The Never Game Read online

  Sophie’s launch had been to the north. With a finger he followed a hypothetical route in that direction, past the 101 freeway and toward the Bay. Of course, she might have turned toward any compass point, at any time. Shaw saw, though, that if she continued more or less north she would have come to a large rectangle of green: San Miguel Park, two miles from the café. He reasoned that Sophie would pick a place like that because she could shred furiously up and down the trail, not having to worry about traffic.

  Was the park, however, a place where one could bike? Paper had served its purpose; time for the twenty-first century. Shaw called up Google Earth (appropriately, since the park was only a few miles from the company’s headquarters). He saw from the satellite images that San Miguel was interlaced with brown-dirt or sand trails and was hilly—perfect for cycling.

  Shaw started the Malibu and headed for the place, wondering what he’d find.

  Maybe nothing.

  Maybe cyclist friends who’d say, “Oh, Sophie? Yeah, she was here Wednesday. She left. Headed west on Alvarado. Don’t know where she was going. Sorry.”

  Or: “Oh, Sophie? Yeah, she was here Wednesday. Pissed at her dad about something. She was going to her friend Jane’s for a few days. Kind of sticking it to him for being a prick. She said she’d be home Sunday.”

  After all, happy endings do occur.

  As with the buck at Egg Lake.

  It turned out that the fast but thin bullet had zipped into and out of the deer’s haunch with no bone damage and had largely cauterized the wound.

  Standing ten feet from the oblivious, drinking animal, Colter had replaced the pistol in his holster and withdrawn from his backpack the pint bottle of Betadine disinfectant he and his siblings kept with them. Holding his breath, he stepped in utter silence to within a yard of the deer and stopped. The creature’s head jerked up, alerted by a few molecules of alien scent. The boy aimed the nozzle carefully and squirted a stream of the ruddy-brown antiseptic onto the buck’s wound, sending the animal two feet into the air, straight up. Then it zipped out of sight like a cartoon creature. Colter had had to laugh.

  And you, Sophie? Shaw now thought as he approached the park. Was this a place for you to heal? Or a place for you to die?

  10.

  San Miguel Park was divided evenly, forest and field, and crisscrossed by dry culverts and streambeds, as well as the paths that Shaw had seen thanks to the mappers of Google. In person, he observed they were packed dirt, not sand. Perfect for hard biking: both Sophie’s muscular variety and his own preferred petrol.

  Owing to the drought, the place was not the verdant green that Rand McNally had promised, but was largely brown and beige and dusty.

  The main entrance was on the opposite side of the park but Sophie’s route would have brought her here, to the bike paths off the broad shoulder of Tamyen Road. While not familiar with the area, he knew the avenue’s name. Hundreds of years ago the Tamyen, a tribe of Ohlone native people, had lived in what was now Silicon Valley. Their lands had been lost in a familiar yet particularly shameful episode of genocide—not at the hands of the conquistadors but by local officials after California achieved statehood.

  Shaw’s mother, Mary Dove Shaw, believed an ancestor to be an Ohlone elder.

  He killed the engine. Here were two openings in the line of brush and shrubbery that separated the shoulder from the park proper. The gaps led down a steep hill to trails, imprinted with many footprints and tire tread marks.

  Climbing from the car, Shaw surveyed the expansive park. He heard a sound he knew well. The whine of dirt bikes, a particular pitch that gets under the skin of some but to others—Shaw, for one—is a siren’s song. Motorbiking was illegal here, a sign sternly warned. If he hadn’t been on a job, though, Shaw’d have had his Yamaha off the rack in sixty seconds and on the trails in ninety.

  So: One, assume kidnapping. Two, assume it was Person X, in the gray stocking cap and sunglasses. Three, assume X put a tracker on Sophie’s bike and followed her.

  How would it have gone down?

  X would snatch her here, before she got too far into the park. He’d worry about witnesses, of course, though the area around Tamyen Road wasn’t heavily populated. Shaw had passed a few companies, small fabricators or delivery services. But the buildings had no view of the shoulder. There was little traffic.

