On the journey home, Gary spent the whole time on the phone to his contacts in the MPD. Now that they had a license plate to connect Mason’s disappearance to, he was pulling out all the stops to identify the owner of the car. There was also the matter of handing a certain amount of information to Captain Bray. Gary wasn’t officially on the Mason Black case, but when you requested details on the inside, more questions tended to come back at you.
Morgan didn’t mind the lack of attention. In fact, he needed the headspace to process everything he’d just witnessed. Dead or alive, Mason Black was out there somewhere, and it was his job—along with the Metropolitan Police Department, of course—to find out where. A thorough search of the area surrounding the parking lot had turned up nothing, and as Gary had pointed out, it would’ve taken a lot of effort for the woman in the footage to move a body as big as Mason’s. Only two possibilities remained: either he was in the car when she drove it out of there, or she had some help.
Both theories were equally terrifying.
When they arrived outside Gary’s house, Gary hung up and rubbed his eyes, dropping the cell phone onto his lap. He groaned as he continued to rub, blowing out a long, frustrated breath. “All right, do you want the good news or the bad news.”
“What do you recommend?”
“That order.”
Morgan splayed out his hands in an I-don’t-care gesture. In this business, even good news turned out to be bad, so what difference did it make which order he’d hear them in? “Go for it, and don’t hold back. I’m too tired for dramatization.”
“Ask and you shall receive.” Gary cleared his throat. “The good news is that we tracked the car. It belongs to a lady named Sarah Patterson. We’re just working on the current address, since she hasn’t been updating it.”
“Okay. What’s the bad news?”
“The car was reported stolen a few weeks ago.”
“Great.” Morgan squeezed the wheel, his knuckles turning white as the engine sent a soft vibration through the seat. It was typical that his only lead turned out to be useless, and he’d expected as much. The only thing he hadn’t anticipated was finding a clue in the first place. Now that he sat here, his only hope torn away from him in the blink of an eye, all he could think of was what he would tell Mason’s family. There was nothing left to go on.
Gary made a humming noise like he was thinking, stuffing the phone back into his pocket. He paused for a moment, gazing out of the window and up at the house where his wife passed by and waved. He waved back. “I guess the best thing we can do for now is hold out for something to fall into our laps. I’m sorry it’s turned out this way.”
There was no way Morgan could accept that. It was one thing to let down a client, but there was some kind of emotional attachment in this for him. Something about the sad desperation in Amy Black’s voice—coupled with the fact her father had also been a private investigator—made him sympathize beyond a professional level. It was his duty to find the guy, no matter what condition he was in, and report it back to the people who’d hired him.
It gave him a new wind.
“I want you to do something for me,” he said, killing the engine. “There seems to be a back-and-forth with you and me. For years we’ve been exchanging favors no matter the risk, but I think it’s my turn again. So… I’m calling it in.”
“Uh-oh.” Gary gave an exaggerated gulp.
“I want some information on Mason Black.”
“But you already have information. You gave me the file, remember?”
“This time I want more: his credit history, police file, phone records. Everything you can pull up. If I’m going to find anything that’ll help, it’s bound to be in there. Tell me, in your honest opinion, are you able to get all that?”
Gary wheezed a fake laugh and grabbed his knees. “A bit much, don’t you think?”
“I need it.”
“I don’t suppose I can bribe my way out of this endeavor?”
“Not really.”
“Hmm.” Gary went silent for a while, rubbing his eyes once more before finally looking up. “Sure, I’ll help you out. There’s a limit to what I can do, and the police have probably already gone over it, but I’ll send you an email when I’ve got everything.”
Morgan smiled, his head fuzzy with fatigue. “Thank you.”
“Just do me a favor in return, will you?”
“What’s that?”
“Get some sleep.”
As much as he wanted to, Morgan didn’t imagine he’d get his forty winks. Once in a blue moon, when a case like this came to him, all he could think about was the client, the victim, and the danger. They all swirled around his mind as if in a storm, clouding his judgment and filling his head with nothing but a bleak, murky gray with no horizon.
“I’ll make no promises.”