“I don’t understand why,” she said. “And it’s his account. I don’t want to violate that. We’ve encouraged him to be more independent, more responsible. If I…”
“If we can access his account, we can see if he’s withdrawn any money,” Lauren said. “We can see if he’s made purchases. Where he might be.”
Marian closed her mouth, blinking rapidly.
Ed patted her hand. “Get the laptop. It’s okay.”
She exhaled, then disappeared down the hallway.
“My wife,” Ed said. “She wants to believe the best. That he’s going to change.” He shook his head. “But it ain’t gonna happen. He is who he is. And it’s time for us to stop protecting him.”
I appreciated his pragmatism about his own kid and I sympathized to a degree. If Elizabeth wasn’t involved, I would’ve been more inclined to ask more questions, find out more about the kid, where he was having trouble.
But at that moment, I was only concerned with the fact that Elizabeth had apparently taken on with a guy who seemed distinctly on the wrong track.
Marian reappeared with a laptop, the screen already lit up. She set it on the coffee table and knelt next to it.
“She does all of our banking,” Ed said, nodding at the computer. “His account is at our bank. We deposit two hundred a month in his account. No idea if, or how, he uses it.”
Marian tapped at the keys with two fingers, staring at the screen. She waited, then looked at me. “Are you going to call the police?”
“At some point, yes,” I said. “But if I can keep your son out of it, I will. I can’t promise, but if he hasn’t done anything wrong, I’ll make sure the authorities know that.”
This time, Ed put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “It’ll be alright, Marian.”
She glanced down at the screen and I couldn’t read her expression.
“The account hasn’t been accessed for three weeks,” she said.
My stomach sank.
“The last time he took any money out was three weeks ago,” she repeated. “And it was here. At the grocery store. I remember. I sent him that day to get a few things.”
I leaned back in the couch. I felt like I’d gotten to take a look down a tunnel and now a boulder had just rolled in front of it, blocking my view.
“Did he keep money in his room?” Lauren asked. “Anything like that? They would need money.”
Ed shook his head. “We checked his room. We check it regularly and he knows that. He wouldn’t have kept anything there. And I don’t think he has that kind of discipline. To save money. He’s too hot to trot to go buy video games.”
Lauren looked at me, disheartened, disappointed. I was sure I looked the same way because I was feeling the same things.
“There might be something else,” Marian said, glancing at her husband, then moving her eyes away.
We all waited.
“About a year ago,” she said, her voice stuttering. “I gave him…I mean, I got him a credit card.”
“Jesus, Marian,” Ed said, closing his eyes.
“I know, I know,” she said, seemingly on the verge of tears. “You wanted to stop enabling him. And I have. But I was also trying to be logical. If we really want him to be independent, to be capable of moving out, he has to build credit. To rent an apartment. To do things on his own.” She looked at us, looking for approval. “I told him he had to pay it with his own money.”
“You mean the money we give him each month?” Ed said, frowning.
Her face reddened.
“The card,” I said. “Can you check the records on that?”
She tapped again at the keyboard. “I don’t know. It’s through our bank so I think I can.”
Ed leaned forward and I thought maybe he was angry with her. But he just patted her shoulder again, silently telling her he understood.
She bit her upper lip, then something flashed through her eyes. “He’s used it.”
I leaned forward with Lauren.
“Two days ago,” she said, her finger on the screen. “He stopped at a gas station in Iowa. It looks like he advanced cash off of it.” Her finger moved again. “Then yesterday. A hotel in Nebraska.” She looked at me. “That’s it.”
I pulled out my phone. “Name of the hotel?”
She recited it and I plugged it into the phone’s browser. Thirty seconds later, I was on the phone with a hotel staffer who informed me that Bryce Ponder had checked out that morning.
I stuck the phone back in my pocket. “They’ve already checked out.”
“Should I cancel the card?” Marian asked. “So he can’t use it?”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “We want him to keep using it. To tell us where he is.” I hesitated. “How would you feel about giving me the account info? So I can continue to track them?”
She looked at her husband.
He looked at me. “I have your word that you’ll try to keep Bryce out of trouble?”
“Look, if he’s just driving the car,” I said. “If they decided to do this together for whatever reason and he’s just along for the ride? You have my word. If he hasn’t done anything wrong, I’ll do the best I can to make sure there’s no probation violation.”
He leaned forward, setting his elbows on his thighs, folding his hands together between his knees. He gazed at me for a long time.
“Yeah, we’ll give it to you,” Ed Ponder finally said.
FORTY-NINE
“I think we need to call the police,” Lauren said.
We were back in the car. After getting the credit card info from the Ponders and a cursory look around Bryce’s room that produced nothing, we told them we’d be in touch with them as soon as we learned anything new. I told Lauren that I needed to go see a friend in the hospital before we decided exactly how to proceed.
She was not exhibiting much patience.
“I’m not disagreeing with you,” I said, navigating the highway traffic. The sun dipped low on the horizon. “But I’d rather wait until we have a location for them.”
“How far could they be from Omaha?” she said, throwing her hands up.
“Actually, pretty far,” I said. “We don’t know what direction they’re headed and if they checked out at normal time, they’ve had the better part of the day to drive.”
She turned away from me and stared out the window.
“And if we involve the police here now, there’s no way you and I will be able to go anywhere if we do get a location for them,” I said. “We’ll be locked into questioning for hours and you know what that’s like.”
She pulled out her phone and refreshed the browser.
“Anything?” I asked.
“No,” she said, staring at Bryce Ponder’s credit card account on her screen.
“They’ve done it two nights in a row,” I said. “It’ll happen. But if we’re tied up answering questions, we won’t get to be the ones that go to her. They’ll hold us.”
“But if we got their information in the system, there would be more eyes looking for them,” she said, tapping the window. “For her. A wider net. Eventually, we’d get to her. They’d hold her.”
“It might mean screwing this Ponder kid,” I said.
“Like I care about him.”
I glanced at her. “You seemed sympathetic while we were there.”
“I wanted information,” she said. “They weren’t going to respond to you yelling at them. But I could care less what happens to him.”
“I gave the guy my word.”
“Yeah, well, the kid’s on probation. That isn’t our problem.” She made a fist and pounded it against the window. “She’s out there, Joe. I don’t want to lose her again. If they can get her in custody, she’ll be there when we get there. She’ll be there waiting. She won’t be lost. We’ll know where she is.”
The GPS directed me to the upcoming exit and I moved over to the far right lane.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?”
“We can call them,” I said. “Bigger net. That’s what you want, let’s call them.”
“What I want is to see our daughter again,” she said.
She was being logical. I was not. She was trading the idea of being the first to reach Elizabeth for more people looking for her. She was willing to hand over the search for her to other people. I wasn’t so sure I was willing to do that.