Sometimes there really is a happy ending, Georgia thought as she drove back from the gym Thursday morning. When she heard the news about Molly Messenger on the radio, she felt relief, elation, then a deep sense of satisfaction. She hadn’t especially liked Christine Messenger. There was a remote quality about her, almost guarded. Georgia thought Molly’s disappearance seemed to be more of an inconvenience, a disruption to Messenger’s carefully planned career, than a gut-wrenching tragedy.
At the same time, Georgia realized she was being uncharitable. People dealt with suffering in all sorts of ways. The woman had been to hell and back. Who was she to pass judgment? She turned off the radio and took a swig from her bottled water. At least one child had been rescued from the maw of tragedy. That was cause for celebration, wasn’t it?
Back home she showered, toweled off, put on a clean pair of jeans. A new case had come in, and she was eager to start in on it. A lawyer suspected a dating service was a front for an identity theft ring and wanted Georgia to investigate. One of the lawyer’s clients had met with “More-than-Friends” in an out-of-the-way office in Palatine, a suburb about thirty miles northwest of Chicago. The woman hadn’t given them any money but did surrender her address and social security number. A week later, her credit cards were maxed out and her bank account emptied.
Georgia Googled the company and checked their website, but other than the address, phone number, and a few “testimonials,” she didn’t learn much. She went into her kitchen. Bright morning sunshine poured in through the window, and a squirrel was perched on the telephone line. She’d always wondered how they could balance on such a flimsy tightrope. Then it scurried across the line and hopped onto a nearby branch.
She went back to her computer. The best way to get a first-hand look at “More-Than-Friends” would be to see it herself. She thought about impersonating a potential client. She was in her thirties, the right age, and she could act the part of the lonely, desperate woman. She’d been there, not so long ago.
She jotted down the number then clicked to a news website to skim coverage of Molly’s return. She wanted to see how the police cracked the case: the communications, negotiations, how it played out. But there was nothing. No statement, no photos, no comment. She went back to the More-than-Friends website but couldn’t get the kidnapping out of her mind. Five minutes later, she picked up the phone.
• • •
Thursday evening was a good night at Solyst’s, a village tavern with rough-hewn floorboards and neon red beer signs on the walls. Solyst’s was a blue-collar haunt, with drinks as cheap as the conversation, but somehow it had flourished. While other places on the North Shore changed hands faster than you could say under-the-table-payments, Solyst’s had been owned by the same family for seventy-five years.
Georgia hadn’t been inside in a while, but nothing had changed. On one side was the bar, its stools patched with duct tape and, despite the new law, a residue of cigarette smoke in the air. On the other side was a brightly lit room with tables and chairs and a menu of pizza, salads, and surprisingly good fried fish.
The faces at the bar looked like the same ones she’d seen two years ago. In fact, several nodded as though it had only been two weeks since she’d been in. She found who she was looking for at the bar near the dart board.
Dan O’Malley and Georgia had come onto the force at the same time, but Dan had ended up her supervisor. Now he was Deputy Chief. She was happy for him; he was a good cop, honest and smart, and his promotion was long overdue. As for her, she sometimes wondered what might have happened if she’d played the career card as well as, say, Christine Messenger. Maybe she would have been made it to upper management, too.
O’Malley’s butt hung over his stool, and he shifted as he nursed his scotch. His eyes had made him look old ever since he was a rookie, but now craggy lines dug into his forehead. At the same time, his carrot orange hair, bristly mustache, and ruddy cheeks made him appear young—even naive. O’Malley used that to his advantage. People always underestimated him.
She slid onto a stool next to him. “Congratulations. Drinks are on me.”
He looked up, surprise on his face. She wondered whether that was part of his shtick. Act shocked and a suspect might feel obligated to explain. And incriminate himself.
“Thanks,” he said.
Georgia waved a hand. “It’s the least I could do. Except I had to wait longer than I should have to buy you a round.”
“Tell me about it.”
She swiveled toward the bar. The bartender lifted his chin.
“Another Dewers for him, Diet Coke for me. With lemon.”
The bartender nodded. Georgia swiveled back. O’Malley’s face smoothed out.
“You thought I was back on the booze?”
He flipped up a palm.
“You gotta have faith.” She grinned. “So, congratulations.”
O’Malley cocked his head. “You already said that.”
“I mean the Molly Messenger case.”
O’Malley looked down.
