Thread of Betrayal

by Jeff Shelby

  Now I felt like I knew nothing.

  And I trusted no one.

  “I can’t call Mike,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “You won’t believe me.”

  Lauren shifted in her seat. She took a deep breath, exhaled, and leveled her eyes at me. “Joe. You and I have had a lot of disagreements over the years. About a lot of crap. And especially since she’s been gone. But not once have I ever said to you or even hinted that I didn’t believe anything you’ve ever told me. And if I had? I wouldn’t be sitting in this car with you right now.”

  I hated when she put her lawyer voice on. When she sounded calm, cool and reasonable, as if there was no possible way to argue with what she was saying. It made me feel dumb and incompetent and, more often than not, wrong.

  Which she had just very succinctly pointed out.

  I put my gloveless hands in front of the vent, trying to warm them. “You’re going to think I’m nuts.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But I won’t dismiss what you tell me, especially if it’s somehow tied to Elizabeth.”

  I considered my words carefully before I spoke. “I don’t trust Mike right now,” I said slowly. She looked at me, her eyes questioning, and I continued. “The old guy in the hospital in Minneapolis? He told me something that makes me think it’s possible Mike could’ve had a hand in Elizabeth’s disappearance. Or is covering it up. Or something.”

  She digested this, blinking several times, then nodded. “Okay. Explain.”

  The car continued idling while I told her about my conversation with Rodney and why it had left me so unsettled. She listened closely, not interrupting, not calling me crazy.

  “So it’s not just Mike,” she said when I was done. “Could’ve been anyone in the department. Bazer, anyone.”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  She leaned back in her seat, crossed her arms across her chest and stared straight ahead. Her mouth was set in a firm line. “You know, it’s always bothered me.”

  “What has?”

  “The idea that she would’ve gone with someone she didn’t know,” she said. “I told you that the first night.”

  She had. I remembered it clearly. We’d been sitting at the kitchen table, both of us numb, staring at the phone, waiting for it to ring, for someone to tell us that she’d been found.

  “She wouldn’t have gotten in someone’s car she didn’t know,” she’d said, her hands flat against the kitchen table, her fingers trembling. “Never. We’ve talked about it with her.”

  “Safeside Super Chick,” I’d whispered.

  Lauren nodded, a ghost of a smile on her face. It was a DVD that had come home from school about safety, about identifying who the ‘safe’ people in your life were. Parents. Relatives. Friends your parents told you were safe. The narrator was this ridiculously costumed super-hero girl and she was accompanied by hokey scenarios and horrific music. Elizabeth loved the DVD and even after we’d gone through it with her, she’d insisted on watching it over and over because she loved Super Chick. She’d gone as Super Chick for Halloween that year.

  She knew who her safe people were.

  “We’ve called everyone we know,” Lauren had said, her voice breaking.

  “So it’s not someone we know. It can't be.” I said it for me than for Lauren, trying to convince myself.

  We’d continued staring at the phone, but it had never rang and now, nearly ten years later, I could remember that conversation like it had just happened.

  “I’ve thought about it so many times,” Lauren said now. “How did we not hear something? Did someone she recognize pull up at the curb and pretend to ask directions? Did they use chloroform?” She shook her head, her entire body shuddering. “I’ve thought about it so much it makes me ill. But I’ve never thought she would’ve gone with a stranger or walk up to a car with someone in it that she didn’t know.”

  “She would’ve come running in,” I said, gripping the wheel.

  Lauren nodded. “To get one of us. To tell us someone needed directions or had a question or whatever. She would’ve. She wouldn’t have been careless.”

  We’d had the same conversation multiple times over the years. I agreed with everything she said. It never made sense. All of our friends, acquaintances, they’d all been interviewed, they’d all been checked out. We’d listed everyone; no one had been excluded from the list. We’d put them all down on paper and turned them over. They’d all been cleared. Everyone we knew had been cleared. But Lauren and I had always believed we’d forgotten someone or overlooked someone.

