To Trust a Friend Read online

  Now she couldn’t imagine how she’d get through life without faith. When things were good she had somewhere to share her joy, and when they were bad she laid her sorrows at the foot of the cross. This was going to be a big burden to put there, Kyra thought. Until now she thought that maybe she and Josh were coming together, making some progress. Now it was clear that she’d been wrong. She got her office in order as much as possible and headed out a little early for a change. She knew she’d be in during the weekend. Maybe for once she’d rent a movie and enjoy just vegging out. “It’s not going to be a romantic comedy,” she muttered, heading for the parking lot.

  By Monday morning Kyra was more than ready to go back to work. She hadn’t had a single phone call all weekend, and once she’d left the store where she’d rented her DVDs, she hadn’t even spoken with another human being until church on Sunday morning. All day Saturday she’d cleaned the house, given Ranger plenty of attention, cooked dinner and treated herself to a long soak in a hot tub.

  By Sunday evening she’d watched all the movies she cared to see, finished up the stack of professional journals that tended to pile up on her nightstand, and done everything but alphabetized the spices in the pantry. Even Josh was a welcome sight on Monday morning when he came into the office about forty-five minutes after she did.

  “Hey. Thanks for making coffee. I didn’t stop anywhere to get some on the way in to work.” He put down his briefcase at his workstation and poured himself a mug of coffee.

  “Hey yourself,” Kyra answered back. “How was your weekend?”

  “Okay, I guess.” He didn’t offer any details and Kyra didn’t feel like pressing. In fact, she didn’t feel much like keeping a conversation going without help. If Josh didn’t want to volunteer anything, she wasn’t going to force him. Was the silence that settled between them the way things were going to be for this last week or two that Josh spent in her office? Kyra hoped not, but she didn’t know how to break the tension.

  They both worked quietly at their computers for a while. Kyra was catching up on the incredible amount of paperwork she’d let slide in the past two weeks while she’d concentrated on finding the identities of the three young women in the lab. After a second cup of coffee and a couple of trips back and forth to the printer in the next room, Josh packed up papers in his briefcase, leaving the computer still set up and other papers on the desk. “So what’s up for you today?” she asked.

  “I still don’t have enough to bug you about getting any kind of warrant on Garcia, but I want to talk to him. I have some plausible questions about Nikki and Gen, and a few on one of the other missing girls we haven’t found any sign of.”

  Kyra eyed him sharply. “Are you sure you can talk to him without giving anything away? If you’re right and he’s the guy, I don’t have to tell you what kind of repercussions there’d be if he got scared off.”

  “Don’t worry. I can handle talking to Garcia. Messing up something this basic would put the final nail in the coffin of my career, and I’m not ready for that. I’ll be back in a couple of hours, that or I’ll call in if things get more complicated. How about you? What’s the rest of your morning like?”

  Kyra shrugged. “More paperwork, I imagine. And then I’ll be documenting the remains in the next room one more time, so that in any eventual trial no one can say that the state forensics experts were anything but meticulous. Whether or not Garcia is the one who did this, I don’t want the killer going free some day on any technicality involving my office.”

  “Sounds reasonable to me. I’ll see you later.”

  “Later,” Kyra echoed, watching him leave. She held back a sigh. Nothing that they’d said to each other all morning was personal or friendly. Josh had kept everything on a business level, although Kyra had to admit that she had as well. Still, she’d been holding out the hope that he would come in today and they’d talk about Friday and what she’d said about her life. She was surer than ever that Josh was ready to go back to the FBI and never see her again. The thought gave her a sad, hollow feeling.

  The phone on the desk rang, startling her a little. The number on the caller ID was all too familiar and she felt a flash of anger. After everything she’d said on Friday, how could Jasmine possibly have cut classes today or walked out of school? It was the only reason for the attendance office there to be calling.

