In Search of Valor Page 2

Rhonda groaned. “I never got around to updating my records here after Ma died,” she said. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God!”

  Val leaned across the desk, her face inches from the receptionist’s. “You need to go check to make sure that little girl isn’t here,” she said. “Now!”

  The receptionist froze for a moment, then disappeared through a door behind her.

  Chapter Three

  Detective Tanisha Jordan parked her ten-year-old Dodge Charger in the “Reserved—Staff” spot in front of the day care center. Nice of them to leave it open for her, she joked to herself. She slapped a laminated green 8x10” card on her dash that read “Official Police Business,” locked the vehicle, and took in her surroundings.

  The facility occupied the western half of a small strip mall on a busy highway a mile from the UConn campus. The rest of the complex housed a Chinese restaurant, a convenience store, and a nail salon. Security cameras mounted on the fascia boards monitored the comings and goings, she guessed, of the whole building. She’d check their footage after interviewing the day care staff.

  She scanned the surrounding area. An apartment complex towered above a thick stand of trees to the left. A series of 1950s-era single-family homes and duplexes lined the street to the right. A similar array of buildings dotted the other side of the highway. Lots of folks might have seen whoever took the child. But would they have suspected foul play of an adult carrying a child from day care to their car? Probably not.

  Unless the perp looked like Tanisha. As in, black, first off. Whether or not they admitted it, most of lily-white Mansfield, Connecticut took immediate distrust to people of color. Especially if, like her, said child-carrying African American was not a female in prime child-bearing age. Few thirty-seven-year-old women met that description.

  Still. Those buildings contained possible witnesses—leads to help solve the case.

  And speed was of the essence in a true abduction case. The perps would move the child out of the area within a day or two. Or—she shuddered—much worse things could happen.

  Jordan took a deep breath. Chill, girl. Don’t jump to conclusions. This case would probably amount to a minor annoyance in the scheme of things. Most child abductions turned out to be false alarms. Often an angry ex-spouse picked the kid up out of turn to annoy their estranged ex. Other times, a grandparent or other relative did and failed to notify the parent. So this whole episode would waste a ton of her precious time she could better spend tracking down real perps. Plus it would probably put her in the middle of nasty family arguments she’d much rather avoid.

  She entered the facility, and out of habit, drew herself up straight for maximum height. No one would call her athletic, 5’7” frame short, but height implied authority, especially among cops. She flashed her badge to the receptionist, a petite white woman with brown hair. “Detective Jordan, responding to a complaint—”

  “Yes, right this way, Detective.” The receptionist jumped out of her chair and led Jordan down a narrow hallway. She showed her into a small meeting room dominated by a long wooden table and a half-dozen chairs. Two young women—one black, the other white—sat along one edge of the table. She guessed them to be students, and for the older black one to be the complainant. A thin, gray-haired white woman, seated across from them, rose as Jordan entered. Distress lined the faces of all three.

  “Welcome, Detective.” The older woman shook Jordan’s hand. “I’m Estelle Quarterman, the director of Little Husky Playpen. This is Rhonda LeMieux, Jada’s mother.”

  The young black student nodded at her, but did not offer a handshake, instead wrapping her arms around herself, her face down. “Thank you for coming,” she said, with a hint of a Jamaican accent.

  Jordan turned to the young white gal, still seated next to Rhonda. “And you are...?”

  The white gal startled from her chair, as if woken from a daydream. “Valorie Dawes,” she said. “Friend of Rhonda’s.”

  Jordan’s mind whirled. Val Dawes? Jordan knew that name. “Any relation to—”

  “He was my uncle.” The girl half-smiled, half-grimaced, and sat back down. “It seems his reputation extends well outside of Clayton, then. You’re the second person today who knew of him.”

  Jordan nodded. “When one of our own goes down, we all know. Besides, Clayton’s not so far from here. Do you hope to become a police officer also, Miss Dawes?”

  “Someday,” Dawes said. “I’m just a first-year at UConn right now.”

