by Beverly Long
They were fifteen minutes away when A.L.’s cell buzzed. He looked at the message. “Ferguson has verified that both Elaine and Leah were at the casino on Wednesday morning. Leah arrived first, coffee in hand. Then Elaine. Elaine left, Leah followed. Times match what both the women said.”
“Well, that’s that, I guess,” Rena said. She was quiet for a minute. “I didn’t want it to be Leah. She’s doing some sad shit with her mother but still, it’s her child.”
“Yeah. That would be bad.”
The Froggs had lived at the very edge of Dover, near a set of railroad tracks. It was a small house, maybe a two-bedroom. There was a man on a ladder painting the exterior of the house. “That’s some paint,” A.L. said. It was a cross between red and burgundy and was starkly different than the white he was trying to cover.
He parked his vehicle and he and Rena got out. They approached from an angle where the man would see them coming. They didn’t want anybody falling off and cracking his head open.
“Morning, sir,” A.L. said.
“Morning,” he replied, his tone cautious.
Maybe he thought they were from the city. That one of the neighbors had complained about the new paint. “I’m Detective McKittridge and this is Detective Morgan. We’re from the Baywood, Wisconsin, police department. Can we have a minute of your time?”
The man didn’t answer but he did climb down. He was young, maybe twenty-five.
“What’s your name, sir?” Rena asked.
“Dawson Ladle,” he said.
“Is this your house, Mr. Ladle?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“How long have you lived here?” Rena followed up.
“Almost three years.”
“Did you purchase it from Trapper Frogg?” A.L. asked.
“Well, sort of. It was Trapper’s house but I actually bought it from his son, Coyote, after Trapper passed away.”
“Do you know Coyote Frogg?” A.L. asked.
Dawson Ladle shrugged. “Dover is pretty small. Most everybody knows everybody else. So, I guess you could say that I knew Coyote. He was a senior in his school when I was a freshman. He didn’t pay any attention to me but he ran track his senior year and made State so I knew him. I saw the sign in the front yard when he put the house up for sale and it was in my price range. I was surprised that he wasn’t keeping the house but he didn’t seem to want anything to do with it.”
“Where was Coyote living at the time?” Rena asked.
“I’m not sure,” Dawson said. “I don’t think it was anywhere in Dover. He made it seem as if it was a hassle to come back, even for the closing.”
“When’s the last time you saw Coyote?” A.L. asked.
“At that closing,” Dawson said. “Once the paperwork was signed and I’d written a check, he couldn’t wait to get out of here.”
“What title company handled the sale?” A.L. asked.
Dawson closed his eyes. “Mc... Mc... McPherson Title,” he said, opening them.
It might give them a place to start. The title company might have an address for Coyote at the time of the sale. “Do you recall any of Coyote’s friends?”
“I don’t know much about him after he got out of high school. But in school, he and Chuck Hayes were buddies. I can still see them in Chuck’s car. He had an old Mustang convertible. Black. I think it was a ’67 or a ’68. And the two of them rode around in that car, looking for trouble. I thought they were so cool.”
“Did Coyote and Chuck find lots of trouble?” Rena asked.
Dawson smiled. “I don’t know. But it was fun thinking that they did.” He paused. “Is Coyote in trouble now? Is that why you’re asking all these questions about him?”
“Just trying to locate him,” A.L. said easily. “Appreciate the tip on Chuck Hayes. Where does he live?”
“Behind the high school. Biggest house on the street. Red brick.”
They’d seen the high school on the first visit. “Anything else you can think of that might lead us to Coyote?”
“No. But if you find him, can you tell him it would have been nice to know that the backyard floods every spring. But I guess that’s just buyer beware,” Dawson added, his tone good-natured.
“Good luck painting the house,” Rena said. “Nice color.”
“My girlfriend picked it out,” Dawson said. “I’m not so sure about it. But if she moves in, it will be worth it.”
* * *
“That’s so nice,” Rena said, when they were back in the car. Then she glanced at A.L. “What? No smart remark that I’m a romantic fool.”
“Nope.”
“Are you feeling okay? Need more sleep? An iron pill? Testosterone cream?”
A.L. ignored her and checked something on his phone. He turned the corner.
“Where are you going?” Rena asked. “The high school is the other direction.”
“I know. We’re going to do a quick swing by McPherson Title.”
“Tess still working at Hampton Title Company?”
“Yeah. The stories she tells about Clark Hampton make me think he’s kind of a goof but she likes her coworkers and likes the work. No reason to be looking for anything else. I think she really appreciates how flexible they were when she needed time off last spring.”
“She’d had part of her arm bitten off by a shark. I think most people might have needed a moment.”
He saw the sign for McPherson Title and pulled into a parking spot. The door was unlocked and they walked in. There were two women working at desks and what appeared to be two offices and a restroom toward the back.
“May I help you?” one of the women asked. She did not get up from her desk.
A.L. approached and offered his card. “Can I speak with whoever is in charge?”
