and half the damn school comes to the party.”
“That’s what I’m looking for. A list of attendees the last two years.”
Bobby’s eyes opened wide as he said, “That’s impossible. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“I would start by sobering up and getting together with a couple of your trusted friends. I want a preliminary list first thing tomorrow morning. And if I don’t get it, next time I come back I’ll bring along Detective Stallings. Your lives will never be the same until you help us out with this. Do my good little dogs understand what I’m saying?”
Both young men nodded their heads in unison.
When Lynn worked this late it was usually for Dr. Ferrero, but tonight she was behind her desk at the Thomas Brothers supply company catching up on accounts receivable that had been held two weeks, then dumped on her desk in a big pile. She really didn’t care because it was peaceful and kept her mind off other, more troubling things.
She finished near seven o’clock and cut through the loading dock to the parking lot, where there were still a number of people scurrying around and closing out their jobs for the day. As she turned into the fleet parking lot she saw Leon wiping down one of Mr. Thomas’s Cadillacs.
She stopped and they exchanged helloes as she took a moment to look at the details of the beautiful car. She turned to the familiar sound of the golf cart Dale used to scoot around the giant complex.
He slowed until he was directly across from her and said, “Looking forward to Saturday night. We’ll have a great time.” He scowled at Leon and said, “You’re outside all day tomorrow. Wear plenty of sunscreen.” He mashed the pedal of the golf cart and hummed away at a brisk five miles an hour.
Leon looked at Lynn and said, “It’s not my business, but why would you go out with that turd?”
Lynn shrugged meekly and said, “I was kind of forced to. I swear to God there’s nothing going on between us.”
Leon gave her a long, curious look and said, “How’d you like it if Dale was unavailable for your date?”
“I wouldn’t be too upset.” As soon as she said it, she wondered what Leon might have in mind. Lynn didn’t think a simple comment like that meant anything sinister or violent, but she knew the lean, tough-looking man had his own grudge against Dale.
Leon said, “I owe it to your dad and I was going to have to do something anyway. That guy is a total dick.” He looked in every direction. “I know everyone in your family can keep a secret. Don’t worry about a thing.”
Stallings stood in the empty third-floor apartment that Jeanie had once rented. He knew he wouldn’t find any evidence or information; he just wanted to be in a space that Jeanie had occupied within the last few years. The whole idea made him shaky and raised an entirely new set of questions in his mind about his daughter’s disappearance.
Why had she run away? If she was so close, why hadn’t she called? What had gone so terribly wrong? Did she hate him? Had it all sprung from his own relationship with his father?
Stallings’s sister, Helen, had been very clear that she’d left because of their father. She was less clear about was what had happened to her after she’d left. That made Stallings wonder what other issues Jeanie might have if, by God’s grace, he did find her and bring her home. He had no illusions. This was not the tidy world of the TV hour- long drama. He had to consider the effect on Charlie and Lauren as well as Jeanie’s well-being.
So the question came up again, why had she left? It was almost easier to believe she had been taken against her will. At least then there was an explanation. Although the rate of kidnappings in the United States was incredibly small, it still happened. Most detectives went their whole careers without seeing a kidnapping. At least one that wasn’t related to the drug trade.
Stallings had developed a certain confidence as a police officer that had served him well the past sixteen years. It could be considered the sixth sense cops are expected to have. A confidence to look at someone and know they are feeding you a line of bullshit. The confidence to know you’ll achieve a goal or solve a case. It was the basic personality trait that defined a good cop.
But as a father, he had constantly compared himself to others. One of the reasons was that he never had a decent role model himself. He adopted other fathers as role models. He appreciated dads who not only spent time with their kids but
He had a lot of questions about his life and
THIRTY
John Stallings had spent the morning at his desk looking through every database he could think of for a reference to someone named Gator. He also wondered what exactly Zach Halston had done to piss Jeanie off.
He had found so many references to so many different Gators that Stallings knew there was only one place he could go to get any real answers. It was one of the few places in the PMB that most cops avoided. But he had made up his mind and started the trek up the stairs to the third floor where the rubber-gun squad was located. Some of the patrolman didn’t even realize there was a unit called Intelligence in the sheriff’s office. Years ago the unit had been a dumping ground for cops who had been unable to make a case or work in the streets. But now, with the rising public concern of terrorism and the mushrooming groups of extremists, the detectives assigned to the intelligence unit, or rubber-gun squad, tended to be among the smartest in the department.
Stallings saw Lonnie Freed sitting at the rear of the squad bay working on a computer. He cut through the empty office and plopped into the chair next to Lonnie’s desk, saying, “What’s going on?”
The thirty-five-year-old detective leaned back and pulled off his heavy glasses pinching his nose with his fingers, and said, “Stall, you have no idea how close to the apocalypse we really are.”
Stallings wanted to rush past this and simply said, “If I gave you a name, could you come up with everything you might have in your files about him?”
“Sure, what’s his name?”
“I only have his street name, Gator.”
Lonnie laughed out loud and said, “Do you have any idea how many Gators we have listed in reports and intelligence files? Between the goddamn Florida Gators, the swamp people who still love alligators, the rednecks who think it’s a funny name, and the felons who don’t ever want to use their real names, there must be a hundred and fifty Gators listed in different reports.”
Stallings leaned in close and slipped him a sheet of paper that had the description the older couple had given him and said, “I don’t care how many you find, I need to talk to one who looks like this.”
Sparky Taylor had left his house at six in the morning and managed to miss the seemingly unending rush hour of Atlanta when he rolled in just before eleven. Most of the detectives would’ve spent the night in Atlanta, but they didn’t have two boys like him. He missed every night he had spent away from them and didn’t care if he had to work twenty hours just so he could play a quick game in the evening, then tuck them into bed. He’d never realized how rewarding fatherhood could be. It was his solemn duty to produce two intelligent, inquisitive boys who would contribute to society, just like his father had done.
Even though Sparky had gone to college in Atlanta, the sprawling city held no particular place in his heart. It was too impersonal and had the well-earned reputation of being a dangerous city. But it wasn’t until this moment that he had ever thought Atlanta had anything but a good, professional police department. He didn’t try to hide his deep disappointment in the detective who had written off the death of the Gainesville fraternity brother as an accident without doing the follow-up that Sparky felt was essential to all police work.
He looked at the table and said, “This was everything you have in evidence?”
The lanky detective who had been reluctantly helping him looked at the random clothing, singed pillowcase,