  The scenario? X spots her. Then what? How would he have approached? Asking for directions?

  No, a nineteen-year-old honors student and employee of a tech company wouldn’t fall for that, not in the age of GPS. Exchanging pleasantries to get close to her? That too didn’t seem likely. X would see she was strong and athletic and probably suspicious of a stranger’s approach. And she could zip into the park, away from him, at twenty miles an hour. Shaw decided there’d be no ruse, nothing subtle. X would simply strike fast before Sophie sensed she was a target.

  He began walking along the edge of the shoulder nearest the park. He spotted a tiny bit of red. In the grass between the two trail entrances was a triangular shard of plastic—that could easily have come from the reflector on a bike. With a Kleenex he collected the triangle and put it in his pocket. On his phone he found the screenshot of Sophie’s bike outside the Quick Byte—lifted from Tiffany’s security camera video. Yes, it had a red disk reflector on the rear.

  Made sense. X had followed Sophie here and—the moment the road was free of traffic—he’d slammed into the back of her bike. She’d have tumbled to the ground and he’d have been on her in an instant, taping her mouth and hands and feet. Into the trunk with her bike and backpack.

  San Miguel Park

  1 - Bike Path 1

  2 - Bike Path 2

  3 - Access Road

  4 - Collision Point

  Some brush had been trampled near the plastic shard. He stepped off the shoulder and peered down the hill. He could see a line of disturbed grass leading directly from where he was standing to the bottom of a small ravine. Maybe the plan hadn’t gone quite as X had hoped. Maybe he’d struck Sophie’s bike too hard, knocking her over the edge, and she’d tumbled down the forty-five-degree slope.

  Shaw strode down one path to the place where she would have landed. He crouched. Broken and bent grass, and gouges in the dirt that might have come from a scuffle. Then he spotted a rock the size of a grapefruit. There with a smear on it: brown, the shade of dried blood.

  Shaw pulled out his phone and dialed a number he’d programmed in several hours ago. He hit CALL. About ten feet up the hill came a soft sound, repeated every few seconds. It was the Samsung whistling ringtone.

  The phone number he’d dialed was Sophie’s.

  11.

  Now, time for the experts.

  Shaw called Frank Mulliner and told him what he’d found. The man greeted the news with a gasp.

  “Those sons of bitches!”

  Shaw didn’t understand at first. Then he realized Mulliner was referring to the police.

  “If they’d gotten on board when they should have . . . I’m calling them now!”

  Shaw foresaw disaster: a rampaging parent. He’d seen this before. “Let me handle it.”

  “But—”

  “Let me handle it.”

  Mulliner was silent for a moment. Shaw imagined the man’s mobile was gripped in white, trembling fingers. “All right,” Sophie’s father said. “I’m heading home.”

  Shaw got the names of the detectives whom Mulliner had first spoken to about Sophie’s disappearance: Wiley and Standish of the Joint Major Crimes Task Force, based in nearby Santa Clara.

  After disconnecting with Mulliner, Shaw called the JMCTF’s main number and asked for either of them. The prim-voiced desk officer, if that was her job title, said they were both out. Shaw said it was an emergency.

  “You should call nine-one-one.”


  “This is a development in a case Detectives Standish and Wiley are involved in.”

  “Which case?”

  Of course, there was none.

  “Can you give me your address?” Shaw asked.

  Ten minutes later he was headed for the JMCTF headquarters.

  There’s no shortage of law enforcement in California. Growing up in the eastern wilderness of the state, the Shaw family had contact with park rangers—the Compound abutted tens of thousands of acres of state and federal forest. The family was no stranger to other agencies either: state police, the California Bureau of Investigation and, on rare occasion, the FBI. Not to mention Sheriff Roy Blanche.

  The JMCTF was new to Colter Shaw. In a brief online search he’d found that it was charged with investigating homicides, kidnappings, sexual assaults and larcenies in which an injury occurred. It had a small drug enforcement group.

