Into Thin Air

by Karen Leabo

  “Ham radio? Who does she talk to?”

  “People all over the world. I already checked with some of her regular contacts. They’ll be listening for any word from her.”

  “Good thinking.” Caro made a few notes. “In our day, only boys were into electronics.”

  The man actually smiled, if only for a moment. “Yeah, well, times have changed.”

  According to her father, Amanda was ambitious, goal-oriented and popular with her friends. She worked a part-time job to help pay for college. It didn’t sound as if her father had put any undue pressure on her. “What about boyfriends?” Caro asked casually, but that was the million-dollar question. She wanted to know who had fathered Amanda’s baby.

  “There’s only one that I know of, Scott Humphrey. They’ve been dating for two years. And before you even ask, yes, Scott is the baby’s father. He and Amanda came to me and told me together.”

  “Have you talked to Scott since Amanda disappeared?”

  Arkin nodded. “He’s been helping me look for her, and he’s at least as frantic as I am. Between us we’ve contacted everyone we can think of who’s even a slight acquaintance. No one’s heard from her.”

  The baby’s father would be Caro’s first and best lead, she decided. She took down Scott’s address and phone number, as well as those of several of Amanda’s close friends. Arkin had come prepared.

  “Oh, but you won’t find Scott at home,” Arkin added.

  “No?”

  “He went skiing with his parents for Christmas.”

  Alarm bells went off in Caro’s head. If this kid was so concerned about his girlfriend, why would he jaunt off to Vail or wherever?

  “He had to go,” Arkin said as if he’d read Caro’s mind. “His parents...well, you’d have to know the Humphreys to understand.”

  This explanation didn’t completely satisfy Caro, but she let it ride for now. “What kind of car was Amanda driving?” she asked.

  “A new Chevy Cavalier convertible. Red. It was her high school graduation present.”

  Nice car, Caro thought. Better than what she drove. “License number?”

  “Personalized plates. They say IMA HAM.” He spelled it out. “She’s serious about this radio stuff.”

  “That’ll make it a little easier. A car like that is pretty hard to miss.”

  “What do you do, put it on a computer or something?”

  She shook her head. “Right now, all I can do is ask around at various places Amanda might go. If we don’t get any leads in the next two or three days, we can start to suspect foul play and I can enter her car in the national NCIC computer. But chances are she’ll show up before then.” Caro tried to sound reassuring.

  Arkin’s hands stilled, and he pinned her with a penetrating stare. “You’re not listening. Whether Amanda is the victim of an accident, illness or foul play, she didn’t disappear because she wanted to.”

  Although Caro disagreed, she didn’t argue. She wasn’t easily intimidated, but something about Russell Arkin—his intensity, perhaps—made her think twice before crossing him.

  She changed the line of questioning, asking about Amanda’s mother. Russ had been divorced from his wife for years, and neither he nor Amanda had kept in contact with the woman. Caro made a mental note to check that out. Then she asked more of the usual questions, asking about Amanda’s routines, where she liked to eat, her sleeping habits, taste in clothes, food and music. The other investigators in Missing Persons sometimes teased her about her thoroughness, but she had learned not to overlook even the smallest detail. She had once located an elderly man, an Alzheimers victim, because the son had mentioned that his father was a nut for Mexican food. Caro had canvassed every Taco Bell within a five-mile radius of the old man’s home, and eventually she turned up an employee who remembered him. The man had been found in a nearby park.

  “Does Amanda have money? Credit cards?” Caro asked.

  “She has a checking account, but she’s constantly overdrawn. She has an Exxon card for gas, and a department store card—Sears or Penney’s, can’t remember which.”

  “Could she have borrowed one of your cards?”

  Judging from the way his eyebrows flew up and his nostrils flared, she’d paid his daughter a gross insult. “Amanda doesn’t steal.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt to check. She might have borrowed a card, intending to tell you,” Caro countered.

