Chapter 4 - THE CHILD IN THE STORAGE ROOM
Desmond drove back to Mesa Verde only after Prescott assembled a plan.
He would not go alone.
He would not enter the front driveway.
And he would not let Celeste know he had survived long enough to think.
By then, Celeste had already started calling him.
Seven missed calls. Three soft voicemail messages asking whether he was all right. One text:
Where are you? You’re missing the most important day of your career.
The private investigator, Sam Collier, disabled the home’s outer cameras from a remote access point Prescott still controlled for legal emergencies. Desmond entered through the service road, crossed the back garden, and unlocked the side storage room himself.
Toby was still there.
The boy had drunk half the water and eaten nothing because there had been nothing to eat.
When he saw Desmond, he stood up so fast that a rusted folding chair fell over.
“I thought you left me.”
“No.”
Toby’s shoulders dropped.
Then Desmond noticed something else.
The boy had a split knuckle on one hand.
“What happened?”
Toby looked embarrassed.
“I climbed back over the wall too fast.”
Desmond almost said You shouldn’t have been climbing walls at all. Instead he asked, “Where’s your mother?”
“At work. Or maybe home. Or maybe…” Toby looked away. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“She didn’t come back last night.”
The sentence landed heavily.
“She works at the Shelton bungalow behind the citrus lots and sometimes at the Mercado laundry. If she works late, she leaves a note at home. There wasn’t one.”
Desmond crouched to his level.
“How long has she been missing?”
Toby tried to do the math the way frightened children do.
“Since yesterday morning.”
Prescott had warned him not to connect facts too quickly.
Now the facts were beginning to connect themselves.
Desmond took Toby out through the service gate and drove him straight to Prescott’s ranch, where the housekeeper, Marta, already had soup warming and a guest room prepared.
The boy froze in the kitchen doorway like someone entering a museum where he didn’t belong.
Marta set a grilled cheese sandwich in front of him without ceremony.
Toby devoured it.
Then a second.
Then half a third.
Desmond sat across the table pretending not to notice the speed with which Toby ate.
Children who trust that food continues tomorrow do not eat like that.
Once Toby calmed enough to answer questions, he described where he and his mother lived: a small rental behind a fruit stand on the edge of South Phoenix. He also admitted something else.
Three days earlier, a man had come asking about Linda.
“What man?”
“He had a shaved head. Big stomach. Tattoo on his hand.”
Paul Gomez.
Desmond didn’t need a photograph to know.
“He asked if my mom still ironed near the Kincaid place. She told me not to answer strangers. So I ran.”
Prescott, listening from the doorway, looked grim.
Paul had not been improvising.
May you like
He had already been searching for Linda and Toby before the brake line was cut.
And that meant Celeste’s plan was bigger than a single morning’s murder.
