The Marine Next Door (9 page)

“If this is an example of the department’s best
work, then what is someone with virtually no investigative experience like you doing on the task force?” Maggie’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel at the low blow to the department and to her. “Is it because your ex-husband served time for rape? Is he a suspect?”

There went
friendly.
“Mr. Knight—”

“I hear you have a real knack for getting the victims of these crimes, like Bailey Austin, to open up and answer questions. Can you tell me why that is? Why did you get results when a dozen other cops before you couldn’t?”

“How do you know about—?”

“So you did interview Bailey Austin.”

Helpful
was off the table now, too. “There are confidentiality expectations in place with assault victims, Mr. Knight. Now remove your hand from my door before I arrest you.”

He let go of the door but didn’t move to give her enough room to close it. “Threatening the press? That ought to make a good headline.”

And now
patience
was done. “Headline this—Single Mom Needs to Pick Up Son from Ball Practice. I have to go. You should speak to Dr. Kate Kilpatrick.” She pointed toward the precinct headquarters building across the street. “She’s the task force’s liaison with the press. She can answer your questions better than I can.”

He finally retreated. “You’ve given me more than enough to work with, Sergeant Wheeler. Have a pleasant evening.”

Maggie’s response wasn’t nearly so civil. She slammed the door and peeled out of the parking garage, leaving Gabriel Knight and whatever he was texting on his phone behind her.

She hadn’t expected to be interviewed by a reporter and hadn’t handled it well at all. He’d gotten her while she was distracted with Travis and Danny, and had ferreted out answers she wasn’t sure she was supposed to give. All her thoughts were exploding in a swirling mass of temper, frustration, self-doubts and second-guessing. She hated feeling out of control like this. She was a good mother. A good cop. She’d make a good detective, too.

But knowing the truth and feeling the truth were two different things. And right now, it was impossible to silence the taunts from the corners of her mind. Taunts that echoed in Danny’s derisive voice.

Your child is stranded in the rain.

You just botched that press interview.

You will never get anything right on your own.

“Shut up, Danny.” Voice in her head or face-to-face terror, he wasn’t going to undermine her confidence anymore.

Maggie turned on her headlights and cranked the windshield wipers to give her a clearer view through the rainy streets that led to the ballpark near Travis’s school. As the snail’s pace of rush-hour traffic stopped her at yet another light, she toyed with the idea of sticking the magnetized flashers on her roof and turning on the siren. Instead of abusing her badge and busting through the line of cars, she picked up her purse.

Concentrating on evening out her breathing and keeping her panic in check, she pulled out her phone and continued checking her messages. There were three more from Danny, probably as sweetly apologetic as the first three had been rife with anger and accusation. She deleted all the messages once she saw that there were no more from her son.

Easing along with the flow of traffic, she called Travis’s number again, forcing herself to keep thinking positive thoughts when it went straight to voice mail. Had he let the battery run down? Forgotten to turn it on? Had he set it down someplace and lost it, leaving him not only abandoned but also unable to contact her? She left a message just in case. “I’m so sorry I’m running behind, sweetie, but I’m on my way. Make sure you stay where the lights are and hang out with your friends if they’re still there. I love you.”

She called the apartment again to see if he’d found a way home but got a recorded message about the line being out of order. A follow-up call to Joe Standage gave her an answering machine message. She left a request asking him to check why her home phone wasn’t working, and if he saw Travis at the apartment, to please call her. She was praying for a cut utility line or an incompetent building super, and not something more sinister.

But she’d once had a daughter, too. And even though Danny hadn’t killed little Angel himself, he hadn’t been above using his own daughter as leverage to ensure Maggie’s cooperation. Danny said he wanted to meet, and she’d said no. If he’d taken Travis to punish or persuade her…

Maggie cursed rush hour and pressed a little harder on the accelerator.

Once she crossed over the I-70 overpass and veered off toward the east side of the city, traffic thinned. A glimpse of white in her rearview mirror made her vaguely aware of a square van a few vehicles back making the same turns she was. But there was still some going-home traffic in the area, and several cars were heading northeast like she was, so she dismissed it.

