I had to admit it was a good hiding place. If you didn’t know where to look, you’d never find it. We moved forward and Bailey shined her flashlight where Russell had indicated.
There was nothing there. Russell lunged forward, but Bailey pulled him back.
“We’ll need to process this place for evidence, Russell. Please step back-”
Russell’s body sagged and he sank to his knees as though his spine had melted. He let out a harsh bark of a sob and cried out in anguish, “Hayley! Oh God, Hayley!”
But the canyon swallowed his words as quickly as they fell from his lips. We all stood rooted but unable to watch as he dropped his head and cried. The air was heavy with the weight of unspoken belief that Hayley would never be found alive. For reasons I couldn’t explain, the passive acceptance of doom made me clench my fists in anger. They might be right, but I refused to believe we were too late. At least, not yet.
The next morning, Bailey and I planned to get out to Russell’s house in the hills bright and early. It was only seven thirty a.m., too early to reach my boss, Eric Northrup, at the office, so I called him on his cell phone.
“Hey, Eric, it’s me.”
“Not at this hour it isn’t.”
I have been forced to admit, repeatedly, that I am not morning’s freshest flower. I come in as late as I can get away with. But in all fairness, I also stay later than anyone else. Since deputy district attorneys are public lawyers, we get paid a flat rate regardless of the hours we put in. So more work does not mean more pay. Toni once totaled up my hours and figured out that my actual rate of pay was about a buck seventy-five an hour. Before taxes.
“That’s very funny, Eric. So funny you probably won’t care about a possible new case Bailey picked up last night. And you’ll be laughing so hard you probably won’t mind that Vanderhorn will hear about it before you-”
“Okay, okay. Shoot.”
The threat of getting holy hell from District Attorney William Vanderhorn for not bringing him up to speed on a big media case predictably got Eric’s attention. I filled him in on the night’s events.
“I’ll call Vanderhorn and make it official for now,” he said. “But if this turns into a fileable case, he’ll be all over it. You might want to rethink taking on this one, Rachel.”
District Attorney Vanderhorn and I got along…well, in truth, we hated each other. He liked his deputies subservient, fawning, and ubiquitous. I liked my bosses smart, trusting, and hands-off. So it was a perfect storm of disappointment for both of us. To top it off, Vanderhorn was in love with Hollywood, not just because it was a big source of campaign support, which it was. But also because he loved rubbing elbows with the stars, and the sheer glitz factor. This meant that Hayley’s kidnapping case would be a chance for Vanderhorn to ingratiate himself with all the right people. So Eric was warning me ahead of time that I’d be in for a nightmarish tour of duty with Vanderhorn riding me like a Preakness pony.
“Thanks, Eric. I’ll keep it in mind.”
If we never found a suspect, I wouldn’t have to make any decisions. But for now, I couldn’t let go. I wanted to find Hayley, even if we never nailed the kidnapper.
I headed downstairs to the lobby and found Bailey sitting in her detective-mobile in the circular drive. Angel, the doorman, was talking to her through the passenger window. I walked out of the air-conditioned hotel into a wall of heat. Only eight o’clock in the morning and it already was eighty degrees and felt like it was about ninety.
“Hey, Angel, they ever going to let you get a summer uniform?” I asked. He wore the same wool slacks and gold-braided jacket all year long. It pained me to look at him.
“Sure, Rachel. Didn’t you see the memo? Starting tomorrow, we all get to wear Speedos. I can’t wait.” He pointedly looked down at his size-forty slacks as he opened the passenger door for me.
Angel shut the door and patted the roof, and Bailey took us out to Fifth Street and northbound on the 101 freeway. Southbound traffic was virtually at a standstill, but the northbound side was blissfully wide open. I almost felt guilty as we sailed down the freeway in full view of those poor slobs mired in commuter quicksand.