  He was now approaching the headquarters: a large, low ’50s-style building on West Hedding Street, not far from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office. He steered the Chevy into the lot and walked along the curving sidewalk bordered with succulents and red flowers, hearing the persistent rush of traffic on the Nimitz Freeway. At the front desk, he walked up to the window behind which a blond uniformed officer sat.

  “Yessir?”

  He knew the voice. It was the same young woman who’d fielded his earlier call. She was calm and stodgy. Her face was pert.

  He asked again for either Detective Wiley or Detective Standish.

  “Detective Standish is still out. I’ll see if Detective Wiley is available.”

  Shaw sat in an orange-vinyl-and-aluminum chair. The waiting room was like a doctor’s office, without the magazines . . . and with bulletproof glass protecting the receptionist.

  Shaw opened his computer bag, extracted his bound notebook and began to write. When he was done, he walked to the desk officer. The woman looked up.

  “Could you please make me a copy of this? It’s for an investigation Detective Wiley’s running.”

  Or, is soon to be running.

  Another pause. She took the notebook, did as he’d requested and returned the notebook and copies to him.

  “Many thanks.”

  As soon as Shaw sat down, the door clicked open and a large man in his mid-forties stepped into the waiting area.

  The plainclothes officer was an inverted pyramid: broad shoulders and a solid chest, testing the buttons of his shirt, tapering to narrow hips. Had to have played football in school. His salt-and-pepper hair was thick and swept back from a high forehead. The proportioned bulk, hair, along with the eagle’s beak nose and solid jaw, could have landed him a role as a detective in a thriller movie. Not the lead but the dependable—and often expendable—sidekick. His weapon was a Glock and it rode high on the hip.

  His eyes, muddy brown, looked Shaw up and down. “You wanted to see me?”

  “Detective Wiley?”

  “Yes.”

  “Colter Shaw.” He rose and extended his arm, forcing a handshake. “You got a call from Frank Mulliner about his daughter, Sophie. She disappeared on Wednesday. I’m helping him find her. I’ve found some things that make it clear she was kidnapped.”

  Another pause. “‘Helping him find her.’ You’re a friend of the family?”

  “Mulliner offered a reward. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Reward?”

  Wiley was going to be a problem.

  “You’re a PI?” the detective asked.

  “No.”

  “BEA?”

  “Not that either.” Bond enforcement agents are highly regulated. One reason not to go down that road. Also, Shaw had no desire to chase Failure to Appears in Piggly Wiggly parking lots, cuff them and haul their sweaty bodies to the grim receiving docks of sheriffs’ departments.

  Shaw continued: “This is urgent, Detective.”

  Another scan. Wiley waited a moment and said, “You’re not armed?”

  “No.”

  “Come on back to the office. We’ll just have a look in that bag first.”

  Shaw opened it. Wiley prodded and then turned and walked through the security doorway. Shaw followed him along the functional corridors, past offices and cubicles populated with about fifteen men and women—slightly more of the former than latter. Uniforms—all gray—prevailed. There were suits too, as well as the scruffy casual garb of those working undercover.

  Wiley directed him into a large, austere office. Minimal décor. On the open door were two signs: DET. D. WILEY and DET. L. STANDISH. The desks were in the corners of the rooms, facing each other.

  Wiley sat behind his, the chair creaking under his weight, and looked at phone message slips. Shaw sat across from him, on a gray metal chair whose seat was not molded for buttocks. It was extremely uncomfortable. He supposed Wiley perched suspects there while he conducted blunt interrogations.

  The detective continued to adeptly ignore Shaw and studied the message slips intently. He turned away and typed on his computer.

  Shaw grew tired of the pissing game. He took Sophie’s cell phone, wrapped in Kleenex, from his pocket and set it on Wiley’s desk. It thunked, as he’d intended. Shaw opened the tissue to reveal the cell.

  Wiley’s narrow eyes narrowed further.

