"Proof of life?" Rebecca repeated numbly, her eyes widening with barely controlled fear.
"It means they have to give us proof that your daughter is still alive," Nathan explained. "Like a photograph with her holding up a current newspaper with the date exposed."
"You mean you think she might be—" Unable to finish, Rebecca covered her mouth with her trembling hands and began to sob. "Oh God, Simon, what if she's—she's—" The sobs grew louder.
After a beat, her husband went to her, putting his arm around her shoulders. They looked like any two parents, caught in the vice of a terrible tragedy, not the golden couple envied by so many.
Brenda looked at Dax. The photograph had been his idea, not hers. Why was he telling them that she was the one who'd thought of it? Was he trying to make them bury their initial animosity against her? Strictly speaking, she knew that the kidnapping wasn't her fault, but the Tylers certainly thought so.
The detective was going above and beyond the call of duty, she thought. Her eyes conveyed as much to him. As they met his, Dax merely lifted one shoulder in a slight, dismissive gesture.
Commiserating with the woman's anguish, Brenda was quick to tell her, "He's calling today with details where we can find the photograph. That means Annie's still alive."
Still sitting beside his wife, Simon looked up sharply at Brenda. "He?" he echoed. "Then the kidnapper is a man?"
Dax took over. "We're not sure. The voice was filtered through a synthesizer."
Impatience stamped Simon's handsome features. His scowl deepened. "Do you have any leads at all?"
"We're pretty sure it's a couple who came to your daughter's school yesterday morning," Dax told them. "Asking for a tour of the place."
"'Pretty sure.'" Simon spat out the words mockingly. "But you don't know."
Dax struggled to hold on to his temper. It wasn't the first time angry victims jumped all over him. But it did make his job harder. "The address the couple gave the headmaster turned out to belong to a recycling plant, so I'd say right now they're our best bet."
The director looked unimpressed and frustrated. "And just where is this 'best bet' right now?"
Dax measured out each word, knowing ahead of time how it would be received. "We don't know."
Simon got into his face. "Well, damn it, find them! Find them before—"
The ringing telephone made the rest of his tirade disappear.
Everyone froze, all staring at the telephone. Simon moved to pick up the receiver, but Dax caught his wrist before he could lift it from the cradle. "What the—"
Dax waved his hand at him, looking toward the technician closest to him. The latter was set up next to the phone with a portable telephone that had been brought in and hooked up. The man nodded and Dax released Simon's hand.
The instant he did, Simon yanked the receiver up, pressing it to his ear. The technician had shadowed his every move. The machine was recording. Calibrating.
Dax indicated that Simon tilt the receiver so he could hear the conversation firsthand. Simon glared, but complied. He held the mouthpiece firmly with both hands.
"Hello?"
"Quite a lot of excitement you have going on there, Simon. I can see it all right here on my TV. You're the breaking story on all the channels." The disembodied voice on the other end chuckled. Broadcast, the tinny sound rattled in the room. "A regular media circus. But then, you Hollywood types welcome that kind of thing, don't you? The press, the attention, it's what you live for."
"Where's my daughter, you worthless lowlife?" Simon demanded.
"All in good time, Simon, all in good time. I must say, I liked your housekeeper better. She kept her temper." There was a significant pause, as if the person on the other end was debating continuing with the conversation. "Is she around?"
Simon drew himself up to his full six foot stature. He gave the impression of being taller because he was so thin. "You'll talk to me."
"No," the voice contradicted, "I'll talk to her. Or I won't talk at all. Learn to bend, Simon, learn to bend." The pseudo-friendly tone faded. "Now do I talk to her, or not?"
Dax waved Brenda over, indicating to Simon that he should give her the receiver. Brenda caught herself thinking that if anyone's look could turn a person to stone, Simon's glare would have been the one. Finally, he shoved the receiver into her hands.
She was quick to make her presence known. "Hello?"
