Little Girl Gone (7 page)

S
OMETIMES
the night is never long enough. Morning comes crashing in like an unwelcome guest that shows up at a party two hours early—and doesn't even bring a decent bottle of wine.

When the alarm did its 7:00
A.M
.
briiiing
, Afton fought her way to consciousness. And as the fog lifted, tried to remember why she was feeling so tense and worried.

Then she remembered. The Dardens. The dog. Definitely not her finest hour. Would there be repercussions? Oh yeah, probably.

Stumbling out of bed, she slowly made her way to the kids' room. Tess was curled up in Poppy's bed, their identical blond hair tousled together on a single pillow. The little French bulldog, Bonaparte, lay snoozing at the foot of the bed in a pile of old blankets the girls had arranged as a cozy dog nest.

Sleepy moans and groans ensued as the girls stumbled down the hall—Bonaparte padding after them—so they could brush their teeth and get dressed for school.

After helpings of Cap'n Crunch and a quick dash into the backyard for Bonaparte, each girl solemnly kissed the dog on the nose and bade him good-bye. Then, in a flurry of red-and-yellow nylon parkas, they dashed outside to meet the yellow school bus that came lumbering down the street.

After a bowl of kibble and a slurp of water, Bonaparte looked expectantly up at Afton as she shrugged into her coat and gathered up her keys.

“I'm not kissing you good-bye, too,” she told him. Then, “Oh, okay. If you insist.”

The dog had been the only good thing to come out of last night.

*   *   *

DESPITE
having her Lincoln stashed inside the relative comfort of her garage, the car's engine struggled to turn over in the bitter cold. And once she navigated the ruts down her back alley and swung out onto the street, she became intimately familiar with the sensation of the car's back wheels sliding ominously on ice.

Nasty day, Afton thought. She shivered as the heater spewed out chill air. With ice-glazed streets and a windchill that was off the charts, she passed three stalled cars on her way downtown, their bundled-up owners looking anxious as they waited for AAA to show up with an industrial-strength battery charger.

The parking garage attached to the precinct building was nearly full, so Afton was forced to park on the exposed top floor of the ramp. Frigid wind whipped her hair and scarf into streamers as she hurried to the building entrance. The elevator down to the third floor was a morass of wet slush.

Once inside, Afton was immersed in a frenzy of activity. Phones jingled, voices rose amid a din of noise, and people rushed about importantly. Hoping to avoid a walk of shame, praying she could remain relatively anonymous until last night's mess blew over, Afton kept her head down as she hurried to her desk. She turned the corner, slipped off her coat, and sat down.

The Force was not with her today.

There on her desk sat a stuffed Beanie Baby, a floppy-eared brown-and-white bulldog. A sign taped to her computer screen said, R
OOM
FOR
ONE
MORE
?

Great.

As if someone had given a silent cue, loud, yappy barking suddenly broke out all around her.
“Arf, arf, arf.”
Then the jerk three cubicles down from her broke into an off-key rendition of “Who Let the Dogs Out.”

Afton felt her stomach start to sink. She'd worked hard to try to fit in
here and this was the crap she got? Jeez. She hadn't screwed up on purpose. And they couldn't just leave the dog out there to freeze to death.

She heard a noise behind her and spun around. It was Max, looking tired and worn out as he clicked his tongue and said in a mild tone, “Don't look so worried. It's just a little friendly departmental hazing.”

“Really?” Afton said.

Max shrugged. “It means you're part of the gang.”

She loved him at that moment. Would've walked across hot coals for him.

Max squeezed into her cubicle and wedged himself into an uncomfortable metal side chair. “You know, I've been with the department for twenty years, and the most important thing I've learned is that as long as you can meet your own eyes in the mirror every morning, you're doing okay.”

“It sounds as if you're perilously close to being a glass half-empty kind of guy,” Afton said.

“Maybe I'll see if I can balance that out,” Max said.

Afton crooked an eyebrow at him. “What's up?”

