Jilliane Hoffman (7 page)

11

‘I thought you were gonna try and sleep in,’ LuAnn said into the mirror, mouth open and mascara brush in hand, when he stepped into the bathroom.

‘Try’s the magic word. Who the hell can sleep through that?’ Bobby grabbed the tube of Crest off the counter, watching as LuAnn went back to finishing her face. Her short robe clung to the curves of her damp body, glistening with freesia-scented lotion. Against the stark white cotton, her muscular legs looked even more tan than they normally did. The robe was slightly open in the front, tied loosely at the waist, exposing the pale curve of one of her breasts, her flat, toned stomach. At thirty-nine, his wife still had an incredible body. Just looking at her standing there, doing her make-up, stirred things in him, both emotionally and physically. LuAnn always had that power over him, from the moment they’d met under the blinding fluorescents of Jamaica Hospital’s trauma room. It was her face that had calmed him, her words that had made sense as he lay on that cold, steel table, bleeding out from the gunshot wound that had severed his brachial artery. Bobby hadn’t remembered much when he’d woken up days later in a hospital room full of anxious buddies in NYPD blue jackets, still groggy from all the drugs and weakened by the infection that had routed his body, but he couldn’t forget her – the dark blonde with the Midori green eyes and light, melodic Southern drawl. He could still hear her whispers in his head, the bright lights of the trauma room backlighting her head like a halo.

Officer Dees …

Dees …

Bobby, come on, now
.

Don’t be going nowhere on me, Bobby …

Just stay right here … right here … with me … stay
…

He knew her the instant she walked into his room the morning he was being discharged. She had an angelic face that perfectly suited her name, he’d thought. LuAnn Briggs, the tag on her uniform read. LuAnn – sweet, simple, soft, Southern, delicate, bubbly, delicious. When she’d sat on the edge of his hospital bed and explained how she wasn’t even supposed to have been working the night he was brought in, how it was only her second day in the ER, how she’d checked on him every night when he was in the coma, he knew his life would forever change. He proposed three months later. They were married that same year, ten days before Christmas. This December would mark eighteen years. He shook the distant memories out of his head and turned back to the sink.

‘You should talk to Chet,’ LuAnn said, waving the mascara brush in his direction. ‘I have to get up, but you don’t. It’s not right on a Sunday, especially with your insomnia.’

He squirted a gob of Crest on to the brush. ‘Helen told me he’s OCD.’

‘That’s no excuse.’

Bobby nodded in the mirror, staring at his own reflection. He looked like shit. The silver hairs in his morning gruff looked like they were beginning to outnumber the brown ones. And the laugh lines that feathered out from his blue eyes had apparently decided to take up permanent residence – whether or not he had anything to laugh about. What turned distinguished into disheveled? He was forty by, what? A couple of months? Daily five-mile runs and twice weekly trips to the gym kept the stress at bay and the pounds off, but he knew the mileage was definitely starting to show. It was only a matter of time. The fact that he just didn’t sleep any more wasn’t helping. The past year alone had aged him ten.

LuAnn dropped the mascara into her make-up bag, and leaned against the sink, pulling her robe closed and folding her arms across her chest. ‘Any reason you’re all dressed up?’

Even on that rare Sunday Bobby did go to church, it was usually in jeans and a T-shirt. The pressed black slacks, white dress shirt and gray silk tie slung around his neck were a clear indication something was up. No one had died and nobody was getting married – it wasn’t too hard to figure out he was headed to a scene. He wiped his mouth on a hand towel, reached for the shaving cream and turned on the hot water. Steam fogged the mirror. ‘I gotta go in,’ he said quietly.

‘I thought you were taking some time off this week,’ she tried.

‘I was. But I gotta go in.’

She stared blankly at him in the mirror, her face blurring from the steam, waiting for the rest of the explanation that he knew she didn’t want to hear.

He turned to face her. ‘There’s a kid,’ he explained softly. ‘She didn’t come home from school Friday.’

