GIRL JACKED (Crime and Punishment Mystery Thriller Series) Page 6

  He missed his mom and dad. A few years back, his adoptive father had developed a blood clot, so the doctor thought it would be beneficial to thin his blood. His parents had moved to Florida. He hadn’t been down to visit in a long while, but kept planning to go soon.

  Every time he saw them, they seemed to be aging faster. They’d tried and tried to have kids of their own but couldn’t, so they adopted. He was fortunate that, at age eleven, a good couple like them chose him. Typically, they all went for babies. Kids his age didn’t end up with the pick-of-the-litter parents.

  How stupid kids can be, he thought. How stupid I was.

  He still felt guilty about how he acted. Two of the nicest people on the planet had brought him into their home, and he acted like a jerk. They’d come to Aunt Haddie’s to pick him up, and he’d run crying into the woods.

  Chandler was the one who found him. Jack had grabbed his hand and tried to pull him farther away, but Chandler just stood there. Even as a kid, Chandler was a giant. Jack could have run into him, but if Chandler didn’t want to move, he wasn’t moving.

  “We gotta run, Chandler.”

  Chandler slapped him in the face, and the blow knocked Jack down.

  “Jack, this is your chance.”

  “But, we need to stay together,” Jack pleaded.

  Chandler sat down on the ground next to him. “I’m not going anywhere. Aunt Haddie will take good care of Michelle and me. You’ve got a chance for a mom and dad. We had them once; you should get that too.” He grabbed him by the arm and helped him up.

  “Chandler…”

  Jack knew he was right, but it still hurt.

  When he got back to Aunt Haddie’s, his new parents waited by her side. This time, he asked them whether he’d be able to come back and see Aunt Haddie, Chandler, and Michelle. His new mom promised that he could.

  They kept that promise…mostly Chandler, his father, and him. Fishing, baseball, and lots of other stuff—together.

  His parents had gone to Chandler’s funeral. Jack wasn’t there. He had been on the other end—putting the coffin on the plane.

  It started to lightly snow. The car in front of him slowed down even more.

  This is going to be a long shift.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mommy

  Jack passed by Mrs. Stevens’s door on tiptoes.

  Damn, I forgot to pick up her appeasement present.

  He made another mental note to pick something up and headed upstairs. As he turned the corner of the stairs, he stopped dead. A light came from under his door.

  His apartment door was solid wood, but there was a good half-inch gap underneath it and light now streamed out. Gina had wanted to get him one of those door sock things because the apartment was always drafty, but he thought getting one was way too domestic for him. He was glad he hadn’t because now he could see that someone was inside.

  Gina? No, she was gone.

  He thought about who could have a key to his apartment, and that was a long list.

  He knew for security, it was beyond stupid, but girls seemed to relax if you gave them a key and Jack wanted to keep the girls happy. He shook his head at his weakness.

  He unsnapped his holster and opened the door. No sound came from inside the apartment. When he looked into the kitchen, he knew something was terribly wrong. It was clean.

  The list of people who’d come into his apartment and clean was short. There was only one name—Mom. She must have flown up to surprise him.

  “Mom?” he called as he trudged into his living room.

  “Awkward.” Replacement sang the word as she walked out of the bedroom. She had a towel wrapped around her body and was drying her hair with another one. She held onto the doorframe and arched her back, striking a comically seductive pose. “I’m not your mommy.” She batted her eyes.

  “Don’t do that.” Jack took a step back and turned away. “What’re you doing here? I dropped you back off at your own apartment.”

  He emptied the contents of his pockets onto the counter. He knew this habit drove the girls crazy.

  “Hey, I just cleaned that.”

  “Good thing you’re not my mommy,” Jack shot back with a slight grin. His mouth fell open a few seconds later when he opened the refrigerator and saw the sub. “How did you get in?”

  “For a cop, I’m surprised you’d keep a key under the rug.” She rolled her eyes and made a face. “It’s the most obvious place to look.”

  Gina.

