by David Bell
Michael entered it and called up the phone keypad. He started to dial but then stopped. “Wait a minute. June sixth. Was your mom’s birthday in June or July?”
“June sixth.”
“How is she?”
Erica remained silent for a long moment while the dark, dull scenery rolled by. “She died a couple of years ago. She had cancer.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“How would you?”
Michael wasn’t sure what else to say, so he finished dialing the number. As it started to ring, he said, “I always liked her. Your mom.”
“She liked you. She always wanted to have a son.”
The phone rang and rang until it went to voice mail. “Shit,” he said. He hung up and tried again, getting the same result. “Now she’s not answering.”
“Maybe she’s asleep.”
“She wouldn’t have her phone off. Not when I’m out. Not tonight.”
“Try again.”
He tried one more time with the same result. Voice mail. He left a message that time, letting Angela know he was feeling better and would check in again soon. He ended the call, feeling worse about his wife. He wasn’t sure why, but he worried that something had happened to her. She was alone in the house without him. He hoped she’d activated the alarm she’d insisted they buy. For the first time, he felt glad to have it.
“Where are we going?” Michael asked.
He looked up. They weren’t near any stores. They were in a residential neighborhood. Midsize homes and winding streets. A subdivision.
“Erica, where are we? I thought we wanted to see this other guy.”
“My house was closer than any store. I thought we’d just stop there and get what you need.”
“But the police . . .”
“They’re near my house. No worries.”
chapter
forty-three
1:59 A.M.
Angela hesitated in the foyer, the door still open and Jake Little on the threshold, his hands still together in front of his body, his eyes focused solely on her as he waited for her decision. She took him in and saw in the light from above that while his body was small, it was muscular beneath the jacket, the shoulders and biceps those of someone who exercised and lifted weights. His eyes were serious, focused, tracking Angela as though she might make a sudden move.
“Why don’t we go talk in the dining room?” Angela said, and led them that way. She thought back to the appearance of the cops at the door—it felt like hours earlier—and the way her head ping-ponged back and forth between the two of them as they peppered her with questions. She’d stood on the porch before that, her eyes cutting between Michael and Erica as she tried to understand why her husband’s ex-wife had picked that night to show up on their doorstep.
And there she was again, caught in between. Was she going to spend the foreseeable future that way? Trapped between opposing forces she didn’t really understand?
Not if I can help it.
“Okay, let’s get this all out,” Angela said when she reached the dining room table. But she looked back and saw Jake Little in the foyer, looking up the stairs toward the second level of the house. “What are you doing?”
His head was tilted, his ear cocked toward the stairs and the bedrooms above. “Are you sure . . . ?”
His voice trailed off, and then he darted up the stairs, taking them two at a time, his shoes clomping against the carpet.
Angela broke into motion. She swept past Gail, who stood there with her hand lifted to her head, and followed the man up to the second floor of the house.
She saw his back going down the hallway, sticking his head into each of the bedrooms, his movements quick and efficient.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “If you don’t stop this, I’m calling the police.”
Angela reached for her phone, calling up the keypad.
The man—Jake Little—stopped at the entrance to the master. He stuck his head in and then turned around. “Stop. Just stop,” he said.
“Get out of here.”
He held his hand out. “Put it away,” he said, his voice losing its higher pitch and nasal tone and becoming commanding. “Just put it away. That’s not necessary.”
“If you’re not a cop—”
Jake spoke firmly. “Put it away. I had to check. I have to check everywhere, and your family is involved in this. How do I know Felicity isn’t here?”
“Because I told you so. And I’m not a damn kidnapper.”
“But your husband, his family . . .”
“What about them?” she asked.
“Your mother-in-law is here. What about your sister-in-law? Lynn? The rock star. Did she come by?”
“She’s out of town. No one else is here.” Angela summoned as much command as she could and rolled it into her voice. “I need you downstairs. Now. This is my house.”
Jake considered her, a look of surprise and respect crossing his face. He nodded. “Okay, okay. I’ll go down. I guess I didn’t really think you had the kid here, but I had to check. I didn’t look under the beds. I didn’t hear anything.”
He moved past her and went back down the stairs with Angela behind him. As they walked, she slipped her phone away but left it peeking out of the top of her jeans pocket for easy access.
Jake walked past Gail and out to the dining room. Gail sighed with relief as she followed behind Angela, and they all ended up at the table. “Gail, I don’t know much about this guy, but he was creeping around outside for some reason. And he’s fascinated by our bedrooms. And he says you’ve been talking to Erica. And, you, Jake or whatever your name is, you need to tell me why you’re here and what you want from me. And keep in mind I have things to do tonight, and it’s late. For everyone, including this missing little girl.”
Jake Little sized Angela up, taking into account the steel she showed in the upstairs hallway. He nodded his head as he took her in and then eased forward, his movements smoother and more controlled than they had been on the porch or upstairs, as though the run through the second floor of the house had calmed him down a little and released some of his nervous energy. He extended his hand.
