Karen Rose - Silent Scream

“You were right about the Gators,” Abbott said, then pointed to Kane who was drumming his fingers impatiently, the phone crushed against his ear. “What’s with him?”

“He’s talking with Tracey Mullen’s father in Iowa, who is deaf. They’re using a relay service. Kane speaks, the relay operator types into a TTY, Mr. Mullen types back, and the operator reads to Kane. It’s a slow process.”

“So what was Tracey Mullen doing in Minneapolis?” Abbott asked.

“We’re still sorting it out. I spoke with the mother in Florida, who’s hearing and who has custody, but who said Tracey begged to live with her father and go to the deaf school in Iowa. She put Tracey on a plane to dad two days before Labor Day. She thought Tracey was with dad. Dad thought she was with mom. It’s not clear why Tracey ran away, but she hasn’t been seen since Labor Day. She’d texted both of them, as recently as yesterday morning, indicating she was with the other parent.”

“Did either parent indicate the other was abusive?”

“Mom didn’t, but they don’t seem to communicate very frequently. Most of their communication went through Tracey. We haven’t mentioned the bruises and arm fracture yet. We’re going to talk with her teachers and area social workers in both Iowa and Florida to see if anyone noticed anything suspicious. This could take some time.”

“How did the mother sound?”

Olivia shrugged. “Devastated. Stunned. Angry. She and her new husband are flying up here on the first flight they can get.”

Kane hung up and let out an exhausted breath. “There has got to be a better way. Dad is on his way. He should be here after dinner. He seemed very upset, especially at his wife for ‘throwing Tracey out,’ but going through the operator, it’s hard to say.”

“Mom said Tracey begged to live with dad,” Olivia remarked.

“Dad said Tracey hated Florida but never said she’d asked to live with him. It’ll be interesting to have them all in the same room. I’ll line up a sign-language interpreter.”

“What about the guy she had sex with?” Abbott asked.

“Mom said there was no boyfriend. Tracey was focused on her studies,” Olivia said. “Whether that was true, Mom wanted it to be, or Mom was naïve remains to be seen.”

“Dad said Tracey didn’t have a boyfriend because her mother forced her to go to hearing school in Gainesville and she was isolated,” Kane said.

Abbott sighed. “I’ll call Jess Donahue. I’m going to want a shrink’s take on this family. I thought this girl had the implant, so she could hear.”

“Mom said they hadn’t had a lot of success with the implant,” Olivia said. “Tracey didn’t get the surgery until she was ten, after Mrs. Mullen got remarried. Her new husband paid for the surgery. Tracey didn’t have good success. Not everyone does.”

Abbott smoothed his bushy mustache thoughtfully. “I’m more concerned with the identity of the male she was with just before the fire started. Focus on him for now.”

“Let’s go back out to the lake,” Olivia said, “and see if anybody saw her there.”

“What’s going on with the Feds?” Kane asked.

“I called Special Agent Crawford, but he wasn’t in the office. Tried his boss, left a message.” Abbott got up to leave, but Micki breezed in from the elevator.

“I’ve been trying your phones for an hour.”

“We ID’d the girl,” Olivia said, “and were talking to her family. What do you have?”

“I ID’d the gel.” Micki pulled up a chair and sank into it. “Sodium polyacrylate.”

“And now we wait for English,” Kane said.

“Baby-diaper goo,” Micki said, chuckling when they stared. “Commonly called super-absorbent polymer or SAP. The crystals in baby diapers that do all the absorbing.”

Olivia was starting to feel the tug of fatigue. “Why?”

“Why coat the glass globe?” Micki asked. “Turns out SAP is also a fire retardant.”

“Absorbs pee and puts out fires. Can it cure cancer?” Kane asked, tongue in cheek.

“Smart-ass,” Micki said. “I couldn’t find any record of arsonists coating a glass ball in diaper gel. The old SPOT group used ripped-up firefighter coats to keep the glass ball from becoming damaged from the heat.”

“So this isn’t SPOT,” Kane said.

“Not necessarily,” Micki said. “Ultrathin baby diapers were around in SPOT’s heyday, but not the knowledge that the gel was fire retardant.”

“Can you track that particular kind of gel?” Olivia asked.

“No,” Micki said. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. This stuff is as accessible as a bag of baby diapers. Which is pretty damn accessible. There’s no way to track it, and it’s a lot easier to get and cheaper than firefighter coats.”

“Aren’t you the bundle of joy?” Abbott asked sourly and she shrugged.

“Sorry. I’m going back to the site. We’re processing the scene outside and assisting the arson guys inside.”

“We’ll canvass the lake area with Tracey’s picture,” Olivia said. “Back at five.”

Monday, September 20, 1:00 p.m.

He checked his laptop, hidden under the counter. The phone he’d given Eric allowed him to track his movements all over town. Eric was on the move, but not on the run. He’d stopped at a butcher shop. He pictured Eric leaving with some thick steaks he could use to drug Tomlinson’s guard dog.

That they hadn’t been paranoid enough to have their conversation out of range of the bugged cell phone he’d provided disappointed him. He’d thought Eric smart enough to check for a bugged phone, but Eric was too scared to be smart right now.

That Joel was dead was a bit of a jolt. He wondered if Joel had really killed himself or if they’d already started to turn on one another. He’d put his money on Albert.

So… they’re planning to kill me. He had to hand it to Albert. Hadn’t given the big boy props for that many brains. His plan would never work, of course, but it was better than what Eric had proposed. Run to France. Idiot.

But they were obeying him on the Tomlinson warehouse, so at least they were smarter than Tomlinson.

Between customers, he quickly typed in a command and brought up Eric’s bank account on his computer screen. Eric had withdrawn a thousand at the bank branch near the university. At least he was smart enough to withdraw from his normal bank and in an amount that wouldn’t raise the brows of the teller. Eric routinely withdrew a thousand, and at first he’d been curious as to what the rich boy did with all that money.

Then he’d picked up on Albert and it made sense. Albert talked a good talk about walking away from his affair with Eric, but there was no way a poor kid like Albert was walking away from money like that.

He checked the cell phone he’d activated for Barney Tomlinson. His text to Tomlinson had been simple-pay or else.

Tomlinson had been one of the few marks he’d initially misread. He’d thought Barney a smart man, but after his demands had gone ignored, had changed his mind. Obviously Barney hadn’t believed he’d follow through on his threats to expose the man’s affairs to his wife. Barney Tomlinson had amassed a modest fortune in the last few years, and according to his sources, Mrs. Tomlinson had not signed a prenup.

Tomlinson responded to his text this time. My wife found out. She’s divorcing me. What more can you do?

He smiled. Oh, a lot, he thought. I can do a helluva lot. He’d been invisible for so many years that he was used to being ignored in person. He used it to his full advantage, in fact. But to have been ignored in direct communication… Well, that was simply rude.

If Tomlinson had simply paid when he’d first asked, the man would have kept the bulk of his fortune, at least initially. Now, not only would Mrs. Tomlinson get her share in the divorce, she’d get it all. Insurance would cover the loss of the warehouse. Plus the ten million Tomlinson had in life insurance would set his wife up for life.