Look for Me

by Lisa Gardner

  “Or that’s what had Roxy on edge: Something had changed recently in the home. Roxy recognized the signs from before, and that’s what had her on edge.”

  D.D. frowned. It was an interesting theory, and yet she had no way of evaluating how interesting, because when it came to the Boyd-Baez family, they simply didn’t know enough yet.

  “I assume your little band of misfits gave advice on proper stocking of a bugout bag?” D.D. asked.

  “We’re big fans of cash, bear spray, nondescript clothes, and duct tape,” Flora said.

  “What about advice on purchasing street weapons?”

  “Like I said, I don’t recommend firearms for these situations.”

  “Except what’s the situation?” D.D. asked in exasperation.

  “Someone fearing for her life.”

  “From whom? Because if she was afraid of her mother’s boyfriend, then he should be dead on her bedroom floor while she claims self-defense. But what the hell justifies the shooting of her entire family?”

  “Just proves an outsider did it. Maybe someone who was there to hunt Roxy. Or, failing that, wanted to leave her alone and vulnerable.”

  “Have you or anyone else in your group heard from her? Lie to me, and I’ll arrest you. All of you.”

  “We’ve had no contact.”

  “But you’ll tell me the minute you do.”

  Flora remained mute.

  “Are you helping us, or are you helping us?” D.D. asked tensely.

  “We’re helping her.”

  “Great. Tell me where she’d go under stress. Maybe a location your group has identified just for these circumstances.”

  “If you fear you’re being followed, I recommend going someplace public. With plenty of witnesses.”

  D.D. growled low in her throat.

  “Roxanna is a big reader. You might consider the library.”

  Less of a growl.

  “I don’t know what’s going on here,” Flora said. “I really don’t. But I’m worried for her. I doubt Roxy’s a killer. I think she’s a victim.”

  “Based on quality time together in a chat room that no longer exists?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know what I get from all of this?” D.D. lifted the transcript pages. “I get I have a missing sixteen-year-old girl who’s been asking questions about firearms. Which makes me believe that somewhere in that backpack of hers, she may very well have a gun. And has done her research on how to use it.”

  Flora leaned forward. “She took care of her dogs. Tied them under a tree, in the shade, with plenty of water. Does a heartless girl do that? A stone-cold killer? She made every effort to keep them safe. Maybe, if she’d been home when the killer came, she would’ve kept her family safe, too.”

  “Because that’s what you’d do? She’s not you, Flora. In fact, we don’t know who she is at all. Once again, if she contacts you . . .”

  “I’ll be the first to help her.”

  “So help me God—”

  But Flora was already pushing away from the table. Once more D.D.’s gaze went to the bloody bandage on her left hand.

  “You do what you need to do, Detective, and I’ll do what I need to do. And maybe if we’re both lucky, Roxanna Baez will turn up safe and sound. Then you can catch the person who murdered her family while I help her with the aftermath.”

  “It’s not gonna be that simple.”

  “It’s never simple.”

  “Flora—”

  “If I learn anything interesting, I’ll let you know. Which is a good deal, because we both know you won’t do the same.”

  Flora turned, walked away. D.D. and Phil watched till she disappeared into the crowd.

  “Don’t trust that girl,” Phil said.

  “You think?”

  He picked up the copies of the transcript.

  “Anything there you can use?” D.D. asked, as Phil was their squad’s self-appointed geek.

  “There’s always something. Just don’t know what yet.”

  “But you have an idea?” D.D. asked hopefully.

  Phil nodded slowly. “Flora might have sanitized things from her end, but we have Roxy’s computer, remember? And the thing about computers is that they love data. Even stuff a user thinks she’s deleted, it’s all stashed on the hard drive somewhere. I say give the transcripts to the real experts and let them go fishing. If they can match these lines with anything in the computer’s browser history, temporary download file, especially, say, if Roxy copied anything from the group’s forum for future reference . . .”

