Innocent Prey. Maggie Shayne
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in my tone.
“But the coach is sighted, right?”
“Uh-huh.” He said it like he knew what was coming next. Hell, he probably did.
“And that makes sense because no one knows what it’s like to be blind better than a sighted person does, right?”
“Of course not.”
“So explain it to me, then, ’cause I’m not getting it.”
He stopped. We’d walked about five steps. (Myrtle, twenty.) “I didn’t say I thought it was a great idea, I’m just telling you how it went down.”
“I know.” I said it like it should’ve been obvious. “I’m just saying.”
“Can we focus here? And stop looking at the damn birds, Rachel, we need to look at the ground.”
I’d been watching a red-winged blackbird in a nearby tree. He was perched on the topmost branch, and he kept chirping this loud, long note and hunching up his shoulders at the same time, so the little red patches were more prominent. Showing off for the ladies, I bet. “You look for clues with your eyes. I look with my other senses, remember?”
“So is that bird giving you anything to go on?”
I shrugged. “It’s spring. Horniness thrives. I say we question the boyfriend. She does have a boyfriend, doesn’t she?”
“Two that her father felt worth mentioning,” he said. “One former, one current.”
“Let’s talk to them both. And the blindness coach.”
He nodded. “Already on my list.”
“I’ll be more helpful when we’re doing that.” I glanced ahead and saw a fat robin skipping along the sidewalk pecking at something too small for me to see. Myrtle sensed it or felt it or something, because she was focused in that direction, too, leaning forward like she was getting ready to lunge at the bird, even though she couldn’t see it. “If we do it indoors,” I added.
He didn’t reply, so I lifted my head again, met his eyes. He was grinning at me, flashing the Dimple of Doom. My doom, at least. I made a face and started walking, scanning the sidewalk as I went, at least when I could take my eyes off my bulldog and her absolute enjoyment of the walk. Myrt really had living in the moment down, that was for sure. Can’t see? Oh well. I smell a squirrel! was her philosophy. Frankly, I thought it was a pretty good one.
I used to have to coax and cajole and tug to get her to walk any distance at all. But today she was rushing me. She was definitely getting more fit. Mason caught me watching her, sent me a look that asked for my focus.
I know, I know, but it was my first sighted springtime since age ten. So shoot me. “Come on, get with the program, Detective,” I said. Best defense is a good offense, right? “Daylight’s burning.”
We completed our inspection of the sidewalk where Stevie had obeyed her coach’s orders, tapping her way from the bench to the corner, and didn’t find anything. Well, we didn’t, but Myrtle did. She’d peed on a clump of weeds, chomped the blossom off a stray daffodil and picked up a discarded Pepsi can, which she was still carrying like a prized treasure.
Whatever had happened to Stephanie had happened after she’d gone around the corner. But we’d already known that. So we turned right, just like she had. And then I really slowed down. Mason walked near the inside edge, where sidewalk met park, so I took the curb, where sidewalk met road.
And there in a drain was a cell phone. It had fallen onto the grate, and wedged itself most of the way through. I’d been hanging around cops—well, one cop—long enough to know not to touch it, so I pointed it out, then crouched low, pulled my long sweater over one hand and picked it up with the sleeve while Myrt dropped her soda can and tried to grab it before I could. “Got’cha!”
I won and turned toward Mason, holding up the phone. And then I flashed back to Thanksgiving, when my personal assistant and best-Goth, Amy, had been snatched off the highway by two jerks in a white pickup truck. We’d found her phone at the scene, too.
Weird.
Mason came over with a plastic bag and I dropped the phone in. “Nice find,” he said.
“Wish I still had that damn stylus in my purse so we could tap this thing without leaving a print. I lost it, need to buy another one.” I’d had one at the scene of Amy’s brief abduction. Ms. Smarty-pants had snapped a photo of the pickup, knowing it was trouble, and left it behind to lead us to her. “Mason, do you think this could be related to what happened to Amy?”
“Because of the phone?”
I nodded.
“I don’t think so. Amy threw her phone underneath her car deliberately. She knew she was in danger. Even if Stevie did the same, it would only mean that they think alike.”
“Right. And we have so many women being snatched off the streets of Binghamton that there’s no way it’s connected.” I was being sarcastic.
He gave me a look. “Okay, I’ll give you that one.” He nodded, thinking on it. “Amy’s twenty-five, Stephanie’s twenty. That’s close enough, I guess.”
I thought back to the photo he’d shown me of the missing girl. “Amy’s got dyed black hair and multiple piercings. Stephanie’s a blonde Barbie doll. It can’t be the resemblance. Still,” I said, “the phones.”
“Coincidence. Besides, we don’t even know it’s her phone.”
I made a face while I tried to figure out how to say what I was thinking without sounding like a complete flake. “I’m not saying that us finding the victim’s phone at both scenes is evidence that the two things are connected. I’m just wondering if it’s a more...a more woo-woo clue.”
“A woo-woo clue?” he asked, arching one eyebrow. I loved when he did that. “Is that a technical term?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“You mean, like maybe the phone being here is the universe dropping us a reminder of Amy’s abduction, just to get us thinking along those lines?”
I shrugged and averted my eyes. “If you believe in that sort of thing.”
“You mean the sort of thing you put in your books and then tell me is bullshit, Rachel?”
I shrugged. “You’re the one who keeps trying to convince me it might not be.”
“So you’ve decided to believe me, then?”
Tipping my head to one side, I said, “I was just trying it out. You’re right. It’s bullshit.” Then I took a big breath. “But if that is Stephanie Mattheson’s phone, then it’s probably safe to say she didn’t run away just to ditch her coach and worry her parents.”
“You’re right about that.”
“There’s a drugstore around the corner, and I’ll bet we can find a ten-pack of those styluses.” I frowned. “Styli?”
He was looking at the road near the grate, though, all but ignoring me. So I looked, too. There was a parking meter there. Probably had been a few dozen vehicles in and out since the night before last, when this had gone down.
Or maybe not.
He pulled out his own phone and took a few close-up shots of the area, while I looked up and down the sidewalks and road, wondering how this chick could’ve been snatched against her will without someone seeing something. I mean, it wasn’t a busy place, but it wasn’t deserted, either.
And then I thought of Amy again. Stupid, I know, but there was something bugging me, itching at my brain. I kept feeling just like I’d felt last Thanksgiving morning, when Amy’s mother had called to tell me she’d never made it home, and I had known—just known—that something awful had happened.
We’d