She was on her third unanswered call to her son when she turned into the parking lot at Abbott Field and saw that the ball field lights were off. The concrete concession stand and batting cages were dark and locked up tight, and the bleachers and dugouts were all deserted. With the clouds blocking off the last dregs of daylight, the only illumination came from the distant streetlamps and her truck’s headlights. “Where are you, Travis?” she muttered in hushed fear before finally thinking clearly enough to dial a different number. “Coach Hernandez?”

Laughter in the background nearly drowned out his reply. “Mrs. Wheeler. Did you rethink dinner?”

Right. He’d taken his son to a Scout meeting. “Is Travis with you?”

“What? We’re going to that pizza place over on Independence Avenue.”

“I’m not interested in dinner, Coach.” She tried not to scream her own frustration. “Is Travis there?”

“No.”

“Then where is he? I came as soon as I got his message about practice ending early. I can’t believe you’d let a little boy stay at the ballpark alone.”

“I thought you’d already picked him up.” His tone bristled at her criticism, and he was quick to defend himself. “Everyone was gone when I left.”

“Gone?” Oh, Lord. She willed herself X-ray vision as she peered through the windshield and the rain. “
I’m
at the park right now and no one’s here. Do you know who he got a ride home with?”

“No.” Travis’s coach must have walked out of the meeting because the background suddenly quieted. “I saw him making a phone call. I just assumed it was to you.”

How could the man
just assume
her child was safe? But the priority was finding Travis right now, not arguing Michael Hernandez’s fitness to be a coach responsible for her child’s well-being. “All right. Thank you.”

“Mrs. Wheeler?”

“I have to go.”

“Let me know when you find—”

She disconnected the call and tried to think like a cop instead of a terrified mother. With her heart pounding in time to the quick rhythm of the windshield wipers, she pulled her KCPD windbreaker from behind the seat and grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment. She left the headlights on but locked the doors when she climbed out to begin her search of the grounds.

The rain cooled her skin but did nothing to ease her anxiety. With her emotions so out of focus, she relied on her training to do a quick, methodical search of the park. The doors to the main facility were locked, the stands empty. She checked behind trees and trash cans and walked through both the men’s and women’s public restrooms. The ladder up to the scoreboard was empty. There was no glove, no bat, no balls, no backpack—no sign of a ten-year-old boy anywhere.

“Travis, where are you?”

With the rain washing away the traces of anyone having been at the ball field at all, Maggie headed back to the parking lot and her truck. Maybe she should call in for police assistance. Or go straight to the dispatch office and issue an Amber Alert. Maybe she should get on the phone and call every friend of Travis, every teacher, every human being her son knew to find out if anyone had seen him.

Or maybe, possibly…she should call Danny. He’d never been interested in having children. Angel had been an unfortunate accident in his book. And Travis wasn’t even legally his. But Travis knew the name of the man who’d fathered him and knew he was now out on parole. Tension bubbled in her stomach at the idea of the two of them even meeting, much less calling on an absent, worthless father for help.

That’s when she saw the white van. Again.
Boyle’s Extermination Company,
with the logo of a bug and a rat painted on the side. It was parked out on the street, not half a block away from her truck. Too close to be a coincidence. Someone
had
been following her.

Going on alert when the van’s front door slid open, Maggie lifted the hem of her jacket and unsnapped the cover on her holster. She made sure she had access to the radio clipped to her shoulder and shined the beam of her flashlight straight into the face of the stocky man who climbed out.

The light reflected off big, round eyes, vaguely reminiscent of one of the critters on the side of the van. Dressed in tan coveralls, the man hunched his shoulders against the rain and called to her across the parking lot. “Mrs. Wheeler?”

Conquering the urge to retreat at hearing her name on the stranger’s lips, she braced her legs and straightened to her full height. The exterminator, according to the matching vermin logo on his coveralls, wasn’t any taller than she was, but he was built like an ox. The bug eyes and the tattoos on the side of his neck warred with his friendly smile and the bouquet of roses in his left hand.

Van? Roses? Woman alone?

Maggie put up her hand to stop him from coming any closer. “Do I know you?”

“Lawrence Boyle. I’m a friend of your husband.”

