The Night Monster_ A Novel of Suspense - James Swain [50]
“Sixty-seven,” I said.
“How many of them are going to drop whatever they’re doing to help you? Based upon my experience, they’ll pass the request down the line, and it will end up in the hands of a secretary, who may or may not look through the files.”
“Do you want to write it?”
“I won’t get any better response. The FBI isn’t liked by most cops.”
Our food came. Two cheeseburgers swimming in french fries, and a bowl of ground beef for Buster. Linderman pulled up one of the folding chairs, and we ate our lunches.
I couldn’t taste the food. Sometimes that happened to me when I was on a search. My appetite disappeared and nothing tasted particularly good. I had lost weight since leaving the force, and didn’t want to lose any more.
I forced the food down, then got up from my chair and went to the window. Parting the blind with my finger, I stared down at Louie’s dock and watched a teenage girl wait on a table of drunk guys with sunburns and loud shirts. The waitress didn’t look like she was more than sixteen years old. Staring at her gave me a thought.
“I’ll talk the Broward cops into helping us,” I said. “They can get the cops in the other counties to respond to my request.”
Linderman put his burger down. “And how would the Broward PD do that?”
“Fort Lauderdale is a magnet for teenage runaways. I can’t name a county that hasn’t had to send a cop down here and retrieve a kid who’s run away from home. The Broward cops always treat the visiting cops nice, and make sure the kids get home safe.”
I returned to my computer and redid my letter. I addressed it to Candy Burrell, marked the e-mail urgent, and hit Send. There were several stray french fries left on my plate. I started tossing them to Buster when my phone rang.
“Carpenter here.”
“Burrell here,” Candy said. “I just picked up your e-mail on my BlackBerry.”
“I need your help.”
“Back at ya, pal. I’m sort of up to my eyeballs right now.”
“What’s going on?”
“A thirteen-year-old girl named Suzie Knockman didn’t come home from school yesterday, and no one knows where she is. One of her classmates said she was having problems at home. Suzie has a large extended family—two sets of grandparents, an uncle and his wife, two older male cousins, and her parents. We interviewed the family and got all sorts of conflicting information. When we tried to reinterview them, they lawyered up, which is really weird. This girl’s in trouble, Jack.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“There was a photograph of Suzie in the house. She was all dolled up and looked like she was going on twenty-one.”
“Girls do that sometimes,” I said.
“The photo was taken last year. Looking at it gave me the creeps. Take my word for it, the kid’s in trouble.”
Burrell had to make her own priorities. Right now, Suzie Knockman was at the top of her list and nothing I was going to say would change that.
“Who’s the lawyer they’re using?” I asked.
“Some white-haired creep out of Miami.”
“Leonard Snook?”
“That’s right. Do you know him?”
I tossed my paper plate into the trash. Leonard Snook was on speed dial for every drug dealer and murderer in town. For Suzie’s family to have hired Snook meant something really bad was going down. Burrell was a hundred percent right in her assumption that the girl was in trouble.
“Snook is your key,” I said. “He should lead you right to Suzie.”
“And how is he going to do that?”
I hesitated. I had a priority list as well, and Sara Long was at the top of my list.
“I’ll show you, but you have to do me a favor.”
“You want me to respond to your e-mail?”
“Yes.”
“You want the detectives in my unit to call every police department in the state?”
“You got it,” I said.
“When do you need this done?”
“The moment after I find Suzie Knockman.”
“This sounds like extortion, Jack.”
I frowned into the phone. Burrell was tired, her voice on edge. Unfortunately, so was I. “How is that extortion? I’m putting your case first, and I won’t even charge you for my time. All I’m asking you to do in return is to assign the unit to work on my case when we’re done. There’s no skin