Come Twilight (16 page)

They stood on the lawn and waited. For the techs inside. For Ruiz. For the patrol officers to report back. For anyone who could give them something, anything, that would tell them what to do next.

Jen’s phone rang. It was one of the uniforms on the next street over. Someone had seen something.

She hurried around the corner and found the officer four houses down from the corner. If it didn’t line up with the duplex on Roycroft, it was very close.

The woman who lived there was older, late sixties or early seventies. Jen guessed she was retired. The uniform introduced her as Mrs. Rosenfeld.

“Can you tell me what you saw?” Jen asked.

“Yes, I was just taking my trash out. We keep the bin in the alley. And there was a white van parked on the other side.”

“Show me,” Jen said.

Mrs. Rosenfeld led her around the side of the house and across an immaculately maintained yard to the back gate. The old woman unlatched it and pushed it open. “Right there,” she said, pointing ten yards up the alley at the back of my garage.

“Do you know what kind of van it was?” Jen asked.

“White, like the gardeners use.”

Jen’s gardener used an old Ford Ranger. “You’re sure it was a van? Not a pickup?”

“Young lady, I might be old, but I know the difference between a van and a pickup truck.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. Do you happen to know what kind of van it was?”

“It’s harder to tell the newer ones apart.”

“How new was it?” Jen asked.

“Oh, not brand new. A few years old. Five, maybe? It was dirty, but it didn’t look too bad.”

“Did it have windows on the sides?”

“No,” Mrs. Rosenfeld said. “It looked like a work truck. Like Edgar used to drive.”

“Edgar?”

“My husband. He was an electrician. Died in ’05.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Was the truck as old as Edgar’s?”

“It’s been fifteen years since he had his truck. Did I say it looked fifteen years old?”

“No, ma’am, you didn’t.”

“It was newer than that. I could still tell the difference between the Fords and the Chevys in those days.”

“Is there anything else you can remember about the van, Mrs. Rosenfeld? Any marks or dents? Any writing? The license number?”

“No, it was just plain white. I didn’t have my glasses on so I couldn’t see the license plate.”

“And it was still parked there then when you went back into the yard?”

“Yes. I was only out long enough to dump the trash. Honestly, I didn’t pay that much attention. We get trucks and things back there quite a bit, with the service people and the gardeners and everyone.”

Jen thanked her for her help. She told the uniform to keep knocking and hurried back to find Patrick so he could add the late-model white van to the BOLO.

She found Ruiz first, though, and told him what she’d learned. He called in the update himself.

“What was he doing here by himself?” he asked.

“He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to go straight to my house.”

“Why was he in a position to make that call himself?”

“I don’t know,” she said, biting down on her anger. “Because he’s a grown-ass man?” She stormed off, her right hand clenched into a fist, looking for something to hit.

An hour and a half later they had knocked on every door on the block. They didn’t find anyone else who had seen the white van. The techs had found some trace evidence that might be useful down the line if they ever had a suspect, but nothing of any immediate usefulness.

Patrol units had pulled over a dozen white vans. None of the stops yielded anything other than angry drivers.

Jen made the call she’d been dreading. Julia answered immediately, and Jen knew she’d been waiting for a call since she’d talked to her earlier.

“Danny’s been abducted,” Jen said.

After a long silence, Julia said, “What does that mean?”

Jen told her what had happened since they’d last spoke.

“Oh god.” Her voice was quiet.

Jen felt the panic. She knew. She was feeling the same thing.

“What should I do?” Julia asked.

“There’s really nothing you can do except wait. I’m heading back to the station. It will be easier to monitor things there.” She thought about Julia, alone, staring helplessly at the cell phone, waiting for news. Already worried she was making a mistake, she added, “Do you want to meet me there, or should I pick you up?”

When Julia got into the RAV4, Jen could see she had been crying.

“Why was he alone?” Julia asked.

“I was late getting out of court. He didn’t want to wait for me. He was supposed to go straight to my house.”

Jen stared out the windshield as she drove. She couldn’t look at Julia. She was afraid to see the accusation in her eyes. “It was my fault.”

“What?” Julia said.

“I should have stopped him, made him wait for me.”

“Stop it,” Julia said.

“Stop what?”

“Blaming yourself.” There was a firmness in her voice that Jen hadn’t heard before. “It’s not your fault.”

Jen didn’t reply.

“It’s not anybody’s fault except the man who abducted Danny.”

