Читать книгу Pretty Little Things - Jilliane Hoffman - Страница 22

It was his gut that told Bobby something was wrong. More wrong than just a troubled teen from a dysfunctional family not wanting to come home any more.

No one knew the stats better than him. Every forty seconds in the US a child gets reported missing. That’s 800,000 kids a year; 2,185 each and every day. Most of them – as high as 92 per cent – were runaways. Alarming numbers, no doubt, until you realized that those were just the kids lucky enough to be reported missing. The National Runaway Switchboard put the actual number of runaways – often called ‘throw-aways’ because nobody cared if they didn’t come home – closer to somewhere between 1.6 and 2.8 million a year.

Faced with overwhelming statistics like that, it wasn’t too far a leap to the conclusion that Elaine Emerson had run away from home. She fit the classic profile: a dysfunctional family, a history of running away and truancy by an older sibling, a family history of alcohol and drug use, a recent drop in grades and cutting classes, a recent relocation away from friends, and a tumultuous relationship with her parents, one of whom was a step. Her disappearance had taken Mom almost two days to finally get herself worried enough about to call in, which – translated into cop language – meant this was probably not the first time little Lainey had decided not to come home. Add in the sexy photos and a web space where the kid rants about her ‘asshole’ stepdad, ‘bitch’ mom and how she wants to ‘get the hell away from here’, and the missing juvi classification in NCIC was certainly justifiable. Statistically speaking, little Elaine should be walking back through that front door in the next twelve to twenty-four hours.

But then there was the other 8 per cent. And that was what was troubling him.

Bobby rubbed his temples. The skateboard contest down the block had moved and was now in the street right outside Elaine’s bedroom window. Given the neighborhood, he figured one or more of the kids had recognized the Crown Vic, Taurus and Grand Am as undercovers and had edged the game closer to see what was happening. Maybe they knew about the troubles with Liza Emerson. Maybe they knew of some troubles with Lainey. He made a mental note to talk to them as soon as he finished up with the computer.

Of the 800,000 children reported missing each year, almost 69,000 of them – or 8 per cent – were classified as ‘abductions’. Familial abductions, such as when a parent takes off with a child in violation of a custody agreement, accounted for 82 per cent of those cases. But the remaining 12,000 were identified as victims of non-familial abductions. Non-familial, as in when the child is taken by an acquaintance, a family friend, or, sometimes – in the more remote and more terrifying cases for the public-at-large – a complete stranger. Plucked off of school buses or snatched from busy malls. Those were the cases that instantly made headlines and triggered AMBER Alerts. And for good reason. While the stereotypical kidnapping was statistically rare, it was almost always deadly.

With the explosive growth of the internet and social-networking websites, non-familial abductions had risen dramatically within the last ten years. Bad guys didn’t need to lurk around corners any more, or peek in windows in the middle of the night. Now they walked straight through a kid’s front door in broad daylight. Right past Overprotective Mom and Drug Czar Dad and into junior’s bedroom via the computer. There they could exchange pictures, chat, play video games and discover all sorts of neat things about the ‘distant’ teen whose parents didn’t understand him. The World Wide Web had spawned a new hunting ground for predators. Trolling kiddie chat rooms and adolescent networking sites at their leisure, they picked off their prey from the millions of profiles offered on MySpace and Facebook, where smiling victims provided as much scrumptious detail about themselves as dinner entrées on a restaurant menu. Sitting behind a keyboard and monitor, this new breed of predator could pretend to be anyone: An eighteen-year-old boy; a twelve-year-old girl; a talent agent; Jay-Z’s best friend. They took advantage of the naiveté of kids and the ignorance of their parents – gaining the former’s trust, and then slowly, carefully exploiting the relationship, subtly grooming their victims for the ultimate, devastating high: a face-to-face meeting. And then, with just the simple click of a button, disappeared forever back into the black abyss of cyberspace once lives were destroyed and the police were finally called in.

Bobby looked around the pink bedroom with its typical teenage décor. Lainey hadn’t lived here long, and she’d moved under protest, but she had hung up her posters and wall art, which meant she considered this room home. She was definitely a slob, but although her clothes spilled haphazardly out of drawers and boxes, they hadn’t been packed up into a suitcase. It would be hard to figure out what was missing, but, perhaps more importantly, if anything was missing. And then there was the faceless photo in her friend space. Bobby was willing to bet the bank ElCapitan just might be the intended recipient of all those sexy pictures. And of course, perhaps the most troubling fact that he kept coming back to was also the most innocuous one: The girl hadn’t logged back on to her MySpace since the day before she’d disappeared. He knew that, for teenagers, MySpace was their social lifeline. A kid wouldn’t just abandon it for a few days – unless she physically couldn’t check it.

Obviously, with 2,185 kids reported missing every day, not every face got slapped on a milk carton and not every kid got his or her physical description launched on traffic message boards across the nation via an AMBER Alert. The system would be critically overloaded within minutes, and people would quickly grow desensitized and indifferent to the plight of yet another kid gone AWOL. AMBERs were reserved for the most urgent of situations. To have one issued, a cop had to meet a strict, three-pronged criteria: 1) a reasonable belief the child was abducted; 2) a reasonable belief he or she was at imminent risk for serious bodily injury or death; and, 3) sufficient descriptive information about the child, the suspect, and the abduction so that a public broadcast would actually help find the kid. Bobby tapped his notepad. He didn’t have enough to meet any one of the prongs with Elaine Emerson. He just had that familiar, heavy feeling in his gut.

