The Lost Girl (A Mickey Keller Thriller Book 1) Read online

  “Okay.”

  “And she and her husband needed help to get pregnant. They went through IVF at a Boston fertility clinic. That clinic had a fire a few years ago and—”

  “Let me stop you right there, Mickey. I’m not paying you to ask questions. I’m not paying you to play detective. I am paying you for one thing right now. Get the girl back. Help me manage this situation without the cops or media getting involved. Pretty fuckin’ clear. You going to do that? Or do I have to call Tait and tell him this isn’t working out?”

  “Nothing’s changed, Angelo. I just wanted to let you know what I’d found in case it mattered to you. I know you’ve got a business deal in place and, well, things may not be kosher. This could cause some problems, so I wanted you to have a heads-up.”

  Lira yanked on his tie and opened the top button of his dress shirt. “Okay. Fine. I appreciate the tip. Meantime, find the girl. Let me worry about the details.”

  “Got it. Keep you posted.”

  Keller waited a couple of minutes after Lira left, then walked out of the garage and headed to his car, which he had parked on the street. It gave him some time to think.

  He could not pass up the payday. That was clear. But despite his expectations when he took this case, he again found himself on the wrong side of the tracks, propping up the bad guy and contributing nothing to society.

  How much longer he could do this, he was not sure.

  29

  Giselle walked out of the LifeScreen offices, headed home as Lira had instructed her to do. But it was no longer home. That word had taken on a different meaning the past couple of years. The Bay Area, the Ellis house, was her safe place, her sanctuary, where she felt like an adult. She was able to shed the bad memories of her childhood, of a failed family life.

  And now? She was headed to the airport in a few hours to fly across the world to a place she did not want to be. Tears began forming in the corners of her eyes. She felt lost. Afraid.

  Giselle turned left and headed toward the lake. She crossed the street and stood on Lakeshore in front of a tailor shop that featured antique clothing irons in the window. She remembered one from her childhood—her grandmother’s sat on a cabinet in a hallway in their house.

  But as she stepped closer for a look, she saw her reflection in the glass: tears streaking her face, bloodshot eyes. She took a deep, uneven breath. Perhaps returning to Germany would give her an opportunity to exorcise her demons, help her decide what to do next with her life.

  As she swiped away the tears, behind her, in the reflection, she saw a little girl walk by with her father. Giselle turned and watched them pass. For the next few hours, she was still in the United States. In California. She needed to do whatever she could to help find Melissa. Knowing she did everything possible might make the long trip, and transition, easier.

  And if they found Melissa, the Ellises would need her, just as they needed her before Melissa was taken. Whether or not they would still trust Giselle was a legitimate question. But it was not one she could answer—nor would it even be asked—if Melissa was not found.

  Giselle started walking, thinking about what she could do. With no resources, no authority, no car, and no experience in tracking down missing children, she needed help.

  The swing of the Grand Lake Bakery door jarred the bell and it jingled and clanked as it rattled against the glass. Other than knowing this was where Amy worked, she hoped that the people there might have some ideas where she went. However, she had to think that the detective who spoke to her had already talked with Amy’s friends and fellow employees. Still, she didn’t know where else to start.

  The sweet smell of baking pastries caught her off guard—and triggered a rumble of hunger in her stomach. The older woman—Ellen, if she recalled correctly—was behind the counter ringing up a customer.

  “Can I help you?”

  Giselle hesitated. “My name is Giselle. Amy’s—Amy’s friend. I was here last—”

  “Yeah, I thought you looked familiar,” Ellen said. “Amy’s not here. We don’t—”

  “I know. That is why I am here. Um…” She looked around at the two customers who had walked in behind her.

  “You want to talk in private?” Ellen pulled open a swinging half-door beside the cash register and motioned Giselle to follow. “Vicky, can you take the front counter?”

  They sat down in Ellen’s small office.

  Giselle glanced around, not knowing where to begin.

  “You’re here about Amy,” Ellen finally said.

  “Yes. I, um, they are sending me back to Germany and I do not want to go.”

  “Who’s sending you back?”

  “The Ellises.”

  Ellen shook her head. “I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “If I can find Melissa, maybe they will let me stay here.”

  “Who’s Melissa?”

  “The little girl, that’s who Amy kidnapped.”

  Ellen swallowed noticeably. “Kidnapped?”

  “I thought you knew.”

  “Look,” Ellen said, leaning back in her chair. “Amy’s just an employee. All I know is that she didn’t return to work after lunch. Then a detective came around asking questions about her.”

  “A man about six feet, short dark hair? No beard or mustache. Forty years old, maybe? Middle—how do you say it?”

  “Middle-aged.”

  Giselle nodded animatedly. “Yes. Athletic.”

  “That describes a lot of men, but yeah, that’s what he looked like.”

  “Wait, he also had a small scar in his left eyebrow.”

  “I didn’t notice that,” Ellen said.

  “And he said his name was Carr.”

  Ellen chuckled. “That’s more than I got.”

