Vanished (7 page)

One after the other, he held each parent’s gaze. “We’re making progress. We’re going to chip away at every lead until we find her.”

A few hours later, Mason sat in the big family room and stared at the gas fireplace. It was nearly 10
P.M
.
The mothers had each settled into the couch with a book, but Mason had noticed that Lilian rarely turned the pages, her eyes frequently focusing on the fire instead of her novel. No one spoke of going to bed. The guest room Mason was staying in had been attacked by Hello Kitty. It would be fine for sleeping but not for thinking or pacing. The only chair in the bedroom came up to his knees, and he felt bad every time he stepped on the huge kitty-face area rug.

So he shared the depressed family room. The TV stayed off. Mason didn’t want to see any news reports and figured the family felt the same. Jake had stepped into the room and stared at everyone like he was lost. Mason quirked an eyebrow at him, but he’d gone back to his room and turned on his Xbox. If games kept Jake’s mind off his sister, Mason was all for them.

Where was Mason’s distraction? His mind kept spinning with what ifs.

After Lucas had arrived, Ava brought in a bag from her car. Robin gave her a grateful look and directed her to the purple butterfly room across from Mason’s.

Currently Ava was having a long discussion with Special Agent Wells in the backyard. Mason had a good feeling about Zander Wells. The quiet agent seemed competent and focused, his sharp eyes missing nothing. The two agents came in through the French doors at the back patio, a rush of icy air blowing in with them.

Was Henley outside somewhere? Was she cold?

Lilian flinched as the cold air hit her, and Mason knew she was having the same thoughts.

He put an image of the freezing child out of his brain.

He moved to intercept the agents as Ava moved with Wells toward the front entrance. The two stopped, regarding Mason with wary eyes.

“Is there something else I can update the family with?” Mason asked.

The two exchanged a look.

“Our focus has shifted to the neighborhood as you know,” Wells said. “We’ve had teams of agents knocking on doors and searching the green spaces. Three of the homes have turned over their home security cameras, but none of the recordings show Henley this morning.” He took a deep breath. “I just heard that they found her lunchbox an hour ago.”

“Where?” asked Mason.

“It was actually up in a tree a few houses down from the bus stop.”

She’d been so close.
“She almost made it,” Mason stated. “But up in a tree? How?”

“It was pretty well hidden between the dense fir branches and a good eight feet off the ground, which explains why no one spotted it for a while.” Wells made a face, acknowledging the bureau’s frustration with missing the clue and the several hours of lag time. “My guess is someone threw it. I don’t think it could have been planted after we searched that area. We’ve had people in the neighborhood nonstop.”

“Could Henley have thrown it?” Mason asked.

Wells nodded. “We think so. Maybe she was trying to leave something behind as she was being snatched. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for a kidnapper to try to leave something so obvious.”

“Are you sure it’s hers?” Mason asked.

“It matches the description the mothers gave us. They sent me a photo of it, but the actual box is on the way to the lab for printing.” He showed Mason a picture on his phone of a pink lunchbox made from synthetic fabric, with a top that folded over and buckled closed. “I’ll send it to you, and you can show the parents.”

“What was inside? Does it match what Robin said was packed?” Mason’s brain spun.
Who threw it? Henley or her kidnapper?

“It practically pinpoints where she was grabbed. He wouldn’t have left something like that behind on purpose,” Ava muttered, shaking her head.

“It held what Robin had listed,” Wells answered. “And I know what you mean, Ava. It makes no sense. My best guess says that she threw it as he grabbed her.”

The three nodded in agreement.

“What about vehicles spotted on the home security cameras?” Mason asked.

Wells nodded. “We’re working on enhancing some images they caught.”

“Anything else I need to know?” Mason asked.

“Just reassure them we’ll be working through the night. Three members of the CARD team landed already. You met the one from BAU. Three others will be here within a few hours.”

“What do they bring to the case?”

“Experience. One is a hostage negotiator, another is evidence recovery, and there’s a computer-forensics expert. A few more agents from BAU.” Wells glanced at McLane, who nodded again.

“No indication yet that this will be a hostage situation?” Mason asked.

“Not yet,” answered Ava.

“I almost wish it was,” mumbled Mason. “Then maybe we’d know she’s . . .”

Ava’s gaze softened. “We’ll deal with whatever arises.” Her gaze went past Mason. “How’re you holding up, Lucas?”

Mason turned. Lucas looked like hell.

“Fine. Is everything okay?” He looked from Wells to Ava.

