“Did I chase you out of bed?” he asked. He was trying to make light, but it was clear he was concerned. Or hurt. Or something. Gah. Complications.
“I came out here to look things over.” She lifted up the case files. “I must have fallen asleep.” Okay, this was really weird. Now what?
“I have to go home and change,” he said. Because she wouldn’t let him bring clothes over, maybe he was saying. She let it hang there. They’d settled all this, right?
“I’ll see you at the office. Got the meeting. Bobby’s bringing donuts.”
“Yeah, cool.”
He went back into her bedroom and came out in his clothes. The house shook as he headed for the front door, thunder loud as bowling balls.
“Jesus,” Grace said.
“Bad storm. Drive careful.” He opened the door and went out. About fifteen seconds later, Grace heard his truck.
Sighing, she lowered her head back to the couch, twisting back and forth to work out the kinks. The rain was really coming down. Maybe that was God’s big plan with the flood and all… … washing away the evidence.
She listened to calls coming in for a big pileup over on May Street and called Dispatch, asking if she should go. Things were in hand, but the road was a big, fat parking lot. Of course the one morning she didn’t stop for coffee was the morning she was denied the satisfaction of that first cup. But that was a minor inconvenience. There were fatalities involved in the accident. Fire truck, paramedics—she wondered if her brother Leo the firefighter was there.
Knowing Oklahoma City as she did, she wove her way across town on a hundred surface streets, windshield wipers struggling violently to keep up with the rain. And the wind. God, they were halfway to gale force. Maybe Earl’s T-shirt was a secret message. Maybe they were going to have a tornado.
She got to the police lot and rushed inside, not bothering with an umbrella because all it would do was turn itself inside out.
The people at work smelled wet and the linoleum floor was a muddy mess. Grace peeled off her light green jacket with the fringes and slung it over the back of her chair. Hey, howdy, welcome to the wet T-shirt contest. Everyone else looked to be in the interview room for the meeting. Cups of coffee and a big pink box, go, Bobby.
She turned to go when something on her desk caught her eye—it was a statue of Wonder Woman with her legs spread wide and her hands on her hips. Someone had attached a handwritten sign at the base: I PEE STANDING UP! She recognized that handwriting.
Grace chortled and made a quick sign of her own, on a sticky note, and stuck it to the center of Butch’s screen:
TOO BAD LONGHORNS CAN’T!
Then she turned his Longhorn refrigerator magnet upside down and took a step back as she lifted her hair off her shoulders to dry it out.
She was just about to blast into the meeting when she caught sight of someone walking down the outside corridor in her peripheral vision. The figure turned and pushed on the glass door of OCPD Major Crimes. It was Mrs. Catlett. She had on no makeup and her hair was pulled back in a tight, unbecoming ponytail.
She pushed open the door before Grace could move forward and do it for her. When she saw Grace her mouth dropped open. Maybe Clay had never mentioned that she was a cop.
“Mrs. Catlett?” Grace prompted. “May I help you?”
“My son is missing,” she said as a secretary from the pool swerved to avoid her. “Forrest. Catlett. Someone kidnapped him.”
Hoo, boy, Grace thought, as she led Mrs. Catlett out of the traffic path. Monday morning in a police office was a very busy place. She leaned sideways to give a wave to Captain Perry, who was looking at her from a standing position beside the whiteboard. Butch, Bobby, Ham, and Rhetta were seated, and everyone was munching down the donuts.
“You and Forrest had a bit of a disagreement on Sunday,” Grace said slowly. “Is it possible he decided to take some time off?”
Mrs. Catlett stared at her. “Take some time … what are you talking about? He was taken from his bedroom!”
Captain Perry came out of the conference room, followed by Ham, Butch, and Bobby. Rhetta stayed behind. They all looked at Mrs. Catlett, then at Grace.
“I’m Captain Perry,” Kate told Mrs. Catlett. “May I help you?”
“Oh, God, oh, my God!” Mrs. Catlett screamed, at the top of her lungs. “Does anyone here speak English? Someone kidnapped my son!”
Heads turned; a few people kept watching. Meltdowns were not uncommon in police offices.