LuAnn said nothing. She just kept staring straight at him. Through him. Like the lyrics go from a bad song, there once was a time when he could feel himself getting lost in those green eyes. Eyes that just made you want to kiss her when you looked at them long enough. Now they stared at him, cold and empty. Concealor barely hid the dark circles and the stress fractures that feathered out from the corners. They were standing only a couple of feet apart, but there might as well have been a mountain between them in that small bathroom.

‘It looks like a runaway.’

‘Oh,’ she muttered with a blink and headed past him into the bedroom.

He shaved while she got dressed in silence. He stepped back into the bedroom just as she was tying her shoes on the bench by the foot of the bed. He finished buttoning his shirt and doing his tie, then slipped his badge around his neck and clipped the gun belt to his side. Out of respect, he waited until she went back into the bathroom and out of sight before he unlocked the gun safe, took out the Glock and slid it into the holster. He knew it got her upset to see it. It always had, even when he’d gone back into uniform after his shoulder had healed. He was probably the only guy on the NYPD back then whose girl
wasn’t
turned on by the fact that her boyfriend was a cop. It wasn’t that LuAnn hated guns or was a gun-control nut, it was just that she hated to see
him
with a gun. She said it reminded her what he had to do all day, and why it was he needed a gun to do it.

He slipped on a sports jacket and walked back into the bathroom. She was standing in front of the mirror just staring at the image before her. As he came up behind her, she started to mechanically brush her wet hair. His hand found her shoulder and rubbed it gently. ‘Don’t work too hard. See you tonight, Belle,’ he said into the mirror, then kissed her softly on the cheek.

Belle, for Belle of the ball. His sweet Southern Belle. LuAnn just nodded and kept brushing. Her skin felt cold and slightly damp, like the inside of a window pane on a snowy day.

He walked out of the bathroom, grabbed his car keys and cell off the nightstand, and headed down the hall, past the framed family pictures that covered practically every inch of the honey-colored walls. The last door at the end was slightly ajar, a battered street sign affixed to it warned ‘Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted’. Inside the bubble-gum pink room, the morning sun warmed the dozens of teddy bears posed neatly atop a metallic silver comforter. A stack of laundered, folded clothes sat on the desk chair, still waiting to be hung up. He stopped to pull the door closed, his hand lingering on the cold doorknob for just a second. A million thoughts rushed him and he quickly pushed them back out of his head.

As he rounded the banister and hurried down the stairs, he licked his dry lips. They tasted salty. That’s when he knew for sure she’d been crying.

12

No media trucks, no mob of flashing patrol cars, no flock of hovering ’copters.

That was the first thing Bobby noticed as he pulled his Grand Am in front of the tired white ranch. Atop a sagging roof, a faded blue tarp flapped in the breeze, a bike lay propped against a plastic car port. Down the block, a group of kids laughed and joked as they skateboarded into air off home-made ramps. Obviously the failure of some teenager to come home after a weekend of partying was not on anyone’s radar.

‘Hey there, Dapper Dan,’ Zo called, tapping on the car’s back window. He walked up to the driver’s side and leaned in, a toothpick stuck in the corner of his mouth, his eyes hidden behind Ray-Bans. He wore khakis and a light blue dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, the collar open and tie loose, like he was about to work on a car or deliver a baby. It was obvious Zo felt more comfortable in flip-flops and shorts. He fingered the lapel of Bobby’s sports jacket. ‘That real polyester?’

‘Very funny. I’d lie and say it’s Armani, but the joke would be lost on you. What’s with the stick, Kojak?’ Bobby asked, opening the door and stepping out.

Zo sighed. ‘I quit smoking.’

‘Yeah? Since when?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘I thought you were trying to quit drinking.’

‘Nah. I gave up on that. Camilla said she’d rather have me drunk than dead of cancer. I’ve been told I’m a lot of fun at a party.’

‘I’ll second that.’

‘I’ve eaten a whole fucking box since last night. Not a single butt, though.’ Zo spit the gnawed toothpick to the ground and popped another one into his mouth.

