Abducted

by Janice Cantore

  Carly huffed. “If the baby’s disappearance is not connected to what they’re after, then it wouldn’t hurt to tell us who they are investigating.”

  “They don’t want that investigation compromised. I’ve got to go. Harris and I are going to sit in on the Harper interview. You go home and take care of yourself. Check in tomorrow morning.”

  “I don’t want to go home. I feel like we’re close.” Carly clenched her free hand and pounded her hip. Don’t cut me out now!

  “You did a great job today. But you are officially IOD now,” Nelson said, using shorthand for “injured on duty.” “You can’t get back in it until the occupational health people clear you. Thanks for being on the ball. Bye.”

  The phone disconnected, and Carly groaned in frustration. She looked at her watch. Occupational health closed at five and it was close to six. The stupid crash took up my entire day.

  “Just let me know if you’re going to throw the phone so I can duck.” A voice from the hallway crashed her pity party.

  Carly turned in surprise; she’d forgotten about Alex. “I’m sorry. Here.” She handed him his phone back.

  “No problem. Boy, you look like your Super Bowl team just lost the game in the final three seconds. What gives?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Carly was spared from explaining further when the nurse came in with the release paperwork. Her instructions for Carly were rest, ice for her nose, and pain reliever if it hurt too much. Mike, the beat cop who was taking the accident report, stuck his head in the door as Carly was gathering her things.

  “Need a ride back to the station?” he asked as he handed over her kit. “I took this out of your car before it was towed.”

  “Yeah, I do need a ride. Thank you very much.”

  “Hey, I can take you,” Trejo offered.

  “That’s okay, Alex. It’s out of your way.” Carly stuffed her bloody clothes into a plastic bag.

  “No, it’s not. I bet this officer has other work to do.” He nodded toward Mike and reached to take the plastic bag from Carly. “Besides, I have some information I need to give you.”

  “What information?” Carly frowned at the reporter. “I’m too cranky right now for games.”

  “No games, honest.” He held up his hands, her bag dangling from one, and the look on his face resembled that of an innocent schoolboy.

  “Make up your mind, please,” Mike chimed in from the doorway.

  “Thanks, Mike. I guess I’ll go with Trejo.” Carly waved at the beat cop, who smiled and left. She turned her attention back to the reporter. “You better be on the level.”

  “I am. Let’s go.” He directed Carly out the door and followed behind.

  On the way out she checked her phone for messages and saw none, not even one from Nick checking up on her.

  15

  “SO WHAT’S YOUR INFORMATION?” Carly asked as they climbed into Trejo’s car.

  “How about dinner? I bet you haven’t eaten all day.” Alex started the car and looked at Carly.

  “You promised, no games.” Carly’s protest was weak because he’d hit the nail on the head: she was starving. The cereal she’d eaten that morning was a distant memory. “Besides, I look like a prizefighter who lost. Are you sure you want to be seen in public with me?”

  Trejo chuckled. “This too shall pass. We can go to a nice dark restaurant so no one will notice.”

  Carly threw her hands up in resignation. “I’m too tired to fight you.” She leaned back and closed her eyes. “But take me back to the station first so I can put my vest and gun belt away and change my clothes.”

  “Roger.” He reached over and squeezed her hand.

  As Trejo drove, Carly thought back to Nick at the accident scene. He was right, procedurally, to order me to the hospital. Why did it tweak me so bad? Was there anything he could have said today that I wouldn’t have taken offense at? I hate this! I can’t believe we came this far together to go our separate ways now.

  Once at the station Carly changed quickly and avoided the mirror. The only encouragement was that the throbbing in her face had ceased and hope was strong she’d be released back to full duty tomorrow. She paused to call Joe and see how he was doing. She didn’t tell him about her fiasco and crash, wanting to leave that to Nelson. Trejo could wait, she thought. Joe sounded good, upbeat, and she promised to stop by on her way home.

  But even as she locked her gun belt away in her locker, her thoughts turned to Mary Ellen, the wild card. Harper said she was a runaway—from where? I’ve got to find out more about her, she thought, but I can’t think straight right now. As soon as I eat, and before I visit Joe, I’ll have to dig in and learn everything I can about that girl.

