Little Girl Gone (7 page)

“Around midnight. A lot of hours between then and morning for someone to light a match.”

They all fell silent, then Tooney said, “I still want to see it.”

Logan frowned, but nodded. What choice did he have?

He led them back to Pacific Avenue, glancing over his shoulder a couple of times to make sure he wasn’t walking too fast. They were keeping up just fine, his dad and Barney at the head of the group and Jerry at the rear. Tooney was in the middle, surrounded by the Cambria Marine Corp.

Some of the excitement on Pacific had dissipated by the time they reached the spot where Logan had been standing earlier. Two of the fire trucks had left, and it looked like the police were getting ready to open one of the traffic lanes.

 “Don’t tell me that’s it,” Harp said. He was staring at the pile of burned wreckage across the street.

“I did say it burned down.”

“But you said you were inside it last night. That it was empty.”

“What part of this aren’t you understanding, Dad? Do you see the fire engine? Do you see the police? This only happened a few hours ago.”

“So you
were
able to get inside,” Barney said.

“Do you guys think I was lying?”

“No, of course not.”

“Definitely not,” Jerry added.

Logan looked at his father, waiting.

When Harp finally felt his gaze, he said, “What?”

Logan shook his head. “Nothing.”

Tooney hadn’t said a word since they got there, his full attention on what was left of the bungalow.

Logan squeezed by one of the marines, and stepped beside him. “You okay?”

“There was nothing inside?” Tooney asked.

“No. It was spotless.”

“Do you think this fire could have been an accident?”

“No way to know that for sure.”

Tooney turned to Logan, his eyes suddenly hard. “I did not ask what you know. I ask what you think.”

Looking back at the house, Logan said, “It seems kind of convenient to be an accident.” He could feel Tooney’s gaze a moment longer, then the older man turned away.

“What are you going to do now?”

Logan took a breath, and let his eyes drift along the perimeter the police had set up. It was like a big, half-circle jutting out from the properties neighboring the scene of the fire, and curving across the street to their side. It was marked off with yellow tape held in place by police cars strategically parked in the middle of the road.

“I got the names of two of your daughter’s friends. I’m going to see if either of them might know anything helpful.”

“Who are these friends?”

“A guy named Anthony, and a girl,” Logan said, then paused to recall her name. “Lara Mendonca.”

Tooney nodded.

“You know them?”

“I’ve heard Elyse mention them before.”

“Do you know Anthony’s last name?”

Tooney’s nod turned into a shake. “No. If she say, I don’t remember.”

That would have been helpful, but not the end of the world. “I was thinking I could get it from their—”

Logan fell silent as he caught a glimpse of a man in the crowd across the street, beyond the taped-off area on the far side.

“Tooney,” he said. “How’s your eyesight?”

“My eyesight? It’s okay.”

“Very casually, I want you to look at that group of people on the other side of the emergency crews. There’s a man near the wall, wearing a dark sports coat.” Logan waited until Tooney was facing the right direction. “Do you see him?”

There was no immediate response.

“Tooney,” Logan urged.

“I see him.”

By the tremble in his voice, Logan knew Tooney had also made the same connection he had.

“Get back to the cars,” Logan said loud enough for them all to hear.

“What’s going on?” Dev asked. He seemed to be the Marine in charge.

“Take them someplace where they can get some breakfast,” Logan whispered. “But make sure no one follows you.”

“Trouble?”

“Possibly.”

Dev nodded. “Let’s go guys.”

Harp looked at Logan. “Why? We just got here.”

“I don’t have time to get into it,” Logan told him. “Just do what Dev says.”

“What are you going to—”

“Dad, do it!”

His father’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “Okay. Sure. If you think we should.”

As soon as they walked off, Logan glanced back at the man across the street. The same man who’d held a gun to Tooney’s head the previous morning.

