Jeffrey felt strongly that Leslie Truong fell into this latter category. If he had to describe the missing student based on what little information he’d gleaned, he’d say she was level-headed, hard-working and stable. Four to five days a week, she was up at the crack of dawn, walking two miles to the lake to do tai chi. Lena had described her as woo-woo, but she definitely didn’t come across as the type of girl who disappeared into the night. Then again, Truong had never before found what she assumed was a dead body lying in the woods.
What bothered Jeffrey was a stray detail that could mean something or could mean nothing at all. On the phone last night, Bonita Truong had told Jeffrey that her daughter was angry with her roommates. Some of her clothes were missing. Someone had borrowed her favorite headband and hadn’t returned it. Apparently, Leslie used the pink band to pull back her hair as she washed her face every night, which was something that Jeffrey was familiar with from living with Sara. They had often argued about the blue headband she’d left out on the sink basin, an area that offered little space to begin with. Jeffrey had even bought her a basket to store some of her crap in. Sara had ended up using it to hold dog toys.
Jeffrey turned his chair to look out the window. The Z4 wasn’t there to taunt him. His watch read just past six in the morning. The clinic didn’t open until eight. He looked at his calendar. It was the last Wednesday of the month, so Sara wouldn’t be at work anyway. She usually stayed home and plowed through the mountain of paperwork she’d accumulated over the previous month.
He looked at his watch again. Bonita Truong’s plane from San Francisco would be landing in three hours. The drive from Atlanta would take another two. He needed to rotate out some of the searchers so they could get some sleep. The station was empty but for Brad Stephens. The young officer had volunteered to babysit the prisoners in the holding cells. Jeffrey imagined if he went back to holding, he would find Brad asleep, too. So Jeffrey would not go back into holding.
He stood up from his desk and stretched his back. His coffee mug was empty. He walked into the squad room. The lights were still off. He turned them on as he made his way to the kitchen.
Ben Walker, Jeffrey’s predecessor, had kept his office at the rear of the station, just off the interrogation room. His desk had been the size of a commercial refrigerator and the seating in front had been about as comfortable as a Judas Chair. Every morning, Walker had called Frank and Matt into his office, doled out their daily assignments, then told them to shut the door on their way out. That door only opened at noon when Walker went to the diner for lunch and at five when he hit the diner on his way home. When Walker had finally retired, the desk had to be cut into two pieces to get it through the door. No one could explain how he’d managed to cram it into the room in the first place.
There were a lot of unexplained things where Ben Walker was concerned. The desk alone was an object lesson in how not to be a chief. Jeffrey had spent his first weekend on the job moving his office to the front of the squad room. He’d cut a hole in the wall to make a window so he could see his team and, more importantly, so they could see him. There were blinds on the glass that he seldom closed. The door stayed open unless someone needed privacy. In a town this small, there was a lot of need for privacy.
The phone rang. Jeffrey picked up the receiver on the kitchen wall. “Grant PD.”
“Hey there, buddy,” Nick Shelton said. “I hear you got some trouble brewin’ down there.”
Jeffrey poured some fresh coffee into his mug. “News travels fast.”
“I got me a spy at the Macon Hospital.”
Jeffrey had heard a definite period at the end of that sentence, but he could tell there was more to it than that. “What’s up, Nick?”
“Gerald Caterino.”
“Rebecca Caterino’s father?” Jeffrey had set the alarm on his phone to call the man at 6:30. He could tell by Nick’s tone that he should rethink that plan. “Should I be worried?”
“Yeah, the old boy left a message on the service last night. I picked it up this morning and thought I could run some interference for you.”
“Interference?” Jeffrey asked. “I didn’t realize I needed any.”
“It’s the timing.”
Nick was being careful, but Jeffrey got his meaning. Someone at the hospital had told Gerald Caterino that his daughter was presumed dead when Lena had arrived at the scene. That was the kind of detail that could end up in a lawsuit. “Thanks for the head’s up.”
“No problem, hoss. Lemme know if you need anything.”
Jeffrey hung up the phone. He felt a headache working its way up his neck. He should’ve taken his own order and grabbed some sleep. At the very least, he would’ve been able to process the next steps he needed to take. Make sure everyone was on the same page about yesterday morning in the woods. Re-read Frank, Lena and Brad’s
