by Matt Lincoln
The biscuit was as buttery as it appeared, and it melted in my mouth.
“So what’ve you been up to?” Holm asked when he was done licking his buttery fingers, arching an eyebrow at Nina. “Marston says you might be working the Holland case without us?”
“Well, I was working something,” Nina said cagily, though she avoided the question. “Then I got called out here when all the commotion happened this morning.”
Holm narrowed his eyes at her and opened his mouth as if to press the issue on the Holland case, but I spoke before he got the chance.
“We heard you had an altercation with one of the suspects at the mall this morning?” I asked, though I wasn’t about to drop the Holland issue entirely. I’d talk to Nina about it before the night was done, but I wanted to get the most pressing business out of the way first, and that was Mikey’s case.
“Sure did,” Nina said sullenly. “Some idiot ran into me, though, and I couldn’t catch the guy. Typical of him to show up. Lots of these lone-wolf types can’t bear to stay away from the crime scene. They’re too proud of what they’ve done or nervous about not knowing how the police are working the scene or both. The problem is, the video makes it seem like there was some other guy with him, so none of it’s quite adding up.”
I exchanged a knowing look with Holm, and then together, we launched into a retelling of everything we’d learned in our conversation with the boy’s parents. By the time we were done, the biscuits were gone, and there were steaming crab legs sitting untouched in front of each one of us.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Nina managed, and I thought I could almost see the steam of anger coming out of her ears. “These parents, I swear. It’s like half the time they don’t even want their kids back.”
“You worked a lot of these cases?” Holm asked her.
“A few,” she sighed. “And it’s always the same. Well, this is the worst example of it, but still, it’s always the same.”
“You mean you’ve had something like this happen before?” I asked, a little surprised even though Dr. Osborne had told us that it isn’t uncommon for parents to withhold information in an investigation like this.
“Yeah, I worked one in Ohio a while back where the mom neglected to inform us about an old boyfriend who thought she wasn’t taking good enough care of her kid. It turned out when he left her, he took the boy with him, and she expected us to not need this information. The whole thing was a mess.”
“Sounds like the boyfriend might’ve had a point,” Holm muttered, reaching out and grabbing one of the crab legs but not moving to crack it open with one of the mallets the restaurant owner had provided.
“He did,” Nina sighed. “Wasn’t his kid, though. And anyway, I had a better impression of these parents. I didn’t really talk to them myself—that’s not my strong suit—but Osborne seemed to think they were decent parents.”
“I think they are,” I said. “That’s what’s so strange about it to me. They seem like good, attentive parents who love their kid. So why do this? Why withhold information like this? It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Osborne would say it’s not supposed to,” Nina pointed out. “That it’s not conscious, or something like that. That the fear and pain make people do stupid things.”
“Yeah, she said something like that to us,” Holm muttered, and Nina nodded in his direction.
“Well, there we go,” she said. “I don’t know. Maybe we’re wrong, though. Maybe they did engineer this whole thing.”
“What?” I asked, shaking my head in confusion. “How do you figure that?”
“People do weird things during custody cases,” she explained, grabbing a crab leg of her own and beginning to beat at it with the mallet. “It wouldn’t be the first time a parent staged a kidnapping just to get the upper hand.”
“Wouldn’t that be this Jackson guy’s plan, though?” Holm asked. “To make the legal guardians look bad in front of the judge?”
“Could be,” Nina said with a nod. “And I agree that’s probably our best theory. But we can’t rule these parents out yet, either. Desperate people do wacky things. They might’ve thought that Jackson had something on them, something about their relationship, or their jobs, anything really, and panicked and thought that getting Mikey out of here and starting a new life with him somewhere was their only way out. As I said, it wouldn’t be the first time. Most of these cases end up being something like that, strange as it may seem.”
“They didn’t say anything about something bad like that,” Holm mused. “Though I suppose that doesn’t mean much, at the end of the day.”
“Yeah, I don’t know how quick I’ll be to trust them after this,” I agreed. “They could easily be hiding something else if they were hiding this.”
“At least we have a decent place to start now,” Nina said. “I assume you have the detectives trying to track down this Jackson guy?”
“Yeah, they were already able to find him on the Internet,” I said, thinking back to our meeting with the police after we spoke with the parents—well, two of them, anyway. “He works at some research university in Southern California. They’re trying to get ahold of him now. They’ll call me when they have something, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes a while.”
“What makes you say that?” Holm asked.
“Because my money’s on Jackson having the kid,” I explained. “And I doubt he’s going to be picking up the phone anytime soon if he does.”
“Fair point,” Holm relented. “So, what about this whole Coast Guard thing? What do you make of it?”
Nina sighed again and cracked open another crab leg.
“I’m not sure,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m the one who took the call. The guy seemed sure that he saw Mikey, and the man whose face we plastered all over the news, the one I saw at the mall. He was certain of it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. People get a glimpse of something all the time and then convince themselves it’s more than it actually was, especially in a stressful situation like this.”
