Stolen Things

by R. H. Herron

  “I did! I looked in twice!”

  “You didn’t think to look under the covers?”

  “I didn’t want to wake her!”

  “Jesus, Pamela!”

  “You could have checked on her, too. Don’t blame me for this.” To Laurie she said, “I have to call her. Can you come over?”

  “I can’t leave Jojo. Come here if Harper doesn’t answer.” Shit. “Bring her here if you find her.”

  The sound of Pamela’s voice was thin. “What . . . what if the same thing happened to her?”

  Laurie dug her fingers into her thigh. “Where could she be? Her boyfriend’s house?”

  “She doesn’t have a boyfriend!” roared Andy from the background—Pamela must have put her on speakerphone.

  Pamela said, “She does.”

  “What? The fuck! What is going on in my house?”

  Laurie said, “Call her. If she’s not in the house, leave her a note and come over.” Pamela disconnected without saying good-bye, and Laurie let the phone drop next to her on the sofa. She wanted the wine she’d left in the kitchen, but she felt too heavy to move. Tiredness wasn’t an affordable luxury. She stared wide-eyed at the grandfather clock in the hallway until the front door shook with a thump. Then, belatedly, a knock.

  She opened the door, and the couple tumbled in as if they’d been leaning against the wood. Andy’s face was thinner than it had been two years ago. He wore black boxers and a deep blue T-shirt. His feet were bare, and his masses of black hair stood upright. His stubble was thick, some of it gray now. “You’re the cop. How do we do this? Do we file a missing-persons report? Do we have to give it forty-eight hours, or is that just TV?”

  “That’s just TV, and we don’t know she’s missing yet.” And I’m not a cop. “Pamela, she’s not answering her phone?”

  Pamela wore an open blue robe over a light red peignoir and didn’t seem self-conscious at all that her nipples were visible through the sheer fabric. She shook her head, her frightened eyes meeting Laurie’s. A mother’s look, a terrified one. Don’t let what happened to your daughter happen to mine.

  “Can you call him? The boyfriend?”

  Pamela bit her bottom lip and then said, “I don’t have his phone number.”

  Andy rounded on her. “Our sixteen-year-old is dating a boy, and you don’t know his number?” He towered over her—had he always done that? Laurie hadn’t remembered him as being so tall.

  “I don’t even know his full name.” Pamela’s teeth were gritted. “And before you say one goddamned word about that, you try talking to her. She won’t share a single fucking thing, you know that.”

  “What do you know about him?” Laurie’s heart beat so hard in her chest that it seemed to shake her back and forth. “In the texts they sent to each other, Harper called him R.”

  “Ray.” Pamela dropped into the couch, thumping her big red purse down next to her. “That’s what she told me his name was. Ray.”

  That wasn’t enough to help them find him. “No last name?”

  Pamela shook her head.

  Damn it. “What about her cell phone?”

  Pamela held out her own, as if proving that she had one. “I’m trying! There’s no answer!”

  “Do you have tracking on it?” Laurie sat next to her.

  “Shit. I do.” Pamela dove into her bag and pulled out an iPad. Her negligee rose high on her thighs.

  Pamela struck at the screen. “Hang on.”

  Andy sat on the side Laurie wasn’t already occupying. Laurie could smell them both—the scent of their bed, Pamela’s gardenia lotion.

  “Okay.” Pamela pointed at the map on the screen. “There’s nothing showing now. No blue dot. Just a history. Oh, God, what does that mean?”

  “Can you go back in time on it?”

  Pamela nodded and clicked. “She was here at seven o’clock. What is that, downtown Oakland?”

  “What the hell would she be doing in Oakland? We have to call 911—”

  Laurie agreed, unless they could use the tracking to find her now. “We’ll call them in a second if we can’t figure this out. Keep rolling the time forward.” Her fingers itched to wrest the tablet from Pamela’s hands, to run away with it, to do the research herself: better, faster. “Where next?”

  “At seven thirty, she’s still there. Wait, here, at eight fifteen it moves. To . . . Wait. It looks like she was coming home.” Pamela’s gaze rose to her husband’s. “Are you sure she wasn’t in the bed?”

