by Mike Omer
The kidnappers had bought her new pants.
Mitchell was pretty sure this lead would go nowhere. Sure, once he looked at the pictures, he saw the pants looked a bit different, but to drop everything and go check out the CCTV footage of clothing shops from a week before sounded like a stretch. Especially since they didn’t have enough for a warrant.
But Hannah had that spark in her eye. He could see the enthusiasm and hope in her face, and he couldn’t bring himself to tell her it was a lost cause. Neither could Bernard, and the three of them divided the clothing shops in Glenmore Park between them.
The first one was a very quick visit. They didn’t have any black pants for girls, nor had they had any a week before. If all five of his assigned clothing shops had ended that quickly, he would have been back at the police station in time for the evening take out. But the second clothing shop did have black pants for girls. He asked for the CCTV footage of a week before. A long argument regarding customer privacy followed. It ended only when Mitchell told the manager that he knew a reporter who would be glad to publish a story about that store, and how the manager had prevented the return of little Abigail Lisman. The manager grumbled, then checked his books and said that the pants in question hadn’t been sold at all during the week after Saint Patrick’s Day.
Mitchell was now at the third shop. He approached the counter, where a teenager employee stood, folding a few shirts. When she noticed him, her mouth stretched into a smile so fake it could have been plastic, and she asked in an annoying sing song voice, “Can I help you?”
“I would like to talk to the manager,” Mitchell said.
“The manager is busy,” she said, in the same voice. He wondered if this was what she always sounded like. Perhaps that was how they talked on her planet. “Is there something I can help you with?”
He showed her his badge. “Detective Lonnie,” he said. “I’m investigating Abigail Lisman’s kidnapping. I need to see your security footage.”
The plastic smile disappeared. “I’ll call the manager,” she said in a normal human voice.
“Thank you.”
She went to the back of the store. Mitchell leaned against the counter and looked around him. A small blonde girl in a pink dress, about six or seven years old, came out of the changing booth and approached a sour-faced woman.
“What do you think, Mommy?” she asked.
The woman glanced at her. “It makes you look a bit fat, Kimmy,” she said. “Let’s keep looking.”
Mitchell curbed his desire to arrest the woman on the spot and drag her to the station. “I think you look fantastic,” he said aloud. “Like a princess.”
The girl looked at him and giggled shyly. He smiled at her. Her mother glanced at him, her eyes widening as she took in his looks. She smiled as well. “It’s her birthday,” she said. “We’re buying her a new dress.”
“Well, she’s a beautiful girl,” Mitchell said. He had half a dozen acidic sentences to follow that one. I bet she takes after her father. Or pink really looks good on your granddaughter. But the girl looked so happy, and he decided to let it slide.
“Can I help you?” A thirtyish woman with short black hair and a cute face approached him with the other employee.
“I’m Detective Lonnie from the Glenmore Park PD. I’m investigating the Abigail Lisman kidnapping case. I’m looking for a man or a woman who bought black pants for a twelve-year-old girl, about a week ago, probably on the 18th of March, right after Saint Patrick’s Day. I hoped I could take a look in your CCTV footage.”
“We only keep the footage from the last seventy-two hours,” the manager said.
“Oh,” Mitchell said. “Can you check the books, see if—”
“What kind of pants?” the employee asked.
Mitchell fished in his pocket for his phone, and browsed to Abigail Lisman’s Instagram page. He showed her the photos.
“Oh,” the employee said. “Those! Yeah, we sell them here. Let me think…” She frowned, clenching her jaw as if the process of thinking required unimaginable effort.
“They might have been bought by this man,” he said, flipping to the sketch image.
She looked at it. “Yes!” she said. “I remember him! Val, you remember? I told you about the guy who looked totally hung over, that came to buy clothing for his niece but he didn’t know her size, and he was so confused by all the options that he nearly left, but I told him…” She slowly stopped talking as she realized Mitchell and the manager were staring at her.
“When was that?” Mitchell asked.
“Just after Saint Patrick’s Day,” she said in a meek voice. “He’s the kidnapper? He didn’t look like a kidnapper. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry—”
“Casey,” Val said, in what Mitchell thought was an incredibly patient voice. “At what time? And do you remember if he paid in cash or—”
“He paid with a credit card,” Casey said quickly. “I remember. It was a credit card.”
It took them less than ten minutes to find the transaction in their records. His name was Darrel Simmons.
Hannah’s heart beat wildly as she took the Kevlar vest out of her trunk and put it on. Her car was parked near a patrol car and several FBI vehicles. There was a group of eight FBI SWAT agents in full gear preparing to charge Darrel Simmons’s house. They weren’t taking any chances.
Hannah and Mitchell, along with the other two cops, were assigned to watch the perimeter—or, as Mitchell put it, the “stay out of the way” positions. The only reason they were even there was because Hannah and Mitchell had given them the address. Neither Agent Mancuso nor Clint really acknowledged their presence.
The garage door was closed, and the house was dark. The SWAT members had night vision goggles on, though Clint and Mancuso didn’t bother with them. Hannah guessed they would follow after the SWAT team stormed the house.
