by Alec Peche
The Girl From Diana Park
Damian Green Series, book 3
Alec Peche
GBSW Publishing
Copyright © 2018 by Alec Peche
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real.
Credits: Book Cover - Vila Design
Author picture - RP Photography
Many thanks to GM Meyer and Honnie as my first readers for improving the big and small things in this story.
Contents
Author’s Note
2013
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Alec Peche
Author’s Note
Author's note:
In a reader review of other books in this series (Red Rock Island and Willow Glen Heist), a comment was made that the premise of the story was bad as such an island couldn't exist in San Francisco Bay. Guess what? It does exist and you can use the GPS coordinates below to find it on a map. At the time of my first book in the series I came across an article that the island was for sale and my imagination took it from there. If you should cross westbound on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, you'll find the island out your car window on the left side as you leave Richmond. It's rumored to be for sale for $5 million as of 2018, but as it's owned by three separate counties, it sounds like it would be a nightmare to try and build on. There is no house on it at the time of this writing which is just further proof that this is a work of fiction.
Latitude: 37° 55' 43.43" N
Longitude: -122° 25' 50.16" W
2013
Jessica Roth had a terrible day at work. As a family law attorney, she'd been trying to file a motion by the end of the day. Her clients were in a difficult situation and needed a Conservatorship Stipulation and Proposed Order as soon as possible. She needed to do the first step and get it filed with the Santa Clara County Civil Court division. She'd made it with just minutes to spare before the office closed. The last-minute stop at the court had put her in a traffic mess, and she'd been late to pick-up her daughter Olivia from child care. Her husband Daniel worked in sales and was in China for a trade convention. She paid the late fee and still felt frazzled an hour later as she sat in Diana Park. Olivia had not been happy with her late arrival and Jessica had sought to make it up to her with a trip to her favorite park. She paused long enough to get out of her business suit and into a pair of scruffy sweats.
Now she sat on the rim of the swing set area alternating between watching her daughter and reading emails. It was fall and the sun had set and darkness, such as you got in a busy city, would arrive in the next twenty minutes. She'd give Olivia another ten minutes of play and then they would have a one block walk back home. Olivia had a swing set in her own backyard, but the park's jungle gym was bigger and better.
Olivia moved from the swings to the monkey bars and then on to the tree house and slides. She joyfully ran from the base of the slide to the stairs leading to the top of the playhouse and its slide. Jessica smiled at her and encouraged her on each apparatus. She wanted her daughter to burn off a little of the extra energy before they went back home, besides the fresh air was good for both of them. Jessica smiled and glanced down at her email for just a moment. As the daylight disappeared, it took a few extra seconds with each glance to focus on her phone screen.
Jessica glanced back up prepared to smile and compliment Olivia and suffered a little panic when she didn't immediately spot her. She shut her phone off and stood calling out “Olivia!”.
She walked to play house atop the jungle gym expecting to find her hiding there, but it was empty. She called out, “Olivia, where are you?” a few times.
Then, in rising panic, she ran around the building in the middle of the park that was a pump house for the city water system and still there was no sign of her daughter.
She raised the hand holding her cell phone and dialed 9-1-1.
“What's your emergency?” the operator asked.
With tears of fear and panic in her voice, Jessica almost shouted into the phone, “My daughter is missing. I need help right now! Please come....”
Chapter 1
Damian Green looked out of the windows of his house situated upon Red Rock Island, his private island in San Francisco Bay. Later that morning he'd take his boat over to the Richmond pier and from there drive his truck to work. For lunch he had a craving for a Pete's Cheeseburger and so would drop in on his friend's bar. This evening, he'd steer his boat the other direction towards Ariana's house, on the other side of the Bay as Hermione had a soccer try-out for the upcoming high school season.
Ariana and Damian taught Hermione the basics of water polo before she tried out for that sport and she excelled. With soccer, they had practiced with her at a local field, and the three of them had flown to England for a vacation week between Christmas and New Year's and she had seen several Premier League games. It took time to develop the footwork of soccer and other girls in her school had played in youth leagues so Hermione was trying out for her high school team with a little disadvantage. Still, she was a natural athlete and she’d increased her running so she'd have the endurance to play for sixty minutes. He was anxious for her to succeed but hadn't seen any of the other girls play and didn't know how Hermione stacked up to them.