  Andy glared and jabbed at the screen. “Keep looking.”

  Pamela did, apparently trusting Andy enough not to check the bed. Laurie wouldn’t have been able to do the same thing with Omid. If their roles were reversed, Laurie would have raced upstairs and torn Jojo’s bedroom apart, just in case she was hiding under the bed the way she used to do during thunderstorms.

  “But then she doesn’t come home. Look.” Pamela touched the screen, rubbing the dot as if she could conjure her daughter from a lamp. “The signal stops here. In town. It’s showing that it died, or she turned it off. Old Coast, right? Who do we know there?”

  Even before she leaned in, Laurie knew where the dot had stopped. “Do you know Kevin Leeds?”

  Pamela looked blank, shaking her head. “It sounds familiar. But I can’t—”

  “The football player?” Andy was up again, dancing on the balls of his feet as if he were getting ready to box someone.

  Pamela shook her head. “She’s not on cheer this year.”

  Andy stared at Pamela. “He’s pro. Oakland. Jesus, do you not listen to me at all when I talk about sports?”

  “Of course not,” snapped Pamela. “What the hell would our daughter be doing at a pro football player’s house?”

  “He’s the un-American one. With the upside-down flag,” Andy said.

  “But—”

  Laurie said, “We found Jojo at his house.”

  Andy’s neck went red, followed by his face. “Fuck. Where is he now?”

  “He’s at the PD—”

  “Then we go there.” Andy pivoted and punched the back of an armchair with his closed fist. The chair skidded on the rug. “And we make him tell us where she is.”

  Pamela stood and strode toward the door as if she were ready to leave now, barefoot and in her nightclothes. “Let’s go.”

  “You won’t be able to talk to him.”

  Pamela stopped, rounding on Laurie as she stood up from the couch. “But you can. We’ll go with you there.”

  Then a siren sounded, a shriek so loud that Laurie felt like she should recognize it, but it took her a moment—the fire alarm.

  The acrid scent of something burning rolled into the room.

  “Jojo.”

  Laurie raced for the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  THIRTEEN

  JOJO HAD NO freaking idea what was going on.

  A banshee had crawled into her brain and dug its claws into her ears. The noise wailed and yowled and crawled up and down her spine.

  She didn’t even know how she’d gotten onto the floor of her bedroom—one minute she’d been blessedly unconscious, and the next she was using a glass of water to put out a small fire on her desk. She’d been dreaming of lighting incense. . . . Shit, the fire alarm set off strobes and Dad’s ire every time he cooked burgers on the stove top. He was going to be pissed.

  But the fire on her desk was out. A lighter sat next to a box of incense and a Kleenex box. One soggy and blackened tissue seemed to be the only damage. With a blurt of sharpened noise, the fire alarm finally shut up. Good, she could go back to bed. . . .

  Then, from behind, someone grabbed her. Jojo folded forward with a scream and came up fighting, the way her father had taught her to do. Fight like a cat in a bag. Fight.

  Or at least she tried, but h
er movements were sloppy and slow, as if she were moving through pudding.

  Mom shouted as Jojo’s fist got close to connecting with her cheek. “It’s me! Jojo, it’s me. Jojo!”

  Jojo fell sideways on her rug, the smell of char still thick in her nose. “Mom. Mommy.” Her words weren’t working right, either. God, she was dizzy. Behind her mother stood the Cunninghams. Andy rushed at the desk and tried to slap away the smoke. He opened a window and waved his arms.

  Jojo struggled to disguise her laugh but failed. It came out like a cough-snort. She pointed at Pamela. “Oh, my God, Mom, I would die if you ever wore something like that out of the house.” Embarrassment filled her a second too late, just after the words had left her mouth. “Sorry, Pamela. Your tits look really good in that, though.” It was getting worse. She rolled herself up into a ball on the floor, letting her mother pull her sideways into an awkward embrace.

  “She’s on drugs! She’s fucking high as a kite!”

  Jojo peeked, and Andy’s face was a grimace of fury. “Where’s our daughter?”

