Forgive Me(7)

Among the many pictures was one of Angie and Sarah Winter, arms draped around each other, goofy smiles on their faces, looking as if they’d have a million tomorrows. Unlike the other photographs, Sarah’s picture would stay on the wall until the day she was found.

Carolyn had supplied pages of biographical details on Nadine and her family. Angie carefully read through them all. She knew right away she’d need help on the case. The sign on Angie’s office door read DEROSE & ASSOCIATES, PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS, but & Associates was an exaggeration. Angie’s tax return did not list any additional employees on the payroll. She did, however, have an extensive network to tap whenever she needed to farm out jobs or required a skill outside her area of expertise.

Angie’s specialty was finding runaways, but her office also handled computer forensics, transport, and surveillance work—all areas where she called on her network of colleagues.

Despite the proximity, people from Maryland seldom crossed the river to Virginia. DC was fine, but they typically didn’t go any farther. If the police had given Carolyn a referral, it was probably to a PI based out of Silver Spring or Bethesda. Carolyn must have done her homework, ignored geography, and gone with the investigator who had the best reputation for finding runaways.

“Where do we start?” Carolyn asked. “How do we do this?” Her nervousness was as evident as her drinking problem. According to her driver’s license, she was a decade older than Angie, but looked twice that. Most of the luster had been squeezed out of Carolyn’s straw-colored hair, and a strong odor of booze—gin, something hard—seeped from her pores. Broken capillaries spread across a reddened complexion like a road atlas. Her face was unnaturally bloated. What looked like blushing was probably alcohol-triggered rosacea.

Drugs and alcohol were corrosive as acid to the parental bond. Angie suspected they had played a role in this case. Nadine wouldn’t be the first. Four hundred thousand kids ran away from home each year, many to escape the ravages of addiction.

“What makes you think your daughter ran away and wasn’t taken?”

“She took her clothes. Her backpack. What abductor lets a girl pack before she’s taken?”

Angie curled her lip and gave a nod. Since she’d opened her agency, the number of children reported missing had increased each year. While the numbers were staggering, only a fraction—perhaps as few as 100 cases annually—fit the profile of abduction by a stranger or remote acquaintance. Family members represented the largest percentage of the abductions, well over 200,000 going by last year’s figures.

“Is there any chance Nadine is with her father?” Angie asked. “That he’s hiding her?”

Carolyn scoffed. “You think he took her? Ha, that’s a good one.”

“Why?”

“Because Greg loves Greg, and there’s not much room left for anyone else.” Carolyn made eye contact.

Angie saw no nervous tics, nothing to indicate deception. “According to you, he’s paying my bill.”

“And he was too busy with his work to be at this meeting,” Carolyn shot back. “Need I say more?”

No, you don’t, Angie thought.

“Did you have a fight before your daughter ran away? Was there a specific incident that upset Nadine?”

“Nothing really.” Carolyn scrunched up her shoulders and scratched at her nose.

“Please, Carolyn. Let’s just be honest here. Lying won’t help us find Nadine. So let’s try again. Was there a fight the night before she ran away?”

Carolyn dabbed at her eyes, and the gesture seemed authentic. “I wouldn’t call it a fight. It was just her stupid shoes. She left them in front of the closet and I tripped over them.”

Angie wondered if Carolyn had been too drunk to notice they were there.

“I sprained my ankle and had to miss work the next day. Maybe I used harsh language. I don’t really remember.”

“Was it the first time?”

The question hit Carolyn like a slap across the face. The anxious mother shrank into herself the way a hermit crab retreats into its shell. “We’ve had issues since Greg and I divorced.”

“What sort of issues?”

“You know, typical mother-daughter stuff.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“Nadine could be disrespectful, you know. She doesn’t understand how hard it is to be a single parent. How much pressure I have on me.”

“What about Nadine? Did she feel like she was under a lot of pressure?”

The distant look in Carolyn’s eyes suggested that it had never occurred to her to ask that question. “Maybe. I don’t know. Look, the past is the past. I don’t know why any of this even matters. What I want to know is what you’re going to do to find my daughter. She’s been gone a month.”

It mattered on many levels, Angie knew, but she wasn’t about to debate the point. Nadine was well past the danger zone. More than three quarters of kids who ran away returned home after a week. The longer Nadine was missing, the less chance they had of finding her.

The technical difference between a runaway and a thrownaway child meant nothing to Angie. One left voluntarily and stayed away from home for consecutive nights, while the other was told to leave the house—alone and without money. Runaway or thrownaway, both types of kids were on the streets, where they attracted dangers like wounded fish in a sea of hungry sharks. Drugs, gangs, human traffickers, muggers, rapists—a gallery of perils loomed every minute a runaway stayed away from home.