Chapter Thirty

There were four of us now.

We were all sitting in the McDonald's in Buena Park, the same McDonald's where, for all I knew, Maddie's mother was last seen alive.

I was drinking a cup of water. Knighthorse had just polished off three Big Macs and a large vanilla shake. Now he was munching on a bag of fries the size of my purse. The fries smelled so damn good that I nearly reached over for one. I resisted. Fries and my undead stomach do not mix.

The thirty-something man sitting next to Knighthorse was about a foot shorter. He was also a specialist in finding the missing, particularly children. His name was Spinoza, and he was a private investigator out of Los Angeles and a friend of Knighthorse. Spinoza, who was oddly shy for a private eye, was shrouded in a heavy layer of darkness. His aura itself seemed weighed down by something.

Guilt, I suddenly thought. Something is eating away at him. Tearing him apart. And just as I thought that, a brief image appeared in my thoughts, so horrific and heartbreaking that I nearly broke down myself. It was snapshot of him holding a burned body. A tiny burned body.

It was his son, and now I understood the waves of guilt.

The image was of a car accident. Like with the McDonald's manager, I saw a burned-out vehicle, but this time I received another sensory hit: The smell of alcohol, along with the smell of burned flesh.

Sweet Jesus.

His palpable waves of guilt nearly overwhelmed me in my current, fragile state, and I was beginning to see the downside of this ESP business.

I need to learn how to shut this shit off, I thought.

Spinoza was friendly enough and had smiled and shaken my hand, but he easily lapsed into a dark silence that made it nearly impossible to warm up to the man.

Sitting next to him was another investigator - yet another specialist in finding the missing. His name was Aaron King and he was older than the hills. He was also damn good-looking and frustratingly familiar-looking.

And the psychic hit I got from him was an unusual one: Mr. Aaron King had a secret. A big secret.

He caught me looking at him and and gave me a beautiful smile, complete with twinkling eyes. I found my heart beating a little faster.

Aaron King and Spinoza (I never did catch his first name) passed on eating and instead sipped from oversized drinks. Men and their oversized drinks. Sheesh. They examined the photos while I recounted the events of the last few days, beginning with the first phone call from Maddie, my discussion with Chad, my conversation with Detective Hanner, Maddie's second call, the meth lab and dead body, the Happy Meal, and the video surveillance.

"All this from a wrong number," said Aaron. God, I loved the lilt to his voice. A hint of an accent. Melodious. A beautiful and agonizingly familiar voice.

"Probably not a wrong number," said Spinoza. The man spoke as if it were a great effort. As if it took all his energy and strength to form the words. If ever there was a man who needed a hug, it was him.

Knighthorse nodded. "Your number was programmed into the phone. No way a kid that young finds you in the phone book."

"Could be our guy's phone," said Spinoza.

Knighthorse looked at me. "Any reason why a six foot five black thug would have your number programmed in his phone?"

"Maybe he's looking for a good time?" I said.

Knighthorse grinned, and so did Spinoza. I think. Aaron King chuckled lightly.

"Maybe it wasn't his phone," offered Spinoza.

"Her mother's?" said King.

I nodded. "Maybe her mother gave it to her before her death."

Spinoza said, "Maybe she suspected something bad might happen. If so, she wanted her daughter to have it in case of an emergency."

"And she pre-programmed it with Samantha's info?" said Aaron King. "Why not the police?"

"Or maybe she took it off her mother's dead body," said Knighthorse, and the expression that briefly crossed his face was one of profound pain. Knighthorse, I realized, knew something about dead mothers. His own dead mother.

Jesus, we're all a mess, I thought.

"And you don't recognize the woman?" King asked me.

"No. And her name doesn't show up in any of my case files."

"Did you check all your case files?" asked King.

"All my files are in a database."

Knighthorse and King whistled. "Maybe I should get me one of those," said the old guy, winking at me in such a way that my stomach literally did a somersault.

Spinoza plowed forward. "Still, that doesn't mean the mother, what's her name - "

"Lauren," I said.

"That doesn't mean Lauren didn't look you up prior to being killed. Maybe she knew something was wrong."

"Or something was about to go wrong," said King.

"Right," said Knighthorse. "She looks you up in the Yellow Pages, punches you in her phone for a later call."

"But never makes the call," I said.

"Right."

"Maybe the mother tried calling you, Samantha," said Spinoza. "Perhaps you were her last call."

"Except you were too damn busy with your database to pick up," said King. He winked at me, and I elbowed the old guy in the ribs. He chuckled again.

"If so," said Knighthorse, "then perhaps you were the last call she ever made. And if the call came through as blocked, which can be done automatically, then you would have no record of the call."

"It's a theory," I said.

Knighthorse said, "And then all the daughter had to do was hit redial."

"And she would call me," I said.

"Bingo."

We let that theory digest for a few seconds. Then Spinoza sat down his oversized drink. No doubt his normal-sized bladder was bursting at the seams. "So let's hit it," he said.

And we did. But first he went to the bathroom.

Chapter Thirty-one

Private investigators seem to hold a certain allure for many people. I get that. TV has certainly made the work appear glamorous; after all, there's something exciting about being a lone wolf (no pun intended), working when you want, living on the edge of society, and catching the bad guys. The adventure. The excitement. The mystery.

