Forgive Me (14 page)

“For sure they’re the Cher to that vegan muffin’s Sonny. I can’t even believe they have vegan muffins at a place like this.”

“Gluten-free vegan,” Angie had corrected. “And they’re everywhere now.”

“No. No. Not everywhere. I’m from Willowick, Ohio and I guarantee you our local diner has no vegan muffins on the menu. Gluten-free maybe, but definitely not gluten-free and vegan.”

“Well, we have a lot of sitting and driving to do and I don’t want to feel gross. Heavy food makes me feel bloated.”

“How does someone make a gluten-free vegan muffin anyway?”

“Almond meal, oat flour, maybe some agave nectar.”

When Mike’s coffee and Angie’s lemon water arrived, he’d toasted Angie with his mug. “I take it back. That muffin sounds like the life of the party.”

For about an hour, they’d gone over the map, reviewing all the places they had visited. They had seen their fair share of young working girls, but nobody who resembled Nadine.

Mike had played the lure. He’d walked the streets while Angie kept a close watch from the car. Girls came to him. “
Hey baby, looking for something, baby? Need something, sweetheart
?” He was the perfect bait, with his khaki pants and patterned oxford shirt. No undercover cop would look so lame. He’d showed the girls a photograph of Nadine, and gave Angie the thumbs down sign after each encounter.

With luck, the security guard, Sean Musgrave, could give them a lead.

When five
AM
rolled around, Angie and Mike hit the bus counter at Union Station. She wore comfortable jeans and a loose fitting crew-neck top from Lululemon. Comfortable as she was, she felt as worn as her canvas sneakers. PI work, the real work, was a grind. No other way about it.

Angie tacked flyers on the pillars around the bus bays, knowing they probably wouldn’t stay up. She asked the people at the ticket counter if anyone had seen Nadine or recalled someone purchasing a ticket in her name.

By nine o’clock they were both hungry again.

“How’s that vegan muffin tiding you over?”

“
Gluten-free
vegan muffin,” Angie said.

They fueled up at the Starbucks inside Union Station and went looking for Musgrave. At noon, they were scheduled to connect with a DC detective who’d been talking to the team at NCMEC. Tracking down a runaway was a battle fought on multiple fronts, and Angie often felt like the general trying to bring disparate armies together.

Angie’s phone rang.
Carolyn Jessup
.

“Any news?” Her voice shook with longing. Carolyn knew everything Angie did, including the Musgrave lead.

“Nothing yet. We’re about to meet with Sean Musgrave.”

“Anything from Nadine’s cell phone?”

With Carolyn’s permission and the help of the phone company, Angie would be notified if any calls were made from Nadine’s phone. The
FIND
MY
PHONE
App was running, but so far there hadn’t been a single ping. Mike had already contacted everyone Nadine spoke with in the twenty-four-hour period before she’d vanished and had come up with blanks all around.

“She’s not coming back, is she?” Carolyn’s breathing turned heavy.

“Don’t say that,” Angie answered. “Until we find her, we don’t give up hope. That’s our rule.”

“I just have a feeling, I have a really bad feeling,” Carolyn said. “Last night I had this dream, this terrible dream that Nadine was floating in the house. She floated from room to room, her nightgown hanging down, but she was weightless. She looked white as the moon, and her skin was cold to the touch. I woke up screaming her name. I know it’s a sign. An omen. Something horrible has happened to her.”

Mike noticed Angie’s puzzled expression and pantomimed the motion of drinking from a flask.

Angie shooed him away. “When I know something, I’ll call. Stay strong for Nadine.” She ended the call.

“What was that about?” Mike asked.

“Nothing. Just Nadine’s mom being anxious, that’s all. It’s completely understandable.”

Angie was shaken, though she didn’t share any of those feelings with Mike. Something about Carolyn’s dream had gotten to her. She pictured another girl floating about a room somewhere in New York City, a little girl with a sad smile and a deformed ear. Angie couldn’t help but wonder if something horrible had happened to both girls.

CHAPTER 18

T
hey met Sean Musgrave in the food court in the bowels of Union Station. He was waiting for them in front of Kelly’s Cajun Grill as planned.

