Gone Cold by Douglas Corleone Read Free Book Online Page B

you thinking, leaving Hailey out there all by herself? You’re her mother, goddamn you. How could you take your eyes off her even for a second? She’s only six years old .”
    “When I looked out the window to check on her again, I didn’t see her,” Tasha says through her tears. “But I thought she’d just moved to another part of the yard. Or maybe she was heading inside. I listened for the door. When I didn’t hear anything I looked out the window again. Then I walked outside and looked around the yard. The gate was closed, so I thought maybe she was hiding. On the phone, my mother was telling me some ridiculous story about my father fighting with their neighbors over some landscaping issue. I didn’t want to interrupt her or shout in her ear. So I kept looking. After another minute or so, I finally told my mother to hang on and I started calling out Hailey’s name.”
    I know it’s useless to point fingers just now. All that matters is that Hailey is found. But I can’t help but feel as though Tasha’s to blame. She says nothing else in the yard was amiss. That the sandwiches and sweet tea were still on the blanket. She listened and listened and heard nothing but silence. Finally she told her mother she had to go. Didn’t say why, didn’t mention that she couldn’t find Hailey, just said, “Let me call you back, Mom, I’ve got to check on something.” Why? I think. Why not say, “I don’t see my daughter.” Maybe then her mother hangs up and dials the police, sends them to our address. Maybe it saves fifteen minutes. Maybe that fifteen minutes is all the time it would have taken to reverse this hell we’re facing right now.
    “I ran across the street to the neighbor’s,” she says. “They have a daughter a little older than Hailey, and a puppy Hailey loves to play with, a little basset hound named CJ. I rang their bell. I heard the dog barking, but no one came to the door. I was still holding the phone, so I tried to call nine-one-one, but I was too far from the house for the cordless to work. So I ran back to the house and called.”
    Rendell nods his head. “What did you tell the dispatcher?”
    “I said, ‘ Someone took my daughter! ’”
    “Why?” Rendell cuts in. “Why did you say that? Why did you think that right away?”
    I look at my wife and for the first time since I arrived she fumbles for words.
    “I don’t … I just knew . I mean, she wasn’t in the backyard and the gate was closed. It was locked . Even if Hailey left—which she’d never in a million years do—she couldn’t have reached over and locked the gate.”
    Rendell makes a face I’ve seen before, a face only cops make when they’re skeptical of something someone is saying. “Couldn’t have?” he says. “Or wouldn’t have?”
    Tasha has to think about it. I wait for her to look at me, but she doesn’t. She’s barely looked at me since I arrived home, in fact.
    “I don’t know,” she says finally. “I guess she’s tall enough now. But she knows better than to leave the yard when I’m not there.”
    How often are you not there? I nearly shout.
    “All right,” Rendell says in the voice of an ER doctor about to deliver bad news. “We and the D.C. Police have every available human resource out there looking for your daughter. We’ll watch the phones and hope we receive a call that Hailey’s safe and sound, that she just strolled away and got lost. But it’s been a few hours now since she went missing, so our job, mine and Special Agent West’s, is to operate under the assumption that she’s been taken. If she has, this first twenty-four hours is crucial. So I’m going to ask you a series of questions, some of which may seem completely irrelevant and some of which may make you uncomfortable. But it’s all standard operating procedure, and the more you cooperate, the faster we’re going to find Hailey and bring her home.”
    “We understand,” I say.
    “Good,” he says, opening a small