Out of Reach: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

cases, she’d maintained her spark of optimism. Something Alec had lost years ago.
    When she returned, she brought two steaming mugs.
    “Thanks,” he said, accepting the offered salvation. “I’m on coffee duty tomorrow.”
    “I’ll hold you to it.”
    He breathed in the aroma, praying the caffeine would shake something loose in his brain. Because Cathy was right about one thing. He needed to remain sharp.
    “Anything new?” she asked.
    “Just more questions.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “And the nagging suspicion that I’m missing something obvious.”
    “If it was obvious, Cody would be back home by now.”
    She was right. Maybe he
was
too tired.
    He couldn’t remember how many hours he’d been awake. Too many. Since he’d gotten the call about Cody Sanders . . . when? Two days ago? He’d been assigned the case because the CAC coordinators in the Baltimore office were involved in Operation Innocent Images, a case involving child pornography on the Internet. So he and Cathy, fresh off a case in Chicago, had driven up from Quantico.
    “Go through this with me, will you?” he said. “Maybe a new pair of eyes will see what I’m missing.”
    Cathy grabbed a notepad and scooted up onto the table facing the wall. “Let’s go.”
    Over the past two years, they’d learned to bounce ideas off each other. They had different strengths, different weaknesses, and together they often saw things neither one could see alone. It was a great partnership, and he’d come to depend on her common sense and insight into human, and particularly child, behavior.
    Alec started. “Cody Sanders, age nine. Fourth grade, Francis Scott Key Elementary.” He pushed up onto the table next to Cathy and sipped his coffee. They’d been over all this before, but they were going to do it again, and again. Until they found the missing pieces.
    “According to his mother, Ellen,” he continued, “Cody left for school around seven-thirty. She claims there was nothing unusual in their morning routine. Roy Vasce—”
    “The boyfriend.”
    “Verified her story.”
    “But the agent who interviewed Roy,” Cathy added, “doesn’t buy it. According to the neighbors, Roy and Cody don’t get along. Lots of noisy fights.”
    “Any signs of physical abuse?”
    Cathy shrugged. “No one’s saying.”
    “Check the local hospitals. See if they have records of Cody being admitted to the emergency room under questionable circumstances. And try the school nurse. She might have noticed something, a broken bone or two, anything that might tell us if Roy was heavy-handed.”
    “The locals are already checking the hospitals, and I’ll visit the nurse today.”
    “Good. So, the question is, did Roy and Cody argue that morning?” The scenario—more common than most people would believe—that Alec hated the most. “And did Roy . . . or Mom and Roy . . . decide the boy was a pain in the ass and get rid of him?”
    “Nothing in the mother’s demeanor suggests she had anything to do with it.” Compassion was one of Cathy’s strengths, and her weakness. Accusing a family member was always her last choice. Where she assumed innocence, he saw guilt. Both could be a problem.
    In this case, however, “I happen to agree,” he said.
    Certain behavioral patterns and clues inevitably surfaced when a family member murdered a child. A mother might use the word
kidnapping
before most bereft parents could psychologically admit to the possibility. Or a father would overthink a cover-up, making false assumptions about kidnappers and their behavior. He might send a note to himself, or something of the child’s to the police, as evidence of the child’s abduction—which only a kidnapper interested in collecting ransom would do.
    Ransom was certainly not a question in this case.
    Ellen was a single mom, hustling drinks in a dive off Light Street in South Baltimore. She was consistently behind in her rent on her deteriorating, formstone rowhouse,