The 6th Target (10 page)

“Blame it on my choice of career.”

“And proud of it.”

“Ab-solutely.”

“Bitch.” I found myself laughing.

“Go ahead. Get it off your chest,” she said. “Give me your best shot.”

“Calling you a bitch
was
my best shot.”

“Okay, then. What gives, Linds?”

I covered my face with a throw pillow, shutting out the light, feeling myself tumbling down. I sighed. “I broke up with Joe.”

Cindy grabbed the pillow away from my face.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Be nice, okay, Cindy? Or I’ll throw up on your rug.”

“Okay, okay, so why did you do
that
? Joe’s smart. He’s gorgeous. He loves you. You love him. What’s wrong with you?”

I pulled my knees up and hugged them tight with my arms. Cindy sat down next to me on the couch. She put an arm around me.

I felt as if I were holding on to a skinny tree while being lashed by a tidal wave. I’d been crying so much lately. I thought I might be losing my mind.

“Take your time, honey. I’m here. The night is young. Sort of.”

So I gave in, blurted out the story about my totally embarrassing trip to DC and how I felt about the whole mood-swinging affair with Joe. “It really, really hurts, Cindy. But I did the right thing.”

“It’s not just because you got your feelings hurt when he wasn’t home and you saw that girl?”

“No.
Hell no
.”

“Oh, God, Linds, I didn’t mean to make you cry. Lie down here. Close your eyes.”

Cindy pushed me gently onto my side, put a pillow under my head. A moment later, a blanket floated over me. The light went off, and I felt Cindy tuck me in.

“It’s not over, Linds. Trust me. It’s not over.”

“You’re wrong once in a while, you know,” I muttered.

“Wanna bet?” Cindy kissed my cheek. And then I was swept along by whatever dream featured me in a starring role. I sunk into a deep hole of agonized sleep, waking only as sunlight streamed through Cindy’s bare windows.

I forced myself to sit up, swung my legs off the couch, saw the note from Cindy on the coffee table saying she’d gone out for rolls and coffee.

Then the day hit me for real.

Jacobi and Macklin were having a staff meeting this morning at eight. Every cop on the Tyler-Ricci case would be there —
except me
.

I scribbled a note to Cindy, stuck my feet in my shoes, and raced out the door.

JACOBI ROLLED HIS EYES when I edged past him, slipped into a seat in the back of the squad room. Lieutenant Macklin gave me a short, glancing stare as he summarized the meeting so far. In the absence of any information regarding the whereabouts of Madison Tyler and Paola Ricci, we were assigned to interview registered sex offenders.

“Patrick Calvin,” I read from our list as Conklin and I got into the squad car. “Convicted sex offender, recently released on probation after serving time for the sexual abuse of his own daughter. She was six when it happened.”

Conklin started the car. “There’s no understanding that kind of garbage. You know what? I don’t
want
to understand it.”

Calvin lived in a twenty-unit, U-shaped stucco apartment building at Palm and Euclid on the fringe of Jordan Park, about a mile and a half from where Madison Tyler lived and played. A blue Toyota Corolla registered to Calvin was parked on the street.

I smelled bacon cooking as we crossed the open patio area at the front entrance, climbed the outside stairs, knocked on Calvin’s aggressively red-painted door.

The door opened, and a tousle-haired white male no more than five foot three stood in the doorway, wearing plaid pajamas and white socks.

He looked about fifteen years old, making me want to ask, “Is your father home?” But the faint gray shadow on his jowls and the prison tats on his knuckles gave Pat Calvin away as a former inmate of our prison system.

“Patrick Calvin?” I said, showing him my badge.

“What do you want?”

“I’m Sergeant Boxer. This is Inspector Conklin,” I said. “We have a few questions. Mind if we come in?”

“Yes, I mind. What do you
want
?”

Conklin has an easy way about him, a trait I frankly envy. I’d seen him interrogate murdering psychos with a kind of sweetness, good cop to the max. He’d also taken care of that poor cat at the Alonzo murder scene.

“Sorry, Mr. Calvin,” Conklin said now. “I know it’s early on a Sunday morning, but a child is missing and we don’t have a lot of time.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“Get used to this, Mr. Calvin,” I said. “You’re on parole —”

“You want to search my house, is that it?” Calvin shouted. “This is a goddamned free country, isn’t it? You don’t have a warrant,” Calvin spat. “You have
shit
.”