  “Kite,” she mumbled up at her mother. Her mouth still felt like it was on crooked. She smashed her hand against her lips, trying to push them back into place.

  “Where’s our daughter?” Harper’s father leaned so far over into her face that Jojo could have booped him on the nose.

  So she did. One finger to the tip of his snoot. “Boop.” She giggled. “Andy boop.”

  Why did she feel so cheerful? Jojo knew there was something she was supposed to be remembering, something terrible and awful, but mostly she was just amused at the fact that now she knew what Pamela slept in, and it was like something from a nineties sitcom except sleazy. Harper had worn something like it to school recently, with a black bra underneath. Oh, dang, was it the same piece of clothing?

  Harper had looked like candy in it. Mouthwatering.

  “Did you start a fire?” Her mother’s voice was hoarse.

  Shit! Had Jojo started it, as well as putting it out? What did that mean for her firefighting skills? She’d basically given up the dream of being a detective—too much corruption—but if she could put out a fire in her sleep, did it matter if she was the one who’d started it? Her thoughts got woozy again.

  It had felt like a dream.

  She’d been raped.

  Was that a dream, too?

  Of course it was. Please.

  Please let that be a dream.

  Jojo sucked in a breath and felt the bottoms of her feet tingle. “Oh, no. Mom.” Images rushed back in. She and Mom on the floor of the shower. Dad holding her in Kevin’s house.

  Kevin’s face.

  Zach Gordon. Was he really dead?

  Harper—

  “Where is my daughter?” Pamela’s voice was a metallic screech.

  “Hang on!” Mom whisper-shouted, even though Jojo was obviously awake. Why was she using that voice?

  Mom tucked her up in bed under the blanket Gramma had made her right before she died. Andy whispered fiercely to Pamela in Jojo’s doorway.

  Mom’s face looked like she’d worked an eighteen-hour shift, that sunk-down, eyes-shuttered look. “Honey, I know your memory is rough at the edges, but do you have any idea where Harper might be now? She was at that house with you, right?”

  “How do you know?” Jojo’s eyelids were so heavy. Words didn’t feel right, not strong enough. She wasn’t strong enough. “I don’t remember.”

  “Harper’s phone.” Mom pointed at Pamela, who approached the bed on the other side from Mom. “We looked at the history.”

  “Dunno.” She giggled at the sliding slur in her voice. “Dunno!”

  “What is she on?” Andy’s shout made Jojo jump.

  She looked down and then back up. “Bed.”

  Mom hissed, “She was roofied. Rohypnol? You may have heard about it on the news, you asshole.”

  Jojo suddenly remembered. Oh, it felt good to remember something! “And Ambien! Dude, this shit is better than weed!”

  “Jojo?” Pamela stroked the back of Jojo’s hand too rapidly, the strokes turning into pats. “Where’s our daughter?”

  Her stomach twisted. Harper. “I’m tired.”

  Mom smiled, finally, her eyes crinkling at the edges. “I bet you are, sweet Joshi.”

  Jojo suddenly felt very small, as if she’d been plucked out of her grown-up body and shoved back into a toddler one. She touched the crease between her mother’s eyebrows. “Really tired . . .” She wasn’t sure if she’d finished the sentence, but Mom seemed to know what she was getting at and tipped her onto her side, tucking the blanket higher at her neck.

  “Sleep, sweet girl.”

  “Okay.” It sounded like a good idea. Her mother’s face looked funny, as if it were carved from something soft and rich. “You’re the ice cream. I’m the cone.”

  Mom always said, I’m the vanilla ice cream. Daddy’s the caramel. You’re the cone. When she was little, Jojo had liked it, but when she was older, she’d hated it. Don’t compare people’s skin tones to food. It’s racist and clichéd. Mom had looked shocked the first time she’d said it. But now the analogy seemed right, except she kind of felt more like Dad’s caramel. Mom’s skin was ice cream, but Jojo’s insides felt soft and sweet, rich and thick, not cone-brittle. Maybe she could explain that to Mom. . . .

  Then Jojo closed her eyes, and the world went beautifully dark again.