Musgrave was in his late twenties with a clean-shaven baby face and the solid build of a high school linebacker. He wore a white shirt with a couple official looking patches sewn on the sleeve. Pinned to his breast pocket was a bronze star reminiscent of something a sheriff might have. With him was a swarthy looking fellow with a goatee, dressed in a nice suit that didn’t look like it was bought at the mall.

He introduced himself as Vincent Cosco, general manager of the shops at Union Station and the guy in charge of mall security. Vincent led Angie and Mike through a locked metal door at the back of an alcove where the restrooms also were located. The shopping area’s nice lighting and visual amenities were evidently saved for places where customers actually hung out. Back where cash registers didn’t chime, it was a different aesthetic. The walls were bare concrete and matched the color and material of the floor. The lighting was dim but bright enough to show off the exposed ductwork, wires, and copper pipes overhead.

He took everyone to a windowless room with a coffeemaker that looked like a relic from some archeological dig, a sofa, rectangular table, and bridge chairs—all that wouldn’t be picked up curbside even if they had a
TAKE
ME
sign pinned to them—and a small fridge Angie wouldn’t open if Mike double-dog dared her.

Musgrave and Vincent sat on one side of the table, Angie and Mike on the other. She withdrew the pictures of Nadine from her bag and spread them on the table for Musgrave to study.

He looked them over, one by one, taking his time, being thoughtful. Angie knew nothing about his background, but he’d seen something, he remembered it, and he’d taken the time to contact someone who might care. That made him A-okay in her book.

“Yeah, that’s her all right.” Musgrave nodded.

Vincent picked up the pictures and studied the photos for himself. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” said Musgrave to his boss. “It was on the second floor, between Heydari Design and Jois Fragrance. I remember it because I thought the girl looked young and might be nicking.”

Vincent looked to Angie and Mike. “
Nicking
is a term we use for shoplifting.”

“But she wasn’t stealing?” Mike asked.

“Nah, at least I think she wasn’t,” Musgrave said. “A guy came up and talked to her for a while. I was watching because I had my eye on her anyway. I thought she knew him at first, but then he walked away. The girl stuck around, but then she took off after the guy. That’s the last I saw her.”

“And you remembered it that clearly?” Angie was dubious.

Musgrave nodded again. “Yeah. I mean, it was like a thing between them. It was . . . like a little story or something. I dunno. Guess it caught my eye and I remembered it.”

A mall cop observing a young girl closely didn’t give Angie the creep vibes. It was Musgrave’s job, and she believed his accounting of events.

“Do you remember when you saw her?”

Musgrave’s face went a little blank. “I’m not sure.”

“Do you remember doing anything that day? Buying anything?”

Musgrave gave this some thought. “Oh yeah. I went to Atlas Comics and bought the new Batman book. It came that day. That was weeks ago. Dang, time flies. I wouldn’t have thought it was that long ago, but it was.”

“What made you remember that?” Good old Mike, always probing.

“The cover had a young girl about Nadine’s age chained to a chair and the Joker was standing behind her, but all you could really see was his face. It was an awesome cover and it stuck in my mind because of that girl.”

Angie bought his explanation, no problem. She had a hard time not jumping out of her skin, though. “You wouldn’t happen to have the receipt, would you?”

Musgrave pursed his lips and fished out a wallet thick as a Bible from his back pocket. He looked a little embarrassed at its girth. “I collect paper like lint. I don’t really toss anything until I can’t sit comfortably anymore. Silly habit.”

For the next minute or so, he leafed through weeks of his life documented in the form of scrap paper. He unfolded every receipt he had stuffed in his wallet since goodness knows when and eventually handed Angie a slip of paper marked with faded blue ink. Angie confirmed it was a receipt from Atlas Comics, and the item purchased was indeed a Batman comic book. She glanced at the printed date . . . and saw it was dated six weeks ago.

“Is there surveillance footage near those stores I could look at?” It was hard to contain the excitement in her voice.

Musgrave turned to Vincent, who said, “Yeah, it’s all online. We purge the data every six months for storage reasons.”

“Could I see the footage, please?” Angie kept her expression as still as possible. She was trying to manage her own expectations. If this lead didn’t pan out, the disappointment would hit hard.