11

There was only about a ten-foot section of sidewalk blocked off on Logan’s side of the street. He moved over to the tape, then checked the man again. The guy was focused on the emergency crews, and had apparently still not noticed him. As soon as Logan was sure no cops or firemen were looking in his direction, he ducked under the tape.

“Hey, you’re not supposed to be in there,” a woman in the crowd said.

Logan ignored her, and moved with purpose across the short bit of no man’s land to the tape on the other side, then ducked under and joined the handful of people standing there. He then checked to make sure Tooney’s assailant was still in the same place.

Only he wasn’t.

Logan stepped off the curb, searching the crowd where the man had been standing. Suddenly the assailant emerged from the back of the crowd, took a quick look at Logan, then sprinted away down the sidewalk. Logan swept around an older couple watching the action from the middle of the road, then rushed after the man.

It was immediately apparent the guy had not chosen the best escape route. There were no cross streets or driveways on the east side Pacific Avenue in that area, so he and Logan were hemmed in between homes and apartments on the right, and a near solid line of parked cars on the left. And while the man may have been in pretty good shape, it was doubtful he was a runner like Logan. With every stride the distance between them shrank.

Forty feet, thirty-five, thirty.

Then, just a little ahead of them, a pickup truck pulled out from the curb, creating an opening in the wall of parked cars. The man seized the opportunity, and shot through it into the street, crossing at a diagonal to the other side where there were plenty of cross streets to chose from.

As Logan neared the opening, the gate of one of the properties opened, and a woman emerged, stepping directly into his path. He twisted to his left, grazing a parked sedan at the curb, to get around her.

“Hey, watch it!” she yelled.

Having lost some of the ground he’d gained, Logan raced through the opening as fast as he could. Crossing the street, he noticed a police car speeding down Pacific, its lights flashing. The job at Aaron’s place apparently done, some other crisis in the city was in need of the cops’ presence.

Ahead, Tooney’s attacker ducked off Pacific onto what turned out to be a block-long pedestrian street with houses lining either side. Logan dug deep, attempting to once more close the gap, but was only halfway down the wide walking path when the man turned to the right at the end of the block, and moved out of sight.

He turned just barely in time to see the man veer onto a narrow walkway between two of the houses on the left, and disappear again.

Logan followed right behind him, closing the distance between them to twenty feet as he burst out onto the concrete pathway of the Venice Boardwalk that ran along the front of the houses. On the other side of the path was a strip of grass, then the wide sandy beach.

The man had gone to the right, so Logan did the same. Unlike the roads they’d run on to this point, there were others around now—joggers and walkers and people with dogs. Logan weaved in and out, anticipating those in front of him, and trying not to get tangled up in any leashes.

To Logan’s left, the grassy strip that separated the path from the sand gave way to a mostly empty parking lot. Ahead, he could see the road that led into the lot, and thought there was at least a fifty percent chance the man would turn down it and head away from the beach. But when the guy got there, he kept going straight.

That was fine by Logan. The fewer turns they took, the quicker he would catch him.

As he swung around a middle-aged man walking a border collie, intending to cross the street and continue down the concrete boardwalk, a police car pulled across his path, and slammed on its brakes.

Logan cut to the right to run behind it as the doors flew opened on both sides, and two officers jumped out.

“Stop right there!” one of them yelled.

Logan continued around the back of the car, not interested in whoever they were after.

“You! Stop now!”

Just as he realized the words seemed to be meant for him, the officer from the passenger side rushed forward and tackled him to the ground.

“Don’t know how to listen, do you?” he said in Logan’s ear.

Logan had to fight the instinct to struggle to get free. As much as he wanted to catch the guy who’d hurt Tooney, he knew enough not to mess with the cops.

“I think you’ve made a mistake,” he said.

“Really? So you
weren’t
the one running away from the crime scene?”

Are you kidding me?
Logan thought. But he didn’t respond to the question, knowing it would be better to keep his mouth shut.

The officer pulled Logan’s arms behind his back. “Sorry, can’t hear you.” When Logan still didn’t say anything, he snickered.