True to her prediction, the SWAT team took positions around the house with Mancuso and Clint hanging back. The SWAT member closest to the door kicked it open, and the man next to him threw something inside. A moment later, there was a sharp flash and a loud bang, and the team charged inside. From her “stay out of the way” position, Hannah could still hear them yelling as they stormed from room to room.
Finally, someone shouted that it was clear. Mancuso and Clint ran after the SWAT team. Hannah followed, Mitchell joining her. As they got to the house, the lights turned on inside. Hannah ran through the front door, stopping instantly as the familiar coppery scent of blood filled her nostrils. She exchanged looks with Mitchell as they inched toward the light. Even before they entered the room, Hannah could see the brown smudges on the floor. For one terrible moment she imagined herself telling Naamit her daughter had been found dead in the kidnapper’s house.
But it wasn’t Abigail. On the kitchen floor, amidst a large pool of dried blood, lay the body of Darrel Simmons. He was lying on his stomach, head turned to the side, face twisted in pain.
“The house is clean,” one of the agents reported to Mancuso. “There’s nobody else here. We found a small bed and a latrine bucket in the basement.”
Hannah shut her eyes. The other kidnapper had disappeared, and had taken Abigail with him.
Chapter Twenty-One
Hannah was aware of movement around her, the murmuring of the crime scene investigators, FBI agents talking silently with each other or on the phone, the chatter of the police radio in a patrol car outside, sharp and concise. She stared at the single unbroken champagne flute on the kitchen table, a reddish-brown trickle of dried blood on its side. She felt sick.
The info had been there the day before. They could have been here sooner. They’d have found Abigail, returned her to her parents.
Now they had a dead body, and no sign of Abigail.
Mitchell had gone down to the basement with one of the agents, to examine the room where Abigail had been trapped for the past week. Hannah couldn’t bring herself to do so.
Annie knelt by the body
, taking its temperature. Not far from her, Matt carefully scraped blood from the floor into a small jar. The jurisdiction issue of the crime scene was unclear. It was a murder scene in Glenmore Park, so the case belonged to the police department. But it was directly related to the kidnapping of Abigail Lisman, which meant it was in the FBI’s hands.
No one was arguing just yet, though Hannah could see the dark clouds of discontent in the near future. But for now, the FBI were happy to use Matt and Violet as crime scene investigators, since they were available. There was no question about Annie being the official person to pronounce that the dead body was indeed, a dead body.
Annie stood up and cleared her throat. She looked hesitantly around her, as if unsure who to address. Hannah met her gaze, and shook her head slightly. Annie nodded, then glanced at Agent Mancuso.
“Um… Agent?”
Agent Mancuso walked over, carefully avoiding the large blood stain that surrounded most of the body. “Yes. Doctor Turner, right?”
“Uh… sure. You can call me Annie.”
It was clear that Mancuso was not in the mood to do so. “Okay, Doctor, what are your findings?”
“Rigor mortis is in progress,” Annie said. “According to that, and the temperature of the body, the deceased has been dead between five and six hours. There are almost no signs of lividity and the body is very pale, indicating the deceased has bled to death.” She paused, and both of them, as well as Hannah, glanced at the huge blood stain on the floor. “I believe the main source of the bleeding is the slash on the throat. There are also two visible stab wounds, one in his back and one in his chest. There are multiple scratches on his face, caused by what seems to be a broken object with sharp edges…” Annie pointedly glanced over to the smashed champagne bottle on the floor. “And another wound on the back of his head, possibly from the same object.”
“Was there a struggle?” Mancuso asked.
“I wouldn’t think a very significant one. Struggles often accelerate rigor mortis, and this isn’t the case. But, of course, I’ll be able to tell you more once I do a full autopsy. And Matt would probably be able to determine more from the blood spatter. I…” she hesitated.
“Go on,” Mancuso said.
“It’s a bit premature, but I would guess after being stabbed at least once he fell to the floor, and was hit on the head with the… with a hard object,” Annie said, careful not to mention the bottle. It wasn’t her job to make that connection. “At that point he would have been completely incapacitated, perhaps even unconscious. Then his attacker may have stabbed him in the back. And then he pulled his head up, using his hair, and slashed his throat.”
“Thank you, Doctor Turner,” Mancuso said, frowning. She turned to Matt. “Mr. Lowery, right?”
Matt straightened. “That’s right.”
“How long until you and your team finish with this crime scene?”
Matt glanced at the rest of his “team.” Violet was in the corner of the room, her brow furrowed as she sketched the scene. “I’d say five to six hours,” Matt said. “We need to go through the basement as well.”
“I see,” Mancuso said, frowning. “Any initial assessment you want to share?”
“We have two champagne glasses, one broken and one intact, and a broken bottle,” Matt said. “And a lot of blood.”
“Really,” Mancuso said dryly. She was clearly unimpressed.
“There’s also something missing,” Matt said.
Hannah tensed, looking at Matt intently.
“What do you mean, missing?”
“Well…” he walked over to one of the blood spatters on the floor. “You see this spatter here?”
Hannah looked at the spatter he indicated. There was a series of spots on the floor, their trajectory pointing away from the body. They ended in a smear.
