The
Brandt Dodson File:
The Lost Sheep by Brandt
Dodson
After closing a high profile case, Colton Parker’s
life is beginning to turn around. His detective agency has money in the
bank, a growing clientele, and the relationship between Colton and FBI
agent Mary Christopher is beginning to blossom. Things are looking up...until
his daughter, Callie, vanishes.
The search for Callie will lead Colton into a world he has never seen. A world where everything is wrong—and wrong is right. A world where light is exchanged for darkness, and the truth is sacrificed for a lie.
If Colton is to save Callie in time, he will need to confront evil where
it dwells. A confrontation that will affect both father and daughter for
all eternity.
CHAPTER ONE
I like to do a lot of different things. Playing poker with my friends,
listening to the music of Benny Carter, and enjoying a good steak.
Sitting in a police station on a cold November evening isn’t one of them.
“Sounds like she’s run away.”
“Thanks for clearing that up,” I said.
“I’m a cop,” Wilkins said. “Clearing things up is what I do.”
Harley Wilkins, captain of detectives with the Indianapolis Police Department, was seated at his desk with his hands resting on top of his head. The fluorescent lighting reflected off his black skin.
“Can you put out an AMBER Alert?” I asked. I was sitting alongside his desk with my right leg crossed over my left. My right foot was bouncing.
He shook his head. “Sorry, Colton. That’s for abductions only.” He glanced at my foot. “Relax, okay? We’ll find her.”
I stopped bouncing. “Sure. Sorry.”
“Any idea when the call came in?”
“No. I got home a little before three thirty—that’s about the time she gets home from school—and checked for messages as soon as I got in the house.”
“You always do that? Check for messages as soon as you get home?” He was drinking a can of Sprite.
“I’m not a cop anymore, Harley. I eat what I kill. If a piece of business wants to reach me, I’ve got to be available.”
“Right.” He took a long, slow drink from the can. “Were there any other messages? Something that might have come in after Callie’s call? Maybe a message from someone you know? Someone who could let you know what time they left their message? It might help us to pin down when she called.”
I gave him a look that told him I knew my job. At least as an investigator, if not as a father.
He finished the last of the Sprite and tossed the empty can into the receptacle under his desk. “You want some coffee or something?” he asked.
“No.”
“Tell me again what she said.”
I sighed. “I got home at about three thirty. I checked for messages and heard Callie’s voice say, ‘Daddy, please don’t try to find me. Please.’”
He leaned back in his seat and studied me. “Were there any background noises? Something we can use to help pin down her location?”
I tried to rub the strain from my eyes. “I didn’t pick up on any.”
“Okay. We’ll have the lab examine your answering machine. If anything shows up, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Wilkins continued to study me the way cops do even when they don’t know they’re doing it.
“You sure you don’t want some coffee or something?” he asked again. “You look beat.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, on second thought. “Coffee would be good.”
He left for the coin-operated machine that stood outside the squad room, abandoning me to my thoughts. It was nearly six thirty, and everyone else had already gone home, leaving the squad room as empty as I felt.
Callie blamed me for her mother’s death. It was an issue that had divided us for the better part of two years. Yet over the past few months, she had seemed to be coming around. She had even gotten involved in soccer again, leading me to believe we had turned a corner. Yet here we were, with me sitting in a police station and her being somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be.
My foot was beginning to bounce again. I uncrossed my legs and stuck them straight out ahead of me.
As soon as I discovered Callie had left home, I called the Shapiros, Anna’s parents. Since Anna’s death, they had been increasingly involved in their granddaughter’s life. This latest episode would upset them, but they had to know. I told them that Callie had run away and that I was already working to find her. I told them about my planned visit with Wilkins and tried to sound as encouraging to them as Wilkins was trying to sound to me. I even caught myself using some of the same tactics. But the tone of their comments made it clear that I hadn’t been any more successful with them than he had been with me.
“Here we go,” Wilkins said, returning to the squad room. He was carrying a couple of lidless Styrofoam cups and set one in front of me as he dropped his ample frame into his chair. “Now, tell me again what the message said.”
I sighed. “Harley, I—”
“Humor me, Colton. Just tell me again what she said.”
Harley was a good cop. And he was doing the good-cop thing. Asking for the story again was a tried-and-true way to uncover discrepancies. Not that he was expecting any. Not in this case. But he kept digging, prying, trying to find anything that might point him in a direction where none seemed to exist.
“She said, ‘Daddy, please don’t try to find me. Please.’”
He eased back in the chair with his coffee in one hand while he stroked his chin with the other. “Most runaways don’t call and leave messages.”