  “Great idea! And thank God. Because, Phil . . .”

  “We’re running out of time,” he finished for her.

  “Yeah. And with a sixteen-year-old girl running around Brighton, possibly with a handgun in her backpack . . .”

  “Was the shooting this morning the end or just the beginning?”

  “Exactly.”

  Chapter 11

  UNDER STRESS, MY MOTHER BAKES. Blueberry muffins, chocolate chip brownies, strawberry-jam cupcakes. Most of my childhood memories were of myself sitting in an overheated kitchen while my mom bustled around, mixing this, pouring that. And the smells. I associated mornings with seared-edged blueberry pancakes and trickling rivers of warmed maple syrup. After school was fresh bread or, if my brother and I were really lucky, cinnamon-sugar-dusted snickerdoodles.

  I was told that during the four hundred and seventy-two days I was gone, the entire community grew fat on all the cookies, cupcakes, breads, and brownies my mother churned out of the kitchen. I bet she needed the focus. The soothing rhythm of stir this, add that. The simple equation of these seven ingredients yielding this sheet of goodies, time after time.

  Baking, my mother is in control of what will happen next. There’s not much in life that offers that.

  When I returned home after my abduction, she concentrated on making all my favorite foods. Fattening me up, she was probably thinking, but never said the words out loud. Jacob wasn’t a big fan of feeding his captives. I’d starve for days; then he’d show up suddenly with bags and bags of junk food. Whatever craving struck his fancy—fried chicken, biscuits and gravy, French fries and milkshakes. He was a very impulsive man, driven to satisfy his immediate appetites, and he had the swollen gut and stick-figure limbs to prove it.

  My first day at home, sitting in my mother’s kitchen again, slowly biting into one of her blueberry muffins . . .

  I cried. I ate it with tears rolling down my cheeks. She sat beside me. Held my hand. My brother was still around. Standing in the doorway. I remember him watching us. I remember being embarrassed and grateful and overwhelmed. I remember thinking, I’m home.

  This is what home tastes like.

  I think I was happy at that moment. I didn’t understand yet how fleeting that emotion would be. That my mother’s baking days were far from over. That my brother’s role standing on the outside and looking in would eventually drive him to leave us completely.

  We want to generalize our experiences. Being kidnapped and held captive, that was bad. Being safely home, that is good. But the truth is, any situation contains both highs and lows. Jacob and I used to play the license plate game in his big rig driving across the interstate. That was good. I woke up screaming in my own home. That was bad. You can’t separate it all out.

  I had a rape survivor tell me she thought of her post-trauma emotions as being like old European plumbing. On one side of the sink is a faucet for cold. On the other side is the faucet for hot. You can turn both on, but the streams don’t mix. They’re forever separate, two halves to one plumbing whole.

  I liked that analogy. I had a spout for all my trauma emotions and a spout for my real life. They existed side by side but didn’t mix. And some days, I poured more out of one faucet than the other. And some days, I went back
and forth—strung out and sleep deprived, yet breaking out into spontaneous laughter at something I saw on TV. One faucet on, the other suddenly kicking in. Just like there are times you can be happy, having a good day, and yet there’s still a shadow around your vision, a creeping sense that this can’t last, the worst is yet to come.

  I didn’t cook under stress. I didn’t clean. I’d tried meditation and mindfulness and a bunch of other stuff to calm my squirrel brain and give me at least a minute or two where I wasn’t assessing the latest possible threat and revving up with fresh suspicion.

  But I wasn’t good at any of that.

  I liked to fight. I liked to run. And I liked to read. Hours and hours of studying other cases, reviewing other missing persons reports. If I examined each case closely enough, maybe I could be the one to find the key to the puzzle that brings that person home again.

  It was how I first got involved with the missing Boston College student. And it was why I became more and more interested in Roxanna Baez.

  My mother bakes to feel in control.

  Me, I’m still trying to save the world.

