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Authors: Janet Dailey

BOOK: Bannon Brothers
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“Really?” he asked. “You don't look old enough.”
“Aww. Aren't you sweet,” she mocked in amusement.
RJ returned his attention to the files on the table, wondering if any of his older cases were among them. They had been laid out in alphabetical order, he noticed. “Okay. Where do you want me to start?”
“Are you really that desperate for something to do?” She sliced him a doubting glance.
“What letter are you up to?” he asked.
“
M.
” She slid off her chair to come over to where he was and picked a thick, crammed folder from a group. “The Montgomery case is next. This is the main file.” She set it in front of him.
“It's a monster.”
“You volunteered,” she reminded him and sighed. “This one's a mess, and there are ten others.”
“Mind giving me a summary of it?”
One eyebrow went up. “You can read, right?”
He grinned. “Big type. Small words. You know me, I just sit on a stump and shoot tin cans for laughs.”
“Don't make me believe it, Detective Bannon.” She patted the file. “Get started. Do what you can.”
“How come it's so big?”
“Oh—there are lots of Montgomerys around here, for one thing.” He noticed that she had dodged his question. “The family goes back twelve generations in this part of Virginia. The historical society even gives tours of the ancestral mansion outside of Wainsville—one of those big stately homes that got built, oh, in the eighteen hundreds. Haven't you seen it?”
“No. I usually get assigned to drug dealers in double-wides, remember?”
“Of course I do.” She nodded, then smiled wryly. “Somehow I don't think the Montgomerys would know a double-wide if one snuck up on them and bit their butts. They're rich and always have been.” Her dry tone made the social divide between the Rawlings and the Montgomerys more than clear. “Still and all, they're not as snooty as some of the newcomers around here. And the Mrs. Montgomery in that file definitely wasn't a blueblood.”
“You read it?” Bannon challenged.
Her face was a study in patience. “I knew her—not well, though. We went to the same church when we were younger. Before she married and I didn't. Luanne was always nice.”
Something about her thoughtful tone made him curious. Very curious. “You going to tell me more about that?”
“Later. Maybe.”
“I'm holding you to that,” he responded.
Doris turned back to her work. “Go ahead and start sorting what you can. I'll finish the one I'm working on while you do.”
“Okay. Take your time.”
He took off his leather jacket and slung it across the back of a folding chair, then settled his long frame into the seat, ignoring a sharp twinge in his back when he sat down. RJ opened the Montgomery file and noticed that the earliest forms had been completed on a manual typewriter. He picked up the first piece of paper and read the basics.
Victim: Ann Spencer Montgomery.
Adult/Child: child.
Age: 3.
Nature of crime: abduction.
At a later date, someone had scrawled four bleak words across the paper.
Still missing. Presumed dead.
Presumed dead. Not declared dead. Officially still considered missing. Curious, Bannon began turning pages of the thick file and soon became engrossed in it for the better part of an hour. “This is one hell of a case,” he said softly and glanced at Doris. “How come I never heard of it?”
“You were a kid when it happened, Bannon.” She sounded a little surprised by his interest. “It was before your time. Before you knew it all,” she added in a teasing way.
“Yeah, sure. But—Ann Montgomery was abducted at the age of three.” He grabbed a pad of paper and pencil and jotted down some quick figures. “That means she would be twenty-nine now if she somehow survived.”
“That's correct,” Doris agreed.
Pulling out the old reward poster and the bank document clipped to it, Bannon scanned them both. The money was held in a trust that would terminate on Ann's thirtieth birthday. “There's a year to go on this reward.” He couldn't imagine why the case was being closed. The female victim was still officially classified as missing and a million-dollar reward was still in force for information leading to her safe return.
Decades had gone by. Her family had faith, he'd give them that. Some people would cling to hope forever when no body was found. A few abducted children had turned up alive, years later, but the odds were solidly against this little girl. He flipped through the documentation, feeling a rush of hunting instinct. It felt good. Like his old self was back.
“Yes, I noticed that,” Doris replied. “What's your point?”
“Fake Anns might start showing up. I wouldn't call this case cold.”
“It's been forgotten, RJ. Don't spin your wheels.”
RJ leafed through another section of documents. “I don't get it. Did you ask Hoebel about this? What could it hurt to keep it open for one more lousy year?”
“As a matter of fact, I did, RJ. But he said nothing doing—every case more than five years old with no activity and no leads is officially cold. He wants these off the shelves. The actual files are going into a document storage place in a week. It's about a hundred miles from here.”
RJ frowned. “Not this one. It could be a gold mine of information. Every scrap of paper counts. This was a kidnapping, for chris-sake.”
“Hoebel knows that,” she said, “but he doesn't care. He wasn't working here when the Montgomery case was headline news. Bye-bye, files.”
“But why—”
“Did you get through everything in that one?” Doris was asking.
“I skimmed most of it.”
“Finish reading,” she ordered in a schoolteachery voice.
“Yes, ma'am.” RJ sank his chin into his hand and pored over the last miscellaneous pages. When he was done twenty minutes later, he glanced at Doris, a thoughtful frown creasing his forehead. “I still don't understand. Tell me why a case with a million-dollar ticking clock and a missing child gets closed.”
“More like two million. Don't forget the interest,” Doris pointed out.
