Cop by Her Side

“What are you doing? Why are you grabbing me?” A man was trying to explode upward as one of the detectives pressed him into a chair.

He wasn’t the usual lowlife being hauled in. The guy was in his thirties, good-looking, thin and maybe earnest when he wasn’t distraught. More like a computer geek than anything. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and had dark, curly hair poking out every which way.

There wasn’t a lot of help to be had out there right now in case this guy went off the deep end, so Clay headed toward the disturbance, cutting his way between desks. “What’s going on?” he asked, when he got close.

“I just want to report my wife and kid missing, and nobody will listen!” the computer nerd said frantically. “We need an Amber Alert or—I don’t know. Something.”

“We’ll listen,” Clay said, “but you’ve got to calm down so we can understand what happened.”

Wild eyes pinned Clay for a couple of heartbeats, and then the guy sagged. Bent forward with a moan until his elbows were braced on his knees and his head hung.

The detective, Steve Atwood, cautiously removed his hands and, when the guy didn’t erupt into motion, stepped back. After a moment, he took his own seat behind the desk. He was nearing retirement, solid but not imaginative and not real big on empathy, in Clay’s opinion.

“All right, sir,” Atwood said. “Let’s start with your name.”

It looked like he could handle it now, and Clay turned to leave them to it.

“Andrew Wilson,” he heard the guy say. “Drew Wilson. My wife is Melissa.”

Garden-variety names, but Clay stopped where he was. He’d heard those names before.

“It’s my daughter Brianna.” The name rode a dry sob. “She’s only seven. She’s with Lissa.”

Lissa. Drew. Bree...and Alexis.

Stunned, Clay turned around, taking in this man’s face. He was Jane Vahalik’s brother-in-law. Had to be. She’d talked about him and her sister and the nieces she loved.

Drew Wilson looked up and saw Clay’s stare. He didn’t even seem to question it. “Where can they be?”

“Your other daughter,” Clay said. “Alexis. Where’s she?”

“Alexis.” He tore at his hair. “She’s... A neighbor has her.” Confusion altered his features, and Clay realized Atwood was looking at him in puzzlement, too. “You know her?” the guy said.

“I know Lieutenant Vahalik. She’s talked about all of you.”

The softening he saw rubbed Clay the wrong way. He had a sister-in-law who was a nice enough woman, but he knew his face didn’t look like that when someone mentioned her.

“I would have gone to her, but we don’t live in Angel Butte.”

“Okay,” Clay said, shoving down a reaction he knew to be irrational. He had a hell of a lot of feelings for Jane Vahalik that fell on the hopeless to downright crazy spectrum. Seeing her again two weeks ago for the joint operation had stirred up too much. “Tell us why you think your wife and daughter are missing.”

The story poured out. They’d gone for a brief errand, to Rite Aid in town. Melissa really hadn’t wanted to take Brianna because the store had a whole aisle of toys, not to mention the candy, and Bree would beg, but his wife had finally succumbed and let her go along. Alexis was still napping, so she’d stayed home with her dad.

“Lissa called me on the way back. I’d asked her to pick up some stuff for athlete’s foot.” He started to lift one foot as if he was going to take off his shoe and show them his problem, but his thoughts moved on and his foot thumped back down. “She’d forgotten it and she wanted to know if it was important enough to go back for. I said no, I could pick some up the next time I went out. She said okay and then she—” He struggled for words. “She yelled. And I heard Bree screaming something like, ‘Mommy, what are you doing?’ or ‘What are they doing?’ And then the phone went dead.”

Breath shuddered in and out a few times before he resumed his story. He’d tried calling his wife back, but the phone rang and rang and then went to voice mail. He tried again; same thing. Although alarmed, he figured she’d pull in any minute. Melissa had probably dropped the phone and couldn’t reach it.

Only, she hadn’t shown up. He’d waited for a bit, although it wasn’t clear whether that was ten minutes or thirty. Finally, he got his younger kid up, put her in the family’s second car and took her to the neighbor’s. “We’re on an acreage,” he explained. Clay knew, pretty close, where the address he gave was. It was an area of nice, modern homes that were each on two-and-a-half or five-acre lots. Clay couldn’t have afforded any of them on his salary from the county. He tried to remember what Jane had said the brother-in-law did for a living, but failed and didn’t want to interrupt him now.

