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When I knock on the door, Abigail answers. She smiles brightly when she sees me. “Thank God,” she says. “It’s about time you showed up.” She gives me a quick peck on the cheek and invites me in. “He’s in his study.” She points toward the stairs.
In all our years of working together, I’ve never felt so nervous to see Pocus. We’ve been through the wringer plenty of times, but this is the first time it’s been so personal. He blames me for bringing in Damien. It’s clear now that he was right to be apprehensive. I have to approach him with humility and—
“Seer!” he says happily when he opens his study door. “It’s about time you showed up.”
I’m perplexed by this greeting. A few hours ago, he was angry when he called about Charlie. What’s changed? He looks at my dumbfounded expression and laughs.
“Fuck, Seer, I don’t know how to do this.” He holds his hand out to me to shake. “We’ve never argued like this before. But I need you on my team.”
“I’m always on your team,” I tell him, clearing my throat. “You have to know that, Pocus. I’m sorry for going to the chief. You have no idea how sorry.” Even now, the regret swirls inside me. I know he can feel it. “But I can’t go back in time and change what happened. So, tell me. What would you do?”
Standing behind Snake as he works feels familiar to me. It’s been a while since I’ve called the shots, but Seer has entrusted me with the next steps. Whether or not Meredith agrees, she doesn’t deserve to be in jail. We’re the only ones who can prove that. Snake’s hacked into the police database to find everything they have on her, but it’s a thin file. I knew it would be.
“So. She starts as a social worker a few years ago, but leaves after a year,” Seer says later as we sit poring over the documents. “I get it, that has to be a shitty job.”
“I don’t think she left because it was shitty.” I read over the report. “Dozens of kids are on this list, Seer. From what she told me, she found a new home for every child.”
“Then where are they? If we could prove that she found them safe homes, that she didn’t turn them over to the gangs…” He trails off, reading something. “Snake, can you pull the records for every kid who’s been arrested for gang violence in the last four years?”
“On it, boss,” Snake calls from his workstation.
Moments later, he produces the files. I can see what he’s getting at. None of the names of the children arrested match the names of the children Meredith allegedly kidnapped. So, she can’t be accused of trafficking the kids to the gang members. So where the hell are they?
“Snake,” I call. “Do some digging. Find out where these kids are.”
“Already ahead of you. But it’s not promising, my friend. It’s like they vanish into thin air.”
“She was thorough,” Seer murmurs. “Of course, she was. If she’s hiding these kids from someone, she wouldn’t leave a trail to follow. It would be under the table, shady shit.”
“There’s no record of their rehoming, but they didn’t vanish. The cops accuse her of funneling these kids into gangs, but that’s clearly not true. The next logical conclusion is she murdered them, but that doesn’t align with what I know about her.”
“Kids can’t vanish, Pocus,” he says. “Think about our kids. They have daycare records, medical records. When Nicky misses too many days, I get a nasty call from his teacher. If these kids are out there, there has to be some kind of record for them.”
I think of my childhood. Nesce and I fell through the cracks our whole lives, to the point we were homeless and near death. Nobody cared for us, nobody stepped in. Meredith has been working her ass off for who knows how long to find Charlie a home. She has contacts. She has a network.
“Closed family adoptions,” I say with a start. “My aunt took us in when we were kids. Those records were sealed. The system doesn’t check as much when a foster child goes to a family member.”
“There won’t be a record?” Seer asks skeptically. “That doesn’t seem likely.”
“She would’ve changed the kids’ names. She would’ve gotten them fake identities. The families would’ve been as discreet as possible. It’s a big deal when you adopt a stranger, but no one questions when you’re taking in your sister’s kid.”
“That’s not a bad thought,” Seer answers thoughtfully. “That’s where we’ll start. We need to find closed family adoption cases in the last four years. Anywhere in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas. I doubt she would keep the kids close by if she’s trying to hide them.”
“Give me some time,” Snake calls out. “That’ll be thousands of cases.”
“You have an hour,” I tell him. “While you’re at it, find as many surveillance videos of Meredith as you can from her time as a social worker. She quit for a reason. We need to find out what that reason was.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO
The concrete wall is cold against my back as I sit on the uncomfortable bed in my jail cell. I’ve stayed in worse accommodations over the years, but I was free to leave. Pocus told me I wasn’t a prisoner. Ironic. I should never have left his house. If I’d trusted Charlie, I wouldn’t be in this mess.
She’d be safe. I don’t care what Pocus said.
He’ll come for her. He’ll use every resource he has to get her out of that house and then all this will be for nothing. He’ll try to break me, to find out where the rest of the kids are, but I won’t tell him. I’ll die before I let him have them.
I stare at the opposite wall. I feel helpless. No one believes me. Even my lawyer thinks I should take a plea deal. Of course, he’s paid by the state. He has no real skin in the game for me. He’ll be paid whether I win or lose, he only wants it on his record that he tried. I’ll rot in jail for the rest of my life for something I didn’t do.
He’d said the police have a strong case against me. He said they had evidence and an established pattern of behavior. That’s bullshit. There’s no evidence of the kids, I made sure of that. Every single child I rescued was falling through the cracks in the foster system. Nobody was paying attention to them. Nobody would have reported them missing. That’s exactly what made them so vulnerable.
