Ellery searched the faces of passersby as she went. She didn’t feel the same abject terror as she had earlier when Tula disappeared on her watch, but there was a tense knot in her gut nonetheless. Most missing kids, she knew, turned up within a few hours. Most of them just lost track of time and forgot to call home. Or they deliberately orchestrated a scheme for freedom, returning when they ran out of money or got hungry. But Francis Michael Coben had stolen sixteen girls and butchered them all before he got to Ellery, so her mind went to him first, last, and always. She picked up her pace as she reached the Public Garden, jogging past the beds of purple and white flowers, the idling swan boats, and the waving willows.
At the intersection to cross to Newbury Street, she waited impatiently for the light to change, bouncing on the balls of her feet like the runner she was. The WALK sign flashed, but a strange sound—a kind of stuttering laugh—drew her up short. She waited and heard it again. She zeroed in on the sound and traced it to the nearest trash can. Inside on top of a pile of garbage lay a cell phone making the Porky Pig signature trill “That’s all, folks!” instead of a regular ring. Ellery’s cold fear returned in force when she saw the caller ID.
“Mimi.”
2
Normally when there was a missing child, people sent for Reed Markham with the singular blazing focus and desperation of Gotham City with its Bat signal. As a young agent, Reed had found the most infamous missing girl of all, Ellery herself, and then many others since then. His pedigree in this area was unrivaled, which was why he hung around Boston PD waiting for them to realize it. He lingered like a wallflower in the precinct hallway, dodging file cabinets, shuffling backward periodically to peek at Tula in the break room. She sat at the table coloring, her short legs not quite touching the floor where Speed Bump lay snoozing. Reed’s ex-wife, Sarit, would have him thrown in the basement jail if she could see them now. They only fought about two issues, both of them Reed’s shortcomings, according to Sarit: his obsession with his work and his relationship with Ellery, and here he was mixing both together.
He knew he should take Tula back to the hotel. The longer she remained at the police station, the more likely she was to relay the adventure to Sarit, complete with the part where Ellery was down the hall, which would be the narrative equivalent to setting the story on fire. Is this some sort of midlife crisis? A temporary insanity? Sarit had asked when she learned he was seeing Ellery. Your manic pixie dream girl dances with death more than she tangos with you. Half the time you’re with her, you wind up nearly shot to death. Reed didn’t have a satisfactory answer to this jab because he knew it to be true.
He crept forward again to eavesdrop on the investigation into Chloe Lockhart’s disappearance. The room vibrated with a tense energy he recognized as the mobilizing fear that accompanied a missing child. Phones rang, seemingly without end. Chloe’s unsmiling face beamed out from all the computer monitors. Reed studied the photo, remembering the moodiness that had gripped his older sisters when they were on the cusp of puberty. Mama would compliment a hairstyle or outfit choice, and the wearer would stomp back to her room and change immediately. Chloe’s refusal to light up for the camera—or whoever was behind it—could be mere adolescent pique or a sign of something more troubling.
Ellery stood across the room, deep in conversation with a man who Reed deduced must be her captain. The man had a roll of antacids in his hand, and he was chewing through them like they were candy. Reed wondered whether this was an old habit or a new one acquired when he began to supervise Ellery this past summer. She’d survived her suspension from active duty, and now Boston was giving her a tryout as a detective. No one could argue that she didn’t get results. But her track record of dead bodies and near misses, coupled with her infamy from the Coben case, rendered her radioactive within the department.
As though she felt him staring, Ellery looked up at Reed and waved him over to her. Reed tried not to appear too eager to join the loop as he strode over to stand near Ellery’s side. She angled her body away from him. “Captain, this is Special Agent Reed Markham.”
The captain stuck out one beefy hand. “James Conroy,” he said as he gave Reed a firm shake. “Hathaway told me you happened to be at the fair today when the Lockhart girl went missing. How about our good fortune that the FBI’s number-one child finder is vacationing here in Boston. I hope you can help us out.”
Reed looked sideways at Ellery, whose face, as usual, betrayed nothing of her thoughts. “I’m happy to help if I can,” Reed said mildly.
“Good. Great, even. The Lockhart girl has been gone almost five hours now. What do you think about putting out an Amber Alert on her?”
Amber Alerts went out to the general public in cases of child abduction or endangerment. In Reed’s opinion, they did not have enough information yet to know whether Chloe was in danger. More than 90 percent of missing kids were runaways, and most returned home within a day or two. “It’s the cell phone in the trash can that concerns me,” Reed said, glancing at the clock on the wall. “Most kids Chloe’s age would need surgical amputation to remove their phone from their hands, let alone willingly toss it in the trash. But I would wait to put out the alert until you’ve interviewed the parents.”
“We’re working on that. Her mother’s a surgeon at Mass General, and she’s in the O.R., apparently. We have an officer waiting to pick her up as soon as she’s free. The father is some bigwig at Fidelity. Chloe’s nanny, Margery Brimwood, reached him on the golf course. He’s on his way down here now.”
“What about Chloe’s friends?”
“According to Margery, her best friend is a kid named McKenna MacIntyre,” Ellery said glancing at her notes. “Margery contacted McKenna’s nanny, who explained about Chloe’s disappearance to McKenna’s parents. They’re bringing her down for an interview.”
“I know Judge MacIntyre,” Captain Conroy said. “He’ll appreciate the gravity of the situation.”
Ellery twitched with obvious impatience. “If we wait on the alert, aren’t we killing valuable time?” Reed knew it had taken more than a day before law enforcement accepted that Ellery was abducted and not a runaway. Her family was poor, her home life chaotic, and Ellery’s time hadn’t been closely supervised or monitored. She’d been out alone on the streets of Chicago the night she went missing, and her mother had admitted, shamefaced, that this situation was not unusual.
“The BOLO went out as soon as we received the report. We’ve put out a description of her to every officer in the city.” Conroy looked to Reed. “More eyeballs couldn’t hurt, though. Push all the buttons you got, yeah?”
“It’s your call. Eyeballs help, yes, but they are most useful when trained in the right direction. Knowing more about Chloe’s habits is crucial at this stage.”
He didn’t have to guess the roots of Conroy’s indecision. The named players in this drama so far included two nannies, a judge, a surgeon, and some financial poo-bah. All this added up to the fact that Chloe came from money, and money knew how to make noise. A misstep either way would be bad for the Boston PD. Sound the national alert for a kid who’d just run off to make trouble for one afternoon and they could be airing a wealthy family’s dirty laundry for all to see. Keep quiet about a girl who’d been abducted and the fallout could bring all the local parents down to headquarters, demanding answers and impeding any further investigation.