In Search of Valor

by Gary Corbin

  “Where’s Jada?” Not accusatory, just matter-of-fact. Give up the facts and we all go home. “Who’s watching her right now?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t take her.”

  “Ah, but you’re aware that she’s missing,” Jordan said. “So who did it? Friend of yours? Hired hand?”

  “I saw it on the news,” he said. “So I came to talk to Rhonda, and to help find my daughter. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Where were you this morning, between, say, nine and eleven a.m.?” Jordan opened her folder and wrote the date and time on a blank interview form. “Specifically.”

  “Working.”

  “Where? For whom?”

  “A construction site in Hartford. My boss can vouch for me.”

  “Boss’s name?” She took notes on the form.

  “Joe.”

  She grunted in exasperation. “Is there only one Joe in Hartford?”

  “Rizzo.” He grinned. “My uncle.”

  “How convenient that your Uncle Joey can vouch for you.”

  “The other guys on the crew can, too," Rizzo said. “I worked until four and heard the news about Jada on the drive home. I showered and came straight to Mansfield. Honest to God.”

  Jordan rolled her eyes. “When is the last time you’ve been honest to God, or anyone else, about anything?” She tapped her pen on the almost-blank page. “Give me Uncle Joey’s number.”

  He did. “Joe can give you the names and numbers of the other guys.”

  “Who’s this?” Jordan slid a photo across the table of the woman who’d picked up Jada from day care, a grainy shot lifted from the video.

  Rizzo shook his head. “No idea.”

  “Never seen her before, ever?”

  “Nope. I don’t hang with n—I mean, uh, no.”

  Heat rose in Jordan’s face. “What were you about to say, Marty?” She waited, but got no reply. “You don’t hang with black people, is that it?”

  “What about it?” he said. “So I don’t know many of you people. Women, anyway. The guys I work with are all right.”

  She controlled her anger enough to keep her voice level. “You made at least one exception.”

  Rizzo stared at her with a blank expression, then recognition dawned. “Oh, you mean Rhonda. Well, not really. I mean, she’s only half. And we had one good night, you hear what I’m saying?” He grinned, and stale, rank air escaped from his mouth. Jordan edged away from him and held her breath for a few moments. “But,” Rizzo continued, “she won’t have nothing to do with me now. Won’t even let me see my daughter.”

  “The courts appear to agree with her.” Jordan pulled a restraining order from the file. “You’re in violation even being in the city.”

  He shrugged. “Somebody took my daughter. It was worth the risk.”

  She sighed. He was either lying, dumb, or both. “You have a history of stalking her.”

  “I didn’t stalk her,” he said, his voice rising. “I saw her out on a date—in Hartford, where I live. It was an accident.”

  “You approached her, interrupted her dinner, confronted her—”

  “I got mad, okay? It bugged me to see her with him.” His tone softened. “I didn’t like the idea of some other guy replacing me as father to my child. But I said my piece and left.”

  “You mean you noticed how big her date was and ran away?” Jordan couldn’t suppress a smile at Rizzo’s expense. “Typical bully. So tough, until a bigger dude comes along.”

  “That’s not how it happened!”

  “Who am I going to believe?” Jordan raised her voice. “A convict? Or a college-educated, professional man with a clean slate?” She bit her lip at the fib about Asher’s record. A little white lie that didn’t matter.

  “I don’t care what you believe,” Rizzo said. “About then, or now. Bust me for the R.O. violation if you want, but you’ve got nothing else. And I swear, I want the same thing you and Rhonda do. Jada, safe and back home.”

  “Then why’d you take her?”

  “I DIDN’T TAKE HER!” Rizzo lurched forward, causing his chair to scrape the floor and his cuffs to jangle. His neck muscles went taut, his body rigid, and his face showed real anger. “HOW MANY TIMES I GOTTA TELL YOU?”

  “Maybe a hundred more, or a thousand,” Jordan said. “And probably even then, I won’t believe you. Believe this, though, Marty: if you don’t start providing some answers, you will only dig yourself into a deeper hole. Because the longer it takes to find her, the greater risk that harm comes to that child, and that’s all on you. Understand? It’s all. On. You.” She stood, grabbed her notes and file off the table, and tossed Rizzo’s cup of water onto the floor. “Oops,” she said, and stalked out of the room.

