Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel (24 page)

“You betcha,” she answered and sat next to Mrs. Meltzer. “Want to watch some TV, Virginia?”
Mrs. Meltzer’s hand came across and patted her caretaker’s knee.

We were out the door a second later. “We have a girl missing,”
Meltzer told me. His tone was curt. “Her name’s Skylar Barbour. Wasn’t home when her
parents got off work. They called teachers, then they called her friends, and then
they called us. We’re taking it seriously. I have a bad feeling.”

“Was she in school today?” I asked as we walked quickly down the pebbled path.

“All day. She appeared normal and not upset. Friends say they
saw
her walking toward home.”

“So she disappeared between school and home. How far is that?”

“Not far, but she would have had to take a trail through those woods on the southeast
edge of the park.” There was a little jiggle in his voice because we were moving fast.
“Here’s what we have so far. Patrols took preliminary statements from the parents,
who told them their daughter always takes the bus home. Tina Brolin was able to contact
a couple of the girl’s friends, who said she always walks home with them.”

“So the parents are lying,” I said. “Or their daughter was.”

“Like I said, I have a bad feeling.”

“Skylar’s Caucasian?” I asked. “And blond?”

“Affirmative.”

“Age?”

“Eighth grader,” Ken Meltzer answered, grimly. “Thirteen. Same school where Melinda
went.” We stopped at our vehicles.

“But there’s no evidence she was abducted,” I reminded him. I was having trouble selling
it. I had a bad feeling too. I was thinking about Logan Peele and the band teacher
who’d flown under the radar and the greeting on my windshield, a warning, a promise.
“Your offender, if this turns out to be his work, he hasn’t had time to do what he
does, Ken. He holds them. If he has Skylar, she’s still alive.”

“Jump in,” Meltzer said, as if he hadn’t heard me. “We’re meeting Brolin and Raymond
at the parents’ place.”

“I’ll follow you.” I got in my car and waited for him to pull out. I wasn’t going
to drive up with the sheriff after nine in the evening. I’d had enough trouble with
Brolin and Raymond. Why feed them? And I was feeling guilty. To borrow from Jimmy
Carter, I’d lusted in my heart. They’d smell it.

We wound back through Whisper, quiet and quaint and lamp-lit, and hiding so many secrets.
The sheriff cut through a neighborhood off Main Street and we came out on a dirt road
half a mile later. The marker said
COTTONWOOD ROAD
. It was pitch dark. No moon. No streetlights on country roads. I followed the sheriff’s
taillights through the dust, our headlights touching the fringes of a field with tall,
blowing grass, rippling and rolling like a black sea in the dark night.

I saw the sheriff’s vehicle turn past a mailbox; headlights hit white fences, a long
ranch house at the end of the lane. Skylar Barbour had gotten dressed for school there
this morning. And she hadn’t come home.

Raymond and Tina Brolin were leaning against Brolin’s Crown Vic. Raymond was smoking.
Both looked grim. We joined them.

“Major Brolin,” I said, and nodded. “Detective Raymond.”

“The Barbours are waiting,” Brolin said. She didn’t look thrilled to see me. No doubt
Raymond had shared our conversation with her. I’d scolded him for conducting a very
sloppy investigation. It would be hard for her not to take that personally. I didn’t
care. How they handled it going forward would determine what kind of cops they really
were.

“We’re going to start at the beginning,” Meltzer told us. “They came home from work
to an empty house. Let’s play it close. No need to alarm these people unnecessarily.
And if there’s something else going on here, we don’t want them to clam up. Understood?
We treat them like suspects, they’ll dive for cover.”

“With all due respect, Sheriff,” Major Brolin said, “it’s not our first rodeo.”

I glanced at Meltzer, saw the muscle ripple across his jawline. “I’m well aware of
that, Tina.” He’d lowered his voice, but it had an edge I hadn’t heard before. He’d
also dropped her designation and used her first name. “I’m also aware that your last
rodeo ended with the missing girl found dead in the woods eight months later. I’m
going to make sure this doesn’t end that way.”

We followed the sheriff up the steps to a long railed porch. A German shepherd stood
on the other side of a glass storm door. A low
growl came through the glass. Meltzer pressed the doorbell, and the dog started to
bark and show teeth.

