Little Girls Lost (4 page)

Sam spent a moment trying to remember who he was talking to. Dimly he could remember Officer Riley as a very young, very eager beat cop. Sam could remember offering him some career advice while he sipped punch from a paper cup, trying not to think about how much he wished that there was alcohol in it. That had been one of the bad nights.

"Yes, Officer Riley. I remember you. How are you doing?"

"I'm doing fine, sir, and thank you for asking. I came across something tonight that I thought maybe you'd want to know about."

"What was that?" Sam asked idly, not really paying attention to the conversation. It was getting on to dinner time and his stomach was empty. He couldn't decide whether to go home for dinner or get takeout.

"Well, there was an abduction down on my beat. A girl."

"Oh?" Sam asked, his mind slowly coming back into focus on the present moment.

"There was a witness, a woman in an apartment across the street. She says she saw a man and a woman fighting with each other. She opened the window to shout at them, but she says the man forced the girl into the back of a gray van and drive off."

Officer Riley had all of Sam's attention now. "What made you think to call me?"

There was a slight pause on the other side of the line. "I don't know, sir. A hunch, maybe? I remembered that case you're working on, and this girl is about the same age. I thought that maybe...." He trailed off.

"No, you were right to call me." Sam grabbed a pad of paper and fished out a working pen. "Now, do we have the girl's name yet?"

In the afternoon of the next day Sam took a look around and thought to himself that he was spending too much time in other people's living rooms.

The Patterson residence was comfortable, almost too much so, with a circle of over-stuffed sofas and easy chairs circling the outside of a green-painted room. Sam sat in one of the chairs and felt the cushion sucking him in, inviting him to stay in a place that he very much wanted to escape. Betsy Patterson—the abduction victim from the previous day—had grown up in a home that tried desperately to make you stay, to feel comfortable, to kick back and become part of the family. He felt guilty for feeling like a fly wrapped snugly in the threads of a spider web.

To his side sat Bud, uncomfortable as always with anything resembling snug domesticity, and before him sat Betsy's parents. They were putting on a brave face that Sam knew concealed a roiling sea of panic and denial. When their daughter had failed to come home from her choir practice, at first they had called her friends, then they called the church, and finally they called the police—after, Sam did not doubt, a great deal of prayer. That the Patterson house was a Christian home was never in doubt from the moment that visitors saw the cross hung on the wall directly facing the front door, nor was it possible to ignore the bible on the table in the center of the room or the television—now muted—tuned to an evangelical sermon.
 

"I understand that you believe your daughter has been kidnapped," Sam began carefully.

Betsy's mother, an earnest woman with brown hair and sensible eyeglasses, nodded. Sam could see red eyes behind her glasses. She had been crying. "The officers tell us that we should wait for a phone call. That the kidnappers just want money, they don't want this to get any worse than it already is."

Sam nodded. He believed, though, that the situation with their daughter was very different from what they believed. "That is prudent, ma'am. And above all, it's important that you not lose hope. You have to believe that your daughter will be returned safe and sound."

"As God wills," Betsy's father muttered, more to himself than to anyone else in the room. He seemed a pleasant man, with an open face that invited easy conversation. His eye glasses were remarkably similar to his wife's. Incongruously, Sam wondered whether they shopped together.
 

"We have been praying for the Lord's guidance and deliverance from this trouble," the man added. "Detective, would you please pray with us?"

Sam knew that the correct answer was "yes." It would cost him nothing and give these poor people some comfort if he would mouth a few platitudes and allow them to believe whatever they wished to believe concerning his piety. Somehow he couldn't muster the will to smile and agree. "Prayer won't get your daughter back," he said, and immediately regretted his choice of words. "What we need is a place to look. Someone to look for. Do you know of anyone in your daughter's life who might have done something like this?"

Betsy's parents looked at each other for a moment, and then again it was her mother who spoke first. "None of her friends, certainly. Betsy isn't close with many girls, but they're all good Christians. Most of them worship at the same church we belong to."

