Smith Investigation Series Box Set 1 (11 page)

BOOK 4:
LOST GAME

Chapter 1

"So, what's the deal with your book?" asked DeMarco. I glanced at him, but his eyes were closed. I sighed.

Today was a slow day at Smith Investigations, and it was understandable for DeMarco to ask stupid questions. I decided to let it go. He didn't.

"Seriously, are you making money off it?"

"Seriously, don't you have anything else to amuse yourself with?"

"What?" He opened his eyes and looked at me.

I rolled my eyes. "Fine. Yeah, I'm making some money. People seem to like it, for some reason . . ."

"So, when is the next book coming? It's been, what, two years since you wrote the first one?"

"Who said there's another book?" Was he set on making my day as bad as it could be?

I slowly raised a hand and massaged my forehead. I suspected a migraine was to come soon, the prospect of it making my skin crawl.

"What are you talking about? What about Fitzpatrick?"

"You've read the book?" His question had taken me completely by surprise.

He straightened up in his chair and turned to me. "Yeah. And I liked it, too. Let me tell you, you need to reveal what happens to Fitzpatrick. I mean, is he done with the PI business? Is he getting married? Not to mention the gunshot wound, don't get me started on that one!"

I laughed, his excitement infectious.

"I don't know," I started. "I had planned to make Fitz . . ."

"Nooo! Don't tell me! Write!"

My cheeks hurt from all the laughing. I lifted a pen and scribbled something on my notepad.

"What are you doing?" DeMarco asked.

"Writing."

He said something else but I didn't pay enough attention. I was suddenly feeling inspired. What had started as a play-pretend for DeMarco's sake felt like something I should really do. The pen seemed to move on its own accord, and soon words were flowing from one page to the next. The idea of another book had stopped being ridiculous.

My revelation was interrupted by a buzz from downstairs. We had a client. I reluctantly put the pen down and stood up.

With a nod, DeMarco acknowledged that, in the absence of everyone else, we were to bear the responsibility of being the “first responders” on this case. I gestured to Robert's headphones, meaning that DeMarco's job was to listen in on my interview.

Walking out of Operations, I mentally prepared myself for greeting our clients. I did a few discreet stretches behind the reception desk, and a few seconds of deep breathing later I was ready.

The door opened slowly, and a visibly distressed woman stepped in, her hands shaking, her eyes red from crying. She looked like she didn't know the first thing to do, like it was the first time she was out without someone holding her hand.

"Hello. I'm Robin Walsh . . ."

"I need to find my boy," the woman blurted out.

"OK. Let's talk, Mrs. . . ."

"Gerald. Loreen Gerald."

I nodded, showing her into Smith's office. She collapsed into the uncomfortable chair we saved for non-paying customers, and started sobbing.

I used the silence to quickly read her.

Not older than 30, plum, wearing a quality perm that had seen better days, she looked like a suburban housewife from the 50s. Her clothes, although cheap, were clean and cared for.

I concluded that I was dealing with an overprotective mother, stay-at-home wife of modest income, most likely with a conservative or religious background. "Not my favorite sort," I thought and reached for Smith's notebook.

"Can you tell me what happened, Mrs. Gerald?"

She sniffled, so I offered her a tissue. She looked afraid, which made me strangely uncomfortable.

"Sure. My son, Mickey, he hasn't come home in two days. He's twelve and doesn't like school that much, you know? But that's how boys are, a bit restless, energetic. He wouldn't have run away, he's a good child. Never had issues with him. I mean, yes, he fights at school, but he's a good boy. My baby . . ."

She started crying again and I raised my eyes to the ceiling, trying to fight early signs of exasperation.

"You say he's been missing two days, Mrs. Gerald?"

She nodded, almost choking on tears.

"Yes. And the police don't want to help. They haven't told us anything, and my husband has been to talk to them every day!"

I thought of a few reasons why someone might not feel like being cooperative, one of them being annoyance over her husband's pestering, but kept the thought to myself.

"Can you tell me more about the day Mickey disappeared, Mrs. Gerald?" I encouraged her, trying to sort my objectivity from the annoyance I was feeling. I had dealt with emotional rambling before, but it seemed to affect me more now. On top of that, I was strangely upset with the fact that Mrs. Gerald had interrupted my writing.

She scowled at my impatience but kept any comment to herself.