“I’m just updating Special Agent McLane and Detective Callahan. I’ll let them relay what I’ve said. I’ll say good night now. I’m going back to the command center.”

He shook hands with them and vanished out the heavy front door. A small rumble could be heard from the pack of reporters.

“What gives?” Lucas asked.

“They found Henley’s lunch box not too far from the bus stop,” Ava said gently. “It looks like it was hurled up into a tree. It could have been done by Henley or the kidnapper.”

Lucas scowled. “I don’t get it.”

Mason nodded. “Join the club.” He pulled up the image Wells had sent and handed Lucas his phone. “Does that look right?”

Lucas stared at the image. “I honestly don’t know. I think so. I’ll show it to Robin.”

“Maybe when they check the prints we’ll have a better lead,” Ava said. “The best thing you can do is get some rest.”

“But it’s something, right? At least they found
something
.” Lucas clutched the phone with white fingers, looking at Mason and Ava with hope in his eyes, and ran a hand through his mussed-up hair. He didn’t seem interested in resting.

“It helps,” Ava said noncommittally. “Why don’t you go ask Robin and Lilian? And then try to convince them to get some sleep. I’ll wake them if I hear anything else.”

Lucas nodded and left.

Mason held Ava’s gaze. “What else? What are you not saying?”

She sighed and smoothed her ponytail. “There’s a heated email exchange on Lucas’s work account from two weeks ago. They’re interviewing the client tomorrow.”

“Lucas mention that in his interview?”

“Wells had to bring it up. Lucas brushed it off. Said that’s how that client always communicates. Sounds like he’s a bit of an asshole, and Lucas took a strong stance to deal with him. Lucas claims that there’s no bad blood there, but we’re looking into it.”

Mason waited.

Ava simply looked at him. She was finished. If she knew more, she was keeping it to herself. For now.

Mason glanced at his watch. “It’s late. I’m going to bed. Good night, Special Agent McLane. I hope tomorrow’s a better day.”

“You and me both,” she whispered.

8

23 HOURS MISSING

Mason woke to the vibration of his work phone. It echoed through the wood of the little white nightstand next to him, sounding like a jackhammer next to his head. He snatched it off the table and glanced at the digital princess clock. Six thirty. “Callahan.”

“Mason. You up?” Ray Lusco’s voice barreled through the line.

“I am now.” Mason rubbed his eyes. “What’s up?”

“Schefte call you this morning?”

“Not yet.” Mason pulled the phone from his ear and touched the screen, blurrily checking for any missed calls or texts, knowing he couldn’t have missed anything vibrating on that little table. He was tired, but not that tired.

“There’s some weird evidence in Josie’s case,” Ray said.

The morning shifted into crystal-clear focus. “How weird?”

“There’s another eyewitness placing a guy in cowboy boots and a hat at her place the day before the murder.”

“So? Schefte mentioned other people had seen something similar. I’m not the only one who dresses like that.” An odd buzz burned in his gut.
Another sighting?

Silence.

“Well, yeah, not many guys dress that way in downtown Portland,” Mason backtracked. “What of it?”

“Your fingerprints have turned up in three places in the apartment.”

Ice encased Mason’s spine, but he kept his tone neutral. “I’ve been there, remember? Hunsinger and Morales knew that. My prints shouldn’t surprise anyone. What’s the point here?”

“On the toilet handle?”

Mason sat up, alarms clanging in his head. “I didn’t touch that when we were there yesterday.”

“I know! But if you hadn’t been there for months, why would your prints show up there? They should be totally blurred out.”

“I never used Josie’s bathroom.” Mason thought hard, trying to remember what he’d done on his short visits to the woman’s apartment. He’d looked in the fridge, sat on the couch, put money under the saltshaker. “They might find my prints on the fridge handle and the saltshaker. I probably touched the front door handle, but surely that’s been touched several hundred times since I was there last.”

“This isn’t right,” Ray said. “Something’s up. You need to figure out when you were there last.”

“Christ.” Mason rubbed his eyes. “I’ll have to look back at my log. I know it was relatively hot, because I remember her complaining about not having air conditioning. Probably at the end of September, during one of those freaky hot weeks we get before the fall weather fully kicks in. I’ll have to look on my computer in the office.”

“Do you remember what cases we were working on? Does that help with the time period?”

Mason thought for a long moment. “No, I don’t remember. I only remember that it was really warm in her place and that I got a bottled water out of her fridge.” His mind jumped through hoops, searching for an explanation.
Yes, he’d been there. But it’d been forever ago. There was no reason for his prints to show up. No reason at all.

Bile rose in his throat.
What was happening?

