Then just as patiently he explained the reasons he couldn’t do anything. “There is simply nothing that you have presented to justify a missing person,” he had said. “I’m not saying that nothing happened to your friend – I’m only saying that we can’t help you find her.”
I opened my mouth to argue when he added, “But I do know someone who can help you. He’s pricey, but worth it if this is that important to you.”
It was that important to me. I left the station ten minutes later with Joe Cook’s number.
Joe had arranged to meet at a hole-in-the-wall diner in Hollywood – his choice, not mine – and at first sight I knew he wasn’t like anyone I’d spent much time with. The men I’d known best were suave and charming, at least on the outside, their hands manicured, their suits pressed, their cars expensive. Half bounty hunter, half private investigator, Joe had shown up on a Harley, decked from head to toe in black leather and sporting colorful tattoos over every bare inch of his arms and neck. His hair was buzzed and he wore dark glasses that he never took off, even inside. As gruff and gritty as he was, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he knew the detective who’d pointed me his way because Joe had a record of his own.
Despite my first impression and the fact that his resume was simply, “I find people who are hard to find,” Joe was professional. He took my business seriously, gathering details of my friendship with Amber for nearly three hours, never doubting or questioning my reasons for hiring someone like him rather than one of the hundreds of PI’s I could find on the Internet for a third of his asking price. I wasn’t an idiot and Amber knew how to hide. I needed a tracker with skills that included more than taking pictures of cheating spouses and locating children after they’d been put up for adoption.
Joe was that guy. It was a gut feeling more than anything, but I believed it enough to hire him on the spot. When he’d given me his first report that included mention of past events that I’d been convinced were buried, he’d more than proven himself.
“I found the parents,” he said to me now. “Actually spoke to the mother. She’s a real fucktard. Lived in the same house for all these years in Santa Clarita, only an hour from where Amber was staying in high school, but I’d bet money she never bothered to look that far. She rolled her eyes when I mentioned her daughter’s name. Said she hasn’t heard anything from her in over a decade. Said she’d figured Amber was dead. Didn’t seem interested even when I’d shown her pics of Amber from after she’d run away. I see people do shitty things on a daily basis so it’s with authority that I say she had a bad family life, Em.”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me through the phone. “Yeah, I know.”
Amber had never spoken much about her parents, but what I had gleaned from the few things she’d slipped over the course of our friendship was that her mother had been a jealous bitch. Jealous of her own daughter. Her dad was the worst kind of scum and had been sexually abusing her – his child – on a daily basis, and instead of defending her, Amber’s mother resented her.
At least my mother had tried to love me. “Well, that was a long shot anyway. Did you see her father at all?”
“Now, that’s an interesting thing. He wasn’t there. He’s been at Folsom for the past several years.”
“State prison?”
“Yep. He was sentenced to twenty-five years for aggravated assault on a child. Some kid in the neighborhood. Seems he would often give the girl a ride after school and by ride I mean a trip on the baloney pony, not his car. Now here’s where it gets fishy. Back at the beginning of October, he got himself murdered.”
The thumbnail I’d been absentmindedly chewing fell out of my mouth. “Wait… did you say murdered?”
“Uh-huh. Assaulted with some sort of ‘slashing-type weapon.’” The quote marks were evident in the way he said it, as if he was reading from his notes. “Pronounced dead on site.”
“Wow.” It sounded appalling to hear it told so plainly, but I also felt a stab of vindication. If someone had slit his throat with a “slashing-type of weapon” years ago, how different would Amber’s life have been? I wondered if she knew. Wondered if she felt the same sense of victory. Wondered if she was feeling anything at all these days.
I shook that last thought off. “I guess it’s not uncommon though for pedophiles to get offed in jail, right?”
“‘Offed.’” Joe seemed amused at my use of slang, as he often did when I tried to talk the lingo. “Not uncommon, no. But keep listening. It gets weird. The cops never fingered anyone with the job, but I have a source there telling me that everyone knows who did it. Nick Delatano. He’s a mob fall guy.” Joe paused. “That means he took the blame for something or other or protected someone more important than him and he’ll get rewarded for it somehow. Basically, he works for mafia, even in prison. And not just mafia, Emily – a special branch called the Philadelphia Greek Mob. Heard of them?”
“I haven’t.” Though my skin was already prickling with the mention of the word “Greek.”
“They’ve been what some call ‘dormant’ for the last decade or so, but what that really means is they’re just operating under the radar. They’re like the Italians, you know, um, specialists in money laundering, tax evasion, extortion, drug trafficking. Murder. Only they’re from Greece.”