Stolen Lives: A Detective Mystery Series SuperBoxset (21 page)

Vargas clapped his hands together. “All right, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s get out there. Leave no stone unturned. We want to keep this as quiet as we can. Especially if the cartels are
involved.”

“That’d be my guess,” Wright said, rising from his vinyl-upholstered chair. Summerson followed his lead. Miriam opened the office door as Keely turned back to speak to the lieutenant. “You want to say anything to Guillermo before we get started?”

Vargas rose from his chair and stretched. “Yeah, be a good citizen and tell us everything you know.”

Keely laughed as Vargas picked up his ringing phone, signaling him to close the door as they left. The detectives walked outside where the tension in the hallway was already evident. Police and detectives alike were moving around, from office to office, gearing up for something big.

“All wound up with nowhere to go,” Wright said.

“What are you two planning to do?” Keely asked.

Wright and Summerson looked at each other and then at Keely.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Summerson said.

“Oh come on,” Keely said. “We need to be working together.”

Wright stepped past them and continued down the hall with Summerson. He turned and offered his parting words. “You bring us something worthwhile, and we’ll do the same with you.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Keely said.

Wright shrugged. “Competition often yields some of the best results, Detective.”

Keely leaned closer to Miriam as the other two turned at the end of the hall and walked toward the building exit. With the exception of a few ringing office phones, everything was quiet.

“Guillermo better not be wasting our time with his story,” he said.

Miriam looked up at him but didn’t respond, her mind lost in thought. She snapped out of it and offered her take on the matter. “Only one way to find out.” She walked in the opposite direction toward the row of interview rooms, determined to get to the bottom of everything.

Keely and Miriam entered the small, windowless room to find Guillermo sitting at the rectangular table, munching on the last of his vending-machine-sized bag of potato chips.

“You guys gone a while,” he said, taking a swig of his soda.

Keely approached the table and pulled out a chair. He turned it backwards and sat with his elbows on the backrest. “We’re very busy out there.”

Miriam remained standing, across the table from Guillermo, studying him, with her notepad and pen in hand. She leaned against the table and spoke. “So I think we’ve delayed long enough. There’s a young girl’s life at stake. What can you tell us, G, about this blue van?”

G chewed the chips in his mouth and swallowed. Then he crumpled the bag into a ball with both hands, deliberately slow. Miriam could see that the info he supposedly had wasn’t going to come easy.

Keely wasn’t up for it. He set his cell phone on the table, swiped at the screen, and pressed a record icon. “You told us you knew something, so get to it already.”

Amused, G laughed quietly to himself under the two long fluorescent ceiling bulbs above. “Well… seems like if this was so important to you, you’d maybe take some of those things off my record.”

Miriam’s eyes narrowed. “What things?”

G took off his dirty ball cap and ran his fingers through his shaggy, black hair. “You know. Shoplifting. Public… uh drunkenness.”

“What the heck are we talking about here?” Keely said, frustrated. “Can we stay on topic, please?”

G shot him an offended cockeyed glare. “Hey, hombre. Why do you think I live on the streets? Ain’t no one will hire me. Not when they look at my record.”

“Please. Detective Keely is right,” Miriam said. “Maybe we can work something out with records, but for now we need to know what you know. Everything from start to finish.”

Silence followed. She could see in his eyes that he was considering it. There wasn’t much else for him to barter. That was clear enough. “I don’t know who he is, but I seen him. He came to the alley one time.”

He paused and took a deep breath. Whatever he knew, he was taking his time getting to it.

Miriam scribbled in her pad and looked up. She chose not to press him. Keely leaned forward in anticipation. “What did he look like?”

He continued, ignoring Keely’s question. “There’s a couple pimps I see. They hang out around the Thirteenth Street. I seen a man. Big, fat, bald gringo.” He paused again, running through his thoughts. “I see two of these pimps, Diego and Gus. They kick the fat gringo. Chase him off. I see the fat gringo get into a big blue van and drive away. Diego tells Bobby and Bobby tells me that the fat gringo argued with Diego.” He stopped and took a slow sip of soda, finishing off the bottle. After that, he said nothing.