  And now I had to wonder if we’d overlooked the most obvious people on the planet.

  “She would’ve known Mike,” Lauren said, her voice shaky.

  “And Bazer.”

  “And any CPD,” she said. “She probably would’ve trusted anyone who wore the same uniform as you. I think we probably told her they were safe.”

  I nodded, thinking the same thing. I could almost recall saying the words that the police were always safe, but I couldn’t pull the details of the conversation. I was sure we’d said it, though. My stomach tightened at the thought.

  “Wow,” Lauren said. “Okay.”

  “We’re on our own,” I told her, closing my eyes briefly. “I don’t want to risk calling him. Maybe I’m overreacting and maybe it’ll be something else. But when Rodney told me about sending the picture, it felt like a few things didn’t fit.” The heat blew strong and I pulled my hand away from the vent. “I’ll figure it out when we find her, but I don’t trust anyone right now.”

  “You don’t have any other contacts?” Lauren asked.

  “I have about a thousand contacts,” I said. “But I don’t trust anyone right now.”

  “You need to think,” she said. “We’re going to need some help. And there have to be people that you know that aren’t connected to Mike.”

  She was right. I needed to think.

  I put the car into reverse and backed out of the slot. “Okay. I’ll think.”

  I drove to the edge of the lot, waiting for an opening in traffic so we could pull out.

  “Joe?”

  I looked over at her.

  She laid her hand on my arm. “I believe you. And I don’t think your nuts.”

  SEVEN

  There were four Thompsons and two Thompkins listed for Castle Rock, Colorado.

  As I drove south, Lauren worked on her phone, searching names and tapping into several databases that she had access to through her law firm. Twenty minutes later, just as we hit C-470 and headed east, she had six names and the addresses and was mapping them out.

  C-470 was a wide open highway that cut through several cookie-cutter suburbs filled with big-box homes sitting amidst gently rolling hills. A massive shopping mall that looked very similar to a ski lodge rose up on our right, its lots nearing capacity with morning shoppers. We made the interchange to Interstate 25 and went south. The highway rose up and then descended slowly into a mammoth valley of pines and plains. The foothills of the Rockies were visible out to the west, beyond the scores of homes that looked like LEGOS in the distance. The road cut through the massive pines and Lauren gave me the exit to take and we descended down into the valley of Castle Rock.

  The four Thompson homes were washouts. Two were elderly couples in tiny homes in what looked to be the older part of the town. Both seemed annoyed that we’d knocked on their door. Another was a young couple that had just gotten married and moved to Castle Rock. They were sympathetic, but offered no help. And the last was actually a doctor’s office at the end of Main Street, a pediatric practice where Dr. Andrew Thompson was the practitioner. I’d gone in to talk to him, only to learn that he was divorced, childless and lived in another suburb to the south.

  Two fruitless hours of looking and we were left with the Thompkins addresses.

  We drove back over the highway and headed out into the valley of LEGOS. The first address was a sprawling home in a subdivision name
d Soaring Eagle Estates, homes perched on a hill with panoramic views of the Rockies. A small putting green snaked next to the long driveway, the home a rambling, newer structure that ran the length of the double-sized lot. Snow had melted in patches in the front yard, revealing a perfectly manicured, albeit dormant, front lawn.

  Unfortunately, no one answered the door.

  I’d walked around the back of the home, down a long slope, to find a covered in-ground pool, a patio the size of a small country, and a deck nearly the same size. The sliding doors both on the deck and below were covered by hanging blinds and I couldn’t see much inside, except that no one seemed to be home.

  I walked back to the front and climbed back into the car. “No one.”

  Lauren sighed, her frustration and impatience showing. “Great.”

  “We’ll check the other one,” I said. “Then come back if we need to and wait until someone shows up.”

  She didn’t say anything, just played with a loose strand of hair.

