Six Seconds

But now?

He ran his hand over his face.

Now, his confidence had been shattered. He didn’t know if he was on the right track, a fact reflected in the way Stotter had looked at him. Bick was not connected. Graham had no solid evidence to prove the case was anything more than a terrible wilderness accident.

So why the hell was he trying to make it into something more?

Did he believe it was something more?

Was he missing something?

He didn’t know. He couldn’t think. It was black outside and he went to bed. But night winds rattled the windows and tormented him with questions.

Maybe what happened to the Tarvers was no accident? What about the missing laptop? The stranger at Ray’s table? The meaning of “Blue Rose Creek,” the last note Ray had written? Earlier, Graham had run the term Blue Rose Creek through databases but got nothing concrete.

Then there was the big insurance policy. There was stress in the Tarver home, money problems and the fact that they still hadn’t found Ray’s body.

Did he flip out, kill his family with plans to emerge and collect the insurance?

Go back.

What if Ray was onto a big story and someone killed him and his family?

How big does a story have to be?

Any way you cut it, a wilderness accident can be a perfect murder.

Mother Nature is your murder weapon.

The wind shook the house. Graham tossed and turned and in his dream state he heard Nora whisper to him as she did when he’d been underwater in the river facing death.

Keep going, Daniel. You have to keep going.

Little Emily Tarver’s dying words haunted him.

Don’t—daddy.

But the girl’s voice was so soft, so small and the river was deafening. These factors raised doubts. Did she actually speak at all? Or did he dream that she did?

Was he dreaming now?

Or was he mining his subconscious as her last breaths played in his memory. He could hear her again. But this time she said more.

He heard her clearly.

An icy chill rocketed up Graham’s spine, forcing him to sit up, wide awake.

The time glowed: 2:47 a.m.

He made coffee, sat in his chair and considered his case. Then he went to his computer and by dawn he’d completed a new case status report. He showered, had fresh coffee and scrambled eggs for breakfast then drove back to the office and placed his updated report on his boss’s desk.

Graham was convinced he now knew Emily Tarver’s dying words.

“Don’t hurt my daddy.”

After reading Graham’s report, Inspector Stotter removed the jacket of his mohair suit, hung it on the wooden hanger, and then hooked it on his coatrack.

“I know you’ve saved our team many times with solid detective work, Dan.”

Graham sat in one of the cushioned visitors’ chairs watching Stotter.

“You stood your ground when everyone else thought you were wrong.”

Stotter loosened his tie then rolled his sleeves to the elbows.

“But I don’t see it here. I don’t see a reason to grant your request to go to the U.S. and look into Ray Tarver’s history.”

“Why not?”

“I think you’re using this case as a means of repentance.”

“What?”

“I think it’s got something to do with why you were in the mountains in the first place and why you jumped in the river after the girl.”

“I jumped in to help that girl.”

“The result was heroic but the act was suicidal.”

Graham averted his stare.

“Danny, you’ve got to stop beating yourself up for what happened to Nora. You can’t go back and undo what happened. It was an accident, which is probably what happened with the Tarver family.”

“She spoke to me.”

“Who spoke to you?”

“I told you. The little girl, Emily. In the river. Just before she died.”

“Dan.” He let a long silence pass. “Dan, are you sure you’re ready to be back on the job?”

“I swear it happened, Mike.”

Stotter looked at him for a long moment, thinking.

“This isn’t in your report.”

“It was chaotic. I was unclear at first.”

“What did she say?”

“‘Don’t hurt my daddy.’”

“‘Don’t hurt my daddy’?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re certain?”

“Yes.”

“She say anything else?”

“No, just, ‘Don’t hurt my daddy.’ Why would she say something like that? There has to be something else at work.”

Stotter looked hard at Graham for a long time then scratched his chin.

“You’ve attended traffic accidents, Dan. You’ve seen badly injured people in shock. They fight off people who try to help them. They say all kinds of things that don’t make sense when they’re in shock. I don’t think you have a clear dying declaration here that would warrant a criminal investigation into suspicious deaths. You have no solid evidence.”

“We still haven’t found Ray Tarver, or his laptop. He met some stranger the day before this happened. The guy was a freelance investigative reporter from Washington, D.C. And there’s another thing, the last handwritten entry in his notebook, this Blue Rose Creek.”

“All circumstantial. It will not hold up in court.”

“But…”

“You know real cases are not like TV crime shows, Hollywood movies or books. There are always loose, inexplicable threads that cannot be tied up neatly at the end, and have no bearing on a criminal act.”

“My gut’s telling me there’s more to this.”

“Your gut?”

“Sir, you’ve got nothing to lose by signing off on a thorough investigation.”

“Dan, our budget’s tight. We’re shorthanded. I need you on other cases.”

“We’re talking a multiple death case with unsettling circumstances.”

Stotter crossed his arms, cognizant of the fact Graham was one of his best, that he needed to keep him on his game and that this case could be crucial to preserving his confidence. After ruminating on the situation, Stotter grabbed Graham’s report.