  So I met with Sergeant Warren and the Phil guy. I told them what I knew about Roxy Baez. And then, after they politely but firmly dismissed me from the investigation, I did what I do best.

  I went hunting.

  • • •

  I DIDN’T HAVE A COP’S authority to ask questions of potential witnesses or suspects. But I did have a survivor’s network of contacts and a comfort with lying.

  Which brought me to the doorstep of Tricia Lobdell Cass, guidance counselor at Brighton High School, shortly after one on Saturday. She answered at my first knock, cracking the door wide enough to expose one leg and a shoulder. The half welcome someone gives a nonthreatening but unknown person standing on her front porch. I wondered what people dreaded more, uniformed officers or door-to-door salespeople?

  “My name is Florence,” I said, as the name Flora Dane was well-known in Boston. “I’m a friend of the Baez family. A neighbor. I was hoping you could help me with the dogs.”

  The guidance counselor’s eyes widened at the name Baez. Clearly she’d heard the news. But my follow-up inquiry about the dogs had thrown her for a loop. Which was what I’d hoped. I didn’t know if guidance counselors had doctor-patient confidentiality with their students, but I figured at the very least they’d feel an obligation to protect a kid’s privacy. So I wasn’t asking about Roxanna. Why go straight for the no when you can work sideways into a maybe?

  “I’m not sure I understand,” she began.

  “The police have found the family’s dogs. Rosie and Blaze? Sweetest dogs in the world. I’m sure you’ve heard Roxanna talk about them?”

  “Yes.”

  “They can’t exactly go home right now.”

  “Oh, well, of course not.”

  “And we feel it would be awful if they ended up with animal control. Locked up in a strange kennel, sleeping on a concrete floor, abandoned.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “So I volunteered to see if I could find someone who could take both dogs. A neighbor mentioned your name as the guidance counselor at the high school. I thought you’d know some of Roxy’s friends. Maybe one of them might be willing to take the dogs for a bit?”

  “Um, okay. I’m not sure how much help I’ll be, but I can try.”

  The woman opened the door. And I walked in. Just like that.

  I wondered if this was how Jacob felt every time a new victim granted him entrance.

  Tricia Lobdell Cass lived in the lower level of a triple-decker. Bay windows, crown molding, worn wood floors. She had a flair for potted plants, ivy and jade and ferns grouped in front of windows, on top of tables. The sitting room also held piles of books and a broken-down blue sofa covered in orange, red, and hot-pink pillows.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, this time telling the truth.

  Tricia walked over to the sofa. She indicated that I could take a seat but remained standing herself. She seemed anxious, like she wasn’t sure what to do. First time dealing with a missing student, I figured. Or something else?

  “Water?” she asked belatedly.

  “No, thank you.”

  Since she remained standing, I did the same.

  “Um, any word on Roxy?” she asked.

  “Not that I’ve heard.”

  “And the dogs?”

  “They were left tied up outside a coffee shop. Both appear perfectly fine.”

  “But the rest of the family. They’re not giving many details on the news, but it sounds like . . . like they’re all dead.”

  She glanced up at me. I didn’t see any fear in the counselor’s eyes. Just grief.

  “Yes,” I said.

  She exhaled hard and sat, just like that. As if a string had been cut, leading her to collapse. I took a seat on the sofa next to her. The school counselor looked younger than I expected. Maybe late twenties, early thirties. Long brunette hair. Pretty.

  “I think the police suspect Roxy,” I murmured low, one neighbor to another. “That she just happened to be gone when this all happened . . .”

  “What? That’s ridiculous! Roxy wouldn’t hurt a fly. And trust me, as a high school counselor, I know just what kind of sociopaths masquerade as America’s teens these days. But Roxy? Never.”

  “I always saw her out with the dogs,” I offered. “She seemed really good with them.”

  “Please, Roxy has practically raised her younger sister and baby brother. She’s one of the most responsible students we have. Ask any teacher in the school. If they could clone a hundred more Roxys, they would.”