  “Let’s hope you inherited your uncle’s genes for good detective work,” Jordan said. “We might need it.” Especially, she noted to herself, if her archery-obsessed partner continued to suffer with a “deer hunting season” flu, now in its third day. “Now, Mrs. LeMieux, let’s start from the beginning. When did you discover your daughter missing?”

  “It’s Ms. LeMieux,” Rhonda said through sniffles. “I never married. I discovered it when I got here to pick her up, about a half-hour ago.”

  “And you dropped her off at what time?” Jordan whipped out a notepad and pen.

  “A few minutes before eight o’clock,” Rhonda said. “I had an early class, then another at nine. Dammit, I should have come straight here after class!” She glared at Dawes for a moment, then turned away. Dawes reddened, but said nothing.

  “Who picked the girl up, then?” Jordan asked Quarterman.

  “Our records show that a woman claiming to be the child’s grandmother—”

  “My mother is dead!” LeMieux shouted. “I’ve told you this a hundred times!”

  “Easy, easy,” Jordan said. “Let’s just get the facts here, okay? Now, Ms. Quarterman...”

  “Call me Estelle, please. Now, as I was saying,” Quarterman said, regaining her composure. “A woman calling herself Karina LeMieux checked Jada out around 9:50 a.m. She presented identification and signed our check-out form, and she was pre-approved by Ms. LeMieux to do so.”

  “I forgot to update my records,” Rhonda said. Remorse choked her voice. “Nobody else knew this. This was an inside job. It had to be! Where’s my baby? Give me back my baby!” She lunged across the table at Quarterman as if to grab her.

  With surprising agility, the older woman somehow eluded Rhonda’s grasp. Dawes wrapped her arms around Rhonda’s waist and guided her back to her chair.

  “I’d like to see your security footage for that period,” Jordan said to Quarterman. “Do you have a physical description?”

  Estelle nodded. “Average height, a little overweight. African American, late forties to early fifties—”

  “My mother was white!” Rhonda shouted. “Wasn’t that in your files?”

  Quarterman stared at her, stricken. “I, uh...suppose not.”

  Jordan rubbed her temples. A headache erupted in her frontal lobes. Crap. So much for this being an easy family-miscommunication case. “I’ll want you to check this footage with me, Ms. LeMieux. See if you recognize her. Is there anyone else that meets her description? The child’s other grandmother, perhaps?”

  “Jada’s father was white, too,” Rhonda said. “So was his mother, I expect. Anyway, Rizzo’s been out of the picture a long while. I don’t think he even knows I’m back in Mansfield.”

  “Still, I’ll need as much information as you can give me on him.” Jordan’s headache intensified. The short list of usual suspects was shrinking fast. “Any other relatives on your side that we might talk to?”

  “My father was an only child,” Rhonda said, “and he died ten years ago. My younger brother moved back to Jamaica as soon as he turned 18. We don’t speak much. He’s never even met Jada.”

  That rang alarms in Jordan’s ears. International child trafficking mills would kill—literally—for a healthy, mixed-race baby. “I’ll need all the info you can share on your brother, too,” she said. “Ms. Quarterman, let’s check that film. Ms. LeMieux, are you up for this right now?”

  Rhonda laid a hand on her friend’s arm. “Can—Can Val come with me? For support,” she added,
gazing at Dawes with tears again streaming down her cheeks.

  “I’d be happy to,” Dawes said. “If that’s okay.”

  Jordan smiled. “Ms. Dawes,” she said, “your first experience as a policewoman may begin much sooner than you expected.”

  VAL SAT ON RHONDA’S right while they viewed the film, one hand on her friend’s arm to console her. Val worked hard to suppress her own squeamishness at the intimate touch. But it calmed Rhonda, whose body shook with sobs every time her child’s abductor appeared.

  Detective Jordan, seated to Rhonda’s left, asked Estelle Quarterman to halt the film when the suspect entered, freezing her image in the center of the screen. The film showed the woman’s face and body from a top-down angle. The woman seemed to be aware of the camera, as she kept her head bowed, often hiding her face. But the key features she could not hide, such as her brown skin, wavy black hair, and stout figure.

  “You don’t recognize her?” Jordan asked.