After Logan was cuffed, the cop and his partner got him to his feet, and guided him into the back of their squad car. Once the door was shut, he looked out the window in the direction the other man had run, but wherever the son of a bitch was, Logan couldn’t see him anymore.

So damn close
.

As they rode away, Logan still had no idea why the cops had stopped him. It was hard to believe they would have come after him just because they’d seen him running. He could easily just have been someone late for work, or out for a jog.

They turned down Pacific and took him all the way back to the taped off area in front of Aaron’s house. Without a word, the cops got out and headed onto the property, leaving him sitting there alone.

As he waited, his thoughts turned to the man he’d been chasing. One thing he knew for sure now was that what had happened in the back of Tooney’s restaurant, and whatever was going on with his granddaughter were related. There was no other explanation for why Tooney’s attacker had shown up at the home of Elyse’s boyfriend—or friend or acquaintance or whatever Aaron was.

Just as Logan was beginning to wonder how long his new police buddies were going to leave him by himself, they reemerged through the gate of the damaged property with two other officers, and a man in a suit walking next to a woman in jeans and a red turtleneck sweater.

As they neared the car, Logan recognized the woman before. The last time she’d been wearing sweats and a baseball cap, but she still had the sleepy look on her face that she’d had when she’d found him in Aaron’s bungalow the night before.

One of the cops opened the door and hauled Logan out.

“Is this the man?” the guy in the suit asked her.

She looked Logan, then nodded. “Definitely.”

12

“So why were you running away from the scene of the fire?”

Logan found out the suited guy’s name was Baker, and he was an LAPD detective. He’d kept Logan waiting in a windowless room at the station for nearly an hour before he finally showed up, and started asking his questions.

“I wasn’t running away from anything.”

The man raised an eyebrow. “Really? Several people saw you. Including me.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t running. I said I wasn’t running away from anything.”

“Okay. Then why were you running
to?
”

“My friend was mugged yesterday,” Logan said. “I thought I saw the man who did it, and chased after him.”

“Convenient, don’t you think? Him showing up at the aftermath of a fire you set.”

“Whoa. Hold on. I did not set any fire.”

“My witness says you were the last person other than herself in the burned down house.”

“The last person she
knows
of. There was obviously someone else, because I didn’t do it.”

“So you are saying you were there.”

“Absolutely.”

“And why was that?”

Logan could hear his father’s voice in his head.
Involving the police would be exactly the wrong thing to do…trust me.
And Tooney’s after he’d been attacked.
I beg you. Say nothing.

As much as he thought he should tell Detective Baker what was going on, he felt he should let Tooney know first. So he said, “The guy who lived there, Aaron Hughes, he’s dating the granddaughter of a friend of mine.”

“Another friend, huh?”

Logan hesitated. “The same friend, actually.”

“Well, that makes things easy.”

“I can’t help the truth.”

“You still haven’t told me why you were there?”

“My friend’s been concerned about his granddaughter,” Logan said, trying to keep things as close to reality as possible. “He’s her nearest relative, so he feels responsible. He wanted me to check on her, check out her friends, and make sure she’s not having any problems.”

“You some kind of private detective?”

“Not at all. I’m just someone helping a friend.”

“So, you went to the house…”

“To see if I could talk to her boyfriend.”

“My witness says you were there around midnight. That’s kind of late for a chat, isn’t it?”

“Not for a kid his age.”

“Did he know you were coming?”

“I tried calling, but was sent straight to his voice mail.”

“So that meant it was okay to go inside his house and check?” he asked.

“No,” Logan said, calmly. “I knocked, a couple times. Then I glanced through the window and noticed that it looked empty inside. Not exactly what I expected. I tried the knob. It was unlocked, so then I went in to check.”

“Do you try people’s doorknobs often?”

“It just seemed to me there was a good chance no one lived there anymore, so if I could look inside, I could confirm that. Which is exactly what I did.”