Because Of A Girl. Janice Kay Johnson
off like this without warning her?
And something she wondered but hadn’t heard anyone else say was, shouldn’t he be missing, too? If Sabra had taken off, her boyfriend must have, too. Right? If he went to school, or had a job, wouldn’t people notice he was gone? So why wasn’t someone saying?
She could pretend to have cramps today so she could get out of running, which she hated anyway. She’d done it before, and would be sent to the office to help make copies or collate handouts. If she had even a minute to herself, she bet she could find the attendance records in the computer. She’d look especially for a boy who’d been absent for three days now. And then she could maybe do some asking around.
Because, really, despite this voice in the back of her head she didn’t want to hear, some guy at the high school was likeliest, right? There had to be a good reason why Sabra wouldn’t name him. Last night, while Emily was trying to sleep, she’d suddenly thought, What if it was Dominic? Sabra knew Emily had a thing for him, so there was a good reason for her not to say, Um, see, it wasn’t you he was smiling at.
Except... Dominic was here today. She knew that for sure.
Anyway, attendance records gave her a place to start. Emily didn’t know how she’d find out anything about community college students, or any guys who’d already graduated and were working now.
And the other thought she’d had? It was so freaky, she just wanted to forget it.
Her gaze lifted to the big clock on the wall, and she gasped. The cafeteria was practically empty except for the lunch ladies with their hairnets. Metal banged in the kitchen. Emily jumped up and scraped her lunch into the garbage before bussing her tray and rushing to her locker.
* * *
“A FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD girl is smarter than you, huh?”
Mid-afternoon Tuesday, Jack lifted his gaze from his monitor to see that his friend and fellow detective John Troyer had paused by his desk. They were close to the same age and had joined the department within a year of each other. Troy had grown up in Frenchman Lake and decided, after a few years with Seattle PD, to come home. Jack’s choice of Frenchman Lake had been a little more random.
At the moment, Troy’s amusement was apparent. He’d been smart enough not to raise his hand to volunteer for this wild-goose chase.
Jack groaned and leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head and stretching until he heard bones crack. “Looks that way.”
“Good going with the carjacker, by the way.”
He grimaced. “I can’t claim any brilliant detective work. The girlfriend handed the asshole to me as a gift.”
Troy shrugged. “You’d have gotten his fingerprints out of the car anyway. Not a real smart criminal.”
“He didn’t intend to touch anything. I watched the surveillance tape. He was damn careful to push the door open with his shoulder going in. Didn’t pick anything up. Pulled his gun right away. If all had gone as planned, he’d have grabbed up his bag of cash and exited the same way. Too bad for him he lost his cool when his girlfriend decided she didn’t want any part of a holdup.”
Troy’s expression hardened. “Guys like him have shit for impulse control. Or, at least, that’s one excuse for what he did to her.”
They saw a lot of domestic violence, however peaceful the town of Frenchman Lake appeared on the surface. They didn’t often see anything as sustained and cruel as what the scumbag had done to Robin Buckley. “Heard the victim woke up,” Troy mentioned.
“Thank God. The doctors were getting worried. Looks like she’ll be okay. She’s a department secretary at Wakefield, and her husband is a prof. The college president put me on speed dial. I’ll be glad to get him off my back.”
“I know him,” Troy said, a little drily, reminding Jack that Troy had solved a very cold case involving the college, probably earning that same president’s eternal gratitude. And that Troy’s wife, Madison, was the alumni relations director at the college.
Some yelling was taking place a few desks away. Both men glanced that way to be sure they weren’t needed, then tuned out the racket. Jack sighed.
“I’m getting a bad feeling about the missing girl.” He wished he had enough information to bounce ideas off Troy, but the truth was, so far he’d come up empty. “I’ve tried pinging her phone, and it’s dead.”
Troy’s eyebrows shot up. “A teenager?”
That said it all.
Troy stood looking down at him for another thirty seconds or so, then tapped his desk, said, “Let me know if I can do anything,” and walked out. He was probably heading off to interview adults instead of sixteen-year-olds with their own language and a built-in suspicion of authority.
How well Jack remembered. Would he have been straight with some cop who’d come to his high school to ask questions? He honestly didn’t know.
Right now, he went back to his search for the absent Mr. Lee. His identity and location were probably irrelevant—but any competent investigator would want to eliminate him as a player in the girl’s disappearance.
THE FIRST WORDS out of Emily’s mouth when she burst in the door were, “Did you hear anything?”
Meg quit turning the handle of her Fraser cutter, clamped to the edge of the table. She’d tried to concentrate on some patterns she was working out but found it impossible. At least cutting the wool garments she’d recently bought at garage sales and thrift stores into usable strips was something. It had to be done, and the task was so routine for her, she had been able to work on autopilot. Which left her plenty of time to worry and brood. Sabra’s pregnancy had stirred up too many memories for Meg, and she was finding she’d blanked out a lot of her own pregnancy and the first few years of Emily’s life. Watching the beginnings of a replay was...not pleasant. She supposed she’d been trying to change Sabra’s path, be the person she wished had been in her own life when she’d needed someone.
It would appear her attempt had been a complete failure. “Nothing,” she said now to Emily’s question, all the tension she felt in her voice. “Not a word from Sabra’s mom or the police or anyone.”
Eyes big and anxious, Emily kept hovering in the doorway, bag still slung over her shoulder. “Didn’t that CPS worker show up?”
“Yes, but it turned out she didn’t even know the police were involved yet.”
“She didn’t think you’d done anything wrong, did she?” In a typical swing of the teenage pendulum, Emily sounded mad that anyone would accuse her mother of wrongdoing.
Meg managed a smile of sorts. “No, I don’t think she did. We had a pleasant conversation, and I agreed to consult her when Sabra’s home again.”
“Oh.” Emily chewed on her lower lip. “I keep trying her phone, but it isn’t even on. Her phone is always on!”
“Did you check Facebook?”
“Of course.”
“Email?”
Her daughter gave her the look. “Who uses email?”
Meg had only a business Facebook page. What did she know? “Can she send something completely private just to you on any social media site?”
“Well, yeah, but...” Emily whirled and raced for the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, “I’ll check again now.”
The doorbell rang.
Meg’s heart took an unpleasant lurch. The doorbell had come to mean bad news. Friends called—they didn’t just show up. Even Emily’s friends called first.
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