“I’m aware of that,” I said, hearing the edginess in my voice. “But kidnap victims don’t get the chance.”
He continued stroking his chin in thought. “Have there been any problems?”
“Things haven’t been right since Anna died.”
“How long has that been?”
“Almost two years.”
Wilkins wasn’t taking notes. He didn’t need to. He just wanted to keep me talking until I said something he could use. Something I probably wouldn’t even realize I had said. After all, I wasn’t thinking as clearly or with as much detachment as he was. Callie wasn’t his daughter.
“But you told me earlier that things have been getting better.”
“I thought they were. She’d gotten back into soccer, and her grades were beginning to improve.” I rubbed my eyes. “She even seemed to be happier, Harley. Not happy, just happier.”
I drank some of the coffee. Wilkins drank some of his.
“She’s playing for a different school now,” Wilkins said. “Any problems there?”
“None I’m aware of. She did have a boyfriend, and that ended, but she seemed to have bounced back pretty quickly.”
“After losing your mother, losing a boyfriend just doesn’t compare,” he said.
“And Mary’s been spending time with her. Giving her pointers.” I drank more coffee. Wilkins took advantage of the silence.
“On boyfriends?” He smiled.
As a Chicago cop, and later as an FBI agent, I had often employed the tactics Wilkins was using. But now that I was on the receiving end, I realized just how lame they were.
“Why don’t you stick to law enforcement and leave the humor to the professionals?” I said.
“Right. Sorry,” he said. “Does Mary know she’s missing?”
“I called and left her a message.” Mary Christopher was a former colleague from my days with the FBI. Since Anna’s death, she had filled the role of surrogate mother. She had also begun to fill a hole in my heart.
“Has she returned your call?”
“No. The bureau sent her to Chicago to testify at a trial. She did some of the legwork for the case here in Indianapolis.”
There was a lapse of silence as Wilkins paused to blow on his coffee.
“I searched her room,” I said, breaking the silence. “I went through her closet, desk, old yearbooks, anything that might help me get a handle on why she left.”
“I understand,” he said.
“I found a photo of some guy I don’t know and the address of a friend.”
“Was the man in the photo her old boyfriend?” Wilkins asked.
I shook my head. “No. I’ve never seen this guy. No name, just a picture.”
“Do Anna’s parents know?” Wilkins asked.
“Yeah. I called them before I came here.”
“And?”
I sighed. “And they were upset to say the least.”
“With you?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “They understand that Anna’s death has thrown all of us over the edge and that it’s going to be a rocky climb back to the top.”
“Does your mother know?” he asked.
“I called but she and her husband are on an extended cruise to the Mediterranean. They aren’t expected back for a couple of weeks.”
My mother had been a prostitute and had given me away shortly after I was born. Although I had established contact with her and was trying to put the past behind me, our relationship was tenuous at best.
“She and her husband are trying to work out their problems,” I said.
“Probably best that they don’t know,” he said. “Sounds like they have enough to work on.”
Wilkins blew on his coffee again.
“Can you put out an APB?” I asked.
“Now that I can do.” He moved forward in the chair. “I’ll need a description. And if you’ve got one, a picture would help. I’ll copy it and get it to the roll call stations.”
I pulled a photo from my wallet and gave it to him. I told him how tall she was and how much she weighed. I told him what she had been wearing when she left for school. I also gave him my answering machine.
“DOB?” he asked.
I told him, and he wrote it down.
“She’s fifteen?” he asked.
“As of last month.”
There was another brief period of silence as he studied me again. Not in an accusatory way, but in an I could be you way. “My daughter ran away once,” he said. “Tore my ex and me apart. But she came home in forty-eight hours. Most of them do, you know.”
“Most of them do. But that means some of them don’t. And the longer they’re gone…”
“Yeah. I know,” he said. “By the way, if she has a cell phone, we can—”
“She doesn’t.”
“Okay.” He stood from his desk. “When I first started on the department, we used to let these things ride for twenty-four hours. But now I can get this thing on the wire right away.”
He was trying to be cheerful, upbeat. I appreciated his effort, but it didn’t help.
“Sit tight,” he said, gently slapping me on the back. “I’ll get this picture and your answering machine down to the lab.”
Wilkins left me alone again. I glanced around. Photos of spouses, children, and grandchildren sat on most of the desks. Photos that represented loved ones who were waiting at home.
Daddy, please don’t try to find me. Please.
It was a request I would ignore. Unless I found her, and found her in time to save her from whatever or whoever lured her away, I would have no reason to go home. Or maybe even to go on.
Taken from The Lost Sheep by Brandt Dodson
Copyright 2007 by Brandt Dodson
Published by Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, OR;
Used by permission.
