Джеймс Паттерсон - The 18th Abduction

Traffic sped on, leaving Anna Sotovina in the gutter.

She screamed at the sky. No one heard her.

Chapter 3

On a chilly Wednesday morning my partner, Rich Conklin, parked our squad car on the downhill slope of Jackson Street in the shadow of Pacific View Preparatory School.

PVP was possibly the best high school in California, with a cutting-edge curriculum, five statewide team sports championships last year, a record number of top college acceptances, and a cadre of first-class teachers.

We were both entirely focused on a disturbing case involving the disappearance of three of those teachers. It was day two of our investigation, and it wasn’t looking good.

On Monday evening Carly Myers, Adele Saran, and Susan Jones had apparently walked from Pacific View Prep to a local bar called the Bridge, had a good time at dinner, and, after leaving the restaurant, vanished without a trace. The teachers were all single women in their late twenties to early thirties. A bartender knew what each of the women had had to drink. Their waitress and a customer had watched the three women leave the Bridge together at around nine that night. Reportedly, all were in good spirits.

When the teachers didn’t show up for work the next morning, their cars were discovered in the school’s parking lot with the doors locked, their book bags and computer cases in the front passenger seats.

We’d spent yesterday checking out their homes and habits. They hadn’t slept in their beds, called anyone to say they’d be out, or used cash machines or their credit cards. It appeared that they had simply vanished.

Director of CSI Charles Clapper had called in his best techs and investigators from all shifts.

They were going at it hard.

There were no surveillance cameras focused on faculty parking, but Forensics was reviewing the video taken inside the Bridge, frame by frame, dusting the women’s cars inside and out, and examining everything on their computers.

So far our lab had found nothing suspicious and hadn’t turned up a single clue.

Bottom line: thirty-six hours had passed since anyone had seen or heard from them.

By the time we’d finished checking their homes, Lieutenant Warren Jacobi had already contacted the women’s parents. Understandably, as good at his job as he was, Jacobi’s questions had sent the parents into a panic.

Carly Myers’s family lived in town. Conklin and I had visited them last night after Jacobi’s call to see if a stone had been left unturned. It had gone about as well as expected. Sheer terror, anger, unanswerable questions, demands for promises that their daughter would be all right.

Their fear and pain and denial had stuck with me and reverberated still.

I slugged down the last of my coffee, crumpled the empty cup, and stuffed it into the plastic bag we kept in the car for trash. My partner did the same.

Rich Conklin is a sunny-side-up kind of guy, but you wouldn’t have known that today. He sighed long and hard, not just frustrated over this puzzle box full of blank pieces. He was reasonably worried. He had wanted to be in Homicide for years, and now he was living the dark side of the dream. I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking it, too.

Where were the teachers?

Were they alive?

How much time did they have left?

As I texted Joe, my new husband, my partner sang the refrain of an old Steve Miller song, “Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future.”

I checked in with dispatch, then said to my partner, “Okay, Rich. Let’s go.”

Chapter 4

Conklin and I got out of the car and headed up the stone stairway from the street to the school.

At the top of the stairway was a manicured lawn with a high 180-degree view of the ocean that was opaque with a foggy marine layer this morning. Ahead of us stood Pacific View Prep, a compound made up of three five-story buildings at right angles, forming a horseshoe around an open courtyard.

We approached the main entrance dead ahead in the central building and badged the armed security guard, whose name tag read K. STROOP.

I made the introductions.

“Sergeant Boxer,” I said. “Homicide. My partner, Inspector Conklin.”

“Homicide?” Stroop said. “Hey, no. You found their bodies?”

“No, no,” Conklin said. “We’re treating this missing persons as top priority. All units, all hands, are on deck.”

Stroop looked relieved. I asked him, “Did you see Myers, Jones, and Saran leave the school Monday night?”

He shook his head. “I go off duty at four.”

“But you know them, right?”

“Sure, casually. I see them in the hallways, say, ‘Morning,’ ‘Have a great weekend.’ Like that.”

I asked, “Would you know if any of them have enemies? Maybe a jealous boyfriend? Or a disgruntled student who didn’t get the grade he or she wanted? Anyone showing inappropriate interest in any of them?”

He shook his head no again.

“They’re all nice ladies. Our students are good kids.”

I nodded. “I do have some routine questions for you.”

He said, “Go ahead.”

I asked where he had been the last couple of nights. He’d spent Monday home all night with the wife and son; last night he and his wife had gone to a birthday dinner at a restaurant with friends.

He pulled out his phone and produced time-stamped selfies at the dinner table, which he forwarded to me with his phone number and that of the birthday boy.

He said, “I wish I knew something. I want to help. I can’t stop thinking about them.”

Conklin handed his card to Stroop. “Call anytime if a thought strikes.” Then we entered the main building and started down the wide hallway.

Two days ago Carly Myers, Adele Saran, and Susan Jones had walked this same hallway on their way to and from class. As Stroop had confirmed, Monday had been an ordinary workday. He hadn’t seen any red flags that had caused alarm.

So what had happened to the three schoolteachers?

My sense was that they’d had no clue their lives were about to veer off from ordinary workday to an extraordinarily bad place. That they’d be abducted on Monday night within minutes of leaving the Bridge.

Every passing hour made it more likely that they were dead.

Chapter 5

Conklin and I checked the names on the doors as we made our way down the broad, locker-lined hallway to the office of assistant dean Karin Slaughter.

In a conversation with the dean, we’d learned that Slaughter was thirty-two, had a master’s degree in education, had been with Pacific View Prep for five years, and, importantly, was friends with the three missing women.

Even if she didn’t know it yet, she might have a clue to their disappearance.

We found Slaughter’s office, and Conklin knocked on her open door. Slaughter stood up from her desk and stepped forward to shake our hands. She was a conservative dresser, wearing a midcalf-length black jersey dress, low-heeled shoes, and a look of genuine concern.

I heard myself say, “You have the same name as one of my favorite writers.”

“I hear that a lot,” she said with a smile. “We’re Googlegangers,” she said.

“Googlegangers? Let me guess: people with the same name?”

“That’s it. Google Karin Slaughter and we both come up. I’m a big fan of hers, too.”

I liked her immediately. She indicated a row of Slaughter’s bestsellers on her bookshelf, but as she returned to her desk, her welcoming expression drooped with worry.

My partner and I took the two chairs across from Slaughter’s desk, and she blurted out, “I’m so frightened. I cannot sleep or think about anything but them. Did you know that I was supposed to go out with them Monday night? I couldn’t go. I had too much work. I had to beg off.”