"We have a witness who says it was a man who abducted your daughter," Sam said. "Did Betsy have a boyfriend, or maybe someone she used to see but broke up with?"

Her father shook his head. "Our Betsy is not a fornicator. She's a good girl, always at home by 9:00. She told us many times that there would be time enough for boys later, when she was in college or later. She didn't have time for dating after her duties in the church."

Sam smiled thinly, wondering what Betsy might not have shared with her parents. "Is there anyone else you know who we should look into? Anyone at all?"

Betsy's mother glanced at her husband for reinforcement, then looked back at Sam with defiance in her eyes. "There's the liberals," she said.

"Excuse me?" Sam asked.

"Liberals. Abortionists. Atheists," she said by way of explanation. "People who are at war with the values on which our nation was founded. Betsy is a crusader for the Lord's truth. You should look for someone who is at war with that truth."

Sam glanced at Bud, who was busy looking at his shoes. "'Liberals' is a pretty broad category," he said at last. "Could you narrow that down a little?"

"I'll tell you who to look for," Betsy's father interjected. "The Muslim Brotherhood. There's a club of some sort at Betsy's high school. They tangled with our Betsy more than once, and she said that things were pretty heated between them. Find the Muslim Brotherhood, and you'll find our daughter."

Outside the air was cool as the day began to shift into evening, and Sam took a deep breath that tasted of grass as he and Bud walked slowly back to his car.

"Abortionists and Muslim high school students, huh? Didn't know they were forming up into kidnapping rings now," Bud muttered.
 

Sam shrugged. "They need someone to blame, I guess. They're grasping for straws, and it's easy to blame the people they already don't like."

"We need someone to blame, too. And crackpot theories don't get us any closer to finding the fucker who's doing this."

Sam gave him an appraising look. "You agree that this is probably connected with the killing?"

Bud sighed. "Probably. For the kid's sake I hope not, but she's probably dead already. It's just a question of how long it will be before her body washes up somewhere."

"Maybe we're wrong. Maybe this is just a regular kidnapping," Sam said, but in his heart he didn't believe it. Something beneath conscious thought told him that the two crimes were connected, which meant that Betsy Patterson was in very great danger indeed. If she was still alive she wouldn't be for long.
 

"Damn it," he said under his breath. He really wanted a drink, but he settled for mild profanity. They needed to find Jesse Rasmussen, and they needed to find him fast.

"You gonna get something to eat?" Bud asked.

"Nah," Sam said, swinging into the driver's seat. "I'm going back to the station. I want to see if I can find something in the files."

There were no answers in the files that night, nor did Sam find insight during the time when he lay sleepless in bed, listening to Patty's slow breathing and watching the changing pattern of light and shadow on the ceiling.

There was something he was missing, he was sure of it, but all that awareness gave him was a sense of disquiet that kept him from sleeping at night.

Jesse Rasmussen was the killer. That made perfect sense. But if he was in town, grabbing girls, why had no one seen him in months? Where the hell was he?

Sam was pondering the same questions when he parked his car in the parking lot of Theodore Roosevelt High School and began the slow march to the guidance counselor's office.

The counselor, an earnest woman with black hair pulled back into a ponytail, introduced herself as "Mrs. Martin." Sam guessed that it had been so long since anyone in this building used her first name that it never occurred to her to offer it. She wore a black sweater with faded blue jeans that were clearly intended to say, "I'm just like you" to the teenagers who visited her office. Sam suspected that those teenagers were far too skilled in the art of not communicating with adults to be fooled by a pair of pants.

At Bud's request, Mrs. Martin was rummaging through her file cabinet, looking for something that might aid the investigation of Betsy Patterson's kidnapping. The guidance counselor was under the impression that Sam and Bud were assigned to the case of the kidnapping. Sam didn't have the heart to tell her that they suspected that Betsy would soon be connected with another case, and that neither he nor his partner had much hope that the next time they saw Betsy she'd still be alive.

