Thread of Hope jt-1

by Jeff Shelby

  “Talk to her after that?”

  “No.”

  “Emails? Texts? IMs?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  I stayed quiet for a moment as we drove, waiting to see if he offered anything else. He didn't.

  “You guys fight a lot?”

  He shrugged. “Not really.”

  “Not really?”

  “We argued, I guess. But nothing that wasn't normal.”

  “What's normal?”

  He sighed. “I don't know, man.”

  He massaged his cheek where I’d hit him the first time. His nose was red and swollen where I’d hit him the second time. He had to be hurting, but it seemed as if he was thinking about something other than his face.

  “What happened in the pool house that day?”

  He jerked in my direction.

  “I know her father didn’t touch her,” I said. “You went in there after him, but he hadn’t touched her. You hit her and then lied to Matt and Megan, telling them she’d already been hit when you got in there. Why?”

  He shifted in the seat again, so he was looking straight ahead. I let him get his thoughts in order.

  “She said she was going to quit,” he said slowly. “She was done. I said that was fine. Honestly. But then she said she wanted me to be done with it.” He shook his head. “I said no way. I was making too much money. I was staying in.” He glanced at me. “So she said she was going to tell everyone about the whole thing. I snapped. I slapped her in the face.”

  There was no reason for him to lie to me at this point and I believed him. He was scared of me, he had nowhere to go and there was something different in his voice now.

  “I apologized about a hundred times,” he said. “I’d never hit a girl before. And I haven’t since. I just freaked out. Took the whole weekend before she said anything to me again. She said she forgave me, but I’m not sure she really did.”

  I stopped at a red light. “I’m confused. So she quit then?”

  He shook his head. “No. That was the weird thing. When she started talking to me again, she said she didn’t really want to quit. I was afraid to argue with her anymore, so I let it go. She’s been working since then.”

  The light turned green and we started moving again. There was something about the last thing he said that made me think he hadn’t finished his thought.

  “Derek,” I said. “No more lying. Remember?”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Then what aren’t you telling me?”

  He pulled his hand away from his face and took a deep breath. “I’m not lying. She’s been working again ever since that day. She’s never said anything again about quitting.” He paused, glancing in my direction. “But she started working for someone else, too. She went from wanting to quit to working nearly every night.”

  My jaw tightened. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  His facial features softened. He didn’t look like the mastermind behind a prostitution ring. He just looked like a confused teenager. “She was freelancing.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  “Jon’s getting impatient,” Gina said as we walked up the stairs to Meredith’s bedroom.

  I’d dropped Derek off at home the night before with a stern warning to keep his mouth shut and to not get cute and try to disappear. He’d rubbed the last spot on his face where I’d hit him and promised he wouldn’t do anything stupid. Then I’d called Gina and arranged to meet her at the Jordan residence early the next morning.

  “I’m sure he is,” I said to her. “He can always go to the police, like I told him initially.”

  “I think he already has.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Not officially. But he’s got some friends. I think he’s put out some quiet feelers, asked them to keep an eye out.”

  I immediately wondered who he’d gone to. Meredith was eighteen. Normally, the cops would take a report and wait a few days before they moved on it. Maybe with Jordan’s name, though, they might move a little quicker. If he’d tossed my name out, it was hard to tell how they might’ve reacted.

  Gina pushed open the door to a room at the end of a long hallway. A queen bed under a lavender comforter was centered against the far wall beneath a collage of photos of Meredith and her friends. A window seat ran the length of the wall opposite the door, drawers built into the bench from one end to the other. A large desk sat opposite the bed, a laptop and several framed photos artfully arranged on its surface. The carpet was vacuumed and, save for the photos, there wasn’t much that indicated it was a room inhabited by a teenage girl.

  “This is her room,” Gina said. “Now tell me why we’re in here.”

  I went over to the desk and sat down in the chair. I glanced at the pictures. A family portrait, Meredith and her parents dressed in white, standing in front of a Christmas tree. A picture of Meredith and Meg, lounging on the beach. A formal picture of her and Derek at a dance, both of them with flushed cheeks and glassy eyes.

  “You have any clue that Meredith was a prostitute?”

  “That’s not even a little funny, Joe.”

  “You’re right. Wasn’t meant to be.”

  I popped open the laptop and hit the power button.

  “What are you talking about?” Gina asked.

  “So you didn’t know then?”

  She came up next to me at the desk. “If you’re telling me that Meredith has sex for money, then no, I didn’t know that. Is that what you’re saying?”

  I nodded.

  “How do you know this?”

  I told her about Derek and his entrepreneurial endeavors.

  Gina listened to me, but the expression on her face told me that she didn’t necessarily believe me.

  “He told you all this?” she asked. “And he’s the pimp?”

  The computer booted up. A picture of Meredith and Megan, hugging, served as the background on the screen. “Yep.”

  “How do you know he’s telling the truth?”

  “Because I saw it in action.”

  “You saw it?”

  I told her about what I witnessed in the hotel. About going up to the room.