‘What about those patches? They’re supposed to work.’

Zo pushed up the sleeve of his shirt. Three flesh-colored squares dotted a muscular bicep the size of Bobby’s thigh. The silver hair on Zo’s buzzed head might betray his forty-five years, but his body sure as hell didn’t. He trained the new agents in tactical defense, headed up the Special Response Team – FDLE’s version of SWAT – and was very much a physically commanding and intimidating presence both in the office and out in the field. When Zo said, ‘Jump!’ most guys simply asked, ‘How high, sir?’

Bobby shook his head. ‘In other words, don’t fuck with you today.’ He looked at the house. ‘OK. What am I walking into?’

‘Just got here myself. Haven’t been inside yet. Waiting on Veso. By the way, don’t hang up on me again,’ Zo said, with a frown and a wag of his finger as he pulled out a notepad from his pocket. He leaned back against the hood of Bobby’s car. ‘Elaine Louise Emerson. DOB, 8/27/96. Brown hair, brown eyes, five feet tall, about ninety-five pounds. A seventh grader at Sawgrass Middle.’ He held up a color copy of what was obviously a school portrait of a young, lanky girl seated behind a desk, her hands folded in front of her, with long, frizzy hair the color of coffee ice cream. Light brown eyes were hidden behind glasses that were just a little too big for her face. She was smiling, but didn’t show her teeth, which probably meant she either hated them because they were crooked, or she had braces. She didn’t necessarily look like a geek, but she was definitely in that awkward adolescent stage of not being a little girl any more, and yet still years away from becoming a woman. ‘That was the fax that came in this morning,’ Zo finished, handing him the copy.

‘August twenty-seven, huh?’ Bobby said. ‘That’s my birthday.’

‘And what a party we had. I think you stayed out till, what? Eleven?’

‘Is this recent?’ Bobby asked, ignoring the jab. ‘She looks young for thirteen.’ ‘That’s from fifth grade, I’m told.’

‘Elementary school? Two years is a world of difference at this age, ya know.’

‘Mom’s looking for something more recent.’

Bobby thought of LuAnn and the pictures she covered every wall in the house with. The library of photo albums that she kept in the family room. If you stacked them all together and flipped through them fast enough, it would probably run like a flip-book movie of their daughter, Katy’s, whole life. There would be no missing pieces. No empty gap of memories for two years that she’d have to go searching for …

‘I’m told she’s inside and she’s pretty pissed off,’ Zo added.

‘At who?’

‘The kid, the cops, the husband – you name it. You’re up next,’ he warned. ‘Debra Marie LaManna, age thirty-six. She works at Ring-a-Ling Answering Service in Tamarac.’

‘Dad?’

‘Stepdad, aka hubby number three. Todd Anthony LaManna, age forty-four. CarMax Salesman of the Month,’ Zo said, raising an eyebrow. ‘In fact, he’s working right now.’

‘I’m guessing he’s not too worried about little Elaine,’ Bobby said.

‘I’m thinking that’d be a good guess.’

‘Real dad?’

‘California somewhere. No one’s heard from him in a couple of years. Mom’s got three kids: Liza Emerson, age sixteen, Bradley LaManna, son of our used car salesman, is eight, and Elaine, the one who’s missing, is thirteen by, as you can attest, a couple of weeks. Latch-key kids.’

‘Anyone call the hospitals?’

‘Done. Nothing.’

Bobby looked over at the weathered and faded cardboard boxes stacked up along the side of the house. Moving boxes. ‘How long have they all been living here?’

‘Both Mom and Step changed their DL address to this house in June. They’re renting. Records place them before that in another rental in Ramblewood, a couple of miles from here.’

‘Any history?’

‘Not with this kid. But cops have been out to both houses a few times. Once for a domestic and a few times for the sixteen-year-old. She’s been in trouble for drinking, marijuana possession, truancy. The latest last month was a burglary. It was dropped to trespassing on school property.’

‘Ouch. A bad apple?’