  Giselle cast her gaze to the floor, thinking.

  “There’s something bothering you. About Detective Carr?”

  Giselle sighed. “I am, um…I do not think things make sense.”

  “Because?”

  “They told me they did not want to call the police, then there is a detective asking me questions. And he gave me a blank card with his phone number. No name. Nothing about the police department where he works.”

  Ellen looked at her, in thought.

  “Detectives have identification. Right? And business cards with their photo on it. In Germany they do.”

  “I—um…” Ellen looked up at the ceiling. “I only dealt with the police once, in San Jose. The officer gave me his card in case I remembered something.” Ellen absentmindedly shook her head.

  “Why would Amy take Melissa? She was so nice. I do not think she would hurt a child. Do you?”

  “Wait a minute. Is Melissa the girl you brought here the other day?”

  Giselle nodded.

  “Oh my god. Bobby!” Ellen cupped her mouth, then stood up. She led the way into the production area, where Bobby was moving quickly, hands busy with automated mixing bowls and trays. “Bobby.” Ellen spoke louder, over the din of the machinery.

  He looked up, saw Ellen and Giselle, and made his way over. They were not properly attired, so they could not enter the food prep room. He slid his mask down to his chin and nodded at Giselle. “You were here with Amy and that little girl making cupcakes.”

  “That’s what I wanted to ask you about,” Ellen said. “Amy apparently abducted that girl and took off.”

  Bobby’s jaw dropped open. His gaze shifted from Ellen to Giselle. “That doesn’t make any sense. I worked alongside Amy for months. She’d never do something like that.”

  “Maybe,” Ellen said.

  Bobby contorted his face. “What’s that mean?”

  “Something happened to her several years ago. Her husband and daughter were killed in a car accident. Amy survived. She hasn’t gotten o
ver it.”

  “Holy shit,” Bobby said. “She never said anything to me about that.”

  “Me either,” Giselle said. “She told me she did not have any kids.”

  “She doesn’t, not anymore.” Ellen massaged her temples. “And Melissa—the girl she abducted—is around the same age as her daughter was when she was killed, if I’m remembering right.”

  Bobby repositioned his hairnet. “When’d she tell you about this?”

  “Last week. She used to be a partner in a law firm. Lost everything after the accident.”

  He shook his head. “I had no idea.”

  “My point exactly,” Ellen said. “We think we know someone, but do we really?”

  Bobby frowned and looked away. Giselle got the feeling this had meaning to them beyond the current situation with Melissa.

  “You know,” Bobby said, “there was something. A week or so ago, Amy seemed to be in a totally different mood.”

  “What do you mean?” Ellen asked.

  Bobby wiped his hands on his apron. “She was happy. Humming a song. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but for Amy, I don’t know, she’s been friendly and all, but I never saw her, well, happy. Lighthearted, having fun. Laughing. I even kidded her. I thought she’d met someone, a guy. She said she didn’t. I thought she was bullshitting me. Sounds like she met someone all right—Melissa.”

  Ellen pulled out her cell phone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “A detective came by asking questions. I’m calling the police, checking some things out.” Ellen poked at the screen and put the handset to her ear. “How old is Melissa?”

  “Four,” Giselle said. “No, wait. She just turned five.”

  “Yes,” Ellen said, shifting back to the call. “Can I speak with Detective Carr?” Her gaze roamed the ceiling a few seconds—then she drew her chin back. “Giselle, you sure that was his name?”

  Giselle nodded. “I remember thinking it was easy to remember because, well, it is like a car.”

  Ellen turned her attention back to the phone. “That’s what he said.” She listened a moment. “It’s about a missing child case. She just went missing a—” Ellen nodded, rolled her eyes. “Investigator. Not detective. Got it.” To Giselle: “Did he say he was with the Special Victims Section?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “No,” Ellen said, “he didn’t…Okay. Kidnap suspect is Amy Robbins and the girl’s name is Melissa—” She motioned to Giselle.

  “Melissa Ellis.”

  Ellen repeated it. “Yeah, I can hold.” She put a hand over the microphone. “Something’s not right. They don’t have any record of Carr. And in a—” To the call: “Yeah…No, no, that’s okay. Thanks.”

  “What did they say?” Bobby asked.

  “In the department that handles child abductions, they’re officers or investigators, not detectives. Either way, they don’t have a new case involving a missing five-year-old child.”

  The machine droning in the background stopped. Bobby checked over his shoulder. “So what the hell’s going on?”

  Giselle watched both Ellen’s and Bobby’s reactions.

  “Yeah,” Ellen said. “Good question.”

  30

  Keller went to the lake and stood at the water’s edge for ten minutes, sorting out his thoughts. As he watched a western gull glide through the air looking to snatch a fish from a pelican’s mouth, he realized he was not unlike that predator: he had a job to do. And a vital part of that job was to put his personal feelings aside and carry out the task with efficiency and professionalism.

  His particular fish was Melissa Ellis.