“If you’d like to file a missing persons report,” Grace began, but Mrs. Catlett looked around, grabbed Grace’s Wonder Woman statue, and threw it on the ground. It shattered.
“Listen to me! Listen, listen, listen,” she bellowed, stepping toward Grace and sliding on the shards of plastic. Grace grabbed her arm and she batted at it. Grace let go.
“His bedroom window was open. Open in the rain. Someone came in and took him away!” She threw back her head and let out a bloodcurdling wail. Then she sank into Grace’s chair, shrieking.
Rhetta came out, assessing, watching. She looked to Grace, who held up a hand.
“Did you call the police?” Captain Perry nodded at Butch, who went to his desk. Tore off Grace’s sticky note from his monitor and started typing. Grace knew he was checking the internal dispatch log.
“Of course I did. Do you think I’m an idiot? No one’s come by. They’re all at some accident.”
Oh, shit. The logjam on the streets. Mrs. Catlett must have taken a raft of surface streets, too.
Butch nodded his confirmation at Captain Perry. “Dispatch reports a car there now.”
“Forrest is a friend of Clay’s,” Grace told Captain Perry. They exchanged a look. Captain Perry stifled a sigh.
“Detective Hanadarko, would you join me in my office?”
“Why aren’t you doing something!” Mrs. Catlett screamed. “Do something!”
Grace and Captain Perry filed into the office. Grace shut the door.
“Fill me in,” Captain Perry said.
Grace did, describing Forrest’s restricted life, the rocket club, and the ATV accident on Sunday.
“So he and Clay get in trouble and now he’s missing,” Captain Perry said. “I’m sorry, Grace. Even if this family is close to yours, this is Missing Persons. And we are Major Crimes.”
Grace made a puppy face, and Captain Perry shook her head, trying to hide her frustrated smile. “I’m going to look like a stone fool if I send detectives out there. You don’t even think he was kidnapped.”
“I have personal time.”
“You don’t even like this woman.”
“But Clay likes her son,” Grace said. “And it’s raining. Hard. And we might have a tornado.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Captain Perry rolled her eyes. “Go ahead. Take your partner with you. If you see anything, you can call Rhetta to check it out.” She sighed and tapped her desk with her manicured fingernails. “So much for the new budget we just got approved. They’re going to eat me alive upstairs if they get wind of this.”
“I’ll bring my own coffee,” Grace said. “From now on. I swear. And my own toilet paper.”
“Just go.” Captain Perry waved her away.
“And soap.” Grace batted her lashes and bolted out of the office. Striding toward Mrs. Catlett, who was still hysterical, she nodded at Ham. Grace bent over her and said, loudly, “We’re going to your house.”
“Why? He’s not there!” she said, clenching her fists.
Grace looked over Mrs. Catlett’s head at Ham, who looked about as enthusiastic about this assignment as Captain Perry had.
“Because we can try to gather evidence that might help us determine where he went … was taken,” Grace said. “If you have any thoughts on that, you can share them with us while we drive to your house.”
It was raining, hard. Lightning flashed across the wide sky, and thunder rumbled. Water rushed down the gutters into the storm drains. Grace spared a
moment’s concern for Gus. Maybe Earl’d stop by and keep him company, help him stay calm during the storm. Grace hoped so.
They reached the Catlett home, two stories, brick, with dark green shutters and two Grecian columns holding up a portico. It looked more southern than Oklahoma. Grace wondered how the Catletts made their money. Could be oil, ranching, old family money.
Dressed in black rain jackets, two uniformed patrol cops were already on the scene and their squad car was parked at the curb. No lights, no sirens. Grace recognized them. Hillyer was standing beneath the portico while Pettit was squishing along the side of the house in the grass with her flashlight on. It was that dark. Part of living in Oklahoma was putting up with extremes in weather, and the cloud cover that came with them.
Grace checked in with Hillyer while Ham took the keys from Mrs. Catlett, unlocked the front door, and ushered her inside.
“You see anything? Area secure?”
“We can see an open window on the east side of the house on the first story. No signs of forced entry.” Hillyer hesitated. “We haven’t gone inside.”
