The Night Monster

by James Swain

  Our food came. Two cheeseburgers swimming in french fries, and a bowl of ground beef for Buster. Linderman pulled up one of the folding chairs, and we ate our lunches.

  I couldn’t taste the food. Sometimes that happened to me when I was on a search. My appetite disappeared and nothing tasted particularly good. I had lost weight since leaving the force, and didn’t want to lose any more.

  I forced the food down, then got up from my chair and went to the window. Parting the blind with my finger, I stared down at Louie’s dock and watched a teenage girl wait on a table of drunk guys with sunburns and loud shirts. The waitress didn’t look like she was more than sixteen years old. Staring at her gave me a thought.

  “I’ll talk the Broward cops into helping us,” I said. “They can get the cops in the other counties to respond to my request.”

  Linderman put his burger down. “And how would the Broward PD do that?”

  “Fort Lauderdale is a magnet for teenage runaways. I can’t name a county that hasn’t had to send a cop down here and retrieve a kid who’s run away from home. The Broward cops always treat the visiting cops nice, and make sure the kids get home safe.”

  I returned to my computer and redid my letter. I addressed it to Candy Burrell, marked the e-mail urgent, and hit Send. There were several stray french fries left on my plate. I started tossing them to Buster when my phone rang.

  “Carpenter here.”

  “Burrell here,” Candy said. “I just picked up your e-mail on my BlackBerry.”

  “I need your help.”

  “Back at ya, pal. I’m sort of up to my eyeballs right now.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “A thirteen-year-old girl named Suzie Knockman didn’t come home from school yesterday, and no one knows where she is. One of her classmates said she was having problems at home. Suzie has a large extended family—two sets of grandparents, an uncle and his wife, two older male cousins, and her parents. We interviewed the family and got all sorts of conflicting information. When we tried to reinterview them, they lawyered up, which is really weird. This girl’s in trouble, Jack.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “There was a photograph of Suzie in the house. She was all dolled up and looked like she was going on twenty-one.”

  “Girls do that sometimes,” I said.

  “The photo was taken last year. Looking at it gave me the creeps. Take my word for it, the kid’s in trouble.”

  Burrell had to make her own priorities. Right now, Suzie Knockman was at the top of her list and nothing I was going to say would change that.

  “Who’s the lawyer they’re using?” I asked.

  “Some white-haired creep out of Miami.”

  “Leonard Snook?”

  “That’s right. Do you know him?”

  I tossed my paper plate into the trash. Leonard Snook was on speed dial for every drug dealer and murderer in town. For Suzie’s family to have hired Snook meant something really bad was going down. Burrell was a hundred percent right in her assumption that the girl was in trouble.

  “Snook is your key,” I said. “He should lead you right to Suzie.”

  “And how is he going to do that?”

  I hesitated. I had a priority list as well, and Sara Long was at the top of my list.

  “I’ll show you, but you have to do me a favor.”

  “You want me to respond to your e-mail?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want the detectives in my unit to call every police department in the state?”

  “You got it,” I said.

  “When do you need this done?”

  “The moment after I find Suzie Knockman.”

  “This sounds like extortion, Jack.”

  I frowned into the phone. Burrell was tired, her voice on edge. Unfortunately, so was I. “How is that extortion? I’m putting your case first, and I won’t even charge you for my time. All I’m asking you to do in return is to assign the unit to work on my case when we’re done. There’s no skin off your nose for doing it that way. No one’s going to complain because your phone bills went up for one day.”

  “Jesus, Jack. Don’t be so angry.”

  “Do we have a deal or not?”

  A long moment passed. I didn’t like to resort to these tactics, but there was nothing else I could do. This was my last lead toward finding Sara Long. If I didn’t pursue it, Sara was as good as gone.

  Burrell started to speak, and I heard a catch in her voice. Something told me that I’d burned another bridge with the Broward County Police Department.

  “All right, Mr. Carpenter. You have a deal,” Burrell said.

  I started to say thanks, but she hung up on me.

  CHAPTER 25

  inderman and I parted ways in Louie’s parking lot. Linderman was heading back to his office, where he planned to spend the afternoon contacting other CARD teams around the country, while I helped my old unit find a missing thirteen-year-old girl.

  “I’ll call you if I turn up anything,” Linderman said.

  “I’ll do the same,” I said.

  Linderman nodded and stared at the ground. In a flat voice he said, “I looked through the Naomi Dunn file while we were eating lunch. Is it my imagination, or were the police trying to hide something during that investigation?”

  His words caught me off guard, and for a moment I didn’t speak.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  “You saw a huge guy with mental problems kidnap a college student from her apartment. Yet the police swore that there was no record of this guy. I find that hard to believe. In fact, I don’t believe it.”

  It was my turn to stare at the ground. It was the one aspect of the Dunn case that had always baffled me. The giant hadn’t just stepped off a spaceship, and neither had his partner. They were both bad guys, and bad guys always left trails.

  “I wish I knew the answer,” I said.

  Linderman pressed me. “You must have a suspicion.”