There was an audible sigh on the end. "Better, much better. I don't like anger," the kidnapper informed her. "It makes me dig in my heels. And that won't be good for anyone, would it?"
"No." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the technician by the table indicating that she should stretch the conversation out and keep the kidnapper on the line for as long as possible.
As if in tune to what was going on, the kidnapper picked that moment to say to her, "Oh, and tell them not to waste their time trying to trace this. They're not dealing with a novice. The signal's all over the map and besides, this is a public phone. Even if they did have the mental capability of finding their faces while staring into the mirror, by the time they locate this, I'll be far away from here."
"I'll tell them." Looking toward the technician, she shook her head. The man continued trying to pinpoint the trace. "Where's the photograph?"
"Direct. I like that in a woman." The metallic chuckle scraped against her soul. It took effort not to shiver. "You'll find the photograph in the ladies room of Hamburger Heaven. It's taped to the inside of the lid of the tank."
It was one of the most popular fast food chains around. She knew of at least half a dozen in the city and knew there had to be more. "Wait a minute, which Hamburger Heaven?"
"Mayflower and Azusa. I'll be in touch." The line went dead.
She surrendered the receiver to Dax. The latter looked at the technician. "Anything?"
The man took off his headphones and tossed them on the table. "He bounced the signal all over the country. We were closing in, but—" He shook his head.
"He's shaking his head. What does that mean?" Simon wanted to know. "What's next?"
The technician popped the audio tape out of the machine and handed it to Dax, who turned around and gave it to Nathan. "Detective Brown takes the tape into the lab for analysis and I go to retrieve the photograph." He was already crossing to the room's threshold.
Brenda stepped in front of him. "Let me come with you." Before he could refuse, she said quickly, "If the kidnapper's watching the restaurant, he might expect the housekeeper to be the one to come for the photograph. She and I resemble each other a little." It was a long shot and she knew it, but there was this overwhelming need inside her to make herself useful.
Dax hesitated. He could always use a policewoman, but that would require having the woman get a change of clothes and time was at a premium. The faster they moved, the more likely they were to recover the little girl alive. Of late, they'd been lucky with their recovery record when it came to kidnapped children and he wanted to keep it that way. He could almost feel the seconds ticking away.
"All right," he agreed. From across the room, he could see the quizzical look Nathan was giving him. "She has a point."
Nathan spread his hands, as if he wasn't about to say anything to contradict him.
Leaving his wife's side, Simon was on his heels. "What am I supposed to do?"
Dax turned at the front door. "Sit tight and wait for the call. He might decide to call while we're out getting the photograph. I think this guy enjoys pulling strings and watching people jump." It seemed as apt a description of the function of a director as any. A thought occurred to him. "He seemed especially pleased at turning the screws to you. Anyone in particular have it in for you?"
Behind them, in the living room, Rebecca rose from the sofa. Taking a step toward them, she dried her eyes. "How much time do you have?"
He hated making promises he couldn't keep, but he knew that parents of kidnapped children needed something to hold on to. "Succe
ssful recoveries varying—"
Rebecca shook her head, her auburn hair shifting from side to side like a luxurious shawl. "No, I meant for Simon to give you a list of people who have it in for him. My husband's very powerful in this town, that means he has a lot of enemies."
Terrific, Dax thought. Nonetheless, he made a mental note to show the director the sketches Brenda had made of the two people. Maybe they'd get lucky and the man'd recognize one of them.
"He'd have less enemies if he wasn't such a jerk," Dax said to Brenda several minutes later as they left in his car. Nathan was already on his way back to the precinct with the audio tape. With a great deal of luck, the lab could clean it up sufficiently to yield some kind of background noise that they could use to pinpoint the kidnapper's location.
Excitement was vying with her baby for space in her stomach. God, she hoped she wouldn't get sick. "Less what?"
