realize just where it came from. The victim’s cell phone. Still on him.
“Christ.” Hauck bent down and found it inside David Sanger’s vest.
The digital display read HOME. Everyone stood around and just listened as it continued to ring, four, five times, looking at one another silently before it finally went into voice mail.
“No.” Hauck exhaled at Vern. “There’s something else I have to do.”
He jotted down the address they had found in the victim’s wallet, 475 Pine Ridge Road. Only a mile or two from there. This was one of the jobs nobody vied for, the unenviable responsibility of rank. He grabbed a local patrolman he knew and asked him to follow in his car. This sort of thing was always done better in twos.
Outside, by the fuel pumps, Hauck grabbed hold of Munoz.
Freddy asked, “You want me to come with you, LT?”
“No. I want you to stay and brief the crime scene guys. And listen, Freddy—I got that APB out within a minute or two; no way they could’ve gotten very far. If we haven’t heard anything back, you know what I’m thinking…”
Munoz nodded. “That the truck’s still somewhere around here. That they dumped it somewhere.”
Hauck backed away to where his Explorer was and pointed at Freddy. “You find that truck.”
Wendy Sanger had the bags packed and dragged downstairs. Haley was in the midst of her usual early morning tortured-teenager routine, whining on about why they had to drag her up to Vermont when Ariel had a party planned for Saturday night and it was “just leaves up there, Mom, not even goddamn snow!” Wendy shouted back at her up the stairs, stuffing the case with Ethan’s medicine. “Don’t you give me a hard time this morning, Haley! Just get your butt down!”
They were heading up to the ski house at Stratton, lugging the ski stuff up with all their clothes for the season. Easier than packing it all up and transporting it to New Britain, near Hartford, where the family was moving before Christmas. It was a stressful time for all of them. Maybe the most for Haley—leaving her friends smack in the middle of the school year.
But it was hard on all of them. And Wendy knew her daughter would probably spend the whole weekend on the couch yapping on the phone anyway, so what the hell did it even matter where she was?
“C’mon, Hale, I mean it, get moving! Daddy’ll be back soon.”
“Who the hell took my goddamn iPod, Mom?”
Ugh. Wendy put down the medicine case in frustration. “I don’t know, hon!”
David had gone into town to wash the car, like he did every Saturday morning. His compulsive little ritual. Vacuum it out like it was the queen’s bedroom, polish down the chrome.
She checked the clock. That was over an hour ago. Where the hell is David? she wondered.
She had tried him on the cell, twice, and left a message: “Just wondering what it is you’re doing, David…You remember, we have this little trip planned today. We’re sitting here ready…” But he wasn’t answering, which struck Wendy as odd. David always picked up unless he was in trial. That was starting to worry her a bit.
Maybe he’d stopped at the station for a cup of coffee. That would be just like him, Wendy knew. Getting everyone up at dawn, pushing them to get moving, promising, “Greenburgers at Dot’s in Manchester by one!”—while he chatted someone up at the car wash about some new bond initiative in town, dawdling over the morning editorials as he filled up the car, and all the while she was running around like a chicken without a head, getting everything together, dressing and making breakfast for Ethan. And then he’d finally come home with an innocent look on his face and clap. “So, hey, what’s everyone been doing, guys? We gotta go!”
That would be just like him.
Ethan was eating cereal in the kitchen, watching Teletubbies. He was six, the love of their lives, though not everything was right with him. Asperger’s syndrome. Not full-out autism, they hoped, but still, a little impaired. And now with the move they had to change schools from Eagle Hill, and maybe doctors too, though they had found a fabulous program up near Hartford with people who seemed to really care.
“Aargh!” Wendy heard Ethan shout something, followed by the sound of something hitting the floor.
“Ethan, no!”
She went over to the wall and picked it up. “Haley!” she called upstairs. “I think Ethan found your iPod…!”
She’d miss this place, Wendy realized. It was an old, refurbished colonial. Her folks had helped them buy it when David took a job with the government after law school. The kitchen was small, they had never quite gotten around to giving the bathrooms a do-over, but there was that terrific yard in back, which faced a nature preserve no one could ever build on. And some of the elms on their property were over a hundred feet tall. And they’d made friends.
Still, David’s Monday-to-Friday commute was growing exhausting. Some nights he wouldn’t get home until after nine, when Ethan was already asleep. Some weeks he didn’t make it home at all. The new promotion at Justice was what David had dreamed of. Why he left private practice in the first place and sacrificed all the money. A chance to really do something and make a difference. Before law school, he’d taught English in Guatemala. A chance to serve.
Speaking of which…Wendy glanced at the kitchen clock again—it was already after ten! He had wanted to be on the road by nine thirty. She tried David’s cell one more time. Again, his voice mail came on.
What the hell is going on, David?
She started to get worried. She knew she sometimes tended to overstress a bit. She’d lost her dad at eighteen to a sudden heart attack. And David had this mild arrhythmia himself, though the doctors convinced her it was nothing to really worry about. Even at forty-one. Still, she always carried around this tiny fear…That one day she would be alone, just like her mom had been left alone. That she would have to bring up Ethan by herself. Stupid, she knew, maybe even a little selfish. But where the hell was he, anyway?
That’s when she spotted the two cars pulling up in the drive outside the kitchen window.
One was a black SUV, just like theirs. Except it had lights on top. Flashing lights! The other was a regular blue and white Greenwich police car.
The wave of worry in her chest had now grown into full-out panic. What are they doing here?
She told herself that there were a million things it could be. It could be the car had broken down, or that he’d had a little accident. But then David would’ve called! Or that he’d been taken to the hospital. It could be he’d just taken sick. It could be anything.
“Ethan, you stay right here, honey…Mommy’s just going outside.” Wendy put down her phone and ran to the front door.
But as she opened it, heart starting to race, and stared quizzically into the face of
