Truth and lies, p.10
Truth and Lies, page 10
“Did you notice anything strange around the house?” Mike asked.
“Strange how?” Dennis replied.
“Anyone acting strange around the kids?” Mike asked.
“Um, no, not that I saw,” Dennis answered, and then he glanced back to the house, looked at Mike, and lowered his voice. “Did something happen?”
“We need to look in your van,” Mike replied.
Dennis was quiet for a moment and then became defensive. “What for?”
“We just want to take a look around,” Mike answered.
Mike knew they needed a warrant, but if push came to shove, they could use extenuating circumstances to search the van. It rarely held up in court, which was why Mike never liked to use it, but if he believed someone was in immediate danger, like the fact that Mallory could be passed out in the back of his van, he’d use it.
“Sure, yeah,” Dennis said. “If it will get you off my back.”
Mike and Dakota followed Dennis out to his van, and both of them kept their hands on the butt of their pistols, ready to draw at a moment’s notice. They each kept an angle on Dennis in case he tried anything stupid, but Mike relaxed when he unlocked the back of the van and stepped aside.
“There, happy?” Dennis asked.
Props and costumes, benches, clothes, and chairs crammed the back. Mike took a closer look, getting in and checking through compartments to ensure he wasn’t missing anything, but the longer he searched the vehicle, the more confident he was that Mallory wasn’t inside.
Mike stepped out and continued his questioning of Dennis. “What did you know about Mallory and Rachel?”
“What do you mean what did I know?” Dennis asked. “I was just there to perform at her birthday party, man. It’s not like we were friends.”
“Did she say anything strange to you?” Mike asked. “Anything out of the ordinary you thought didn’t sound right?”
“No, nothing that I remember,” Dennis answered, and then he glanced back to the house and saw the faces of the parents looking through the window. “Christ, this is causing a scene. Are you two trying to get me fired?”
“Mallory Shubert disappeared around the time you left her birthday party,” Mike said, finally showing his cards. “So, if you want to tell us anything, now is the time.”
“Oh my God,” Dennis said. “Are you serious? Wait… Do you think I had something to do with this? No way. Look, I love my job. And in my line of work, reputation is everything. Parents catch even one whiff of you being inappropriate, and you’re done. I don’t touch the kids. I don’t use them in the act. I’m just there to put on a show, make them laugh, and then leave. That’s it.”
“Have you had any problems at other parties before?” Dakota asked.
“No, like I said, I have a good reputation,” Dennis answered. “And you can look at my background checks, which I passed. I’ve never even had an inkling of trouble with the law. Ever.”
“Except for that drunk and disorderly,” Mike answered.
Dennis stared at him like a deer caught in headlights. “That was… a long time ago. And it had nothing to do with my job. That was before I got into this line of work.”
Mike didn’t know if Dennis was hiding anything, but because they couldn’t find any evidence in the van, there was nothing more they could do.
“We appreciate your time and cooperation, Dennis,” Mike said, handing Dennis his card. “If you remember anything, please call me.”
Dennis took the card but didn’t say anything else as he closed the van and returned to the house to finish the party.
Mike watched as the woman who answered the door earlier stopped him from entering the house. They had a brief conversation, and then the woman shut the door in his face. Dennis stood momentarily and then turned around, marching angrily past Mike and Dakota and back to his van.
“I hope you’re fucking happy,” Dennis said, and then he climbed into his van and drove away.
After Dennis was gone, Mike and Dakota walked back to their vehicle.
“Do you think we might have been too hasty?” Dakota asked.
“Hindsight is always twenty-twenty,” Mike answered. “Time is our most valuable commodity in a case like this. We can’t worry about hurting a person’s feelings.”
They climbed back into their vehicle, and a call came in over the radio.
“Go for Detective Willis,” he said.
“We have a tip from the hotline,” dispatch replied. “Someone said they saw your girl.”
Before dispatch could even mention the location, Mike had already started the car and pulled back onto the road.
13
“Copy that,” Dakota said, quickly entering the address as Mike sped down the road. She clipped the radio back on the receiver and put on her seatbelt. “The tip said Mallory was spotted at a gas station heading out of the city toward Naperville. The location is already in the GPS.”
Mike flipped the lights and the sirens, glancing at the GPS as he sped through traffic.
“What are the odds that this tip is legit?” Dakota asked.
“Depends,” Mike answered. “All tips must meet certain criteria to ensure they’re legitimate before they’re passed on. They wouldn’t have forwarded us this one if they didn’t think it was prudent that we checked it out. But you’d be surprised how many people call in with false information. It’s hardly ever intentional, but once an idea wiggles into someone’s head, it’s hard for it to go away, you know?”
Dakota understood. Plenty of thoughts had permeated the grey matter of her mind and had overstayed their welcome. It was why she was here in the first place and the reason her father no longer wanted her to work at VICE.
Deep down, Dakota understood why her dad had pulled the strings to get her out of that environment. But she wasn’t sure if she was more upset because she was out of the unit or because her father had broken their agreement not to bring their personal lives into their professional relationship.
