In Search of Valor Page 3

  “I can take care of myself.” She failed to keep the defensiveness out of her tone.

  “Especially if you make smart choices.”

  Val seethed. “Would you look at the time? I’ve got to go. Thanks for, you know. Everything.” This time, she did not hide the sarcasm.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, his voice annoyingly cheerful. “By the way, Dad asked about you.”

  “Interesting that he didn’t ask me about me.” Distracted, she nearly ran a red light, trying to keep up with the detective. Dammit! She didn’t know the location of the precinct office. She’d need to use the GPS in her phone. “Gotta go, bro.”

  “Love you, sis.” This time he sounded sincere.

  “Love you too, Chad.” She ended the call and opened her phone’s maps app, but before she could search for the precinct’s address, her phone rang again—an unknown number. “Hello?”

  “Miss Dawes. I was wondering if you’d be able to answer from your jail cell.”

  She recognized the sneering tone of her Criminology professor and sighed. “Dr. Hirsch? What makes you think I’d be in jail?”

  “I’ve had three calls from the local police this morning, asking suspicious questions about your character,” he said. “To which I responded, in all honesty, that I can no sooner vouch for you than any Jane, Dick, or hairy Husky on the basketball court. What in heaven’s name are you involved in now?”

  “I’m not in any trouble,” she said. “I’m helping a friend who reported a crime to the police. She’s also one of your students, I might add.” The light changed, and she set the phone down in the cup holder to drive.

  “Oh, really?” Hirsch said. “Please, do tell, so I can begin the paperwork to drop the both of you from my class roster. It’s awfully difficult to attend college from prison, Miss Dawes.”

  She sighed, wondering if the man ever made the slightest use of his ears, or whether they were even connected to his brain. “Professor, we’re not the ones in trouble. She’s the victim, and I’m, well...assisting.”

  Hirsch snorted. “You’d be of the greatest assistance if you stayed out of the way of the professionals,” he said. “Barring that, at least keep them from harassing me with their annoying phone calls. And Dawes? Don’t think this encounter with the criminal justice system will help you in my class. It won’t. Not one bit.”

  “Gee, I wouldn’t want real-world experience to interfere with my education,” she said.

  “Good,” Hirsch said. The man delivered sarcasm like a pro, but couldn’t recognize it in the voices of others. “Because as difficult as it is for women to succeed as police officers, it’s impossible for those with a criminal record.”

  “I don’t have a crim—”

  “And don’t forget,” Hirsch said, “your term paper topic selection is due tomorrow afternoon.” He hung up without a goodbye.

  Val sighed. Perhaps Chad was right about criminology as a field of study. Social work sounded better by the moment.

  TANISHA JORDAN PAUSED in her interview of Rhonda LeMieux to survey her list of potential suspects. Something felt wrong. Rhonda didn’t seem upset enough. Most mothers in her position would lose their minds. This one seemed more disconnected than distraught, as if this whole event had happened to someone else. She hadn’t spoken ten words in the drive from the day care center to the station and said as little as possible in response to Jordan’s questions. It raised her suspicions, to say the least.

  She drew in a breath to ask her next question when the door opened and Valorie Dawes entered, escorted by a young officer in uniform. Jordan pointed to an empty chair in the small interview room, an eight-by-twelve rectangle filled by a black-topped table and a handful of uncomfortable chairs. She waited for Dawes to get comfortable, then returned her attention to Rhonda. Perhaps with Dawes in the mix, Rhonda’s comfort level would rise and she would open up a little more.

  “Besides your brother Desmond, who else in your family might have a connection to Jada?” Jordan asked. “In particular, would any of your relatives resemble the woman on the video?”

  Rhonda shook her head and waved Val over to sit next to her. “I don’t even have any non-white cousins,” she said. “I never met my Jamaican grandparents—they died when my father was still young. As I mentioned, he was an only child.”

  Jordan took a few notes, mostly to put something on the page. The woman had given her diddly squat to go on. “No other relatives at all?”

  Rhonda wagged her head again. “No one that looks anything like her. And my mother’s white family wanted nothing to do with us.” She made a sour face. “You wouldn’t even want me to repeat the names they called her. And me.” Tears welled in her eyes again. She squeezed her friend’s hand. Dawes seemed uncomfortable with her friend’s touch, but remained quiet.