“You’re getting awful steamed up for an innocent man,” Conklin said. “Makes me wonder, you know?”

I stood by as Conklin explained that we could call Calvin’s parole officer, who would have no problem letting us in. “Or we could get a warrant,” Conklin said. “Have a couple of cruisers come screaming up to the curb, show your neighbors what kind of guy you are.”

“So . . . mind if we come in?” I asked.

Calvin countered my scowl with a dark look of his own. “I’ve got nothing to hide,” he said.

And he stepped aside.

CALVIN’S PLACE WAS SPARSELY DECORATED in early Ikea: lightweight blond wood. There was a shelf of dolls over the TV — big ones, little ones, baby dolls, and dolls in fancy dresses.

“I bought them for my daughter,” Calvin snarled, dropping into a chair. “In case she can ever visit me.”

“What is she now? Sixteen?” Conklin asked.

“Shut up,” Calvin said. “Okay? Just shut up.”

“Watch your mouth,” Conklin said before he disappeared into Calvin’s bedroom. I took a seat on the sofa and whipped out my notebook.

I shook off the image of a young girl, now a teen, who’d had the terrible misfortune to have this shit as a father, and asked Calvin if he’d ever seen Madison Tyler.

“I saw her on the news last night. She’s very cute. You could even say
edible
. But I don’t know her.”

“Okay, then,” I said, gritting my teeth, feeling a sharp pang of fear for Madison. “Where were you yesterday morning at nine a.m.?”

“I was watching TV. I like to stay on top of the current cartoon shows so I can talk to little girls on their level, you know what I mean?”

At five ten, I’m a head taller than Calvin and in better shape, too. Violent fantasies were roiling in my mind, just as they had when I’d arrested Alfred Brinkley. I was stressing too much, too much . . .

“Can anyone vouch for your whereabouts?”

“Sure. Ask Mr. Happy,” Pat Calvin said, patting the fly of his pajama bottoms, grabbing himself there. “He’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

I snapped. I grabbed Calvin’s collar, bunching up the flannel tight around his neck. His hands flew out as I lifted him off his chair, thumped him against the wall.

Dolls scattered.

Conklin came out of the bedroom as I was about to thump Calvin again. My partner pretended that he didn’t see anything crazy in my face and leaned casually against the door frame.

I was alarmed at how close I was to the edge. What I didn’t need now was a complaint for police brutality. I released Calvin’s pajamas.

“Nice photo collection you have, Mr. Calvin,” Conklin said conversationally. “Pictures of little kids playing in Alta Plaza Park.”

I shot a look at Conklin. Madison and Paola were snatched from the street just outside that park.

“Did you see my camera?” Calvin said defiantly. “Seven million megapixels and a 12x zoom. I shot those pictures from a block away. I know the
rules
. And I didn’t break
any
of them.”

“Sergeant,” Conklin said to me, “there’s a little girl in one of those pictures, could be Madison Tyler.”

I got Jacobi on the phone, told him that Patrick Calvin had photos we should look at more closely.

“We need two patrolmen to sit on Calvin while Conklin and I come in to write up a warrant,” I said.

“No problem, Boxer. I’ll send a car. But I’ll have Chi take care of the warrant and bring Calvin in.”

“We can handle it, Jacobi,” I said.

“You
could
,” Jacobi said, “but a child matching Madison Tyler’s description was just called in from Transbay security.”

“She’s been seen?”

“She’s there right now.”

THE TRANSBAY TERMINAL on First and Mission is an open-air, rusty-roofed, concrete-block shed. Inside the cinder-block shell, half-dead fluorescent lights sputter overhead, throwing faint shadows on the homeless souls who camp out in this oppressive place so that they can use the scant facilities.

Even in daytime this terminal is creepy. I felt an urgent need to find Madison Tyler and get her the hell out of here.

Conklin and I jogged down the stairs to the terminal’s lower level, a dark, dingy space dominated by a short wall of ticket booths and a security area.

Two black women wearing navy-blue pants and shirts with
PRIVATE SECURITY SERVICES
patches sewn to their pockets sat behind the desk.

We flashed our badges and were buzzed in.

The security office was glassed in on two sides, painted grimy beige on the other two, and furnished with two desks, unmatched file cabinets, three exit doors with keypad access, and two vending machines.