‘Spoils the whole friggin’ barrel,’ Zo replied. ‘Sis has also hit the road before. Miami-Dade picked her up on an NCIC missing juvi report a few months ago down in Little Havana, hanging with some boys from the Latin Kings at two in the morning.’

NCIC stood for the National Crime Information Center, a nationwide criminal information system for law enforcement. ‘That’s not good company to be keeping,’ Bobby replied, kicking the curb. The lawn was overgrown by a couple of weeks. The edging longer than that. ‘Who’s working it inside?’

‘Springs GIU responded last night when Mom finally decided to call it in.’ GIU stood for the General Investigations Unit, an all-purpose detective squad. ‘Bill Dagher and Troy Bigley. You know ’em?’

Bobby shook his head. He knew most every cop in South Florida who worked Crimes Against Children or Special Victims. The fact that he hadn’t heard those two names before probably said more than if he had.

‘They peg the kid for a runaway. The Springs chief called Trenton this morning for assistance to clear it. You know, after the shit storm that hit last year with that Jarvis girl, CYA is the name of the game in this town.’

CYA as in Cover Your Ass. Bobby nodded. Normally, only endangered missing kids (i.e. snatched) were investigated by FDLE, not runaways. With fifty thousand kids hitting the pavement each year in the state, there just wasn’t enough manpower to go looking for every kid who didn’t want to be found. The locals usually handled their own, calling in FDLE and the Clearinghouse for assistance on abductions, endangered runaways and exceptional cases. But then came the Jarvis debacle.

Makala Jarvis was fifteen when she was first reported missing to the Coral Springs PD by her grandmother. Two days after cops took the report, Mom called, claiming Makala had returned home. Without verification, the case was closed and Makala’s name was removed from NCIC as a missing juvenile, even though Grandma kept insisting Makala hadn’t really come back home. It was two years before a school resource officer finally listened to the old woman and put Makala’s name back into NCIC. Within a month, the skeletal remains of a young female found stuffed in a suitcase and floating in the St John’s River eighteen months prior were finally identified. Makala Jarvis had died from blunt-force trauma to the head. The subsequent homicide investigation revealed that Makala had been scheduled to testify against Momma’s boyfriend in a domestic violence case just two weeks before Grandma initially reported her missing. A conviction would’ve violated boyfriend’s parole and sent him back to Florida State Prison for twenty years. Mom didn’t want to lose her meal ticket, and since cops don’t go looking for people who aren’t missing, Makala’s name wasn’t even on the list of possible victims back when her body was fished out of the water. She sat, unidentified, in a black evidence bag on a shelf at the Medical Examiner’s Office in Duval County for almost two years.

The fallout from Jarvis was bad. The reporting Coral Springs detective was fired, virtually the whole General Investigations Unit was reassigned to road patrol, and the department took a beating in the press. And a new departmental policy was instituted: Cover Your Ass. But for that new policy, most likely Bobby would never have even heard the name Elaine Emerson. ‘Assistance to clear it’ was code for ‘we already investigated, just sign off on the report already.’

‘Where was stepdad on Friday?’ Bobby asked.

‘Out with the boys. Or girls. The Mrs says he stumbled home around three. Stumbled was actually my word. Pulling from personal experience, I think most people are stumbling when they get home at three in the morning.’

‘Anybody interview him yet?’

‘Not yet. He got home too late last night and left too early this morning. Given the shit he’s had to put up with from stepdaughter
numero uno
, maybe he’s expecting the same from this one, and thinks, “Fuck that, I’m going to work and getting the hell out of Dodge.”’

‘One rotten apple …’ Bobby said softly.

‘Spoils the whole friggin’ barrel.’ Zo flipped his notebook closed.

Bobby looked at the overgrown lawn, the overflowing garbage, the house in need of a paint job. Didn’t look like Todd LaManna liked to come home much at all. ‘Your boy Veso’s late, Boss,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘’Fraid he’s gonna have to hear what he missed out on at briefing,’ he called out as he started up the cement walk. ‘The morning’s getting away from us and I wanna find out where the hell this kid is.’