He offered a reward.” Shaw nodded toward the flyer.
She thought about this for a moment, revealing nothing of her reaction to this news. “He must be going crazy. God. And her mother?”
“I’m sure. But Sophie lives here with her father.”
The woman had a face that might be called heart-shaped, depending on how her hair framed her forehead. She was constantly tugging the strands, a nervous habit, he guessed. Her skin was the tan of someone who was outside frequently. She was in athletic shape. Her black leggings revealed exceptional thigh muscles. He guessed skiing and running and cycling. Her shoulders were broad in a way that suggested she’d made them broad by working out. Shaw’s exercise was also exclusively out of doors; a treadmill or stair machine, or whatever they were called, would have driven a restless man like him crazy.
“You think something, you know, bad happened to her?” Her green eyes, damp and large, registered concern as they stared at the picture. Her voice was melodic.
“We don’t know. Have you ever seen her?”
A squint at the sheet. “No.”
She shot her eyes down toward his naked ring finger. Shaw had already noticed the same about hers. He made another observation: she was ten years younger than he was.
She sipped from a covered cup. “Good luck. I really hope she’s okay.”
Shaw watched her walk back to her table, where she booted up her PC, plugged in what he took to be serious headphones, not buds, and started typing. He continued canvassing, asking if the patrons had seen Sophie.
The answer was no.
That took care of all those present. He decided to get back to San Miguel Park and help the officers that Detective Dan Wiley had sent to run the crime scene. He thanked Tiffany and she gave him a furtive nod—meaning, he guessed, that she was going to start her surveillance.
Shaw was heading for the door when he was aware of motion to his left, someone coming toward him.
“Hey.” It was the redhead. Her headset was around her neck and the cord dangled. She walked close. “I’m Maddie. Is your phone open?”
“My—?”
“Your phone. Is it locked? Do you need to put in a passcode?”
Doesn’t everybody?
“Yes.”
“So. Open it and give it to me. I’ll put my number in. That way I’ll know it’s there and you’re not pretending to type it while you really enter five-five-five one-two-one-two.”
Shaw looked over her pretty face, her captivating eyes—the shade of green that Rand McNally had promised, deceptively, to be the color of the foliage in San Miguel Park.
“I could still delete it.”
“That’s an extra step. I’m betting you won’t go to the trouble. What’s your name?”
“Colter.”
“That has to be real. In a bar? When a man’s picking up a woman and gives her a fake name, it’s always Bob or Fred.” She smiled. “The thing is, I come on a little strong and that scares guys off. You don’t look like the scare-able sort. So. Let me type my number in.”
Shaw said, “Just give it to me and I’ll call you now.”
An exaggerated frown. “Oh-oh. That way I’ll have captured you on incoming calls and stuck you in my address book. You willing to make that commitment?”
He lifted his phone. She gave him the number and he dialed. Her ringtone was some rock guitar riff Shaw didn’t recognize. She frowned broadly and lifted the mobile to her ear. “Hello? … Hello? …” Then disconnected. “Was a telemarketer, I guess.” Her laugh danced like her eyes.
Another hit of the coffee. Another tug of her hair. “See you around, Colter. Good luck with what you’re up to. Oh, and what’s my name?”
“Maddie. You never told me your last.”
“One commitment at a time.” She slipped the headphones on and returned to the laptop, on whose screen a psychedelic screen saver paid tribute to the 1960s.
Shaw couldn’t believe it.
Ten minutes after leaving the café he was pulling onto the shoulder of Tamyen Road, overlooking San Miguel Park. Not a single cop.
Alrightyroo. We’ll look into it, Chief …
Guess not.
Shaw approached the only folks nearby—an elderly couple in identical baby-blue jogging outfits—and displayed the printout of Sophie. As he’d expected, they’d never seen her.
Well, if the police weren’t going to search, he was. She’d—possibly—flung the phone, as a signal to alert passersby when someone called her.
Maybe she’d also scrawled something in the dirt, a name, part of a license plate number, before X got her. Or perhaps they’d grappled and she’d grabbed a tissue or pen or bit of cloth, rich with DNA or decorated with his fingerprints, tossing that too into the grass.
Shaw descended into the ravine. He walked on grass so he wouldn’t disturb any tracks left by the kidnapper in sand and soil.
Using the brown-smeared stone as a hub, Shaw walked in an ever-widening spiral, staring at the ground ahead of him. No footprints, no bits of cloth or tissue, no litter from pockets.
But then a glint of light caught his eye.
It came from above him—a service road on the crest of the hill. The flash now repeated. He thought: a car door opening and closing. If it was a door, it closed in compete silence.
Crouching, he moved closer. Through the breeze-waving trees, he could make out what might indeed have been a vehicle. With the glare it was impossible to tell. The light wavered—which might have been due to branches bending in the wind. Or because someone who’d exited the car had walked to the edge of the ridge and was looking down.
Was this a jogger stretching before a run, or someone pausing on a long drive home to pee?
Or was it X, spying on the man with a troubling interest in Sophie Mulliner’s disappearance?
Shaw started through the brush, keeping low, moving toward the base of the ravine, above which the car sat—if it was a car. The hill was quite steep. This was nothing to Shaw, who regularly ascended vertical rock faces, but the terrain was such that a climb would be noisy.
Tricky. Without being seen, he’d have to get almost to the top to be able to push aside the flora and snap a cell phone picture of the tag number of the jogger. Or pee-er. Or kidnapper.
Shaw got about twenty feet