Ariana and Damian were raising Hermione until she was reunited with her parents. She was Hannah Sherwood when she'd fall asleep under a tarp in Damian's boat, which was parked at the marina. She'd woken up once he reached his island. She'd told a fantastic story about her parents being kidnapped and with a little research, Damian had found she was telling the truth. She renamed herself Hermione, after her favorite Harry Potter character and Damian began the search for her parents. She lived with Ariana, but Damian also had a bedroom for her to stay on his island home. She attended the local high school in Ariana’s neighborhood and she’d been with them nearly a year.
Damian had been chopping the fresh fish he caught that morning for his cats, Bella and Bailey. They really did have the best diet of any felines in the world. They got the fish fillet and he discarded the head and tail into the Bay as food for whales, dolphins or sea lions that passed by his island. Cleaning up after the stinky duty, he got ready to leave after checking the weather forecast. If he traveled the Bay in low wind and sunny conditions he took a different boat then when the Bay was foggy or drizzling.
Thirty minutes
later he was in his truck and on the way to his warehouse. He was up to ten employees as his company explored various inventions. He was close to bringing to market a solar battery internet connecting device that he intended to distribute to thousands of Peruvian farmers that currently had no access to the world. His team developed the solar battery and a satellite smartphone-like device except that it didn’t have a telephone component. It was like a handheld tablet but smaller. What made it unique was the solar battery and the intuitive applications for the farmer in relation to crop production and weather. The side benefit was connecting them to the world, but really he wanted to improve the food production in developing countries to prevent death and disease from poor nutrition.
His warehouse was working on other inventions that excited him each day when he looked at the progress and the people of his team. Before he knew it, it was approaching the lunch hour and he still had a craving for one of Pete’s cheeseburgers. He debated asking one of his team members to join him, but he was in the mood for a solitary meal. Ten minutes later he sidled up to a barstool and was pleased to see that Pete was running the bar. They spent a few minutes catching up with each other's lives and Damien checking in with Pete to assure himself that his software was still helping Pete manage the bar. Minutes later he was sinking his teeth into the cheeseburger he’d fantasized about all morning and it was as good as he remembered.
He finished his lunch and followed Pete back to his office to look at some pictures that he had taken that interested Damien. There was a corridor that connected the bar/restaurant with Pete’s office, a storeroom, and the restrooms. His eyes caught sight of a poster on a bulletin board in the corridor. His eyes widened with alarm as he caught sight of the picture on a notice. He continued into Pete’s office, his mind calculating how he would grab that notice off the bulletin board and take it with him. At the end of the conversation with Pete, he’d either leave Pete in the office or make a stop in the restroom in order for Pete not to see him remove the notice on the bulletin board. Damien didn’t think he heard a word that Pete said; he was just waiting for the conversation to end so he could study the notice without interruptions.
Five minutes later, Damien found himself in the restroom watching his watch waiting for time to pass. At his designated time he opened the restroom door noted that the corridor was empty and proceeded to remove the poster in question and shove it into his jacket pocket. He waved goodbye at Pete as he left the bar and returned to his truck. He drove the truck a few blocks away and pulled over shutting the vehicle down. He pulled the piece of paper out of his jacket and smoothed it straight.
Studying the picture on the poster, he knew it was Hermione. His heart was racing as he thought about the next steps. Looking at the time, he decided to give Ariana a call.
“Hey Damien, are you calling to confirm the time you’re supposed to be at my house this afternoon?”
“No, I just had a cheeseburger at Pete’s for lunch, and I found a poster with Hermione’s picture on it. I have to tell you that my heart is still racing from viewing the notice.”
“Oh my God, why is her picture on a notice? Are you sure it's her? What does the poster say?”
“I’m texting you a copy of the poster, give me a minute,” and seconds later he heard the swoosh of an outgoing text.
“Got it. How long do you think it was posted on that bulletin board?” Ariana asked after giving it an initial read-through.
“I don’t know. It’s been at least six months since I walked down that corridor at Pete’s and the paper was curled and had the look that it had been there awhile. I could dust it for fingerprints.”
“But you don’t know who has touched the paper just walking through the corridor.”
“Should we share it with Hermione?”
“We’ve always been honest with her,” Ariana said. “There’s nothing overtly bad with the announcement. Somehow I don’t think it’s her parents that posted it; it doesn’t sound loving or desperate. In fact, it sounds like one of those ‘Ten most wanted criminals lists’. It’s interesting that Pete didn’t make the connection between this picture and Hermione as he’s met her several times.”