  Outside, Jordan leaned against the wall, taking deep breaths. She hadn’t broken him—yet. But she would. And until she did, she would make life miserable for Mr. Martin Rizzo.

  Chapter Ten

  Preoccupied by everything that had happened that day, Val forgot to press the button in the dorm’s elevator. The doors opened on the top level and a pair of young women stared in, waiting for her to exit. She mumbled something about missing her floor and pushed “5,” then slid aside to let them in.

  Minutes later she unlocked her door on the fifth floor where she shared a room with her longtime friend and confidante, Beth. Val hoped her roomie had waited for her to eat—she had so much to tell her. But she found the room empty, and a quick glance at the clock showed that unless she hustled, she’d miss out on dinner, too. She tossed her backpack onto the bed and headed for the door. Her phone chimed before she locked up.

  “Valorie! They have Rizzo!” Rhonda’s panicked voice greeted her. “Detective Jordan says if I talk to him, he might reveal Jada’s location. But I’m nervous, and I’m not sure what to say. I was wondering...” Her voice trailed off.

  Val’s stomach rumbled. Soccer practice had left her ravenous, and those sociology chapters wouldn’t get read on their own. But then she envisioned Jada, trapped with strangers and afraid, and then imagined her niece, Ali, in the same situation.

  Food could wait. Besides, everyone said college women gained fifteen pounds their first semester. She could skip the high-carb offerings at the dining hall without penalty. Maybe she could grab some fruit and yogurt for the road. “Sure,” she said. “Pick me up outside my dorm.”

  “I’m five minutes away,” Rhonda said. “Thanks, Val.”

  They made it to the police station in record time, with Rhonda bubbling over with elation over the prospect of getting her child back. “I’ve been so worried, I can’t even think straight. All I do is eat.”

  “Lucky you.” Val held her empty stomach. “I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.”

  “So sorry!” Rhonda said. “After we’re done at the precinct, I’ll buy you dinner. It’s the least I can do.”

  They met a frustrated Detective Jordan in her office, peering into her computer screen. “Bad news,” Jordan said. “Rizzo’s alibi checks out. His boss and two co-workers verified that he was at work when Jada disappeared.”

  “But we already knew that a woman grabbed Jada,” Val said. “Couldn’t he still have masterminded it?”

  Jordan laughed. “Interesting choice of words. Rizzo’s not smart enough to ‘mastermind’ tying his own shoes, much less an abduction. Worse, he doesn’t even have a permanent residence. We have no clue where to begin looking for the child.” Sighing, she circled her desk to face Rhonda. “Still, I think he knows something that will help us, and I hope you can get it from him. Are you up for it?”

  “Anything to help find Jada,” Rhonda said.

  The threesome strategized about how to pry information out of Rizzo. “Emphasize Jada’s safety above all else,” Val said, thinking of her own niece. “If he loves her, that ought to sway him.”

  “If we’re lucky, he may still have feelings for you, Rhonda,” Jordan said. “Play that up, too. Make him believe it’s possible.”
>
  Rhonda made a sour face. “Lucky? Not from my point of view,” she said. “But I’ll try. Can Val be in the room? It’d make me feel a lot more confident, facing him.”

  “Sorry,” Jordan said. “But Val, if you want, you can observe from behind the glass.”

  “I’d love to!” Val’s heart rate spiked. If nothing else, the experience was giving her an amazing inside look at police procedure and strategy.

  It also gave her a peek at the lousy diet detectives had to endure. On the way to the interrogation room, she and Detective Jordan bought a quick dinner of granola bars and soft drinks from vending machines in the hall. “Welcome to Café Mansfield,” Jordan joked. “Shall I show you our wine list?” She handed Val a grape soda.

  But over the course of the next hour, Rizzo refused to budge, insisting that he knew nothing of the abduction, and his story never wavered. The three women gathered back in Jordan’s office afterward, all of them glum and dispirited.

  “We have diddly-squat on Marty,” Jordan said, munching on a Snickers bar. “Other than motive, I mean. No hard evidence. We can hold him on the R.O. violation for a couple of days, but I’m supposed to escort him back to Hartford for that. If we don’t come up with something concrete within forty-eight hours, he walks.”