“Yes,” Mancuso said.
“And see that spatter here?” He pointed at a smaller spatter, a foot away.
“Yes.”
“It’s the same spatter,” Matt said. “There was a large object here. Some of the blood hit it as it splashed. Then, later, the object was removed, accounting for the clean spot and the smear.”
“I see,” Mancuso said. Her tone warmed up. Apparently, Mancuso had no problem with the way everyone here conducted their work, except for Hannah. “Could it be a duffel bag?”
Matt shrugged. “Sure. Size fits.”
Mancuso turned her head and exchanged meaningful looks with Clint.
“Well,” a familiar voice said behind Hannah. “This is a damn mess.”
“Captain Bailey,” Mancuso said, her tone raised in surprise. “What brings you here?”
“I heard there was a murder in my city,” Bailey said, carefully walking into the room, sliding a pair of gloves onto his hands. “And I understand that you want to work on the case together with my detectives.”
“This murder is a part of the Abigail Lisman kidnapping case,” Mancuso said sharply. “And it is in the hands of the—”
“Perhaps we should talk about it outside,” Bailey suggested. “I’m an old bureaucrat, and the sight of so much blood makes me dizzy.”
Mancuso blinked, then nodded curtly. “Very well,” she said. “Let’s step outside.”
They both brushed past Hannah on their way. She looked at them walking out, then turned her eyes to meet Clint’s. He quickly looked away. She returned her stare to the single champagne flute on the table.
It was cold outside, and the night wind froze Fred Bailey’s ears. He could handle cold quite well—pretty much a must if you worked as a cop in the Glenmore Park PD—but his ears always hurt when it was windy. Couldn’t be helped. There were certain things that a police captain could wear, and earmuffs were not on the list.
Mancuso didn’t seem to mind the cold at all. She was a stony one, especially when angry. In the many years they’d worked together, he’d never seen her display a sign of weakness. But he thought he could see the turmoil in her eyes. There wasn’t just anger there, there was pain as well. Maybe he just saw what he felt.
“I want us to work together on this case,” he said.
“Like hell,” she answered angrily. “This is our case, and you know it, Bailey.”
“Who cares whose case is this?” he said, his tone soft, though loud enough to be heard over the wind. “It’s everyone’s case. You don’t care about the publicity. You’ve never cared about that. That’s your boss’s problem, not yours. You just want to find the girl.”
“That’s right,” Mancuso snapped. “And I can’t let your detectives mess with my investigation, calling their own shots, with no one to rein them in when needed.”
That one stung, and Fred made sure his face remained completely neutral. “My detectives are the best detectives in the state,” he said. “Sure, they can occasionally be a bit… difficult—”
“You call that difficult? If Shor had told us about the phone call—”
“If Detective Shor had told you about the phone call you might have caught the kidnappers, sure. Or Abigail Lisman might have been killed.”
“She’s probably dead anyway.”
“Maybe,” Fred said. “No signs of recent violence in the basement. She was taken away alive.”
“We would have caught them!”
“Or not!” he snapped, losing his temper. “Would, would. What the hell is wrong with you? This is where we’re at now. There’s a kid missing, a dead kidnapper, and the clock is ticking. Do you really want to talk about something that might have happened?”
Mancuso glared at him, clenching her fists.
“Would you have done differently?” he asked, lowering his voice. “In her position, would you have reported the call despite the mother’s request? Endangering the mother’s child?”
“Yes.”
“Bullshit. I know you better than that. You would have done exactly the same. And it might have been the right call.”
Mancuso shook her head and said nothing.
She stared at the house, her mouth twisted in a bitter grimace. “We have more than a hundred and fifty agents, professionals, and consultants working on this case,” she said. “I’ve been managing it for the past week. I’m almost never home. The only time I see my daughter, she’s already sleeping. All my men are working double shifts. And still, we didn’t notice that she was wearing different pants. Never followed that lead. If we’d noticed this a day earlier…” She stopped talking, clenching her jaw. A sudden gust of wind caught her hair, messing it up. She didn’t seem to notice.
“Plenty of guilt to go around,” Fred said. “You know, my father used to say guilt is like ice cream. Everyone wants a bite—”
“—unless it’s mint flavored.” Mancuso said.
Fred blinked in surprise. “How did you know?”
“My Mom used to say that all the time.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. I have no idea what it means, though.”
“Yeah,” Fred said. “Neither do I.”
They stood in silence. Damn, his ears hurt. Perhaps black earmuffs were acceptable after all. Dignified, even. He wasn’t getting any younger.
“Detective Shor is the one who noticed the pants,” he said carefully.
“I know,” Mancuso said.
“She has her moments, you know. She can be damn hard to work with sometimes, but she’s probably the most brilliant detective in my squad.”
Mancuso nodded. Bailey decided to wait.
“Fine,” she said eventually. “But Fred, I want her to report to you. No more bullshit. And if any of us tells her to do something, I want her to act as if it’s the divine word of God.”
“Of course,” Fred grinned, mentally filtering the last sentence.
Far away, thunder rumbled ominously.
“All right,” Mancuso said. “Let’s go inside. I’m freezing.”
They began walking toward the front door.
