Believe No One (14 page)

‘Yes, sir. I mean, I got case details up on NCIC and NCMEC last night, sir,' Hicks said.

He quirked his eyebrows. ‘You
did
get a lot done with your day.'

‘Like I said – working late.'

Sheriff Launer smiled his shark smile. ‘All right, I'll give you that one, Deputy. You should hear from Team Adam today. When you do—'

‘I already did, sir.'

‘You did?'

‘I got a call from NCMEC early this morning. They said they could send a Team Adam consultant from Tulsa just as soon as we want.'

‘What did you tell them?' The skin around his mouth tightened, and she wondered if he was about to turn on her again.

‘I said I would talk to you about it, check it was okay.'

‘Well, get back to 'em, tell 'em to come on over, and welcome. We could sure use their kind of firepower. Those guys're goddamn heroes since Katrina.'

Now she understood Sheriff Launer's thinking: the whole nation had seen the TV coverage of tearful families reunited, kids swept up in the arms of moms and dads they had not seen in months since the hurricane, law officers standing in the background, all smiles. It was the last few weeks of Sheriff Launer's election campaign. Right now, he was picturing himself on TV screens in every household in Adair County with Team Adam. Those guys
were
heroes – righting wrongs, standing up for family and the sanctity of childhood innocence – and Launer was thinking some of that heroism was bound to reflect on him.

She had met two Team Adam consultants at the Mountain Home Conference last spring. Good men, both. Old school, modest, though they must've had thirty-five years' experience of homicide investigation apiece. They were proud of Team Adam, but their pride was in bringing lost and stolen children home; they didn't need the ego rub of personal recognition, and they did not have careers to build or maintain. Those two men were content to facilitate and mediate, and let someone else take the glory – which would leave the stage and the spotlight entirely to Sheriff Launer.

Hicks made the call to Team Adam from the desk she shared with two other deputies. A Post-it note on the desktop computer monitor read: ‘Out of Order.'

The consultant allotted to the Dawalt case turned out to be one of the two she had met at the Mountain Home last April. Kent Whitmore was a big, soft-spoken man with a West Oklahoma drawl. They small-talked for a short while, then Hicks gave him the news that the Sheriff would like him to help with the investigation.

‘I can be there in a couple hours,' he said. ‘Is there anything you need right now?'

‘Technology that works would be nice,' she said, flicking the yellow note on the computer screen.

‘Computer problems?' he said.

‘Only one in the department that works right now is in the Sheriff's private office, and we're not allowed to touch that.'

‘Well, if your computer's fried, you won't have seen your email yet?'

‘No, sir,' she said. ‘But hold on …' She pulled up her sheriff's office email account on her cell phone. ‘I got a message from a Detective Valance at St Louis PD.'

Always the gentleman, Whitmore said, ‘I'll give you a moment.'

Her heart pounded as she read the email. ‘Good Lord,' she murmured, scanning a list of common features the detective had included. ‘This does look a lot like the Dawalt case, doesn't it?'

‘Kyra Pender was flagged as a possible link to your victim on the NCIC database,' Whitmore said. ‘You might want to talk to Detective Valance before I get there.'

‘I will. And we got a partial palm print – I'll send him that, along with the files.' It was a slip of the tongue, and Whitmore was instantly on it.

‘Files?' he said. ‘Are we talking more than one case, Deputy Hicks?'

‘I don't know, Mr Whitmore.' She glanced towards the open door of Sheriff Launer's office. She had already pissed him off, investigating a murder that could have happened in Adair; she didn't know how he'd take to her looking into a three-year-old murder in Creek County. ‘Can we talk about that when you get here?'

‘You bet.'

He said it without hesitation, and she remembered the watchful grey eyes of the ex-cop, and the wisdom and kindness in them, and was thankful for his tact.

She hung up and immediately dialled Professor Fennimore. ‘Professor,' she said. ‘We need to talk.'