  He went back to his room and opened the USB flash drive on a virtual machine he set up on his Surface tablet. While the app installed the cloned copy of Robbins’s computer, Keller spent some time doing traditional investigative work, knowing there was a low chance of success because Amy Robbins was not the typical missing person or kidnapper. She had gone through a tragedy that caused her to withdraw from just about everything. She had no friends he could find. She had no Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram accounts where he could grab a location…or even photos from which he could glean information on places she had recently, or frequently, visited.

  When he had finished recreating her hard drive, he checked her email messages to see if there were any of significance. Amy Robbins was perhaps the only individual who had fewer than fifty sent entries in the past year. It seemed unfathomable in the twenty-first century. As he had figured, she had no presence on social media and almost no current photos—another perplexing finding in today’s environment, where just about everyone had a quality camera in his or her pocket at all times. There was one exception, however: she had a few pictures and a video of Melissa Ellis and several old ones of her daughter, Lindy, and her husband Dan. No documents of any significance: a few recipes and a copy of her job application for the bakery.

  He did find a Word document containing notes from a conversation she had with Boston Fertility and fire marshal Gilbert. It was the same information he had learned on his calls.

  Keller then turned to Private Investigation 101 and tapped the usual databases at his disposal, including TracersInfo, Accurint, and TLOxp, which processed trillions of records at sub-second speeds.

  Not surprisingly, he got very few hits—and those he did get spit back material he, again, had already procured.

  Finally, he called the Tait cyber technician and set things up. Having gone cold on Robbins’s trail—where she could now be anywhere within a twelve-hour-plus radius—he was going to need some help. This was not a legal case, so the data he was looking for would not be used in a court of law. That gave him tremendous latitude…including resorting to pretexting—illegally impersonating someone else to obtain protected information—as he had done with his call to Boston Fertility.

  An hour later, his satellite phone rang. As he pulled it out and moved to the window, he hoped it was a lead on Robbins’s whereabouts.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s Bill. Give me a SITREP.”

  He was not keen on having to give his boss an update until he had something productive to report.

  Keller cringed as he spoke: “Almost had her at her apartment, but she got away.”

  “Got away? How the fuck does that happen?”

  “Sometimes shit happens.”

  “Mickey.” Tait hesitated as if shaking his head in disappointment. “I’m not sure that’s an acceptable response. Did she see you?”

  “No,” he said without hesitation. He hated lying to his friend. “I’m not compromised.”

  “You want to tell me what happened?”

  No. Keller definitely did not want to relate the sequence of events. “Bottom line, I had her. She came back to her place but when I approached the apartment her neighbor came out and I had to wait—”

  “All right, all right. Shit happens. I know. I get it. But Lira’s very concerned.”

  “Yeah, I spoke with him. He worries a lot.”

  Tait snorted. “Mickey, this is a two-billion-dollar deal for him, if not more. He’s got a hundred million, at least, invested in this company. I were him, I’d be a fucking basket case. All you gotta do is bring that girl home safely.”

  “I get it.”

  “Compared to what you’ve done these past several years, not to mention what we had to do in Iraq, it’s pretty simple shit. You can do this in your sleep.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t forget we’ve got five mil riding on making sure the IPO comes off without a hitch. So concerned? Lira should be concerned. And so should you, buddy. And properly motivated.”

  “I am, Bill. I am.”

  “You’d better be.”

  Keller opened his mouth to speak but Tait had already hung up.

 
31

  Amy took Melissa to Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County, a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Lake Merritt.

  Amy had vacationed in the Napa Valley a year after getting married when she and Dan were having difficulty becoming pregnant—and getting on each other’s nerves as a result. They thought a relaxing wine country trip would give them a chance to escape the stress and reenergize their efforts.

  After spending four days in Napa, they drove down the coast and stopped at Paso Robles, a burgeoning wine-growing region all its own, and then hit some of the nearby cities. One was SLO, or San Luis Obispo, a charming college town with art galleries, ethnic restaurants, bookstores, coffee shops, and local music venues. They stayed at the Apple Farm Inn, a Victorian-style boutique hotel that was still there, looking much the same, when Amy and Melissa drove by it on the way to a market to pick up food for lunch.

  Very few people knew of their trip, let alone remembered it now, with the obvious exception of Loren and Zach—who had known but might not recall it. At the time, they were living in New York—Loren’s first Bureau assignment.

  Amy and Melissa left the downtown area and drove to the beach, where they played with the dozens of dogs that ran toward the water when the waves went out—and away from it when they rolled in. A golden retriever decided to buck the pattern and went swimming, much to his owner’s consternation. Melissa found it all too amusing.

  Sometime past noon, they picnicked on the sand farther back from the ocean’s reach.

  It was sunny and the weather was a pleasant sixty degrees—much more palatable than a typical Massachusetts winter.

  Before leaving her apartment, Amy took all the cash she had there, enough to cover two days in the motel she had found down the block from the Apple Farm, not far from the Cal Poly university campus. It was reasonably priced and clean. Basic stuff—a couple of beds, a bathroom, a TV.