Little Girl Gone

Stunned silence.

“Did you say dead?” his dad finally asked.

“Lara gave me his address. Said that he was supposed to have had dinner with Elyse the night before last, so I went over there. I found him in his apartment.”

“How did you get in if he was already dead?” Barney asked.

“I just did.”

“Did someone kill him?” Jerry asked.

“The way it looks, he shot himself through the head.”

Harp leaned back, surprised again. “Suicide?”

“That’s the impression.”

“What do you mean ‘impression’?” he asked.

“With everything that’s been going on, I’m not willing to believe suicide yet.”

“So what do you think might have happened?” Jerry asked.

“I don’t know. Could be he did kill himself. But if he did have dinner with Elyse, he would have been one of the last people to see her before she disappeared. Maybe he was with her when they grabbed her. Wrong place, wrong time.”

“Oh, no, no,” Tooney said, burying his eyes in the palm of his hand. “We should have called the police yesterday.”

“I don’t think it would have made a difference,” Logan told him. “I’m pretty sure he was shot before that guy even came to the cafe to try to kill you.”

“But the police are going to know now anyway, aren’t they?” Barney said. “You must have called them after you found the body.”

Logan hesitated. “No. I didn’t.”

“No?” his dad said.

“They almost got Tooney,” Logan said. “They probably did kill Anthony. The first sign that anyone tries to involve the authorities, I think you might be right. Whoever has Elyse will kill her, too. As far as Anthony goes, the police will know, but it can’t come from me. Not if you still want me to find Elyse.”

“We can’t just let him lie there, can we?” Barney asked.

Logan shook his head. “No, we can’t.”  He walked over to the front door and opened it. “Dev, can you come in here for a minute?”

“Sure,” the ex-marine said.

Once they had rejoined the others, Logan asked his dad, “How much does Dev know?”

Harp shrugged. “Maybe not all the details, but pretty much everything.”

Good, Logan thought. It would save him some time.

Vets who’d seen serious action usually went one of two ways: they’d either wall off what they’d gone through and tried to forget, or they remembered and gravitated to others they’d served with or who’d had similar experiences. Logan had a feeling Dev and his buddies fell into the second group. “You have any local friends you can call on for help?”

Dev cracked a smile. “A few.”

“Can you get them in a hurry?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. Why?”

“Tooney’s granddaughter had two close friends,” Logan said. “One of them’s turned up dead. That’s not public knowledge. Two things I need your help on. First, I know I’d feel a hell of a lot better if the one who was still alive had someone keeping an eye on her. And second, I’m hoping that you or someone you know can anonymously inform the police about the one who’s dead.”

“The people who did this, are they the same people who are after Tooney and his granddaughter?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Give me the info. I’ll take care of it.”

Logan wrote everything down on a piece of paper, then gave Dev a quick description of Lara. “She can’t know you’re there.”

“She won’t.”

“Thanks, Dev.”

He gave Logan a nod, then left.

“Do you really think someone’s going to try to kill Lara, too?” Logan’s father asked.

Logan shook his head. “If they considered her a threat I think they would have gotten rid of her by now, but better not to take a chance, don’t you think?”

For a moment, no one said a word, then Tooney looked up. “Find my granddaughter, Logan. Please, just…find her.”