  Jack cursed under his breath.

  “Are you ready?” Replacement asked as she walked over to his desk.

  My desk.

  The workspace in the corner of the living room was immaculate. Jack could now see the wooden desk. The top was empty except for his desktop computer, a laptop he didn’t recognize, a photograph, a stack of papers, and a notebook.

  “Do you have obsessive-compulsive disorder?”

  He walked over and picked up the photo. It was of Michelle. She’d changed so much. Gone was the awkward little girl who loved to wear mismatched socks. The beautiful woman who sat on the hood of the blue Civic had the same bright smile, the same dark brown eyes, but that was where the physical similarities ended.

  She seemed confident and full of life. She seemed happy.

  Happy.

  If Jack had to choose one word to describe Michelle, it would be happy. When they were growing up, he thought she was cheerful all the time just because she was a little kid. He stopped thinking that when she broke her leg. They were sledding, and Michelle hit a tree. Aunt Haddie was beside herself when she got to the hospital. Chandler and Jack thought they’d get it when she came in. Michelle saved them from a big spanking because she lit up as if it was the best day in her life.

  “Aunt Haddie, we had a great time sledding, except for my leg, but Chandler and Jack pulled me all the way to downtown.” She beamed. “I got to ride in an ambulance. I’ve never been in a hospital, and the nurses are so pretty. Maybe I could…” and on and on she went. That was what Michelle truly was…happy.

  Guilt washed over him as he looked at the picture. She’d matured into a beautiful woman, and he’d missed seeing her grow up. He wanted to hug her. He wanted to ask her why she was so happy then. He wanted…

  Want, wish…they were about equal. Both the words came to the same thing, though: they never happen.

  “Jack.” Replacement’s hand was soft on his arm. He had started to grip the photo too hard, and it was crumbling in his hands. “I thought you might need a photo to show around.” There was concern in her voice and in her eyes.

  Smart kid.

  He turned the photo over. It was printed on photo paper with a home printer. “How old is the picture and where did you print it?” he asked.

  “Three months ago at the nursing home,” she answered with a crisp military tone. Jack couldn’t tell whether she was mocking him or trying to be serious. “Terry at Well’s Meadow—that’s the home Aunt Haddie is in—printed it out after Michelle emailed it to her.”

  “Aunt Haddie’s in a home?”

  Replacement paused. “Sorry, she got real old and she started forgetting things. The doctors said it’s early Alzheimer’s. Michelle got her into a nice treatment center.”

  “Why didn’t—?”

  “I don’t want to talk about Aunt Haddie.” She folded her arms across her chest.

  Jack hated to admit it, but he didn’t either. It hurt too much.

  “Do you have an electronic copy? I want to email it to a cop I know in California.”

  “She didn’t go there,” Replacement protested.

  “Humor me, okay?”

  “I already scanned it and put it on your desktop.”

  “How?”

  “There.” She pointed.

  “That’s my printer.” Jack’s lip curled.

  “It’s a scanner too.” Replacement turned, but Jack could see her smile in the monitor before it vanished. “I printed some missing person fl
yers and passed some out. You didn’t have much paper.”

  Jack stopped and looked at the small stack of papers on the desk.

  “Good job. We can print some more.” Jack sat down and pulled up his email. “I want to get that picture out.”

  Replacement walked into the kitchen as he emailed the photo to Victor.

  “If she went to California then fine, but if she didn’t, we need to rule it out,” Jack tried to explain.

  “She didn’t. See, I ruled it out,” Replacement snapped but quickly added, “You’re right, sorry.”

  “Can you get more paper for the flyers?”

  Replacement was silent, so Jack looked back into the kitchen.

  Her mouth opened and closed but she nodded. “Sure.”

  He turned to the computer.

  Why would she be freaked out about getting paper? Paper is…expensive.

  “Use this, okay?”

  Replacement’s jacket was on the back of the chair. Jack took the cash out of his wallet and put it in her pocket.