  FOURTEEN

  “IS SHE OKAY?” Pamela leaned forward, touching Jojo’s cheek.

  Laurie wanted to slap away her hand.

  “She’s fine. She shouldn’t have taken the sleeping pill, but the advocate said it was fine. She’ll just sleep.” And maybe wake up and eat. Twice after taking Ambien, Laurie had awakened to find herself on the couch, an empty box of unremembered Oreos next to her. “She probably won’t even remember this. Come downstairs. We can talk there.”

  In the living room, Andy bobbed on his bare feet. “Why haven’t we called 911 yet?”

  Pamela pointed at Laurie. “She is 911. Where the hell is my daughter?” Her voice broke.

  Andy was right—Laurie should already have called work. “We’ll find her. Jesus, we have to tell the department, though. ID techs are at Kevin Leeds’s house right now. They’ll be gathering evidence, but they don’t know to look for Harper yet.”

  Andy’s hands fumbled at his phone. “I’ll call. I’ll call.” He looked up at them. “What do I say?”

  Pamela’s eyes were platter-size. “Tell them to find her!” She whirled on Laurie. “You knew? You knew she might be missing, but you didn’t call them first? You let us walk all the way over to your house—what is wrong with you? You’re supposed to be the expert!”

  Laurie stepped toward Andy, her hand out. “Give me your phone.”

  Bettina answered on the second ring. “Bettina, it’s Laurie. Look, we have another situation. Jojo was with a friend tonight, and we can’t find the other girl.” She gave the Cunninghams’ address and then said, “But they’re at my house now. Meet us here first. We haven’t fully checked their whole house, and we’ll need a couple of guys to help with that. Name, Harper Cunningham. White female, sixteen years old. About five foot six. Blond hair, green eyes. Last seen wearing—” She looked at Pamela.

  Pamela’s voice shook. “I don’t know. She was wearing a black tank and black shorts when she went to bed, but I don’t know that she would have gone out in them.”

  “Maybe black tank and shorts, unconfirmed.”

  Pressing her hands together as if she could stop them from shaking, Pamela stepped forward. “Take me to the station. I have to tell all of them. What to look for.” She gasped. “How to find—”

  Laurie said, “Hang on a sec, Bettina. Pamela, they’ll come to us.”

  “No. Take me there.” Pamela looked as if she were about to f
reak the fuck out and not be able to bring it back in. “Take me there now, goddamn it.”

  “I told Jojo I wouldn’t go anywhere.” But it struck her—if Laurie were in the station, she could go to dispatch and run Kevin Leeds through the system. She could comb through his known contacts, if he had any. She could start to push the buttons she knew how to push and dig the way she did best.

  In her ear Bettina said, “Laurie? Are you coming in with her? Does she know about the 187?”

  God, she had to tell them. “Send them to my house, and we’ll go from there.” She disconnected and handed the phone back to Andy, who was nodding hard, as if in silent agreement, as if she’d done it right.

  “Look,” Laurie said. “Both of you, sit down for a minute, okay?”

  “I will not sit. Are you fucking kidding me?” Pamela’s voice was on the far side of a shriek.

  “I have to tell you something.” Laurie stuck her hands in the pockets of her pajama top. It would be better coming from her, rather than a uniform. “A man was killed in the house where Jojo was found. A friend of Leeds.”

  “Jesus Christ.” A vein throbbed in Andy’s forehead.

  Pamela said, “But Harper wasn’t there. Right? You didn’t find her there. Has she been taken? Kidnapped? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  Laurie didn’t know what to tell her. “Maybe she’s just gone away with her boyfriend?”

  Andy shouted, “Every single damn minute we stand here talking is another minute we’re not looking for her!”

  “She wouldn’t go away without telling us,” Pamela insisted. “We talked. After that last time she ran away, we really talked.” She lurched forward. “We need to make the report. Now.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “We go, then. We go now.”

  “I have to stay with Jojo.” She’d promised.

  “No.” Pamela shook her head desperately. “We go. We tell them about Harper so they can look. You’re slowing that down. We go. Together. You can make them work harder. You know them. You can get into the system, right? Do something with the computers? Whatever it is you do?”