Sorry folks, but fifty perfect of P.I. work is following cheating spouses and doing background checks. And even then, the background work is getting sparser and sparser, thanks to so many new internet sites that do the work for us.

But, yeah, every now and then we do get a juicy case. And it can be fun. Especially when you do help those in need.

More often than not, P.I. work takes great patience, especially when you're watching a subject at home for days on end. Or when you're beating down doors looking for leads.

Like we were doing now.

Canvassing a targeted area will eventually turn up something. With enough people pounding doors and stopping people on the streets, someone, somewhere will recognize the man in the picture.

Canvassing is painstaking and frustrating at best, hopeless and infuriating at worst. And just when you think you couldn't knock on another door, or stop another stranger on the street, someone starts talking, and that someone will tell you exactly what you need to know.

Ideally.

So the four of us hit the pavement and, using a street map, centered our efforts on four different quadrants surrounding the meth house. I had the northeast section, which included a lot of rundown apartments, rundown homes, and a handful of motels. The guys didn't like me running off on my own but I reminded them that I was a highly trained federal agent. They didn't like it, and made me promise to keep my cell phone and pepper spray handy. I didn't have any pepper spray, but the old man Aaron, gave me his.

I checked with Danny once, confirmed that Anthony was still sleeping, checked with my sister, confirmed Tammy was safe and sound at their home, and then hit the pavement.

And hit it hard.

* * *

We did this for four hours.

I questioned dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of people. I sensed that many of the young men recognized the man in the picture. None of them were talking. I would make them talk if I had to. I remembered where all of them lived.

Sometimes I don't play by the rules. Sometimes I make up the rules. Someone was going to talk, whether they wanted to or not.

A few of these men let be known that they didn't appreciate me walking around and asking a lot of questions. One of these men might have threatened me. One of these men might have soon thereafter suffered a broken finger.

Might have.

I handed out all the fliers I had, each one with my cell phone number on the bottom and a promise that the call would remain confidential. And at the end of the night, with no one talking and the neighborhood shutting down, the four of us reconvened at the McDonald's. We discussed our options. We all felt we had hit the area pretty hard. Most of us felt someone knew something but wasn't talking. We all agreed that unless someone started talking soon, we would have to take drastic measures. None of us talked about what those drastic measures were. I suspected each of us had our own definitions.

Knighthorse and Spinoza would both be back tomorrow morning. I would be back in the evening. Aaron King had a lead or two he wanted to follow up tonight. He insisted on following up alone, stating he would use his old Southern charm to get the information he needed. He even winked. Hell, I was charmed ten times over.

As I stepped into my minivan, Knighthorse pulled up behind me in his classic Mustang. He cranked down his window and said he'd heard from someone on the street that a mean, dark-haired lady had broken some gangbanger's finger. His eyes narrowed. "That wouldn't have been you, would it?" he asked.

"Everything but the mean part. It's not nice to threaten a lady."

He threw back his head and laughed. "I knew you were a badass."

"Badder than most."

"Hey, that's my line," he said, winking. He rolled up his window and pealed out of the parking lot.

Spinoza followed behind in his nondescript Toyota Camry, a car much better suited for investigations than Knighthorse's eye-catching classic Mustang. He nodded at me and told me we would find her. I thanked the deeply troubled man for his help, and secretly hoped he would find himself.

As I started up my minivan - a vehicle even better suited for long surveillances - Aaron King sidled up to the window. His eyes twinkled. As if he was in on a private joke. Or if he knew a secret. I rolled down my window.

"We'll find that girl," he said. "I have a daughter. I can't stand the thought of a little girl alone and scared and possibly abused."

"I have a daughter, too," I said. "And a son."

But that was all I could get out. My voice caught in my throat.

Aaron King angled his beautiful face down into my window. "Is there something wrong, lil' darling?" he asked.

"No, I - " But my voice did it again. Or, rather, my throat did. It shut tight, and all I could do was shake my head.

But there was something so tender, so serene, so warm about Aaron King. I felt myself opening up to him, responding to him. Connecting with him.

I tried again. "My son..." But, dammit, that was all I could say. Even those words came out in a strangled choke.

Aaron reached through the driver's side window and gently touched my chin. "Hey, even highly trained federal agents cry," he said.

And I did. Hard. Much harder than I thought I would around a stranger. Aaron King let me cry. The hand he used to touch my cheek now reached around and patted my head and shoulders gently. He was a loving grandfather. A man with a big, beautiful heart.

And when I was all cried out, he rested his forehead against the upper window frame. "I'm sorry you're sad, lil' lady. But everything's going to be alright."

Some of the McDonald's yellowish parking lot light caught his eyes, and when he smiled again - a smile that was so bright that it lifted my spirits immediately - I got the mother of all psychic hits. So powerful...and so mind blowing. So much so that I was certain I had made it up.

No way, I thought.

But the hit persisted. His name wasn't Aaron King. At least, not the name the world knew him by.

Unbelievable.

"I'll call you tomorrow, Samantha Moon. And you can tell me about your son then."

I nodded, too dumbfounded to speak.

He winked at me. "Go take care of your son." And then he reached through the window and gave my chin a small boxing jab, smiled at me again, and walked back to his own car.

A Cadillac.

Might as well have been a pink Cadillac.