Angela took a step back, but Jake kept going, and before she could move again, he’d slipped her cell phone out of the front pocket of her jeans. Then he stepped back.
“I’m going to hold on to this so nobody makes any phone calls before we’re ready to make them.” He slid the phone into his back pocket and then looked at Gail. “I assume yours is in your purse there.” He pointed. When Gail nodded, he went over and took the purse. He dropped it at his feet without opening it and kicked it away. “I just want to keep the police out of this for a moment, and I’m not going to say anything else right now. I think what your mother-in-law has to say is going to be much more interesting to you.” Again, he looked at Gail. “Am I right? And try to hurry it up, okay? There’s a child missing, a child I care about very much.”
Angela had never really seen the kind of look in Gail’s eyes that she saw in that moment. An added layer of toughness and contempt had appeared, and if a knife or an ax had been easily available, it would have been embedded in Jake’s throat.
“What exactly do you want me to say?” she asked, her voice tight, the words coming out with an effort.
Angela’s phone began to ring right then. Jake reached around and pulled it back out of his pants.
“Is that Michael?” Angela asked.
Jake pushed a button, silencing the sound. “Unknown number.”
“It could still be—”
“Let’s just hear this first,” Jake said. “Once this is out, you can decide what you want to do next. Okay? And we’re in a hurry. Quick, quick. Believe me—I get it. That’s the whole reason I’m here, after all. I want to know what happened to Felicity as much as anyo
ne.”
And Angela had to admit she very much wanted to hear whatever the two of them seemed to know. Had Gail really been in contact with Erica?
Had Michael been aware of this as well?
“Gail?” she said. “Do you know something about Erica? And all of this craziness?”
Gail kept her eyes on Jake, the look in them still withering. But she said, “I do, Angela. I’m sorry to say I do.”
chapter
forty-four
2:05 A.M.
As she left Tiffany Flowers’s neighborhood, Griffin placed a call to Twitchell. She knew he’d have his phone on, even in the middle of the night, and she needed to tell her partner what she’d just learned.
But instead of hearing her partner answer the phone in the groggy voice of the sleep deprived, he sounded wide-awake and alert when he answered. And he didn’t say hello.
“Where are you?” he asked. “I was just about to call.”
“I was just about to call you.” Her excitement and lack of sleep made her words come out in a tumble. “I mean, I called you to tell you something.”
“Where are you?” he asked again. “Are you home?”
“No, I’m not. I’m driving.”
“Driving? At this time of night? Where? Never mind. I was about to pick you up.”
“I can meet you at my place. What’s going on?”
“We might have caught a break in Felicity’s case. I’ll see you there in a few minutes.”
“Okay. I just—”
But he was gone.
It took her ten minutes to make it home. The sky had clouded over, obscuring the moon and stars. On the horizon, she saw distant flashes of lightning, a storm that might blow through Trudeau later that night. She hoped it brought relief from the heat.
She passed few cars on the way. Solitary drivers, just like her, returning home or going out God knew where. She tried to keep what Tiffany Flowers had told her in perspective. She knew how unreliable eyewitness testimony could be, and this was being delivered ten years after the fact. But she believed Tiffany when she said she hadn’t been watching the news, that her identification of Erica hadn’t been influenced by seeing her on TV all day. It was something more than anything else they had.
And wouldn’t a mother have pinpoint recollection of the person who might have taken her child?
Easy, Griffin reminded herself. If Tiffany’s memory was accurate, then Erica was so far guilty of nothing more than speaking to a mother pushing a baby in a stroller.
Nothing more.
“Come on,” she said out loud, shaking her head. “A coincidence? Really?”
When she came in sight of her apartment building, she saw Twitchell’s familiar sedan parked at the curb, the lights glowing. She saw him inside, his face illuminated by the screen from his cell phone. Glasses pushed up on top of his head, eyebrows knitted together in concentration. If Reddick was the cool mom Griffin wished she’d grown up with, Twitchell was the awkwardly nerdy dad, the one who managed to appear befuddled at the most ordinary things.
She parked. Rory and Coco would have to continue to keep each other company. They’d been fed. They’d miss her, but they’d be content. And she wasn’t certain about how much they’d miss her. She might have just been trying to convince herself the cats possessed any feelings for her that extended beyond the dinner hour. She crossed the street to the sedan and opened the passenger-side door, slipping inside while Twitchell remained focused on his phone. His head didn’t even move.
“What’s up?” she asked.
He put the phone down and flipped his glasses into place. They made his eyes look larger, almost comic. He put the car into gear and started driving. “Remember how Phillips and Woolf were going to check on those last couple of pervs? The ones they hadn’t reached yet?”
“Sure.” The name “Phillips” sounded bitter to her ears. Had he blown off Tiffany Flowers ten years ago, an oversight that led them to where they were now?