“I’m going into the office for a few hours this morning. Want me to look back at your calendar?” Ray offered.

“Sure. I don’t know when I can get over there. Depends what’s happening here today.” Mason spoke through clenched teeth, fighting to project a nonchalant tone for Ray while his brain was flashing with red warning signs.

But why were his prints in Josie’s apartment?

It had to be a mistake in the evidence.

He hadn’t been there.

“No news?”

With a conscious effort, Mason shifted gears to Henley’s kidnapping. “Henley never made it to the bus, so they think she was snatched between here and the bus stop. And they found her lunch box not far from the bus stop.”

“That should help narrow things down. That’s the type of neighborhood where security cameras are kinda standard, right?”

“Eh. They’re looking through some footage. People don’t usually have camera views of the street or sidewalk in front of their homes.”

“How’s everyone holding up?”

“Running on adrenaline, prayers, and coffee. Lilian and Robin had a blowup last night. As you can imagine, tempers are short and emotions are high around here.” He set his thoughts about Josie’s murder to one side and stretched his jaw. The muscles felt like he’d been chewing thick gum all night. His dentist had asked if he ground his teeth in his sleep. How would he know? He was asleep. Going by the pain in his jaw, though, he estimated he’d ground off a good millimeter of enamel last night. “I assume you’re not watching the news broadcasts?” Ray asked.

“Hell, no.”

“Henley was the featured story on the dinnertime and late-night broadcasts. Saw you, too. A brief shot of you at the front door of the Fairbanks home.”

“Did the cameras zoom in on Jake? He’s the one who answered the door.”

“Not on the network I was watching.”

“Good. Hopefully, no one caught a view of his face. I don’t want him on the news.”

“The news reports have mentioned she has two sisters and an older brother. I don’t think they used his name. At least not yet. I haven’t looked at the paper this morning. That might have more detail.”

“Lucas doesn’t get a paper here, thank God. I don’t want to imagine what the papers might be speculating.”

“A lot of people don’t get papers anymore.” Ray coughed away from his phone. “And I haven’t caught any speculation yet. I’ll ask Jill to keep an eye on the news broadcasts and see what sort of twists they’re adding.”

“Robin and Lilian will be under the media microscope. Lucas, too.”

“Stranger abductions are rare,” Ray stated, even though Mason knew that.

“I firmly believe that none of the parents had anything to do with Henley’s disappearance. Someone that they know or someone angry at one of them could be a possibility, but it’s not one of these adults.”

“What about you? It could be someone striking out at you. You’ve pissed off enough people to fill a small town.”

Mason snorted. “Then why target Henley? She’s not my kid.”
What if Jake had gone missing?
Guilty acid burned in Mason’s gut over the relief that his son was safe.

“Yeah, good point.”

The line was quiet as Mason’s brain shot in a million different directions, weighing scenarios. He suspected Ray’s mind was doing the same thing. He ran a hand through his short hair, making it stand on end and fighting an overwhelming urge to rush to the FBI command center and demand to hear what they’d discovered while he was sleeping.

He ended the call with a reminder for Ray to check Mason’s log on his calendar at work. They knew each other’s passwords. Seven years of working together had created a deep trust. He’d trust Ray with his son’s life, and he knew Ray felt the same.

Ray will figure out what’s wrong at Josie’s house.

He pulled himself out of bed and headed for the door. First a shower, then coffee. If he’d been at home, he’d do the coffee first. But he didn’t want to run into anyone while looking or smelling like he’d slept in a doorway in downtown Portland.

He turned the doorknob, noticing that he was taller than the entire Hello Kitty measuring chart on the back of the door. Someone’s size had been proudly highlighted at the height of Mason’s hip. He barely remembered when Jake had been that size.

Special Agent McLane stepped out of her room across the hall, fully dressed in jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved casual blouse. Blue eyes surveyed him in amusement.

“Morning, detective.”

Mason wanted to go back to bed.

Ava reviewed her email at the kitchen nook table, sipping hot coffee as she scanned the latest update from ASAC Ben Duncan. Someone in the Fairbanks house hadn’t slept last night. She’d found fresh homemade chocolate-chip scones, blueberry coffee cake, and cinnamon rolls on the kitchen counter. No one else was up, and the kitchen was as neat as a pin. Was Robin or Lilian the midnight baker?

She placed her money on Robin.

Taking a second piece of preservative-free coffee cake, she prayed Robin didn’t keep up the custom bakery routine. Ava had a serious weakness for homemade sweets. She kept her daily food choices as simple as possible, avoiding processed foods with seventy-five ingredients on the label, and from what she’d seen in Robin’s refrigerator and cupboards, the woman seemed to follow the same philosophy. No store-bought Twinkies, but bring on the home-baked goods.