Drew went on to explain he’d then gone home again to be sure Melissa hadn’t showed up, after which he’d driven her logical route to the outskirts of Angel Butte where the Rite Aid was located. He didn’t spot her Toyota Venza anywhere.

Clay made another mental note. If he wasn’t mistaken, the Venza, a crossover, had been new in 2013. It wasn’t the most expensive vehicle on the road, but it didn’t come cheap, either. The Wilsons must have money. He wondered what Drew drove.

Drew had called his wife’s mobile phone half a dozen more times. He’d driven alternate routes. He’d gone home again to find she still hadn’t returned. Scared, he’d come to the sheriff’s department, from which, ironically, the Rite Aid could be seen.

“Let’s back up here,” Atwood said. “Any chance your wife is prone to impulse shopping expeditions? Say she remembered Target is having a back-to-school sale, and since she had your daughter with you she decided to stop?”

“What about the last thing I heard on the phone?”

“Maybe another driver cut her off.”

Drew shook his head and kept shaking it. He seemed to have forgotten Clay had propped himself against a nearby vacant desk and was listening without intruding himself. He didn’t kid himself that Atwood had also forgotten he was there.

“Maybe she didn’t call you back because she was annoyed at you,” the detective suggested in a tone of “it happens to all of us.” “She as good at sulking as my wife is?”

“No!” Drew scowled. “She’s—” He seemed to fumble with how to describe his wife. “She’s...”

“Fiery, huh?” Atwood’s eyebrows rose. “Say, you didn’t have an argument before she left, did you? Maybe she’s pissed because you expected her to buy something like athlete’s foot powder? Or because you pressed her to take the kid when she didn’t want to?”

An expression crossed Wilson’s face so fast, Clay couldn’t quite pin it down. “She didn’t want to take her,” he admitted, sounding as if he wished he didn’t have to. “I told you. But...it wasn’t like that. Anyway, she wouldn’t disappear if she was mad at me. Especially not with Brianna.”

Clay was getting a bad feeling about this. He excused himself to check on recently reported vehicular accidents, abandoned cars and the like while Atwood nailed down more details, especially a more precise time frame. Exactly when had Melissa called? Three hours ago or forty-five minutes ago?

The bad feeling got a hell of a lot worse when he reached the desk officer, who immediately said, “Yeah, there’s been one possible fatality accident.”

Jane’s sister, dead? Shaken, Clay learned that Melissa Wilson had suffered a head injury and had been transported to the hospital in critical condition. Deputies were investigating the cause of the accident.

Clay called a deputy who was actually at the accident site.

“A kid?” He sounded appalled. “There was no kid in the vehicle when it was spotted.” He swore. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” Clay said grimly. “Unless there’s another explanation—or we’re being fed a line of bull by the father.”

He strode across the squad room to where Drew Wilson sat with his head buried in his hands.

“Mr. Wilson,” Clay said formally, “do you have a home phone?”

Jane’s brother-in-law straightened, having aged even in the past five minutes. “Sure, but Lissa wouldn’t have called it.”

“I’m afraid,” Clay told him, “there was an accident involving a Toyota Venza registered to you and your wife. The woman driver has been taken to the hospital. Last we know, she was unconscious. A police deputy has been trying to reach you, but unfortunately would have used your home phone rather than a cell number.”

“The hospital?” Drew repeated numbly. But then his face changed and he lunged to his feet. “Bree. Is she okay?”

Clay didn’t like saying this, but there was no alternative. “Your daughter wasn’t in the vehicle, Mr. Wilson.” Seeing the horror in a father’s eyes, he raised his hand. “It’s likeliest that your wife dropped her off somewhere before the accident. At a friend’s house, perhaps?” He hesitated. “Especially given that the Venza wasn’t found between your home and Rite Aid.”

“But...I heard Bree when she called.” His wild glance swung between Clay and Detective Atwood. “I know I heard her!”

* * *