Here and Gone(57)

He had to shoulder the door open, and he heard the buckle spring free, and a sickening weight hit the floor on the other side. An age passed as he stood there, knowing what he would find when he finally gathered the courage to look. But he did look, eventually, and he pulled the belt from Mya’s neck and sat cradling her for an hour, howling and blinded by tears, before he thought to call an ambulance.

Two months after Mya’s suicide, Danny drove back to Hamilton. Through his contacts in the SFPD, he had learned that Sergeant Granger had taken a leave of absence due to the stress of dealing with the case. He had gone to Mexico to recover. No one knew when he would return.

But Lloyd was still around, drinking in the town’s one small bar every night. Lately he’d been generous with his tips, bought lots of drinks for his friends. He’d even bought a new car. Nothing too fancy, an Infiniti, but upmarket enough to be noticed by those he drank with.

Lloyd was also known to be an idiot.

Danny waited and watched outside the bar. Lloyd lived only a twenty-minute walk away and would usually leave his new Infiniti parked on the street outside, to return for it in the morning. He was pissing in an alleyway when Danny snatched him.

An hour later, Lloyd was tied up, suspended by his wrists from a roof beam in an abandoned storage shed Danny had found a week before. No one for miles around to hear him scream. Danny took his time with the knife. Lloyd didn’t know much, only what Granger had told him. When Lloyd told Danny they’d received less money than they wanted because the little girl was mixed-race, Danny lost the sliver of control he had, and Lloyd died too quickly for his satisfaction. No matter, he would make up for it with Granger, and find out how to get to the buyer.

When he found the buyer, he would keep him alive just long enough to find out what they’d done with Sara. Whether they’d let her live or not. His higher mind knew the answer to that question, but he would ask it anyway. He would ask it hard.

Danny had a flight booked for Cabo San Lucas two days later, but when he arrived in Mexico and asked around, he discovered Granger had been stabbed to death in a bar fight a week earlier. On a beach, sand burning hot on the soles of his feet, Danny mourned for his wife and daughter, knowing he might never find the men who had destroyed his life.

He didn’t tell Audra about the hours spent with Lloyd, showing the cop pieces of himself before tossing them on the fire. But he told her about Granger. By that time she had grown calm, the food gone. She remained on the bed while he sat on the thinly upholstered chair.

‘There’s a group of men,’ Danny said, ‘very wealthy men. They’ll pay a large sum of money for the right child. Seven figures, I heard. There’s a ringleader. He holds parties at a mansion somewhere out west. Him and his friends, they have these children procured and …’

Audra looked away. Danny cleared his throat.

‘Well, I guess you know,’ he continued. ‘They could get trafficked children easy, refugees, whatever, but they want American kids. White, if they can get them. There’s a specific method, a way of working. They use the Dark Web, it’s like the underside of the Internet, where criminals and perverts hang out. There’s a close circle of dirty cops from around the country who talk to each other there. I’ve tried to find a way in for years now, but I can’t. I was told they discuss ways of making money. Odd jobs for the Mob, evidence tampering, sometimes even contract killings. And these wealthy men have a request out for kids. If one of these cops comes across a vulnerable parent traveling with children, preferably alone, they find an excuse to arrest them, separate them from the kids, then say the kids were never in the car. If they do it right, if they find the right target, suspicion falls on the parent. They can pull it off maybe once a year, twice at most.’

‘Why don’t they kill the parent?’ Audra asked. ‘Why didn’t Whiteside just kill me? That’d be simpler, wouldn’t it?’

Danny shook his head. ‘Simpler for the cops, maybe, but not for the men paying the money. See, my theory is if they just snatch the kids and kill the parent, then the authorities know there’s a murderer out there and they go looking. If the parent’s alive, and the suspicion’s on them, then the authorities waste days and weeks chasing their tails. You look at all those cases where a kid goes missing, there’s a big search, and they find a body. How many times does it turn out it was the father, the stepfather, the uncle, the cousin? Naturally the authorities look to the last family member to have seen the child. And if it’s a parent who does what my wife did …’

Audra finished the thought. ‘Then the case dies with them.’

‘Exactly.’

She sat still and quiet, her gaze on the floor.

‘Do you think I’m crazy?’ Danny asked. ‘Some nut job who just showed up here to mess with you?’

She did not look up. ‘I don’t know what you are. My right mind says to kick you out of here, but …’

‘But what?’

‘But at this moment I don’t have anyone else on my side.’

Danny leaned forward in the chair. ‘Let’s get one thing straight. I’m on my side. Not yours. If I help you, it’s because it helps me get to the men who took my daughter. And, if she’s alive somewhere, maybe even find her. I’m not your Good Samaritan.’

‘Then let me get another thing straight,’ Audra said. ‘I’m only hearing you out because I’ve got no other choice.’