Part 2 (2/2)
”It drove her brother wild. His room looked like a hurricane hit it.”
”They're pretty different from each other, I take it,” Jan said.
”Night and day.” It was pretty clear which child Mrs. Harrington favored. She stared out the windows looking over the backyard. It was dark, but the deck and garage were lit up. Jan saw a car pulling out of the garage. ”My husband is going back to work.” She turned back to the counter and picked up the slip of paper. ”Here's the information you asked for. I hope it's helpful.”
Jan looked it over. There were three names and numbers on the list, including Justin Harrington's, along with Maddy's telephone number and e-mail address, and a network log-in. ”We'll need a router log-in as well if we're going to find out what she's been looking at on the Internet. I should have mentioned that before.”
Mrs. Harrington looked exasperated, as if there were no end to the demands on her. ”I don't even know what that is. I'll have to have my husband help with that.”
”And an e-mail to you or your husband from Maddy,” Peet said. ”We need her IP address as well.”
”Yes, yes. I promise we'll do what we can.”
”We saw letters to Maddy from her grandmother. Are the two of them close?”
”They were, but all of Maddy's grandparents are now dead.”
”How about any other relatives she's close to?”
”There's no one. I'm an only child, and my husband's family isn't close.”
”Close as in tight, or do you mean they live far away?” Jan asked.
”Both, I'd say.”
She led them to the front door. Jan watched her face recompose itself into a concerned mother expression. She thought she'd seen better acting by Peet's eight-year-old daughter.
”One last thing,” Jan said. ”Did Maddy have any luggage in her bedroom closet?”
”Luggage? No, that was kept downstairs and there's nothing missing. But she has a backpack. You know, the large kind for when you're camping. She kept that in her room.”
”It's gone now.”
Mrs. Harrington looked stricken. ”So she has run away?”
”It looks that way. Now we go find her.”
Chapter Two.
Jan and Peet were back on Willow Road before either said a word. Jan stared out the pa.s.senger window, lost in thought.
”Okay, let's hear it,” Peet said.
”What?” She turned to Peet. ”What's there to say? The Harringtons are jerks and their daughter's a runaway. We do our job; that's all.”
Peet's knuckles were white on the steering wheel. ”Jerks? No. A jerk is someone who spills beer on you at Wrigley Field and then laughs about it. These people are criminal, as far as I'm concerned. You probably had a better upbringing than Maddy did.”
”What's that supposed to mean?” Jan felt a flush climb up her face.
”You grew up in the system, right? Out west? I'm just saying you probably got more love and caring there than Maddy Harrington has.”
Jan stared back out the window. ”It was a group home. An orphanage, not a foster home with a brood of happy, mismatched kids.”
”Sorry.”
”Think Oliver Twist and you're halfway there.”
”Sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I just can't imagine parents who don't notice when their daughter's been gone for two nights.”
Jan shrugged. ”At least we have one motive for Maddy running away. I doubt it's the whole story.” She wanted the conversation steered away from her own childhood. She'd known when Peet became her partner that she'd have to say something about her past. Peet was too curious and chatty to not ask questions and expect answers. Jan told her the same story she'd been telling since she was sixteenparents killed, no relatives, the group home. It usually shut people up. She'd never had to flesh out the details because most didn't probe too deeply. She rebuffed, ignored, or abandoned those that persisted. The lie was much easier and safer than the truth. She didn't think she had the ability to describe her childhood.
Though she tried to avoid remembering her life in the camp, she knew it was impossible. Just as it became impossible for her to stop thinking of a life outside the camp once she started to realize one might exist. In the two years prior to her escape, Jan had discovered ways to slip beyond the camp's perimeter and explore the woods beyond. Timing and stealth were all she needed. She discovered a ranch four miles north of the camp, and in the ranch she found her hope. It was a small homestead run by a large family, and Jan would spend every moment she could tucked up next to a boulder on a ridge overlooking it. She watched men, women, and children doing ch.o.r.es, sitting together on the porch of the house, entertaining guests, hugging and kissing, coming and going from the property as they pleased. She knew she had to have some of that, any bit of it, in her life. She would somehow find a way to get it.
Peet pulled into the parking lot of the Winnetka police station. It was past seven o'clock and they didn't expect to see the detectives who'd taken the call from Mrs. Harrington, but they needed to let the department know as soon as possible that they'd been hired to find Maddy. The police would be only too happy to share information and offload as much of the work as they could on to the private investigators.
The desk sergeant made a call to the back of the shop and pointed them toward some folding chairs lined up along a wall. He never said a word directly to them. Jan hated the scorn that some police felt toward private investigators, the kind she now saw on the sergeant's face. She started to say something to him, but Peet took her arm and pulled her over to the waiting area.
”It's not worth it,” Peet said. ”We want them to cooperate.”
”We're surrounded by a.s.sholes,” Jan said. She put her elbows to her knees and stared at the floor while they waited. Within a few minutes, a very short and very sharply dressed detective came to get them. If Winnetka had a minimum height requirement for its officers, this man had found a way around it. Peet towered over him as they shook hands.
”Donald Hoch. Glad to meet you both,” he said. He led them down a hall and into his private office. It was small but painted a tasteful cream color and furnished in wood and leather. A new computer sat on his desk.
”I talked to Mrs. Harrington this morning. Frankly, I'm glad they've called you in on this. We're getting a late start if the girl's really been gone two days.”
”She's likely to be far away by now,” Peet agreed.
”Or she may be right here, just seeing whether her parents care enough to try to find her,” Jan added.
”That too.” Hoch pulled a slim file off a stack on his desk and opened it.
”She's never been in trouble with us. Her teachers say she's a good student, especially in the sciences, but not really working to her potential. They describe her as withdrawn. I haven't met the father, but they seem like the kind of parents a kid would run away from.”
”Exactly. Do you intend to keep trying to track her down?” Jan asked.
”We don't want to duplicate your steps or get in your way,” Peet said. ”I used to be on the job. I know what a pain PIs can be.”
”Oh yeah? Where did you work?”
”Chicago. Homicide.”
Jan knew Peet always worked this in for a reason. Cops were cops and the brotherhood ran deep. It p.i.s.sed Jan off as a general rule, but she couldn't deny the benefits. Peet often got information much more quickly from the police than she did. As Peet and Detective Hoch talked for a bit about cops they knew, what their shops were like, and who had the best benefits, Jan wondered where Maddy Harrington had disappeared.
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