  “She was here for her first-hour class,” the attendance clerk told Kyra. “But nobody remembers seeing her after that except one girl who said she ‘might’ have seen Jasmine leave and head for the bus stop across the street.”

  Kyra sighed in earnest this time, unable to hold back her disappointment. “Great. Have you alerted her placement manager yet? I guess you have to this time.”

  “I thought I’d call you first, but if you haven’t heard anything, this time I’ve got to go through channels.”

  “Go ahead. I’m not in the business of rescuing people from themselves.” They exchanged a few more words and Kyra put down the phone, her eyes filling with tears. Jasmine had really seemed to get it on Friday. How could she possibly do this only two days later?

  Kyra sat silently at her desk, praying for comfort and clarity for herself and for guidance and safety for Jasmine. Shaking her head, she went back to her paperwork. A few minutes later the ringing of her cell phone startled her out of her contemplation of a complicated report.

  “Miss Kyra? I need help. I did something dumb and now I don’t feel good and I’m scared and…well, I just need help.”

  “Okay, slow down,” Kyra told Jasmine, whose voice was higher and more childlike than usual. “First tell me why you don’t feel good and where you are. Do we need to call 911?”

  “Maybe. No, I don’t think so. That means an ambulance or cops or something and I don’t feel that bad. Can you come get me? I’m about six blocks from my school sitting in front of that burned-out place on Washington that you told me was a crack house.”

  “The place I specifically told you to stay as far away as possible from?”

  There was a long pause. “Yeah. That one. Anyway, I still need you to come get me. If I call school or my placement counselor I’ll get in even more trouble than I’m already in. Please, Miss Kyra?”

  “All right, but be prepared, because I can’t get you out of the trouble you’re in. Go to the nearest business that’s open and wait there for me. I can be there in about fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll wait for you.” Jasmine’s answer was a little less hysterical, and now Kyra didn’t feel as anxious herself.

  She grabbed her purse and her other essentials and scribbled a quick note to Josh on a sticky notepad, taking the sheet when she was done and attaching it squarely on his computer screen where he couldn’t miss it. Then, praying all the while, she got into her truck and started heading toward the block of downtrodden row houses where she prayed that Jasmine would wait for her the way she said she would.

  Josh sat in the waiting room of the clinic as patients filled the plastic chairs around him. A couple of small children played with blocks that had seen better days, while another little guy sat on his mom’s lap looking too miserable to join them. Ramon Garcia came out with a clipboard and scanned the people. “Simmons,” he barked, impatient for an answer. “Simmons. Travis Simmons.”

  The woman with the sick toddler hoisted him off her lap as he protested, and stood up with him in her arms. She walked toward Garcia, who reached out as if to take the child, who reacted with a wail.

  “I’m going in there with him,” the woman said firmly.

  “He’ll cry more if you do. They always put on a show for the parents,” Garcia snapped. “And I don’t have all day to do this.”

  “I’m going in there with him,” she repeated, staring down the medical technician. He had to outweigh her by fifty pounds and was at least six inches taller, but she had a mother’s determination.

  Finally Garcia shrugged and turned on his heel. “Fine,” he said without looking back. “But
if I can’t get this done in five minutes, that’s it. I can’t mess up the whole day’s schedule because you won’t calm down your kid.”

  “He’s been throwing up for two days and running a fever,” the woman said softly to the man’s retreating back. She followed him into the treatment room and the door slammed behind them. Josh could almost feel steam coming out of his ears at Garcia’s attitude with her. She was worried about her sick child, and if he’d been as sick as she described, it probably meant that she hadn’t slept the past two nights. Of course she wasn’t going to hand him off to some stranger.

  Not only was he rude and brusque with his patients, he didn’t even tell them the truth. The clinic manager had already told Josh that Garcia had at least forty-five minutes between patients once this appointment was over, and there he was telling this mom that he had five minutes to complete her child’s test or he’d toss them out.

