“Listen to me. I don’t know who you are or what your game is, but it’s obvious to me you don’t know Victoria. I’m hanging up now.”
“Wait.” Her defensiveness is inexplicable. Why isn’t she more concerned? I pick up the phone and switch off the speaker. “Please, wait. I’m a private investigator hired to find your daughter. Are you saying she’s not with you?”
“Who hired you?”
I don’t know the proper etiquette regarding client confidentiality, so the journalist’s approach seems safest. “I’m not at liberty to say. But I can confirm that your daughter is missing, Ms. Harkness. Do you know where she is?”
“Are you working for that heathenish organization she calls a church?”
Whoa. No love lost there, apparently. “A friend of hers approached me.” Claire said she was a friend. I’m not lying. “Are you saying that Victoria isn’t with you?”
Her voice lowers; it sounds husky now. “I haven’t seen or spoken to my daughter for over three years.”
My turn to pause. “I see.” I take a turn around the room, rolling the gun barrel in my palm. Sometimes I think better on my feet. “Do you know where she might be? Is there any other family? A sibling? Her father?”
Ms. Harkness’s reply drips with venom. “Her father is the last person she would go to.”
“Look, Ms. Harkness. I’m trying to find your daughter. A little help would be nice.”
Setting the phone back down, I re-activate the speaker, giving her time to assimilate the information and adjust her attitude. After a pause long enough to enable me to run the lubricating mop through the gun barrel, Elizabeth Harkness says, “I don’t know who you are, but I’m coming out to that riverside rat hole, and so help me God, no one had better stand in my way.” The call ends, and my ear fills with the sound of dead air.
What a bitch.
I push aside Zoe’s opinion. Maybe if I ignore her long enough she’ll go away.
The key to a successful interview is not becoming emotionally involved, but I’m shaking with the effort of not reacting. Channeling away the anger, I use a gun brush to apply a light coat of lubricant to all the moving parts of the Glock. The familiar acrid smell and the resulting smoothness of the action satisfy my internal power receptors — I have a working, dependable weapon ready to hand. As I burnish the reassembled pieces with the luster cloth, I’m once again in command of myself and my unruly emotions.
There’s something going on with this case that I don’t understand. But whatever the cracks and crevices in the family dynamic, there’s now no obvious place to look for Victoria. I mentally review the timeline. According to Claire, the church moved to Astoria two years ago. Victoria hasn’t spoken to her mother for three. So, although Ms. Harkness obviously doesn’t think highly of the town, their estrangement wasn’t caused by the move. It also didn’t sound as though Victoria’s mother knew about her disappearance, or where she might be now. Nor did she seem overly concerned. Unless it was fear coming out as anger.
I know something about that.
When I was a detective at the Denver Police Department, the Major Crimes Unit handled missing persons, so I’ve had my share of looking for the lost. Hundreds of thousands of people are reported missing every year, but the vast majority turn up safe within a few hours or days. Unfortunately, those that don’t are often victims of crimes like kidnapping and murder. Hence the involvement of the MCU.
What the general public doesn’t seem to get is that it’s not a crime to disappear, to leave your world behind and start a new life. After all, I’m doing that myself. You can even argue that historically, these are the kinds of individuals who built our country. So unless there’s compelling evidence to the contrary, the police have to assume a missing adult is acting by choice. And most of the time, they’re right.
The gun-cleaning apparatus goes back into its box. I pull the trigger a few times, dry-firing to make sure everything is working. Then I begin thumbing bullets into the magazine. Up to now, I have found no evidence of a crime committed against Victoria Harkness. Just the fact that she left her home on foot without her purse, but with her keys and phone.
And a frightening hallucination.
If Victoria’s disappearance is voluntary, she may have been fleeing a stalker or obsessional congregant. Although the purse left in her apartment makes me infer she left with the intention of returning, it’s possible she may have felt so threatened she didn’t dare go home. This scenario feels more plausible than the pastor avoiding unpaid debts or overdrawn credit cards, although I can’t rule it out. I don’t know her money situation and have no right of access. This is where the resources of the police beat those of a lone investigator. My only resources are wits and experience.
The alternatives to voluntary leaving are foul play or an unforeseen accident. Movies and novels notwithstanding, very few people wander off with amnesia. Something prevented Victoria from coming home. And when I think of the darkened Riverwalk, the lonely beach, and the rolling chop of night-black water, the conviction grows: she was alone, vulnerable, unable to defend herself. Something terrible has happened. I don’t need a vision to tell me that.
I’ve done what I can. So, I call Claire. Leave a voicemail. Tell her to consider talking to the cops.
Time to give my brain a rest. I turn on all the lights and secure the loaded gun in my shoulder holster. Then I defrost a frozen pizza and spend the rest of the evening listening to the radio and researching how to become a private investigator in
