Heartstopper (6 page)

Judy reached into her red leather purse. “I have this one. She never liked it. She says it makes her nose look too big, but it’s always been one of my favorites because she looks so happy.” She removed the small, color photograph from its red leather frame and handed it across the desk.

John smiled at the image of the pretty girl with the long, reddish blond hair. Both mother and daughter were right, he thought. The picture did make Liana’s nose look bigger than it was, but her smile was wide and genuine. She did indeed look happy. He hoped she was somewhere smiling right now. He didn’t think so, he realized glumly, pocketing the picture. “I’ll take this over to Chester’s, maybe stop at a few other places, show the picture around, see if anybody’s seen her. If she’s not back by morning, we’ll make up some flyers, post them around town.”

“Should we alert the media?” Howard asked.

“That won’t be necessary at this time.” John almost smiled. There was no real media in Torrance, other than a biweekly newsletter that consisted mainly of local produce prices, advertisements, and obituaries. Most people in the area received either the
Sun-Sentinel
out of Fort Lauderdale or the
Miami Herald.
If Liana still hadn’t turned up by the
weekend, he’d alert both those papers, as well as the sheriff’s departments in each city. If necessary, he’d contact the FBI.

“Do you think she might have been kidnapped?” Judy asked, again reading his mind.

“Well, it’s been over twenty-four hours and you haven’t received any ransom notes,” John told her. “I think you would have by now.”

“What if it’s not money they’re after,” Judy continued, speaking more to herself than to the sheriff. “What if some lunatic took my daughter, what if he—”

“Judy, for God’s sake,” her husband interrupted.

“Let’s try to think positive thoughts,” John advised, although positive thoughts wouldn’t do Liana Martin any good if, in fact, some lunatic
had
grabbed her. He made a mental note to ask everyone he interviewed tonight if they’d noticed any strangers in the area in the last few weeks, and he’d tell his officers to do the same. “In the meantime,” he said, coming around the desk, “you go home, and try to stay calm. I’ll call you after I’ve checked around a bit. Here’s my cell number. Phone me right away if you think of anything else. Don’t worry about what time it is.”

“What if she’s hurt? What if she’s lying on the side of a road somewhere?”

“We’ll organize a search party in the morning,” John told Judy Martin, knowing that if her daughter was, in fact, lying on the side of the road anywhere in the area, the odds were good she wouldn’t be there for long. There was a good reason they called it Alligator Alley.

He ushered Howard and Judy Martin out of his office, promising again to call them as soon as he’d checked things out. “We’ll find her,” he promised, as another troubling image seized his brain. He recalled another woman who’d sat in his office approximately one month ago, hands twisting in her lap, eyes brimming with tears, as she told essentially the same story. He’d dismissed her concerns—the
woman was from nearby Hendry County, and therefore technically not his problem, and she’d admitted her daughter was a habitual runaway and drug addict who often turned tricks to support her habit. He hadn’t given the girl’s disappearance much thought, but as he watched Liana Martin’s distraught parents get into their car and drive off, he couldn’t help but wonder if the two disappearances were somehow connected. “You’ve been watching too much television,” he scoffed, trying not to picture his own daughter, Amber, her skinny body lying twisted in a ditch by the side of the road, her neck broken by some lunatic’s monstrous hands.

Then he walked purposefully from the room.

T
orrance wasn’t so much a town as a series of isolated streets that had multiplied and merged over the years, a loose conglomeration of farms and orchards and swampland, whose four thousand, mostly white, Christian inhabitants encompassed all socioeconomic levels, from the scandalously rich to the heartbreakingly poor. It was located about an hour’s drive west of Fort Lauderdale, just past the junction between Highway 27 and that strip of I-75 known as Alligator Alley. Its small downtown core consisted of several banks, a post office, a pharmacy, a few restaurants, a store that sold hunting and fishing equipment, a pawnshop, a women’s clothing store, an insurance agency, and a legal firm whose slogan, hand-painted across the front window in frosted silver letters, promised its all-purpose legal team—a father, his son, and their much put-upon assistant—were HAPPY TO SERVE, WILLING TO SUE, HOPING TO SETTLE. The rest of the town circled this main drag like a series of expanding ripples. Nearby was the Merchant Mall, with its grocery store, movie theater, tattoo parlor, and clothing stores full of all things denim. Down the way was a McDonald’s, an Arby’s, and a KFC. There was also Chester’s.

