Stranger in Town (2 page)

I reclined my seat back and closed my eyes.  Some time later, I woke up and looked around.  There was no sign of Mr. Tate or his beige SUV anywhere. 
How long had I been out?  Fifteen minutes?  Thirty? 
It felt like an hour.
 
I glanced down at my phone.
 
Forty-five minutes had gone by. 

I checked my text messages and had received one written in all caps: BE THERE SOON, NOAH TATE.

I never understood what compelled a person to show up late without any regard for the person they’d inconvenienced.  I dialed Mr. Tate’s number.  It went to voicemail.  “Wait fifteen more minutes,” I said to myself, “then leave.”

Fourteen minutes later, I turned the key in the ignition and put the car in reverse, almost backing into the beige SUV that whizzed across the intersection and into the parking lot at warp speed.  The vehicle jerked to a stop, and a slender, red-faced man with no hair to speak of opened the door and scurried out.  He smoothed some crumbs off of his expensive-looking, button-up shirt, glanced around, and advanced in my direction.

“Mr. Tate?”

The man nodded, sticking his hand through my open window. 

I didn’t take it.

“Call me Noah, please.”  

“You’re late,” I said.  

“I’m sorry.  I sent you a text.  Didn’t you get it?”  

“That’s your excuse: ‘you sent me a text?’”

He shrugged.  “I tried to leave on—”

“Call next time,” I said.  “Or I might not be around when you get here.”  I got out of the car.  “Should we go in?”

He nodded and followed me inside. 

The waiter seated us at a wooden table with legs made of thick, knotty logs.  Black and white photographs were haphazardly glued along the top and had been covered with some type of lacquered glaze, sealing them in place.  The photographs looked like they’d been taken several decades earlier and showed what the town was like before it turned into what it was today. 

Once we were seated, Mr. Tate looked both ways before sliding a bank envelope over to me.  The look on his face made me feel like we were making a drug exchange.  I took the money, setting it to the side.  I hadn’t agreed to anything—not yet.    

“I’m not clear about why you wanted to hire me,” I said.  “I need to know before I accept the job.”

“I didn’t want to discuss it over the phone.”

“Why not?” 

He tapped his pointer finger on the table and whistled a few notes from an unfamiliar tune.  “It’s not an easy subject to discuss in front of my wife.”

“Your wife isn’t here now,” I said.

I thought about all the reasons a man would need to discuss something away from the watchful eye of their suspicious spouse, the most prominent being cheating or something having to do with money.  But Mr. Tate didn’t appear to have money problems, and he didn’t seem like the unfaithful type either.  Then again, the best cheaters never did.   

“It’s not what you think,” he said.  

I shrugged.

“How do you know what I think?”

“You wrinkled your face just now like I’ve done something wrong,” he said.  “I haven’t.”

“I’d like to know why I’m here.”

He leaned back in the chair, laced his fingers together, and rested them on the edge of the table.  “A couple years ago a young girl named Olivia Hathaway was kidnapped a few hours from here.”

The name seemed vaguely familiar.  “Where was she taken?”

“From a grocery store in Pinedale.”

“Is Pinedale in—”

He nodded.  “Wyoming, yes.”

“What happened?”

His shoulder bobbed up and down.   

“No one knows for sure.  They were shopping at the time, the girl and her mother.  Her mother remembers telling Olivia to hold on to the side of the cart while she looked at something, but when she turned back around, Olivia was gone.  She searched every aisle with the store employees, but found no sign of her anywhere.”

“They never found her—dead or alive?”

He shook his head. 

“Police combed the area, formed search parties, and put her picture up on every post, billboard, and store window.  By the time they were through, they’d gone over every inch of Pinedale at least once.  There wasn’t a soul in the state of Wyoming that didn’t know the girl was missing.”

“And there were no witnesses?” I said.

“None that lived to talk about it.”

I sipped my water. 

“So there was someone who saw what happened?”

“A store employee discovered an elderly woman dead in the parking lot right after Olivia was taken.  She’d been stabbed once, and then run over.”

“By a vehicle?”