“I just spoke to Thacker. He wants to see you in his office.”

“Oh boy.” Afton's heart, which had suddenly felt hopeful, plunged again. She grabbed a notebook and pen and hurried down the hall to Thacker's office. This was one guy who didn't like to be kept waiting.

His secretary, Angel, was nowhere in sight, but his office door was open halfway. Afton peered inside and saw that Thacker was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing yesterday. It must have been a long, exhausting night for him again. Lots of explaining to higher-ups, damage control with the media, and dealing with the distraught Dardens as well as the ever-snarky FBI.

Afton gave a tentative knock. She was half hoping he wouldn't hear her.

“Come in,” Thacker said. He was sitting at his desk, staring intently at his computer screen. When he looked up and saw it was Afton, he said, “Close the door behind you.”

Definitely not a good sign.

Afton took a seat across from Thacker in one of his two rump-sprung leather chairs. She instantly felt eight years old again, back in elementary
school, sitting across from Mr. Murphy, the school principal, after she'd gone postal at recess and smacked Corey Miller in the face with an ice ball as retribution for sticking gum in her hair. Hopefully, the punishment meted out today would be the equivalent of one week without recess. A small price to pay.

Thacker grunted, removed his reading glasses, and stretched back in his chair. He looked exhausted.

“Last night wasn't exactly our department's shining hour,” Thacker said. “But I want to be clear on this. I don't believe you did anything wrong. That said, I'm probably in the minority. Richard Darden has some fairly powerful friends, one of whom sits on the City Council. So if I appear a bit bedraggled, it's because I've been up all night fielding calls.”

“Sir . . . I . . .” Afton stammered. Her heart was a pounding metronome.

Thacker held up a hand. “I said I've been fielding calls; I didn't say I was taking them to heart. Most of the knee-jerk bureaucrats who made any kind of stink were chin deep in their down comforters last night and got the story secondhand. Hell, Richard Darden isn't really mad at you. He's mad at himself, his wife, the situation, the FBI, and most of all the kidnapper.”

Afton felt the wire that had been strung around her chest loosen a degree. “Where does that leave me, sir?”

“For one thing, you're to have no more contact with the Dardens.”

“I understand.”

“And I'm putting you back on desk duty.”

Afton's knuckles flashed white as her hands crimped into tight fists. She'd been afraid this would happen. It
was
a kind of punishment.

Thacker held up an index finger. “I want you to work backup for Max. We're pathetically shorthanded so I need you to go through that list that you and Max—yes, I know you went to Hudson with him—got from that doll show organizer. What was her name?”

“Muriel Pink,” Afton said in a humbled tone. Did nothing get past Thacker?

“Right. Pink. We've got detectives and FBI agents out there interviewing a number of these so-called doll people, the ones who make the reborn dolls,
as well as the Dardens' friends, acquaintances, and coworkers. While they're doing that, I want you to go through Pink's list. Run it against DMV, arrest records, real estate, divorce, adoption, anything you can think of. See if you can find any sort of connection, no matter how tenuous. You got that?”

“Yes, sir,” Afton said. “That's it?”

“That's it for now,” Thacker said.

Afton got up and started for the door. Then she paused and turned around. “Sir?”

Thacker was back staring at his computer screen. “Yes?”

“Thank you for sticking up for me.”

“You don't have to thank me for doing the right thing,” Thacker said. He lifted a hand to shoo her. “It's my job.”

*   *   *

BACK
at her desk, Afton found that someone had removed the dog and the note. Either they were destroying evidence or had grown tired of the joke.

Afton wasn't thrilled about being assigned to do research, but it was better than being flung down to the basement to work in the property room, amid a bunch of overweight, semiretired cops. Besides, Thacker had stuck his neck out for her and she didn't want to disappoint him. Max had once told her that real detective work was done in the shadows. Answers were usually gutted out by staring at a flickering computer screen or poring over notes. That's where she was now.