Even though she didn’t want to hear it, Jen listened.

“Danny made a mistake. He shouldn’t have done what he did. But it wasn’t his fault, either. He was in pain. So he took a shower in his own house. How could that possibly make it his fault that he was abducted?”

Before she’d transferred to Homicide, Jen had worked in Sex Crimes. By the time she’d been on the squad three months, she’d lost track of the number of times she’d had to school someone about victim blaming. She was blaming me for my own kidnapping.

Still, though, if I had just done what she’d told me to, if she had made me listen to her, I would have been sitting on her couch right now with Julia watching
Downton Abbey
.

Jen checked in with the watch commander as soon they were inside the station. There was no news. Ruiz was back, too. She wondered if she should apologize for her crack at the scene.

Shit,
she thought, as the realization that she had just thought of my home as a crime scene swept over her. She was depersonalizing. “Stop,” she whispered.

“What?” Julia said.

“I’m just trying to keep a handle on this,” she said.

“Me too.” Julia reached out and touched Jen’s arm. “Me too.”

Jen listened to Patrick on the phone. “I feel like I should be out there.” He was still at the duplex in case any of the crime-scene techs pulled off a miracle with a new piece of evidence everyone had missed.

“I know,” Jen replied. “Keep me updated, okay?”

Patrick said, “Check it again anyway” to someone there, then spoke to her again. “I will.”

She was in the squad room with Julia, just outside of Ruiz’s office. He was talking to someone on the landline and had another call going on the speaker of his cell phone.

Jen knew there was nothing she could do but wait. The entire department was on high alert. The SWAT Hostage Rescue Team was standing by, ready to roll, and every available patrol unit was scouring the city looking for the van. She should have stayed at my place. There wouldn’t be any more for her to do there, but she’d be closer to things. Well, she thought, she might not actually be closer, but she’d feel closer. But when she spoke to Julia and heard the fear in her voice, Jen knew she couldn’t leave her alone. As impotent and powerless as she felt, she was keenly aware of how much worse it would be for Julia.

Jen looked at her. She was sitting in a chair outside the lieutenant’s office, wearing a navy-blue sweatshirt and black workout pants, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. Julia held her phone in her lap with both hands and looked down at it, as if waiting for it to ring.

“Can I get you anything?” Jen asked.

“No, I’m fine.”

None of us are fine,
Jen thought. “How about a coffee? I’m going to get one for myself.”

“Okay.”

Jen went into the break room. There was half a pot on the machine. It had probably been there for hours. She poured two cups and realized she didn’t know how Julia liked it, so she grabbed a handful of sugar packets and little plastic creamer containers and put them in her jacket pocket.

She found Julia where she’d left her, sat down next to her, and handed her a cup.

“I brought some cream and sugar if you need it.”

“No, this is okay.”

They sat there sipping bad coffee for what seemed like hours.

When Julia finally finished her coffee, she looked into the empty cup and said, “It’s a good thing he has you.”

Jen thought about that. She knew it was true. “He’s been different the last few months, since you guys have been together.”

Julia looked at her but didn’t say anything.

“Since his injury, since Megan, he hasn’t really had anything but the job. But he’s different. Reminds me of how he used to be when we first partnered up. Before everything weighed him down.”

“Thank you,” Julia said.

Jen nodded.

When she heard Ruiz shout in the office, she couldn’t tell if it was good news or bad. She stood and turned to look. He waved her inside. Julia followed.

“They found him. He’s alive and on the way to Memorial.”

Jen rushed Julia downstairs and drove to the hospital. Ruiz followed in his own car.

Patrick was already there when they arrived. He told them I’d been found in the parking lot of a vacant warehouse near the harbor. That I was unconscious after suffering multiple blows to the head. A concussion was likely, and they were doing a CT scan to evaluate further possible damage.

I wanted to apologize to Jen again, but I held my tongue. She was exhausted. I could see it in her face, around her eyes, in the slump of her shoulders.

“What were you doing this morning?” I asked. “Julia told me you and Patrick left when the results from the scan came back.”

“A patrol unit found the van abandoned in a parking structure by the aquarium.”

“How do you know it’s the same one?”

“It was stolen, but the owner hadn’t realized it yet. Collected hairs and fibers in the back that we’re ninety percent sure will match you.”

“Did you get the guy on video at my house?”

“Only well enough for a rough physical description. He knew the cameras were there. Hid his face.”