“Are you still in regular contact with the police?” Angie asked. “I saw that Nadine’s been entered into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database. Sometimes this can be difficult because of bureaucracy and backlog, but it’s done and that’s a good thing.”
“The police haven’t been helpful at all,” Carolyn said with venom in her voice. “Especially after they figured out Nadine packed her belongings and called the school pretending to be me.”
“Not really a surprise,” Angie said. “They’re working murders, serious crimes. Runaways are not treated with the same urgency as, say, an abduction case.”
“I’m sure the level of urgency from the police would have been higher if it had been one of their kids who ran away.”
“I don’t disagree,” Angie said. “But the problem is too many kids go missing. I promise you, it’s not like they forget that for a parent, a missing child is a very big deal. It’s simply that they don’t have enough resources to track all the kids down. That’s where we come in.”
It was a constant complaint from parents of runaways and hard for Angie not to get frustrated and vocal. She needed law enforcement to be a friend. At the same time, as Carolyn had found out, they could do little to help.
“When did you last speak with your contact at NCMEC?” Angie asked.
“Sometime last week.”
“So you know they printed new posters? The old ones typically get taken down after a while.” Angie reached behind her and peeled away one of the posters from a printed stack. She’d gotten a copy of the poster from NCMEC when she’d learned of Nadine’s disappearance. The word missing atop the poster in bold red lettering caught the eye. A QR code on the side would connect anyone who scanned it with a smartphone to the NCMEC website. Below that were two recent photos of Nadine. She was a pretty girl with straight brown hair and friendly smile. Even with Carolyn’s drinking, Angie could see that someday Nadine would grow up to be the spitting image of her mom.
Carolyn studied the poster intently but did not seem impressed. “So basically I have an entry in a database and a damn poster I could have made myself.”
Angie had heard this response before. “She’s part of the system. It’s a start.”
“What’s next?”
“Have you been to your daughter’s bedroom? Gone through her belongings? Did she leave behind anything that might tell you where she’d gone? A cell phone, a camera, a notebook, something that might detail her plans.”
Carolyn winced. “The police searched her room but said they didn’t find anything useful. I trusted them. Honestly, I was glad they went through her things and not me. It’s hard to go in there now. It’s just too painful.”
“I understand. The bedroom is where we’re going to start.”
Carolyn’s face brightened. “We have plenty of money to pay you. I heard you were the best at this.”
“I’ll do what it takes to find your daughter. I want to meet Nadine’s friends if at all possible. Chances are she’s not hiding out with one of them, not for this long anyway, but they might know where she’s gone. Did Nadine have any relatives she was close with?”
Carolyn shook her head. “I don’t keep in touch much with them.”
“You haven’t shut off her phone have you?” Angie grimaced slightly, hoping the answer would be no.
“No. I’m still paying the bill.”
“Good. I need you to keep calling her phone. Don’t shut it off. That’s the worst thing you can do. We’ll monitor Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat and other social media sites where your daughter may have a presence. Meanwhile, I want you to write down any places where you think she may have gone. I want every one of them. Places you visited that she liked or someplace she’s talked about always wanting to go. Think hard on this because we’re going to search them all.”
Tears flooded Carolyn’s eyes. “It’s my fault—my damn fault. You must think I’m the worst mother ever.”
“I don’t think that for a minute,” Angie answered.
“I should have come to you sooner. I just thought the police—” Carolyn could not finish her sentence.
Parents’ responses to a runaway child were as varied as the circumstances. Some blamed themselves and were consumed by guilt. Others were defensive. Some were openly angry, and all too often Angie heard plans to punish the child after all was resolved.
“What about the posters?”
“Well, I’ve got a stack, and I’m making my own with my contact information on them. Between my team and the team at NCMEC we’ll see that they’re in as many spots as possible. They will be geo-targeted too, based on the information we supply.” Angie reached across the table to take Carolyn’s trembling hand. “Trust me when I say I’m going to do everything possible to find your daughter.”
CHAPTER 4
Four weeks earlier
Nadine caught up to Stephen Macan after a brief sprint. In a semi-breathless voice, she explained her change of heart.
He seemed genuinely pleased. “Can you come now?”
“Now?” Nadine replied.