappeared anyway?” Ellie asked it under her breath as they walked up to the house through the crowd.

  “Nicole Remington.”

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Not for me either. I don’t think I move in their circles.” Santiago surveyed the lavish home in a sweeping glance. “What the hell kind of shit are we stepping in anyway? Why is there so much up with the media on this?”

  The answer to those questions was a mystery to her too, and for once his excessive profanity didn’t annoy her. They stepped through the open door of the foyer, and first thing they saw was the blood splatter.

  A lot of it.

  Against one wall and all over the floor, and Ellie understood at once why it was assumed, even without a body, there had been a homicide. Next to her, Santiago said under his breath, “Jesus. Looks like someone bled out in here.”

  “Detectives.” One of the crime-scene technicians came over to greet them. He was young, fair-haired, and businesslike, and she only knew him by his first name, Stan. “We’re getting ready to go over the rest of the house, though this seems to be the scene, I’m sure you agree.”

  “Can you tell us anything from the pattern?” Ellie asked it, feeling sick at heart for the parent that walked into this gruesome mess and then discovered their child was missing.

  “We have our splatter specialist on the way, but it looks to me like someone opened the front door and was standing right here.” The tech took a few steps and demonstrated. “Just inside. We haven’t found any bullet holes or casings, so I would venture to say a knife, but then again, without a body, it is hard to tell.”

  “So she let him in. There was obviously a struggle,” Santiago mused, looking around the elegant foyer, frowning. His eyes were narrowed. “There’s blood on both walls. That’s pretty damn interesting. Whoever it was could carry the body away, so it stands they had to be big enough for that, but she was able to at least defend herself.”

  “This is interesting. No blood on the walk except one drop on the drive,” Stan said.

  “That is interesting. Thanks. Let’s go talk to the parents,” Ellie suggested, though she wasn’t all that anxious to have the conversation.

  “In the kitchen,” Stan supplied, and pointed. “Right down that hallway.”

  The kitchen matched the house in that there were custom cherry cabinets, marble floors, and French doors overlooking a terrace with a shimmering pool beyond it. A man and a woman sat at a polished table, not speaking, faces drawn. The man was older than Ellie anticipated for someone with a teenaged daughter, with a thick build and a lined face. He wore tailored slacks and an expensive navy shirt and it looked like maybe he’d just been out to play golf because there was a set of clubs propped against the island. The wife was younger, dark-haired, and probably trophy, but puffy eyes and trembling hands made her less than pretty at the moment.

  Whatever had happened, they weren’t a part of it.

  A cynical point of view to even consider they were, but Ellie didn’t rule anyone out until she felt it was reasonable to do so, and in this case, she thought it was a logical conclusion they were innocent before even exchanging a word. If they were pretending devastation, they were very good at it.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Remington?” Ellie produced her badge. “I’m Detective MacIntosh and this is Detective Santiago. Can we talk briefly?”

  The man swive
led his head. He looked weary. “We’ve given a statement.”

  “To the uniformed officers,” Santiago said in his forthright way. “And they are competent. I used to be one. But they are not us. So can we just go over it again?”

  Mrs. Remington said in a strained tone, “We really don’t know anything. We talked to Nicole this morning. She went to school, but left around noon because she wasn’t feeling well. I talked to the school nurse and gave my permission.”

  “Around noon? Anyone heard from her since then?”

  “Not that we know of. She isn’t answering her cell phone.” There was a small sob.

  Santiago asked, “But it isn’t here?”

  “No.”

  “Give us the number and we can trace to see if she’s called anyone. What else can you tell us? Has she mentioned that she’s been uneasy lately, or said anything remotely out of the ordinary? Anything might help us find her.”

  “I can’t think of—”

  “Someone ran her off the road.” Mr. Remington interrupted his wife, suddenly animated, his voice thick. He plucked at his shirt in a nervous mannerism. “We gave her a new car for her seventeenth birthday and she was out driving it around. She’d just gotten accepted into a very prestigious Ivy League school and we were all thrilled. Two days ago someone was following her and cut her off twice. The second time she had no choice but to go into the ditch. It didn’t cause any severe damage but we had to have the car towed out.”

  That was interesting but hardly reassuring. Ellie said, “Did she describe the vehicle?”

  “I think so, but I can’t remember right now.” He ran his hand over his face. “It should be in the police report. She insisted on calling it in. It frightened her.”

  “Does she have a boyfriend?”

  “No one serious. Well, there’s a boy named Jeremy she hangs out with fairly often, but she says they are just friends. We called him first. He’s home with the flu. His mother said he swears he hasn’t even gotten out of bed all day. Without Nicole’s phone we didn’t have numbers for her friends, but we did call one of the parents and she had her daughter call around. No one has seen her.”

  Mr. Remington’s voice cracked.

  She didn’t really blame him, as the man had a foyer covered in blood and a missing daughter. “Can we look at her bedroom? I have no idea if it will tell us anything, but maybe it will help.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll show you.” He rose woodenly and took them out into a great room with a staircase that led upward to a series of rooms along a carpeted hallway. He pointed at a doorway. “That one. That’s Nicole’s. Look through anything you want. At this point, we just want her back.”

  Ellie didn’t comment. All that blood …

  Hope was a powerful force. She was a perfect example. When she’d gotten the phone call about her father’s heart attack, she’d kicked into high gear and driven to the hospital, breaking several laws in the process, and the entire time she’d told herself it was going to be just fine …

  It wasn’t.

  “You look through the closet.” Santiago prowled around once they were inside, examining everything. “I can’t imagine trying to decide if she had too many pastels for spring or not enough. Does anyone really need seven bottles of body spray?”

