Halston. He wanted to show her so badly. He wanted to change the focus of her rage. It’d be the easy way to get out of the situation he found himself in right now. It might change her entire opinion about him.
Or it might break her all to pieces.
He removed his hand from his pocket and left the photograph.
This was going to be one long Thanksgiving dinner.
FOURTEEN
The Friday after Thanksgiving had always been somewhat of a letdown for John Stallings. When he was a child he looked forward to Thanksgiving as a chance to spend time with his mother’s family, who would drive down from South Carolina to visit for the long weekend. He felt like a grown-up, watching football with the men in the living room, either waiting for or recovering from a giant meal. But by the next day, he was relegated to entertaining his younger cousins and once again ignored by his father. In the past few years it had been an empty holiday, giving him more time to think about his missing daughter and less time to work on finding her or other kids. This year, being separated from his wife and living in a lonely house over in Lakewood, Stallings had no intention of spending the day at home, alone and brooding.
He had waited until midday, having made a few phone calls to make certain the people he needed to talk to were where he thought they’d be. In the case of Kyle Lee, friend and fraternity brother to the missing Zach Halston, Stallings had been able to scare one of the other fraternity brothers into silence after he told Stallings Kyle was at his parents’ house in Winter Park, a quiet, upscale suburb of Orlando.
Now Stallings found himself pulling into Gainesville after slightly more than an hour through the back roads of North Florida from Jacksonville. Stallings had always liked the atmosphere of the college town. Although the Gainesville cops told horror stories about what went on with the students at the University of Florida, the town itself always seemed pleasant and friendly. Stallings figured that any school as big as the University of Florida had problems that would scare the average parent of an incoming freshman. More and more he understood the value of a smaller school like the University of North Florida or Jacksonville University.
He pulled into a string of buildings that looked like they were part of the university even though they weren’t specifically on-campus. Part of the university’s School of Art and Art History, these offices held university personnel who didn’t officially teach classes. They were tech people and former movie business employees who knew how to work cameras and create special effects. It seemed to be the perfect haven for the artist sick of show business but still in love with his craft. It was here that Stallings had cultivated one of the oddest and most rewarding relationships of his professional career.
He saw the older Toyota Tercel, covered in bumper stickers to hide scratches and holes, directly in front of the main entrance to the last building. It was the only vehicle in the entire lot. A smile spread across Stallings’s face. He could relate to being the only one who worked on a holiday. The front door was unlocked and he knew his way down the long hallway to the small office crammed with old photographs and newspapers that had to be digitized, examined, and sometimes disseminated. To Stallings this was a very special place.
He paused at the open door and gazed in at the woman, in her early sixties, who peered through thick eyeglasses at a photo that looked like it was from the 1940s. She sat forward in her chair almost like it was a stool as a way to help support the massive weight of her hips.
After a moment her eyes moved from the photo to Stallings and a broad smile stretched across her pretty face. “You should call before you come over. How did you even know I’d come in today?”
Stallings smiled and shook his head, saying, “I could tell you I was psychic because I know you really like that kind of stuff. But actually I called the house and Louise told me you had some project you’re working on here at the office.”
The woman held up a stack of old photographs and said, “I promised the dean I’d preserve the photographs of his parents’ wedding. I put it off for more than three months and it’s their anniversary on Sunday. Besides, if I had to sit around and listen to Louise bitch about the cats or why we’re stuck in a shitty little town like Gainesville, I’d have to call you to come over and shoot me.” She set down the photographs and pulled off her magnifying eyeglasses. “Come over here and give Sonia a hug.” She held out her hands like a baby asking to be plucked out of her crib.
Stallings crossed the small room and gave his friend a long, comfortable embrace. He sat on a stool next to her desk as they caught up with each other’s lives from the past eight months. Sonia had a talent for identifying people from photographs and enhancing the photographs to get the best results when the photos were published in public. Her work had been recognized across the country when missing children, as well as ailing elderly people who had disappeared, were recognized from photos she prepared for publication. More than once she’d helped Stallings on his quiet quest to find his daughter. She’d used university resources without documenting what they were used for and she had never asked for anything in return.
She was the model of a good friend.
After they had chatted for almost an hour, Sonia said, “I know you didn’t come by to listen to an old lesbian’s complaints about living in a Bible Belt college town. Now what you got for me?”
Stallings slowly pulled the photograph of Zach Halston and Jeanie from his notebook. This was the original photo he’d taken off the missing boy’s wall. As he handed it over to Sonia, he saw the tremor in his hand exaggerated by the photograph.
Sonia carefully took the photo, laid it flat on her desk, picked up her glasses, and adjusted the lamp on her desk. She studied the photo for a full minute without saying a word.
Then she sat up straight, took off her glasses, and faced Stallings. “I know who the girl is in the photo. Who is the boy?”
Stallings took a moment to gather his thoughts and said, “He’s the focus of my missing persons investigation. I just happened to find this photo while searching his apartment.”
“This was taken after Jeanie disappeared, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was.”
“My, my, that’s a twist. What did you want from me, exactly?”
“First, I wanted someone to verify that I was actually looking at a photograph of my daughter. Second, I was wondering, with your connections in the missing child world, if you could circulate her photograph. If the photo came from me, my bosses might take me off the case altogether.”
“I think they would have to take you off the case. Ethically speaking.”
Stallings stomach tightened as he wondered if he had overstepped the bounds of their friendship and forced her to make a choice between ethics and helping a friend. He tried to get a fix on her until she said, “Luckily, since I am not a member of the law enforcement community directly, I have no ethical issue. I’m assuming you don’t want me to bill JSO for any of this?” She smiled and suddenly Stallings felt a tremendous wave of relief.
Sonia said, “If all guys were like you, decent, funny, and cute, I probably would’ve given men more of a chance when I was younger. But as you know, most men are pigs. So I’m quite happy with my life. I would dearly love to see you happy with yours.”
Without even realizing he was saying it, Stallings mumbled, “Me too.”
Tony Mazzetti had never stayed in bed past noon in his entire life. When he was a kid, his mom would yell at him to be up before eight o’clock even on the weekends. After years of shift work and investigations, he had made it a habit, even if he worked all night, to be up by eleven. But somehow lying naked under his cool sheets with Lisa Kurtz giggling next to him, he didn’t feel like he was wasting a day off.
Aside from a couple of trips to the bathroom and grabbing all the fresh fruit and orange juice in his kitchen, he had not left his bed since yesterday afternoon. The way they had been going he wondered if he might need to invest in a heart rate monitor if he intended to continue dating the assistant medical examiner. She was all energy, enthusiasm, wavy red hair, and soft white skin. It was a cliche, but this thirty-year-old made him feel young too.
She snuggled in next to him and he wrapped his arm around her shoulder. She said, “I wish you had a TV in here so we could watch the college football games on today.”