Somewhere in between the panic-mode AMBER and the runaway code-word ‘missing juvi’ entry in NCIC was a Missing Child Alert. In cases where you didn’t have an abduction, but you had enough information to believe the child was in imminent danger, you could request a Missing Child Alert. While it didn’t spark the same urgent, national ‘Oh Shit!’ response as an AMBER, it did trigger notifications to the local media, neighborhood businesses and community law enforcement agencies. But again, other than his agita, Bobby had no concrete reason to believe Elaine was in danger. An alert would definitely be a stretch. And based on the info they had right now, it would be much easier to just OK the missing juvi report that Coral Springs had put into NCIC, grab his golf clubs and call it a day.

‘Veso just showed up,’ Zo said, popping his head back into the room from the hall, where he’d disappeared for the past ten minutes. ‘Fucking numb-nut got lost.’

‘Obviously a great detective,’ Bobby replied, not bothering to look up from the screen.

‘Be nice.’

‘Fuck that. You be nice. I don’t need a pet. Or an understudy.’

Zo shook his head. Diplomacy was a tough tightrope to walk, and he was a shitty acrobat. ‘You almost done here?’ he tried. ‘I got tickets to the Dolphins game at four.’

‘Just writing down a few things. I’m gonna try talking to some of these friends while I’m out here. And the step, too. See what the hell’s up with him.’

‘OK, bro. You’re the expert.’

Bobby couldn’t resist. ‘Can you tell your boss that, please?’

Zo stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He waited a long moment before he finally spoke. ‘I don’t know how you deal with,’ he started, looking around, ‘this shit every day. Every fucking day. Let me be honest with you, Bobby, my friend. I don’t know how you do it. Especially after Katy. I don’t know how you can fucking function. It’s like you’re locking yourself in a freaking torture room every second of every day and forcing yourself to look at all the shit on the walls. It ain’t healthy.’ He sat down on the edge of the bed and waited till the pregnant silence caused his friend to finally look over at him. ‘None of these cases, none of them, have a happy ending, man. None of them. You know that better than anyone. You bring ’em home, Shep, that’s true, all these … these kids. Dead or alive you bring ’em home, but what kind of life is that? I mean, what kind of career is that? ’Cause it’s never a happy ending, even when it’s supposed to be. And you know it. It’s just the beginning of years of therapy for those who do make it home. I’ve worked a lot of squads, you know, in my years, a lot of different cases. Violent Crime, Terrorism, Narcotics, Organized Crime. You name it, and I’ve probably worked it. And I’m not saying they’re easy, but you know, when you’re working something like homicides – it sucks, there’s blood and brains and bad shit – but at least you know the guy you’re working for is dead. I mean, there’s never any hope of finding him alive. It’s depressing and all, and it’s a dead body, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you never get that fucking hope ripped out of your chest, like you do in these kid cases. Over and over and over. What I’m saying is, why don’t you look at the changes Foxx wants to make as a way out? As a long-overdue, I don’t know … vacation? A chance to move on? Ain’t nothing wrong with pushing some paper and taxiing governors around when they come to town. I know you don’t want it. Hell, we all know – the director included and every suit in Tallahassee, too, as well as the freaking Fibbies – we all know that no one else can do this job as good as you. You’re the best at what you do, Shep. But – well, fuck the Vesos of the world and Foxx if you think they’re trying to squeeze you out – but, for LuAnn, for your own sanity, let someone else try, man.’

Bobby said nothing. The whoops and hollers from the skateboard contest filled the strained silence. ‘Look, you brief the guy if you want to,’ he replied finally. ‘I already know he’s a fuck-up and I don’t want him in here.’ Then he turned his attention back to the screen.

Zo let out a slow breath. ‘Whatever. I’ll meet you outside when you’re done.’

After Zo walked out, Bobby leaned back in the desk chair and rubbed his tired eyes.

Not all of them. I don’t bring them all home, Zo. And that’s the problem. That’s why I don’t sleep any more. I don’t bring them all home and we both know it …

He flipped open his cell and dialed.

‘Missing Children Information Clearinghouse. Travis Hall.’

‘Hey there, Travis, it’s Bobby Dees down in Miami.’

‘Hey, Agent Dees. I haven’t heard from you in a while. I thought you wasn’t working these cases no more, after, you know, well, after what, um, happened …’ Travis’s voice had slowed and stumbled off, like he’d just gotten the memo that it wasn’t such a hot idea to be saying what he was saying.

‘Don’t believe everything you hear, Travis.’ Bobby sat up. ‘I’m still alive and well down here in the Conch Republic.’

‘Glad to hear it. You doing OK, Bobby?’

Bobby ignored that question, because any idiot with half a brain and knowledge of the hell he’d been through the past year wouldn’t have asked it in the first place. ‘Listen, Travis,’ he said dismissively, fingering the two pictures of Elaine Emerson he had printed out on the desk. Before and After. The Geek and the Lolita. Stretch or not, he’d learned over the years to listen to his gut. It was the one partner that never let him down. ‘I’m gonna need you to put out a Missing Child Alert on one Elaine Louise Emerson. White female, date of birth 8/27/96 …’