  “Where are you taking me, reporter?” she asked when she climbed back in the car.

  “Pizza, Officer. BJ’s, to be exact. Pizza heals all wounds.”

  She wondered how Alex had managed to hit on her favorite food, something she would never turn down. “That is a statement I won’t disagree with.”

  “Glad to hear it.” In a few minutes he parked the car in front of her favorite pizza place. To Carly’s surprise, despite the condition of her nose, she could smell. The heavenly odor of baking pizza and tomato sauce came through loud and clear as soon as they stepped into the restaurant. The aroma did a lot to soothe her mood.

  “I have to admit, this was a great choice,” she conceded. “I’m starved. All I had today was cereal for breakfast.”

  “I’m glad.” Trejo grinned. “I sure could get used to this, having dinner with you on a regular basis.”

  Carly let his comment pass as they slid into a booth near the back and the waitress handed them menus. The place was dark, mood lighting for the dinner hour. Thankfully, he was quiet until after they’d ordered and she’d downed one glass of iced tea and half a green salad.

  “That’s much better,” Carly said after a healthy swallow of tea. “My headache is even fading.”

  Trejo smiled and toasted her with a glass of water. “Are you going to fill me in on what happened today? I heard the words FBI, surveillance, and A.J. in your conversation with the sergeant. My interest is piqued.”

  “Well . . .” She looked at him over the rim of her iced tea glass and then set it down on the table. Choosing her words carefully, Carly fiddled with her fork while she spoke. “The public information officer will be putting together a press release about a person of interest in A.J.’s kidnapping. But this is off the record. I don’t have any authority to be making statements to the press. Please don’t get me in trouble.”

  “You pierce me through and through.” Alex put both hands over his heart and looked hurt. “This is just me and you, not the PD and the Las Playas Messenger.”

  Carly smiled and told him about Harper, his girlfriend Mary Ellen, and her own literal run-in with an FBI agent. She paused only when the pizza was set before them, and then she ingested half a slice before continuing. Trejo listened without interrupting.

  “So that’s how I came to receive an air bag–induced bloody nose. Now I have to cool my jets and get a health department clearance before I can go back to work.”

  “They wouldn’t tell you what they were investigating?”

  “Not yet. Nelson said he’d keep trying to get more information.”

  “It’s too much of a coincidence to me. Girl kidnaps baby; then her apartment gets tossed.”

  Carly went to work on her pizza again. “The apartment was Harper’s,” she said between bites. “If Grant was looking for keys Harper had, then the place being tossed might really have had nothing to do with Mary Ellen.”

  Alex sprinkled peppers on his pizza. “Unless she has the keys.”

  Carly nodded. “I would bet she does. She has Harper’s car. And missing keys could explain why Caswell was in such a hurry to get Harper out of jail. I mean, it makes more sense to me that he wanted keys rather than Harper.”

  Alex laughed. “Sounds like Harper didn�
��t impress you.”

  “He’s a two-bit thief. It never made sense to me that he’d have the money for a high-priced lawyer. You said it yourself—Caswell defends money. But if Harper was in possession of something that belonged to a paying customer . . .” She shrugged.

  “You could be right. And I have a guess about that paying customer. I’ve been studying up on Caswell since we last met. About three years ago, even though I only wrote a few paragraphs about him and his clients, I did a lot of research. I’d forgotten, but when I retrieved the file, it brought back memories. Do you remember Conrad Sperry?”

  “How could I forget? The guy was creepy. He’s one of Caswell’s clients?” She arched an eyebrow. Sperry was an infamous ex-reserve police officer for Las Playas. A man with a diverse business empire, he’d started out as a rock star as far as the reserve corps was concerned. The department didn’t want the reserves to be a stop for people who couldn’t get hired to be full-time police officers; they wanted it to be a corps of volunteers, people successful in other walks of life who only wanted to help when they could and not be full-time cops.

  But Sperry had crossed the line while wearing his reserve uniform and very nearly found himself behind bars.

