Chapter Eight

 

Detective Josh Meadows swallows his frustration. The pictures on his desk are just as useless as he thought they would be. Just as useless. Just like that god damned interview.

What he wouldn't give for just five minutes with that son of a bitch Queen in a dark alley. Maybe he wouldn't find out a thing. They say torture doesn't work, beatings don't do anything at all.

But that's not totally true, either way, because they do one thing. They're still a beating, and that bastard has one coming to him. Josh keeps his hands tight. No problem. He's got everything under control.

Another night passes. He should be asleep. He should have been asleep hours ago. But he isn't, and he's not going to be any time soon.

He still needs to interview the parents. It's already occurred to him that he didn't get the friends name in that interview. A stupid slip-up. A stupid slip-up caused by his own frustration. At least he didn't ruin the fucking case for himself.

He takes a deep breath and pours another two fingers of amber-colored whiskey. It doesn't taste like much of anything going down. Not after the last four.

"What the fuck am I missing?"

The evidence is right there. Or, it should be. But there's nothing that means anything. A few hair and fiber samples. Likely human hair. A DNA test might confirm that they're from Queen.

He'd say, and he has every right to say, that they're from before. He's been in the apartment before, hair moves around. No big deal. It proves nothing.

The parents might have come back, but if they did, it was late. It wouldn't be the first case of a couple new grandparents deciding that their precious grand-baby isn't being watched adequately.

They take it 'for the child's protection' and never give a second thought to the fact that what they're doing is a big no-no. The list of suspects is agonizingly short.

There's always the possibility that Anna herself is responsible. It twists Josh up inside. The idea is disgusting, disturbing. There are plenty of ways it could have happened. The baby gets sick and passes on, maybe.

She can't handle it, and… the tumbling his stomach does at the thought of it stops him pursuing the thought further. She's not off the suspect list yet, and that's all he needs to know about it.

Why would some random son of a bitch come in the house, though? Why? There's no money to be had. None at all. Queen isn't interested in the kid. Doesn't know the name. Doesn't know the gender.

He swallows the rest of his glass. He should be done for the night. He should go to bed. He should have gone to bed five glasses ago.

The bottle turns over, instead, pouring out the last little bit that he'd had left in the cabinet. He lets it sit in his mouth for a second, trying to get a little taste out of his numbed tongue before he swallows.

What is he missing? There must be something that's going to be the step forward. Something that's going to turn the case around.

He looks at the pictures. Something he's missing. There's gotta be.

 

Detective Josh Meadows jerks awake from a dream that fades quickly. He's happier when it's gone, but the phone is still ringing in his pocket. He pushes himself up straight on the sofa and pulls the phone out.

"Detective Meadows, who is this?"

"Detective? This is Mr. Morrow, you spoke with my client yesterday about a child being kidnapped?"

The lawyer. Okay.

"Yes."

"I think you should come over at your earliest possible convenience. We've just received a very disturbing letter, and we wanted to call you right away."

"How did you get this number, by the way?"

"Your chief. I called, and he said you were on the case, gave me your number."

Josh made a note to have a word about personal space. Then again, when it came to Al Queen's boy, sometimes boundaries got pushed.

"I'll be right there."

The alarm is screaming in the other room, and for all that Josh knows, it has been for the past two hours, which sounds about right looking at the clock on his phone.

He pushes himself up from the sofa seat, ignoring the splitting headache. Eventually, at some point, he'll have to find himself some painkillers. But for now, he's got to get that ear-splitting noise gone, or it's going to drive him fucking insane.

Very disturbing letter, huh?

Well, it's not exactly what he wanted. What he'd wanted was something that would tie everything up nice and easy. Something like a gift-wrapped package, containing a bouncing baby girl and labeled 'Care of The Kidnapper, Mitch Queen.'

But there's no use in assuming who it is. The guy's a real hot-head and no damn good. That doesn't mean, though, that he's an outright criminal. Not until Josh can prove it, that is. Then, it's not slander—you can't slander someone with the truth, after all.

Meadows slaps the button to turn off the infernal racket. Infernal racket that will probably get him a noise complaint from the landlord. He strips his clothes off and applies deodorant liberally.

Then the new clothes go on. He should shower, but that's assuming a hell of a lot about the amount of time he's got on his hands that isn't a safe assumption in the least bit.

He's in the car five minutes later. He has to adjust the pistol on his hip not to jab into his side as he slides into the car.

The guy at the gate isn't the same guy. If anything, the two are practically opposites. Nobody could possibly mistake one for the other, if they'd seen them both. The guy at the door, though, is unmistakably the same fellow.

Without Anna here, he's all frowns. "This way," he says. Surly.

Josh follows him inside. They go the same route. But he's not exactly a guest inside the house, so he gets the chaperone routine.

There are three inside, this time. The first two, the detective recognizes from having seen them the day before. The third, he recognizes from having seen several more times than that. From having seen him a thousand times if he's seen him once.

"Mr. Queen. Detective Meadows. It's a pleasure to meet you." Josh feels like it's tactful not to keep his opinions to himself. In fact, to keep them about as quiet as he possibly can. It's easier that way.

The elder Mr. Queen is a big man. At least as big as the bruiser they've got outside, a veritable bear of a man. He doesn't smile at the detective. He's not a man of smiles.

"Mr. Meadows. You made good time in getting here."

"Your attorney sounded very concerned, on the phone."

"Yes, he did. And for good reason."

Josh enters the room a little further. Sitting on the table is a letter. It's not comprised of chopped-up newspaper, like in the movies. Someone typed it out on a computer, and then they printed it off.

It's black and white. You could print one of these off at your local library if you were worried that someone would figure out that you are the only one on your street that owned some kind of fancy one-of-a-kind printer.

Meadows doesn't take the time to read it carefully. He'll read it over and over again, over the coming weeks. But it doesn't take much skimming to know what it says.

It says, we have your kid, and we want you to pay us a big sum of money to get him back. Don't call us, we'll call you. No signature. Would have been all too convenient, wouldn't it?

What it does have, on the other hand, is a black-inked stamp of a baby's foot pressed into the bottom of the page. It's too soon to say for sure, since he doesn't have one prepared, but it's easy to believe that Anna Witt would be able to easily identify that as Ava Witt's footprint.

Which is to say that someone found money in the case, which opens up a whole world of possibilities.