Castle Point, St Louis Metropolitan District

Trey Gaigan's aunt had bounced from housing project to housing project around St Louis. They finally tracked her down to the dilapidated suburbs of Castle Point, about ten miles north of the metropolitan area. Dunlap and Ellis found her in a one-storey clapboard house. She showed them into her tiny living room and stared at the mess of toys and kids, clothes on the couch, as if she could will it away with the power of her mind. The sliding doors to the backyard stood open and the sound of children playing was carried in on the hot, damp air. The woman cringed at every shriek or burst of laughter. Presently, her eyes were drawn to the TV in the corner of the room, where Oprah was nodding in solemn agreement as a chiropodist talked about the importance of foot care to a general sense of wellbeing. Dunlap turned off the TV and cleared a space on the couch and she sat down, though it looked more like a slow collapse, her legs giving way under the burden of her cares. He took the chair opposite, but Ellis remained standing, his eyes tracking the room.

‘I don't
understand,
' she said. ‘The police investigated when Trey went off. Those Team Adam guys came and—'

Her nasal whine was cut off by the sudden appearance of a boy, no more than three feet tall; he charged into the room, roaring, his fists raised, and his mother gave a little yelp of alarm. The boy tripped over Dunlap's long legs, but the detective caught him and set him on his feet. The boy stuck his thumb in his mouth and chewed it hungrily, struck dumb by the appearance of two large men in his house. Ellis glowered at the boy and he jumped, turning one-eighty degrees, and ran back the way he'd come, clearing the steps to the backyard at a leap.

The woman sighed as if she had been holding her breath and pressed her palm to her forehead. ‘I forgot what I was saying.'

‘You were telling us about Team Adam,' Dunlap said.

‘Oh,' she said, ‘yes. They gave us that TV.' She looked vaguely at the screen and her brow furrowed, as if she could not imagine why it was blank. ‘But it's like I
told
them, Trey wasn't
missing,
he ran away. He was
always
running away. I can't say
how
many times he ran away from Rita. It's just something he
does.
'

‘But he came back all the other times,' Dunlap said.

She stared at him, perplexed. ‘Well, yes, but only because they caught him.'

Ellis shifted his weight and Dunlap sensed his impatience. ‘Why don't you tell us what happened?' he said.

‘Nothing
happened.
Rita sent him here – well, not
here,
exactly – we were up in Benton Park West right then. It was a small apartment – I mean
tiny.
The kids had to be out on the street – they just had to – I didn't have
time
to watch Trey as well. And she was supposed to wire me some money, but she never did.' Ellis
tsked,
and she blushed. ‘Of course, I know
now
that Rita
couldn't
send that money because she was, you know …'

‘Dead?' Ellis said.

Dunlap shot him a warning look, and Ellis shrugged and wandered off to the doors to the back garden, his big frame blocking the light. The children must have felt the shadow of his presence, too, because the screaming stopped and a nervous silence fell.

‘What made you think Trey ran away?' Dunlap asked.

‘He
said
he would. Said he didn't have to stay with me. He
hated
living with us. He hated the baby keeping him awake nights. Hated
me
.' She shook her head at the impossibility of his dislike. ‘He'd go out in the morning and wouldn't come back till suppertime. I
tried
to contact Rita, to tell her to take him back, but the park manager said she moved out.' She shook her head, remembering. ‘I was so
mad
at her, leaving me with another mouth to feed. Then they found her …' She wiped her nose with a trembling hand. ‘The apartment was so small. The kids had to play on the street – they just
had
to – I got three of my own, and Trey was getting big—'

‘It's okay, ma'am.' Dunlap patted the air with his hands. ‘Just tell me what happened.'

‘The police came, told us ab—about Rita. Trey – he wouldn't talk to me, or the police. He just stopped talking – I mean altogether, like he was dumb or something. To be honest, it was a relief. Then, about, I don't know …
two
weeks later? I called the kids in for supper, like normal, but Trey was gone.' She reached out to touch his hand, but drew back before she made contact, put her fingers to her lips instead. ‘But he was
fine.
I
knew
he was, 'cos of the postcard.'

‘What postcard?' Dunlap said.

She blinked, her eyes wide. ‘The one Trey sent.'

