Dead Stop (Sydney Rose Parnell #2)

CHAPTER 3

Iraq. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, the age of camaraderie and the age of loathing, the epoch of belief, and the epoch of cynicism. The season of light, and the season of the darkest things you hope to never see. It was the spring of our patriotism, and the winter of our disillusionment. We were all going to heaven.

Or so they said.

We just had to pass through hell first.

—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

Cohen and I talked quickly through our next steps, both knowing how critical the following few hours were. We outlined what I would do at this crime scene while I waited for him to arrive from the first one.

If Lucy had been abducted by a stranger, then hers would be the rarest form of child kidnapping. Of the eight hundred thousand child abductions reported each year by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, only a hundred of those children were taken by strangers.

But stranger abduction was the kind most likely to end in tragedy. Some of these children were held in exchange for ransom, or kidnapped by someone who wanted to raise them as their own. Many of the children were stolen for trafficking purposes—to work in fields or sweat shops or as sex slaves.

What Cohen and I both knew was that, given what someone had done to Lucy’s family, she seemed likely to belong to the smallest subset of abduction victims. A child taken for the express purpose of being tortured and killed.

Most kids taken like that die within the first hour. After three hours, we could start assuming the worst. After three days, we’d almost certainly locate her body in a shallow grave. Or a dumpster. Or not at all.

Judging by when Samantha Davenport died, the first two windows had already closed.

I’d never heard of a case like this, a child taken during a home invasion while the rest of the family was slaughtered. And I didn’t need so much as a single finger to count the times that an abducted child had been linked to a hazmat run. Or that the child’s mother had been killed by a train.

After Cohen and I hung up, Clyde and I hurried down the hill toward the detectives, my bad knee complaining at the haste. Tendons shredded five months ago had still not completely healed. Two surgeries and hours of physical therapy had made things better. But the doctor cautioned it might never be what it was. Kind of like me.

Wilson and Gresino straightened and watched us approach with narrowed eyes. Ketz, hard at work hammering stakes into the ground, noticed the detectives’ stillness, followed their gaze toward me and stopped.

The flies had found Samantha’s body, and in the silence that fell after Ketz laid off his work, their whine hit like a buzz saw. The odor of death, little more than a promise when I’d arrived, had worsened, rising with the warmth seeping into the day. Why did death have to offer the parallel wound of indignity?

I stopped a safe distance away and kept a firm grip on Clyde’s lead.

Wilson and Gresino watched me. There wasn’t any surprise in their eyes. Whatever they’d noticed under the tracks had set them up for anything I had to tell them.

Up above, gravel crunched as a car arrived. I heard Deke’s wife telling him to get in the car, that everything would be fine.

“She isn’t a suicide,” Wilson said. “Am I right?”

“Her name is Samantha Davenport. Her husband was critically injured and two of her children were shot dead last night in their home. A third child, eight-year-old Lucy Davenport, is missing.”

I left out the part about the hazmat train due to run in two days. I didn’t know where to slot that information.

“Fuck me,” Gresino said. He hitched up his pant legs one at a time, like he was preparing for a sprint.

Wilson’s gaze went far away. He patted his shirt pocket beneath his sports coat.

“When I woke up this morning,” he said, “I thought it was going to be a beautiful day. That’s what my wife said. A beautiful day.” He pulled out his hand, stared at the pack of cigarettes he’d retrieved then stuffed them back in his pocket. He met my eyes. “She was tied up, looks like. Electrical wire. There’s the remains of what looks like a hefty chunk of wood.”

“Like the crossbar on a crucifix,” Gresino put in.

Wilson glared at him. “We don’t know that.”

“She was cru—”

“Stop. For God’s sake, stop. We don’t know anything yet.”

I looked away from the darkness in the detectives’ eyes, put aside how their words made me feel. “Denver and Thornton’s crime scene units and the lead detective from the Denver crime scene unit are en route. Right now, our focus is on the little girl.”

Ketz had joined us, restlessly swinging the hammer between his second and third fingers, its steel head cupped in his palm. “They think the girl’s around here?”

“She hasn’t shown up yet with any friends or neighbors,” I said. “They’re operating under the assumption she left the house with her mother, who initially was the top suspect. Our discovery puts a different spin on things. An Amber Alert has gone out. The FBI is putting together a rapid-response team and the media’s been put on notice. In an hour, the entire world will be looking for her. But right now we’re all she’s got.”

“Goddammit,” Wilson said. “She could be anywhere.”

As if suddenly aware of how big “anywhere” was, the four of us took in the fields and the road, the warehouses and suburbs and the distant ruins of a former industrial site. We ended up looking between the train cars toward the river.

Ketz said, “We’ll need divers.”

“There’s a child’s toy in the Lexus,” I said. “The lead detective wants us to do a quick process of the vehicle then break a window and grab that toy, see if my dog can pick up a scent trail.”

“Your dog any good?” Gresino asked.

I gave him a cool stare. “Former Marine.”

“Let’s do it then.” Wilson turned to the other men. “Al, stay on the body. Keep doing the dance. Ketz, call in additional units and have them set up a roadblock in both directions and reroute traffic off Potters. Get someone to block the bike path by the river before a bunch of exercise nuts wander in.”

He rubbed his right eye with the heel of his hand and looked at the river again.

“A missing kid,” he said. “Goddammit.”



Wilson went by the book as he did an exterior examination of the Lexus. No doubt he shared my gut-churning need to hurry. But if Clyde couldn’t pick up a trail for Lucy, the SUV might be the only link we had to her. He had to do it right.

While he snapped photos of the vehicle and the surrounding area, I dialed my boss. Captain Mauer had transferred to Denver from Chicago two years ago and proved himself as worthy as any of the home-grown brass. When he picked up, I gave him a quick rundown of what I knew. The murders. The child. And the tanker train, UNMACWAT21. A train he now needed to cancel.

“I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “I’ll jump on that data the detective asked for. And I’ll cover the train. You and Clyde find that little girl.”

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