Willing to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“Detective Tanaka?” a male voice asked when Tanaka answered her phone in the department on Monday morning. “This is George Aimes. Remember me?” She did, but he clarified, “I own the rooming house. Troy Boxer rents from me.”

“Of course I remember you, Mr. Aimes,” Tanaka said, catching Paterno’s eye as he passed by her desk. She waved him over.

“Well, remember you told me to call you if anything odd happened? Anything out of the ordinary?”

“Yes.” She’d been sifting through e-mails and reports, but now he had her full attention. “What is it?”

“We have a pretty steady routine around here, you see, and when neither Ronny or Troy did their assigned duties, I tried to roust them, y’know? Both their cars were here, all weekend, still here in fact, but neither of them answered their doors. I checked—their rooms are empty, beds don’t look like they’ve been slept in, though with Troy, it would be hard to tell.”

Tanaka’s pulse jumped. “You think they’re missing.”

“Like I said, hard to tell with boys that age, but I got a call from A-Bay-C Delivery asking about Troy. He didn’t show up for work and was scheduled to. His route starts at eight. Then Ronny, his boss calls. Works for Stillwell Plumbing, company owned by his uncle. S’posed to be on the job at eight and he’s a no-show, too.”

“When was the last time you saw either of them?” she asked.

“I thought about that. Both of ’em were here Friday night and up and about on Saturday, but I didn’t see either of ’em on Sunday, or Saturday night for that matter, but that’s not surprising. They’re both young and single and tend to kick up their heels on the weekend. But I don’t know either one to have missed work like this.”

She asked a few more questions and, getting no further information, hung up and caught Paterno’s attention.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Troy Boxer and one of his roommates, his alibi, Ronny Stillwell?”

“Yeah?”

“Both men appear to be MIA.”

She was already standing and reaching for her jacket. “I’ve got more information, too.”

“You must’ve gotten in here at four.”

“Four thirty, but close enough. Come on.” She hurried into the hallway and nearly ran over Dani Settler, another detective with the department, someone Paterno had known for a long while. Settler had been carrying a cup of coffee and juggled it quickly. “Sorry,” Tanaka said.

Paterno said, “She’s onto a big lead. You know how that is.”

“No prob,” Settler said, and turned into her office. “Go get ’em.”

Tanaka didn’t bother responding. She was too hyped. Had no time for any kind of chitchat unless it had to do with the case.

“Ultra-focused,” her mother had said of her once, to which her engineer father, who had been sitting at the small kitchen table in their apartment, had snapped his newspaper and from behind the screen of the financial page said, “It’ll serve her well.”

And it had, Tanaka thought.

She was one of three, firstborn and determined to be a standout, not that her father would ever notice. Her siblings were sons and to Takami “Tom” Tanaka, that was what mattered: gender. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her; no. He did. Tom just didn’t have the same aspirations for his daughter that he did for his two boys. Fortunately her mother had always pushed her, and when her father had mentioned her being “too stubborn for her own good,” or “bullheaded,” Mom had thrown his own words back at him: “It will serve her well.”

She smiled at that thought now.

No one was more proud of her for making detective than her old man. Thank you, Dad. He’d come around.

But she couldn’t get caught up in nostalgia. Things were finally breaking in the Latham double-homicide.

She walked swiftly through the old hallways of the department. “The cell phone records for Ivy Wilde came in,” she told Paterno as they made their way out the back exit. “She’s been in Albuquerque, but that was as of a day or two ago.”

“Or her phone’s been there.”

“Right. It could have been stolen. I’ll drive,” Tanaka said.

“No. You talk. I’ll drive.”