The Night Monster_ A Novel of Suspense - James Swain [47]
“Find the girl,” I told him.
Buster sniffed the napkin. He resumed sniffing the ground, and crossed in front of me, pulling to my left. I shortened his leash, and let him drag me clear across the lot, stopping at the boundary to the warehouse. I glanced over my shoulder. We had walked in a perfectly straight line from the van. My experience told me that when hurried, people took the shortest route possible. Buster had found the escape route.
“Good boy.”
I let Buster move ahead. There was pavement here, most of it broken. My dog went fifty feet, then came to an abrupt halt. We were beside the warehouse, the shade a welcome relief from the burning sun.
I stared at the ground. My eyes locked on a pair of tire tracks and a fresh cigarette butt. Mouse had been smoking a cigarette the night of Sara’s abduction. This was where their second vehicle had been parked.
The tire tracks were muddy and looked fresh. As a detective, I’d used an online company called TirePrint to identify tire tracks that I’d discovered at crime scenes. I would e-mail the company the tire track and wheel base measurements of a vehicle I wanted to identify, and they would input the information into a database, and determine the make and year of the vehicle. The simple procedure rarely took more than a few minutes.
I felt my spirits soar. I was going to find the vehicle Mouse and the giant were using, and I was going to alert every law enforcement agency in the state to be on the lookout. I scratched behind my dog’s ears.
“You make me look so good,” I told him.
Then, I cupped my hand over my mouth.
“Over here,” I called out.
Linderman was the first to reach me. The FBI agent inspected the tracks, then went to his SUV, and returned with an evidence collection kit. Using a tape measure, he measured the tire tracks and jotted down the numbers onto a notepad. He also snapped a photo of the tracks with a small digital camera. The cigarette butt was placed in a plastic evidence bag, onto which he scribbled the date, time, and location. Then he took out his cell phone.
“Calling TirePrint?” I asked.
“Yes. Let’s hope they can tell us what these guys are driving.”
Linderman’s call went through. I heard my own cell phone ring, and stepped away to answer it. Caller ID said it was JESSIE.
“Hey, honey,” I said.
“Hi, Daddy. I’m sorry to be bothering you, but I need your help.”
“What’s wrong? Where are you?”
“I’m on the team bus heading back to Tallahassee. It’s an eight-hour drive, so I decided to catch up on my homework, only I realized that I didn’t have the schoolbooks I loaned Sara Long. I’ve got an exam next week, and I really need them.”
It was rare that my daughter called me with her problems, but there was something in her voice that I didn’t like.
“Did Sara bring the books on the trip?” I asked.
“Yes. Sara had them the other night. I figured the Broward police were holding them as evidence, so I called the detective in charge of the investigation, and asked her if I could have them back.”
“Detective Burrell?”
“Yes. She was very nice, and went to the evidence locker to find my books for me. So here’s the weird part. They weren’t there. Detective Burrell found a copy of the police report that listed everything in Sara’s motel room, and my schoolbooks weren’t listed.”
“So the books weren’t in Sara’s room when the police got there.”
“No. I figured maybe they fell under the bed, so I called the motel, and asked the manager if one of the cleaning people found them. No luck there either.”
There was a simple solution to Jessie’s problem, which was to go to the campus bookstore, and buy another copy of her missing books. Only there was something else going on here that I was missing. I said, “Tell me what you’re thinking, honey.”
“This