  Alex nodded, his mouth full of pizza. He swallowed. “It was Caswell who got him off.”

  “That figures, but what does that have to do with Harper?” She sat back and put her fork down. “Wait, you think Sperry is Harper’s employer and the one the feds are investigating?”

  “Let me finish. I can do an Internet search as well as the next guy. Sperry left Las Playas for Riverside, but his legal troubles didn’t end. He’s been Caswell’s number one client of late, and he keeps the lawyer busy. Sperry is a businessman who has his fingers in a lot of different money pies. Some of them are shady and have been investigated by various law enforcement agencies. In one case Sperry was under suspicion for some stolen artwork. It’s not a leap to consider Harper his employee and Sperry under investigation, is it?”

  Carly sipped her tea and digested this new information. “Maybe not that Harper works for Sperry. But the leap from stolen artwork to stolen babies is huge.”

  Alex held up his index finger. “A thief is a thief.”

  Carly hiked a shoulder and said, “Harper working for Sperry would explain a lot. I could see Caswell getting out of bed and heading to the station for Sperry. He definitely could have been doing Sperry’s business. Since Harper didn’t have the keys—Caswell would know that from the property inventory on the booking sheet—that would explain him sending Grant to toss the apartment.”

  She frowned. “But that still doesn’t explain Mary Ellen taking A.J. The FBI doesn’t buy Harper’s story about selling a baby. If Mary Ellen took the baby and there’s no one for her to sell him to, what will she do with him?”

  “Maybe the whole baby thing was Harper’s deal and not his employer’s. He’s just trying to shift blame by saying it came from his employer. For all we know, Mary Ellen could have already sold the baby, gotten the money, and kept it.”

  Carly shook her head but stopped quickly as the movement irritated her nose. “If so, who bought the baby? A.J. is a hot property; his face is everywhere. Anyone taking that child now would be risking a lot. Something has been bothering me about this stealing-a-baby-to-sell thing. It can’t be that profitable, not as profitable as fencing stolen goods. As an officer of the court, if Caswell knew something like that was going on, why would he risk a career on it?”

  “Maybe there’s more to it than the money. Maybe Caswell was working another angle with them and the baby was a side deal,” Trejo offered.

  Carly pressed her fingers into her temples. “I don’t know, and frankly I don’t care about motives right now. First and foremost, I want A.J. back. The rest can wait. Do you mind if I give Harris a call? He probably already knows all this, but I want to make sure.”

  Trejo nodded. Carly made the call and got Harris’s voice mail. She left a message. When she disconnected, she found the reporter watching her with an odd expression.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just like watching you work.” He cleared his throat. “So aren’t you anxious to hear about the other information I learned?” Trejo asked after the waitress removed the remains of the pizza and they’d both ordered coffee.

  “Ah, brave man, you ask me now because you know I won’t storm out. I’m calmed down, satisfied, and waiting to savor a cup of my favorite hot beverage.”

  “At least I’m reasonably sure you won’t shoot me. Remember, I’m only the messenger. I wish this news were good, but . . . Anyway, you deserve to hear it.”

  Carly closed her eyes and swallowed. “Bad news is my middle name right now. You go right ahead.”

  “Discipline is coming down at the hospital. Apparently, someone who should have been supervising was doing something else.”

  Carly looked at Trejo with eyebrows raised. The coffee was set between them, and she took a scalding yet fortifying sip. “Who?”

  “I’m sorry, but they busted your roommate, Andrea. They say that when she should have been on the floor, she was, well . . . elsewhere.” He wouldn’t meet Carly’s eyes.

  “What do they say she was doing? Tell me, Alex. I know you know.”

  He took a deep breath and expelled it forcefully. “Okay, you don’t pull punches. I guess I won’t either. Gossip is, she was in a supply closet, making out with someone. She won’t reveal his name. But whispers in the air say it was a cop—a patrol sergeant.”

