My Wife Is Missing(6)
“No. I haven’t heard from her,” said Tina, sounding somewhat bewildered.
Michael picked up on her worry, but there was no hesitation, no pause before her answer.
She wasn’t lying, he concluded.
“Okay, great, um … oh, hey … I think I see them. Yeah, here they are.” Michael gave a little laugh to emphasize his relief. Acting was never his thing. “Okay, sorry to bug you, Tina. You know how it goes, city jitters. We’ll see you when we get back.”
He found his parting words overly saccharine, but he ended the call before she could offer a goodbye.
Michael headed for the front desk, relieved there was no line.
“I need to speak to a manager right away,” he said, barely able to muster the words. The young woman behind the counter took one look at Michael and lost her smile.
“It’s my family,” he managed. “They’re missing and I need help.”
Five minutes later, a man with thinning hair and puffy eyes, whose complexion told of too much work and too little sunlight, approached with hurried steps. Instead of the glad-to-see-you grin typical of anyone in the hospitality industry, this man conveyed the weighty look of a worried friend. He’d been briefed, and Michael couldn’t help but wonder if his sole concern was for his family or if he was thinking also of the crisis he’d soon be facing over a kidnapping on hotel property.
“Mr. Hart, I’m Dan White, general manager here. Let’s go somewhere where we can speak in private.”
Dan led Michael to a small room down a short hall behind the reception desk. It wasn’t nicely furnished, so chances were this was a shared space and not Dan’s primary office.
“Can I get you something to drink? Water, coffee, anything?” asked Dan. He kept glancing at his phone, maybe because he couldn’t face looking Michael in the eye. Sweat dotted Dan’s forehead, glistening under the harsh fluorescent lighting. Michael had the passing thought that neither of them was equipped for this situation. Dan had come to work wanting nothing more than to have a good day, no troubles, no fires to put out. Instead, he had to listen to Michael recount everything that had happened, starting with finding Teddy in the hallway. Dan’s expression said it all: this wasn’t a fire; more like an inferno.
“So did you see a suspicious man following your family?” asked Dan, who couldn’t hide the shake in his voice.
“No … I’m just…”
Just what? Michael asked himself. Just making it up? Imagining things that aren’t there, things that haven’t happened, the way Natalie has been imagining things of late?
“It’s just that kidnapping is the only thing that makes sense,” Michael said.
“I think we better call the police,” said Dan, who might have been wondering himself why a kidnapper would pack luggage.
Michael went cold inside. He imagined news cameras and reporters descending on the hotel (and him) with the buzz of locusts. Then what? He’d be putting up posters of his wife and children like they were beloved pets gone missing. But the answer to Dan’s question was, of course, yes, call the damn police, call them right now. Better he find out this was all a huge misunderstanding, something he and Nat could laugh about years later.
But the movie still running in his mind wasn’t a comedy. He kept seeing the man in the baseball hat with a gun in his hand. At least he knew what his family was wearing before they vanished. That was a plus. He had that picture.
“Cameras?” Michael suddenly thought to ask. “Do you have security cameras we could look at? Can we access them?”
“Yes, of course we do. I have my people working on that right now,” said Dan. “I know you’re nervous, Mr. Hart, and rightfully so, but we have an excellent security record at our hotel. If there was something suspicious as you’ve described, I’m sure someone working for me would have seen it.”
“With all due respect, Dan, your security record means nothing to me right now. Nothing. Please. Just call the police.”
CHAPTER 4
MICHAEL
Detective Sandra Ouyang arrived at the Marriott Hotel thirty minutes after Dan White made his phone call. Michael’s first thought was that dispatch had sent only one detective because the NYPD wasn’t taking his case all that seriously. His family hadn’t been gone for long and nobody else had seen anything suspicious, making his troubles either a big misunderstanding or a domestic squabble. Either way, in a city as large as New York, where police resources were scarce, someone had decided a lone detective could handle his situation just fine.
Detective Ouyang, an Asian woman with dark hair pulled into a tight ponytail and a full cherubic face, greeted Michael with a friendly enough hello, one tinged with empathy. Dressed in a purple blouse and black pants suit combo, she could have done any number of jobs, but the shiny badge and gun hooked to her belt elevated the detective to a position of authority.
The conference took place in the same small office where Dan had initially brought Michael. Hotel staff ferried in an extra chair, and it didn’t take long for body heat to warm the room up to an uncomfortable degree. Even so, Michael knew that wasn’t the reason he was sweating so profusely.
“Does that bear belong to one of your kids?” Ouyang indicated to Teddy.
Michael had forgotten he was holding the stuffed bear, clutching him really, in a white-knuckled grip on his lap.