Dunlap relayed the rest of the story to the team an hour later, back at Brentwood PD. ‘They put out an Amber Alert. They searched the local area for him; they went to Phelps County, where Rita had been living before she went missing, canvassed the trailer park and the wider area; Team Adam helped with state-wide news coverage.'

‘They were thorough,' Detmeyer said.

Dunlap nodded. ‘But they didn't find a single clue about that little boy's whereabouts. Then about a month later, his aunt got a postcard—'

‘Wait a minute –
about
a month?' Valance said.

‘When she got it, she left it on the TV stand,' Dunlap said. ‘Didn't think she needed to tell anyone. It was only after one of the Team Adam consultants checked in on her they found out about it.'

‘There must have been a date stamp on the card,' Simms said.

‘It was mailed from St Louis three weeks after Trey disappeared,' Dunlap said. ‘The message read, “I'M FINE. TREY”. Trey's fingerprints were on it – the detectives running the investigation checked them against his stuff at his aunt's house.'

‘Did Trey give the police a description of the man his mother was with?' Simms asked. Children's descriptions were often quirky, but even a vague idea of age, build and height would be better than nothing.

‘He never got the chance,' Ellis said, his face hard. ‘When Rita turned up dead, the boy stopped talking. I mean literally – he never said a word from that day to the day he disappeared.'

‘So, we've got a probable abduction–murder in one county, body deposition in a second, disappearance of a child from a third,' Simms said. ‘Where Trey ended up is anyone's guess. This bastard really knows how to cover his tracks, doesn't he?'

Ellis looked at her, startled. ‘Did Princess Kate just curse?'

But Simms wasn't in the mood for jokes. ‘The killer came back for Rita's boy,' she said. ‘Took him right off the street because he knew Trey could identify him.'

‘We don't know that,' Dunlap said.

‘So where is he, Detective?'

‘Maybe he really did run away,' Ellis said. ‘The aunt didn't want him there; he couldn't stand her or her kids. And by the way, she's a real piece of work.'

‘Then why didn't he tell his aunt where he was?' Simms said. ‘Why send a card at all, if he hated his aunt so much?' Ellis shrugged, and she went on. ‘Because the killer wanted the police off his back. He wrote the message, planted the boy's prints on the card and then he—' Her imagination refused to go further, because Simms really did not want to imagine what had happened to Trey Gaigan after that.

‘The lead investigator on the case is coming over on his lunch break from Third District. He'll bring everything he's got, fill us in on anything that didn't go in the report,' Dunlap said.

‘What's happening on the Oklahoma case?' Detmeyer asked.

‘The Sheriff is territorial,' Valance said. ‘He won't allow the Oklahoma State Bureau into the investigation.'

‘He give a reason?' Dunlap asked.

‘He was in a hurry – he was due on TV. He did say he was concerned that making this interstate might turn the investigation into a circus.'

Detmeyer said, ‘TV – he's made a statement on the case?'

‘No,' Valance said. ‘It was local – cable TV. Sheriff Launer is on the campaign trail.'

Simms looked from Dunlap to Detmeyer and raised her eyebrows.

Valance said, ‘What?'

‘Just thinking that Sheriff Launer might not mind a circus if he gets to be ringmaster.'

‘We got the green light from Major Case Squad,' Dunlap said. ‘They'll fund an interstate investigation. Launer wants to arrange the initial meeting in Williams County, we'll move our guys over there.'

‘Did you talk to the deputy who's investigating the case?' Simms asked Valance.

‘Yeah,' Valance said. ‘She thinks she might have another murder in Creek County, but doesn't have enough evidence to make a strong link.'

‘Did you ask about cause of death?' CSI Roper asked. It hadn't been listed in the autopsy report of the Oklahoma murder on the NCIC database.

‘Body was too far gone to tell,' Valance said. ‘But the victim did have glue in her hair, and the victimology's the same – recovering addict, single parent – though the kid in question was her brother. Laney Dawalt went missing from a trailer park in Adair, Oklahoma, along with the kid. She was found over the county line in a farm pond in Williams County. No sign of the kid brother. Tulsa PD's diving team just finished searching the pond – the boy isn't there.'