Pretties in Pink

16. Ford

16

FORD

Fuck, that was blunt. And Hallie’s words hit Ford right in the damn chest. But he was seeing a stronger version of her tonight, so he had to view that as a good thing.

“Want to hear a funny story? After I finished college, I took a trip to LA to visit Dad, and he asked what I planned to do with the rest of my life. I told him I wanted to be a detective. And his eyes just lit up. I thought finally, finally, I’d managed to do something right, and then he said, ‘That’s great, son, great—I’ll speak to casting and make sure you get a few lines.’”

“What the hell?”

“He was shooting a cop movie at the time. When I broke the news that I mean an actual detective—bear in mind here that I’d just graduated magna c*m laude with a degree in criminal justice—he rolled his eyes and said, ‘Where did I go wrong?’”

“Wow.”

Ford shrugged. “He is who he is. I’ve accepted it now. And he isn’t a terrible father intentionally; he simply doesn’t understand the requirements of the role. But enough about him—dinner’s getting cold, and we have a stack of bedtime reading.”

“Did you order egg rolls? Tell me you ordered egg rolls.”

“Best part of the meal.”

“Are we going formal here? Or can I work while I eat?”

“Be my guest. I’m gonna start with the Metgood file. Pete Sarba—Detective Sarba—emailed me the bones of it right before I left the station. What did Donna’s mom have to say earlier?”

“We didn’t ask many questions on the phone, but we’re going to speak with her in person tomorrow.”

“In Lewisburg?”

That was a seven-hour round trip. Hallie would be gone all day.

Or maybe not.

“She actually moved to White Sulphur Springs to live with her sister. I was planning to drive, but Dan wants to fit in some flight hours, so we’re gonna borrow Emmy’s helicopter instead.”

Her helicopter? Okay, so Ford had to concede that working in the private sector did have its advantages. His assigned vehicle was a five-year-old Dodge Charger.

“Is Dan a good pilot?”

A nervous giggle burst out of Hallie’s mouth. “I hope so.”

“You hope so?”

“Emmy assured me that Dan’s flying isn’t as bad as her driving.”

“You’re not exactly filling me with confidence here, plum.”

“We’ll be fine.” Why did Hallie seem as if she was trying to convince herself as well as Ford? “Yes, we’ll be fine.” She sliced the end off an egg roll, popped it into her mouth, sighed, and opened the first file. “To think I could have been watching Netflix this evening.”

Now that Ford had escaped the Hollywood life, he preferred a good book to a movie, but he understood the sentiment. He echoed Hallie’s sigh and opened his laptop. The good news? The Metgood file wouldn’t take long to get through. The bad news? There wasn’t a whole lot in it. Reading between the lines, the detective in charge had been Duncan’s brother from another mother, except he hadn’t even found a suspect. When he retired, the case had been passed on to Sarba, but he was a recent transfer from the West Coast, newly promoted, unfamiliar with the locale and the folks involved. He’d never heard the name Mila Carmody either.

As Ford scanned the sparse details, a chill ran up his spine. Hallie had been right—the similarities were too significant to ignore. Donna had been asleep in a first-floor bedroom, and it appeared the suspect had climbed in through an open window. In August three years ago, the temperatures had been into the nineties, and they didn’t drop below seventy overnight. Why had the window been open? Because the AC was out. Size eleven footprints criss-crossed the dirt outside. The neighbour’s dog hadn’t barked, and Donna hadn’t made a sound.

Ford studied a photo of the little girl. She’d been ten years old at the time of her disappearance, clever according to her teacher, but small for her age and timid. In the picture, she wore a pink tracksuit and carried a soccer ball. Had pink been her favourite colour? She’d disappeared in a pair of pink pyjamas, but no clothes had been found near her remains. Her remains. Her skeleton had been picked clean by scavengers, the bones scattered over a thirty-yard radius. She’d been identified by dental records and X-rays, the latter taken when she’d broken her arm two years previously.

The details made the hair on the back of Ford’s neck stand on end.

“How’s it going?” he asked Hallie. A half-full plate of food sat at her elbow, and the fortune cookies remained untouched. “Lost your appetite?”

“After everything I’ve seen, I shouldn’t be surprised at the amount of evil in the world, but this… They’re just kids. Sorry I didn’t eat much.”

“Doesn’t matter. Did you find anything interesting?”

Hallie had gotten a third of the way down the stack of files, and she’d been making notes on her laptop as she went. Should he have given her free rein like that? Officially, no, and Duncan would blow his top if he found out, but didn’t Blackwood and the cops have the same ultimate goal? To solve the case? To stop more girls from disappearing?

When Ford first stepped into the Feinstein residence, he’d felt in his bones that she wasn’t the first. The crime was too neat. Too audacious. Everybody made mistakes, so where and when had the perp made his? That was the key to solving this case, and by going back in time, maybe they could find out where he’d started.

“One more possible,” Hallie said.

“How are you approaching this?”

Ford asked for two reasons. One, he was curious about Blackwood’s methods, and two, he was all too aware of Hallie’s greenness. She had instincts, but not the hours of experience to back them up. It wasn’t his job to mentor her, but at the same time, he wanted to help her hone those skills.

“I’m reading through each file and entering the key points into our database. And while I work, Providence is plugging away in the background to add any supplemental information that might be relevant.”

“Providence?”

“Blackwood’s in-house search-and-analysis software.”

“It’s like an extra pair of hands?”

“Exactly like that.”

Smart. “Can I see?”