“Nice work.”
He tossed back the rest of his drink, then clinked the empty glass on the bar. “Everyone’s a joker.”
“What’s so funny?”
He kept his mouth shut.
Their drinks came. Georgia pushed his scotch towards him. “So, what’s going on? Why so tight-lipped with the press?”
“You noticed.”
“Hard not to notice when the force that loves to brag about itself suddenly goes quiet.”
O’Mally wiped his sleeve across his mouth.
“Who handled the investigation?”
“Who do you think?”
“Robbie Parker.”
Parker had been her partner on the force. He’d never been a particularly thorough cop. Except when he played politics. Which, it turned out, he did better than Georgia. He’d been promoted from patrol to detective a year ago.
“What’s the story?”
O’Malley’s eyes bored into her. “I wasn’t here tonight. Or if I was, we never had this conversation.”
“Just buying my former boss a drink to celebrate his promotion.”
O’Malley nodded. “What happened was nothing. A big fat zero.”
Georgia frowned.
“Parker started working the case. Did all the things you’re supposed to. Went to the camp, interviewed the counselors. Canvassed neighbors and relatives. Even tried to talk to some of her friends— ’course, then he had to get the parents involved, and some of them refused, and—”
“I get it.” Georgia cut him off. “This is the North Shore.”
“Right. Well anyway, we got nowhere. Really. The kid just showed up.”
“That’s crazy.”
“God’s honest truth is whoever had her just decided to let her go.”
“Come on, Dan. That doesn’t happen.”
“It did here. We had people with the mother 24-7. Monitored her phone, her email, her cell. Even went downtown with her when she went to her office. No one was more surprised than us when the car pulled up at the corner and the kid jumped out.”
“What kind of car? The TV report didn’t say.”
“We canvassed the neighborhood again. Someone came forward. They think it was a Lexus. Their biggest fucking sedan.”
“No plates, I guess.”
“You guess right.”
Georgia sipped her drink. “Weird.”
“You’re telling me.”
“Do you think someone was negotiating behind the scenes?”
“It wasn’t us.”
“Maybe the mother was working it herself.”
“If she was, we didn’t see it. And, in any case, there’s nothing we could do. There’s no law against trying to rescue your kid.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a kidnapping to begin with. Maybe the ex-husband just took her for an ‘extended’ visit.”
“Don’t think so. His whereabouts are accounted for. He went to work. Then stayed overnight at his girlfriend’s.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Plenty of people vouched for him.”
“You think maybe the mother staged the whole thing?”
“I don’t see how. Or why.”
“Munchausen’s?” she asked. Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy was a form of child abuse in which a mother invents imaginary symptoms of illness in a child that are subsequently treated, sometimes with fatal results. “It could be a variation.”
O’Malley shook his head. “No evidence.”
“There wouldn’t have to be.” Georgia said. “Anyone following up with the kid? About her captors, how she was treated?”
“Parker’s trying, but the mother won’t let us talk to her. Says there’s been too much trauma. But we’ll keep at it.”
Georgia ran a finger around the rim of her glass. “You said your guys went downtown with her?”
“Yeah.”
“When was this?”
“Wednesday morning. The kid came back that afternoon.”
“Why did she go downtown in the middle of everything? The mother, I mean. How could she work while this was going on? Why wasn’t she glued to the phone at home?”
“She said she wanted to pick up a few things. Pictures of Molly, her laptop. She left it there when the kid was taken.”
“If my daughter had been kidnapped, and I didn’t know if she was alive or dead, I sure as hell wouldn’t take time to ‘pick up a few things at the office.’”
O’Malley shrugged. “Parker told her we’d get the stuff for her, but...”
“He was obviously very persuasive.” She frowned. “And Molly was released that afternoon.” She stared at O’Malley.
“Hey, Davis. Our job is over. The girl is safe. We got a happy ending. We move on. We’re having a press conference later today.”
“Which will thank everyone for doing a great job.”
“What do you want from me?” He tapped his glass on the bar again. Then he stopped. “You know Eric Olson is gonna retire next year.”
Eric Olson was the village’s Chief of Police. O’Malley’s boss. “I didn’t know.”
“I need good officers, Davis. I know you told him no last year. But what if I asked you to come back?”
Georgia propped an elbow on the bar and massaged her temples. She didn’t answer for a minute. Then, “Don’t go there, Dan. Not right now.”