  Jordan frowned. Again, no help. “Okay, back to the baby’s father,” she said. “What’s his last known place of residence?”

  “Rizzo lived in New Haven when we...when I got pregnant.” Her eyes darted over to Dawes, then toward her lap. “I don’t know where he lives now.”

  “Have you seen Mr. Rizzo since?” Jordan asked.

  “No.” Rhonda bowed her head.

  Dawes cleared her throat. “What about that night he interrupted you at dinner?” she asked. “When was that, again?”

  Holy crap. Jordan glared at Rhonda. How could she not remember that? Or thought it important enough to mention? She wanted to scream at her. Instead she took a deep, calming breath, and waited.

  “Oh, yeah,” Rhonda said, her face brightening a little. “That was two or three months ago, in Hartford. I was on a date, and he confronted me. But he didn’t even ask me about the baby.”

  “Who was this date with?” Jordan tried to mask her excitement by speaking in a monotone. At last, something to build on.

  “Asher Mulholland. But he wouldn’t—”

  “I’ll need his contact information,” the detective said before Rhonda wasted her time making excuses for him. Victims often refused to believe the obvious about the ones they loved. Time to dig deeper. “How long were you seeing him? Are you still?”

  Dawes winced next to Rhonda, and Jordan noted that Rhonda had crushed her friend’s hands in a death-like grip. “We went out a few times,” Rhonda said. “We never got serious.”

  “Any other boyfriends? Even single dates, meeting for coffee, a walk in the park. Male or female.” Jordan smiled to ease the tension. “I can’t assume anything, and neither can you.”

  Rhonda frowned, a sad expression. “I haven’t had a social life since having Jada,” she said. “Especially after my mother died. She was my babysitter until she got sick, and I haven’t found a replacement. That’s why I take her to Little Husky Playpen. But they are so expensive.” She bit back tears and seemed to shrink into her seat.

  Jordan sighed. Maybe there was nothing there. “Okay. Our hot leads are the brother and Rizzo. We’ll check on Mr. Mulholland and follow up with the day care folks, just in case. In the meantime, look at some mugshots. We don’t have a lot of middle-aged black females on file, but we might get lucky.”

  Rhonda’s curvy body sagged into her friend’s wiry frame. Jordan fixed Dawes with a stare when their eyes met, trying to will her message into the young woman’s brain: I need your help here. Dawes seemed to understand, returning Jordan’s gaze with a slight nod.

  Jordan breathed a bit easier. Dawes had Rhonda’s trust, and she struck Jordan as smart, capable, and willing to help. Perhaps she’d inherited some of those same tenacious, intuitive genes that made her uncle such a force in his time.

  Maybe, just maybe, Jordan had already gotten a little lucky on this case.

  Chapter Five

  Detective Jordan sent Valorie Dawes and Rhonda LeMieux off to review mugshots of middle-aged black female convicts in the area. She didn’t expect Rhonda to recognize any of them or match them to the woman in the video, but it was a necessary due diligence step. Meanwhile, Jord
an reviewed the security film of the day care center’s parking lot with a frustrating result. Whoever had made off with Jada had driven a beige Toyota Camry—one of the most common cars on the road. They’d also mudded over their license plate, rendering it unreadable. The combination made the car almost impossible to find.

  “We’ve got an Amber Alert out on the car, driver, and baby,” Jordan said when the three of them gathered in her cramped, dingy office. “Since nobody has made any ransom demands, we have to assume either a family or acquaintance has her, or a trafficking motive. I’ve alerted the FBI and Interpol, but they won’t act until the disappearance hits the 24-hour mark.”

  “So, what do we do?” Rhonda said, sounding desperate. “Wait until they sell her to the Russians?”

  “Like I said, we knock on doors,” Jordan said, keeping her voice calm. “And by ‘we’, I mean the police. As for you, I need you to stand by and be ready to identify anyone we bring in. It will be a little rough on your academic schedule, I’m afraid.”

  Rhonda burst into tears and collapsed into her chair. “My baby! They have my baby and you sit there, doing nothing!”

