The Never Game Read online

  Suicide: 1% (no history of mental issues, no previous attempts, no suicidal communication, doesn’t fit with scene in San Miguel Park).

  Kidnapping/murder: 80%.

  Kidnapped by former boyfriend Kyle Butler: 10% (somewhat unstable, possibly abusive, drug history, didn’t take breakup well; hasn’t returned calls of CS).

  Killed in gang initiation: 5% (MT-44 and several Latino gangs active in area, but crews generally leave corpses in public as proof of kill).

  Kidnapped by FM’s former wife, Sophie’s mother: <1% (Sophie is no longer a minor, the divorce happened seven years ago, criminal records and other background check of mother make this unlikely).

  For-profit kidnapping: 10% (no ransom demand, they usually occur within 24 hours of abduction; father isn’t wealthy).

  Kidnapped to force FM to divulge sensitive information from one of his two jobs: 5% (one, middle management in automotive parts sales; the other, warehouse manager with no access to sensitive or valuable information or products). Would expect contact by now.

  Kidnapped to force Sophie to divulge information about her part-time job as coder at software development company, GenSys: 5% (does work not involving classified information or trade secrets).

  Killed because she witnessed a drug sale between boyfriend, Kyle Butler, and dealer who didn’t want identity known: 20% (NOTE: Butler is missing too; related victim?).

  Kidnapped/killed by antisocial perpetrator, serial kidnapper or killer; SM raped and murdered or kept for torture and sex, eventual murder: 60%–70%.

  Unknown motive: 7%.

  Relevant details:

  SM’s credit cards have not been used in two days; FM is on cards and has access.

  Quick Byte Café has video of possible suspect following her. Manager has preserved original and uploaded to cloud. Tiffany Monroe. CS has copy.

  Under expectation-of-privacy laws, FM cannot access her phone log.

  Perpetrator possibly put tracking device on bike to follow her.

  Mulliner’s house just on market, no prospective buyers yet to case the location for kidnapping potential.

  The detective’s carefully shaved face wore a frown. “The hell all this come from, Chief?”

  The nickname rankled but Shaw ignored it; he was making headway. “The information?” He shrugged. “Facts from her father, some legwork of mine.”

  Wiley muttered, “What’s with the percentages?”

  “I rank things in priority. Tells me where to start. I look at the most likely first. That doesn’t pan out, I move to the next.”

  He read it again.

  “They don’t add up to a hundred.”

  “There’s always the unknown factor—that something I haven’t thought of’s the answer. Will you send a team to the park, Detective?”

  “Alrightyroo. We’ll look into it, Chief.” He smoothed the copy of Shaw’s analysis and shook his head, amused. “I can keep this?”

  “It’s yours.”

  Shaw set the cell phone and the chip of reflector in front of Wiley.

  His own phone was humming with a text. He glanced at the screen, noted the word Important! Slipped the mobile away. “You’ll keep me posted, Detective?”

  “Oh, you betcha, Chief. You betcha.”

  12.

  At the Quick Byte Café, Tiffany greeted him with a troubled nod.

  It was she who’d just texted, asking if he could stop by.

  Important! . . .

  “Colter. Come here.” They walked from the order station to the bulletin board on which Frank Mulliner had tacked up Sophie’s picture.

  The flyer was no longer there. In its place was a white sheet of computer paper, 8½ by 11 inches. On it was an odd black-and-white image, done in the style of stenciling. It depicted a face: two eyes, round orbs with a white glint in the upper-right-hand corner of each, open lips, a collar and tie. On the head was a businessman’s hat from the 1950s.

  “I texted as soon as I saw, but whoever it was might’ve taken it anytime. I asked everybody here, workers, customers. Nothing.”

  The corkboard was next to the side door, out of view of the camera. No help there.

  Tiffany gave a wan smile. “Madge? My daughter? She’s pissed at me. I sent her home. I don’t want her here until they find him. I mean, she bikes to work three, four times a week too. And he was just here!”

  “Not necessarily,” Shaw said. “Sometimes people take Missing posters for souvenirs. Or, if they’re after the reward themselves, they throw it out to narrow the field.”

  “Really? Somebody’d do that?”

  And worse. When the rewards hit six digits and up, reward seekers found all sorts of creative ways to discourage competition. Shaw had a scar on his thigh as proof.

  This eerie image?

  Was it an intentional replacement, tacked up by the kidnapper?

  And if so, why?

  A perverse joke? A statement?

  A warning?

  There were no words on it. Shaw took it down, using a napkin, and slipped it into his computer bag.

  He looked over the clientele, nearly every one of them staring at screens large and screens small.

  The front door opened and more customers entered, a businessman in a dark suit and white shirt, no tie, looking harried; a heavyset woman in blue scrubs; and a pretty redhead, mid-twenties, who looked his way quickly, then found an empty spot to sit. A laptop—what else?—appeared from her backpack.

  Shaw said to Tiffany, “I saw a printer in your office.”

  “You need to use it?”

  He nodded. “What’s your email?”

  She gave it to him and he sent her Sophie’s picture. “Can you make a couple of printouts?”