  “Forty-eight hours! Jada could be long gone, or—or—” Rhonda’s face crumpled and she covered it with her hands, bowing her head. Sobs wracked her body.

  “It begs the question,” Val said, “of who else might have taken the child, if not Rizzo or Desmond.”

  “Not my brother!” Rhonda said. “Desmond would never do anything to hurt me.”

  An idea struck Val. “Your brother said some men threatened him in Jamaica,” she said. “Did you check Rizzo’s phone?”

  “No calls to Kingston, or anywhere else down there,” Jordan said. “He might have used a burner, but he didn’t have one on him, or in his car.”

  “Let’s brainstorm,” Val said. “Who else knows about Jada and where Rhonda lives?”

  “Asher Mulholland is at the top of that list,” Jordan said. “But he also has an alibi, and no motive.”

  “We must be missing someone,” Val said. “Any other relatives? Anyone from one of your classes, or work, or—”

  Rhonda sat up in her chair. “There is one person,” she said. “Dammit! I can’t believe I forgot him.”

  “Who?” Jordan held her by the shoulders. “I need a name, some details!”

  “Sorry I didn’t remember him before," Rhonda said. “It just didn’t—”

  “The name, dammit!” Jordan shouted. “Who is he?”

  Rhonda stared wide-eyed, tears running down her cheeks. Her mouth opened, moved as if to form words, but none came, and her head collapsed into her hands again. Jordan fumed and stomped to her desk, cursing under her breath.

  Val squatted in front of her friend. An inner voice urged her to rest a hand on Rhonda’s knee or shoulder, but something stopped her. Dammit! Once again, her struggles with intimacy and physical touch held her back—this time from connecting with her friend in a moment of need.

  But she had other tools.

  “Rhonda,” she said in a soothing voice. “I’m here to help you. If you can tell me, I can help the detective. Okay?”

  Rhonda moaned and leaned over further. “There’s a guy,” she said, her voice a rough whisper. “We dated one time. His name’s Isaac.”

  “Isaac who?” Val said in a low voice. “How can we find him?”

  “Lewis,” Rhonda said, regaining control of her voice. “He took me out to dinner once. He got upset with me when I wouldn’t go home with him, so he never called me again. I didn’t save his number, and he never told me where he lives.”

  “Got him,” Jordan said several minutes later, tapping on her keyboard and staring at her computer. “Or, rather, several guys with that name, but one guy stands out. No phone or current address, though. Has a short rap sheet, including an assault. Does your guy work for an auto dealer in Hartford?”

  Rhonda nodded. “He drove a fancy car and claimed it was his. But it had dealer plates and a paper floor mat shoved under the seat.”

  The detective’s printer whirred and spit out a grainy photo image a moment later of a man with light brown skin and curly dark hair.

  Val stared at the page in disbelief. “That looks a lot like the guy who chased me today,” she said. “Short, kind of stocky build, late 20s?”

  “That’s him,” Rhonda said, sniffling.

  Jordan clapped her hands in the air. “Bingo. This guy’s a not-nice dude. Hangs around some bad people. People that might try to sell a baby on the open market.” She stared up at them. “But ladies, we’ve got to move. Guys like this don’t wait long to fence their goods. Uh, sorry...I mean, they’ll want to get Jada into a buyer’s hands sooner rather than later. We need to get to her before they do.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Val recapped the actions of the man who followed her and provided a detailed physical description to Detective Jordan. Then she scanned hundreds of mugshots to identify a more positive match. Isaac Lewis more or less fit the description, but so did a half-dozen other men—including Marty Rizzo.

  “That’s okay,” Jordan said when Val and Rhonda reported back to her office. “We’re narrowing the possibilities and adding data. That’s detective work, in a nutshell.”

  “I’ve never met those other men,” Rhonda said. “Why would they take my baby?”

  “I’m not saying they would have,” Jordan said. “Isaac and Rizzo have connections to you, so they’re our top leads. But I’m not counting anyone out.”