"Sure, Mrs. Walsh."

"It's Miss. But, please, call me Rob."

Judging by her expression, she was shocked to learn that I wasn't married.

"I . . . Mickey, he went to school that day. He had a model car. He took it to school, it was a project and he was so excited. He doesn't like school too much, but that day he couldn't wait to show off his project, the car."

"Have you seen him leave for school?" I asked, in an attempt to limit the rambling.

"Yes, of course. I always do—you must, with a child this young," she preached, lifting her chin high, trying to appear righteous, I guess.

"And that was the last time you saw him?"

Tears were welling up in her eyes again as she nodded. "When he didn't come home from school, I thought he had stopped to play with the boys. There's a basketball court near us, so I sent my husband to bring Mickey back. You know boys, they get distracted," she continued, after blowing her nose loudly.

I decided against telling her that girls get distracted as well and just nodded, instead.

"They told him that Mickey hadn't been on the court that day and that's when we knew, my husband and I that something terrible must've happened."

"Who told him?"

"The other kids playing on the court. Older kids, but there were a couple of Mickey's friends too. My husband called me, and I waited for him to come home and call the police. They came right away, took our statements, looked in Mickey's room, and promised to do something. But nothing’s happened and no one is telling us anything. Please, can you help us?"

I looked up from my notebook. I knew that the police would have put up an Amber alert immediately and if they haven't found anything by now, it most likely meant that they had no leads, or they didn't consider the case as a priority. Which, to me, it translated as either police incompetence or a runaway situation. I couldn't relate either option to Mrs. Gerald, no matter how much she seemed to annoy me.

"We'll make every effort, Mrs. Gerald. We have a highly trained team that'll start looking into things right away, and we'll make sure to keep you and the police in the loop, every step of the way." The well-rehearsed line seemed like the best option.

She seemed to relax a bit.

"Thank you." She grabbed my hand suddenly, holding it tightly like it was her only lifeline. "Please find my baby, Robin. Please."

I couldn't say anything. Instead, I squeezed her hand and smiled.

After taking her number and promising a million times that we would be in touch as often as humanly possible, I could finally close the door behind her and breathe easily.

Back in Operations, DeMarco was fiddling with a piece of paper from his notebook.

"Missing child, eh?" he said, his tone neutral.

"Yes. We need to talk to the police, see what they think. And go see the husband, maybe he'll be able to tell us more."

"School? Friends?"

"Yes. And any social media the child might've used."

"I guess you're taking point on this one?"

I nodded, searching in my desk for a new notebook. I had used the last pages from my old one to write about Fitzpatrick's fate.

"We have a case!" Spike burst through the door, excitedly waving a file at us.

"Is that so?" DeMarco asked, obviously believing that nothing could top our own case.

"Yeah. And a big one."

"Oh? Please, tell me more."

"Well, I can't really tell you much, 'cause it's kinda confidential. You see, the client is high-profile, and the matter is private."

"So, a celebrity wants you to dig some dirt for them?"

"Basically." And she left it at that.

DeMarco's interest had been obviously piqued, despite his best efforts to look indifferent. My interest, on the other hand, had stayed at the same mild intensity. I was more excited by the thought of finally being able to write my book idea.

Chapter 2

I wiped my mouth with the dinner napkin and took a sip of ice water. My lunch was over.

In ten minutes I had to meet DeMarco at the police station. I had been partnered with him by default since Spike was leading her first case, something involving a celebrity, and Dylan, our surveillance expert, was assisting on her investigation.

I paid for my meal and walked out before the server could hand me the change. I didn't really care.

Walking to my car, I passed by the blooming rose bushes the diner painstakingly cared for, but remained unmoved by their beauty. I seemed to move in slow motion, my mind protectively enclosed in a bubble that didn't let it engage too much with what was happening around me.

I felt composed, the only thing slightly annoying being some sort of buzzing at the edges of my mind. "I must be tired," I reckoned, folding into the driver's seat.

I spent the drive to the police station lost in my thoughts. I couldn't exactly remember what I’d thought of, but it seemed to have taken up a lot of my energy.

DeMarco was already waiting for me. He was leaning against the old brick wall, smoking.

I parked the car and walked towards him.

"I won't tell Spike," I said, startling him.

"Please, don't," he begged, stubbing the cigarette out.

"Shall we?"