Because Mike was driving through the city like a bat out of hell, they arrived at the gas station quickly. The place was old and looked like it had been a family-run gas station since the Ford Model T had rolled off the line but with a few modern updates along the way.
There were only a handful of pumps, and as Dakota and Mike stepped out of their cruiser, Dakota took notice of the lack of security footage around the building, save for a single camera attached to the main building that pointed out toward the pumps.
The bell on the door jingled when they entered, and the clerk at the desk was sitting in a chair, arms folded across his stomach, turned toward a small television with rabbit ears, something Dakota hadn’t seen since her grandmother had died twenty years ago.
Bulletproof casing surrounded the man, and Dakota wondered how much crime they might have gotten in the area.
“What can I help you with?” the clerk asked, still focused on the television.
“We need to speak with the individual who called in the tip about the missing girl?” Mike asked.
The man snapped his attention away from the television screen and stared at Mike and Dakota’s badges as they brought them out. When the guy realized who they were, he straightened up at attention and cleared his throat.
“Yeah, that was me,” he said. “I’m Ronnie. I was the one who made the call.”
“What can you tell us, Ronnie?” Mike asked. “Anything and everything you can remember would be helpful.”
“Well, I have a pretty good view of all the cars and people who come here from this spot,” Ronnie said. “So long as the windshield faces the building, I can always see who is inside the car.”
“And you saw our missing girl?” Mike asked.
“Yeah,” Ronnie answered, but then his confidence wavered. “I mean, I think so.”
Dakota turned and looked out the windows of the building to the pumps outside. It wasn’t the best view.
“Was she acting strange? Screaming? Anything like that?” Mike asked.
“She looked like she was struggling to stay awake,” Ronnie answered.
“Are you sure?” Mike asked.
“Yeah,” Ronnie answered. “But it wasn’t a peaceful kid sleep, you know? I’ve got a few nieces and nephews I babysit, and when they sleep, it’s like they’re in a deep sleep that adults wish they could be in, right?”
“But that’s not how the girl you saw was sleeping?” Mike asked.
“No, my oldest nephew, Billy, got his wisdom teeth out last year,” Ronnie answered. “And when he went under for the operation, he came out of it and was loopy. I remember because I was with my sister when we picked him up. The girl I saw was acting like that.”
Dakota wasn’t sure how scientific the differences in sleep were between a kid who had been drugged and not drugged, but Ronnie was adamant that he could tell something was wrong.
“And what about the person you saw her with?” Mike asked.
“It was a man. A white guy with beady eyes,” Ronnie answered. “He paid twenty in cash, filled up, and drove away.”
“And the car they were driving?” Mike asked.
“White van,” Ronnie answered. “Looked old.”
When Mike pressed Ronnie about the make and model of the vehicle, he couldn’t give them much more. He confessed that even though he worked at a gas station, he knew little about cars.
“But if you ever want to know what our best seller of candy bars is, I can tell you,” Ronnie said. “It’s Snickers.”
“What about cameras?” Mike asked, ignoring the statement.
“We only have one pointed at the pumps, and it’s not the best quality,” Ronnie said. “I can get you the footage if you want.”
“You don’t have any cameras inside the store?” Dakota asked, irritated.
“Well, the boss gave me a budget for more cameras or this protective casing,” Ronnie answered, tapping on the bulletproof glass.
“It would be helpful if you could grab the footage,” Mike answered. “Thank you.”
Ronnie slipped off his chair and hurried into a back room while Mike and Dakota waited for the video.
“What do you think?” Dakota asked.
“Not sure yet,” Mike answered. “The description he gave of Mallory when he called in matched closely to her physical description and what she was wearing at the party.”
“He had a good description of the van,” Dakota said. “And if we can get that video, maybe we can catch a break.”
“Maybe,” Mike said, but nothing in his tone suggested he was happy about the situation.
He had been like this ever since they’d left the station earlier. Dakota wasn’t sure what was bothering him, but something was wrong.
When Ronnie returned, he opened the bulletproof crate box he was working in and led Mike and Dakota into the backroom, where the video camera monitors were.
“I wanted to pull it up before you guys came back here,” Ronnie said. “It can take a minute, and this space is cramped enough.”
The room was not meant for more than one person. The setup was crude and looked like it was from the eighties, but everything still worked.
Ronnie pressed play on the footage, and Dakota and Mike focused on the tiny screen. The picture quality of the single camera outside offered an even worse view than what Dakota could see standing in the station and staring out through the windows.
“Does it zoom in at all?” Mike asked.
“No, this is as good as it gets,” Ronnie answered.
The van pulled into the last pump near the exit. The driver, a male just as Ronnie described, got out, wearing a hat and sunglasses, a T-shirt, and jeans, but they couldn’t make out the person’s face, even as the man walked closer to the store to pay for the gas.
There was a girl in the passenger seat up front. She sat slumped forward in her seatbelt, head hanging down. Because they couldn’t see the girl’s face, it was impossible to know if it was Mallory Shubert.