  “It’s Sophie’s mobile. I found it in San Miguel Park. Where she’d been cycling just before she disappeared.”

  Wiley glanced at it, then back to Shaw, who explained about the video at the Quick Byte Café, the possibility of the kidnapper following her, the park, the car’s collision with the bike.

  “A tracker?” That was his only response.

  “Maybe. I’ve got a copy of the video and you can see the original at the Quick Byte.”

  “You know Mulliner or his daughter before this reward thing?”

  “No.”

  The detective leaned back. Wood and metal creaked. “Just curious about your connection with all this. It’s Shaw, right?” He was typing on his computer.

  “Detective, we can talk all about my livelihood at some point. But right now we need to start looking for Sophie.”

  Wiley’s eyes were on the monitor. He’d probably found some articles in which Shaw was cited for helping police find a fugitive or locate a missing person. Or checking his record, more likely, and finding no warrants or convictions. Unless, of course, the powers that be at Cal had learned he was behind the theft of the four hundred pages yesterday from their hallowed academic halls, and he was now a wanted man.

  No handcuffs were forthcoming. Wiley swung back. “Maybe she dropped it. Didn’t want to go home because Dad’d paid eight hundred bucks for it. She went to stay with a friend.”

  “I found indications there’d been a scuffle. A rock that might have blood on it.”

  “DNA is taking us twenty-four hours minimum.”

  “It’s not about confirming it’s Sophie’s. It suggests that she was attacked and kidnapped.”

  “Were you ever law enforcement?”

  “No. But I’ve assisted in missing-person cases for ten years.”

  “For profit?”

  “I make a living trying to save people’s lives.”

  Just like you.

  “How much is the reward?”

  “Ten thousand.”

  “My. That’s some chunk of change.”

  Shaw extracted a second bundle of tissue. This contained the small triangular shard of red reflector, which he believed had come from Sophie’s bike.

  “I picked them both up with tissues, this and the phone. Though the odds of the perp’s prints being on them are low. I think after she fell down the hill she was trying to call for help. When the kidnapper came after her, she pitched the phone away.”

  “Why?” Wiley’s eyes strayed to a file folder. He extracted a mech
anical pencil and made a note.

  “Hoping that when a friend or her father called, somebody’d find it and they could piece together that she’d been kidnapped.” He continued: “I marked where I found it. I can help your crime scene team. Do you know San Miguel Park? The Tamyen Road side?”

  “I do not.”

  “It’s near the Bay. There aren’t a lot of places a witness might’ve been but I spotted some businesses on the way to the park. Maybe one of them has a CCTV. And there’s a half dozen traffic cams on the route from the Quick Byte to San Miguel. You might be able to piece together a tag number.”

  Wiley jotted another note. The case or a grocery list?

  The detective asked, “When do you collect your money?”

  Shaw rose and picked up the phone and the bit of plastic, put them back in his bag. Wiley’s face flashed with astonishment. “Hey there—”

  Shaw said evenly, “Kidnapping’s a federal offense too. The FBI has a field office here, in Palo Alto. I’ll take it up with them.” He started for the door.

  “Hold on, hold on, Chief. Take it easy. You gotta understand. You push the kidnap button, a lot of shit happens. From brass down to the swamp of the press. Take a bench there.”

  Shaw paused, then turned and sat down. He opened his computer bag and extracted the copy of the notes he’d jotted while waiting for Wiley. He handed the sheets to the detective.

  “The initials FM is Frank Mulliner. SM is Sophie. And the CS is me.”

  Obvious, but in Wiley’s case Shaw wasn’t taking any chances.

  Missing individual: Sophie Mulliner, 19

  Site of kidnapping: San Miguel Park, Mountain View, shoulder of Tamyen Road

  Possible scenarios:

  Runaway: 3% (unlikely because of her phone, the reflector chip and evidence of struggle; none of her close friends—8 interviewed by FM—give any indication she’s done this).

  Hit-and-run: 5% (driver probably would not have taken her body with him).