And there, sitting beside the stationmaster’s desk, was a little girl with silky yellow hair falling over her collar.

Her blue coat was unbuttoned. She had on a red sweater over blue pants. And
she wore shiny red shoes
.

My heart did a little dance. We’d found her.

Oh, my God, Madison was safe!

The stationmaster, a big man, fortysomething with gray hair and matching mustache, stood up to introduce himself.

“I’m Fred Zimmer,” he said, shaking our hands. “And we found this little lady wandering all by herself about fifteen minutes ago, weren’t you, honey? I couldn’t get her to talk to me.”

I put my hands on my knees and looked into the little girl’s face. She’d been crying, and I couldn’t get her to look me in the eyes.

Her cheeks were dirt streaked and her nose was running. Her lower lip was swollen and she had a scrape along the side of her left cheek. I threw Richie a look. My relief at seeing Madison alive was swamped by a new concern for what had been done to her.

She looked so
traumatized
that I was having a hard time matching up her face to the image of the little dazzler I’d seen playing the piano on videotape.

Conklin stooped to the little girl’s level.

“My name is Richie.” He smiled. “Is your name Maddy?”

The child looked at Conklin, opened her mouth, and said, “Mahhh-dy.”

I thought,
This little girl has been scared to death
.

I took her small hands in mine. They were cold to the touch, and she stared right through me.

“Call EMS,” I said softly, trying not to frighten her further. “Something’s wrong with this child.”

CONKLIN AND I WERE PACING RESTLESSLY outside the hospital’s emergency room when the Tylers rushed in and embraced us like family.

I was feeling high. One part of this frightening, god-awful story was over. And I was hoping that right after she saw her parents, Madison would come back to herself. Because I had some questions for her — starting with, “Did you get a good look at the guys who kidnapped you?”

“She was sleeping when we last looked in on her,” I told the Tylers. “Dr. Collins just stopped by and said he’ll be back in . . . let’s see . . . about ten minutes.”

“I have to ask,” Elizabeth Tyler said softly, “was Maddy harmed in any way?”

“She looks like she’s been through an ordeal,” I said to Madison’s mom. “She wasn’t given any kind of invasive exam because the doctors were waiting for your consent.”

Elizabeth Tyler covered her mouth with both hands, stifled her tears.

“You should know she’s barely said anything to anyone.”

“That’s not like Maddy.”

“Maybe she was warned not to talk or she would be hurt —”

“Oh,
God
. Those animals!”

“Why would they kidnap Maddy, then abandon her without trying to get a ransom?” Tyler was asking as we entered the ER.

I let the question hang, because I didn’t want to say what I was thinking:
Pedophiles don’t ask for ransom
. I stood aside so that the Tylers could enter Maddy’s curtained stall in the ER ahead of me, thinking how overjoyed Madison would be when she saw her parents again.

Henry Tyler squeezed my arm and whispered, “Thank you,” as he went through the curtains. I heard Elizabeth Tyler calling her daughter’s name — then cry out with an agonized moan.

I jumped aside as she ran past me. Henry Tyler emerged next and put his face right up to mine.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” he said, his face scarlet with rage. “That girl isn’t Madison. Do you understand? That’s not Madison.
That’s not our baby
!”

I APOLOGIZED TO THE TYLERS sincerely and profusely as they exploded all over me in the hospital parking lot, then stood flat-footed as their car tore past me, leaving rubber on the asphalt. My cell phone rang on my hip, and eventually I answered it.

It was Jacobi. “A woman just called saying her daughter is missing. The child is five. Has long blond hair.”

The caller’s name was Sylvia Brodsky, and she was hysterical. She’d lost track of her daughter, Alicia, while shopping for groceries. Alicia must have wandered away, Mrs. Brodsky told the 911 operator, adding that her daughter was autistic.

Alicia Brodsky could barely speak a word.

Not long after Jacobi’s call, Sylvia Brodsky came to the hospital and claimed her daughter, but Conklin and I weren’t there to see it.

We were back in our Crown Vic, talking it over, me taking responsibility for jumping the gun, saying, “I should have been more forceful when I told the Tylers that
maybe
we’d found their daughter, but we couldn’t be
sure
. But I did say that we needed them to make a positive ID, didn’t I, Rich? You heard me.”