Dax rolled the windows up to cut down on the noise in the form of questions being hurled at them as they drove by the reporters and their camera crews. "Enemies."
"I think a man like that counts the number of enemies he has as a testimonial to his power. The more he has, the bigger he is." She shook her head as they cleared the estate. "I never understood that kind of thing, being proud of who hated your guts."
Dax laughed. "Some people thrive on that. Me, I'm with you."
I'm with you. She knew it was silly, but she liked the sound of that, even though in reality, it meant nothing. He wasn't "with" her in any true sense of the word; it was just a figure of speech. But for a fleeting moment, she pretended that they were a unit. And she supposed in a way, for the duration of this case, they were. For as long as he allowed it.
"I think the kidnapper I talked to was definitely a man," she confirmed.
He turned toward her as they came to a red light. "What makes you so sure?"
"He said something about liking direct women. It's the kind of flippant line a guy might say."
The light turned green. Dax shifted his foot back onto the gas. "Is that the kind of line guys gave you?"
"Guys didn't give me lines." She saw him raise a quizzical eyebrow. "I never really hit the dating circuit." Her father had kept a tight rein on her all through school, demanding she be there to make his meals and take care of the house. "I was married at a young age. Right out of high school."
That would have made her, what? Eighteen? Much too young in his opinion. She'd hardly been more than a baby. "You must have really been in love to get married that young."
It would have been easier to say yes and leave it at that, but she hated lies, even little white ones. They'd been the kind she'd lived with for most of her marriage. Pretending to be in love when she wasn't. There was a huge difference between loving and being in love.
"No," she corrected, "What I really wanted was to leave home." And Wade had been her ticket. "Wade was a marine, that meant travel. Or so I thought." Things never quite turned out the way they were planned. "As it was, I never left the state. But Wade did. He was sent overseas on four tours of duty, always to places where bringing a wife along wasn't feasible." That was why there were times when she'd hardly felt as if she really was married. She did a lot of growing up in those seven years.
Squeaking through a yellow light, he glanced at her. "So what did you do while your husband was over there?"
"Went to school, broadened my mind." Her mouth curved. "Played house." That's what it felt like because there was hardly ever a husband to sit opposite her at the table. "Got used to living on my own for the most part." She looked at his profile. It seemed so chiseled, so forceful. In a way, he looked like more of a marine than Wade had. "Found out to my surprise that I could."
"I think you could probably do anything you set your mind to."
A compliment. Lord, when had she last heard one? Wade wasn't given to wasting words and before that, there'd been no one to say anything kind to her at all. "I could have used you years ago, when I didn't believe that."
He picked up on what wasn't being said. "But now you do?"
"For the most part." Except in those wee hours of the night or morning, when everything was covered in darkness and it seeped into her soul, making her doubt herself. Making her afraid.
Turning into a strip mall, he brought the car to a stop in the small lot that looked out on three fast-food restaurants. Hamburger Heaven shared a sidewalk with Chinese-Food-To-Go and Hot Tamale. "We're here."
He held the door for her as she walked into Hamburger Heaven. The fast-food restaurant was thinly populated this time of the morning. The quick breakfast crowd was all but gone and it would be several hours before the early lunch crowd arrived.
There was only one person behind the counter. She looked from Brenda to Dax, an eager smile on her young, unlined face. Her fingers hovered over the digital register. "How can I help you?"
"Where's your ladies' room?" Dax asked.
Leaning over the register, the young girl pointed to the far side of the counter on her left. "Just follow that to the end. Rest rooms are right there," she informed them brightly.
Brenda was already hurrying down the narrow hall, leaving Dax in her wake.
"Damn it, wait up, Brenda! I'm the cop here, not you."
She pretended not to hear him. Her heart was racing. Dax was half a step behind by the time she reached the ladies' room.
"Police," he called out in case there was someone using the facilities. But there was no response. No one was inside.
He took the lead. The moment they walked inside, the smell of liberally applied disinfectant assaulted his nose. The cleaning woman had obviously just been here.