Chester’s was one of those places common to every small town in America. Located about a quarter of a mile from the
main strip, it was relatively unassuming on the outside, its simple wood exterior painted a quiet shade of gray and trimmed in white. Inside it was big and dark and noisy, the noise accentuated by the high, wood-beamed ceilings and dark-stained wooden floors, as well as by the constant clamor coming from the pool tables in the back room. Waitresses in skimpy, pink shorts and provocative, white T-shirts with CHESTER’S stretched in hot-pink letters across their breasts weaved their way from the large, neon-lit bar at the front through the polished wood booths and tables in the middle to the game room at the back, with trays of beer in their hands and frozen smiles on their faces. Chester’s, named for its creator, a wily, white-haired septuagenarian who cooked up the best hamburgers in town, was always packed. It seemed everyone in town frequented Chester’s, although Chester, himself, had become increasingly reclusive over the years and now preferred to stay holed up in the kitchen, having largely turned over the day-to-day management of his establishment to Cal Hamilton. The verdict on Cal Hamilton among the local citizenry was decidedly mixed. Some people—mostly men—found him a swaggering bore; others—mostly women—found him self-confident and sexy. The latter likely hadn’t seen the bruises covering his pretty wife’s face and arms, although there were always women who were attracted to the so-called bad boys, who failed to recognize them for the often dangerous bullies they were, and who convinced themselves they were different, that they could transform the bad boy into a good man.

John Weber pushed his way through the heavy, outside double doors and squinted into the darkness for a familiar face. Torrance was full of all kinds of people. What was one person’s idea of heaven was another’s idea of hell, which made Torrance just like every other city—big or small—in America. Or the world, for that matter, John Weber thought.

Hell is other people
, he remembered his wife telling him once, although he couldn’t recall the occasion. He’d made the mistake of repeating this sentiment during a strained conversation with Amber’s drama teacher, Gordon Lipsman, at a parent-teacher meeting last fall, and the man had nodded his big, condescending head and said he was
très
impressed that the local sheriff could quote Jean-Paul Sartre. The man had then expounded on “the existentialist doctrine” for the better part of half an hour. Luckily he’d been pulled away by another parent just as John had been weighing the consequences of pulling out his gun and shooting the pompous ass between his disconcertingly crossed eyes.

“Looking for someone, Sheriff, or can I show you to a table?”

John turned toward the familiar voice, his hands making fists at his sides as he absorbed Cal Hamilton’s insolently handsome face. It was the kind of face—dark, brooding eyes as hard as pebbles, in sharp contrast to soft, wavy blond hair; a small pug nose; full round cheeks; large, snarling lips covering a mouthful of surprisingly tiny teeth, like niblets of corn—that John Weber always wanted to punch, although the muscles bulging beneath and below the upturned short sleeves of Cal’s black T-shirt warned him to keep things nice and friendly. Cal was rumored to have put more than one man in the hospital during his days as a bouncer in a Miami nightclub, although he had no arrest record or outstanding warrants against him. At least none that John had been able to locate. “I was wondering if you’d seen Liana Martin in the last several days,” John said.

“Liana Martin?” Cal’s eyes narrowed at the mention of the name.

John pulled Liana’s picture out of his shirt pocket. He found it interesting that you could actually see the effort it took some people to think. Some, like Cal Hamilton, narrowed their eyes. Others scrinched their brows and pushed
their lips into a lemon-sucking pout. Sometimes they tapped the tip of their nose. Sometimes they did all these things, in sequence or all at once. “Apparently, Chester’s is one of her favorite haunts.”

“Really? Well, let’s have a look.” Cal took the picture, carried it over to the large bar area, and examined it under the red and gold neon lights. “Oh, sure. I recognize her. She comes in all the time with her friends.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

Cal shook his head. A wave of blond hair fell across his wide forehead. “Weekend, I guess.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“Probably Saturday,” Cal said, after another narrowing of his eyes. “Why? Is she in some kind of trouble?”