Keely held his arms out, surprised and waiting for more as Miriam scribbled. “What did they argue about?”

G balled the crumpled potato chip bag between his hands. “They argue because fat gringo says that Diego’s girls are too old. Wants younger.”

Miriam was intrigued and disgusted. The man who G had described could have very well be Phillip Anderson. Perhaps he had gained more weight and shaved his head. From what she knew about the lengths he had gone to in the past to change his appearance, anything was possible.

“It was the second time fat gringo ask Diego for young girl. Diego get mad because he have a young daughter of his own back in Mexico.” G stopped and laughed softly. “Gringo is lucky he didn’t get killed.”

Keely rocked back in the chair, not completely satisfied with the story. “You have a name for this
fat gringo
?”

G laughed again. “Sorry, I didn’t get his name.”

“What about this Diego and Gus? Do your pimp friends know the guy’s name?”

“They wouldn’t talk to you,” he answered. “Besides, I haven’t seen them in weeks.”

Miriam shuffled through her notepad. “When did this happen?”

G looked up, thinking. “Three weeks ago. I think.”

“And he drove a blue van? You’re sure of that?” Keely asked and pushed his cell phone closer to Mr. G.

“
Si
. Blue van.”

Keely stood up, brimming with frustration. “So we got a fat bald pervert driving a blue van? I’ve got to admit, Mr. Gomez, we probably could have come up with that one on our own.”

Miriam cut in, reserved. “I don’t see this as a coincidence. There’s a real link here.” She looked squarely at G. “But there are other people in the area we can ask, right?”

G shrugged. “Sure. I guess.”

“Any marks on this guy? Scars? Tattoos?” Keely asked.

G froze. For a moment, he just stared ahead, blankly and then began laughing to himself. Miriam and Keely looked at each other, confused.

“What’s so funny?” Keely asked.

“What is it?” Miriam asked. Her impatience was beginning to show.

G took a deep breath and addressed both of them. “He wears all clothes.”

“What do you mean?” Keely asked.

G thought to himself, trying to think of the right words. “He wears, like, long sleeves, a hood. Likes to cover his face.”

“Why?” Keely asked, interrupting.

“Because his face is burned.”

The room went silent save for the air conditioning unit spilling out cold air.

G looked around again, trying to gauge their reactions. Miriam stood stone faced. Keely looked lost in thought. “You understand, right?” G asked. “He is burnt from head to toe. That’s what they say.”

Miriam clutched the table, feeling lightheaded. A sick coincidence. There was no way. It was a sick coincidence and nothing more. Her knees felt weak as her legs began to shake. Keely noticed how pale she looked and asked if she was okay.

“Yeah…” she said, holding herself up over the table. “Just give me a minute.”

If anything G was saying was true, the entire case had just gotten a lot more dangerous.

Search for Sarah

With Keely at the wheel, they resumed the search with only Guillermo’s scant details of who and what he might have seen to help guide them. Miriam couldn’t shake the ominous presence of the “burned man” Guillermo had described. Their next moves had to be careful and calculated, not impulsive, which was tempting, with the many options at hand.

They could check the county registry for all GMC vans and narrow down the search. They could screen others who may have seen the same man G described, get a corroborating statement, and issue an official police sketch. Store owners, shopkeepers, bartenders, mail carriers—somebody had to know something.

The city was crawling with police on nearly every block. A manhunt was underway, leaving civilian drivers and pedestrians curious about the presence of law enforcement everywhere. Contrary to what Lieutenant Vargas had claimed, two police helicopters hovered above, scanning the city.

The police radio was alive with reports of other vans, false alarms, and various descriptions of the suspect. With the majority of the department’s resources unleashed, perhaps Sarah Bynes had a chance. Miriam wanted nothing more than her safe return. She also wanted to be the one to do it.

Another missing girl case. There had to be a rhyme or reason to it. There were no coincidences, she believed. It was late afternoon as they passed a public park, brimming with school children oblivious to the threat beyond the gates.

