Gone The Next Read Online Free PDF Page A

a little blond girl. Pink top and denim shorts. That’s what I saw. I’m not mistaken.”
    He placed his notebook on the table, slowly pulled out a chair, and sat back down. He seemed to be weighing exactly what to say.
    I continued. “I saw a photo of Tracy Turner on the news last night. I know what she looks like. I’m almost certain it was her.”
    But I could be wrong. I knew that from experience. I had to admit it to myself. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure.
    Ruelas said, “She’s been missing for eighteen hours. In that time, since the Amber Alert was issued, do you know how many people have called in, claiming they’ve seen her?”
    “I know how it works.”
    “Fifty-six. All of them positive of what they saw. Just like you.”
    “Brian Pierce doesn’t have any kids. He has no siblings, which means no nieces.”
    “Maybe he’s babysitting a friend’s kid.”
    “Okay, maybe he is. So why not check it out?”
    “How would you propose we do that? Just walk right up and knock on his door?”
    “Well, why not?”
    “What if he doesn’t answer?”
    I sat silently. I knew where he was going.
    He said, “Then...what? We can’t just bust the door down, not without a warrant, which we can’t get, not without probable cause, and we’re not even close to having that. And now — let’s just assume that you correctly identified the girl from more than a hundred yards away through a pair of binoculars, which is a damn big assumption — now we’ve tipped him off. If we knock on his door and he doesn’t answer, we gain nothing and he gains a lot.”
    The door was still open and two deputies in uniform passed by, talking loudly, on their way to the break room.
    “Are you going to set up on him?” I asked.
    Again, a hesitation, and I knew the answer. Then he said, “Mr. Ballard, I can’t tell you what we are or are not going to do. Let me say that I do believe you saw a girl. I do. But the odds of that girl being Tracy Turner...you know how many little blond girls are running around Austin right now wearing pink tops?”
    “And denim shorts,” I said.
    He didn’t reply. He was done talking.
    I’d already told him what I did for a living, and that Pierce was my latest subject, so now I said, “I still have a job to do. Pierce is suspected of insurance fraud.”
    It was a clever way to force Ruelas’s hand. If he was planning to put Pierce under surveillance, he wouldn’t want me doing the same thing.
    But all he said was, “I understand, Mr. Ballard. Thanks again for coming in.”

8
     
    I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life. The mullet I sported in high school. Getting married at twenty-one. Betting on the Astros.
    All of those things are nothing — absolutely meaningless — compared to what I did on a cool spring day nine years ago. A Saturday. Laura had gone to an aerobics class, with plans to stop by the grocery store afterward, so I decided to take Hannah to the dog park near our house. We’d been talking about getting a Labrador, and I wanted to see how Hannah would handle herself around large dogs. Would she be nervous? Excited? Frightened?
    The park was crowded. Maybe thirty or forty owners and their dogs in two fenced acres. No leashes were required inside the fence, so dogs of all sizes and shapes were sprinting and bounding and leaping all over the place. Plenty of barking, too, of course, but no growling, because a sign said that dogs who caused problems weren’t allowed to come back. These were all friendly, playful dogs, and most of the owners were, too.
    Hannah and I sat on one of the many shaded benches away from everybody else and simply watched. She seemed a bit nervous when some of the larger dogs came near us, but she also seemed intrigued. When a tan-and-white pit bull came up and nuzzled her leg, Hannah giggled hysterically.
    “That’s Belle,” said the owner, a woman I had seen a few times in the neighborhood before. A jogger. Slender and very pretty. Great legs.