John thought he detected a note of hopeful anticipation in Cal’s voice, as if the notion of a young girl in trouble appealed to his baser instincts. He decided to give the man the benefit of the doubt. “Nobody’s seen her since yesterday afternoon.”

Cal shrugged his indifference. “You know kids,” he scoffed, returning the picture to John’s waiting palm. “She’s probably shacking up with her boyfriend.”

“Her boyfriend doesn’t know where she is.”

Cal lowered his chin and raised his eyes, which John took to indicate skepticism. “Well, I don’t think I’d worry too much about her. My guess is she’ll be back in a couple of days. Mark my words.”

John almost laughed. Did people really say things like
Mark my words
anymore? “I hope you’re right.”

“You check with her friends?”

An involuntary sigh escaped John’s lips. He and several deputies had spent the last two hours talking with most of Liana Martin’s friends. The answers to his questions were the same in every house they’d visited. No one had seen the girl since yesterday afternoon. No one had any idea where
she might be. Everyone was worried. It wasn’t like Liana to take off without telling anyone, they all agreed.

“Why don’t you let me treat you to a beer, Sheriff?” Cal was offering now. “You look like you could use a cold one.”

John was about to decline the offer, then thought better of it. Cal was right. A nice, cold beer was exactly what he needed, and technically, he was no longer on duty. Officially, his day had ended when he’d left his office, and everything he’d done since then, the driving through the widely scattered residential streets and side roads of Torrance, the interviews with Liana’s friends and neighbors, had been on his own time. He’d called home once, but Pauline had refused to pick up the phone—the wonders of caller ID—and when he’d finally reached Amber on her cell, she’d told him her mother was watching a movie on TV and had given strict instructions she was not to be disturbed. He asked his daughter whether she’d had dinner, and she said she wasn’t hungry. John decided to order a couple of hamburgers to take home just in case he could persuade Amber to join him, although he knew in his heart it was a lost cause. Hell, that was probably the main reason he’d put on so much weight in the last few years. The less his daughter ate, the more he felt compelled to ingest, as if he were eating for two. The gaunter his daughter’s cheeks became, the fuller his got; the flatter her stomach, the rounder his own. If she didn’t start eating soon, he was liable to explode. “I’ll have a Bud Light,” he told Cal. “And give me a couple burgers to go. Make that bacon cheeseburgers,” he amended.

“Have a seat.” Cal waved toward a recently emptied booth to the left of the bar. “A Bud Light for the sheriff,” he instructed a red-haired waitress as she wiggled past. “I’ll give your order to Chester.”

John tucked Liana’s picture back into his shirt pocket as he watched Cal strut toward the kitchen, his thumbs thrust into the side pockets of his black denim jeans. Something
about the studied swagger of his hips—as if he knew he was being watched—rubbed John the wrong way. Cal and his wife had moved to Torrance two years ago, which was unusual, to say the least, considering that neither had family in the area, and neither had a job when they arrived. Why would any young couple move to an isolated community like Torrance unless they were running away from something, or hiding from someone? John had briefly considered the possibility they were in the witness protection program, but ultimately decided this was unlikely. People in the witness protection program usually did their best to maintain a low profile. And although Cal’s wife, Fiona, was rarely seen out in public, unless glued to her husband’s side, Cal, himself, was anything but shy. Indeed, most of the rumors regarding Cal Hamilton’s wild past could usually be traced directly back to one source: Cal Hamilton.

Unless, of course, he was lying.

“Hi, there, Sheriff,” a voice cooed, as long, bright red fingernails deposited a tall glass of cold beer on the table in front of him. “I understand you’ve had a rough day.”

John immediately pulled the picture of Liana Martin out of his breast pocket, handed it to the waitress with the preternaturally red hair. “Have you seen this girl in here recently?”

The waitress leaned over to get a better look. Her breasts, with their carefully displayed cleavage, brushed against the side of his cheek. He felt an unexpected stirring below his belt and almost knocked over his drink. “Careful with that beer there, honey,” the waitress said, and John winced at this easy familiarity from a girl young enough to be his daughter. “Yeah, I’ve seen her. But not for a few days. Why? Something happen to her?”