“That’s fine.” Grace wrinkled her nose. “We’re thinking teenage runaway. She grounded him.”
Hillyer grinned. “I ran away a few times. Always came back around suppertime.”
Grace grinned back and went inside. The front room was decorated very sparely, with hardwood floors that gleamed and wooden furniture covered with clear plastic covers. A grand wooden staircase led upstairs. Staring at the plastic, she whispered “No way” and followed the sound of Mrs. Catlett’s weeping down a central hall, turning right.
The distraught woman was sitting on a rumpled king-sized bed made with plain white sheets and a cotton brown-and-green quilt. A HEPA filter was wheezing quietly. The hardwood floor was bare.
Ham had on gloves, and he had just closed the window. There was a sizable pool of water on the floor; left to lie there, it was going to damage the hardwood.
Grace pulled on a pair of gloves and examined the watery surface. “Footprints?” she asked Ham, leaning way over, staring at the splashes.
“Can’t tell,” Ham said. “Maybe. The last time Mrs. Catlett saw Forrest was at eight o’clock last night. He wasn’t feeling well so she told him to go to bed.”
Grace thought about the e-mail Clay hadn’t gotten. She looked around the room for a computer.
“Does Forrest own a laptop?” she asked.
“No. There’s a computer in the family room. I monitor his use,” Mrs. Catlett replied.
Of course you do, Grace thought, but she didn’t actually disapprove. The Internet could be a big bad world.
“Had he changed into his pajamas?” Grace opened the closet.
“No. He had on his jeans, and a T-shirt about space, and his denim jacket.”
Handy, if he wanted to crawl out the window.
Nothing was out of place: schoolbooks lined up on his study desk, clothes put away, shoes in the closet. A large bronze crucifix hung on the wall so that Forrest would be able to see it first thing in the morning.
Grace picked up a book. Rocketry for Beginners. She opened it. It belonged to Clay. She paged through it and put it down.
“Mrs. Catlett says that none of Forrest’s things are missing,” Ham told Grace.
That still wasn’t proof that he was kidnapped. Hell, she’d run away from home when she was twelve—only everyone in her family was so busy that day, no one had noticed. Football practice, Paige’s music lesson, and Leo had a dental appointment. Plus she had forgotten to take a sweater. When she’d dragged on back, waiting for her family to gather around her and tell her they were sorry—for what, she no longer recalled—her mother had told her to set the table for dinner.
Although she didn’t condone what Forrest had done, she was proud of him for having the stones to do it. She pulled out her cell and called Clay’s house again.
“Me,” she said to the phone machine. “If Forrest checks in with you—”
“He can’t check in with anybody,” Mrs. Catlett yelled at her. “Don’t you people understand?”
Ham looked at Grace and vice versa. They stepped together in the hall.
“No one is going to take this seriously,” he said. “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours.”
“He’s fourteen,” Grace countered. “Kinda young.”
“He had a fight with his mother.” Ham moved his shoulders. “When I ran away from home, no one called the cops. They just waited.”
Grace went back into the room and sat beside Mrs. Catlett. From her place on the bed, she had a good view into a half-opened nightstand drawer. Inside lay a gigantic pump container of hand sanitizer, a box of disinfectant wipes, and an asthma inhaler.
Also, a clutch of small diabetic needles secured with a rubber band and what appeared to be a bottle of insulin.
“Mrs. Catlett, does Forrest have diabetes?” Grace asked slowly. Ham froze in the doorway, listening.
“Yes, of course he does! I told you that!”
Grace looked at Ham, who shook his head. It was news to him, too. “Does he have a pump that delivers insulin to him automatically?”
“No. I don’t trust those things. I have to give him his insulin. I have to do it myself.” She reached into the drawer and grabbed the clump of syringes. “And it’s been too long!”
Grace was dumbfounded. She tried to think back on all the conversations she’d had about Forrest. Clay had said nothing about diabetes. Father Alan hadn’t mentioned it. And neither had Mrs. Catlett.
Mrs. Catlett held the syringes in both hands. “It’s from his celiac disease. A complication,” she said, sobbing. “If he doesn’t get his insulin, he’ll die.”
Shit, Grace thought. He really does have a condition.
