Find Her (Detective D.D. Warren #8)(50)

The arrival of a Boston sergeant detective known for her past work on several major cases would only fan the flames. Even sending out Pam Mason, the family’s victim specialist, would stir the pot.

So, Sunday afternoon, D.D., Keynes, and Pam Mason sat in Keynes’s office and, instead of actively searching for Florence Dane, brainstormed ways of outsmarting the media in order to get Colin Summers alone for questioning. It took another round of coffee to get the job done, with Keynes sticking to water.

D.D. didn’t trust him. Anyone who could appear that alert and engaged without at least one cup of joe?

Pam came up with the winning plan. She would call Colin. Request that he come to his office for a meeting with her. He would understand immediately she had something to say outside the prying eyes of media. And while the news vans could follow him to his downtown office building, they were shut out of the high-rise itself, given it was private property. Colin could ride the elevator up to his eleventh-floor suite, which should be relatively quiet on a Sunday afternoon.

D.D. and Pam would meet him there. Keynes would remain behind, as three against one would appear too threatening for the kinds of questions they needed to ask.

Keynes didn’t argue, merely nodded. D.D. wondered what it would take to ruffle the senior victim specialist. Or maybe that was the point. In his line of work, at this stage of his career, he really had seen it all.

Pam made the call. D.D. could only hear her side of it, but it was clear Colin was already champing at the bit, demanding to know who what why when and how. But Pam, an experienced handler, kept her voice calm and her request simple. Meet me at your office. Meet me at your office. Meet me at your office.

Eventually, Colin must have given up on beating his head against the iron wall of her answers, and agreed to meet her at his office. Three o’clock.

The hour wait gave D.D. time to check in with her team. Keynes showed her an unoccupied office she could use, and she quickly dialed Phil, filling him in on the game plan.

“So you want me to meet with Colin Summers at three?” he asked.

“No.” She frowned over the phone. “I got it.”

Pause. “Can I ask a question?”

“Maybe.”

“What part of duty are you restricting, I mean, given that you are on restricted duty?”

“I’m not carrying my sidearm,” she informed him curtly. “Why? Think I need one to interview an investment banker?”

“No. I think you need to trust your squad. Let us work while you boss us around. Come on, what’s not to love?”

“I don’t have time for this conversation,” she informed him.

“You mean the one where I’m right and you know it?”

She growled. Her former squad mate didn’t laugh. “D.D., we care about you. You’re just coming back from a major injury suffered on the job when you went off all alone, without notifying Neil or me, to review a crime scene. Can you not see the pattern? And do you not understand how much that hurts us? No, no. I’m wrong. How much that pisses us off? We were your partners, and you didn’t even give us a chance to have your back.”

That brought D.D. up short. One, because Phil, father of four, never swore. And two, because calm, good-natured, always-understanding Phil definitely sounded angry.

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“You never mean it that way. That’s the point. You think of yourself—”

“I think of my case!”

“Which has a whole team working it! Exactly my point.”

D.D. didn’t know what to say. Phil was chastising her. Phil never chastised her. That was her job.

“So . . . you want to question Colin Summers?” she asked quietly. Though she didn’t want Phil to interview Stacey Summers’s father. She wanted to do it. Meet the man, pass judgment on how he responded to each line of inquiry. It was her nature to want to do and see for herself. Not because she didn’t trust her squad, but simply because she was who she was.

Just ask Alex.

“I can’t,” Phil said.

“You can’t?”

“I got a bead on Kristy Kilker, whose driver’s license we found in Devon Goulding’s bedroom.”

“The one who’s supposedly studying abroad in Italy?”

“Yeah, did some digging. According to her university, Kristy never signed up for a study-abroad program. So either she lied to her mother or her mother’s lying to us. I got uniform patrol officers picking up the mom now and bringing her down for questioning.”

“Keep me posted. Any word on Natalie Draga?”

“Yeah, heard back from her grandmother in Mobile. Natalie headed to Boston last year. Called home a few times, but Grandma Draga hasn’t heard from her in a bit. Best she recalls, Natalie had gotten a job as a waitress in a bar. But it doesn’t sound like she and her granddaughter are exactly close, so as for such details as where Natalie lived, possible roommates, friends, Grandma Draga doesn’t know, doesn’t care.”

“Which bar?”

“Grandma didn’t know. But per your savvy restricted duty sergeant commands”—Phil uttered the words dryly—“couple of district detectives paid a visit to Devon Goulding’s employer yesterday afternoon—”

“Tonic.”

“Yep. They flashed photos of Natalie Draga and Kristy Kilker. Bar manager ID’d Natalie Draga as a former employee, but claims she hasn’t seen her in months. Draga walked out one day, never came back.”