  “Sure.” Tiffany did so and soon returned with the sheets. Shaw printed the reward information at the bottom of one and tacked it back up.

  “When I’m gone, can you move the camera so it’s pointed this way?”

  “You bet.”

  “Be subtle about it.”

  The woman nodded, clearly still troubled about the intrusion.

  He said, “I want to ask if anybody’s seen her. That okay?”

  “Sure.” Tiffany returned to the counter. Shaw detected a change in the woman; the thought that her kingdom here had been violated had turned her mood dark, her face suspicious.

  Shaw took the second printout Tiffany had made and began his canvass. He was halfway through—with no success—when he heard a woman’s voice from behind him. “Oh, no. That’s terrible.”

  Shaw turned to see the redhead who’d walked into the café a few minutes ago. She was looking at the sheet of paper in his hand.

  “Is that your niece? Sister?”

  “I’m helping her father find her.”

  “You’re a relative?”

  “No. He offered a reward.” Shaw nodded toward the flyer.

  She thought about this for a moment, revealing nothing of her reaction to this news. “He must be going crazy. God. And her mother?”

  “I’m sure. But Sophie lives here with her father.”

  The woman had a face that might be called heart-shaped, depending on how her hair framed her forehead. She was constantly tugging the strands, a nervous habit, he guessed. Her skin was the tan of someone who was outside frequently. She was in athletic shape. Her black leggings revealed exceptional thigh muscles. He guessed skiing and running and cycling. Her shoulders were broad in a way that suggested she’d made them broad by working out. Shaw’s exercise was also exclusively out of doors; a treadmill or stair machine, or whatever they were called, would have driven a
restless man like him crazy.

  “You think something, you know, bad happened to her?” Her green eyes, damp and large, registered concern as they stared at the picture. Her voice was melodic.

  “We don’t know. Have you ever seen her?”

  A squint at the sheet. “No.”

  She shot her eyes down toward his naked ring finger. Shaw had already noticed the same about hers. He made another observation: she was ten years younger than he was.

  She sipped from a covered cup. “Good luck. I really hope she’s okay.”

  Shaw watched her walk back to her table, where she booted up her PC, plugged in what he took to be serious headphones, not buds, and started typing. He continued canvassing, asking if the patrons had seen Sophie.

  The answer was no.

  That took care of all those present. He decided to get back to San Miguel Park and help the officers that Detective Dan Wiley had sent to run the crime scene. He thanked Tiffany and she gave him a furtive nod—meaning, he guessed, that she was going to start her surveillance.

  Shaw was heading for the door when he was aware of motion to his left, someone coming toward him.

  “Hey.” It was the redhead. Her headset was around her neck and the cord dangled. She walked close. “I’m Maddie. Is your phone open?”

  “My—?”

  “Your phone. Is it locked? Do you need to put in a passcode?”

  Doesn’t everybody?

  “Yes.”

  “So. Open it and give it to me. I’ll put my number in. That way I’ll know it’s there and you’re not pretending to type it while you really enter five-five-five one-two-one-two.”

  Shaw looked over her pretty face, her captivating eyes—the shade of green that Rand McNally had promised, deceptively, to be the color of the foliage in San Miguel Park.

  “I could still delete it.”

  “That’s an extra step. I’m betting you won’t go to the trouble. What’s your name?”

  “Colter.”

  “That has to be real. In a bar? When a man’s picking up a woman and gives her a fake name, it’s always Bob or Fred.” She smiled. “The thing is, I come on a little strong and that scares guys off. You don’t look like the scare-able sort. So. Let me type my number in.”

  Shaw said, “Just give it to me and I’ll call you now.”

  An exaggerated frown. “Oh-oh. That way I’ll have captured you on incoming calls and stuck you in my address book. You willing to make that commitment?”

  He lifted his phone. She gave him the number and he dialed. Her ringtone was some rock guitar riff Shaw didn’t recognize. She frowned broadly and lifted the mobile to her ear. “Hello? . . . Hello? . . .” Then disconnected. “Was a telemarketer, I guess.” Her laugh danced like her eyes.

  Another hit of the coffee. Another tug of her hair. “See you around, Colter. Good luck with what you’re up to. Oh, and what’s my name?”

  “Maddie. You never told me your last.”

  “One commitment at a time.” She slipped the headphones on and returned to the laptop, on whose screen a psychedelic screen saver paid tribute to the 1960s.

  13.

  Shaw couldn’t believe it.

  Ten minutes after leaving the café he was pulling onto the shoulder of Tamyen Road, overlooking San Miguel Park. Not a single cop.

  Alrightyroo. We’ll look into it, Chief . . .

  Guess not.

  Shaw approached the only folks nearby—an elderly couple in identical baby-blue jogging outfits—and displayed the printout of Sophie. As he’d expected, they’d never seen her.

  Well, if the police weren’t going to search, he was. She’d—possibly—flung the phone, as a signal to alert passersby when someone called her.

  Maybe she’d also scrawled something in the dirt, a name, part of a license plate number, before X got her. Or perhaps they’d grappled and she’d grabbed a tissue or pen or bit of cloth, rich with DNA or decorated with his fingerprints, tossing that too into the grass.