  “Don’t do that. I’m fine…I have plenty of money.” She rushed back over.

  “Don’t argue with me about money, kid. I’m Italian. It’s part of our customs.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve got no idea what I am. I’m adopted, but I sort of look Italian and it sounds cool when I say it.” He shrugged. “Besides, I’m not asking, capisce?” He tried his best godfather impersonation.

  She grinned. “I thought you knew your parents. Aunt Haddie said you came there when you were seven.”

  “I knew my birth mother. I have no idea about my…the…guy. She never talked about him.”

  “Are they alive?” she asked.

  “They could be.”

  “They could be? Why didn’t you go find them?”

  Jack could tell that Replacement was trying not to make a face, but the result was an expression that looked as if she drank a straight shot of unsweetened lemonade.

  “What for? What would I ask them? Why did you get rid of me? I don’t want to know. I don’t care.”

  “Not even a little?”

  “Well, trying to figure out why she left me on my birthday…it made me a little crazy, so I stopped doing it.”

  Replacement’s mouth dropped open. “It happened on your birthday?”

  “Don’t get so dramatic, kid. It wasn’t my real birthday. I don’t even know when that is. That’s the date they wrote on the form.”

  “They just pick it?” She sat on the couch.

  Jack nodded. “Anyway, it happened.”

  She walked to the side of the desk and stared at him. “What happened? I mean how did…uh…she do it?”

  Jack tried to keep his eyes on the computer, but she just kept watching him. Maybe it was the innocent look on her face or because he was so worried about Michelle, but he opened up.

  “We were in a bus depot. She said we were going to Vegas. I had no clue where that was. She came back with two tickets. When she started to hand me my ticket, she froze.”

  He looked off into the distance, detached from the story he was conveying.

  “She just stared at me. She always looked at me weird anyway. It was like a mixture of love and hate. A real yin-yang thing.”

  Replacement leaned against the desk.

  “She just straightened up and said, ‘You got needs, kid. School, friends, crap like that. This is best.’ Then she turned around and went to the bus.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I flipped out. I ran after her, begging. I grabbed onto her and she just backhanded me. I didn’t know about drugs then, but I knew there were times when she was just out of it. I thought that was one of those times.”

  He squinted as if he were trying to see a detail that was just out of sight. “She wore these super big heels, and she was wobbling.” He stared down at the floor. “She just turned around and said, ‘You don’t know jack, kid.’”

  Replacement stared at him. “Then she just up and left?”

  He nodded. “That was the last thing she ever said to me.”

  “You were left in the middle of a bus station?” Replacement’s eyes were huge.

  “Not exactly the middle. I was sort of to the right—”

  She smacked his shoulder. “You know what I mean. What did you do?”

  “I did what every seven-year-old would do if they got dumped in a bus depot at night.”

  “You cried?”

  “I got caught stealing a pocketbook.” Jack laughed.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I stole it so I could get enough money to buy a ticket to go with her. Anyway, I got pinched and then the whirlwind into the system began. Police station, youth services, counselors, court, lawyer…I never had so much attention in my life, and I hated it. No one talks to a whore’s kid, but now everyone was asking me questions. I was seven, but…” Jack raised his head. “What about you, kid?”

  “I…I don’t like to talk about it.” She wrapped her arms around her chest and crossed her legs.

  “That’s fair. Here I am baring my soul and…”

  Replacement’s lip quivered.

  “Sorry.” He held both hands up. “I shouldn’t have butted in.” Jack moved to the window and looked into the darkness.

  Replacement shuffled over and sat down.

  Jack watched one lone car drive down the street. After a few minutes, he turned and nodded toward the photo. At the bottom was a printed title: Check out my new ride! “Who added the title?”

  “I guess Michelle?” Replacement shrugged.

  “Is that her car?”

  “She got it when Aunt Haddie stopped driving.”

  A wave of guilt washed over Jack again, and he tried to forget how he had left the old woman to fend for herself.

  “Okay. Then the picture is a couple of years old. How often did she call?”