“They went to the house of the one guy tonight. Todd Friedman. He refused to open the door and talk to them. And when they pressed him on it, he announced he had a gun and was going to start shooting at somebody if they didn’t back off.”
“Crap.”
“He’s barricaded in a house over on Ninth Street. Phillips and Woolf are there with a swarm of cops. They’ve called everyone in. Plus, there was some kind of fight at a bar near campus. We’re stretched thin. They’re trying to get a negotiator to drive down from Louisville. For all I know, she’s on her way.”
Griffin looked around. “Where are we going? Ninth Street is the other way.”
“We’re going to talk to Todd Friedman’s former wife, Randi. She called in a while ago, said she knew something about the case as it relates to her husband. They went to her house but couldn’t find her, so now we’re going back.”
“What does she know?”
“She didn’t say. But since her ex-husband’s holed up, saying he won’t be taken alive, we’re kind of hoping it’s good. If we think it’s worth it, we can bring her over to his house, let her try to coax him out.”
They made a series of turns, the GPS calmly naming the movements. It looked like they were heading for the northeast part of town.
“Where were you?” Twitchell asked. “Partying after a long day of work?”
He almost never asked much about Griffin’s personal life. All the details he knew about her divorce from John came because she insisted on telling him, sharing her heartache over lunches and coffee breaks. He always listened patiently, offered whatever advice he could. She appreciated him for that.
“I talked to Tiffany Flowers. About her missing child.”
Twitchell said nothing, but a red flush rose on his cheeks. She saw his grip tighten on the steering wheel. “Why did you do that?” he finally asked. “We said we weren’t going to worry about that yet. The boss said it.”
“I know.” She waited a beat. “She ID’d Erica Frazier from a photo. She said Erica Frazier talked to her about her baby right before the kid was snatched. That’s something.”
Twitchell let out a long sigh. He looked out the driver’s-side window of the car, away from Griffin, and made a turn as the voice instructed. “The boss talked to you tonight, didn’t she? That’s why she made you stay after we all left.”
“Yeah.” Then Griffin understood. “You knew she was going to do that?”
“Of course. I suggested it.”
“You did? And you didn’t say anything to me?”
“You needed to hear it,” he said. They’d reached their destination, a row of apartment buildings in a middle-class neighborhood. He pulled the car over to the curb but didn’t turn the engine off. “I thought it would be better coming from her. I guess I was wrong since you didn’t listen.”
“What happened to partners having each other’s backs?” Griffin asked.
“I do. That’s why I did it.”
“If you don’t trust me . . .”
“I trust you. But this case, all this stuff going on, it’s in your head. You’re being emotional, listening to your heart too much, letting your own feelings and regrets get in the way. We can deal with the Flowers stuff later, figure out a way—”
Griffin pushed the door open and stepped outside. The night smelled like rain, and another flash of lightning lit the horizon. She started to walk away, then realized she didn’t know the exact address, didn’t know where they were going. Even her attempt at storming off hadn’t worked.
She waited while Twitchell got out of the car and walked up beside her. He pointed at the next building. “Unit G,” he said. “Are you ready?”
She refused to answer him but followed along dutifully.
chapter
forty-five
2:10 A.M.
Gail pulled a chair out, its
legs scraping against the wood floor, and sat down at the dining room table.
“Gail, what is he talking about?” Angela asked. She moved closer to the table, stopping at the end and eyeballing her mother-in-law who suddenly looked her age. And flustered.
Gail’s hands moved around a few moments, as though she weren’t sure where to put them.
Jake Little moved past Angela and grabbed a chair across the table from Gail, sitting down as if he’d been invited to dinner. He kept his mouth shut but also seemed to be waiting expectantly for Gail to speak. His folded hands rested on top of the table, but his thumbs twiddled as he waited.
“I told you, Angela, that I was never crazy about Erica,” Gail said. “I was never sure why she and Michael were getting married. I think they dated a while in college, and then graduated and just weren’t sure what to do next. So they got married. It seemed like the next step, and a lot of young couples do that. For all I know, they knew James and I didn’t approve, and they married just to show us. Kids do that sometimes.”
Angela made a quick inventory of the guys she’d dated in college. The steady and the casual, the embarrassing and the not so embarrassing. No, she never felt like marrying them was the next logical step. She only ever contemplated marrying one man. Michael. And she believed she made the right choice. She still did.
“When they split up,” Gail said, “I knew Erica was devastated. She had to be. And I knew . . .” She looked at Angela. “I knew Michael . . . Well, he’s more like his father than like me in that way. Michael isn’t cruel, I know that, but he can be a little . . .” Again her hands waved around as she searched for the right word.
“Abrupt,” Angela said.
“Yes. He’d tell her once, explain the whole thing, but then he wouldn’t have the patience to talk to her again. Some people, some women, need to talk things out longer. Michael struggled with that, I know. And then he met you pretty quickly after that as well.”