  “Surely at one time you knew girls who were seventeen.” Ellie moved toward the desk, opening a drawer.

  “I knew about their bodies,” he corrected. “Liked that research. Even now their minds would be a mystery.”

  “Since it appears she let the person in, or at least opened the door for them, maybe we’ll find a note or collection of notes, but I doubt it.” She took pity on him and went to the closet as he surveyed a patterned pink bedspread and pale violet walls. “They use e-mail and files on their computer or phones now.”

  He lifted a pillow. “Her parents maintain she wasn’t seeing anyone seriously.”

  “Ever lie to your parents?”

  “Parent,” he corrected. “And fucking yes, all the time, so point taken.”

  In the end, the worst thing they found was a stack of romance novels with some fairly racy covers hidden under some sweaters. Santiago picked one up and shook his head. “You ever read these things?”

  “Sure.” Ellie shut the closet door. “Still do, as a matter of fact. It is a very entertaining illusion to have a hero who never forgets to put the seat down and always gets politely to his feet when a woman walks into a room. It’s called fiction. The only thing I don’t see is her laptop. There’s her desk, but no computer.”

  There was also the usual jumble of pictures of her at the beach, with friends, wearing a cheerleading uniform, at prom … and a slew of framed academic awards too, which fit in with what her father had said about the prestigious college acceptance.

  Long dark hair, trim figure, and very, very pretty. Unfortunately that might have caught a predator’s attention.

  “I’ll take the bathroom. I searched the dresser but refuse to go through her underwear drawer and feel like some pervert. That job is yours.” Santiago left the room.

  A minute later he came to the door. “I think I’ve found out how come there’s no blood on the sidewalk. Shower curtain liner was ripped down. There are still bits of the plastic part stuck on several of the rings.”

  Chapter Three

  They’d found nothing.

  Not a single real lead besides the missing shower curtain.

  Jason sat and thought about what they did have.

  Shoes and purses and the usual young girl stuff, her room itself tidy, but the closet a jumbled mess. Nothing looked ransacked, however, and according to the Remingtons, nothing was missing as far as they could see.

  No robbery. No body. No obvious suspect.

  If it wasn’t for the amount of blood and Nicole’s missing laptop and phone, Jason wouldn’t be so worried about the case, but as he sat in his living room, the screen flickering with a basketball game he couldn’t care less about, he tried to envision a scenario from every angle.

  He was restless, unsettled, and for once solitude was not his friend.

  In the end he called Ellie. “Have you had dinner?”

  “Actually, no, not yet.” She sounded distracted. “Haven’t felt much like eating. Must have been all the blood. I’m actually still at my desk.”

  “I’m sitting here too, thinking about today, and I’m uneasy. I know we can’t be on duty twenty-four hours a day, but let’s grab a pizza and go over it again.”

  There was a palpable hesitation. “All right,” she said finally. “But no to pizza. Someday your bad eating habits are going to catch up with you. I’ll pick the place. But you’re right, my mental gears are starting to grind to a halt. I’ll meet you there.”

  Long day. Longer night ahead. There was an alert out over every county and into Michigan and Illinois now.

  She chose a Thai place, and since he was not really all that picky, it was fine with him. They both looked tired—at least she did and he assumed he did too—and he let her order for them both. It wasn’t like there was any sleep in their future either.

  It took him about two minutes before he asked, “Want to tell me what else is wrong?”

  She shook her head. Slender in jeans and a clingy blue sweater, she didn’t look at him directly and he got the message. Her mother had breast cancer and he was always careful to talk around that subject. Her shuttered expression didn’t invite further inquiry, and he could take a hint.

  “Okay.” He leaned on the table, arms folded across his chest.

  “Nothing personal.”

  “I’m not offended.” He wasn’t. He really got the need for privacy. Self-reliance had always been a part of his life. “Let’s go back to the case.”

  “You mean the one where we have no idea where to look, no idea who could possibly have either killed or abducted Nicole, and not a single witness?”

  Nope, she definitely wasn’t going to talk about anything but the case.

&n
bsp; Fine, he wasn’t willing to talk about the thing with his mother either because he hadn’t decided if he wanted to ask the woman about her motives, her decision to leave him behind, or even worse, his father. Instead he drank half his glass of ice water without stopping and unwrapped his chopsticks. What a great invention. Utensils you could use and then throw away.

  Kate—his ex-live-in girlfriend—had once told him he had a utilitarian approach to life. He did keep things as simple as possible.

  It might have been better if they hadn’t been in bed at the time, but then again, when she’d left him, she’d told him that the sex was why she’d stayed as long as she did. So he was just going to roll with the assumption that she meant he was a great believer in paper plates and things like chopsticks.

  “So what’s our next move?”

  He looked at Ellie, her blond hair shining even in the subdued lighting.

  “Good question.” He inhaled deeply, thinking. “I have a hard time believing no one knows anything. Someone always does.”

  “Nicole’s friend. The boy who supposedly isn’t a boyfriend. I guess I’m willing to risk the flu to talk to someone who was absent the same day. That pops for me.”

  True enough. Nicole had used the same excuse to leave school. “There’s something missing,” he said thoughtfully. “I can’t say what it is, but it is.”

  “Clear as mud.” Ellie checked her phone for the tenth time since they sat down. “If it wasn’t for the blood I might speculate she left voluntarily.”

  It all stopped there.

  He couldn’t swear Nicole Remington was dead. Sometimes he felt it in a case, like a bad twist in his stomach. It also meant something when he didn’t have it, like he was casting around in the dark with a net on the Black Sea during bad weather in a sinking boat.

  She was gone.

  No doubt about that.

  Why was the question. Definitely he was in rough murky waters and there was a leak somewhere.