But Dakota believed she understood now what Ronnie referenced about the girl’s behavior. Her head wobbled back and forth as if she wanted to sit up but couldn’t.
The suspect filled up his gas tank, walked to the back of the van, opened the doors, returned to the pump, finished up, got back into the vehicle, and drove away.
When the van turned around to leave, they saw the license plate, but reading it on the pixelated screen was impossible.
“Play it again,” Mike said.
They watched the clip a dozen more times, but it didn’t help.
“We’ll need a copy of this to send to our team,” Mike said. “Can you do that?”
“Yeah, I can do that, sure,” Ronnie answered. “So, do you think you’ll catch the guy?”
“This has been helpful, so thank you,” Mike answered.
Ronnie beamed with pride. “Well, I just wanted to do the right thing, you know? It seems there aren’t enough people in the world willing to do that anymore, and I just wanted to do my part.”
Dakota was watching the screen as the video played one more time, and she noticed how the suspect was just to the left of the pump, but he was only there for a moment before he leaned back against the van to wait for the tank to fill up.
“Play that one more time for me,” Dakota said.
Ronnie happily obliged, and as Dakota watched the footage, she had an idea.
Dakota walked out of the cramped tiny room and back into the store. Mike quickly followed her outside, and she made a beeline for the pump the guy had filled up.
“Care to share with the class?” Mike asked.
“He stepped out of frame momentarily when he went to the back of the van, right?” Dakota asked. “What was he doing at the back of the van?” She pointed to the trashcan as they neared the pump. “I think he was throwing something away. You can’t see the trashcan from the video camera’s angle. It’s framed out.”
“Damn,” Mike said. “I didn’t catch that.”
The pump wasn’t occupied, and Dakota ripped off the top of the trashcan. The smell put her off, but after all the places she had been forced to crawl through during her time at VICE, it wasn’t the worst thing she’d smelled.
Between the discarded fast-food wrappers, candy bars, chip bags, and drinks, she finally hit pay dirt.
“This,” Dakota said, “is what he threw away.”
If there had ever been any doubt about whether this guy was the one who had taken Mallory Shubert, it was put to rest. Dakota was holding a birthday party hat. The same hat that all the kids had worn at Mallory Shubert’s birthday party.
14
Mike and Dakota were still at the gas station as they called into the precinct to update the team on what they’d found, including the video, which they handed off to a uniform to take back to their IT department to see if they could work any magic with clearing up the image on the van’s license plate.
“All right,” Mike said. “So, we have a better idea of the van’s color, make, and model, but we don’t have the plates. We can run DNA on the party hat to ensure our case is ironclad with who we’re looking for, but I’m positive the girl in that van was Mallory Shubert.”
“So, what are the next steps?” Dakota asked.
“We need to coordinate with all local, state, and federal authorities within the state,” Mike said, and he checked the time on his phone. “It’s been almost two hours since that driver came through here, so at eighty miles an hour on the interstate, that gives us a search radius of about one hundred and sixty miles.” He turned toward the south, where the van had driven down the road. “It’s most likely that whoever this guy is will take Mallory to a specific place. But if we can set up roadblocks along the major highways out of the area, we might get lucky.”
“What do you need me to do?” Dakota asked.
Mike’s phone started to ring. He checked the screen and saw it was the YMCA calling where he dropped his son off that morning. “Call our office and contact the FBI liaison we have working there. Give him all our information and tell him to set up the roadblocks. I don’t think he’ll give us any grief about diverting those resources once you hit him with the party hat we found.”
“Yeah, okay,” Dakota said, and she got on the phone while Mike answered his call.
“This is Mike Willis,” he said.
“Mr. Willis, this is Darlene Marbles over at the YMCA,” she said. “I’m the director of operations here, and I need you to come to pick up your son.”
“Is he all right?” Mike asked.
“There was an altercation between your son and another child,” Darlene answered. “I’m afraid it became violent. I can give you more details when you come in, but until we get all of this sorted out, we will have to ask you to take Parker home.”
Mike shut his eyes, irritated. “Yeah. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He hung up, not waiting for a reply, and turned to Dakota, who was still on the phone. “Hey.”
Dakota covered her hand over the mouth of her phone and looked at Mike.
“Something happened with my son,” Mike said. “I need to go and check on him.”
“Everything all right?” Dakota asked.
“I don’t know, but I can’t ignore it,” Mike answered. “I’ll go and deal with this, and you handle the coordination of the roadblocks. I’ll let the captain know what’s happening, and if you have any problems, call me.”
“It’s okay, Mike. I’ve got this,” Dakota said.
Mike admired her confidence, but even though she might have been an experienced cop, there were nuances in a case like this that a detective could only learn through experience on the job. And Mike feared she might miss something.
Mike took their cruiser, and Dakota arranged for a uniform to come to pick her up as she continued the coordination over the phone. She also planned on checking out the other stores nearby to see if any other cameras in the area might have given them a better angle.