  “Detective,” Rhonda said, her voice cracking, “it’s been twelve hours since they’ve taken her. What are the chances she’s still in town, and that they haven’t...” She couldn’t finish. Tears splashed down her face again. Val sat closer, almost even touched her. Almost.

  “I’m confident that the people who took her haven’t harmed her,” Jordan said. “The longer we go without hearing from them, the less likely it’s a ransom situation, and the more likely that they plan to...find her a new home.” She paused, then continued in a quiet voice, “As to when they’ll move her, it’s impossible to say. Once we speak to Mr. Lewis, we may get a better idea of that.”

  Rhonda’s body shook. Val patted her shoulders, but Rhonda batted her arm away. She stood. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I need a few minutes. This is all too much.” She flung open the door of Jordan’s office and rushed through, nearly colliding with Adonna Matthison, her knuckles curled as if to knock.

  “Is this a bad time?” Matthison said.

  “Come in, Adonna,” Jordan said. “What have you found?”

  “A bit of good luck, I hope,” Matthison said. “Mr. Lewis appears in our system in connection with two other children, each from a different family. In one case, he was tested for paternity—negative. In the other, we interviewed him regarding the temporary disappearance of a foster child of a woman he’d dated. But in that case, the state found the parent at fault for neglect and they moved the child to another home. Mr. Lewis was not implicated.”

  “How is that good luck?” Val asked. “It seems to exonerate him.”

  “We have a place of employment, which may be current, and a couple of phone numbers—no longer valid, I’m afraid. It’s all in this report.” Matthison set a manila folder onto Jordan’s desk and cast a wary glance at Val. “Your eyes only, Detective.”

  Val fumed, but said nothing.

  “This is fantastic work,” Jordan said. “Just the break we needed. Thank you!” She typed rapid-fire on her keyboard.

  “Can I help, somehow?” Val asked.

  Jordan paused and frowned. “Sorry, no. This may be a good time for you to find Rhonda and try to console her.”

  “I’ll join you,” Matthison said. They exited the detective’s office and pulled the door shut.

  “So, social work has more in common with detective work than I realized,�
� Val said as they walked, scanning each room as they passed for signs of Rhonda. “Perhaps I’ve been selling it short.”

  Matthison smiled. “It can be that way, sometimes,” she said. “Tracking down deadbeat dads and sorting out who’s causing domestic strife requires some forensic skills. Is social work of interest to you, Ms. Dawes?”

  “Let’s call it my Plan B,” Val said. “My family isn’t too happy with my first choice, of becoming a policewoman. Not since my uncle died on the job six years ago.”

  “How horrible!” Matthison said. “That must have been very traumatic for you. Did you seek counseling?”

  They stopped walking and faced each other, Val leaning against the wall for support. “Three years,” she said, nodding. “For the first two, we focused on why my mother left a year after my uncle’s death. And...well, we talked about a lot of things.” She shuddered. The number one topic she’d discussed with her counselor, and the real reason for her therapy, could remain unspoken for now.

  The large man’s shadow hovered over her, his weight crushing her legs, his breathing ragged. An aroma of alcohol permeated from his every pore. “Shh,” he said, and continued in a hoarse whisper, “no one will hear you, anyway. It’s just us here tonight, Valley Girl.”

  “You’ve had some experience with parental neglect and family dysfunction, then,” Matthison said, shaking her out of the awful memory.

  Val nodded, tight-lipped. Some experience with parental neglect might have been the understatement of the year. Never attentive before Val’s childhood trauma, Mom grew even more distant over the following year. Then, on that final gray, rainy day, Mom stood in the doorway, fumbling with a cigarette and made some excuse about needing to go visit a friend suffering from illness. Without so much as a hug goodbye, she dragged two suitcases to the station wagon and drove off, never to return.

  “Then I can see why social work and helping families would interest you,” Matthison said, again interrupting her wandering thoughts. “What’s the draw of police work, though? Were you close to your uncle, perhaps?”

  “Very,” Val said, her throat tight. “Uncle Val was my hero, and...well, more than that.” Much more. Uncle Val was the only person other than Beth and her shrink that she’d trusted with the story of what happened with “Uncle” Milt. But he’d died soon after, before he could pursue any police action against her attacker. Val fell silent again and avoided eye contact with the social worker.