Before I could go on chattering like a demented parrot, Sigrid’s phone rang. “Harald here.” She listened intently, then said, “When?… Is she sure?… Okay. I’ll be right up.”
“What’s happened?” I asked.
She ignored my question and reached for the flip-flop. “Do you have a plastic bag I can put this in?”
Annoyed, I opened a drawer and handed her a box. “I want a receipt for my earring.”
“Later,” she said brusquely, already heading for the door. She grabbed her coat in passing and was gone before I could object.
CHAPTER
18
—
, 1909
SIGRID HARALD— MONDAY AFTERNOON
Sam Hentz was waiting outside the open door to the Wall apartment when Sigrid reached the twelfth floor. The new man on the elevator seemed inclined to stay and see what was going on until Sigrid turned and said “Thank you” so pointedly that he closed the cage and left.
Having been on the receiving end of the lieutenant’s chilly dismissal more than once, Hentz was torn between amusement and irritation.
An anxious Mrs. Wall joined them at the door. Her silver hair looked as if she had combed worried fingers through it, and her face was as pale as the light gray turtleneck and slacks she wore. “Did he tell you?”
“That your son Corey is missing? Yes,” Sigrid said. “When did you last see him?”
“Yesterday morning. He said he was going sledding in the park. When he didn’t come home, I tried calling him, but he wouldn’t answer. We—we’d had words and he was angry with me. Fine, I thought. I’d just back off and give him time to get over it. I thought he’d crashed with some friends and gone to school from there. He often does that without telling me, but when he didn’t come home today, I started calling around. No one’s seen him. He didn’t meet them yesterday morning and he wasn’t in school today.”
“You’ve tried calling him again?”
“Of course I have.” Her anger at being asked something so obvious did not mask her mounting fear. “Here.”
She pressed a speed dial button on her phone and thrust it into Sigrid’s hand. Almost immediately, a mechanical voice said, “The person you have called is unavailable. Please try your call again later.”
“I’ve heard that the police don’t consider someone truly missing until they’ve been gone forty-eight hours, but please. Corey’s been gone more than thirty hours.”
“You said your son was angry when you last spoke,” Sigrid said. “Are you quite sure that his friends are telling you the truth? Is it possible that they’re lying as a favor to him?”
Mrs. Wall hesitated and Hentz said, “What did you fight about, ma’am?”
She tried to shrug him off. “What don’t teenagers and their parents fight about? Curfews, schoolwork—”
“Stealing your jewelry?” Sigrid asked quietly.
What little color had been in Mrs. Wall’s face drained away and the vibrant woman they had interviewed yesterday now looked old and defeated. “How did you know?” she whispered.
“Drugs or alcohol?” Hentz asked.
She gave a long unhappy sigh. “Corey doesn’t do either of those. He gambles. Last year he lost nearly six thousand dollars playing poker online. We put a block on his computer so that he can’t do that anymore, but he’s found live games here on the West Side. He’s hocked almost everything of value in this house. His computer, his camera, his television, even the silver that’s been in our family for four generations. If he realized the pottery was valuable, that would be gone, too.”
Tears glistened in her eyes. “He’s not a bad kid, but my father was an alcoholic and my brother’s addicted to cocaine. Our therapist says addictions can be genetic. His sisters don’t seem to have any, but maybe because he’s a boy? And the youngest?”
She pushed back the hair from her face and looked at the detectives helplessly. “My husband’s in Chicago. A business trip. I haven’t told him yet because he wants us to kick Corey out. Tough love, he calls it, but Corey can’t help himself. He needs that adrenaline rush and, really, if you think about it, if you’re going to be addicted to anything, gambling’s better than drugs or alcohol, isn’t it? Not as destructive?”
“Do you think his disappearance is connected with his gambling?” Sigrid asked.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know. He swears he hasn’t played since Thanksgiving, but he’s lied before. He doesn’t have any money, though. We’ve cut his allowance to fifteen dollars a week. We cover everything else ourselves—clothes, fare cards. We even prepay his school lunches. Can’t you do something? An Amber Alert?”
“How old is Corey?” Hentz asked.
“Seventeen.”
“I’m sorry,” Sigrid said, “but Amber Alerts are primarily intended for younger abducted children unless there’s a clear indication of kidnapping, and you don’t really believe Corey was kidnapped, do you?”