Hallie hesitated for a moment, then angled her screen so he could see it.

“The information in black is user-entered. Notes in blue were added by Providence. And if I click on one, the reference pops up. See? Then I can confirm whether it’s relevant or not, and Providence uses my choices to learn.”

Ford did see. He saw that Blackwood’s system was light years ahead of anything the Richmond PD had. He saw that Hallie had distilled the case of Michelle Moody, who’d vanished six years ago at the age of ten, into the pertinent facts and entered the details succinctly. He saw that Providence had trawled social media and found current posts from Michelle’s birth father in Idaho. And in the background of a photo of a family cookout, he caught a glimpse of a teenage girl who bore a remarkable resemblance to the image of Michelle. The case had been languishing in the cold files for years, and Hallie had potentially cracked it in the time it took her to eat half a portion of chow mein.

Ford pointed at the screen. “Think that’s Michelle?”

“Give me a minute…”

She opened up a new window and dragged all the photos they had of Michelle, her mom, and her biological father into it. Two minutes later, Providence provided an age-progressed image of Michelle and an assessment that the girl in the picture was eighty-three percent likely to be the same person.

Hallie shrugged. “I’m gonna go with ‘probably.’ Can you follow up?”

“I’ll definitely follow up. Who’s the possible you found?”

“Araceli Suarez. Nine years old, disappeared from Roanoke in August last year. Snatched from her bedroom, intruder came in through a window, size eleven footprints in the dirt outside, nobody ever saw her again. Sound familiar?”

“She’s from a different demographic. Poor, Hispanic. Donna and Vonnie could be twins, and apart from the hair colour, Mila fits that profile too.”

“I’m not saying the cases are definitely linked. I just think it warrants a further look.”

Yeah, it did. Hallie was absolutely right on that point. “Was the AC at the Suarez home broken, by any chance?”

“I haven’t seen anything about AC.”

“Why was the window open?”

“To cool the place down, I guess.”

“Most people use AC for that.”

“Looking at the pictures, the Suarez family didn’t have much money. Maybe they couldn’t afford AC?”

“Yeah, maybe. Do me a favour—when you speak with Mrs. Metgood, ask her about the AC. When it failed, whether a technician came, that kind of thing.”

“Okay, but why?”

“Because the Feinsteins’ AC wasn’t working either. We already ruled out the tech who visited—he was at a family reunion when Vonnie was snatched—but I’m wondering whether there might have been sabotage involved.”

“Break it in daylight, come back in the dark?”

“Something like that.” It was a reach, but they had little else to go on. And the offender’s method of selection bothered Ford. Vonnie’s window could be seen from the ridge behind the house, true, but not from the road. “Want me to take some of those files?”

“I need to enter the data into Providence.”

“Can you give me access?”

“Sorry, I just don’t have the authority to set up an additional login. I could try speaking with Mack tomorrow, but tonight…”

“Let me read through them, and I’ll note down the important points. Then you can type them in. Will that work?”

Hallie nodded. “I think I need a sugar hit first. Got any more M&Ms?”

“For you? Always.”

By the time midnight struck, they’d found one more possible candidate—Janiya Thomas, nine years old, mixed race, taken from her bed in a run-down neighbourhood on the outskirts of Lynchburg. Size eleven prints in the dirt. If these cases really were linked, then the problem was far bigger than anyone had suspected. Five girls gone in six years.

Five girls.

Six years.

All in August or September.

The hotter months.

Open windows.

“We’re missing one.”

“Huh?” Hallie raised tired eyes. “We’ve done all the files now.”

“One girl disappeared each summer, but there’s a gap between Donna and Araceli. What happened that year?”

“I don’t… I don’t know. Maybe something went wrong?”

“Or maybe there’s another girl. We need to expand the search. Donna came from West Virginia. So far, we believe our man’s hunting ground spans from Richmond across to Lewisburg and down to Roanoke. What if he travelled farther west? Or south?”

“I’ll…” Hallie covered a yawn. “I’ll start looking.”

“Tomorrow. We’ll start looking tomorrow. You need to get some sleep, plum. We both need to get some sleep.”

“What time is it?”

“After midnight. What time do you need to get up?”

“Six.”

Another yawn. Was she even safe to drive? Back when Ford was a patrolman, he’d seen the aftermath when people fell asleep behind the wheel.

“Want me to give you a ride home?”

She managed a smile. “You’re as tired as I am.”

“I can load up on caffeine, and I don’t need to get out of bed until seven.” He hesitated, then raised her chin so she faced him. “Or I have a spare room you’re welcome to use.”

“I’m not sure…”

“I know you’re not. It’s a big step, and there’s no pressure, but I figured it’d be rude if I didn’t offer.”

Hallie bit her lip, and Ford’s c**k twitched. That was the moment he realised he wanted her in his bed. Someday, no matter how long it took, even if he had to walk through f*****g fire to get her there.

“There’s a lock on the door,” he murmured. “Promise I’m not gonna make a move until you want me to.”

Now those beautiful hazel eyes narrowed. “Until I want you to?”

Sometimes, a man had to take a chance. “Yes.”

Once, she’d looked at him with fear, but now he saw something else. Apprehension, and then acceptance.

“I should text Mercy,” she murmured. “Let her know I won’t be home.”

“Call her, don’t text. This is a new thing for you, and she’ll need to hear your voice, understand that you’re not under duress. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Should I find you a T-shirt to sleep in?”

A nod. A quiet, “Thank you.”

And Ford knew nothing would ever be the same again.