While he waited, Sam scanned the walls of the office, which were heavily decorated with college pennants and Mrs. Martin's diplomas. This was an office that sent a loud message to everyone who entered: "Go to college!" Sam guessed that the message was well-received in a middle-class high school like this.
 

Still browsing through the contents of a folder, Mrs. Martin returned to her desk. "I'm afraid I don't have much on Betsy. The students I get to know well are the ones who are struggling, either here or at home. Betsy didn't stand out much, in either a negative or positive way."

"At this point we're just hoping to get to know her better. Who she hangs out with, who her friends are, what's been on her mind lately, that sort of thing. Do you know of someone here who might be able to help us?"

Mrs. Martin considered. "Yes, I think your best option is Peggy Green. I didn't often see Betsy in the hallway without Peggy at her side. Would you like me to call her in for you?"

"Please," Sam said with a smile. He glanced back at his partner, who was being suspiciously silent at his post by the door. Sam knew that Bud just barely escaped from high school. He was probably nervous that someone would spontaneously assign him to a civics class.

Mrs. Martin picked up the phone and spoke a few words into it before placing the receiver back in the cradle. "Peggy is in a class right now, but someone in the administration office will go to the room and escort her here." She visibly composed herself before adding in a small voice, "Is Betsy going to be OK?"

Sam wanted to be reassuring, but he had little to offer her. "We're doing our very best," he said, and knew how unconvincing that sounded. Mrs. Martin nodded and tried to smile, but mostly she just looked sad.
 

After a few moments they heard a tap on the door, then a pretty girl with long brown hair slipped into the room. She gave Bud a nervous glance and said, "You wanted to see me?"

Sam rose from his chair and extended his hand. "I'm Detective Patton, but you can call me Sam. This is my partner. We were hoping you could talk to us about Betsy."

Peggy looked back and forth between them. "Have you heard anything?"

"I'm afraid not, but you might be able to help us find her. Did Betsy tell you about anyone she was fighting with, or who threatened her in any way? Anyone at all?"

Peggy shook her head. "No, no one."

"Did she have a boyfriend?"

"No. She took the Pledge and ..."

"The pledge?"

"The Virginity Pledge. We all took it—well, everyone in the Christian Youth took it. We pledge to remain virgins until we get married. Betsy took it really seriously. She wanted to go on mission next year, and she didn't see how boyfriends or dating could possibly work."

"Busy girl," Bud muttered.

Peggy nodded. "Betsy was super busy, what with school, and choir practice, and Christian Youth, and work with the church. She barely had time for friends, which is why that rumor was so stupid."

Sam glanced at Bud. "What rumor was that?"

Peggy rolled her eyes. "Oh, some kids thought it would be funny to spread a rumor that Betsy was having an affair with a teacher. Which everyone knows was a total lie, but they spread it anyway because ha, ha, it's Betsy and everyone knows she doesn't do stuff like that!"

Sam leaned in. "Was there any truth to this, Peggy? Anything at all? Even if Betsy didn't go out with a teacher, was there a teacher who maybe wanted to go out with her?

Peggy shook her head emphatically. "No! I would have known about it if it happened, but Betsy didn't say anything to me. It was a total lie."
 

Sam thanked her and sent her back to class, but he was still thinking about the rumor as he and Bud headed down the hallway toward the parking lot. "She's probably right," he said. "It was a malicious rumor, a joke at the expense of the girl who was holier than thou."

"Probably," Bud agreed. "Still..."

"Still, we need to check it out," Sam agreed. They would follow the lead and ask their questions, but unless someone was eye-witness to Betsy and a teacher making out in the parking lot, it would never be more than a rumor. He hoped that Peggy was right, though. If there was a teacher out there—someone in this very building—who pursued an affair with an underage student and abducted her when she rejected him, that was the sort of thing that could tear a community apart.
 

This case was already ugly, but there was room for it to get a lot uglier.