If it calmed Robin to bake, maybe Ava could run what they didn’t eat down to the command center. It would save the FBI money on their donut budget and get the temptation out of Ava’s vision. Heck, she wouldn’t mind getting some flour on her hands. Her job was to stick with the family, so maybe they could have a big cookie-making day. Churn out a few hundred Christmas cookies. That would keep some minds occupied.

Guilt flashed through her. What if cookie making was a tradition with Henley and her mom or stepmom? Would the process be more painful than helpful? Ava had good memories of her mom, herself, and Jayne spending countless hours in the kitchen during the weeks before Christmas making lemon bars, frosted sugar cookies, thick oatmeal-and-cranberry cookies, and chocolate haystacks.

In the kitchen, Jayne had never turned baking into a competition. Unlike every other aspect of her life: grades, boyfriends, clothes. Jayne had always fought to be one step ahead of Ava in everything. And Ava had let it roll off her back. It’d bugged the hell out of Jayne that Ava hadn’t had the same urge to outdo her sister. Ava had always kept a cool head and ignored her sister’s rants. Even now, Ava took pride in the fact that she was the calm and mellow sister, while Jayne was the fiery and emotional sister. Was Ava passive-aggressive in how she handled Jayne’s competitive spirit? Absolutely. It was the one thing her sister couldn’t take away from her.

And look what I have here.
On her screen was an email from Jayne with a dozen exclamation marks in the subject line.

That described Jayne in a nutshell: excessive exclamation marks. Ava counted to three and exhaled before clicking on the email.

Why are you ignoring my texts??? Call me, please!!! I need to talk to you about next weekend. I just need a place to stay for a few nights until I round up some roommates. It wouldn’t be more than a week. I’ve got a lead on a possible watercolor showing! This could be a big break for me!

XOXOXOX

Ava deleted the email. Jayne believed every word she wrote, but Ava knew they weren’t true; she’d been burned twice before. If she let Jayne under her roof for one night, she’d end up like Charlie Harper on
Two and a Half Men,
with the sibling who never moved out. Jayne would break her microwave, eat all her food, and leave her wet laundry in the washing machine for a week. And those were the small issues.

Never again.

The big issues would be the variety of men Jayne invited to sleep over and the illegal drugs she’d hide from her sister. Ava closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. Tough love. She wouldn’t let Jayne drag her down. Jayne claimed she’d been clean for two months, but Ava didn’t care. Jayne had a thirty-five-year history of lying to Ava, and it’d taken the last decade for Ava to break the bond her twin held over her.

Jayne and Ava might have been identical on the outside, but inside they seemed to have different genes. Somehow God had given Ava all the common sense, while Jayne got the judgment of a drunken flea.

Why? Why can’t my sister see who she is?

Because Jayne didn’t care. Something was missing inside of her. She operated as if the world revolved around her. She couldn’t see the needs of others. She couldn’t see the hurt and damaged people in her wake. As children, when Jayne was suffering, she pulled Ava down by whatever means possible to suffer along with her. She couldn’t bear to be alone in her misery.

Ava wouldn’t let Jayne’s current misery affect her life. She’d learned that lesson several times. Too bad it’d taken so long to stick. And as for the art showing? Ava would believe it when she saw it. Every other month, Jayne was excited about a lead on an art show or someone interested in her watercolors, and she always swore she was days away from making a fortune. Jayne had never stuck out a real job. She’d been chasing the art dream forever, convinced she’d make it big and never have to worry about money again.

Until then, she believed Ava should financially support her.

“Everything okay?”

Ava started in her chair, jerking her head up to meet curious brown eyes. She hadn’t heard Detective Callahan enter the kitchen. He had a cup of steaming coffee in his hand. She hadn’t seen him pour it or heard the clank of the coffee pot.

Feeling distracted?

“It looked like you were about to rub through the skin on your forehead.” The detective took a sip of his coffee, his gaze never leaving her.

Ava gave a weak smile. “Personal email. My sister knows how to get under my skin.” The detective nodded and didn’t probe further. She appreciated his manners. Anyone else would have launched into a hundred questions about her sister. He straddled a stool at the kitchen counter, hooking a boot on a rung, and eyed the bounty of baked goods. His salt-and-pepper hair was still damp from his shower. She’d clearly surprised him a half hour ago when he’d opened his bedroom door. He’d been groggy with sleep.