Vargas had been careful to stress the urgency of finding the girl before her congressman father went in front of the TV cameras for the 5:00 p.m. news. Sarah had been missing for three, maybe four hours—hardly enough to even qualify as a missing person’s case.

“She could in another state by now,” Keely said with a hint of defeat as they approached three lanes of heavy traffic at a red light. They were headed downtown, off East Chandler Boulevard, to drop Guillermo off. He’d insisted on being taken to the same shady alleyway where they had found him.

“Why don’t you stay at a shelter? Reorganize things from there,” Miriam said, turning to him as they sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Keely sighed and leaned forward to turn on the police siren—revealing that their gray four-door Dodge Charger was not just another vehicle on the road.

Guillermo looked out past the park, into the distant mountain ridge beyond the city. “The shelter is no place for me. Don’t worry,
señorita
. Things are going to pick up, real soon.” He made his claim with an air of confidence that bordered on delusional.

“The streets are no place for anyone,” Miriam said. “Be a man and get your life together.” She turned, done with the advice, and grabbed her cell phone. The burned man had re-entered her head—his image constructed from visual fragments of Phillip Anderson’s menacing face, seen in the shadowy basement light just before he’d shot her. She searched for Detective Lou’s number, swiping down.

Keely glanced into the rearview mirror, surprised by Miriam’s lecture. Guillermo looked indifferent as he stared out the window, lost in his own thoughts. Keely flipped on the siren switch from a panel above the window. Lights above the dashboard flashed wildly as the police siren wailed.

The traffic ahead had little to work with as drivers made an attempt to move to the side and make a path for the Dodge Charger to push through. He gunned it through the next intersection as cars stopped in their tracks and others swerved to get out of the way.

Additional sirens could be heard from several blocks away. The hunt was bordering on a frenzy. With all the commotion, Keely was wary of too many cooks in the kitchen. In his experience, that wasn’t always a good thing.

Miriam held the phone close to her ear as it rang. She needed Lou to answer. She needed reassurance that Anderson was dead. If she had any hope of keeping a clear head, Anderson couldn’t remain in her thoughts—where his presence had thrived since he’d shot her partner, Deputy Lang, nearly two years before.

Why had their paths crossed? And why did it seem like the game was far from over? Lou finally answered his phone, sounding startled by the unexpected call.

“Miriam?”
he said.

“Yes, Lou. How are you?”

She could hear shuffling on the other end.
“Oh. I’m fine. Just packing things up at the office tonight. How about you?”

“I’m okay,” she said.

“Gosh, I haven’t heard from you in…”

“Six months,” she answered.

“Yeah, that sounds about right. How’s Arizona?”

“It’s been great so far,” she said. “A real nice change.”

“That’s good to hear,”
he said, sounding busy.

“I don’t want to take up too much of your time—” she began.

“No, no,”
Lou said.
“I always have time for my favorite detective.”

Miriam smiled and then got right to the point. “I’m on a case right now. Missing girl.”

There was a pause on the other end. She’d obviously taken him by surprise.
“You’re kidding…”

“I wish I was, Lou. Some really freaky stuff. Turns out she’s the daughter of a congressman.”

Another pause and then Lou spoke.
“They looking for a payday?”

“I honestly don’t know,” she said, looking ahead as Keely maneuvered around stopped traffic with deft precision.

“What’s the ransom?”
Lou asked.

“I don’t know,” Miriam said.

Her phone suddenly vibrated. Miriam held it down and saw a text from Ana, asking if she could go to Tina’s house after school. Tina was her new friend from school. She wanted Ana to make all the friends she could and step outside her box. It was important for her emotional rehabilitation, and the trauma she lived through. Counseling and therapy couldn’t do all the work. Some of it was up to Ana herself.

Miriam typed back with Lou on speaker, telling Ana that it was okay and to be home by eight. She returned to Lou, who of course had questions.
“So what are you looking at then? A gang? Terrorists? Or just some loner trying to make a quick buck?”

“Consider for a moment that money isn’t even an issue here,” Miriam said. “What if that wasn’t even the reason she was targeted?”

Keely glanced at her as the conversation continued, curious about who the
Lou
character on the phone was.