He nodded.

“A car.”

“She must have seen something,” I said. 

His demeanor conveyed much more than a person who was sharing a story.  He was connected somehow.

“Is Olivia your daughter?”

He swallowed hard and glanced out the window. 

“I’m sorry,” I said.  “I can’t imagine how hard it would be to lose a child.”

A single tear formed in the corner of his eyelid.  He quickly swept it away.  “Olivia Hathaway is not my daughter.”

I set my glass down and looked up.  “If she’s not your daughter, why are you here and why tell me this story?”

“My daughter’s name is Savannah,” he said.  “Savannah Tate.”

CHAPTER 3

“Savannah Tate—of course,” I said.

He perked up. 

“You’ve heard the story then?”

“Everyone has,” I said.   

Savannah’s abduction took place at a preschool in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, six months earlier.  Once the media got a good whiff of what had happened, things spun out of control.  Finger-pointing and blame spread in all directions, most of it resting on the shoulders of the daycare itself.  No one working that day understood how they had managed to lose a child—from an enclosed play area, no less.  Even more bizarre was the fact that Savannah hadn’t been outside alone.  She had been playing with another child who was the same age, leading to even more speculation.  People wondered why they weren’t both taken, why one had been chosen over the other. 

The daycare employees were interviewed on WNN, Wyoming’s nightly news, each one tearing up on camera, but an unsympathetic public didn’t care.  A toddler was missing because of the daycare’s mistake.  It might have been an honest one, but it didn’t stop parents from pulling their children out of A Place to Grow Child Care Center until no children remained.  Soon after, the child-care center was forced to close.  A rumor circulated about a twenty percent decrease in daycare attendance across the nation.  Mothers from every walk of life clutched their children a little closer that week, opting to find what they felt were more “suitable” arrangements.  Many turned to in-home child care, thinking their children were much better off in the comfort of their own homes.

Two weeks after Savannah was kidnapped a new website sprung to life called All Kids Safe.  It was a place where parents could hand-pick quality nannies in their area.  All employees had to undergo a background check and adhere to a code of ethics.  The idea of children getting personal care made parents feel safe, making All Kids Safe a huge hit.

“I hope you understand now why I wanted to wait until I could speak to you in person,” Mr. Tate said.  “My wife doesn’t even get out of bed anymore.  She’s tired of…well—everything.  The media coverage, the constant interviews by the police, the ladies on the street bringing casseroles over every night.  She can’t take it anymore, and neither can I.”

“How’s the investigation going?”

“Seems like they’ve done more harm than good.  We’ve been given the same statistics so many times now, I can quote them for you.”

When I failed to respond in a timely manner, he backed up his statement.  

“Every forty seconds a child is reported missing or abducted,” he said, “eighty-two percent by family members, many taken within a quarter mile of the child’s home.  Seventy-four percent of children who are murdered are dead within three hours of their abduction.”

I stayed quiet.  He kept going.

“Why do they tell us this stuff?  Do they really think it makes us feel better to hear it?  I’m aware of the statistics.”

“I believe they’re just trying to be realistic.  The last thing they want is to give you some sort of false hope.  It may seem harsh, but it isn’t.  They just want you to know the truth.” 

“I’m not some delusional parent asking you to look for his daughter when there’s a good chance she’s dead,” he said.  “She’s still alive—I know it.”

I thought about how many times I’d watched parents on TV say the same thing.  Admitting a loved one was gone wasn’t easy.  But now wasn’t the time to explain everything police officers and detectives went through as a team when something of this magnitude happened.  He wasn’t healthy enough to hear it yet, let alone understand. 

I removed a pad of paper and did what I do best.

“Is there a specific person working with you—a detective maybe—someone who keeps in touch more than the others?”

He nodded. 

“There’s a detective.  Name’s Walter McCoy.”

I jotted it down.

“McCoy makes a lot of promises, but there’s no delivery,” he said.  “McCoy says he’ll keep looking even if it takes the rest of his life, but if you ask me, he’s headed toward retirement.  Why would he stay committed?  It’s not like his daughter was taken.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t see it the same way.”