“You still called us,” I pointed out.
“Of course I called you,” she scoffed, grinning at me. “You think I’d pass up an opportunity to work with you two again? It was the perfect set up.”
“So you have doubts that the kid’s actually at sea?” Holm asked.
“Of course I have doubts, I always have doubts,” Nina shrugged. “Wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t. The thing that really sticks out to me is that at the mall, the guy wasn’t wearing that brown jacket from the video anymore. I figured he must’ve seen himself on the news and tossed it. It would be the smart thing to do. But the Coast Guard guy said he was wearing the jacket when he saw him, and that was after the mall.”
“Which makes you think that he just might’ve seen a man vaguely matching that description and a little boy out on the boat and then jumped to conclusions when he saw the newscast back onshore,” I finished for her, nodding knowingly. “That would make sense.”
I thought back to that morning when Diane had told us about the Scottish fisherman who spotted the Hollands in a similar manner off the coast of Scotland. Interpol had ignored him for weeks, thinking much the same as Nina and I had just said, that he had extrapolated more to what he saw than was actually there once the news reports about Chester and Ashley were fresh in his mind. This was a better reason than any not to discount any eyewitness accounts just because they might sound implausible at first glance.
“What are you thinking about?” Nina asked me, noticing that I was deep in thought.
I exchanged a look with Holm and made a decision. Nina was with us in New Orleans. The Holland case was, in a way, as much hers as it was ours. I doubted anyone would care if we shared this new information with her. For all we knew, she already knew it and was working the case with another team of FBI agents somewhere other than Miami.
So I launched into another explanation, this one of the whole Scotland an
d Interpol situation that had eaten up so much of our morning before catching this case.
Nina gave no indication that she knew what we were telling her already, but she didn’t stop us from relaying the information, either. In fact, she seemed even more engrossed by this story than by the one about Mikey’s parents keeping their custody case from us.
“I think I follow your meaning,” she said quietly when I was finished, nodding slowly. “You think it would be wrong to ignore the Coast Guard account lest we end up in the same position as Interpol with your other case. Don’t worry, then. I brought you here for a reason. I won’t be ignoring it. And the Coast Guard’s out scouring the water for them as we speak.”
“Good,” I said, nodding to her, and noticing that she called the Holland case mine and Holm’s, and not her other case, too. “So, I know that I probably shouldn’t ask…”
My voice trailed off as I watched for her reaction. I could tell she knew exactly what I wanted to ask. She was too smart not to, and she gave me a wink for good measure.
“No, you probably shouldn’t, Marston,” she said with a small smile. “And I shouldn’t tell.”
She lingered on that sentence, meeting my eyes. So she did know something, I decided. She had to. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be saying there was anything to keep from us.
“Come on, this is an MBLIS case, isn’t it?” Holm complained, clearly catching on to the same thing I had. “Our agencies are supposed to be working together, aren’t they?”
“They are,” Nina said, nodding again and seeming to mull this over. “But not every agent knows every detail of a case this big. There are lots of different facets to consider.”
“It has to do with Lafitte’s ship, doesn’t it?” I asked, unable to contain myself any longer. “The FBI still has jurisdiction over that, technically. I know because I keep asking Diane about it. Come on. It could really help our investigation to have some answers about it.”
“I know it would,” Nina said, pursing her lips. “Which is why you haven’t heard anything yet, I’m afraid.”
I thought about this for a second.
“You mean you think you might have something, but you don’t know for sure yet, and you don’t want to tell us until you do?” I asked.
I had to admit that this made some measure of sense. Nina and her team—whatever it was they were working on—wouldn’t want to sidetrack us when we should be looking for the Hollands and pursuing our own leads. Still, it was tantalizing to know that there was something going on that we weren’t exactly privy to yet.
“You could say that,” Nina said quietly. “They’ve been keeping us updated on what you’re doing, though. I left this morning before the news from Scotland must’ve come in. I’m sorry, I can imagine how frustrating it is to have someone else working this case when you should be there yourselves.”
“Kind of like finding out that someone else is working your case and not giving you all the details,” Holm said bitterly, and I shot him a look. I was sure that Nina was telling us all that she could. I hated this just as much as he did, but it was what it was, and antagonizing her wasn’t going to help matters any.
“Holm…” I started to say, making to scold him, but Nina held up a hand to stop me.
“It’s okay,” she said, hunching over her plate. “I understand. I’m almost as frustrated as you are, believe it or not, not being able to talk about things yet. But we’ll get there, I promise. I just wish we didn’t have this nightmare of a case to take us all off the rest of our workload.”
“Finding this kid is the top priority,” I said. “Then, we can worry about the rest of it.”
Nina and Holm both nodded in agreement, and I finally turned my attention to my crab legs. Nina and Holm were both close to being done with theirs, but I’d talked so much that I’d almost forgotten mine. Luckily, they were delicious even after the wait, dipped in butter and sprinkled with cracked pepper and creole seasoning.