That got her up. “Of course.” She walked quickly to the back office. Knocked on a door. Then opened it and stuck her head inside. In less than a minute, she was back with a middle-aged white guy trailing behind.
“I’m Marcus Page,” the man said. “We can talk in my office.”
Marcus led them back the direction he’d come from. Once inside the midsize office, he motioned for them to have a seat at the small corner table with four chairs. Once he was seated, he said, “What can I assist you with?”
“Mr. Page, we’re working on an ongoing investigation and want to have a conversation with someone who we believe you might have some information on. McPherson Title was the title company that assisted with the sale of his property a couple years ago. We’re hoping that you’d have an address?”
“Who is the individual?”
“Coyote Frogg.”
Marcus Page’s facial expression didn’t change. But suddenly he was tapping the end of A.L.’s business card on the table in a staccato beat. “You’re from the Baywood Police Department.”
“Yes, sir,” A.L. answered, even though it hadn’t sounded like a question.
“The only thing that the police in Baywood are working on right now is the disappearance of Emma Whitman.”
Rena leaned forward. “Mr. Page, how is it that you know Emma Whitman’s name?”
“I imagine most people in this town know it. Or at least most people of a certain age. Because when we heard the news, it took us back ten years, just like that.” He stopped tapping and very carefully laid A.L.’s card on the table. “My daughter was Corrine Antler’s best friend. They went to the same day care. She was there the day Corrine disappeared.”
“That must have been a horrible time,” Rena said. “For your child. For you.”
“Coyote’s father worked at the day care. And now you want to talk to Coyote about another missing child.” He sounded very angry. “Did the police miss something here ten years ago? Did they?”
“Mr. Page, I would encourage you not to connect to
o many dots that are really just specks of dirt on the paper,” A.L. said. Christ, he had not expected this. It was as if they’d scratched a scab and ended up rupturing the femoral artery.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to explain to your five-year-old why her best friend is never coming back to day care? Why they’re never going to play together again?” He pressed his lips together. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You know, my wife and I didn’t let our daughter play outside for almost a year. We...we were afraid that the person who’d taken Corrine would see her and come back for her.”
Suddenly, he pushed back his chair and walked to his desk. He sat down and started punching keys on his desktop computer. “We scan every piece of paper in every file.”
They let him work. And four minutes later, he looked up. “The only address we had on Coyote Frogg was the address of the property that was being sold.”
“We appreciate your time,” A.L. said.
“Just find the bastard this time, will you?”
* * *
Neither of them said anything as they left the title company and drove to the high school. Rena felt mentally bruised. And exhausted. Corrine Antler’s disappearance had changed people. Was this the journey that so many in Baywood were just beginning? Naive still to the trauma that would set in, unaware of the bitterness they would shoulder going forward. It was a depressing thought.
When A.L. pulled up in front of a two-story redbrick house, she studied it. It was big, certainly bigger than any of the neighbors’. And it had an attached four-car garage. Perhaps there was still a vintage mustang behind one of the doors.
They knocked and a teenage boy answered. He was wearing a faded University of Wisconsin T-shirt and pajama pants and had a cell phone in his hand. “Is your dad Chuck Hayes?” A.L. asked.
“Stepdad.”
“Is he at home?”
“No.”
Rena gave the kid credit. He wasn’t giving anything away. “I’m Detective Morgan and this is my partner, Detective McKittridge. Your stepdad is not in trouble and there’s nothing wrong but we do need to talk to him.”
“He’s playing tennis. At the community courts.”
Rena pulled her phone and used the map function. “Right here?” she asked, pointing at the screen.
“That’s the one,” he said.
“Thank you,” Rena said. By the time they got back to the car, the kid was already talking on the phone. Maybe to call his stepdad to warn him that the police were looking for him. Maybe his best friend to laugh about the same.
They found Chuck Hayes sitting on a bench, on the side of an empty tennis court, no partner in sight. Both Rena and A.L. flashed badges. “I assume your stepson told you we were coming, Mr. Hayes,” Rena said.
“Please, Chuck is fine. And, yes. You made his day,” Chuck added dryly. “He said that if I end up being handcuffed, that somebody needs to get a photo. That’s why I sent my tennis partner on his way.”
“Restraints are not generally required,” Rena said. “We just have a few questions about someone we believe you were acquainted with in the past. Coyote Frogg.”
Chuck Hayes’s eyes grew serious. “Is he dead?” he asked.
“Not that we know of,” A.L. said. “Interesting first question, though.”
Chuck ran a hand through his short brown hair. “Coyote was my best friend in grade school all the way through high school. I went to college, he didn’t. It was a divide we couldn’t breach. We saw each other socially a few times after I got out of college and moved back to Dover but...our lives were pretty different. I was busy with a wife and kids and, well, he wasn’t.”
“What was he busy with?” A.L. asked.
“Alcohol. Drugs. I don’t want to talk poorly about him but I did hear that he was dealing and sampling some of the product.”
No surprise there. “Can you think of somebody who might have kept in contact with Coyote after high school?”