  Josh had to remind himself that simply being unpleasant didn’t make Garcia a serial killer. True, they were probably looking for somebody who didn’t deal well with other people, but that wasn’t everything. Many people lied and way too many of them were rude. Those types had been part of his daily routine not that long ago. Since he’d started working with Kyra, he’d begun to notice how much better most people reacted to the truth and a little bit of common courtesy. Now, that didn’t mean he’d act that way with every suspect and lowlife he came in contact with, but he could always try.

  Ten minutes later Travis and his mom and Garcia came out of the treatment room. “Go to the main desk and talk to them about an appointment for results. And good luck to you.”

  Okay, that was a surprise. Ramon was actually being a regular guy for once. Maybe he had an idea of who Josh was and decided to put on a front. Or maybe he could actually be a regular guy when he put his mind to it.

  Josh stood and went back to the doorway of the treatment room. “Ramon Garcia? Josh Richards. I need a few minutes of your time.”

  “What if I don’t want to give it to you?” Okay, so he wasn’t a regular guy all the time.

  “Then we can go back to the state police building where I have my office and talk there.”

  Garcia held up a hand. “Whoa, no need for that. Come in and shut the door, Mr….”

  “Richards. Agent Richards.” Josh closed the door and went to the small desk in the corner where Garcia sat. He took a seat in the plastic chair that served as a side chair. “I’m here investigating the disappearance of several young women whose bodies have recently been identified. One of their common links was being treated in this clinic. Specifically, most of them came through that door into this room.” Josh spread the pictures of Gen, Serita and Nikki out on the desk. He’d added Lisa Phipps’s picture as well in hopes of tripping Garcia up. She fit the general profile and she was still missing.

  Garcia’s eyes held no light. “Agent Richards, do you have any idea how many people come through that door every week? A hundred or more. That means about three thousand a year. Now, I know from people talking around here that these kids you’re talking about have been missing something like seven or eight years. How do you expect me to remember that far back?”

  Josh would have believed him if Garcia’s gaze hadn’t strayed back to the photos at least twice during his speech. “Try a little harder. This one’s Gen,” he said, pushing her photo forward with one finger. “And she told a friend that a guy was going to get her a job, a good job. In the medical field. Funny, the name she gave her friend sounded a lot like yours.”

  Garcia continued to stare at the picture. “Her, I remember. Not the name, but the second part. The last time I saw her she was bringing a kid in, maybe for a hearing test because of ear infections. She told me that somebody was going to help her get a job like mine. I asked her if that somebody told her that she was going to need at least two years of school to do that, and she said no. I tried to tell her that it was a scam and that the guy wanted something from her, but she didn’t want to listen.”

  Josh was so stunned that he couldn’t speak. While he tried to form the next question Garcia surprised him even more. “And I remember this one, too.” He separated out the photo of Lisa Phipps. “She asked if I could do a test for her without telling anybody. She said she’d pay cash and we could just keep it a secret.”

  “What kind of test?” Josh leaned forward to hear the answer.

  “A pregnancy test. I told her that I couldn’t do something like that for anybody, and especially not a minor. I told her she needed to talk to somebody about this, like maybe her case manager or somebody she trusted.”

  Garcia looked Josh straight in the eye and this time his dark eyes held the expression Josh had looked for before. “She said there wasn’t anybody she could trust. Too bad, because she looked like an okay kid, and maybe fourteen at most. Kids that young, there should be somebody they trust.”

  The room seemed to spin around Josh. He felt as if he’d been hit by a wrecking ball. Garcia was telling the truth. There were too many things in his statement that would have incriminated him otherwise. No one was as good an actor as you’d have to be to say what he just had and lie through all of it.

  Garcia was not their guy. Josh was beginning to get an idea who might be, though, and he needed to talk to Kyra. “Would you tell all this to somebody from the district attorney’s office?”

  There was silence for a moment, then Garcia leaned back in his office chair, making it groan. “Yeah, I guess. Nobody should get away with murder, and if you think this will help, I’ll do it.”

