“No problem. Tell your parents I said hello.”
His stomach is churning but he bypasses the bananas, making a beeline for the prune display.
The gift box isn’t there.
Frowning, he roots around trying to find it, but it’s definitely gone. Realizing Denise is watching him, he grabs a bag of prunes just as the bell rings signaling the start of next period. He shows it to her, saying, “I’ll take this. Bill me for a banana, too, okay? I grabbed one yesterday when no one was here. Thanks, Denise.”
“No problem. Now get moving.” As he heads for the hall, he hears her laugh and repeat, “Get moving. Hah! Good one.”
Mick is too concerned about Brianna and the missing gift to be mortified.
Passing the bulletin board in the empty hallway, he pauses to lift the Toys for Tots flyer, intending to remove the written clue he’d left there for Brianna.
It, too, is missing.
Since he’s already late for class, he detours past a few other spots where he planted notes, only to find that all have been removed.
Even more disturbing: through the glass window of the main office, he can see a pair of uniformed police officers along with several of Brianna’s friends—-all of whom are crying.
After spending the night combing case files, Sully got home at four in the morning to find that her upstairs neighbor was apparently spending the night at her boyfriend’s because her teenage son—-an avid drummer—-was having a party. And the insomniac old man downstairs was blasting his television so loudly that she could hear every word of Life Begins for Andy Hardy on Turner Classic Movies.
Reminded of her father, who had been a big fan of old movies and Mickey Rooney, she downed a shot of Irish whiskey, crawled into bed, and managed to sleep soundly until nine. She’d have kept right on sleeping if she hadn’t been awakened by a call from Barnes, reporting that a teenage girl had gone missing up in the Hudson Valley and she might have crossed paths with their redhead stalker.
Maybe. But probably not. Brianna Armbruster is younger than the other victims, still living at home with her parents. She vanished on a sunny morning, not on the heels of a catastrophic storm.
When small--town teenage girls go missing, the vast majority of them disappeared voluntarily. Often, they’ve had a fight with their parents or boyfriend, or they’re simply in the mood for a change of scenery or searching for some big--city excitement.
Still, she lived on the Hudson River just up the Taconic Parkway from New York, and she’s an attractive girl whose most striking feature is her long red hair.
At that news, Sully bounded out of bed and jumped into the shower. Now she’s juggling rest stop tea and a bagel in the passenger’s seat as Stockton follows the foggy gray ribbon of highway stretching along the Hudson River with the Catskill Mountains looming to the west. They’re well aware that the trail is fairly cold by now. The girl had likely been missing for hours before anyone realized she was gone. No one had seen her since she’d gone to bed on Monday night.
“Those poor parents.” Sully shakes her head. “Can you imagine the guilt?”
“I can. That’s why I’ve never had kids. It doesn’t mix with this job.”
Both Armbrusters are successful professionals, with demanding state government careers in Albany. They’d assumed when they left for work yesterday morning that their daughter was out jogging, as was her early morning habit.
“At least they’re both cleared as suspects,” Barnes points out. “That saves everyone a whole lotta extra anguish.”