He followed me into the station. I waited my turn at the Reception desk, behind a teenager who seemed to believe that all stolen goods end up magically at the police station and that the point of reporting a theft was so you could pick them up as you were reporting them. To put it in his words:

"Nah, fam, why would I report my phone if you can't give it to me now?" It seemed legit to him.

"Hi," I said, giving the overworked officer a comforting smile. "I'm Robin Walsh from Smith Investigations. I would like to talk with whomever is in charge of the Gerald missing child."

The man breathed easily, happy to deal with such a simple matter.

"You need to talk to James Bellagio. Third floor, you'll probably find him in the squad room."

"Thanks."

He looked like he wanted to thank me, instead, for not being another crazy person to sort out.

DeMarco had already pressed the elevator button, so the doors were opening by the time I got to it.

"Third floor." He obliged.

"Where can we find our guy?"

"Squad room," I said with a shrug.

One well-placed question to an all-knowing-looking officer was all that it took to find James Bellagio.

"What can I do you for, detective?" a tall, homely man asked us. He was so tall I needed to crane head back on my neck to look him in the eyes.

"We're working on a missing child case. Michael Gerald, twelve. He disappeared two days ago, and we'd like to know if you can tell us something about the state of things."

He looked thoughtful for a second, like he was trying to sift through the thousands of missing kids he had been working in the last couple of days.

I couldn't help but raise my eyebrows.

He caught my expression. "Yes, Michael Gerald. Mickey," he said, smiling at me. "What do you want to know?"

"What can you tell us?"

He chuckled. "I can see you're not new to the business."

My age didn't give that away?
I asked myself. I was in no mood to do the PI-versus-police flirting dance. "Have you made any progress?" I chose to say, instead.

"There's no progress to be made, if you ask me. I mean, we've put all the alerts up, and we've looked at everything connected to the boy, and nothing suspicious came up. What we did find was a misbehaving child, a bully at school, who managed to hide his malicious actions from his parents very well."

"And you think that he ran away," I concluded for him in a flat tone that expressed no emotion.

DeMarco glanced at me, like he was expecting my usual anti-police incompetence rant, but I wasn't feeling it. The man made sense and it wouldn't have been the first case where a little menace would've run from home, only to return with his tail between his legs after he got fed up with the real world.

Bellagio nodded, looking pleasantly surprised by my reaction.

"I've seen this sort over the years. Single children raised by strict parents, the father is probably the head of the house, lots of repressed anger going on. So the kid has some repressed issues himself. That's how you end up with rebellious kids who run away and do drugs and God knows what else. Mickey seems to have expressed his anger at school or anywhere else he found someone weaker than him. He was a bully, but the sneaky sort. From what his teachers told me, he seemed to be more violent towards things and not people, but he would manipulate his classmates and friends like a true con man."

"So, you think there's no revenge angle to look at, then?"

He nodded.

"Have you talked to his friends?" DeMarco decided to join the discussion.

"Yes. But they're kids, they haven't been very helpful so far."

DeMarco shook his head, visibly unhappy with what he was hearing. Bellagio chose to take a sip of coffee and eye my colleague patiently.

"Well, I guess there's nothing you can give us, then," I concluded, thinking that we still had to look in a few other places before finding a way to tell the family they were basically bad parents.

"Nice meeting you, Robin Walsh."

This was new. Police weren’t in the habit of using that word to describe their encounters with me and, while Bellagio's remark seemed to leave me unmoved, it made DeMarco's eyes narrow suspiciously.

"Likewise," I said automatically, and turned to leave.

"If I find anything, I'll give you a call."

"Thanks."

Behind me, someone cleared their throat.

"Oh, right!" I finally figured it out.

"You need my number," I said. DeMarco pursed his lips, trying hard not to laugh.

"If you please," Bellagio agreed, grinning.

I pulled out my notebook and scribbled the number. "Here you go."

After a few awkward seconds of silence, DeMarco notified me that we needed to be in Operations by 4 p.m. Smith had summoned us to a meeting and we were required to attend.

"We better leave, then," I said, and turned to leave once more.

"Bye, Robin."

Bellagio seemed unhappy that our talk had been cut short. I didn't understand why, but DeMarco enlightened me as we rode the elevator down.

"He likes you. Like, 'let's go and on a date, get married and have kids' likes you."

"Get out of here."