The Never Game

Shaw’s mother, Mary Dove Shaw, believed an ancestor to be an Ohlone elder.

He killed the engine. Here were two openings in the line of brush and shrubbery that separated the shoulder from the park proper. The gaps led down a steep hill to trails, imprinted with many footprints and tire tread marks.

Climbing from the car, Shaw surveyed the expansive park. He heard a sound he knew well. The whine of dirt bikes, a particular pitch that gets under the skin of some but to others—Shaw, for one—is a siren’s song. Motorbiking was illegal here, a sign sternly warned. If he hadn’t been on a job, though, Shaw’d have had his Yamaha off the rack in sixty seconds and on the trails in ninety.

So: One, assume kidnapping. Two, assume it was Person X, in the gray stocking cap and sunglasses. Three, assume X put a tracker on Sophie’s bike and followed her.

How would it have gone down?

X would snatch her here, before she got too far into the park. He’d worry about witnesses, of course, though the area around Tamyen Road wasn’t heavily populated. Shaw had passed a few companies, small fabricators or delivery services. But the buildings had no view of the shoulder. There was little traffic.

The scenario? X spots her. Then what? How would he have approached? Asking for directions?

No, a nineteen-year-old honors student and employee of a tech company wouldn’t fall for that, not in the age of GPS. Exchanging pleasantries to get close to her? That too didn’t seem likely. X would see she was strong and athletic and probably suspicious of a stranger’s approach. And she could zip into the park, away from him, at twenty miles an hour. Shaw decided there’d be no ruse, nothing subtle. X would simply strike fast before Sophie sensed she was a target.

He began walking along the edge of the shoulder nearest the park. He spotted a tiny bit of red. In the grass between the two trail entrances was a triangular shard of plastic—that could easily have come from the reflector on a bike. With a Kleenex he collected the triangle and put it in his pocket. On his phone he found the screenshot of Sophie’s bike outside the Quick Byte—lifted from Tiffany’s security camera video. Yes, it had a red disk reflector on the rear.

Made sense. X had followed Sophie here and—the moment the road was free of traffic—he’d slammed into the back of her bike. She’d have tumbled to the ground and he’d have been on her in an instant, taping her mouth and hands and feet. Into the trunk with her bike and backpack.

Some brush had been trampled near the plastic shard. He stepped off the shoulder and peered down the hill. He could see a line of disturbed grass leading directly from where he was standing to the bottom of a small ravine. Maybe the plan hadn’t gone quite as X had hoped. Maybe he’d struck Sophie’s bike too hard, knocking her over the edge, and she’d tumbled down the forty-five-degree slope.

Shaw strode down one path to the place where she would have landed. He crouched. Broken and bent grass, and gouges in the dirt that might have come from a scuffle. Then he spotted a rock the size of a grapefruit. There with a smear on it: brown, the shade of dried blood.

Shaw pulled out his phone and dialed a number he’d programmed in several hours ago. He hit CALL. About ten feet up the hill came a soft sound, repeated every few seconds. It was the Samsung whistling ringtone.

The phone number he’d dialed was Sophie’s.

11. (#ulink_bd4a9ddb-0151-5719-a891-0dd9797cf488)

Now, time for the experts.

Shaw called Frank Mulliner and told him what he’d found.

The man greeted the news with a gasp.

“Those sons of bitches!”

Shaw didn’t understand at first. Then he realized Mulliner was referring to the police.

“If they’d gotten on board when they should have … I’m calling them now!”

Shaw foresaw disaster: a rampaging parent. He’d seen this before. “Let me handle it.”

“But—”

“Let me handle it.”

Mulliner was silent for a moment. Shaw imagined the man’s mobile was gripped in white, trembling fingers. “All right,” Sophie’s father said. “I’m heading home.”

Shaw got the names of the detectives whom Mulliner had first spoken to about Sophie’s disappearance: Wiley and Standish of the Joint Major Crimes Task Force, based in nearby Santa Clara.

After disconnecting with Mulliner, Shaw called the JMCTF’s main number and asked for either of them. The prim-voiced desk officer, if that was her job title, said they were both out. Shaw said it was an emergency.

“You should call nine-one-one.”

“This is a development in a case Detectives Standish and Wiley are involved in.”

“Which case?”

Of course, there was none.

“Can you give me your address?” Shaw asked.

Ten minutes later he was headed for the JMCTF headquarters.

There’s no shortage of law enforcement in California. Growing up in the eastern wilderness of the state, the Shaw family had contact with park rangers—the Compound abutted tens of thousands of acres of state and federal forest. The family was no stranger to other agencies either: state police, the California Bureau of Investigation and, on rare occasion, the FBI. Not to mention Sheriff Roy Blanche.

The JMCTF was new to Colter Shaw. In a brief online search he’d found that it was charged with investigating homicides, kidnappings, sexual assaults and larcenies in which an injury occurred. It had a small drug enforcement group.

He was now approaching the headquarters: a large, low ’50s-style building on West Hedding Street, not far from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office. He steered the Chevy into the lot and walked along the curving sidewalk bordered with succulents and red flowers, hearing the persistent rush of traffic on the Nimitz Freeway. At the front desk, he walked up to the window behind which a blond uniformed officer sat.

“Yessir?”

He knew the voice. It was the same young woman who’d fielded his earlier call. She was calm and stodgy. Her face was pert.

He asked again for either Detective Wiley or Detective Standish.

“Detective Standish is still out. I’ll see if Detective Wiley is available.”

Shaw sat in an orange-vinyl-and-aluminum chair. The waiting room was like a doctor’s office, without the magazines … and with bulletproof glass protecting the receptionist.

Shaw opened his computer bag, extracted his bound notebook and began to write. When he was done, he walked to the desk officer. The woman looked up.

“Could you please make me a copy of this? It’s for an investigation Detective Wiley’s running.”

Or, is soon to be running.

Another pause. She took the notebook, did as he’d requested and returned the notebook and copies to him.

“Many thanks.”

As soon as Shaw sat down, the door clicked open and a large man in his mid-forties stepped into the waiting area.

The plainclothes officer was an inverted pyramid: broad shoulders and a solid chest, testing the buttons of his shirt, tapering to narrow hips. Had to have played football in school. His salt-and-pepper hair was thick and swept back from a high forehead. The proportioned bulk, hair, along with the eagle’s beak nose and solid jaw, could have landed him a role as a detective in a thriller movie. Not the lead but the dependable—and often expendable—sidekick. His weapon was a Glock and it rode high on the hip.

His eyes, muddy brown, looked Shaw up and down. “You wanted to see me?”

“Detective Wiley?”