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There was nothing in the living or kitchen, sending me into the only real room left, tearing through is closet, his dressers, feeling for possible stashes under his floorboards.
It was only then, when I was leaning down to put my ear to a board to tap on it that I saw it.
A small black box like one sneakers had come in at one time, pressed all the way up toward the head of the bed, in the middle of it, out of sight unless you were at the exact angle that I was.
Yanking the bed from the wall, I reached for it with hands that maybe weren't as steady as they should have been, denoting my personal connection to the case, something that - ordinarily - I would have said made me the worst possible person to handle the case. But right then, feeling the need to find her coursing through my veins, I knew there was no one better for the job than me.
Throwing off the lid, I found what I had been looking for. Receipts. Scribbled notes.
And something that made it all fall into place.
Everything.
Why the store was starting to crumble.
Why he was missing so much that Savea had to work as much as she did.
Why men were beating him.
Why he was running.
A simple casino token.
Harry was a gambler.
I flipped the token back over, seeing the name printed there.
Sands.
And in this part of the country, that meant one thing.
Pennsylvania.
Bethlehem, to be exact.
And because if you knew one gambler, you knew them all, I knew that was exactly where I could find him. Trying to win back the money he needed to pay off his debtors. Trying to use his vice to pay his dues, sure he was one hand, one deal away from fortune.
Shoving the box away, I tore back through his house, jumping in my car, trying to mentally prepare myself for an hour and a half ride, trying to focus on the case, not let my mind wander back.
To what might be happening to her.
To what she must be thinking.
To if she blamed me for it.
Shaking my head, knowing it wasn't going to help if I let myself go there, I put my phone on speaker, called Nixon, demanded updates from his end.
Lloyd had been persuaded to put a BOLO out even though there was no solid evidence of her being kidnapped, no eye witness, just a little speck of dried blood on the coffee table and a ringing alarm to go by.
Relieved that there were going to do something, not just sit on their hands until she was technically missing - a full twenty-four hours from now - I pushed past the speed limit on my way out of state, rage pulsating off every nerve ending, making me feel hot, itchy, impatient every time I had to slow, every time there was a delay.
I got to the parking lot of Sands an hour and forty minutes later, not bothering to go into the trunk to grab a gun, a weapon of any kind.
I didn't need it.
I was pissed enough to beat what I needed out of him with my bare hands.
I had never been violent. Things needed to happen sometimes in life, in my line of work. Violence transpired. But it was never something I enjoyed, something I instigated. I just reacted, handled myself, subdued the person I needed to, brought them to the proper authorities to handle.
I didn't exact justice.
That wasn't my job.
Except this time, it was.
Because this time, it was Savea.
Sands was about what you expect from a casino, everything in reds and greens and neon that looked exciting at night, but garish in the daytime even though there was no natural light to speak of inside, no clocks, no nothing to let you know what time of day it was, how much of your life, of your soul you lost at those tables or at the machines.
Inside, the slots were set up in a sort of circle pattern that backed up to the live dealer tables.
It was sparse, but not empty. Which was somewhat sad given the time of day.
Sure, maybe some of these people were here on a vacation for a special occasion. But if I was a betting man - and I wasn't - I would put my money on most of them being like Harry - people who simply couldn't stay away.
Ignoring the slots - and the small group of people scattered around sitting at them- I made my way toward the back.
I doubted Harry was a slots guy.
Serious addictions like his had to be spoke of games he felt like he could win if he was just smart enough, just lucky enough, despite everything and everyone telling you that there was almost no beating the dealer, that the odds were stacked unfairly against you the moment you walked in the door, that the house - sooner or later - always wins.