  As he flipped through the contents of his wallet, his expression turned sheepish.

  “Well?”

  “I lent her my MasterCard to pay at the clinic. I’d forgotten.”

  Caro made a note of all the cards in Amanda’s possession, extracting a promise from Mr. Arkin that he would call later with the numbers.

  Next, she took a detailed physical description of Amanda Arkin, right down to the number of freckles on her nose and the scar on her right knee. Her father had also come prepared with a stack of photographs, copies of Amanda’s graduation picture. Caro took a moment to study the young woman’s face. She was uncommonly attractive, with thick russet hair, sparkling blue eyes and a friendly smile. Caro hoped Amanda had sense enough to use that MasterCard. She hated to think of such a pretty young girl on the streets. The regulars would eat her for breakfast.

  “What else will you do?” Arkin asked, looking hopeful for the first time since he’d sat down.

  “Besides looking for the car, I’ll also question the people at that clinic, if I can get a subpoena so they’ll release her information. I’ll ask if anyone saw her in the parking lot or the reception area, just in case she got that far. I’ll also visit Christmas tree lots between your house and the clinic, since you said she was planning to buy a tree. And I’ll talk to her friends, particularly Scott Humphrey. I know you already did that, but they might tell me things they wouldn’t mention to her father.”

  Arkin nodded his understanding.

  “I’ll talk to the credit card companies and get them to flag the account numbers. If anyone makes any charges, we’ll know about it,” Caro added.

  Again he nodded. “I’m having some fliers printed up,” he said. “I’m offering a ten-thousand-dollar reward to anyone who helps me find Amanda.”

  Caro was slightly uncomfortable with that tactic, and she told him so. “Media attention can sometimes be helpful, but at this early state it’s not really warranted. Ninety-nine percent of the cases that cross my desk solve themselves within a day or two.”

  “Now, you listen to me, lady!” Arkin came out of his chair, showing a burst of emotion that he’d previously kept carefully leashed. He leaned across her desk until he was nose to nose with her. “Six years ago my wife left me. She left for the grocery store and she just never came home. But do you know, I never looked for her? I never called the police, because I’m not some nut-case alarmist. I just waited patiently for the divorce papers to arrive. I knew, even though she’d never said as much, that she didn’t want to live with me anymore.

  “This is different. I know my daughter, and she would no more leave home without telling me than she would fly to the moon.”

  Caro didn’t back down an inch. “She’s pregnant, Mr. Arkin. We get at least one or two pregnant teenagers through here every week. They have tough decisions to make, and usually they need some time to themselves.”

  “In other words, you don’t intend to take this case seriously.”

  “I didn’t say that. I’ll do everything I can think of to find your daughter. But I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts she’s missing because she wants to be.”

  When he spoke again, his voice was deadly soft. “I hope you’re right, Corporal Triece. I really do. Because if you give this case short shrift and they find my kid in a ditch somewhere, you’re going to have to live with that.” He spun around and stalked out of the room, skirting the closely arranged desks, bumping a chair with his hip. No one paid him the slightest attention. They had seen it all before.

  Tony, recently returned from his
trip downstairs to CAPERS, straddled the chair in front of Caro’s desk, fiercely chewing his gum. “What was that all about?”

  Caro swallowed the lump in her throat. There was no reason for Arkin’s words to sting like they had. Maybe it was the combination of finding Marcy Phelps in such a horrible way and now facing a similar case that had gotten to Caro. Wordlessly she handed Tony one of Amanda’s pictures.

  Tony gave a low whistle. “I guess Daddy’s not too happy about his little pride and joy taking off.”

  “He’s not too pleased about the fact that his little pride and joy is pregnant, either.”

  “Lot of that going around. Like the Phelps girl. At least now we know why she ran away in the first place.”

  “I tried to tell Mr. Arkin that a pregnant teenager has every reason to split, but...”

  “Naturally he didn’t believe you.”