  “I called every mental hospital in the country,” I said. “There was no record of the giant. As far as they were concerned, he didn’t exist.”

  “Did any of them try to stonewall you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Did any of the mental hospitals stand out?”

  “One did,” I said. “There was a mental institution in Broward called Daybreak that had been shut down after a TV news show exposed the horrible practices going on there. In the beginning, I focused on them almost exclusively.”

  “Why?”

  “Daybreak had a ward for the criminally insane, and I wondered if the giant had been institutionalized there. I spoke to Daybreak’s managing director and several doctors who’d worked there. Nobody remembered a crazed giant. I also checked with several Broward cops who helped move Daybreak’s patients when the facility was closed. They had no memory of the giant either.”

  “Did you ever visit the place?”

  “No. The place had already been closed when I started my investigation.”

  “So all of the information you got about Daybreak was secondhand.”

  “It was all I had to work with.”

  “What about records?”

  “I looked high and low for their records, but could never locate them.”

  Linderman’s expression had turned cold. Most law enforcement agents did not deal well with bad news or hitting dead ends. He was no exception.

  I waved as he drove off, but he did not wave back.

  I got back into my car, and headed west into the far reaches of Broward County.

  Suzie Knockman’s family lived in Plantation, a monied area of horse farms, high real estate taxes, and private schools. The Knockman address was one of the better zip codes in town. Which made their decision to hire defense attorney Leonard Snook all the more damning.

  Everyone was entitled to hire an attorney; it was written in the Constitution. Only it didn’t make sense to hire an attorney when you hadn’
t been charged with a crime. Yet that was exactly what the Knockmans had done.

  I had seen Snook represent families of missing kids before, and I knew how he worked. His playbook went like this:

  First, Snook would make the Knockmans circle the wagons and stop talking with the police. Snook would become the conduit for any communication between the family and the cops. All information would flow through him.

  Then, Snook would not allow any family member to be given a polygraph test by the police, and would cite the unreliability of polygraphs in a court of law if questioned by the media.

  Finally, Snook would hold a circuslike press conference. Standing with members of the grieving family, he would publicly question the police’s handling of the case, and point out leads the police had not followed up on. He would paint the police as idiots and bunglers, and divert attention away from the family.

  That was Snook’s deal. I did not know of a single instance where he had helped the police find a missing child. But he had kept quite a few highly suspicious family members out of jail.

  I drove down the Knockmans’ street. By south Florida standards, it was fairly wide, with generous sidewalks and plenty of trees. Many of the houses were two-story mansions surrounded by paddocks with three-board fencing and horse barns in the back of the property, the majority painted fire-engine red. Parked in the driveways were spotlessly clean Mercedeses and Beemers. The area reeked of money.

  I drove past the Knockman address. Four police cruisers and several colorful TV news vans were parked in front of the house, a palatial white Colonial with navy blue shutters. A mob of reporters filled the lawn, jockeying for space while they gave their reports.

  I parked on the next block behind a black Lincoln town car with a Hispanic chauffeur wearing a uniform. Loud music was blaring out of the car’s stereo of an unidentifiable origin. I got out with my dog and approached the vehicle.

  “Are you Leonard’s driver?” I asked.

  Snook’s chauffeur tilted back his hat and shot me a wary look.

  “Who’s asking?” the chauffeur said.

  I handed him my business card. He didn’t look too bright, and I said, “Leonard has hired me to help find the kid. He said the police are really screwing up the case.”

  “Ain’t that the truth?” the chauffeur said.

  “Where’s Leonard?”

  “He’s already at the house, doing his stuff.”

  “So tell me something. Which member of the family called Leonard?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “I was just wondering who was going to pay me, that’s all.”

  “My cell phone’s vibrating. Hold on a second.” The chauffeur pulled out his cell phone and stared at the Caller ID. “There’s Mr. Snook. Want me to ask him?”

  The last time I’d seen Snook, he’d been tied to a chair and had soiled his pants while watching a client murder two innocent people. I’d called him a coward, and left him tied to the chair. Hearing my name was not going to bring back any fond memories.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  “Suit yourself, man.”

  I started walking toward the Knockman house, Buster close behind.

  Snook stood on the front lawn with a group of people I assumed were the Knockman family, looking resplendent in his thousand-dollar suit and silk necktie. He was small, maybe five-six and a hundred fifty pounds, and had snow white hair and a goatee, which was also snow white.

  “The Broward County Sheriff’s Department has done nothing but harass the Knockman family from the moment this investigation began,” Snook stated into the bouquet of reporter’s microphones. “There is not a single shred of evidence linking the Knockman family to this tragedy, yet the police are expending most of their energy here, instead of out in the surrounding neighborhood, looking for poor Suzie.”

  Poor Suzie. It had to be a new low, even for Snook. I skirted around the house, and walked to the back of the property. A chestnut quarter horse galloped past me in a nearby paddock, then started bucking, the wild energy a sight to behold.

  “Jack.”

  I turned to see Burrell standing at the back door of the house. Looking tired and pissed off at the same time. I held up two fingers.

  “I come in peace.”

  “Get in here.”

