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***
Dimitri’s office was in an old brick building at the end of a dead-end street lined with dormant maples. The temperature was already dropping again as I slipped inside, under a sky the color of lead. It would snow again soon, somewhere in the back of my head I worried about the drive home. But then I pushed it out of my mind. Today’s reunion intrigued me, excited me, and gave me hope.
If Dimitri was as competent on the detective beat as he was in the sack, my daughter was as good as found.I mounted the steps carefully, holding up the hood of my coat with one hand.
The lobby was narrow and high-ceilinged, with airlock doors at either end, keeping the cold and drafts out. My footsteps echoed as I walked along looking for the right door. A directory sent me climbing the stairs to the second floor, which was just as deserted as the first. I wondered about that until I saw a waiting area on the second floor. The quiet made me nervous, but I was probably just imagining things. Besides, I definitely had something akin to stage fright as I walked up to Dimitri’s door.
I knocked on the door, and a moment later, heard a heavy footstep beyond. The door opened, and for the first time in almost six years, Dimitri was looming over me again.
He smiled when he saw me. “Alissa. It is good to see you again.” He held out his hands and I clasped them before I even thought about it. “Come in.”
His hands were warm and leathery-smooth and sent their heat into my small, chilly fingers so fast that it stung. He led me through the door into a small office with a leather couch, an aquarium full of guppies, and a desk with two chairs sitting across from one another. “It seems to be getting chilly outside again. May I take your coat?”
I shrugged out of it, sighing a little with relief as the room’s warmth hit my skin. My little apartment was always cold, no matter how well I sealed the windows or placed space heaters. I wanted to move some place better, but in this market, there was nothing else I could afford. Especially with the deal I got for doing repairs around the building.
“Thanks,” I sighed as he hung up my winter coat. If he noticed its threadbare bottom edge, he didn’t comment on it. “And thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”
“Well, the problem certainly seems urgent enough. So. Let’s catch up for a bit, then I’ll dive into the case with you. How have you been?”
“Uh, well, after we parted ways, I had a couple of good years. Michelle was born, I got my CPA license, and I found a place we could live that gave me a break on rent for doing repairs. I even got a job right after getting my license. Things were looking up. Then somebody took Michelle from her daycare in broad daylight. Those idiots who ran it just handed my baby over to this woman who claimed she was my sister without checking or calling me. Michelle wasn’t even the first they’d lost, the bastards!”
My voice broke a little on the last word as he led me to the couch and sat me down. “So you called the police.”
“Yes, I went through all the proper channels, did everything I was supposed to do.” I swallowed hard, struggling to keep my tears in. “But the police never found her. I don’t even think they tried that hard.”
“No, they wouldn’t. Once, maybe, but time and again they seem to prove themselves as more of a hindrance than a help. They’ll come after you for driving too fast, but the brute you’re fleeing from gets a pass from them.”
That just made me think of Alan. “When it comes to some crimes, they oftenarethe brutes.” Forty percent of married cops were domestic abusers. God, wish I’d known that before I took up with Alan. “But in my case, they hurt me most by being incompetent, apathetic, and lazy.”
“And so your daughter is still missing.” His smile had gone, expression now dark and thoughtful as he puttered over the electric kettle in the corner, making us tea.
“Yeah. And they’re about to give up the chase. The current lead detective thinks they’re wasting their time because she’s dead somewhere. I think he’s just convinced himself of that to excuse not finding her.”
“That may be,” he replied calmly. “Or he may genuinely believe it. Many kidnapped children do end up dead. However, given the way that she was taken, I suspect she is not.”
He brought me back a mug of steaming black tea. I warmed my hands around it gratefully as he sat down with his own mug and a plate of small cookies.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Most children who are killed in stranger abductions are taken by a pedophile, either opportunistically or as part of a planned hunt for a victim. He will kill the child afterward to prevent his victim from telling anyone what happened. There are also a small number of abductors who are mentally ill in some way, or desperate to be a parent, but they are much more likely to be peaceful, and those deaths are normally an accident. The other reasons children are taken include abduction for ransom, which we can rule out since you’re not wealthy and no communication was made by the kidnappers. Again, not in their best interests to kill the child. Finally, we have traffickers. And those, sadly, can be found in every major city in America, just like serial killers.”
“You think traffickers took her?”
“I’ll really have to have a look at the evidence to make more than educated guesses,” he admitted.
I nodded and dug in my pocket for the thumb drive, which I handed over. “Here you go. This is everything from the investigation that I could get my hands on, plus everything I found on my own.”
He nodded, and got his laptop, setting it on the coffee table in front of us and booting it up. He inserted the thumb drive and started going through the contents. “Wow. I’m guessing most of this information is your work?”
“Yeah. I figured that trying to find out whatever I could, would be a better use of my time than pacing or nagging the cops.” I gave him a sheepish little smile, and he let out that toe-curling chuckle again.
“You’re very dedicated. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” His smile crept back onto his lips as he kept reading. “So the police did not even consider investigating the Ivanovs?”
“They said they’d been cleared, but I don’t know if they did anything beyond basic questioning. It made me crazy. I just couldn’t get them to cooperate no matter what I showed them.” My throat tightened as I remembered all of those helpless, frustrating days.
“I see. Well, I suspect I should start there. Fortunately, I have many contacts locally who should be able to help me get to the bottom of this.”
I tried my tea, strong, tannic, smoky and unsweetened, a big hot cup of wake-up juice. Probably just what I needed, but I immediately wanted to ask for some sugar.