  The last Thompkins’ house on our list was about four minutes away, in a smaller subdivision that I missed the name of. A two-story house with light-green siding and a long front porch nestled at the end of a cul-de-sac. Two bikes lay on their sides in the half-melted snow on the lawn and the garage door was open, showing off a minivan and a Toyota Camry.

  At least someone was home.

  Lauren got out with me and she was first to the door. She pushed the doorbell and then, before anyone could answer, rapped on the door.

  Footsteps padded down the hall and the door opened. A friendly-looking woman about our age smiled at us. “Hello.”

  Lauren deferred to me. I took a deep breath. Our daughter could be there. Somewhere inside that house.

  “My name is Joe Tyler,” I said. “This is Lauren. We’re trying to locate a girl named Morgan Thompkins. Does she by any chance live here?”

  Her smiled stayed, but she shook her head. “Afraid not. Right last name, but no one with that first name.”

  Lauren’s shoulders sagged and I felt the familiar stab of disappointment in my chest. The woman noticed our dismay, her expression worried as her gaze moved from me to Lauren.

  “We haven’t lived here very long,” the woman said, as if this explained why Morgan didn't live there. She was dressed in a thin, long-sleeved t-shirt and she wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the chill. “I’m afraid we don’t know many of our neighbors. My kids are still getting adjusted to the schools. Moved here from Wyoming.”

  I returned her smile. “Ah, okay. Saw the bikes in the snow.”

  A fake frown crossed her face. “Yes. I’ve been trying to get them to bring them in for two days now, but they’re so happy to see the sun, even in the cold. You don’t see the sun as much in Wyoming.”

  “I’m sure,” I said. “Can I ask how old your kids are? The reason I’m asking is that the Morgan Thompkins we’re looking for is a teenager.”

  She nodded again, wanting to be helpful. “Oh. I have three. A nine year old, an eleven year old and a seventeen year old.” She hesitated. “Do you live around here?”

  “No,” I said. “We’re actually here trying to track down our own daughter. She was abducted from us about ten years ago and we think we’re really close to finding her. We think Morgan Thompkins might be able to help us.”

  Her eyes widened in horror. “Oh wow,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m so sorry. That is…I don’t know what to say.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  And it was. That was always the reaction. People immediately felt horrible and then immediately worried about their own kids. It made me feel guilty for worrying them. But I couldn’t change it.

  “Can you wait here for just a sec?” she asked. “Let me…I’ll be right back.”

  I nodded and she closed the door, disappearing back into the home.

  “This isn’t it,” Lauren said, annoyed. “Why are we waiting?”

  “Because I think she’s trying to help us,” I said.

  “How?”

  “Let’s just see.”

  She frowned again, shaking her head, and looked away from me.

  A moment later, the door opened and the woman was back.

  With her teenage daughter.

  The girl looked timid, her eyes a bit downcast, her shoulders slumped. She wore an oversized-red sweatshirt and sweatpants so long that they covered her feet. Her long blond hair was pulled together in a messy pony tail and her hands were tucked inside the pocket of the sweatshirt.

  “This is my daughter, Jenny,” the woman said, her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “And I’m sorry, I’m Nadine.”

  Jenny managed a half-smile and I nodded.

  “Jen, these people are looking for another girl with our last name,” Nadine said, then glanced at me. “Morgan, correct?”

  I nodded again.

  “I wondered if you might know her from school,” Nadine said, her gaze moving back to her daughter.

  Jenny Thompkins studied me warily. “She’s in my math class. Our teacher gets us mixed up, like, every day.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?” The flicker of hope was back.

  The girl nodded. “Which is, like, ridiculous because we look nothing alike. But I guess the last name thing is too hard for him.”

  Nadine frowned at her daughter’s scornful tone but didn’t say anything.

  “She’s a cheerleader,” Jenny said, rolling her eyes. “I am not.”

  The way she said it told me she was glad about that.