“What do you mean?” he said.

“You have no idea how many cops have ‘the one.’”

“What one?”

“The one they never solve,” I said.  “It’s something they carry with them their entire life.  It’s not some itch they can scratch to make them feel better.  It’s always there, in the back of their minds.  Even when they sleep, they have nightmares.  It doesn’t ever go away.”  

“McCoy never tells me what he’s been up to, how much time he’s spending on my daughter’s case, nothing.  What am I supposed to think?”

“Maybe there are facts about the case that haven’t been revealed to you yet,” I said.  “When the time is right, they’ll fill you in.  I know it’s hard right now, but you have to be patient.  I’m sure they’re doing the best they can.”

“I’m done being patient,” he said.  “I’ve been interviewed so many damn times, it seems like my wife and I are their only suspects.  They waste time talking to us when they should be finding our daughter.”

“Cases like this add a lot of pressure for everyone involved,” I said.  “The public often pushes police, demanding answers, and when they don’t come—well—you can see how stressful it can be, right?”

He tilted his head slightly.  “I don’t know—I don’t trust them.  And now there’s this new guy in town.”

“A cop?” I said.

He shrugged.  “Not sure.  McCoy just said he brought him in to work on the case, so it didn’t get ‘cold.’”   

“Do you have a name?”

He shook his head.

“Don’t know, don’t care.”

“I’m surprised this new person hasn’t met with you yet,” I said.

“He tried.”

“And you refused?”

“Why would I want to start working with someone else at this point?”

You’d think he’d be willing to work with anyone if it led to finding his daughter. 

“You could at least give him a chance.”

He swished his hands through the air like he thought I was crazy.  “He’s just another person working for
them
.  I want someone working for me.”  He aimed a thumb at himself.

I felt like I was missing something important, something he hadn’t said yet.  It didn’t sit well with me.  

“Is there anything you haven’t told the police?” I said.  “Because if there is, I can’t take your case unless I know about it.”

Noah leaned back in his chair, placing one of his hands on his forehead like he’d just been stricken with a massive migraine.  “Before I answer, I need to know one thing: Do you believe there’s a chance my daughter is still alive?”

Statistics weren’t in his daughter’s favor, but numbers had never meant much to me.  “I believe you think she is, and that’s enough for me.”

Noah closed his eyes and smiled.  “Good.  I want to show you something.”

CHAPTER 4

Flattened on the table in front of me was a piece of paper.  A princess resembling Sleeping Beauty frolicked in the middle of a field of flowers, all of them pink.  In fact, the entire page was pink.  I lifted the piece of paper up and examined it.  There was no writing of any kind, just outside-of-the-line scribbling done with a waxy Crayola.  

“What is this?” I said.  “I mean, I can see it’s a torn page from a child’s coloring book, but where’d you get it?”

“In the mail.”

His tone of voice had changed so much one would have thought I was holding a newly discovered artifact.

“When?” I said.

“Three days ago.”

“If you’re showing this to me, obviously it means something to you,” I said. 

“I believe it was colored by my daughter.”

I stared at the picture, not knowing what to think.  Could it be possible?

He grabbed the paper, waving it back and forth in front of me.  “Don’t you see what this means?  She’s alive!”

Or someone had a twisted way of turning a wayward parent into a believer.

“Why haven’t you shown this to the police?”

He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms.  He had a smug grin on his face like my astute observation had impressed him.

“What makes you think I haven’t?”

“It’s still in your possession,” I said.  “If you would have handed it over to Detective McCoy, it wouldn’t be.”

“You’re right.  He would have taken it from me and said something about how it needed to be ‘entered into evidence.’  I’d never get it back.  You have no idea what this means to me—to my wife.  It’s—helping her cope.”

I understood the attachment he’d formed and why, but he wasn’t doing himself any favors by hanging onto it. 

“You don’t know what they’ll do until you show it to them,” I said.  

“Olivia Hathaway’s parents got one too.  They handed it over, and once the investigators all looked at it, her mother asked if she could have it back.  What do you think they said?”