Holding court in Serenity—in the single courtroom on the second floor of the small police department—tended to consist of mundane traffic violations, the occasional half-assed assault between two drunks, and rare property damage from the handful of troubled high school kids they had to contend with seemingly every year.
But all in all, it was a peaceful town. That was what he liked about it. He had lots of leisure for his favorite sport, fishing. And though it looked hardly more than a wide creek, there were plenty of fish, so the stream that was less than a mile from downtown Serenity suited him perfectly. He’d staked out his special spot—which everyone in town knew and respected—and the walk out there and back two or three times each week was what he considered to be sufficient exercise.
Today, rod and tackle box in hand, he stopped in at the police station. “Is he in?” he asked Jean at the reception desk.
“He’s in, Judge, but I’ve seen him in better moods.”
“I’m not surprised.” The information didn’t deter the judge, and he passed through the nearly deserted bullpen to the chief’s office. He didn’t let the closed blinds deter him either.
He walked in without knocking, saying briskly, “Nothing new, I take it?”
Jonah looked up from the usual clutter on his blotter with a frown, but it was a general expression of mood rather than anything directed at the judge. He looked very tired and a bit haggard. “Nothing. I’ve reached out to every law enforcement agency in three states, issued a BOLO, and took Sully’s dogs out for miles around on three different days even though there wasn’t much hope after that damned rain.
“There’s been no ransom note. We’ve personally interviewed every single high school student in Serenity, plus all the teachers and the guidance counselor, and contacted distant relatives of both kids. We’ve searched both their rooms and their lockers at school. Everything points to a deliberate and well-planned elopement, nothing else. An elopement that just . . . stopped . . . near the edge of town.”
“Nothing in the car?” The judge sat down in one of the visitor’s chairs, setting the tackle box at his feet and propping his rod against the other chair.
“Nothing unusual. Once we went over everything and got it all out of the car, I had the parents back here sorting what belonged to who. Some stuff was obvious, but not everything. And nothing stuck out as not belonging to a couple of reckless kids taking off without much in the way of planning for the future.” He didn’t add that Monica Church had sobbed the entire time the parents had sorted their kids’ belongings.
Jonah drew a deep breath and leaned back in his well-worn chair until it creaked. “Those two kids might as well have vanished into thin air for all the evidence I’ve found.”
“Maybe they were just smart enough to lay down a false trail,” the judge suggested.
Thinking of the vanished footprints that, so far, only he, Sarah, and Tim knew about, Jonah said, “From all I’ve been told, Amy was the brains of that pair—and she wasn’t that smart. All she wanted was to get out of Serenity and out from under her parents’ thumb, and it was the same for Simon. I’m betting they hadn’t thought much beyond just getting out of here. No elaborate plan. They had relatively little money, relatively few skills, and like most teenagers, they thought they could build a life on that foundation. Somewhere other than Serenity.”
“Stranger things have happened,” the judge said mildly.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. And if either one of them had been in touch with somebody, I wouldn’t be so worried. But they haven’t. It’s been a week, and nobody’s heard from them. And since Amy left her purse behind, they only had whatever cash Simon had in his jeans. About two weeks’ pay at most, his father thinks. That won’t get them very far, especially if they have to rent a room somewhere.”
He paused, then added, “Something else. Their cell phone usage—high as hell like every teenager’s—stopped abruptly. Nothing after Saturday night, about the time they left. Which figures; probably Stuart letting Amy know he was waiting with the car. Nothing since. I mean nothing. The phones are either off or destroyed. And I have to lean toward the latter, because both had GPS locators in them; the parents had made sure of that and that the GPS was locked on at all times, so the kids couldn’t disable without destroying the phones. A condition of them having their own phones, I gather.”
“And no joy.” It wasn’t a question.
Jonah nodded. “How many teenagers do you know who can be more than a foot or two away from their cells? If they aren’t in a pocket, they carry them in their hands. A lot of the girls don’t even bother with purses anymore, just a little billfold-like thing on a long strap that holds their cell, driver’s license, and car keys if they have a car, and maybe a few bucks or an ATM card.”
He held up a hand before the judge could ask. “I know that because they volunteered the info and showed me the billfold things. Most of the girls seem to have them. The twenty-first-century version of the fanny pack, I guess. Handy. But not helpful to me.”
“Maybe they tossed their cells and bought burners,” the judge suggested.
“It’s a possibility, especially given the locked GPS signals, but who would they call except friends or family? I don’t really know Amy, but according to her BFF, she would have called once they were out of town and on their big adventure, proud of herself for having pulled it off. The friend seemed sure. And worried.”
“Because there was no call.”
Jonah tapped his fingers on the stack of papers on his desk. “You signed the warrants so I could get the phone records of all the kids—plus everybody with a kid in town. And it’s a sign of everybody’s worry that they don’t seem to mind. Anyway, I’ve pored over these records every day and had Sarah go over them in case I missed something. No strange numbers on any of these accounts. No unknown numbers. No untraceable numbers.