“I don’t have a husband.”

He laughed. “Danny said you’d say that. Here.” He held out the drooping red blooms.

“I hate flowers.”

When she made no move to take the gift, he laid them across the corner of her truck and tailgate, then shoved his hands into his pockets and backed up a couple of steps.

She wrapped her fingers around the butt of her gun and unsheathed it a few inches. “Keep your hands where I can see them, please.”

The bug eyes darted to her weapon. “I’m trying to do you a favor, Mrs. Wheeler. I know we’ve never met, but I feel like I know you. I know things weren’t always great between you and Danny.”

“Hands, Mr. Boyle.”

“He talks about you all the time.” The exterminator with the bleached-white hair pulled his hands from his pockets, then leisurely laced his fingers together and rested them on top of his head.

He’d done that for a police officer before, Maggie noted, keeping him in her sights and inching to the back of the truck. The rain shredded the tissue paper as she pulled it aside to retrieve the note. The
Sorry. Love you
wasn’t as troubling as recognizing the card from a florist shop in her neighborhood and knowing Danny had been within a block of her apartment. Had Danny made contact with Travis? Had he done something to keep her from reaching her son?

“He says he’s sorry if he said or did anything that upset you today.” Lawrence Boyle’s hands went right back to the top of his head when she swung the flashlight back to his face. “I guess cops and lawyers make him nervous. He hopes the two of you could have a conversation sometime.”

“Not likely.” It wasn’t the first time Danny had sent flowers as an apology for his unspeakable behavior, but she intended it to be the last. She eyed the van behind Boyle and wondered if her ex was in there, watching her right now. “Where is he?”

“At work by now, I imagine. I gave him a job a few weeks ago. Danny and I go way back.”

Judging by the twining blue-and-green tats on his neck, including a trio of teardrops that indicated years of incarceration, she could imagine where they’d met. Just how much did he and Danny have in common? Did they share a penchant for hurting women? “I need you to step back inside your van, Mr. Boyle.”

Although he wiped the moisture from his face and retreated a step, the conversation wasn’t over. “Your kid has a strong arm. Can’t hit worth crap, though.”

Don’t ask. The answer will only upset you.
“How do you know that?”

“We watched practice for a while. Before the rain started.”

We?
As in Boyle
and
Danny?

The rain soaking through her uniform was suddenly cold against her skin. “Did Danny take Travis?”

“No, ma’am. I sent him back to the shop to clean up for the day, and cool off.”

“Why were you following me?”

“To give you the flowers.” He made a face as if that had been a stupid question. “I was taking them to the police station to deliver ’em when I saw you leave. Please, ma’am, they’re getting ruined.”

Think, Maggie. Think.
She had to push through the haze of fear, anger and suspicion to find her son. Did she take his word about Danny’s whereabouts or insist on checking the inside of his van?

When he moved toward the flowers again, she pulled her gun and he stopped. His hands went up in the air. “Easy there, Mrs. Wheeler. I don’t mean you no harm. You’re just worried about your boy, I bet. Danny said you were doing a good job with the kid.”

Ultimately, a dubious witness was better than no witness at all. She had to ask, “Did you see my son leave the ballpark?”

“Yeah.” Lawrence Boyle lowered his hands and slipped them into the pockets of his coveralls, despite her warning. “Some cripple in a black truck picked him up. Big guy—looked pissed off. Walking on a stick for a leg would put me in a mood, too.”

Relief warred with anger inside her.
Cripple?
Lawrence Boyle could only be talking about one man. John Murdock. “That big guy is a war hero. And here’s what Danny can do with his flowers.”

She knocked the bouquet into a puddle beside her truck, climbed inside and drove away

* * *

“T
RAVIS
R
YNE
W
HEELER,
you couldn’t have called me half an hour ago to let me know you were safe?” Maggie snapped into her phone. She was immediately contrite over raising her voice, but her emotions were still bubbling too close to the surface. Knowing that Danny had been at the park watching her son, and could have easily been the one offering him a ride home, had terrified her. She should be grateful Travis had had the sense to call someone more reliable. “Sweetie, do you know how crazy I’ve been with worry?”