“Yes,” she said in a soft voice. “Isn’t it time to help us put a stop to it?”
She didn’t know if she was getting to him or not. She knew that, if she told her boss about this, he’d have her bring Simon in, and they would sit there and interview him for hours until he broke. And maybe that’s what they needed to do. She just wanted to see if he had a child with him. If they took him in, and he had somebody hidden somewhere who would slowly die, that would be even worse. She didn’t want to do anything that would endanger another child.
She watched as Simon disappeared on her. She pulled out her phone and called Missing Persons. After identifying herself, she asked for Jennifer, someone there she knew. When Jennifer came on the line, Kate asked, “Do you have a missing boy? As in a last-night kind of thing?”
“Yes. It was called in around dinnertime. The Amber alert went out a few moments later. Didn’t you, hear?” she asked curiously. “The little boy is seven, normally walks home with friends. Yesterday the friend was sick, so he walked home alone, but he didn’t make it.”
“No updates?”
“No.” Jennifer’s voice turned heavy. “He just disappeared off the face of the earth.”
Kate winced at that because, of course, they never did. It just seemed that way. They could search high and low, but it was damn near impossible without something—someone—to point them in the right direction. Over two-and-a-half-million people were in the city and its surrounding areas; any one of them could be holding that child. And unfortunately the child could already be dead. “Let me know if you get any updates,” she said.
“Wait, wait, how did you hear about it?”
She quickly explained about Simon.
“I want to talk to him,” Jennifer said.
“You do that,” Kate replied. “He’s not very helpful though.”
“Do you think this guy is involved with your case?”
“Somehow, yes,” she said. “I just don’t know in what way.”
Jennifer hesitated.
“You talk to him,” Kate said, giving her Simon’s name and number. “If we could just save one child, maybe I’d get more clues for the next.”
“Do you think he’s got one?”
“I’m not sure what he’s got or what he knows, but he knows more than he’s telling me. I’m sure of that.”
And she hung up.
*
“That didn’t turnout the way I expected,” Simon snapped to himself. Something was so very irritating and so very magnificent about her. He wanted to hate her but knew they were well past that point. What she didn’t understand was that she and Simon were on a trajectory that would take them someplace personal. Hell, he could read the signs, even if she was in denial. A trajectory he would do anything to avoid. The last thing he wanted was a cop in his world. He hated them, always had. And, from the looks of it, she hated everybody like him too.
It was Thursday, and a weekend cruise left almost every Friday afternoon. He checked his watch, got on his phone, to confirm the next few weekends were available, leaving his options open. Even if the gambling lost him money, he needed to get the hell out of town for a bit. He didn’t want to be anywhere close by, if something went down with Leonard. God, he hoped not. No child should endure that. But a solid alibi might change Kate’s opinion of him.
As soon as he hung up the phone, it rang again. This time it was the Missing Persons Division. His heart chilled that the detective had passed his name on to somebody handling Leonard’s case. “I don’t know anything about it,” he snapped. “Talk to my ex-fiancée. She was the one who called me.”
“I have,” the officer said. “And she said that you know more than you’re telling.”
He stopped and stared out across the ocean. “I don’t know anything,” he said heavily, feeling the pressure weigh in on him. “I can give you a full rundown of where I was all of yesterday and today,” he said. “And you’ll see I was nowhere close.”
“Why don’t you tell me about that first?” she said. He quickly went through the list of addresses where he went to check on his jobsites.
“These are all yours?”
“Yes,” he snapped. “They are all mine. They are building projects.”
“That’s a lot of potential locations to hide a child.”
Everything inside him went still. Just the thought was so abhorring, he wanted to upchuck on the spot. Either that or pound the next person he saw into the ground. The closest one available appeared to be an old lady, somewhere in her mid-seventies, pushing a square shopping cart in front of her. That was probably not a good idea. He finally said, “Listen. Either arrest me or leave me alone.” Then he hung up his phone.
Standing here for a long moment, he looked down at his hands, not surprised to see a tremor sliding through them. Of all the criminals in the world that he could possibly be, a pedophile was not one of them. Not after his own nightmares at the hands of one. Of course the cops would look at that and might actually see motive. Supposedly victims of sexual abuse grew up to be sexual abusers themselves. Simon shook his head at that disgusting thought. The cops seemed to see the abuse as grooming or training.