Three stalls lined the back wall. The center one had an Out Of Order sign on it. When he pressed his palm against the door, it wouldn't give. It had been locked from the inside. Playing the odds, he went to the first stall. The door swung open and he lost no time in picking up the lid. Nothing. Brenda crowded in behind him. He heard her sigh of disappointment.
The third stall yielded the same results. Either the kidnapper was playing them, or the photograph was in the middle stall.
Dax tried the door again. It didn't budge.
"I can crawl under it," Brenda volunteered.
But he waved her behind him. "Stay back." Bracing himself, he lunged at the door, applying his shoulder to it. The door flew open as pain shot through his body. He paid no attention to it.
Brenda pushed passed him. Holding her breath, she gingerly lifted the lid from the tank and turned it over. She wasn't sure what she was going to do if there was nothing there.
But there was.
"Oh, thank God."
There was an instant photograph of Annie taped to the underside of the lid. It was wrapped in a plastic bag. Dax lost no time in removing it.
Standing on her toes, Brenda looked around Dax's shoulder at the photograph. Annie was sitting on a bed in a bedroom that looked like a thousand other bedrooms. Brenda could feel her heart tightening in her chest. Poor baby. "She looks scared."
He thought of the photographs Brenda had shown him of the girl in her album. "But none the worse for her ordeal." The little girl was holding up this morning's newspaper. That meant that as of this morning, she was still alive. Something caught his eye. He looked closer. "I didn't realize she wore glasses."
"She just recently got them," Brenda told him. She remembered how insecure Annie had been, afraid that the other children would call her cruel names. Brenda had sat with her, mentioning other people who wore glasses as children, people who had gone on to make an impression in history. "She's nearsighted." Her eyes narrowed. "Wait, isn't that something reflected in her glasses?"
It was what had caught his attention. "Looks like it, but it's hardly more than a speck."
Excitement began to build inside of her again. They had something, she could work with. "You'd be surprised at what you can see in a speck."
He made his own deductions from the tone of her voice. "Can you mak
e this any clearer?"
"Odds are pretty good." But everything she needed was back at the academy. "I'm going to need to cross the yellow tape again. The school's got all the state of the art software," she reminded him.
That had been her excuse for crossing the restricted lines yesterday. He was far from computer savvy and had no idea what they had at the precinct. He knew one thing, though. The techs wouldn't let him hover and look over their shoulders. Brenda would. She had no choice. "C'mon, let's go."
Walking out into the dining area, Dax stopped to glance at the menu. The same girl was behind the counter, still looking eager to serve them.
He turned to Brenda. "Have you had breakfast yet?"
"Burnt toast."
He thought of the huge breakfasts his Uncle Andrew liked to prepare. On any given day, there was anywhere from five to twenty people sharing the meal with him. He'd purchased a specially made table just to accommodate everyone. The funny thing was, like the Greek fable, Uncle Andrew never seemed to run out of food. There was always more.
He knew his uncle would have been horrified at what he was about to do. "Let me get something to go for us, it looks like it might be a long morning."
Her stomach rumbled in response. "Fries, see if they have fries ready yet."
He looked at her dubiously. "For breakfast?"
She had a craving, but she didn't want to call it that. It was far too much of a giveaway. "I've always liked fries."
Actually, so had he. Dax grinned and nodded. "Okay, fries it is."
He turned toward the girl behind the counter and placed their order.
* * *
Chapter 8
« ^ »
Dax flipped his cell phone closed, ending the call he'd placed to Nathan. The lab was still attempting to clean up the audio tape. Stripping away the layers of synthesized interference took time. So far, nothing useful had surfaced, but Nathan promised to be in touch once it did. In the task force area, his partner informed him, the volume of calls coming in had increased. Leads were being followed, no matter how slim or far-fetched.
In Broad Daylight Page 8