  “I’m not sure I believe me. For one thing, Amanda Arkin is over eighteen. She didn’t have to run away. She could just leave, and no one could stop her.”

  “So maybe she did, and she just didn’t announce the fact.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But that doesn’t sound like the girl Arkin described to me. According to him, she’s never been any trouble. Good grades, no drugs, never been arrested, never even had a speeding ticket.”

  “But she did get pregnant.”

  “True. And apparently she lifted Daddy’s MasterCard, although he maintains he lent it to her. I think I better find out what her friends have to say about this supposed close relationship between father and daughter.”

  * * *

  When Amanda came to, her head was spinning and her stomach roiling. She was lying on a narrow cot in a tiny room. A small, barred window let in the only light, the thin winter sun of an overcast day. The green walls were blank, the tile floor bare. The only furnishings were the cot, a cheap nightstand, a chair and a metal bar with some unidentifiable articles of clothing hanging from it.

  Amanda retched, but there was nothing in her stomach. She’d had morning sickness earlier, she remembered. Then memories of the rest of her morning—or was it yesterday morning?—came flooding back, and a wave of panic washed over her.

  Oh, God, I’ve been kidnapped.

  The last thing she recalled, she’d been sitting in her car in the clinic’s parking lot, killing time until her appointment with the shrink. She could have sat in the waiting room, like she’d done the time before, but she hated that place. It had been filled with women, some young, some not so young, most of them poor. Some had been there to get birth control or prenatal medical care, but most were like her, facing an unplanned pregnancy and confused as hell. The mood of depression, desperation and hopelessness had been so pervasive that it had almost smothered Amanda.

  As the time for her appointment had rolled around, Amanda continued to sit in the car. She would open the door, then close it again, unable to make herself walk across the parking lot to the front door.

  She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t go back into that horrible place.

  As suddenly as the sun burst from behind a cloud, Amanda reached a decision she’d been grappling with for two weeks. She would have the baby. Maybe she would keep it, maybe she would give it up for adoption, but she wouldn’t get an abortion. She would go through with the pregnancy and birth with or without Scott’s support.

  With the decision made, a weight seemed to lift from her shoulders. Smiling for the first time in weeks, she had reached for the ignition, intent on stopping at the nearest Christmas tree lot and buying the biggest Scotch pine she could find. Before she could turn the key, however, someone knocked on her passenger window.

  A stout older woman waved to her through the glass, a pleading look on her face. Amanda started the car so she could run the electric window down a few inches. The heater blasted to life. “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” the woman said in a croaky voice, “but I seem to be lost. I’m trying to find the St. Jude’s Shelter. Do you know where that is?”

  Amanda’s heart immediately went out to the woman. It was cold outside, and she wore only a thin coat and no scarf or gloves. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where the shelter is,” Amanda said.

  “I have a map, but...well, I’m afraid I can’t read so good. Could you look at the map?”

  “Sure.” Amanda unlocked the passenger door. Having just decided to allow the life inside her to continue living, she felt unusually charitable. It was Christmastime, when people should help each other. “Why don’t you sit in here where it’s warm. If I can figure out your map, I’ll drive you to the shelter.”

  The look of gratitude on the woman’s face had warmed Amanda’s heart. The woman opened the door and climbed in with her worn shopping bag—probably all she had in the world. She reached into the bag and extracted a much-creased piece of paper, then held it out tentatively toward Amanda.

  Amanda started to reach for the map. But before she could, a cloth was shoved into her face by a surprisingly strong hand and a noxious odor invaded her nose and lungs. For a moment she was so shocked she couldn’t fight it. When she finally did go into action, bucking and screaming and flailing her attacker with her fists, her struggle was brief. Lethargy overcame her and darkness engulfed her.

  Next thing she knew, she was here in this depressing little room—no, cell, she corrected herself. She took a quick inventory of her body, finding nothing amiss except a nasty scrape on her elbow. She vaguely remembered banging it against something as she’d struggled, maybe the steering wheel. But then she saw what looked like a needle mark on her arm.