  Rhonda shook her head, sobbed more, and squeezed Val’s hand.

  “She looks nothing like Rhonda,” Val said. “She’s short, her nose and face are shaped differently, her build—even her skin is much darker.”

  “My mother was white, for the hundredth time,” Rhonda said, moaning.

  “To be fair, we didn’t have a photo of Karina on file,” Quarterman said. “And she presented what appeared to be a valid Connecticut driver’s license with your mother’s name and address.”

  “Fake IDs are the easiest thing to find around a college campus,” Val said. “The counterfeiters practically distribute brochures in the dorms.”

  “I’ll check the usual places,” Jordan said. “Estelle, can I get a screenshot of her?”

  Quarterman clicked a few keys on her laptop and nodded. “Anything else?”

  Jordan sat up in her seat. “A copy of her signature on the sign-out form. Can we check the outside footage?”

  Quarterman tapped the keyboard again, and screen displayed the sidewalk in front of the day care center’s entrance. A young Latinx couple exited, holding a child, and disappeared into the lot. “This is just before she arrived...and here she is.” The suspect stepped into the frame, and the image froze again.

  “She’s short, all right,” Val said. “The other couple was a head taller than her.”

  “Can we get their contact info?” Jordan said. “They may remember something—her car, anything.”

  “Here’s another angle,” Estelle Quarterman said. The screen image shifted to the parking lot. The Latinx couple came into view from behind, and they busied themselves loading their baby into a small SUV. Another vehicle entered, a Toyota sedan with New York plates.

  “Freeze it there,” Jordan said. “Can anyone make out the plate number?”

  They all squinted at the screen. “They’re blurred out,” Val said. “I can’t read a single number.”

  “Me either,” Rhonda said. “What the hell?”

  Jordan sighed. “They mudded the plates. They must’ve known about the cameras. Dammit! Well, maybe our folks in the lab can make something out. Can I get a copy of this footage?”

  Estelle Quarterman smiled and handed the detective a thumb drive. “I expected you to ask for that. There’s a scan of the sign-out form and a screenshot of the suspect on there, as well.”

  “Damn, you’re fast,” Jordan said. “I’m impressed.”

  The center director smiled. “When you serve a university community, it pays to keep up with the times.”

  Jordan stood and stretched, then turned to Rhonda. “I’ll run this downtown. Will you come with me? Also, I’ll need the names of everyone who knows enough about you and Jada to try something like this—but who wouldn’t know what your mother looked like. Can you do that?”

  Rhonda shrugged, tears flowing again. “Will I ever see my baby again?” she asked.

  Val wrapped an arm around her, steeling herself against the touch, and said in a soft voice, “I’ll help you.”

  Rhonda shook her head. “Thank you, but this isn’t your problem. I’ve involved you too much already.”

  “Nonsense,” Val said. “Call it step one of our research project—partner.”

  Rhonda’s face crumpled again. “You’re too kind.”

  Val hugged her and patted her back, her heart sagging in her chest. She couldn’t remember the last time someone called her kind.

  It felt good.

  Chapter Four

  Val drove Rhonda’s Ford Focus to the precinct office, following the detective’s rust-colored Charger through slow Mansfield traffic. Rhonda rode with the detective so they could talk further. That afforded Val some alone time, which she used to place a few important calls.

  She first called Dominique Hillebrand, head coach of the freshman soccer team. Val dialed the number after stopping at a red light, then set her phone in Rhonda’s cup holder and put it on speaker.

  “Dawes!” Hillebrand said in greeting. As usual, the coach’s voice volume was about ten decibels too loud. “Have you been working on those no-look left-footed passes I showed you? Or is this about taking extra corner kick drills again? I can meet you at three today, if you’re available.”

  “Sorry, Coach,” Val said. “Actually, I’m calling to tell you I may have to miss practice today. A friend of mine—”

  “Miss practice? No, no, no, no, no,” Hillebrand said, her Canadian accent and cadence more pronounced. “Unless you’re in the hospital, in class, or in prison...and if you’re in class, you know what to do about that.”

