Heads Will Roll – Chapter Four

NOT EDITED

Thursday: January 30, 2014

According to the red numbers on his alarm clock, it was barely after five when Rick awoke from a restless sleep. He carefully pulled his arm out from under Heidi’s shoulders and sat up, grabbing his cell phone from the nightstand. He had a text from Tina, timed a little over half an hour ago.

Tina: I couldn’t sleep. Just kept thinking about what you said. I found the letter in her room. She knew he was being released.

Rick scratched his cheek, unlocking his screen with his free hand. If she were still awake, he could head over, check where Tina found the letter, and go over the rest of Bonnie’s room, see what else she was hiding. If he were lucky, there’d be even one little clue that insinuated she had gone to Florida to see her piece of shit father.

One little clue that insinuated she wasn’t already dead in a ditch somewhere.

Rick closed his eyes for a moment before forcing himself to text Tina.

Rick: Are you still up? I’ll come over and check out the letter and her room

Her simple ‘yes’ came almost immediately. Rick changed into his uniform, left a note for Heidi, and headed out.

Tina was waiting for him on her porch, hands clutching her robe closed against her chest. “Jesus, Tina. It’s too damn cold for you to just be standing out here.”

“I saw your headlights. I… I wasn’t out for long, I don’t think.”

“Still.” Rick laid a gentle hand between her shoulders and guided her back inside. “Where’d you find the letter, Tina?”

“Tucked into her diary.”

Rick would have to tell Heidi she’d been right about that one. “Where does she keep that?”

“On her nightstand.”

According to Heidi, keeping the letter in her diary meant Bonnie trusted Tina. The fact she kept the thing out in the open was also a pretty good sign Bonnie trusted her implicitly, which meant the likelihood Bonnie had run away to Florida to see if the stories were true was, well, unlikely. “Did you read it?”

Tina shook her head, fingers still clutching her robe. “I couldn’t. I-I tried, but I just… She knew she didn’t have to hide that kind of stuff from me. She knew I wouldn’t go snooping around in her things. I just can’t bring myself to let this change any of that trust.”

Rick squeezed her arm. “You don’t have to break any trust or do any snooping, Tina, I promise. How about you go ahead and sit down while I go take a look at her things, okay?”

Tina nodded and headed toward the living room. Rick watched her long enough to confirm she had made it to the couch before he headed down the hall to Bonnie’s room. It had been a long time since he’s actually been back this way in the house. Jennifer had been much younger and having a sleepover with Bonnie, and she had dragged Rick back to the girl’s room to show him whatever they had been working on the night before. What, he couldn’t remember, but they had both been excited about it.

Things had certainly changed in the room, but nothing drastic. Her Justin Bieber and boy band posters had been replaced with posters for TV shows. The pictures on her little cork board had been switched out for more recent ones. He recognized Bonnie and Jennifer in their junior prom dresses in one of them. Rick did his best not to think about the girls not getting the chance to have a second prom together.

He grabbed Bonnie’s diary and sat down on the edge of her bed. The envelope from the prison was tucked between the pages at the back of the book. Though they would have arrived at separate times, there were two letters inside — one to alert Tina of the impending parole hearing, and one to notify her of his release. It had been tucked between two blank pages. He flipped back toward the beginning, until he found the date the first letter had been timestamped with. A few days later in the diary, Bonnie had written about it. In the entries for both letters, she had written about protecting her mom, about being worried hiding the letters was the wrong call. No matter how many pages he flipped through, he saw absolutely no indication that Bonnie doubted Tina about her father’s abuse and subsequent imprisonment.

And absolutely no indication that she had any desire to run off to Florida, or anywhere else, for that matter.

On one hand, it was good news. Bonnie wasn’t on her way to Florida to hang out with or confront an abusive piece of shit. But on the other hand, it was horrible, horrible news. Because if Bonnie wasn’t on her way to Florida, if she hadn’t been planning to run away to somewhere else, then she had been taken and hidden away, and the chance of her being killed within forty-eight hours of when she left the school the day before was monumental.

***

Rick had left Tina’s and gone straight to the school. No one would be there until seven, but it was better than going back home and pretending everything was fine. When Jeff finally showed up — on time, impressively enough — he parked his cruiser next to Rick’s and climbed into the passenger seat. Before he could even open his mouth, Rick held Bonnie’s diary out to him.

“What’s that?” Jeff asked, setting two coffee cups on the center console.

“Bonnie’s diary. Tina found the letters from the prison tucked inside.” Rick cleared his throat as Jeff grabbed the book. “I’ve read the thing front to back. There’s no indication she wanted to go see him. She took the letters to protect her mom, and then she dwelled on if that was the right call or not.”

Jeff nodded, skimming each page he thumbed through. “She and Peter had a fight?”

“Yeah. I… I knew about that last night, but I was worried you’d completely dump the case if you knew.”

After a moment, Jeff shook his head, flipping another page. “Like I said, I trust your gut, even when it goes against mine. If you think she’s in danger, we’ll work this like she is, either until we find her or we prove she’s safe.”

“Thank you.”

Again, he nodded. “Looks like she thought she and Pete were going to make up. You talk to your kids about that?”

“Last night, yeah. Peter was pretty sure she’d probably never talk to him again, but Jen was certain Bonnie would realize it was a stupid thing to be upset over and make up with him. The couple entries toward the end there kinda solidified that for me,” Rick said.

“Mmhmm.” Jeff flipped through a few more pages. “Applying to colleges, enjoying school, working on the volleyball section of her PE test… She was doing well.”

