Then he went inside, closed the door, and turned off the lights behind him.

CHAPTER

89

THE NEXT SEVERAL HOURS WERE THEIR OWN KIND OF TORTURE. I FELT MORE than a little burned by Creem, and I hated the way he was playing this.

To make things worse, Doyle kept his own personal monologue going pretty much the entire time. He knew a thing or two about surveillance and had some valid opinions about how these investigations ought to be structured, but most of that was bookended with one long, pointless story after another.

Around 3 a.m., a yellow cab pulled up in front of the house. A minute later, the porch light came on and Creem walked Ms. Bishop outside. She was carrying a shopping bag now and wearing street clothes that, for all I knew, came straight out of Mrs. Creem’s closet.

Neither of them even glanced our way, until Creem had put her into the cab and sent her off. Then he turned, gave us a friendly wave, and went back inside.

“What a tool,” Doyle said. “I don’t get it. What is it about hot women and rich assholes? Actually, never mind. I just answered my own question. But still—”

Bottom line, I don’t like to talk when I’m losing the game. I couldn’t stand the idea of five more hours of this.

“Doyle, don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, “but is there any chance we could finish out this shift with a little less conversation?”

It got him all huffy and cold-shouldered, but if that was the price of silence, I was ready to pay it. With any luck, this would be our first and last detail together.

After that it stayed pretty quiet, both in and outside the car. Creem kept the lights on and puttered around the house, doing whatever he was doing in there. At five, he took the paper off his front porch and went back in—upstairs, I think. I didn’t see him after that.

Then, just after sunrise, my cell rang.

It’s not so unusual for me to get calls at all hours. I expected to see a departmental number on the ID or maybe Bree. But it wasn’t either of those. It was Stephanie Gethmann, Ava’s social worker. Right away I knew something had to be wrong.

“Stephanie?” I answered.

“I’m sorry to call so early,” she said. “I actually wanted to call last night, but . . . well, it’s complicated, of course.”

“Something’s happened to Ava,” I said. It wasn’t a question. My heart was thumping, and I was already running through the possibilities in my head. Overdose? Runaway? Accident?

“She’s missing, Alex.”

“Missing? What does that mean?”

“She didn’t come home from school yesterday, and nobody knows where she is. I hope this isn’t inappropriate, but I know you and Bree are police officers. I was thinking maybe—”

I only wished Stephanie had called sooner.

“Of course we will,” I said. “We’ll get right on it. Tell me everything you know.”

Part Four

ALL FALL DOWN

CHAPTER

90

BREE AND I SPENT THE MORNING IN OUR CARS, KEEPING IN TOUCH BY PHONE and hitting up every resource we could think of to track Ava down.

I started with the Youth Investigations Bureau contacts I knew in the first, third, and sixth police districts. Those covered Ava’s group home, her school, our house, and Seward Square, where she used to hang out. The department has a centralized database of missing kids, but there’s no substitute for face time with people who are working the streets every day. For that, you have to go district by district.

As it turned out, the picture Nessa had taken of us at the group home was even more valuable than I’d thought. It wasn’t much of a shot, but it was something to show people. I texted it to everyone I could think of.

Bree started at Howard House and interviewed several of the girls there, as well as Sunita, the braided house manager we’d met the other day. From the sound of it, nobody had seen Ava since breakfast the previous morning. She’d been quiet, but that was nothing new. And it didn’t look like anything was missing from her room, either. That meant she hadn’t intentionally run away.

Tags: James Patterson Alex Cross Mystery
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