“It’s okay, Luke.” A man in a business suit came to the door. He was late thirties
with thinning brown hair. “Brooks Barbour,” he told Meltzer, pushing open the door.
They shook hands. “Thanks for coming.”

“I’m Sheriff Ken Meltzer, and these are my investigators.” He introduced us. Barbour
invited us inside. Luke sniffed the air as we passed.

We found Mrs. Barbour sitting at an oblong table in the kitchen clutching a mug of
something, shivering on this hot August night in Georgia, used Kleenex balled up around
her. Luke sat down next to her chair. Hayley Barbour had the hollow, shocked eyes
you see in hospital emergency rooms, seeing and not seeing. We all sat down at the
table.

“We’re anxious to get Skylar home, and I know you are too.” Meltzer spoke gently.
“Most of the time these things are just a matter of somebody getting their signals
crossed, someone made plans and forgot to call.” He was right. Kids don’t come home
all the time. Almost none of them have been abducted. “But that doesn’t mean we’re
not taking this seriously. We know you’re worried and we’re here to help. We may have
to repeat questions my deputies already asked but bear with us.”

The Barbours nodded. “When was the last time you saw your daughter?” the sheriff asked.

“This morning.” Hayley Barbour spoke for the first time. “I took her to school.” She
answered almost mechanically, like a sleepwalker.

“Did you speak to her during the day at all?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t. Brooks, did you?”

“No. But that’s normal,” Brooks Barbour said. “We don’t usually talk until I get home.”

“What time is that, sir?” I asked. I was trying to put a time on her disappearance.

“I get home around six-thirty or seven,” Brooks Barbour said. “But Hayley is home
by five-thirty.” Hayley nodded her agreement. Skylar was last seen around three o’clock.
Which meant she had vanished
sometime between three and five-thirty. A large window of opportunity. My heart sank.

“Was anything disturbed when you got home? Are any of Skylar’s things missing?” I
asked.

Hayley shook her head. “The deputies asked us to check for missing items but we didn’t
find anything.” Her hand reached for Luke, her fingers disappeared in his thick fur.

“Can’t you see what they’re doing?” Brooks Barbour asked his wife. His voice was sharp
and angry and shot through the room in accusing spirals. Luke leaned in closer to
Hayley. “You’re trying to figure out if she ran away, aren’t you?” he asked Meltzer
gruffly. “Our daughter would not run away. Something happened to her and you need
to be out there. Right now. Looking for her.”

Hayley didn’t look at her husband. “I heard Luke whining through the door when I got
home,” she told us. “I knew right away something was wrong.” One side of her mouth
twitched. She bit back a sob. “He bounded out when I opened the door and ran up the
driveway. He still hasn’t settled down.”

“What usually happens when you get home?” I asked.

“Skylar and Luke are in the den where she does homework,” she told me. “Luke barely
looks up when I come home. He’s Skylar’s dog.” She covered her mouth and squeezed
her eyes closed. “Oh God,” she moaned. The icemaker buzzed, cubes dropped into a freezer
tray. I glanced at Brooks. He’d looked away. Some people pull in close during a crisis.
Some people curl up in a little ball. Or was his response more than that?

Detective Raymond took a notepad from his shirt pocket and put it on the table. He
looked dead tired. The weight of his jowls and the bags under his eyes made him look
like a cartoon dog. “I know you’re worried to death,” he said, in a voice I hadn’t
heard before. “I just need to verify some information we got from the responding officers.
Skylar was wearing khaki-colored pants and a sleeveless green blouse. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Barbour answered. “And a Nine West purse from Macy’s. Small, oblong, tan
with a wide black band and a square buckle. And pink Nikes.”

Detective Raymond verified other details—birth date, names of teachers, friends—then
asked for a photograph of Skylar. Brooks Barbour got up, disappeared somewhere in
the house. Luke stayed with Mrs. Barbour.

“Does Skylar have a phone?” I asked.

Hayley nodded. “We’ve been calling it for hours.” Tears filled her eyes and spilled
down the pale skin of her cheeks. She pulled a fresh tissue from the box, clutched
it. “It was her birthday present.”

“Can you describe the phone?”

“It’s an iPhone,” Brooks told us. “In a pink OtterBox.” He’d returned with a framed
photograph, a five-by-seven with the swirly gray-blue backdrop of a school picture.
I studied the face of a smiling blond girl with her father’s brown eyes, a navy sweater
vest over a white collared shirt.