Vincent left the room and returned carrying a laptop computer. It did not take long to open the security camera system’s interface in a web browser.

“A few years back we would have had a tape library to sift through,” Vincent said. “Now it’s all digitized and easy to find footage. Mostly we use it for shoplifting cases, but we’ve certainly caught a number of other crimes on camera.” He returned his focus to the laptop screen.

Angie got up so she could peer over his shoulder. Mike did the same. Part of the interface was a map marking the various locations of installed cameras.

“Okay . . . okay. So, we’re looking for the camera near Heydari Design and Jois Fragrance. That would be . . . ah yeah, here. SF-R2R. That’s second floor, rear, second to the right.” Vincent tapped the location of the camera and entered the date March 18th. Today was the 29
^th
day of April.

Angie said, “It would be sometime before six o’clock because that’s when Sean bought the Batman comic.”

Vincent shot Musgrave a slightly disapproving look. “Your shifts go to seven.”

Musgrave shrugged off the rebuke. “I didn’t want it to sell out. Anyway, it would be late afternoon because I bought it pretty soon after I saw her. That’s why it was so fresh in my mind and stuck there.”

“So let’s watch from four to six. See what we see,” Mike said.

Vincent queued it up. The black and white recording played in a window the size of a YouTube video. Taken from a high angle. the image resolution wasn’t great and the playback a bit grainy, but the quality was good enough to make out faces.

“Can you speed it up?” Angie asked. The anticipation was too much.

After fifteen minutes at four times normal speed, Mike shouted, “Stop!”

Vincent froze the playback. There she was. Nadine Jessup, dressed in a pair of jeans, sneakers, and a low-cut top with a backpack slung across her shoulders.

Angie’s heartbeat picked up. No feeling quite matched the adrenaline rush from closing in on a runaway. Her skin prickled and tingled. The excitement was palpable on her tongue, down her neck and arms, an energy all its own. She noted the time on the video playback. 5:15 in the afternoon. “Advance it slowly, please.”

Vincent clicked a button on the interface.

Nadine moved in slow motion. After a few a moments, a man carrying a bag from Heydari Design appeared in the frame.

Angie studied him carefully. Tall, handsome, balding, but in a way that suited him. He wore a nice-looking suit, Oxford shirt underneath. The black and white video meant she couldn’t tell the color of either. He had a conversation with Nadine, but the angle was wrong for lip reading. Angie knew people who could do it if she had a better quality video. They must have been talking about shopping because the man took out a scarf from his Heydari bag. The man and Nadine chatted for a moment, presumably about the scarf, before the man put it back in the bag.

The conversation continued. What could they be saying to each other, Angie wondered. The man took something out of his wallet—it looked like a business card—and handed it to Nadine, who took it a little apprehensively.

Angie studied Nadine’s body language carefully. At first, she had seemed a little unsure, a bit defensive, but warmed up as the conversation went on. She began leaning toward him. Her arms had uncrossed and showed openness, receptiveness to whatever he was discussing with her.

At some point, Musgrave wandered into the frame and soon wandered out. Angie saw him right away, though he pointed himself out in case anyone had missed him. Something the man said to Nadine appeared to make her anxious . . . or embarrassed perhaps. She looked to the ground, shifting her weight from foot to foot. She shrugged. She studied the card he gave to her.

Who was this man?
Angie wondered. What did he want with a sixteen-year-old girl? What the hell were they talking about? Angie wished the surveillance footage also captured sound. The man gestured with his hands and seemed to be asking a question of Nadine. Then he paused, took out his cell phone, and began a conversation with someone else.

Musgrave wandered back into the frame. He lingered, appearing to notice the encounter between the older man and younger girl before he wandered away again, but they took no notice of him. The man on the phone tossed his head back, and even without sound it was obvious he gave a little laugh. Then the man put his phone away and returned his gaze to Nadine.

More conversation ensued, but the girl still looked unsure. The man’s body language was harder for Angie to read. Disappointment, perhaps? The two shook hands, and the man turned around and walked away.

Angie watched with bated breath. What would Nadine do? Could this be a pivotal moment that would forever change her life?