  Dawes shot Jordan a pleading look and tried to console her friend. The awkward way that she draped her arm around Rhonda told Jordan that Dawes had little to no experience helping others deal with difficult emotions.

  “We’re doing everything we can,” Jordan said in her most patient voice. “But until we find something new, or the abductors make contact, there’s not much for either of you to do here.”

  “So what should we do?” Dawes said, her impatience showing. “We can’t just sit around and wait for the kidnappers to return the baby with an apology.”

  “What you need to do next,” Jordan said, “is talk to Child Services. There’s a rep in a meeting room down the hall—”

  “What?” Rhonda’s voice shrieked off the walls of the tiny room. She stood and leaned over Jordan’s desk, glaring down at her. “It’s not bad enough that some weirdo walks off with my baby. Now you sic some bureaucrat on me? So, if the kidnappers return her, the state takes her away anyway? No, thank you!”

  “I don’t think that’s what the detective has in mind,” Dawes said, though her tone belied her own doubts.

  “Right,” Jordan said. Good for Dawes, saying the right thing even when she didn’t believe it. “Listen, the way these things go is, the kidnappers make you wait, sweat it out a bit. But then they contact you, usually with demands for money and warnings not to go to the police. They want you to get nervous. It makes you more agreeable to their demands.”

  “And in the meantime?” Dawes and Rhonda said in unison.

  “In the meantime,” Jordan said with a sigh, “we keep you working so we can stay one step ahead of them. For instance, the Child Services rep will help us find Jada and protect her from harm. They have additional resources to bring to bear. Talk to them. Help them, so they can help us.”

  Rhonda took a deep breath and looked to her friend for help. Dawes glanced at Jordan, then embraced Rhonda again, this time with a little more grace. “I’ll go with you,” she said, “to make sure they know you did nothing wrong.”

  Rhonda wiped the tears from her face, swept her own gaze from Jordan to the detective and back again, and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll try. Anything to get Jada back.”

  “I’ll check in on you in a half-hour,” Jordan said. “Come on, I’ll walk you over there..” She led the two younger women down the hall and knocked on the closed meeting room door, then pushed it open. A squat, forty-something white woman, wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a professional-looking skirt suit, rose out of her chair. Jordan waved Dawes and Rhonda inside.

  “Adonna?” she said, and “This is Rhonda LeMieux, the baby’s mother, and her friend Valorie Dawes.”

  “Adonna Matthison, Connecticut Child Services Bureau,” the woman said, extending her hand to Rhonda. “Thanks, Tanisha. I’ll take it from here.”

  Jordan eased the door closed, but paused with it open a crack to catch the eye of Dawes as she sat down. “Is this okay?” she mouthed. She tapped her wrist where a watch would be. “You have the time?”

  Dawes nodded and gave her a thumbs-up. “We got this,” she mouthed back.

  Jordan closed the door and strolled back to her office. Dawes, like her uncle, was good people. So far, her talents and helpful intentions had kept Rhonda focused and calm. But including her stretched the bounds of protocol and risked giving Dawes the impression that she should engage further into taking investigative steps. Sooner or later Jordan would have to cut her off, before she became an obstacle to the investigation—and a danger to both of them.

  WHEN THE MEETING ROOM door closed, Adonna Matthison fixed Val with a concerned frown. “How long have you known Ms. LeMieux?” Matthison asked, taking notes on a tiny laptop.

  Val glanced at Rhonda, noted the fear lining her friend’s face. “We...met a few weeks ago, in Criminology class.”

  Matthison frowned and paused in her note-taking and fixed an intense stare on Rhonda. “Are you okay with Miss Dawes being here, Ms. LeMieux? It’s a bit unusual, and this could get a bit personal.”

  Val’s heart rate quickened, her blush deepening. Maybe she didn’t belong in here. She waited for Rhonda’s response.

  Doubt joined fear on Rhonda’s face. “H-how personal...what are we going to...why are you here, Ms. Matthison?” Rhonda’s voice trembled.

  Matthison sighed and gathered her thoughts a moment. “The state has an interest in the child’s welfare,” she said. “My role is to determine whether we can identify any improvements in her pattern of care that could, ah, keep her safe.”