  Carly looked at Alex and found an amazing mix of sorrow, compassion, and worry in his eyes. She put the coffee down and sat back in her seat. “Gossip,” she muttered. The word left a bad taste in her mouth. “Now I have to wonder what patrol sergeant. At that time of the morning, it would most likely be a graveyard sergeant. I knew there was more going on with her the other day, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to her. What’s going to happen?”

  “The hospital looks bad; a kid is gone. I’m afraid Andrea is expendable. They can’t say her lapse is the only reason the kidnapper got away with the baby, but they’ll say it contributed. My sources say she’ll be suspended pending an internal investigation.”

  Carly brought a hand to her mouth and stifled the first word that came to mind. “Alex, how accurate is your information?”

  He shrugged. “Gossip is gossip. Bottom line, she was doing something she shouldn’t have been doing. I’m sorry—you know as well as I do how politics work.”

  Carly was about to lash out at Alex and defend her roommate, but a sudden thought struck her. “You’re right.” She shook her head. “I hate to say it. It wasn’t the first time she’s had a lapse at work, but it’s never been anything to put her duties or patients at risk. She was reprimanded when she was assigned to the emergency room. I think that’s why she was moved upstairs. Andi is a flirt.”

  “I’ve heard that. People say she flirted too much in the ER.”

  “Yeah, firefighters and police officers.” Carly sighed. “Andi loves to live on the edge. At one time I envied her free spirit. I never used to look at it as a dangerous thing. It may sound strange, but it was an odd quirk in my friend I just accepted.” I knew it was wrong. I knew I should have reached out to her, tried to talk sense into her. For four months I’ve been going to church and hearing a positive message that would have helped, and I never shared it.

  “It doesn’t sound strange. You’re a good friend. Good friends overlook things.”

  “I don’t know about that. I think I should have said something, maybe issued a gentle warning.” Carly leaned back because her nose started to hurt again, mirroring the hurt forming in her heart. “Thank you for the pizza. Can we go now? Suddenly I feel a hundred years old.”

  She started to reach for her wallet, but Alex waved her off.

  “You’re welcome, and it’s on me. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”

  He threw down some money, and they walked in silence to h
is car. Alex took her hand when they reached the passenger door. “Hey, is there anything I can do? You look like I hit you with a bat—and I don’t just mean your nose.”

  “I’m not mad at you; I’m sad for Andrea. And thanks for telling me. Now I need time to think about everything.”

  She didn’t take her hand from his, and suddenly Alex pulled her close into a tight hug.

  “I hate to see you in pain,” he whispered into her ear, his breath warm on her neck. The hug didn’t surprise Carly as much as the fact that she didn’t resist. She returned the hug and rested her head on his shoulder for a long while, enjoying the support Alex offered. But in rhythm with the thud of her heart, Carly’s mind heard one word repeated over and over again: Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick . . .

  • • •

  Alex dropped her off at the station, but instead of going to the hospital right away, Carly went to work. First things first, she went to homicide to see if they’d gotten a verified name and age on Mary Ellen. They had—it was on the board. Mary Ellen Barber was a 301, a dependent minor. Her prints had been recovered off the equipment at Memorial. So she had taken the baby.

  She’d never been arrested for a criminal offense; she was a ward of the court because of neglect or abuse. Carly studied the girl’s picture. She had light-brown hair, brown eyes, pale, washed-out features, and the thousand-yard stare you often saw on kids in county custody. She’d run away from placement the day after her seventeenth birthday and hooked up with career criminal Stanley Harper.

  Carly had to work not to pity the girl. As an officer, she’d been to enough foster homes and placement facilities to know they could be bleak and in rare occasions more dangerous than the home the dependent minor was removed from. Was that Mary Ellen’s story? Did the county take her out of the frying pan into the fire?

  Sitting at an empty desk, Carly admitted she was running on fumes. She turned on a computer and logged in. Pulling up all the files she could find on Mary Ellen, she started reading. Mary Ellen had to have a relative somewhere, someone she would go to. Carly had to believe Nelson and Harris had already exhausted all of those avenues, but what if they hadn’t? She made a mental note to ask them if they’d sent someone to the catch basin. If they hadn’t, she would make a run down there.