  “Good. I’ll make sure the right person calls you in the next seven days.” Josh gathered up his things and headed for the door as quickly as possible. He was barely through the waiting room and out the door before he called Kyra. There was no answer on her cell or on the work phone, either. He began to get a very bad feeling about everything, and struggled to push it away. He prayed all the way back to the office.

  When he got back there he searched quickly through the office and the labs, but Kyra wasn’t there. Neither was Allie, and for a few minutes Josh held out the hope that maybe they’d just gone to lunch together. Just to make sure, he picked up the receiver of Kyra’s phone and punched the buttons to see the last few incoming calls. His heart sank when he saw the last one. He scrolled all the way back to Friday and found the same number with the same ID for Jasmine’s school.

  Replacing the phone on Kyra’s desk, he paced through the department one last time. When he got to the room where most of the staff had their desks and cubicles, Allie stood next to hers hanging a damp jacket on a hook. “Where’s Kyra?” he asked, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.

  “Isn’t she back yet? She said she was going after Jasmine, but that she’d be back soon.” Allie pressed her lips together in an expression of worry. “That was at least twenty minutes before I went to lunch. I thought she’d get here before I did.”

  “She’s not here. And I didn’t see her truck in the lot, but I was trying to tell myself that she’d just parked in a different area,” Josh admitted. “Did she say where she was going after Jasmine?”

  “No, she just said she was very unhappy with her because she was where she shouldn’t be. Apparently the kid called her from someplace after she ditched school this morning.”

  The hair on the back of Josh’s neck prickled. “Call the detective unit and tell a supervisor everything you just told me, and tell them we have reason to believe that someone has abducted Kyra and Jasmine.”

  Allie took a step backward. “We do?”

  “Yeah, we do.” Josh picked up a notepad from her desk and started writing on it. “And tell them that I’ve gone to this address to try to figure out where the two of them are. I’ll call when I find something out.”

  “Okay.” Allie still looked puzzled, but Josh saw that she was already punching numbers in the phone as he turned to leave.

  He broke all kinds of traffic laws on his way to his destination, but natura
lly there wasn’t a police unit of any kind that pulled him over. He got to the Griffith household in record time, parking his car in front of the house as quickly as possible and taking the short flight of stairs to the door two at a time.

  Diana Griffith answered his heavy knock quickly. “You’re the investigator who was here with Dr. Elliott. Did you forget to ask me something before?”

  “Not exactly, but I don’t think we want to discuss what I have to say on the doorstep. May I come in?”

  “I guess so. Follow me back to the kitchen because I’m in the middle of the home-from-school rush. The grade-schoolers are upstairs doing homework and I need to get ready for the older kids coming home.”

  Josh thanked her and followed Diana to the back of the house. He felt so nervous that he had to wipe the palms of his hands on his pants. Please, Lord, let mebe wrong, he prayed silently. But in his heart he already knew that now, too late, he had the right answer to what had happened directly under their noses.

  THIRTEEN

  The last time he’d been here, Josh enjoyed the atmosphere in Diana’s homey kitchen. Now every muscle was taut and he could barely keep from yelling. “Have you heard from your husband today?” he asked her, hoping he was wrong and she could prove that.

  “A few hours ago. He called and said he had to do something off-site and he wouldn’t be home until very late tonight.” She gave Josh an assessing look, as if she wondered whether to say more or not.

  “What else did you want to tell me?” Josh tried to keep his voice even and calm.

  Diana paused a moment more. “Well, this isn’t going to sound like something that should concern me, but it did. Gary told me he loved me, and he told me to tell Sarah that as well.”

  “And that’s unusual for him?” Josh already knew the answer, and his heart sank to the level of his knees.

  “Very unusual. Gary just isn’t the demonstrative type. He’s solid, dependable, but not the kind of guy who’s romantic or mushy.”