  She stayed quiet.

  “But there’s another piece,” I said.

  Her expression went from concerned to dour. “What’s that?”

  When Derek said freelancing, I assumed he meant Meredith was working without a pimp, going out on her own. But I was wrong.

  “There’s somebody else,” Derek had said as we pulled up at his home. “She’s working for somebody else besides me.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t even supposed to know. I saw an email on her computer for a set-up that I knew wasn’t from me.” Derek slumped in his seat. “At first, she tried to play it off like it was something else. But then she told me. Yeah, it was for another set-up and it was none of my business. She said she wanted to make some more money and there was nothing I could do about it. I got pissed and left. When I saw her at school, I told her I was sorry for getting pissed. She blew me off, said it was okay. I tried to get her to tell me who was setting her up, but she wouldn't. Said if I asked her again, she’d never talk to me again. So I didn’t ask.”

  “How long ago was this?” I asked.

  “About three weeks ago,” he said. “I’m not sure how long it was going on before I found out.”

  Gina digested all of that, her eyes growing wider by the second. She had not been feigning ignorance when she said she didn’t know about Meredith.

  “So I wanna try and get in her email,” I said, clicking on the email icon on the lower part of the screen. “See what I see.”

  “You have to tell Jon,” she said.

  “I know that.”

  “He’s going to…I don’t know what he’s going to do.”

  “Which is why I want to get as much information as possible.”

  Gina let out a long breath. “He won’t believe you.”

  “Which i
s also why I want to get as many hard facts as I can before I talk to him.”

  The email program loaded up on the screen and asked for a password. “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “She’s got her email password protected. Think Jordan would know it?”

  “She probably has it protected because of him.”

  “Doesn’t mean he doesn’t know it.doesn’/p

  “We can ask him,” she said. “And I might know someone who could break it.”

  “Who?”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  I shrugged and scanned through the files on the computer’s desktop. Mostly school projects and some other random but meaningless files. If she was smart enough to protect her email account, any files that might help us were probably on a portable hard drive. With her. But I couldn’t imagine what she’d have in any sort of digital file. Email addresses or text messages, those would be the things that might help us.

  I snapped the laptop closed. “Let’s ask him about her phone records, too. Take a look at those.”

  Gina nodded, but something crossed her face and she looked hesitant.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Meredith’s a smart kid,” she said. “You saw that with her grades. If she wanted to hide something, she’d figure out how to do it.”

  “So you don’t think we’ll find phone numbers or emails that might help us? That she would’ve covered her tracks that well?”

  Gina thought about that. “Yeah. I think that’s accurate.”

  I stood and looked around the empty room. It seemed so sterile, so generic. Teenaged rooms usually had their own personality, their own vibe. Meredith’s did not and it made me feel sorry for her.

  “You’re probably right,” I said to Gina. “But we need to check anyway.”

  We walked out of Meredith’s room, down the long carpeted hallway and out of the massive Jordan home.

  “I’m going to see Chuck,” Gina said, as we walked down the steps to our cars.

  “Oh yeah? Good.”

  “This afternoon.”

  “Good.”

  She wanted something else from me, but I wasn’t sure what. I stayed quiet.

  “Is he any better?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “What you said…” She glanced away from me. “The other day, about not really giving a shit about him. It’s not true.Oh y

  “Okay.”

  She moved her gaze back to me. “I’m serious. I care about him. A lot.”

  “Okay.”

  “Stop saying okay,” she said, irritation pinching her face.

  I started to say exactly that, then caught myself and didn’t say anything.

  The irritation faded in her features. “I don’t think Chuck did anything to Meredith. I don’t. All of that came out wrong. Yeah, they were spending a lot of time together, but I know there has to be an explanation for that.”

  “I believe that, too,” I said.

  “And what I said about Jordan, about being sure of what you know before you go up against him?” she said. “That’s the truth. You do need to be sure about taking him on.” Her mouth twisted and untwisted. “But you and I? We’re on the same page. Because I’m sure about Chuck and if I’ve gotta choose between him and Jordan, I’m choosing Chuck. Every time.” She waved her hand in the air between us, like she was shooing a fly. “And I just wanted you to know that.”

  The morning sun was warm on my neck as I studied her. I wasn’t much into trusting people any longer in my life. Trust had disappeared the day Elizabeth did. But Gina seemed sincere in her words and she hadn’t given me a reason to distrust her.

  “Is it okay to say okay now?” I asked.

  A thin smile forced itself onto her lips. “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  She took a deep breath, seemingly relieved to have cleared the air. “Have you learned anything else about Chuck? About what happened?”

  Before I could answer, my phone vibrated in my pocket and I pulled it out. I looked at the number on the readout and my breath caught. The familiar cold and dread I felt every time that number showed up on my phone consumed me like a bitter cocktail forced down my throat.

  I waited a moment until my breathing found its rhythm again.

  “I haven’t,” I said to Gina, then held the phone up in her direction. “But this might help.”

