One way or the other, Mark couldn’t afford to stick around. They made a pretty ridiculous picture, the stripper in her heavy make-up and robe, him with a water pistol shoved against her side, a wave of smoke rising from her chest.
He had to move, and quickly. He didn’t want to lose his hostage, but he also didn’t want to destroy her.
He wanted answers from her.
“Come with me—now. And quietly. You know what I have here. You can die for real, or you help me. The choice is yours,” he said.
“I’m hurt,” she said pathetically.
“You’ll be more than hurt in two seconds if you don’t shut up and do what I tell you,” he assured her.
She slipped an arm around his shoulders, pretending to be with him. Onlookers would probably just assume they’d had a lovers’ quarrel, he thought.
“I’m nearly…gone.”
“Nearly, but not quite.”
“You need to show some mercy,” she whined.
“Like you were about to?” he suggested.
“I wasn’t going to kill him.”
“We’ll never know, will we? Just shut up and come with me, or the cops will be here. And then I’ll have to kill you, because I can’t let you go,” he promised her swiftly. “Let’s go.”
She complied without further complaint.
The older woman sitting across the desk from Sean Canady was very upset. The desk sergeant had tried to explain that she couldn’t fill out a missing persons report, because the missing person hadn’t been missing long enough.
But the woman had been persistent.
Her name was Judy Lockwood, she said. She had raised her niece, Leticia, since she had been a small child and Judy’s brother, Leticia’s father, had passed away. Leticia had grown up to be a fine young lady. She worked at the hospital as a nurse, and she hadn’t been sick a day since she started. She went to church; she always came home at night.
But she hadn’t come home last night. And she hadn’t reported in to her job at the hospital.
Because Sean had insisted on being told about absolutely anything even slightly out of the ordinary, Judy had been shown into his office.
He had put through a call to Mark Davidson the minute he had heard the two keywords “disappeared” and “hospital.”
The woman in front of him was straight and slender, wearing a flowered dress that was clean, smelled of fresh air, and was perfectly pressed. She wore dignity about her like a cloak; she sang in the church choir, and she lived by a code of right and wrong. Sean’s heart seemed to squeeze as she spoke to him. He prayed her niece was fine. He doubted that she was—though, from all he was hearing, she was a far cry from the previous victims whose pitiful remains had been pulled from, the mighty river.
“When was your niece last seen, Miss Lockwood?” he asked.
“Just yesterday evening—and I know, I know, she hasn’t been missing long enough, but I’m telling you, something’s wrong. She said goodbye to Bess Newman, who was taking over her patients. Bess said she left late, because Leticia always stays longer, just to make sure all her paperwork is filled out and all her patients are in good shape. She’s a really good nurse, Lieutenant Canady,” Judy assured him.
“But no one saw her after she left the hospital?” Sean asked.
“No,” Judy said.
“Did she drive to work?” Sean asked.
“Yessir, I was getting to that. Her car’s not in the parking lot.”
“And you don’t think she drove somewhere, and that…something came up?”
She stared at him as if only a complete idiot could have made such a comment. “Lieutenant, you haven’t been listening to me. Leticia is a very good girl. She goes to church. She has never missed a day of work. What can you imagine that would suddenly make a woman like that just decide she wouldn’t go to work?”
“Miss Lockwood, I
Huge tears suddenly filled her eyes. “She’s a good girl. Not that I wish any ill on anyone, but from what I read in the papers…those other girls took chances. My Leticia didn’t. She went to church. She went to work. She’ll go out on a date now and then, but with a good boy, a boy from the church. She’s never had any truck with boys in gangs. So she couldn’t have been taken by…by whatever horrible monster…killed those other girls…could she?” she asked weakly, hopefully.
Sean covered her hand with his. “I’m going to follow up on this, Miss Lockwood. I promise you, I’ll do my very best to find her.”
As Judy Lockwood started to rise, there was another tap on his door. The desk sergeant stuck his head in. “A friend of Miss Lockwood’s is here, Lieutenant,” he said.
Another woman walked in. She was almost Sean’s size and, like Judy, beautifully dressed, down to her straw hat. “Excuse me, Lieutenant Canady, and thank you for your time. Judy, I just got a call from Leticia. She ran late into work, and that was all. She’s sorry you were worried, Judy, and she’ll talk to you tonight. But she’s fine, and that’s what matters, right?” She turned to Sean. “I have a cell phone, you see. The grandkids bought it for me last