  I dropped my voice lower. “Are the parents . . . not that involved?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve only met them once. They both work a lot. Night nurse at the medical center, an overworked building contractor. My impression is that they’re very busy juggling daily demands. Add to that three kids in three different schools . . .” She shrugged. “Roxy was doing her best to help out, though sometimes at a cost to herself. Last year we had an issue with her being tardy several times in a row. Turned out, she was having trouble getting her younger sister to the middle school on time. Once we figured that out, I followed up with her mother, but the truth is that Juanita isn’t home from her graveyard shift yet, and Charlie is already out on a job site. Meaning the morning churn is Roxy’s responsibility and she’s old enough to legally be in charge. In the end, I had a chat with Roxy’s teachers. Given that she’s never late with homework and pays attention once she’s in class, they agreed to let the tardy slips slide. It’s the best we can do to help a family that’s doing the best they can do.”

  I didn’t know anything about these kinds of situations, but I nodded my head in sympathy. “Sounds like you’re very understanding.”

  Another shrug. “That’s my job. To help kids navigate school and home and real life. There’s a lot of pressure on teenagers these days.”

  “Roxy have a lot of friends?” I asked. “Sounds like she’s very nice.”

  “You mean is she popular? No. She’s quiet. Mostly, you see her sitting at lunch with a book.”

  BFF123, I thought, not surprised by Roxy’s deception. Especially not as I sat there and continued lying myself. “A big reader?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Great student?”

  “Above average. Reading and writing are her passion. I know she’s been working on an essay series that Mrs. Chula, the writing teacher, can’t stop raving about. She wanted Roxy to enter the pieces in a statewide writing competition, but Roxy refused.”

  “Really? What’s the essay about?”

  “I’m not sure. Something about the perfect family. I know the first two installments made Mrs. Chula cry.”

  “What does Roxy read?” I asked, mostly because I was curious.

/>   “Oh, all those fantasy books, the ones where average kids turn out to have hidden warrior powers and are the only ones who can save the world. Typical hero’s journey stuff.”

  This intrigued me. Would Roxy and I have liked each other if we’d gotten to spend more time together? She, a family protector; me, a self-appointed vigilante. I didn’t read books much. Maybe she would’ve held that against me. Plus, in the books, I’m pretty sure, the badass heroines are beautiful, versus my own ragged self with my hollowed-out cheekbones and torn fingernails. But still . . .

  “I did have one concern,” the counselor was saying now.

  “Yeah?”

  “We have this group of Hispanic girls. I’ve heard whispers they’re a gang. They all have beauty marks on their cheeks and a penchant for ripped-up jeans. According to the rumor mill, Roxy’s sister, Lola, has already joined the middle school group. Now, Roxy’s under pressure from the high school girls. I’ve been keeping my eye on the situation; nothing crazy has happened yet. My impression is that Roxy’s playing it smart—she doesn’t directly tell anyone no, just keeps saying later, right now she’s gotta pick up her sister, grab her brother, walk the dogs, whatever. It’s been keeping them at bay.”

  “For now,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “And if she can’t keep stalling them . . . ?”

  One of those shrugs again. “Girls, especially a clique of girls? They can make Roxy’s life miserable.”

  “How so? Physical threats, actual beatdowns? I’ve heard girl gangs can be worse than boys.”

  “Oh, trust me, it used to be that girls would exchange insults while boys would throw punches. Now, the girls go at it just as hard, often armed with box cutters, razors, you name it. Which is why not so much as a butter knife is allowed on school grounds.”

  “But after school, not on school property . . . ?”

  Tricia looked me in the eye. “I can’t control everything. And yes, anger the wrong group of kids and any high schooler’s life gets tough. I’ve heard stories of brawls involving chains, studded belts, baseball bats. When I tell parents their kids are under a lot of stress, I’m not lying.”