“You look shook up.”
“I’m fine, everything’s… I just don’t know where the hell my daughter went.” He tried to sound annoyed, not scared.
“The junior and senior girls, a lot of them go over to the food court down the block after school. Where the hospital is? They get pizza or ice cream or have a bagel or what have you. I see them heading over there in little gangs.”
“But you didn’t see Abby, right?”
He shook his head. “Nor her friend Jenna.”
“It’s the damnedest thing.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
He texted her: Where R U????? and waited for her reply, but nothing came. He waited for the word delivered to appear in little letters under the text, a reassuring confirmation. But it hung there in a green balloon, a dialogue bubble in a comic strip. And nothing came back. He called her cell again.
Finally, he realized, stupidly, that he hadn’t called the one, most obvious place: home. She must have gone home on her own, sulking, and turned off her phone. She had a house key, after all.
No answer.
In the old days of answering machines, he could have spoken after the beep, and if she was there, she would have heard. And picked up. But that didn’t work in the age of voice mail.
He pulled out of the circular drive and drove the few short blocks over to the medical area. The traffic was heavy and there were no parking spaces. He double-parked and raced into the food court, moving from the bagel place to the pizza place to the coffee place to the ice cream place, and she wasn’t there. The tables were crowded with people, a few tables of girls just a few years older than Abby, some looking Abby’s age, but none of them Abby.
He returned to the car with his heart pounding in his ears and found a Day-Glo orange parking ticket tucked under a windshield wiper. He didn’t care. He got into the car and gunned the engine and barreled through a yellow traffic light, and drove to Marlborough Street.
No parking spaces there, either. He double-parked and ran up the front steps of his building. Keyed himself in and took the stairs to the second floor, and as he put the key in the lock, he rehearsed the angry words he was going to speak.
But she wasn’t home.
He collapsed onto the couch, gripping his iPhone, feeling at once hollow and nauseated.
He was finding it hard to keep the terrifying thoughts from intruding now. The simple logic of the cartel’s enforcers taking his daughter. Of course they would. He cursed himself for ever having let himself get involved in this. He should have taken his chances with the lawyer and the court system, and his daughter would be here with him, instead of…
He called Galvin’s cell again and it went to voice mail, but he didn’t leave a message. He called Galvin’s office and asked for Galvin and got the same unhelpful secretary. “He must have left early for a meeting out of the office, Mr. Goodman. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
Danny found it hard to believe that Galvin’s secretary couldn’t locate him precisely at any moment, but he said, “I’m a friend. As I told you. What’s his home number?”
“I’m sorry,” she replied quickly. “We don’t give that out.”
“You see, the problem is that my daughter’s missing, and I need to know whether she might have gone home with Jenna. My daughter is Abby Goodman. Can you at least call Celina and ask if she’s there?”
A pause. “Certainly, can you hold?”
In a little over a minute, she returned to the line. “I’m sorry, Celina’s not home. None of the family is there. I wish I could help you. I know how worried you must be.”
“Thanks for trying,” he said, and hung up.
He called Abby’s phone and called it again and again. He texted her again. He searched his call log for missed calls.
You heard things like the first thirty-six hours after a disappearance were the most important. Or was it the first twelve hours? He didn’t remember.
But he knew he should call the police and report her missing, that was the first thing to do.
File a missing-persons report with the police and look forward to that moment, maybe an hour from now, when his phone rang and it was Abby, and there’d been some sort of misunderstanding, and he’d have to call the police back sheepishly. He would be delighted to be made a fool of.
He just wanted her back.
If… if the cartel enforcers had done… something… (he wouldn’t let himself complete that thought. Just… something) they would contact him and make a demand.
And he would instantly comply, whatever they wanted.
If they wanted blood, he would gladly offer himself up. If they would let her go, he’d submit himself to the same torture they’d inflicted on Esteban. Just as long as they let her go.
His iPhone rang, and he heaved a big sigh until he looked at it and saw it wasn’t Abby.
Heart hammering.
“No,” he said to Lucy. “Nothing. I looked everywhere. You didn’t hear from her?”
“This is weird, Danny.”
He just exhaled.
“It’s not like her.”
“No.”
“She wouldn’t have, I don’t know, gone somewhere on her own, right? I mean, a pretty sixteen-year-old girl, she’s not-”
“Don’t, Lucy. Just… don’t go there.”
“I’m sorry. Danny, you should probably notify the police.”
“You’re right.”
“I mean, it’s just a formality, the sort of thing you’re supposed to do, because I’m sure she’s on her way home, and it was a big misunderstanding, that’s all.”
“Right,” he said dully, and at that moment, he heard a key turning in the lock.
32
“Where were you?” he said. Torn between towering relief and towering anger, he tried his best to keep his tone neutral. But there was no disguising the quaver in his voice.
Abby seemed smaller, as if she had shrunk into herself, the way a pill bug rolls itself up into a tight ball when threatened. Her cheeks, normally brushed with pink, were bright red, but that could have been from being outside in the cool air. Her metallic-glinting scarf was wound around her neck several times. Her fine blond hair flew away in wild hanks.
“Shopping with Jenna,” she said. “What’s the big deal?”
He got up from behind his desk and approached slowly. “What’s… the big deal? What’s the big deal? You didn’t get my phone messages or my texts?”
“I turned off my phone.”
“You turned off your phone.” Steady, he told himself. Cool it. “When have you ever, I mean ever, turned your phone off? What the hell did you have it off for?”
She shrugged. “I was trying to save the battery.”
“That thing has never been turned off since I bought it for you, not once.”
“That’s not true.” She kept looking to the side, as if avoiding his eyes, as if afraid he’d see through her. She unwound her scarf.
“Can I see your phone, please?”
“For what?”
“I want to see the times of the text messages you sent. I want to see if you were on your phone during the last couple of hours when I was desperately trying to reach you, when I thought something bad might have happened.”
“Like I’m some kind of criminal, that’s why you want to look at my phone? Like you don’t believe me?”
“How come you won’t look at me?”
She pulled off her jacket, head still turned away. She circled around to her right and walked toward the bathroom. “I have to use the bathroom, okay?”
“Hold on a second.” She kept walking. “Will you stop, please? We’re talking.”
Without turning to look at him, staring at the bathroom door, she said, “What… do you want… to know?”
“You didn’t know I was picking you up at school?”
“Oh, I see, so you’re pissed I didn’t tell you I was going to walk around Newbury Street with Jenna?”