“You guys got a place to stay yet?” Nina asked us after a long period of silence in which we just enjoyed our meals and the view of the water in the distance, a brief reprieve during a particularly stressful case.
We both shook our heads.
“We were just about to do that when we ran into you,” I explained. “Though I doubt we’ll spend much time there. Probably just catch an hour or two every now and then in the station until we crack this one.”
“Fair enough, but the FBI’s putting me up in an inn not far from here,” she said. “Osborne, too, though I doubt she’ll spend much time there, either. You two might as well stay at the same place, in case anything happens. I double-checked that there’s still space this morning before I called for you, and now that most people are clearing out of town, I’m sure it won’t be a problem.”
“We’d appreciate that,” Holm said, nodding to her.
“We can head back to the station, then get you guys checked in whenever we leave for the night,” Nina suggested.
Left unsaid was the phrase if we leave at all. In a case like this, the clock was always ticking, and come morning, Mikey would’ve been missing for a whole twenty-four hours, without much sign of him since. That was bad, and it was just going to keep getting worse with each hour that ticked by without a new lead.
“Sounds like a plan,” I said, forcing a smile. It was important to keep up morale, as much for my own sake as for everyone else’s.
Our best hope was that the Coast Guard would catch another sign of the boy or the perps tonight, or that the biological father would turn up with some information. Until then, all we could do was keep looking.
11
Nina
It was good to see Marston and Holm again, even if Nina couldn’t be as forthcoming as she would like to about Lafitte’s ship.
In truth, she’d been arguing for weeks with her supervisor about bringing the MBLIS agents into the fold on what they were doing in Virginia. Her pleas fell on deaf ears, however. He just kept saying that they had to wait until they knew for sure what they were dealing with.
Well, Nina thought that they’d know for sure faster with Marston’s help. He knew more about this stuff than pretty much anyone, after all. Regardless, she didn’t want to get kicked off the case entirely. Then where would she be? So, for now, she just had to keep her mouth shut, as much as it pained her.
None of that mattered now, however. Her only concern was finding Mikey, the image of his wailing, terrified little face from the security footage seared into her brain, there every time she closed her eyes.
When they got back to the police station after their meal, she had to resist the urge to march straight back to that lounge area and rip those parents a new one for holding out such important information on them for so long. Osborne, seeming to anticipate this urge in her colleague, ran out to greet them as soon as she heard that the agents had returned.
“Now, don’t freak out,” she warned, and Nina glowered back at her.
“I have half a mind to…” she started to say, her fists clenching at her side.
She and Osborne were standing near the door leading back to the interrogation rooms and that lounge area while Marston and Holm were chattering with the detectives over by the whiteboard, trying to find out if anything new had happened since they left the station.
It hadn’t, of course. If anything came up, all three of their phones would’ve been ringing off the hook. But hope sprang eternal.
“I know you do,” Osborne said sternly. “But it won’t help anything. You know that.”
Nina growled and clenched and unclenched her fists some more. The good doctor was right, of course. They’d worked together on that case in Ohio where that mother didn’t tell them about the boyfriend, and Nina had completely lost it then when Osborne wasn’t looking. The mother had stopped cooperating with them entirely after that. And it was all Nina’s fault. She didn’t want that to happen again, for Mikey’s sake as much as her own.
“Alright, alright,
” she sighed, shaking her head to clear it and then wiggling out her arms, trying to release some of the tension. “But please tell me you at least made it clear that they could’ve killed their son, pulling a stunt like that.”
“Not in so many words, but they know,” Osborne assured her, her expression turning dour now. “I just hope they’re not holding anything else back now.”
“Do you think they could be?” Nina asked, her brow furrowing in concern.
“Who knows?” Osborne muttered, shaking her head. “I had a feeling there was something they weren’t saying before, but I was thinking something along the lines of them not being home as much as they said or sending him to daycare when they said they didn’t. Sometimes parents are weird about stuff like that and hold back the information. I never thought it was something like this, though. I didn’t get the hunch from them I got with that God awful woman in Ohio.”
Osborne had been invaluable on that case, Nina remembered. It was the first one they’d worked together, and Osborne had been suspicious of the mother the whole time. She never really thought it was a stranger abduction.
That the psychologist’s intuition wasn’t serving her as well on this case troubled Nina. This whole thing seemed muddled. Both planned and unplanned, first a stranger case and now a custody battle. None of it was sitting right with her.
“What’s your gut tell you?” Nina asked the other woman.
“My gut tells me that we don’t know enough yet,” Osborne admitted, her mouth set in a thin line.
“Great,” Nina sighed, her voice dripping with sarcasm, though she appreciated the psychologist’s honesty. That they didn’t know enough was important information, in and of itself.
“I’d better get back to them,” Osborne said, pointing behind her toward the lounge area. “They’re going to wake up any second now that I’m gone, I imagine. That would be my luck.”
“Had to drug ‘em again?” Nina asked, though she already knew the answer. No parents in this situation would sleep this early in the evening on the day their child was abducted otherwise.
