“You mean the one where I’m right and you know it?”
She growled. Her former squad mate didn’t laugh. “D.D., we care about you. You’re just coming back from a major injury suffered on the job when you went off all alone, without notifying Neil or me, to review a crime scene. Can you not see the pattern? And do you not understand how much that hurts us? No, no. I’m wrong. How much that pisses us off? We were your partners, and you didn’t even give us a chance to have your back.”
That brought D.D. up short. One, because Phil, father of four, never swore. And two, because calm, good-natured, always-understanding Phil definitely sounded angry.
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“You never mean it that way. That’s the point. You think of yourself—”
“I think of my case!”
“Which has a whole team working it! Exactly my point.”
D.D. didn’t know what to say. Phil was chastising her. Phil never chastised her. That was her job.
“So . . . you want to question Colin Summers?” she asked quietly. Though she didn’t want Phil to interview Stacey Summers’s father. She wanted to do it. Meet the man, pass judgment on how he responded to each line of inquiry. It was her nature to want to do and see for herself. Not because she didn’t trust her squad, but simply because she was who she was.
Just ask Alex.
“I can’t,” Phil said.
“You can’t?”
“I got a bead on Kristy Kilker, whose driver’s license we found in Devon Goulding’s bedroom.”
“The one who’s supposedly studying abroad in Italy?”
“Yeah, did some digging. According to her university, Kristy never signed up for a study-abroad program. So either she lied to her mother or her mother’s lying to us. I got uniform patrol officers picking up the mom now and bringing her down for questioning.”
“Keep me posted. Any word on Natalie Draga?”
“Yeah, heard back from her grandmother in Mobile. Natalie headed to Boston last year. Called home a few times, but Grandma Draga hasn’t heard from her in a bit. Best she recalls, Natalie had gotten a job as a waitress in a bar. But it doesn’t sound like she and her granddaughter are exactly close, so as for such details as where Natalie lived, possible roommates, friends, Grandma Draga doesn’t know, doesn’t care.”
“Which bar?”
“Grandma didn’t know. But per your savvy restricted duty sergeant commands”—Phil uttered the words dryly—“couple of district detectives paid a visit to Devon Goulding’s employer yesterday afternoon—”
“Tonic.”
“Yep. They flashed photos of Natalie Draga and Kristy Kilker. Bar manager ID’d Natalie Draga as a former employee, but claims she hasn’t seen her in months. Draga walked out one day, never came back.”
“Kristy Kilker?” D.D. asked, wondering if they could be so lucky as to have both women connected so quickly to Devon Goulding.
“No such luck, but Carol is headed over to Tonic now to copy Natalie’s pay stubs,” Phil said. “More and more . . .”
“Looks like Devon Goulding has direct ties to at least Natalie Draga. Working at the same bar and all.”
“Carol will figure out the details,” Phil assured her.
D.D. tried to stop her automatic snort. She was only half successful.
“Come on now,” Phil said immediately. “Why are you so hard on her? Carol Manley is a perfectly good detective with an excellent track record. Not to mention she has a golden retriever named Harley. How can you not like a woman with a dog named Harley?”
D.D. didn’t answer. Her feelings regarding the new detective were irrational, and she knew it.
“I thought Carol was reviewing video feeds from all the cameras surrounding Florence Dane’s apartment?” she asked.
“Officers are executing those warrants now. When they have the videos, she’ll start reviewing. But in the meantime . . .”
D.D. couldn’t argue with that. It did take longer to amass security footage than one might think.
“We need to find Flora,” she muttered.
“Then given that you’re the boss, how ’bout requesting more manpower? Because between working Devon Goulding from yesterday and now this from this morning . . . we’re stretched thin. You know, so thin, even the restricted duty boss lady feels a need to work in the field.”
“Touché.”
“Not that it’s my place to tell you what to do.”
Phil sounded cranky again. D.D. hesitated. Wondered if there were things here she was still missing. God knows she’d never considered that Phil and Neil might be taking her injury so personally. Left alone, she had a natural bossy streak even before she, the younger detective, was appointed a supervisor over Phil, who had more years on the job. Though she’d always been the lead detective on their three-man squad . . .
“Phil . . . ,” she started.
“Hold on. Okay. Mrs. Kilker has just arrived. Time for me to earn my paycheck. Good luck with Colin Summers.”
“Same.”
“Then come home?”
Cop-speak for returning to HQ. “Sure. Then I’ll be home.”
“See you here.”
Phil hung up. D.D. stood there a while longer, wondering again what she was missing and, if she was such an excellent detective, why the men in her life remained such mysteries to her.
*
COLIN SUMMERS WORKED FOR a major investment bank in the financial sector of Boston, adjacent to Faneuil Hall. From the FBI’s downtown office, it was easier for Pam and D.D. to walk to the stately pink-granite building than battle out-of-state tourists driving hopelessly lost on increasingly narrow side streets.
D.D.’s favorite leather coat wasn’t completely up to the job of battling the late fall chill, but she hunched her shoulders and soldiered through. Pam, she noticed, had exchanged her suit jacket and silk blouse for a cable-knit sweater and gold-toned scarf. Still dressy, but more approachable than the earlier buttoned-up affair. Not a bad strategy, in other words, when about to ambush an angry father about just how far he might have gone to get his missing daughter back.
Like many corporate offices in Boston, the banking building had a manned lobby even on Sundays. Pam did the honors for both of them, flashing her ID and stating they had a three o’clock meeting with Colin Summers. The young rent-a-cop stifled a yawn—no doubt they’d interrupted quality time watching YouTube videos on his cell phone—then dialed up. Colin must’ve already been there to vouch for them, as they were immediately waved through.
“I’ll take the lead,” Pam said briskly as they rode the elevator up.
D.D. didn’t argue. Pam had an established relationship with the subject, and despite what Phil might think, D.D. wasn’t that big a control freak. Maybe.
They arrived on the eleventh-floor lobby. One set of glass doors to the left, a second set to the right. Both appeared dark and secured. Pam turned to the left, and sure enough, a man appeared on the other side of the door, gaunt face already set in a grim mask as he buzzed them through.
D.D. had never met Colin Summers before. Just spoken to him by phone, plus seen him on TV, pleading for his daughter’s safe return. He must’ve recognized her from various press conferences as well, because immediately:
“I knew it! I knew it! If she’s here”—he stuck a finger out at D.D.—“then that Goulding bastard’s death did have something to do with my daughter. Did you find her? Do you have news? Where is she? Where’s Stacey!”
“Colin,” Pam said. Not soothing, which surprised D.D., but firm. “We haven’t found Stacey. Trust me, I’d be sitting with both you and your wife right now if we had.”
Colin scowled but nodded. Apparently, that made sense to him.
“We do, however, have a new line of inquiry that might help us find her. So please, may we?”