  “I’m a good mother!” Rhonda shouted, jumping to her feet. “I love her. I would do anything to keep her safe! You can’t take her from me!”

  Matthison bit her lip, said nothing.

  Val cringed. Nobody could take Rhonda’s baby...except a kidnapper. She stood and eased Rhonda back into her chair. “Nobody’s saying you’re not a good mother,” she said, “or that you did something wrong. Right, Ms. Matthison?”

  Matthison smiled, an expression so fake Val didn’t blame Rhonda for her suspicions. “Nobody’s saying anything, yet,” the social worker said. “We’re here to find out what we can do to keep Jada safe. We all need to stay calm and focus on the facts. Can you do that, Rhonda?”

  Val’s frustration grew. Matthison’s condescension didn’t help matters any. She patted Rhonda’s arm. “I’ll help you, Rhonda. As long as you need me here.”

  “Actually, that’s not your call, nor even Ms. LeMieux’s,” Matthison said. Her eyes narrowed, and her gaze flitted from Val to Rhonda and back again. “Given what we’re about to discuss, I think it best that we continue without Ms. Dawes present.”

  Fear returned to Rhonda’s face. “But I want her here!” she said. “Please?”

  Matthison shook her head. “It’d be best if she weren’t present. I’m sorry.”

  Val cut Rhonda’s second protest short. “I’ll stay close by,” she said. She stood and patted Rhonda’s arm. “Call me if you need me.” She cast another glance at the social worker, already busy taking notes on her laptop. She gritted her teeth and sucked in a deep breath. Damned passive-aggressive control freaks.

  But on the off-chance that it could help find Jada sooner, Val needed to go along. She shuffled out and closed the door behind her. Some twenty feet down the hall, she found an empty meeting room and pulled her laptop and Research Methods text out of her backpack. Might as well use the time to catch up on homework.

  Some fifteen minutes later, Rhonda flew past the room, sobbing. By the time Val reached the doorway, Rhonda had disappeared from sight.

  VAL APPROACHED THE open door of the small conference room that Rhonda had exited moments before and knocked. Adonna Matthison started, as if she’d been absorbed in deep thought.

  “Ah, Ms. Dawes. Come in.” She shook her head and tsk’d. “I hoped to see Ms. LeMieux, bu
t perhaps you and I should chat now.”

  Val drew a deep breath and retook her seat. “I take it your talk didn’t go well,” she said.

  “These situations are always fraught with emotion,” Matthison said. “Ms. LeMieux’s reaction is not at all unusual.”

  Unease bubbled near the surface in Val’s chest. This woman showed no empathy for Rhonda’s understandable fears and frustration. Her friend needed help, not psychoanalysis. Val licked her lips, searching for the right words. “What happened?”

  Matthison smiled and removed her glasses, a half-smile softening her stark features. “Ms. LeMieux got a little defensive. But I am not here to accuse anyone,” she said. “My sole objective is to do what’s best for the child. Sometimes, that requires I ask some tough questions. It can be difficult for a parent to hear.”

  “Still,” Val said, her throat tight, “put yourself in her place. Jada is missing. Any number of individuals might have taken her, including some terrible people. She’s afraid and angry. Wouldn’t you be?”

  “Of course,” Matthison said. “She should receive counseling to help her through this. But that’s not my role. Nor is it to locate the child. Mine is to ensure that when Jada is returned to her—if she is returned—”

  “It’s those types of statements that add to Rhonda’s distress,” Val said. “Maybe she doesn’t need to hear things like that.”

  Matthison’s smile faded. “We don’t have time to tiptoe around this situation,” she said. “It’s serious, and dangerous. Rhonda’s anger at me will subside, but only if this is all resolved successfully—which means, quickly. Can you help us with that?”

  “Of course,” Val said. “That’s why I’m here. How can I help?”

  Matthison clicked on her keyboard a moment. “Can you help clarify something for me? You went with Ms. LeMieux to the day care center this morning, correct? What time did you arrive?”

  Val searched her memory. “Around 10:20,” she said. “I recall Rhonda worrying that we were late.”