“Give me an hour.”

Some forty minutes later, Stotter, holding Graham’s rolled report like a baton in his hand, waved him into his office.

“Shut the door. I talked to the superintendent.”

“And?”

“Apart from his life insurance—” Stotter had circled part of Graham’s report “—Ray Tarver took out a small Canadian travel insurance policy when he booked their trip.”

“Right. It doesn’t pay much for death.”

“In cases where bodies are not recovered the policy has a standard presumption-of-death clause.”

“You’re going to let me do this, let me go to the U.S. and check his background?”

“Listen to what I’m telling you.”

Graham took out his notebook.

“You get in touch with the LO in Washington and give him what he needs to set you up down there. This is how you approach this: You tell people that you’re completing paperwork that confirms Ray Tarver was in peril at the time of his presumed death. All efforts to locate him have been exhausted. You’re asking a few routine background questions, basically to ensure that he hasn’t surfaced, wandering like an amnesia victim, or was acting out of character before the tragedy.”

“Right.”

“You say that you’re tending to an administrative matter while you’re in the U.S. following up on other unrelated matters. This will be low-key with no potential for ruffling feathers or causing embarrassment between the force and U.S. law enforcement. Besides, I’m sure some of the guys will be busy with the papal visit. Do you understand what I’ve told you?”

“Got it.”

“You are not authorized to conduct a criminal investigation in the United States. Is that clear, Corporal Graham?”

“Crystalline.”

“Register your trip with the travel branch. You have one, maybe two weeks, unless I call you back sooner.”

17

Los Angeles, California

Please, God, let it be Logan.

Blurry images of a boy played on the screen before Maggie.

Let it be him. Please.

A few days after Maggie’s ordeal with Madame Fatima, a new hope had emerged.

“We believe this is your son,” Ned Rimmer said just as the video froze and static snowed on the images.

Rimmer was an LAPD detective—“retired six years now” after a drug dealer’s bullet took his left eye. Rimmer wore an eye patch, a ponytail and a sour disposition most days. He was still a detective, just not the kind he’d planned on being.

Rimmer and his wife, Sharmay, an emergency dispatcher with a penchant for dangling earrings, belonged to the Guardian Rescue Society, a national group of law enforcement types who volunteered their money, resources and time, to find children in parental abduction cases who’d slipped through the cracks.

Logan’s file was passed to them months ago when Maggie had first sought help from support groups who’d circulated her plea among their circles.

She’d never heard of the society until today when Sharmay called her at the bookstore, identified herself, then said, “We believe one of our Guardians may have located your son, Logan Conlin.”

Stunned into silence, Maggie gripped the phone.

“Hello? Maggie?”

“My God, do you have him? Where is he? Is he okay? I have to see him!”

“We don’t have him yet. We’d prefer to discuss details at our Los Angeles office. Please come as soon as it’s convenient so we can advance the case.”

An hour later, after following Sharmay’s directions, Maggie had parked her car on a street that bordered Culver City and West L.A.

The society’s L.A. chapter was in a second-story office above the Flying Emerald Dragon takeout restaurant. The aroma of deep-fried chicken and stir-fried vegetables filled it now as Maggie sat before the video monitor.

“Here we go. Fixed it,” Rimmer said. “This footage comes to us from our New York chapter from Wayne Kraychinski, retired NYPD detective first grade.”

As the Rimmers had explained it, Kraychinski checked Logan’s profile with his school sources, as he does with all the cases his chapter takes on.

Kraychinski got a lead in Queens concerning a boy fitting Logan’s age and description. According to the history, the boy had recently moved to the community with his father, a trucker, who fit Jake Conlin’s general profile.

Kraychinski and some of the other Guardians initiated surveillance.

“We’ve got a series of sequences recorded over a few weeks,” Rimmer said.

The camera shook and a boy about eight to ten years old in a hooded sweatshirt swam into view but not in sharp focus. Maggie couldn’t see his face clearly, or his full body and gait. The boy was among a group walking through a schoolyard to a basketball court.

“Now, this is where they reside.”

The video jumped to a row of tired-looking two-story detached homes shoehorned into a Queens neighborhood. One house had a rig out front. No trailer. A green Peterbilt. Being married to a trucker, Maggie knew vehicles. Jake drove a Kenworth but he could’ve sold it or traded it for a Peterbilt.

Next, the boy was in a park with other kids on skateboards.

Again, his back was to the camera. He was wearing a ball cap and was sitting on the grass bordering the skating area. Maggie caught her breath as he turned to offer his profile, but a shadow blocked the image before it disappeared.

Maggie covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a groan.

Is it Logan? She couldn’t be certain.

“Now,” Rimmer said, “this next sequence, which is the money sequence, was obtained by Kraychinski’s friend, Ella Bell. She’s a former Customs officer. Ella used a minicamera hidden in her hat to employ a ruse for interaction.”

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