  “But you know her?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Sure. Everyone knows her. She’s popular. And she’s nice. For a cheerleader.”

  “You know where she lives?”

  “Yeah,” Jenny said. “Her parents are gone all the time so she’s always having parties at her house.” She glanced up quickly at her mother. “But I haven’t gone to any. She invited me to one but I didn't go.”

  Nadine patted her shoulder and nodded, letting her daughter know she wasn’t in any kind of trouble.

  “She lives in The Bird,” Jenny said.

  “The Bird?” Lauren asked.

  “It’s like two minutes from here,” Jenny answered. “Her neighborhood is named after a bird so everyone calls it The Bird. Really big houses. Her dad is some Internet guy or something. Pretty rich.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “Soaring Eagle? That’s her neighborhood?”

  Jenny nodded. “Yep. That’s it.”

  EIGHT

  Ten minutes later, Lauren and I were back in front of the home with the putting green in Soaring Eagle. I’d knocked on the door again, got no answer, and went back to the car. I slipped back behind the wheel and shoved my hands in front of the heater.

  “Now what?” Lauren asked from the passenger seat.

  I turned the heat down to a lower setting. “We wait. Nothing else to do.”

  She sighed and leaned back in the seat. “Great.”

  I understood her frustration. Our daughter, the daughter we'd been missing, the daughter I'd been searching for for nearly ten years, was with this girl. Morgan. I wanted to rip the town apart, call out an APB, do anything I could to locate them. But I couldn't. The only thing either of could do was wait.

  “If we leave, we might miss her,” I said. “If we…”

  She held up a hand. “I got it. I don’t need an explanation.”

  I pushed the button on the side of the driver’s seat and it complied, reclining slightly.

  “Sorry,” Lauren said after a few minutes. “Didn’t mean to cut you off.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I’m just frustrated.”

  “I know.” I was, too. But I was used to it.

  “I know there’s nothing else to do,” she said. “I’m just worn down from this chase. Or whatever you want to call it.”

  “I know.”

  “Is this how it always is?” she asked. She didn’t look at me, just played with her fingers
, picking at her nails, rubbing her thumb over her knuckles.

  I shrugged. “Sometimes. Sometimes it’s easier.”

  “How is it ever easier?” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t see that.”

  I stared at the house for a long moment.

  “I was in Dallas, maybe two years ago,” I said. “I can’t even remember why I was there initially, but I ended up helping this woman find her son. He was a college kid. All she knew was that he’d had a fight with his girlfriend. Hadn’t checked in with his mom in a couple of days and she was freaked out. Understandably. I went and talked to the girlfriend. He wanted her to come home with him for the summer. She wasn’t sure her parents would be okay with that. It was a fight over nothing. But she knew when he got frustrated he’d go up to this lake in Oklahoma and camp by himself, just to get away. And they had a deal. If she ever really needed to get ahold of him, an emergency or something, she could text him with a code word and he’d call. She texted him. He called back in about thirty seconds. She told him his mother was worried, that I was looking for him. He felt terrible, apologized to her, to me and immediately called his mom.” I shrugged. “That was pretty damn easy.”

  “They weren’t all like that,” she said. She didn’t pose this as a question, just stated it like something she knew to be true.

  “No. But some were. You just never know.”

  “I wish we had a secret code,” she said, her voice wistful.

  I reached out and briefly touched her hand. “Me, too,” I said. “Me, too.”

  She smiled at me, a sad smile that tore at my heart. As much as I wanted to find Elizabeth for me, I wanted to find her for Lauren, too. For both of us. I glanced out the front window, my eyes scanning the road. Every car that passed us on the street gave me a little twinge, wondering if it was the one that might be carrying Elizabeth. But each one continued by, either headed toward another gigantic house or out of the subdivision.

  “Was that night in San Diego weird for you?” Lauren asked, shifting in her seat.

  “Which night?”

  “Me and you,” she said. “The hotel.”