“He was hanging with people who I would have crossed the street to avoid. I wasn’t interested in learning their names.”
“Did you know Coyote’s mom?”
“Yeah, sure. Dusty. Coyote used to call her by her first name. If I’d have called my mom by her first name, I wouldn’t have sat down for two weeks.”
“Understand,” A.L. said. “Do you remember when she left?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we were in fifth or sixth grade.”
“Did Coyote talk about her after that?”
“Not if his dad was around.”
“Do you know if he ever saw her?”
“I remember him talking about her one time. I was a freshman or sophomore in college, and I was home on break. Coyote and I were still trying to hold the friendship together. He came over to my house. Said that he was getting out of Dover, that he was going to go live with his mom.”
“Did that happen?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not sure I saw him after that.”
“Okay. Do you recall, Mr. Hayes, when Corrine Antler disappeared?” Rena asked.
“That was the little girl from the day care, right?” he verified. “That was a while ago.”
“Ten years ago,” Rena said. “Did you know her or her family?”
“No.”
“Did Coyote ever talk about her or her family, either before or after Corrine’s disappearance?” Rena asked.
“We might have talked about it afterwards.”
“Do you recall anything specific that Coyote might have said about Corrine Antler?”
“Just that the police were crawling up his dad’s ass...sorry,” he said, looking at Rena. “They talked to his dad a bunch of times because his dad worked at the day care that she disappeared from. Now that I think about it, I do remember one thing he said. That the police dug up his dad’s garden.”
“Did he think his father had anything to do with the disappearance?” A.L. asked.
“I don’t know. Christ. That’s not the kind of thing you ask your friend.”
“Did you ever think that either Coyote or his dad had anything to do with the disappearance?” Rena asked.
Now Chuck narrowed his eyes. “Detectives, you’ve got a lot of questions about something that happened ten years ago.”
A.L. closed the distance between him and Chuck. “Another five-year-old girl disappeared in very similar circumstances in Baywood this past Wednesday. We have an eyewitness who put Coyote Frogg in the vicinity the previous night.”
“Well, fuck me,” Chuck said. “Sorry,” he added, again in Rena’s direction. “I’ve been out of the country on business this past week, just got home late last night. I’m behind in my news. But now something makes sense. I got an email yesterday asking for a contribution. I only glanced at it but I did see that it came from a guy I know in Baywood. His bank and my investment company are owned by the same holding company. We cross-sell a few products.”
“What’s his name?” Rena asked.
“Steven Hanzel.”
“Are the two of you friends?” Rena asked.
“No. We have common friends. He’s...let’s just say, I’m a happily married guy and when I travel, I’m in my hotel room by 8:00, alone.”
“And he’s not.”
“That’s what people say. But I guess this shows that he’s an okay guy. I mean, he’s reaching out pretty broadly to raise money for a good cause.” He paused. “I just can’t get my head around the fact that the Coyote Frogg that I knew could have anything to do with a missing child. But believe me, if I had any information about him, I’d tell you. I got three kids. Anybody who hurts a child isn’t even human and I’d be the first person to step on them in the street.”
A.L. and Rena both handed Chuck a card. “Please call us if you remember anything else that might be helpful,” A.L. said.
Ten minutes later, Rena spread butter on her strawberry French toast. She loved places that served breakfast all day. A.L. had gone for the more traditional burger and fries for lunch.
A.L. drank his coffee.
“Ten years ago, Doug Franklin documented that Coyote Frogg was not in contact with his mother.”
“He was nineteen at the time. Maybe this conversation between Coyote and Chuck occurred after that. If Chuck was a sophomore, the two young men might have been twenty.”
“Do we contact Dusty?”
“I don’t know if it’s worth it.”
“Faster isn’t going to be happy with what we’ve got,” Rena said.
“We can’t manufacture facts,” A.L. said. “But you’re right, if there is one stone left unturned, Faster will use it to bash us over the head. I’ll reach out to Dusty.”
“Okay. I think we need to get back to Baywood.”
“Maybe swing by Troy and Leah’s house. Check in,” he said. “Still have to talk to Leah’s employer, too.”
“Maybe you could do that and I’m going to start calling the parents who dropped their kids off around the same time. We already have talked to those in Emma’s class who fall into that group but we need to look broader, at the other classroom. Those parents would have been going in and coming out of the main lobby area around the same time as Elaine Broadstreet. Maybe they saw something.”
“That’s fine. Although the times don’t always make sense on the sheets.” A.L. opened the file folder near his right hand. “For example. Here’s the sign-in sheet from the other room. First parent signs that they dropped their kid in at 7:07. Next one at 7:12. Next one at 7:10.”
Rena shrugged. “Slow watch. In a hurry. Bad with details. A thousand reasons.”
“Sloppy system, that’s all I’m saying,” A.L. said.
“I suspect Alice Quest will be instituting a whole host of new and improved systems in the coming weeks. Maybe she was sloppy. Maybe just casual. Because she thought that would be enough.” But now a kid was missing and every detail of her operation was under scrutiny.