  Burrell ushered me into the kitchen, a gleaming, high-ceilinged room that contained matching pairs of every expensive appliance and cooking utensil made.

  “Nice place,” I said.

  Burrell stood directly in front of me with her arms crossed. Her face was red, and there was anger written all over it. I’d crossed a line that I shouldn’t have crossed.

  “You shouldn’t have spoken to me like that,” she said.

  “I know. I was wrong. It was the way I was raised.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?”

  I shook my head. My father was the most stubborn man I’d ever known, and I was my father’s son.

  “I’ll make it up to you,” I promised.

  “I’m going to hold you to that,” Burrell said. “Let’s go.”

  I followed her through the house. The downstairs was deceptively large. I peeked into the rooms at antique furniture too old to have been made in Florida. The joint reeked of old money, and I wondered whose side of the family it had come from.

  We came to a winding staircase and Burrell halted. The living room was off to her right, and through a picture window I saw Snook out on the front lawn, basking in the TV camera’s bright lights.

  “Come on, Jack, hurry,” Burrell said.

  “What’s the rush?” I asked.

  “If Snook sees you inside the house, he’ll start screaming his head off. He’ll want to know why the police are letting a civilian work the case.”

  “Who’s running this investigation? You or him?”

  Burrell acted offended. “What kind of question is that?”

  I went to the front door and locked it.

  “Screw Snook,” I said.

  Suzie Knockman’s bedroom was on the second floor at the end of the hallway. As was customary with missing children investigations, it had been classified as a crime scene and yellow police tape crisscrossed the door. Burrell pulled the tape down.

  “It’s all yours,” she said.

  I handed Burrell Buster’s leash, and entered the bedroom. It was lavishly decorated, with a four-poster bed, a closet filled with expensive clothes, and a wooden toy chest overflowing with beautiful dolls and teddy bears. It was too much, even for a rich kid. Someone was indulging Suzie.

  A framed photograph sat on the dresser. Suzie was slender and dark-skinned and had multiple earrings in both ears. She was extremely attractive, only she wasn’t smiling in the photo. I looked at Burrell, who’d remained in the hallway with my dog.

  “Give me a timeline,” I said.

  “Suzie left school yesterday afternoon at three-thirty, but never came home. She normally walks home with a group of friends, but they didn’t see her. Her mother says she tried Suzie’s cell phone, but it wasn’t turned on.”

  “What was Suzie carrying?”

  “Her books and her purse.”

  “Does she have credit cards?”

  “Yes, and a debit card that she used to withdraw two hundred dollars last night.”

  “Where does the family money come from?”

  “Her mother. She’s loaded.”

  Kids did not run away from happy homes. They were either pushed out or forced out. I had to figure out why Suzie had run. Once I did, I would have a better idea how to find her.

  I walked around the bedroom and stopped at the toy chest. A Winnie the Pooh teddy bear caught my eye. There was something dark and slender sticking between Winnie’s legs. I started to reach for it, then stopped.

  “Is it okay if I touch this?”

  “Go ahead.”

  I removed the object from the toy chest. It was a baseball bat, only smaller, the kind used by kids in Little Le
ague.

  “Did you see this?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Burrell said. “I mentioned it to the girl’s father. He said that Suzie was a tomboy, and liked to play softball with the boys on the street.”

  The reason struck me as lame. I hit the bat against the palm of my hand.

  “Where’s her glove?” I asked.

  “Beats me.”

  I kept hitting the bat against my palm and walked around the room. I had a bad feeling in my gut, and needed one more piece of evidence to confirm that feeling.

  I stopped at the door. It was being held open by a doorstop. Thirteen-year-old girls didn’t use doorstops, and I kicked the doorstop away, and pulled the door back. My eyes fell upon the deadbolt directly above the doorknob. The wood around it was badly chipped. Suzie had installed it herself.

  I quickly checked the other bedrooms on the second floor. There were four, all occupied by adults. None had deadbolts on their doors. I returned to Suzie’s room.

  “Someone’s been trying to molest Suzie Knockman,” I said.

  CHAPTER 26

  ive me that thing before you hurt yourself,” Burrell said. I handed Burrell the baseball bat I’d found in Suzie’s toy chest. Holding up my hand, I extended all of my fingers.

  “We have five suspects,” I said.

  “Five? I only count four,” Burrell said. “Suzie’s father, her uncle, and two male cousins, who are sixteen and eighteen years of age. Who am I leaving out?”

  “The grandfather.”

  “Oh, come on. He’s eighty-five years old.”

  “Viva Viagra.”

  “That’s sick, Jack.”

  “You can’t rule him out.”

  “He uses a walker.”

  “And he has a penis.”

  “That’s really sick.”

  “Is it any sicker than her father, or uncle, or a cousin coming on to her?”

  “All right. We have five suspects in the house, one of whom is trying to molest Suzie, if the deadbolt on the door and baseball bat mean what you think they do. So which one of them is it?”

  “I’m leaning toward the father. The line about his daughter being a tomboy is lame. But I need to look around the bedrooms before I start accusing anyone.”