  Shaw descended into the ravine. He walked on grass so he wouldn’t disturb any tracks left by the kidnapper in sand and soil.

  Using the brown-smeared stone as a hub, Shaw walked in an ever-widening spiral, staring at the ground ahead of him. No footprints, no bits of cloth or tissue, no litter from pockets.

  But then a glint of light caught his eye.

  It came from above him—a service road on the crest of the hill. The flash now repeated. He thought: a car door opening and closing. If it was a door, it closed in compete silence.

  Crouching, he moved closer. Through the breeze-waving trees, he could make out what might indeed have been a vehicle. With the glare it was impossible to tell. The light wavered—which might have been due to branches bending in the wind. Or because someone who’d exited the car had walked to the edge of the ridge and was looking down.

  Was this a jogger stretching before a run, or someone pausing on a long drive home to pee?

  Or was it X, spying on the man with a troubling interest in Sophie Mulliner’s disappearance?

  Shaw started through the brush, keeping low, moving toward the base of the ravine, above which the car sat—if it was a car. The hill was quite steep. This was nothing to Shaw, who regularly ascended vertical rock faces, but the terrain was such that a climb would be noisy.

  Tricky. Without being seen, he’d have to get almost to the top to be able to push aside the flora and snap a cell phone picture of the tag number of the jogger. Or pee-er. Or kidnapper.

  Shaw got about twenty feet toward the base of the hill before he lost sight of the ridge, due to the angle. And it was then, hearing a snap of branch behind him, that he realized his mistake. He’d been concentrating so much on finding the quietest path ahead of him that he’d been ignoring his flank and rear.

  Never forget there are three hundred and sixty degrees of threat around you . . .

  Just as he turned, he saw the gun lifting toward the center of his chest and he heard a guttural growl from the hoodie-clad young man. “Don’t fucking move. Or you’re dead.”

  14.

  Colter Shaw glanced at the attacker with irritation and muttered, “Quiet.”

  His eyes returned to the access road above them.

  “I’ll shoot,” called the young man. “I will!”

  Shaw stepped forward fast and yanked the weapon away and tossed it into the grass.

  “Ow, shit!”

  Shaw whispered sternly, “I told you: Quiet! I mean it.” He pushed through a knotty growth of forsythia, trying to get a view of the road. From above came the sound of a car door slamming, an engine starting and a gravel-scattering getaway.

  Shaw scrabbled up the incline as fast as he could. At the top, breathing hard, he scanned the road. Nothing but dust. He climbed back down to the ravine, where the young man was on his knees, patting the grass for the weapon.

  “Leave it, Kyle,” Shaw muttered.

  The kid froze. “You know me?”

  He was Kyle Butler, Sophie’s ex-boyfriend. Shaw recognized him from his Facebook page.

  Shaw had noted the pistol was a cheap pellet gun, a one-shot model whose projectiles couldn’t even break the skin. He picked up the toy and strode to a storm drain and pitched it in.

  “Hey!”

  “Kyle, somebody sees you with that and you get shot. Which entrance did you use to get into the park?”

  The boy rose and stared, confused.

  “Which entrance?” Shaw had learned that the quieter your voice, the more intimidating you were. He was very quiet now.

  “Over there.” Nodding toward the sound of the motorbikes. The main entrance to the east. He swallowed. Butler’s hands rose fast, as if Shaw presently had a gun on him.

  “You can lower your arms.”

  He did so. Slowly.

  “Did
you see that car parked on the ridge?”

  “What ridge?”

  Shaw pointed to the access road.

  “No, man. I didn’t. Really.”

  Shaw looked him over, recalling: surfer dude. The boy had frothy blond hair, a navy-blue T-shirt under the black hoodie, black nylon workout pants. A handsome young man, though his eyes were a bit blank.

  “Did Frank Mulliner tell you I was here?”

  Another pause. What to say, what not to say? Finally: “Yeah. I called him after I got your message. He said you said you found her phone in the park.”

  The excess of verbs in the last sentence explained a lot to Shaw. So, the lovesick boy had conjured up the idea that Shaw had kidnapped his former girlfriend to get the reward. He remembered that Butler’s job was bolting big speakers into Subarus and Civics and his passion was riding a piece of waxed wood on rollicking water. Shaw decided that the percentage likelihood of Kyle Butler being the kidnapper had dropped to nil.

  But there was that related hypothesis. “Was Sophie ever with you when you scored weed, or coke, or whatever you do?”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  First things first.

  “Kyle, does it make sense that I’d kidnap somebody hoping her father would post a reward? Wouldn’t I just ask for a ransom?”

  He looked away. “I guess. Okay, man.”

  The sound of the motorbikes rose and fell, buzz-sawing in the distance.

  Butler continued: “I’m just . . . It’s all I can think about: Where is she? What’s happening to her? Will I ever see her again?” His voice choked.

  “At any time was she with you when you scored?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Why?”

  He explained that a dealer might have been concerned that Sophie was a witness who could identify him.