Two and a half hours later, the clock on her computer said 11:35. Afton could hear chairs squeaking and people filtering down the row of cubicles, heading toward the exits. The first lunch shift was under way, but there'd be no lunch break for her. She was only a quarter of the way through Muriel Pink's list, and not much had turned up. Only two exhibitors on the list had an arrest record, and only one of the two was serious—a DWI. Another exhibitor ran a licensed day care center out of her home. She made note of these three, though none of them had been exhibitors at the Skylark Mall. They'd all exhibited at a place called Sundown Shopping Center over in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Still, Afton plugged ahead. She wanted some nugget of information to
emerge from all this drudgery. There was a missing baby out there, a set of grieving parents, a teenage girl who'd been assaulted, and a community that was nearly rabid for answers.

She wondered again how a baby could be snatched from her parents' home. And in Kenwood yet. Was careful planning involved, or was it just a spur-of-the-moment crime? Being a parent herself, she could feel the stab of paralyzing panic that was starting to creep through the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. A predator was out there, one who was bold and crazy enough to break into a private home and steal a baby. If Elizabeth Ann hadn't been safe in her crib, then no one's child was safe.

Knuckles wrapped on her outer wall.

Afton turned to find Max standing outside her cubicle. Most of her coworkers simply barged in unannounced and started barking orders at her. But Max carried himself in an old-fashioned, almost dignified manner.

“May I come in?” Max asked.

“Sure,” Afton said. As he eased himself in, she noted that his khakis didn't have the razor-sharp pleat that Thacker's dress slacks always had, and it was obvious that his shirts were machine washed and not dry-cleaned. Max was rumpled, but comfortable.

“I've been working on that list we got from Muriel Pink,” Afton said.

“Whatcha come up with?” Max asked.

“There are three names that might be worth checking out.” Afton handed him her notes and the partial list with three names highlighted in yellow. “One's a DWI conviction from back in 2012, another was busted with some of those Occupy Wall Street protesters that camped out in Loring Park a few years ago, and the third one runs a day care center.”

“Day care,” Max said.

“I thought maybe her contact with kids . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“I never considered that angle. But it's good. Okay.”

He started to leave, but Afton said, “I appreciate your trying to make me feel better. I felt like a bit of a screwup today, so thanks. You made me feel . . . well, normal again.”

“Why would you want to feel normal?” Max asked. “I've seen how you
operate. You're definitely not civilian-type normal. You've got fairly good instincts that can probably be honed a lot sharper, so you're selling yourself short if you just want to be normal.”

Max gave an abrupt nod of his head and left. He seemed to have a knack for getting in the last word. But that last word had inspired Afton to keep working.

*   *   *

AT
3:09, Afton looked up blurry-eyed from her computer. Except for a quick trip to the break room for a granola bar and a Diet Coke, she'd been working steadily for well over six hours. And she'd still only come up with three names, the same three she'd given Max earlier today. All her fancy data mining had turned up a big fat zero. The rest of the people on her list appeared to be upstanding citizens, organ donors, and careful drivers. None had been arrested, declared bankruptcy, been foreclosed on, or landed on Homeland Security's watch list. Heck, maybe they were all eligible for sainthood.

Afton pushed back in her chair, trying to stretch out the kinks. Her back felt knotted and sore—a result of hunching over her computer terminal since early this morning. Or maybe it was from that crappy ice booger she'd tried to skitter around yesterday.

Had it really been just yesterday that this entire scenario kicked off?

Yes, it had. Even though she felt like she'd been working this case for a week.

Groaning, she raised both arms over her head and stretched carefully. Sighing deeply, she relaxed into the stretch. And felt instantly better.

She'd just finished checking the last half dozen names on the list—again nothing—when Max once again ghosted in. Seems he was going to be her only real visitor today.

“You still hard at it?” he asked nonchalantly. He'd tugged on a bulky, army green snorkel parka over his equally bulky sweater and slacks.

“Almost finished,” Afton said.

“How about a field trip?” He twisted a pair of suede gloves, what folks in the Midwest called choppers, in his hands.