“Some sort of black pants and black shoes or boots. I didn’t notice which.”
Radcliff raised an inquiring eyebrow to Dwight. “You got any more questions now?”
Dwight shook his head and Radcliff thanked the old man for his patience. For the first time, Jonna’s neighbor thawed a little. “Hope you get up with your boy, Bryant.”
“Sorry, Major,” said one of Radcliff’s officers when they had crossed the snow back to the other house.
Dwight had provided them with pictures of Cal from his wallet. “We canvassed the street two blocks in both directions. No one saw your son leave. ’Course now, there were a few places where nobody answered the door. If she doesn’t turn up, we’ll come back and ask the ones we missed.”
“We did take good close-ups of their shoe prints in the snow, though,” said a second officer. “And good prints from your wife’s hand on the doorknob, too.”
“Ex-wife,” Dwight said automatically, and for the first time since Cal’s chilling disappearance, he thought of Deborah, who must surely assume that he and Cal were halfway home to Colleton County by now.
Four o’clock.
She would still be in court with her phone turned off.
All the same, he hit his speed dial and left a message for her to call him back.
The first officer reported that a neighbor two doors down saw Jonna come home shortly before eight-thirty as he was leaving for work yesterday morning. She had parked her blue Accord on the street in front of her house and had given him a wave as she went up the front walk.
“We’ve alerted both the sheriff’s department and the highway patrol about the car,” Radcliff told him.
“What about an Amber Alert?”
His friend glanced away uneasily.
“Christ, Paul! You know the sooner that’s out, the more effective.”
“In a true kidnapping, yes, but Jonna
She’s done nothing illegal.”
Dwight balled his fists in frustration. “You don’t call sneaking my son out from under my nose illegal?”
Radcliff just looked at him. “You know the criteria for a Code Amber. Do you honestly believe Cal’s in immi- nent danger of serious bodily injury?”
Dwight groaned. “Okay, okay, so I’m acting like a civilian. But this is Cal, Paul. What if it was one of your kids?”
“I’d be ready to wring Sandy’s neck,” Radcliff agreed.
“All the same . . .”
“All the same, something’s wrong here,” Dwight insisted. “Except for a couple of neighbors, nobody’s seen Jonna since early yesterday morning. She leaves Cal alone overnight. She misses work. She doesn’t call her mother—that’s not her normal behavior.”
“No, probably not,” his friend agreed. “And you can punch me in the nose if you want, but you know I’ve got to ask. Have you done anything to make Jonna afraid of you? Afraid for Cal?”
Dwight’s jaws clenched so tightly that he could barely get the word through his teeth. “No.”
Radcliff waited for him to elaborate, then shrugged.
“Listen, pal, I’ve seen you back down a general. You can be pretty damn intimidating when you put your mind to it.”
Dwight let out the breath he’d been holding. “I don’t hit women and I don’t scare little kids. You do what you have to, Paul. Ask the questions you have to. But while you’re doing it, I’m going to take this house apart. There has to be something here to tell me why she’s gone off with Cal like this.”
They agreed to touch base if any leads turned up, then Radcliff returned to his office and Dwight reentered the house.
He let Bandit out of the crate and began in the kitchen with the wall-hung phone and answering machine, whose blinking lights indicated messages.
The first was time-dated 10:17 yesterday morning from Mrs. Shay, who complained in one long, nonstop sentence about her icy steps and walks and how nervous they made her and she wasn’t sure how she was going to get out for bridge that night and why didn’t Jonna call?
That was followed at 11:48 by a woman who was unsure of where a reunion committee was meeting.
Today’s messages started with Mrs. Shay peevishly asking why Jonna did not call and a message from Mayhew at the Morrow House.
There were dirty dishes in the dishwasher and a sticky cereal bowl in the sink where Cal had fixed himself a bowl of cereal this morning. Except for a stray cornflake and a smear of peanut butter on the table, the kitchen was otherwise spotless, which meant that she had cleaned up after yesterday’s bacon and waffles. Nothing jumped out at him to show that Thursday had been anything other than a routine morning.
Ditto for the dining room and living room, formal spaces with nine-foot-high cove ceilings and damask drapes that had hung in the house in which Jonna had been born, the house Mrs. Shay had to leave after her husband’s early death reduced the family’s finances. A large gilt-framed portrait of Jonna’s Shay great-grandparents hung over the mantel and a much smaller portrait of a solemn-faced husband and wife hung in the dining room. As Dwight recalled, that one had been a wedding gift from Mrs. Shay. Were they the famous Morrows? He had forgotten the details of how the couple were related to Jonna, but he did remember that when it arrived in Germany she had been