  “She called all the time, almost every day.”

  “When was the last call?”

  “Look. I wrote it up.” She grabbed the calendar off the desk and flipped the pages back twice. “She called Aunt Haddie but the calls stopped on the eighteenth. She was supposed to come home December 21, Saturday evening. We called her Sunday, thinking that maybe she just hadn’t left yet, but she never called back. By Monday morning, we both freaked out and started calling the campus police. They got back to us and said she transferred. I knew that was garbage, so we called the police.”

  “When was that?” Jack made notes, too.

  “December 23.” She pointed to the calendar. “I went to the Fairfield Sheriff’s Department that afternoon and after an hour of filling out the missing person report, they said I couldn’t because I’m not her real sister. I said that was bull, and he sucks, and asked if I could talk to a real cop.”

  “Hold up. Which officer were you speaking with?”

  “I don’t know. Officer Jerk Bag. Some creep. He says I have to be blood related. I told him that she doesn’t have any blood relation living so how was that going to work? He said he needed blood for the report, and I offered to show him blood, and then they asked me to leave!” She looked genuinely surprised.

  “A nurse called and explained that Aunt Haddie was too ill to come to the police station, so another cop was sent out and took the report from her. We kept calling. The cops just kept blowing us off, telling us to wait. We didn’t know what else to do. Then Aunt Haddie said to track you down.” She looked up expectantly.

  “Okay. What do we know?” He grabbed the notebook. He wrote the titles “DATE” and “ACTIONS” on one page. He wrote “FACTS” in large letters for a title on the next page and then pushed the notebook and pen to Replacement.

  “Can we use the computer? Twenty-first century?” She made a face.

  “Humor me. I like to be able to carry it around.”

  Replacement lifted the laptop and made it float up and down.

  “Call me old-fashioned.”

  Replacement muttered und
er her breath, “Yeah, old.”

  Jack looked at the laptop. The case looked well-worn, and he didn’t see any brand name on it. The lid was closed, but it looked powered up, and it was connected to his computer too.

  “Yours?” he pointed.

  “She’s my baby.” She patted the case.

  “Just use the notebook. Write all the dates from the calendar down and what happened,” he instructed her as he went back to the kitchen to get a drink.

  He came back with two glasses of water and set one down in front of her. He noticed that her penmanship was beautiful, and he laughed.

  “What?” Replacement looked up.

  “Your handwriting is beautiful. I guess Aunt Haddie kept writing as a punishment?”

  “It sure sucked,” Replacement said with half a laugh. “I think I’d rather have gotten spanked than to write.”

  Aunt Haddie had some unique punishments she’d use to correct the children in her care. Jack remembered having to transcribe page after page of books if he misbehaved. If his handwriting didn’t meet Aunt Haddie’s strict standards, she’d tear it up, and he’d have to do it again. His handwriting now was almost perfect.

  He looked down at Replacement’s intricate script and laughed out loud. “Boy, you must have been a pretty rotten kid.”

  “Thanks. I heard you were an angel, too.” She shot him a frown. “Don’t get me wrong. Aunt Haddie really loves you, but she said if there was ever a kid who liked to do the opposite of what he was told, it was you.”

  “She was just trying to make you feel good. I was a choir boy.”

  “Michelle backed her up.” Replacement gave him a knowing look.

  “Okay. Let’s go over the facts,” Jack continued. “First: Michelle is missing.” Replacement wrote that, but added duh. Jack let that slide. “Second: the campus police and the roommate said she transferred. Third: the roommate said he told her Michelle transferred to a different school. Fourth: Western Tech said she applied and was accepted, according to Neil.”

  “Miss Piggy said Michelle took all her stuff,” Replacement growled.

  Replacement turned the page, wrote the title “EVIDENCE” and stopped. She didn’t look up. Her back was still stiff, and Jack knew she was smoldering over the fact that Michelle’s belongings were now missing. He admired the fact that in spite of her feelings she was pressing on.