“Mrs. Catlett,” Ham said, coming over to her. “We’re going to find him.”
She touched each capped needle as if she were counting them. Did it again. “I already lost one son. Oh, dear God, I’ve already lost one!” She gripped the syringes against her chest. “You’ve got to find Forrest. God, God, find him!”
She folded up and collapsed onto the bed, screaming and kicking. Grace signaled for Ham to stay with her and he nodded, keeping close, but not too close.
Moving into the hallway, Grace whipped out her cell phone. Her face prickled with alarm, intensity. Mrs. Catlett hadn’t told them. They’d had no idea. She demon-dialed her captain, who answered on the first ring.
“We need Rhetta,” Grace told her. “And Butch and Bobby. We need an APB for Forrest Catlett. He’s got a life-threatening illness and he needs his medication. Juvenile diabetes. Insulin. So we especially need Bobby.” He himself was a diabetic.
“Hell,” Captain Perry said. “Why didn’t she tell us in the office? Did she forget?”
“No clue,” Grace said. “She’s going out of her mind.”
“Do we need to send someone from Psych out there?”
“That might be a good idea. We have to make her talk to us. Find out how severe it is. How often his doses are administered.”
“Don’t they have pumps nowadays?”
“No pump. She’s got a pile of diabetic needles, those little ones.” Grace had a lot of first-aid training, and she’d seen such needles before. “We’ll get an inventory, see if all his insulin’s here. He also has an inhaler. As in asthma.”
Captain Perry grunted.
“We’ll get as much as we can and then I’ll talk to his pediatrician.” Grace puffed air out of her cheeks. “Why’s it all got to be about kids all of a sudden?”
“Don’t ask me, sister-woman,” Kate said. “Any signs of forced entry? A struggle?”
“Not so far. We just got here.”
“I’m sending a paramedic and the rest of the team over and I’ll get you an APB. Let’s see if Kendra Burke will help us out on this one.”
“Copy that,” Grace bit off. She hung up and went back inside the room. Ham had his notebook out, but Mrs. Catlett was sti
ll in orbit.
“Mrs. Catlett, you need to help us. Forrest needs you. Can you tell us if he took any of his insulin with him?” Grace asked.
She kept crying.
Grace shrugged at Ham—Sorry, man—and headed back out of the room and went outside, into the storm, and walked the perimeter of the house. No one had asked about Mr. Catlett. Grace hadn’t gotten the impression that they were divorced, but then again, she also hadn’t known that Forrest really did have a medical condition. Ham was probably finding out about Mr. Catlett now. He was a good partner.
Within seconds, she was soaked to the skin. She didn’t notice until suddenly, the rain wasn’t touching her. It was as if an invisible umbrella had opened above her head.
“Earl? Is that you?” she asked. There was no answer.
Mr. Catlett was in Houston on business; he was catching the next flight back. Rhetta had found some latent prints on the wall—man-sized, maybe they were Dad’s and maybe they were Hannibal Lector’s—and there were streak marks and rope fibers embedded in the windowsill consistent with someone dragging something heavy out of the house. Restraints, a kid goofing, who knew? Rhetta was doing her tests.
Turned out Forrest’s denim jacket was missing. Grace was very proud of Mrs. Catlett for getting her act together sufficiently to notice. Unfortunately, Mrs. Catlett couldn’t remember if he’d been wearing it the last time she’d seen him. They couldn’t get anywhere with her after that, and she asked for and received a tranq. Butch and Bobby stayed on the home front while Grace and Ham took to the field.
The partners drove to Forrest’s pediatrician’s office in Grace’s Porsche. Ham had to move aside some fast-food bags, and he sat on a squeaky toy she’d bought for Gus. It was still raining and the wind was brutal. A storm by any other name … Oklahoma had more tornadoes than any other state in the Union. There had to be some kind of price to pay for living in God’s country, she supposed.
They got to the pediatrician’s office. There were cartoon giraffes and lions on the walls—had to embarrass a young teenage boy—and Grace remembered Clay telling her that Forrest had a thing for snow leopards. She felt as if she understood him a little better—the sad, pale boy with the enmeshed mother.