He flipped back to the bank document and noted the date on it. “Eight per cent, compounded, low tax. Yeah, two million is probably about right.”
“Now look at the date on the last document in the file.”
He found it—a memo from a detective, now retired, whose name he remembered only vaguely. It was about something minor. RJ read the date aloud. “Okay, that was fifteen years ago. So?”
“It's ancient history, RJ. We don't have the manpower or the money to stick with cold cases, even a high-profile one like this. Our budget keeps getting cut.” She scowled into her screen. “Hoebel has a master plan to streamline some of us out of existence, you know.”
“But you just got promoted.”
“Which means I have to prove myself, right? I intend to get every single file down here entered in my lifetime. Which is getting shorter every day.” She picked up a staple remover and snapped the tiny jaws at him. “Getting old really bites. Just you wait.”
“I'll take your word for it.” He sat up and clasped his hands over his head, stretching out his back. “Are there other Montgomery files? I feel like I'm missing something.”
“Like I said, there are ten on that table. It's possible some already went to the storage place, but I can't be sure until I find the master list of files. That thing runs to about three hundred pages all told.”
“What about the record of evidence? Where's that?”
Doris's reply was matter-of-fact. “Evidence? There wasn't any to speak of. Not a drop of blood or a sign of a struggle. Whoever took Ann left virtually no trace.”
RJ favored her with a look of disbelief. “That can't be. Who handled the investigation?”
She wagged a finger at him. “Did you forget I wasn't working here then?”
“What's that got to do with it? You just said you looked into all the Montgomery files.”
Doris gave him an annoyed look. “RJ, you'd know as much as I do if you'd really read the material.”
“Brief me anyway. For old times' sake.”
She sighed and tapped her pencil on the tabletop. “Half the cops in Virginia were working on it for months. Every sheriff who could keep his pants up over his gut got in on the action and dragged his deputies along. Search and Rescue went out with tracking dogs. The woods around the Montgomery house were gone over inch by inch.”
“And nothing was found?” His tone was skeptical.
“The dog handlers couldn't pick up a scent trail and the searchers found zip. Whoever took her was extremely careful. I don't know if you noticed it,” she added tartly, “but the FBI sent a profiler to try to match the MO to their list of known offenders.”
“Where's that file?”
“I'm not sure.” She looked his way. “Maybe to your left.”
He set aside the file he'd been leafing through to look for something labeled
FBI
and got distracted by another one labeled
Photos. Montgomery, Ann.
Bannon instinctively steeled himself.
This was where it got real.
After five years as a cop and five more as a detective, there were things he never wanted to see again. Crime scene photos that involved kids were among them. Granted, Doris had said there was no evidence, but the way he'd tensed up made his back twinge again. Damn bullet.
Two years ago it had stopped perilously close to his spine, just short of severing it. The surgeons had left it in. Bannon thought of it as a souvenir of his own unsolved case, a meth lab bust that hadn't gone too well. The dealer had used his young sons for a human shield and Bannon had no choice but to drop his gun, unable to ignore the terror in their eyes. But the dealer had opened fire.
Two other bullets had been successfully removed from his chest. He had them somewhere, maybe in his sock drawer. The dealer's sons were on the lam with him as far as anyone knew. RJ would give anything to set them free. But he wasn't going to get the chance.
He had lived—Bannon was grateful for that. And he planned to keep on living. But he'd learned you never knew, that was all.
Opening the file, he looked through the faded photographs of a smiling little girl, pale blond hair caught back in ribbons, clad in a smocked dress. A photo-studio shot showed her holding a favorite toy, a pink teddy bear with flowered tummy and paws. There were others of her: most with her parents as a baby, as a toddler, as a three-year-old.
Nothing he could go on now.
“No age-progression images, looks like,” he said absently.
“They didn't have the software back then.”
“Guess there were no sightings of the suspects. There's no police composite either,” he said. “For what they were worth. I've heard they used to give a cop a crayon and hope for the best.”
Doris snorted. “I know what you mean.”
Looking at the photos stirred feelings in RJ that went beyond a mere hunting instinct. Protectiveness was chief among them. A vulnerable child had vanished. That kind of crime got under the skin and stayed there.
Apparently not with Hoebel, though. The chief was declaring the case cold exactly when anyone who knew the particulars of the reward might come forward. Stupid bastard. Still, he had to concur with Hoebel on the probable outcome of the kidnapping.
Ann Montgomery hadn't lived long. Somewhere there was a shallow grave that had never been found. A small one.
Someone ought to be behind bars, facing the maximum penalty for that, no matter how long it took to make it happen. Bannon knew it was wrong to let this one go.
He put back the drawings and sketches of Ann at three. What was the point? He knew the odds that little girl had lived for more than a couple days after her abduction weren't good.
“What else needs to be organized?” he asked briskly.
“Every freakin' file on that table. Pick a letter,” she said absently.
RJ went one row down to the
N
files and opened folders for other cases that were a lot less sensational, sorting police documents by date and methodically dealing with the miscellaneous papers in them.
After a couple hours of sitting in one place, his back began to ache, a warning signal that he needed to move around if he didn't want it to start stiffening up. Right now a break and some fresh air had a welcome sound to it.
Pushing his chair back from the table, he stood up. “I have a couple errands to run, Doris.” Truth to tell, he didn't, but it was a good excuse. “I'll be back in an hour or so, okay?”

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