Little Girl Gone (An Afton Tangler Thriller #1)(9)

*

SUSAN and Richard Darden were hunkered down in Thacker’s office. They’d already spent hours with the FBI and the Minneapolis PD; now they were waiting for a visit with Afton before they headed home.

In the locker room, Afton shucked out of her fleece top and grabbed a navy blue blazer from her locker. It was a conservatively cut Talbots blazer that she kept for just such meetings. She struggled into it, and then, feeling a little breathless and unsettled, headed for her meeting.

“How are they doing?” Afton asked Angel Graham as she breezed into the deputy chief’s outer office. Angel was Thacker’s secretary and had been his right-hand counsel, confessor, and provider of homemade coffee cake for at least a dozen years.

“Not so good,” Angel replied. She was seven months pregnant and looking fretful. “I feel so bad for them,” she said, nodding at the closed door and absently massaging her stomach through a fuzzy pink sweater. “Guilty even.”

“Don’t be,” Afton told her.


*

HELLO,” Afton said. She tried to keep her voice sympathetic but calm as she eased into Thacker’s office to meet Susan and Richard Darden. “I’m Afton Tangler, community liaison officer for the Minneapolis Police Department.” They shook hands, Richard looking stoic and somber, Susan leaking tears like crazy.

“This is our attorney, Steven Slocum,” Richard said, indicating a tall, hawk-nosed man who hadn’t bothered to stand up.

“Nice to meet you,” Afton said, shaking hands with Slocum, wishing he wasn’t here.

Afton sat on a straight-backed chair directly across from the Dardens and tried to focus every inch of her being on them. “I want to offer you my deepest concern and assure you that the department is doing everything possible to solve this case,” she said.

“So is the FBI,” Slocum said stiffly. “They already have a team in place at the Dardens’ Kenwood home.” He snapped open the latch on his briefcase as if to punctuate his sentence. “Have for the last ten hours.”

“Obviously they’re taking the lead in this,” Afton continued. “But the MPD is working with them in complete concert, doing everything necessary to assist. I know our crime scene team is there as well. I want you to know, however, that if there is anything, anything at all, that you need, any question you want answered, any issue that needs to be resolved, I’m here to run interference for you. So please feel free to contact me.” Afton handed each of the distraught parents one of her business cards. “Twenty-four/seven, day or night. Don’t hesitate to call.”

Richard Darden rubbed her business card with his thumb, then put it in his inside jacket pocket and nodded.

“The media,” Afton said, “is going to hound you relentlessly. Your first instinct may be to shy away from them but just remember . . . if we use them to our advantage, they can reach millions of viewers and listeners.”

“Got it,” Richard Darden said. He looked like he was ready to get the hell out of there.

Susan Darden continued to leak tears. “Our baby,” she began in a halting voice. “Elizabeth Ann. She . . . she took her own sweet time to arrive.”

“You don’t have to talk about this,” Richard said, but Susan shook her head defiantly.

“Please,” she said, “I want to, it’s important to me.”

Afton leaned forward, gently placed a hand on top of Susan’s clasped hands. “Tell me.”

“We tried for three years,” Susan said. “Endured two miscarriages, had to go through three rounds of IVF. But I finally got pregnant with Elizabeth Ann. She was our own little miracle. When she was born, I never knew such happiness could exist.” Her voice cracked and she sobbed quietly, defeatedly, for a few moments. “Please, she’s everything to us.”

“The FBI and MPD are pulling out all the stops on this,” Afton said. “They’re good people, smart people. They’ll find her, I know they will.”

“Bless you,” Susan sobbed.





5


AFTON cracked open the door to the conference room and peered in. Max was sitting by himself at the table, looking somber and a little tired. “Hey, Max,” she said. “Got a second?”

Max glanced up. “Sure.” Manila folders and pages of notes were spread out around him. Max was old school, not always in sync with technology. Case in point: He had a perfectly good HP laptop sitting on his desk, but claimed to prefer actual paper and handwritten notes.

Afton slipped into the chair across from Max. She was feeling edgy after her meeting with the Dardens. She figured that talking to him might help alleviate some of the pent-up anxiety and fear that had spilled over into her psyche.

Max seemed to read her mind. “You talked to the Dardens?” he asked.

Afton nodded. “And their lawyer.”

“Yeah,” Max breathed. “I heard they brought their lawyer along. Slocum.” He said the man’s name like he was referring to a steaming heap of manure. “The one who got that crazy football player off on the rape charge.”

“I remember that,” Afton said. “The so-called Love Boat Incident.” She hesitated. “So you’ve huddled with the FBI?”

“I talked to Keith Sunder and Harvey Bagin from the local field office late last night. And Don Jasper, one of their top guys, a couple of hours ago. Jasper flew in from Chicago. Apparently he has a shit load of experience when it comes to child abductions.”