“We’ve also gone over their laptops or desktop home computers, and no joy there either.” He sighed again. “Two very ordinary teenagers started to elope, and something stopped them near the edge of town. Not only stopped them—but took them.”
“With no ransom demand.”
“No. But . . . there are possibilities I’m not about to mention to the parents or anyone outside the investigation unless I have to. For one thing, there’s a hell of a lot of money to be made these days in human trafficking, and kids in their age range are typical for the targets. I’m not talking about pretty girls sold to be sex slaves for some sicko, though there is that. I’m talking about something even worse. Something I didn’t know anything about until I took those FBI courses last year.”
“I’m afraid to ask,” the judge said.
“I wish I didn’t know about it,” Jonah responded frankly. “Even the FBI isn’t sure if it’s a huge organization or a bunch of smaller ones. Sort of like a bunch of secret clubs whose members are pedophiles, monsters into torture and snuff films, whatever horror you can imagine. The FBI has a unit set up just for the human trafficking, and they have young undercover operatives all over the country trying to infiltrate the groups.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. Dangerous as hell for the young agents. The FBI can’t go in as buyers and commit crimes, so they have to send in undercovers to be potential victims.”
“Jesus, who’d volunteer for that?”
“Some dedicated young agents, I’d say. As for the buyers . . . Pay a small fortune, and you can have your pick of attractive young people or kids, and do with them whatever you want, in a nicely discreet location and among other monsters with the same . . . tastes. The FBI hasn’t yet figured out how these perverts communicate, how they’re notified that one of the traveling groups will be in their area, but somehow they find out where to meet, at some very isolated location. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours later, the club is gone, the perverts are gone, and someone in the organization takes care of t
he cleanup and disposes of the bodies, most of which are never found.”
“Nobody gets out alive?”
“Not according to the FBI. They believe some of the kids last for more than one . . . encounter . . . but eventually the client pays enough to kill to get off, and does just that.”
“I wish I didn’t know that,” the judge said, adding immediately, “You think our two missing teenagers might fit?”
“Maybe some good news there. I was on the phone an hour yesterday with an agent in that FBI unit. The more I told her about the situation here, the less she thought they could have been targets of these traffickers. They tend to go for street kids, college kids, or clubbers in major cities. They apparently keep them under observation for a while, learn their habits and schedules, learn which kids are vulnerable, on the point of dropping out or burning out, or just don’t have anyone to worry about them. Then they take them. Sad as it is to say, more often than not nobody even reports these kids as missing for weeks—if at all.”
The judge frowned. “A stranger watching our kids would stand out here, especially if he or she watched for that long.”
“Yeah, that’s what the agent said. No way would one of the traffickers have taken a couple of high school kids a mile from their homes in a little mountain town. Just not where they hunt. Too high-risk for them.”
“So you’re back at square one.”
“Yeah. All I know for sure is that they’re gone—and there was no sign of struggle near the car. That’s pretty much it.”
“Then you’re doing all you can.”
“Tell my conscience that, will you? Then maybe I can sleep tonight.”
The judge eyed him. “I’m a little older than you, so let me give you a piece of advice. Understand that you aren’t going to win them all, find every bad guy, rescue every damsel—or couple—in distress. Even in a little town like this, there’ll be murders you can’t solve, other crimes you can’t solve. And lost people who never get found.”
“I don’t like it,” Jonah said. “It’s not why I became a cop.”
“Course not. Also why it makes you such a good one. But you won’t win every time, Jonah, no matter how good you are. No one wins all the time. Do everything in your power, do your job. But don’t let it eat you up inside.” He rose to his feet, gathering his tackle box and rod. “You’re a good cop, and that’s good for the town. But nobody expects you to be perfect.”
Jonah glanced at the clock on his desk and raised his eyebrows at the judge. “Thanks. Aren’t you going out a little late? It’ll be dark in another hour.”
“Full moon. I get some of my best fishing then. And it’s so peaceful. I very much enjoy being alone with the fish and my thoughts.”
“Well, I hope you get lucky,” Jonah told him.
Words that would haunt him for a long time.
—
AS HE HAD every night since the young couple had disappeared, Jonah worked late, going over and over information already burned into his brain, hoping to see something he’d missed, overlooked, or misunderstood every other time he’d studied it.
Nothing. Not a clue where those kids had gone.
Or where they had been taken.
Or any answer to the fairly spooky question of why both his watch and Sarah’s watch and Tim’s had stopped when each of them had reached the abandoned car, and why all their cell phones, still functioning, had all been missing the time spent out there.
As if they had stepped into a fucking time warp, or something else right out of science fiction.
“It’s my night to work, not yours,” Sarah said as she came into his office. “Go home, Jonah.”
“You know, I am your boss,” he reminded her.
“Yeah, yeah. Look, you can go home under your own steam, or I can call Tim and the tow truck.” When he didn’t even frown at that, she lowered her voice and kept it matter-of-fact. “A week in, we aren’t likely to find anything new, and you know it. If nothing else, you need a good night’s sleep so you can come back at it with fresh eyes in the morning.”
“It doesn’t seem right for me to just . . . go home,” he said finally.