“Would you mind writing down Skylar’s cell phone number for us?” Meltzer asked.

Hayley found a notepad and scribbled down a number. “We’ve called the provider already,”
she told us. “There’s an app that finds it when it’s lost, but there’s no signal.”
Her voice wobbled. So did her hands.

“Did the mobile provider tell you where the GPS went out?” I asked.

“No,” Hayley answered. “I … I didn’t think to ask. I don’t understand any of this.
I talked to her friends. I called her teachers. Skylar was at school all day. She
wasn’t sick. She was
fine
. She wasn’t talking about doing anything but going home. And the bus drops her right
at the end of the driveway. Her friend Pam told me she walked home today. I don’t
understand that …”

“Skylar walked home every day,” Major Brolin said flatly. Meltzer’s head jerked in
Brolin’s direction. The total lack of empathy in her tone made even Raymond’s head
turn. “Her friend didn’t tell you that?”

“What are you talking about?” Brooks Barbour lowered himself into a chair.

Brolin took her time. She had a notepad in her hand. She flipped one page, then another.
“I spoke with the bus driver.” Another page turned. She squinted. “One Vicki Bello.
Said Skylar’s been on the bus
only one day since the school year began. That was the first day of school.”

“That can’t be right,” Hayley insisted. “Skylar
was
riding the bus this year. We made her. Because those girls were found in the woods
just before school started. Brooks …” She looked beseechingly at her husband.

“Are you telling us you really don’t know how your daughter gets home in the afternoons?”
Brolin’s tone stayed accusing. “Or are you deliberately omitting information?”

“Just exactly what are you trying to say?” Brolin was pushing Brooks’s buttons and
we were all discovering he had a hair trigger. “Is this how your department treats
victims
, Sheriff? Because we’re not the bad guys. We’re the ones that called you to help
us find our daughter!”

“Was Skylar upset about anything this morning? Maybe you noticed something was bothering
her recently?” I suggested, and kept my voice even, hoping some of the tension would
dissipate.

“So now you’re on the runaway thing again?” Mr. Barbour jumped up, his cheeks flushed.
“What the hell is going on here? Get out there and
find my daughter
.”

“We have an active and organized search going on right now, Mr. Barbour,” the sheriff
assured him. “Patrol units are on it. They have Skylar’s description and all the information
you’ve already supplied. We’ll get her photo out right away too. But we have to collect
as much information from you as we can. Your cooperation will make this process go
faster.”

“The questions may be upsetting to you, Mr. Barbour,” Brolin added. “But it’s what
we must do in order to help Skylar.” It was the first decent thing out of her mouth
since we’d arrived. I was starting to hate her even more than I did yesterday. Meltzer
told me at breakfast she was smart. I wasn’t getting that.

“Mr. Barbour,” Meltzer said calmly. “If your daughter was upset about something, say,
a boy, she might go to a friend, want to talk to someone. See where we’re going? Maybe
just a new place to look.”

“I don’t know,” Mr. Barbour answered impatiently. His fuse had been lit and he was
having trouble putting it out. “We made a list already
for the deputies. And Hayley talked to most of her friends. We’ve called everyone.”

“We had a fight.” Mrs. Barbour admitted it so quietly I almost didn’t hear her.

“Hayley,”
her husband warned, but she kept going.

“It was nothing.” She wouldn’t look at us. “I mean, she just turned thirteen. She
wants to do things we don’t think she’s ready for.”

“What things, exactly?” I asked, gently.

“She wanted to ride with friends to a dance Saturday,” Hayley answered. “I don’t want
her in a car with a bunch of teenagers. And she doesn’t want to be dropped off by
her parents. It’s the kind of arguments we have now.”

“Can’t you get an Amber Alert out or something?” Brooks asked.

“Not until we’re certain Skylar has been abducted,” Major Brolin announced with characteristic
sensitivity. She was mad at me and maybe at the sheriff and she was taking it out
on the family of a missing girl.

“Abducted?” Hayley gasped. Of all the ugly possibilities swirling in her brain, this
one clearly hadn’t occured to her. Mr. Barbour paced to the end of his kitchen, rested
hands on the sink, stared out the window at the darkness. Meltzer stirred. I wondered
how long he was going to let Brolin hammer at them.

“Mrs. Barbour,” Brolin continued, “do you know the whereabouts of your daughter?”