  “I didn’t schedule any afternoon classes,” Val said. Hillebrand had warned the team to avoid that mistake and had offered to help reschedule around conflicts. Reschedule the class, not practices. “A friend of mine has gotten caught up in a bit of a police situation, and—”

  “That’s even worse!” Hillebrand huffed and a loud “clunk,” similar to a set of weights being dropped on a gym floor, came over the receiver. “You need to steer clear of any police trouble, or any ‘friends’ who have that sort of issue. The terms of your scholarship are clear on all this. You hear me, Dawes?”

  “It’s not like that.” Val’s impatience grew. Her coach’s well-earned reputation of shouting first and asking questions later had frustrating consequences. “Someone took her baby from a day care center. I was there when she discovered it, and she needs my help.”

  “Her baby? Jeez, that’s a raw deal.” Hillebrand huffed out a noisy breath. “But Dawes, you can’t solve everybody else’s problems, and you can’t go creating them for me and your teammates. Stay clear of anything remotely connected to criminal activity. You understand? Way clear. As in, a hundred percent out.”

  “It’s just for today,” Val said, “and probably not even the entire practice. I’ll be there if I can, maybe a little late, and I’ll be back tomorrow for certain.”

  “It still counts as an absence,” Hillebrand said with a growl. “Another one, and you don’t start. Three and you’re suspended. Understood?”

  Val sighed. “Thanks, coach.” She hung up before any more sarcasm crept into her voice and got her in worse trouble. The coach’s harsh response surprised her. Didn’t Hillebrand understand that this was a life-or-death situation? Val shook her head, muttering to herself.

  Still, she felt partially responsible for Rhonda’s predicament. If she hadn’t delayed her friend from picking up Jada from day care, none of this would have happened. She wanted to help, but how?

  An idea struck her. She voice-commanded her phone to call her brother.

  “Chad?” she said when he answered. “Hey, I know you’re just starting law school, but could you give me some advice, on behalf of a friend?”

  “Hello to you, too, little sister,” Chad said, groggy. “And yes, we’re all fine here, since you asked. Oh, you didn’t ask? Silly me.” He yawned, a sound that resembled a loud cat’s meow.

  “Sorry,” she said. “How were your first few weeks at Yale?”

  “Brill
iant,” he said. “I haven’t slept a wink, and neither has Kendra. Ali’s had a stomach bug for the past week, and my first brief is due at 8 a.m. tomorrow. Other than that, law school is pure heaven.” He yawned again, not as loud as before.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “Give that precious girl a hug for me. I’ll come visit and help you as soon as I can.”

  “Don’t,” he said. “The little diva is contagious right now. Kendra’s coming down with it, and I’m fighting it. We’ll let you know when it’s safe. Now, what’s this about your friend?”

  Val recounted the events of the morning, fighting tears. “What legal action can she take against her daughter’s father once she gets her back?” she asked. “A restraining order, or a ban, or—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Chad said. “First, we don’t know if he’s responsible. He’s the most likely suspect, yes, but as the detective told you, there are other possibilities. Second, a restraining order won’t stop someone who’s willing to commit a felony—and that’s what this sounds like. And third, I’m not a lawyer. I can’t offer legal advice to anyone, even you.”

  “Then take off your lawyer hat,” she said, “and just be my big brother. What should I do to help her?”

  “Nothing,” he said, “other than to be her supportive friend. Console her, keep her calm, hold her hand—figuratively, not literally.”

  Val’s skin grew warm. Chad knew better than most of her aversion to direct human contact.

  “But you’re not part of this problem, and it could be dangerous if you got involved,” he continued. “Guys who do stuff like this tend to turn violent to people who get in their way. Don’t become his next victim.”

  Val rolled her eyes. “Don’t pull these ‘dangers-of-being-a-cop’ scare tactics on me,” she said. “I know what I want to do with my life, and your nagging won’t dissuade me.”

  “I’m not trying to change your mind about becoming a cop,” he said. “I lost that battle years ago. I’m just saying, you’re not a cop, much less a detective. Your jiu jitsu training won’t protect you against a guy like that, either.”