“Very. Always. She’s… Jesus.” Rick raked a hand through his hair before pulling his sheriff’s department ball cap back down over his head. “Pete was going to propose to her after they graduated this year. I was going to be her father-in-law. I just…”

Jeff gave Rick’s arm a tight squeeze. “Pete is going to propose to her, and you are going to be her father-in-law. We’re going to find her, Rick, no matter what happened or where she is. We’re going to find her.”

“In Ellepath, with our resources? You really think there’s any damn chance of that?”

“I’ll admit we’re at a disadvantage,” Jeff said after a moment. “But I don’t think that automatically makes finding her impossible.”

“That makes one of us.” Jeff patted the back of Rick’s hand rather than offering any further refusal of that statement. “We don’t even have a lab, Jeff. Our coroner is our pediatrician. We don’t—”

“I was thinking about that after I got home last night. Your old boss in California. You still talk to him sometimes, don’t you?”

“Pitman? Yeah, usually at the beginning of every month.”

“Thought so. One of his forensics people is in the news all the time for basically being a walking crime lab, isn’t he?”

“Bo,” Rick said after a moment. “Yes. But you don’t usually send your best asset halfway across the country to help a department you’ve got nothing to do with.”

“He sends that detective to other states all the time,”

“Kathy?” Jeff nodded. Rick snorted. “Kathy isn’t really an asset. She’s… a liability. She’s a drunk. I don’t know why he sends her places — I’ve never asked — but it’s not because she’s an asset.”

“Well, maybe we should see about getting the lab geek drunk too so Jamal will send him our way.”

Rick chuckled, a brief but welcome relief to his mood. “Yeah, maybe.” He sighed. “Getting him drunk aside, you’re right about bringing him in. Or seeing if Jamal will send him. Whoever took Bonnie, unless they’re a complete idiot, there isn’t going to be evidence lying around for a couple deputies to collect with fingerprinting powder and a couple small evidence bags. And if he did leave evidence around, Bonnie doesn’t have weeks for it to be shipped out, analyzed at the backend of a backlog, and then shipped back. If we want any chance at bringing her back alive, we need more than what we have.”

Jeff nodded. “Call him. Ask about the forensics kid. Beg him if you have to. Just… tell him a girl’s life depends on it.” He opened the passenger side door and dropped his foot to the asphalt. “I’m gonna grab a smoke. When you’re done with Pitman, we’ll head in. All right?”

“All right.” After Jeff stepped outside and closed the door, Rick pulled his phone from his pocket. He dialed Jamal’s number and pressed his cell to his ear.

Like he did every month, Jamal picked up after the first ring. “Rick. I’d say it’s a pleasure to hear from you so soon, but I can only imagine it’s not for a casual conversation.”

“It’s not. I’m sorry for that.”

“Don’t be. What’s going on?”

“Pete’s girlfriend, umm… It looks like she was abducted yesterday. Her father’s out of prison in Florida, so we’ve looked into that angle, but based on her diary, it doesn’t seem like there’s any way she’d be on her way there to see him. Her mom, Pete, and Jen all say she was totally normal Bonnie in the days leading up to it. Tina — the mother — called the school yesterday when she started getting worried that Bonnie hadn’t come home yet, and the receptionist said she was leaving the school at that time. Jeff and I are here to talk to the receptionist and see if she physically watched Bonnie leave or not. But if she’s been abducted…”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jamal said after a moment. “What can I do to help you find her?”

“We don’t have our own lab, our own crime scene techs. It’s just, you know, us deputies with some cheap cameras and a couple fingerprinting kits. If we find anything — blood, saliva, hair — she’ll be…” Rick cleared his throat. “By the time the results come back from whatever lab we send it to, it’ll be too late for it to help Bonnie.”

“Do you want expedited shipping to my labs?”

“I was thinking, umm…” Rick scratched his cheek. “The kid still works for you, doesn’t he? Bo?”

“He does. He is an adult now, however,” Jamal said. “They do that, you know. Age.”

Rick chuckled. “Yeah, I know. Is he still his own lab?”

“More or less.” Rick could hear some papers shuffling. “Do you want him sent out there?”

“I don’t know how we can do this without him. O-or someone like him.”

“There’s no one like him. Just him.” A pause. “Do you want a detective too?”

“Not Kathy.”

Jamal snorted. “I don’t send Kathy anywhere without a direct request, and even then, she doesn’t go anywhere without a backup plan. Don’t worry about that. Bo works best with two of my people. I’ll see who he wants to go with him. Have you been inside the school yet?”

“Not yet. We’re in the parking lot.”

“You guys sit tight. I’ll make some calls and get the school closed for the day. My boy prefers an untampered scene, or as close to it as you can get.” Jamal cleared his throat. “Sit pretty for a bit, kiddo. I’ll get your scene locked down and in a few hours, you’ll have a lab and the analyst who knows how to work it.”

“Thank you, Jamal. I don’t know what the hell we’d do here without you.”

“Ah.” Rick could practically see the dismissive hand Jamal likely slashed through the air at that. “We’ll find your girl, Rick. Talk soon.”

“Talk soon,” Rick echoed, pulling his phone from his ear once Jamal ended the call. He slid his cell onto the dash, letting out a long breath. Most people would consider what he’d done akin to making a deal with the Devil. Though a part of Rick still considered the man to be family, it was hard to ignore the things the reporters and the media speculated and posited about him.

If they were to be believed, Rick had just pulled a favor from the biggest player in the American mafia. Who knew what the hell kind of favor he would owe Jamal in return.

But for Bonnie, he didn’t have a choice. For a missing kid, he didn’t have a choice.

If he had to sign his soul over to the devil in a suit and tie, so be it.

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