  Why would anyone kidnap her? She tried to think logically as she sat up slowly, her head still spinning. Her father was comfortable but by no means wealthy, so no one had reason to believe a fat ransom would be forthcoming. She had no enemies that she knew of. She’d been estranged from her mother for several years, but if Trina had wanted to see her, she wouldn’t have had to resort to anything this elaborate.

  When Amanda could stand without falling over, she made her way to the door. It was locked from the outside, which didn’t surprise her, and the bars on the single window were secure.

  What the hell kind of place was this?

  Panic welled up inside her again. “Hey!” she called out suddenly. “Hey, let me out of here!” She beat her fist against the door. “Let me out, damn it!” She hadn’t been screaming for very long when she heard footsteps and the scrape of a deadbolt. She stepped back, balling her hands into fists, prepared for anything.

  The door opened, and the “homeless” woman stepped in. She didn’t look the slightest bit confused or pitiful now. In fact, she wore a decidedly smug smile. “Well, I see you’re finally awake.”

  “What is going on?” Amanda demanded, although her voice wasn’t as strong as she would have liked. The question came out sounding rather desperate.

  “You’re at the Good Shepherd Maternity Home, my dear Amanda. You’ll stay here until you have your baby.”

  “I most certainly will not. What are you, some kind of rabid pro-lifer who snatches women at abortion clinics?”

  The woman’s lack of emotion sent a chill down Amanda’s spine. “Not at all. It was pure coincidence that I caught up with you at the clinic.”

  “You’ve been following me?” Amanda screeched. For some reason, that idea was even more frightening than the fact that she’d been kidnapped. “This is preposterous. You’re nuts! You’re—you’re—” She gasped for breath and the wits to express her utter horror. “When my father finds out about this, he’ll have your ass in jail so fast you won’t know what hit you!”

  “My dear, you don’t think I would go to this much trouble on my own authority, do you? Your father is the one who made all the arrangements.”

  Chapter 2

  Austin Lomax read the autopsy report for the third time, not quite sure how he felt about it. Marcy Phelps wasn’t the victim of murder or suicide. She’d died from loss of blood, the result of seve
re hemorrhaging after childbirth. The ME was quite firm about this; unusually cold weather had preserved the body well. The contusions and broken neck Marcy had suffered falling from the dam had occurred after death.

  Austin pulled off his tortoiseshell glasses and rubbed his eyes. Technically this wasn’t a homicide. But somebody out there was sure as hell guilty of something. First off, the girl should have been taken to a hospital if she was having a difficult birth. Failing that, her death should have been reported. And where the hell was her baby?

  Whoever had dumped Marcy’s body off the dam knew the whole story, and Austin was determined to find out who that someone was.

  “Austin Lomax?”

  He looked up and into the face of a heart-stirringly beautiful young woman. She wore little if any makeup, and her retro clothing made her look like a tiny and fragile Annie Hall. The only clue to her age was the hardness around her huge hazel eyes; she probably wasn’t as young as she looked.

  “I’m Carolyn Triece. You wanted to see me?”

  Austin hoped he hid his surprise. “So you’re the illustrious Caro. Have a seat.” He stole the chair from the empty desk next to his and motioned her into it.

  She seemed to have no reaction to his use of the term illustrious. “Is that the ME’s report?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Have a look. I think you’ll be surprised.”

  As Caro Triece studied the autopsy report, Austin finished off a sticky bun and surreptitiously watched her. He’d been working at this station for almost six weeks, but their paths hadn’t crossed before. Still, he’d heard a lot about her. Her days in the Sex Crimes Unit had earned her a reputation—subtle as a butterfly when she wanted to be, or tough as an army boot to the gut. She could do the bad-cop-good-cop routine all by herself. People used to fight over who got to listen first to the tapes of her interrogations. The way she questioned a suspect was a thing of beauty, they said.