“Check deeper. It’s an alias.”
That silences her, but only for a minute.
“How do you know?”
Her question is sharp, almost a challenge. For a moment it rattles me and I hesitate, but there was no mistaking that voice, or those cold eyes.
“I know,” I tell her firmly before adding, “I recognized his voice.”
“Recognized? From where? Who is it?”
I take a deep breath before I share the name of a man I believed to have been dead for the past twenty years.
“Josh Kendrick.”
I can hear the phone clatter to the desk on the other end.
Mitch
Jesus, what a mess.
Cases like this make me grateful my ex and I were able to keep Sawyer as our priority, even after we split.
Hard to believe just three days ago, I was sitting around a campfire with my daughter, roasting marshmallows to celebrate the start of our mini vacation. Two days ago, I was racing to join the search for a missing ten-year-old in Frankfort, who turned up at a local arcade where he was forced to sell dime bags of pot by a gang of teens.
Then this morning I get a call from local law enforcement in Lanark about a fourteen-year-old girl gone missing. She was last seen five days ago. The parents are in the middle of an ugly divorce. The girl wasn’t getting along with Mom and chose to live with Dad, who is a long-haul trucker. The man is gone from home days at a time and left the kid to fend for herself.
It wasn’t until early yesterday they discovered her gone.
Unbelievable. Some people are seriously messed up.
“Did you get anything more?” I ask when Matt climbs into the passenger seat.
“Not much. Get this, she ate most of her meals at the local youth center,” he says, his disgust evident. “Two damn parents living in the same town, not five blocks from each other, and somehow between them they can’t manage to feed their own daughter?”
I grunt in agreement. Sadly, Georgia Braxton is not the only kid who slipped through the cracks while the parents were busy fighting with each other.
“Local cops talk to someone at The Lanark Youth Center yet?”
“They planned to meet with the director today. I told them we’d go instead.”
“Good. Bring up the address in the GPS.”
It’s forty-five minutes after noon when I pull the SUV into the almost empty parking lot of a large, one-story building, just steps from Lanark’s downtown. I wait for Matt to get off the phone with the local detective in charge, to let him know we arrived, before getting out.
“Any new developments?”
“They tracked down the father in Reno,” he says in a grim voice as we approach the front doors. “Killing time at the slots while waiting for a load to haul back to Louisville. He’s looking for a replacement driver so he can fly back.”
“What a prince,” I mumble, as I open the door and walk into a large space.
On the right side of the entrance is a wall of lockers and to the left what looks to be a large rec room with tables and chairs, a small bar with an industrial-sized coffee maker and a vending machine. The opposite side of the room holds two pool tables, a foosball table, and a few pinball machines.
The place is empty.
Straight ahead a man steps into the narrow hallway running to the back of the building and walks toward us.
“Gentlemen, can I help you?”
Matt and I both flip open our FBI badges when he approaches and I keep a sharp eye for any reaction. I’m guessing he’s five ten or eleven, about my age, maybe a little older, judging from the lines around his eyes, and in decent physical shape. The most remarkable things about him are his piercing blue eyes and the skin graft covering the entire right side of his face and down his neck into the collar of his shirt.
“Agents Kenny and Driver,” I take the lead.
“Mason Kramer, I’m the program director. How can I help you?”
“We’re hoping to ask you a few questions about one of your young patrons, Georgia Baxter?”
Not a muscle on the man’s face moves, in fact, I’d say he looks almost bored but that could be the result of his obvious burns.
“Ah, Georgia, yes. I understand she may have run away?”
“Actually, we’re not at all sure about that, which is why we’d like to talk to you.”
“Of course,” he says with a flat smile. “Please follow me to my office.” He leads the way and sits down behind his desk, inviting us to sit on the other side. “I’ll do whatever I can to help, gentlemen.”
“We understand Georgia came into the center regularly?” Matt gets to the point.
“Yes, she did. Usually after school, she’d come in for a meal and hang out with some of the kids in the rec room.”
“What about counseling? I believe she was seeing one of your therapists?” I take over.
“Yes, quite possibly. I’d have to check—” He suddenly looks at something behind us. “If you’ll excuse me just a minute, I’ll find out for you.”
He shoots out of his chair and heads for the door. I twist in my seat in time to see him usher a woman into a room across the hallway. A few minutes later, he’s back with a large planner.
“We keep all our scheduled appointments in here. It looks like she saw one of our counselors two days a week; Wednesdays and Fridays.”
“What does this mean?” Matt points at the letters NS in red marker across Georgia’s name both on Wednesday and Friday of last week.
“That’s a no show. Apparently, she missed her last two sessions.”
“Would that not have sent up any red flags?” I ask pointedly, poking a little.
“Not necessarily,” Kramer responds easily. “The kids here come and go. It’s a walk-in center.”
“I understand. However, you admitted earlier Georgia was a regular. Surely if that was noticeable, her absence would’ve been as well?”
I know I got under his skin when his nostrils flare slightly.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to check with her therapist on that. I was away on vacation and only returned yesterday. As you can imagine, even a short week away means a pile of messages waiting, I’ve been busy processing those and haven’t had a chance to check in with staff.”
Matt doesn’t skip a beat as he pulls out his notebook and pen.
“Then let’s make this easy for you. If you could give us names and numbers for anyone on your staff, who would’ve been in contact with Georgia, we can check for ourselves.”
Kramer is clearly reluctant but provides the information, and twenty minutes later we stand up to leave.
“Thank you so much for your time. We’ll find our own way out,” Matt says, shaking the man’s hand.
“If we have any more questions, we’ll let you know,” I add with a fake smile before I follow Matt into the hallway.
I pass an open door and glance inside; spotting the woman I glimpsed earlier pulling open the drawer of a filing cabinet. She must’ve sensed me, because she turns around and her eyes widen when she sees me. Immediately she presses her finger against her lips and sharply shakes her head no.
I keep walking and it takes me a second to let it sink in.