  FIFTY-FIVE

  A couple of times a year, just when I’m beginning to think the pain is subsiding from suffocating to tolerable, I get a phone call that goes like this.

  “Joe?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Hey Mike.”

  Mike Lorenzo is a cop, was my mentor and we have known each other now for a dozen years. I would recognize his voice if it was one in a thousand.

  “Got a call,” Mike says.

  The familiar fluttering begins in my stomach. I would use every ounce of my strength to crush it, but it is Pavlovian now and there is nothing I can do to quell it.

  “Oh yeah?” I say.

  “Similar description,” Mike says. “Enough for me to take a look.”

  Sometimes it’s a description, sometimes it’s an unidentified victim, sometimes it’s something else.

  “Okay,” I say, even though it is anything but.

  “Just wanted you to know,” Mike says. “Didn’t want you to catch wind of it elsewhere.”

  “Appreciate that, Mike.”

  “I’ll let you know.” Mike will pause. “You doin’ alright?”

  He never asks where I am, what I’m doing, what my plans are. Just if I’m alright.

  “Yeah,” I lie. “I’m okay.”

  “Good to hear,” Mike says. “I’ll be in touch if it’s anything.”

  We hang up and I know he won’t be in touch because it won’t be anything. It never is. Not once in eight years has it ever been anything. The only time he will call will be the next time he gets something that tells him to take a look. The fluttering will stick around for a day and then slowly die off until the next time it’s summoned.

  She would be sixteen now, my daughter. A junior in high school, driving, dating boys and spending too much time on the phone. Every high school, every unsteady driver, every surly teenage male and every cell phone reminds me of that.

  But she is gone. No matter how many times Mike calls me, I know that she is gone. If I hadn’t accepted that, I would be dead, gone in a much different way than Elizabeth.

  So I can’t look for her anymore. I let Mike do that.

  Instead, I look for other people’s children. I try to help them. Because I know what they are going through, how excruciating it is, to experience the disappearance of a child. I know how to do it now and looking keeps me occupied.

  Because I know Elizabeth’s not coming back, won’t ever call me on the phone and say “Dad. I’m okay. Come get me.”

  That call won’t come for me.

  But sometimes I can make it happen for others and I pretend that is enough for me right now.

  It has to be.

  Because I have nothing else.

  FIFTY-SIX

  “You look good,” Detective Mike Lorenzo said.

  “You’re a liar,” I answered, squinting into the sun. “But thanks.”

  We were sitting in the left field pavilion at Petco Park, the Padres playing an afternoon game, getting run over by the Cardinals. The stadium was maybe a quarter full, the city once again demonstrating their apathy for a team that had always played second fiddle to the Chargers. Mike had always been one of the few who saw them as a first fiddle.

  He’d gotten the message I’d left for him at the station and when he called at the Jordan home, he’d asked me to meet him at the park not just because he loved baseball, but because he knew it was probably the most private place we could get together. Not that he was doing anything wrong meeting with me, but we both knew being seen on the island would get too many tongues wagging.

  Mike dug into the bag o
f popcorn in his lap. “Fine. You look better than I thought you might.”

  “Must’ve thought I’d look like shit.”

  “Just about,” he said, before shoving a handful of the popcorn into his mouth. “Thought I got your message wrong when I read it.” He glanced my way. “Shoulda known you’d come back for your buddy, though.”

  I shrugged.

  “Bazer left me a message, too,” he said, brushing the salt from his hands and smiling wryly. “Said I should steer clear of you.” He set the bag of popcorn on the ground between his legs and the smile grew. “Oops.”

  I laughed.

  Mike was the only detective on the Coronado force and had held that title for almost twenty-five years. My intention had been to get in line for that spot when he retired and I’d told him that my first year on the job. He’d been unimpressed, having heard it too many times before, but after a few months of my pestering him, he began to take me seriously and we became close friends, despite the fact he was old enough to be my father.

  And being the only detective on the island, he’d drawn my daughter’s case.

  “Here’s what I know, Joe,” Mike said, keeping his eyes on the field. “Two guys jumped your buddy. Based on the doctor’s report, he never saw them coming.” He pointed to the back of his head. “Took a shot back there with something pretty heavy. Crowbar, bat, I don’t know, but definitely something other than a fist.”

  “Something smaller if they caught him on the beach,” I said, seeing the game but not really watching it. “Be a little tough to run down a guy in a public place with something big.”

  Mike nodded. “Yeah, most likely.”

  The crowd feigned enthusiasm for a Padres two-out single. “You said two guys jumped him. Jane told me there were no wits.”

  “Officially, there weren’t,” Mike said. “But I got a guy who saw a little bit.”

  Probably a kid messing around with drugs on the beach. Mike was like that. No reason to ruin a kid for smoking a joint where he thought he wouldn’t get caught. But somehow Mike tracked him or her down, promised to keep him out of it if he or she could convey what they saw. It was one of the reasons he was good at his job. He had no taste for the stuff that didn’t matter. His ego didn’t need it.