“I think she was younger in this picture and her hair is completely changed and we men are not observant. Perhaps Pete doesn’t see those notices anymore he pays no attention to what's posted as long as it meets his decency standards.”
“Have you seen this notice posted anywhere else in Richmond? It’s sort of a strange place to post a notice. Most notices I’ve seen in bars relate to roommates or dating, not missing children.”
“Are you suggesting that it was put there to attract my attention? Pete once called me an irregular regular visitor to his bar.”
“I don’t know what I’m suggesting, just trying to understand the poster and what it means.”
“I was going to go to the office, but I'm going to leave now and return home to research this notice. I’ll fingerprint it but I doubt that will tell me anything. I want to investigate the number on my untraceable computer. When should we say something to Hermione?”
“Let’s tell her after soccer tryouts. I don’t want that to interfere with her concentration on the soccer field,” Ariana suggested.
“Okay. Ariana, can I just say how much I appreciate your help raising Hermione? I may be smart about many things, but I struggle every day trying to figure out what’s the best thing to do or say with Hermione.”
“Damian, you don’t give yourself credit. We’ve shared her nearly a year and I haven’t seen any missteps on your part.”
“I’ve made her cry.”
“You think that isn’t normal for a teenager?”
“I suppose.”
“I’ll nominate you for father of the year if you survive teaching her driver’s education.”
“Haha. She’ll probably be a level-headed human being about that too. We really lucked out trying to raise a smart, athletic, and resourceful teenager.”
“Thank you for inviting me in to help raise her. She brings joy to both of our lives.”
“Okay we best end this conversation before we become saps,” Damian said with a smile in his voice.
“See you later.”
Damian restarted the engine and put the car in gear. He drove back to the warehouse, checked in with his staff and left to return to his island. The staff was used to his odd comings and goings. Soon he had his boat inside his watercraft garage and his island was tightly locked up. He had a large cup of tea as he sat down to explore the notice that said, ‘Looking for information’ and then followed with a dated picture and description of Hermione. When Damian had found her cold and hiding in his boat one night as he returned to his island, her name was ‘Hannah Sherwood’, and she had long red hair. Her home had suffered a home invasion and her parents were kidnapped. She escaped to a 'safe room' and survived a week hiding as someone had stayed behind in the house looking for her. When she knew the man charged with finding her was sound asleep, she snuck out and eventually ended up in the marina where her family had a boat. That boat was missing, and so she ended up in Damian's boat asleep from exhaustion.
He’d called Ariana Knowles the moment he discovered the girl as he neared his island. Ariana had housed her overnight while Damian made a plan to go check out the teenager’s story and her house.
It was all exactly as the girl had described including the abduction of her parents on security camera footage. Ariana was a widow, her husband having died from cancer before they could have children. Damian’s wife and two girls had been murdered in a burglary attempt some eight years ago. Hannah was the same age as his oldest would have been and the adults gave the teenager the option to be turned over to social services with law enforcement’s help finding her parents or she could stay with the two of them while they searched for her parents. After a search of Ariana's and Damian's backgrounds online, Hannah chose to stay with them. Her name was changed to Hermione Knowles from Hannah Sherwood. Sh
e’d cut and dyed her hair and added regular lens glasses to hide her appearance. Damian had used his computer skills to create a background for the kid and identity so she could enroll in the school system. He felt lucky to have her in his life and he thought they were doing a great job protecting the kid and giving her a caring and supportive home. Hermione excelled in school and in sports.
Now this poster was threatening their peaceful existence and it boded ill winds towards Hermione. He began by fingerprinting the paper. He’d just taken up fingerprinting shortly after Hermione joined them so he was by no means an expert, but he’d managed to hack into CODIS which was the national system for fingerprint identification. Rather than searching for fingerprints, he had instead downloaded their database anytime he was trying to match something. He sat back assuring himself the computer was beginning it analysis and he’d have a match in twenty to thirty minutes. He turned to again to look at the paper trying to guess its age. Then his cell phone began ringing and he saw that it was retired Detective Natalie Severino and so he answered.
“Hello, Natalie. What’s up?“
“I’ve got another not quite cold case, and I was hoping you could help. By the way, how are you doing? Haley says some of your inventions are getting close to going to market. Not sure what that means but she was excited about it.“
