make sure the kids get home safe.”
I returned to my computer and redid my letter. I addressed it to Candy Burrell, marked the e-mail urgent, and hit Send. There were several stray french fries left on my plate. I started tossing them to Buster when my phone rang.
“Carpenter here.”
“Burrell here,” Candy said. “I just picked up your e-mail on my BlackBerry.”
“I need your help.”
“Back at ya, pal. I’m sort of up to my eyeballs right now.”
“What’s going on?”
“A thirteen-year-old girl named Suzie Knockman didn’t come home from school yesterday, and no one knows where she is. One of her classmates said she was having problems at home. Suzie has a large extended family-two sets of grandparents, an uncle and his wife, two older male cousins, and her parents. We interviewed the family and got all sorts of conflicting information. When we tried to reinterview them, they lawyered up, which is really weird. This girl’s in trouble, Jack.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“There was a photograph of Suzie in the house. She was all dolled up and looked like she was going on twenty-one.”
“Girls do that sometimes,” I said.
“The photo was taken last year. Looking at it gave me the creeps. Take my word for it, the kid’s in trouble.”
Burrell had to make her own priorities. Right now, Suzie Knockman was at the top of her list and nothing I was going to say would change that.
“Who’s the lawyer they’re using?” I asked.
“Some white-haired creep out of Miami.”
“Leonard Snook?”
“That’s right. Do you know him?”
I tossed my paper plate into the trash. Leonard Snook was on speed dial for every drug dealer and murderer in town. For Suzie’s family to have hired Snook meant something really bad was going down. Burrell was a hundred percent right in her assumption that the girl was in trouble.
“Snook is your key,” I said. “He should lead you right to Suzie.”
“And how is he going to do that?”
I hesitated. I had a priority list as well, and Sara Long was at the top of my list.
“I’ll show you, but you have to do me a favor.”
“You want me to respond to your e-mail?”
“Yes.”
“You want the detectives in my unit to call every police department in the state?”
“You got it,” I said.
“When do you need this done?”
“The moment after I find Suzie Knockman.”
“This sounds like extortion, Jack.”
I frowned into the phone. Burrell was tired, her voice on edge. Unfortunately, so was I. “How is that extortion? I’m putting your case first, and I won’t even charge you for my time. All I’m asking you to do in return is to assign the unit to work on my case when we’re done. There’s no skin off your nose for doing it that way. No one’s going to complain because your phone bills went up for one day.”
“Jesus, Jack. Don’t be so angry.”
“Do we have a deal or not?”
A long moment passed. I didn’t like to resort to these tactics, but there was nothing else I could do. This was my last lead toward finding Sara Long. If I didn’t pursue it, Sara was as good as gone.
Burrell started to speak, and I heard a catch in her voice. Something told me that I’d burned another bridge with the Broward County Police Department.
“All right, Mr. Carpenter. You have a deal,” Burrell said.
I started to say thanks, but she hung up on me.
CHAPTER 25
Linderman and I parted ways in Louie’s parking lot. Linderman was heading back to his office, where he planned to spend the afternoon contacting other CARD teams around the country, while I helped my old unit find a missing thirteen-year-old girl.
“I’ll call you if I turn up anything,” Linderman said.
“I’ll do the same,” I said.
Linderman nodded and stared at the ground. In a flat voice he said, “I looked through the Naomi Dunn file while we were eating lunch. Is it my imagination, or were the police trying to hide something during that investigation?”
His words caught me off guard, and for a moment I didn’t speak.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
“You saw a huge guy with mental problems kidnap a college student from her apartment. Yet the police swore that there was no record of this guy. I find that hard to believe. In fact, I don’t believe it.”
It was my turn to stare at the ground. It was the one aspect of the Dunn case that had always baffled me. The giant hadn’t just stepped off a spaceship, and neither had his partner. They were both bad guys, and bad guys always left trails.
“I wish I knew the answer,” I said.
Linderman pressed me. “You must have a suspicion.”
“I called every mental hospital in the country,” I said. “There was no record of the giant. As far as they were concerned, he didn’t exist.”
“Did any of them try to stonewall you?”
I shook my head.
“Did any of the mental hospitals stand out?”
“One did,” I said. “There was a mental institution in Broward called Daybreak that had been shut down after a TV news show exposed the horrible practices going on there. In the beginning, I focused on them almost exclusively.”
“Why?”
“Daybreak had a ward for the criminally insane, and I wondered if the giant had been institutionalized there. I spoke to Daybreak’s managing director and several doctors who’d worked there. Nobody remembered a crazed giant. I also checked with several Broward cops who helped move Daybreak’s patients when the facility was closed. They had no memory of the giant either.”
“Did you ever visit the place?”
“No. The place had already been closed when I started my investigation.”
“So all of the information you got about Daybreak was secondhand.”
“It was all I had to work with.”
“What about records?”
“I looked high and low for their records, but could never locate them.”
Linderman’s expression had turned cold. Most law enforcement agents did not deal well with bad news or hitting dead ends. He was no exception.
I waved as he drove off, but he did not wave back.
I got back into my car, and headed west into the far reaches of Broward County.
Suzie Knockman’s family lived in Plantation, a monied area of horse farms, high real estate taxes, and private schools. The Knockman address was one of the better zip codes in town. Which made their decision to hire defense