“You won’t be any good to anybody if you spend another sleepless night in this office,” she said.
“I slept. Sort of.”
Sarah glanced at the old leather couch across the room from his desk. “That wasn’t sleep, that was time on a medieval torture device. Unless you confessed you’re a heretic, it was useless time.”
Not even that earned a smile from him.
“Jonah. You’ve done every single solitary thing a cop could do on a missing-persons case.”
“I haven’t figured out the weird stuff,” he said. “I’m not even sure keeping quiet about all that is the thing to do.”
“I’m sure,” she said. “Right now, we’ve got two teenagers missing, with clear evidence their intent was to elope. Both sets of parents and the rest of the town can understand that. They can find reasonable explanations in their own minds for the abandoned car, the inactive cell phones, the lack of any trail to follow.”
“But add in the weird stuff . . .”
Sarah nodded. “Add that in, and your slightly uneasy town is going to wobble toward panic. Really fast. And what good’s that going to do anybody?”
“If I could just figure it out—”
“From where I’m standing, I’m not sure anybody could figure it out. But one thing I do know is that you need rest, real, honest-to-God sleep, about twelve hours of it. Because no matter what you believe, nobody expects you to work on this or anything else twenty-four-seven.”
“I think Monica Church does,” he said seriously.
“Jonah. Go home. You stopped making sense a couple of hours ago.”
He thought she was probably right. And he was too tired and discouraged to keep arguing with her. He did need to sleep. He needed a decent shower rather than the make-do shave and wash in the little bathroom off his office—though Sarah had been kind enough not to actually say that he looked like hell. He also needed to eat something that hadn’t come out of a vending machine or a take-out box.
The Diner was still open even this late on a Saturday night, though nearly deserted, and Clyde was more than willing to get started on a burger and fries for Jonah. Then he came out to the front counter, reached underneath, and produced a bottle of Scotch and a small glass.
Mildly, Jonah said, “You don’t have a liquor license, Clyde.”
“I’m not charging you for this, Jonah. Drink it. Then eat and go home. Get some sleep. I’ve seen men in coffins look better than you.”
“Nice.”
“Truth.” Clyde returned to the kitchen. He didn’t have Waylon or Johnny playing tonight, so the Diner was quiet. There was a couple over in a corner booth finishing their own late supper and talking in low voices, and an expressionless teenage boy sitting at the far end of the counter with an open laptop before him.
Since Jonah had personally spoken at least briefly with every teenager in town, he recognized this one. Alec Lowry. Not a bad kid, but a not-so-good home life, and Jonah wasn’t surprised to see him here because Clyde was generous with his Wi-Fi and liked to provide a safe place where kids could spend a few hours if needed.
Alec needed more than most, if Jonah was any judge. The favorite sport of his parents seemed to be arguing. Loudly. So he wasn’t likely to find any quiet time at home. And there were certainly worse things he could be doing late on a Saturday night when he wasn’t eager to go listen to or ignore the latest fight.
He probably wouldn’t be missed there, sad to say.
Jonah brooded about that as he sipped his Scotch. It burned all the way down to his empty stomach, but he thought it probably would help him sleep once he ate.
He thought about two sets of parents who had, in their individual w
ays, been going crazy for a week now, and compared them to Alec Lowry’s parents, who should never have had kids because they were too damned self-involved. If their son grew up to be a good man, as he showed every sign of doing, it would be because he’d virtually raised himself, not because they had.
“Here.” Clyde slid a plate across the counter to probably his last customer of the day. “Eat.” He raised his voice. “Alec, you want to earn a few bucks?”
The teenager looked up from his laptop, thin face finally wearing an expression as he smiled faintly. “Dishes?”
“There’s a sink full,” Clyde said. “Or you can stick around for sweeping and mopping. I could use the help.”
Jonah dug into his burger and fries as the Diner owner went over to talk more to Alec, perfectly aware that Clyde was one of several adults in the town who looked out for the kids who got either bad parenting or no parenting at all.
A safe place to spend an evening, a good hot meal, and a little cash in their pockets from odd jobs could make all the difference in the world, as did a little time and attention from a good adult role model.
There were advantages to small-town life.
Usually.
—
IT WASN’T THE crack of dawn on Sunday morning when the phone rang, but Jonah was still conscious of a tickle of déjà vu as he fought his way out of the tangled covers to answer. And a cold, hard pit of something he didn’t want to acknowledge settled in the base of his belly.
“Yeah?”
Without prevaricating, Sarah said, “Looks like another one, Jonah.”
“Shit. More kids?”
“No. It’s the judge. He didn’t show up for his usual Sunday breakfast at Clyde’s, and we all know he’s a creature of habit. Clyde called me early, as soon as he started to feel uneasy. I went out and checked the judge’s fishing spot.” She paused, audibly drew a breath, and finished, “Everything looked absolutely normal and undisturbed. His chair, his tackle box, a string with half a dozen fish he’d caught just at the water’s edge. His fishing rod leaning up against the chair with what looked like fresh bait on the hook.”