Read Loose Ends for Free Online Page A

movement. “Why would you be asking about her? It was…it was seven years ago.”
    “What was?”
    “My baby girl. My little Sandy.”
    Baffled, I tried to keep from showing it. “The girl I’m talking about is missing right now.”
    “Oh.” Bill took a deep breath, almost a sob. “I thought…but that makes no sense,” he repeated. “I’m sorry. It’s burned into my skull. May fourteenth, 1998, I…I had too much to drink. I came home, fell into bed, failed to secure my service revolver, and…”
    Oh, God. I could see it in a flash of imagination. His daughter, walking in to see Daddy. Disobeying, as kids will do. Picking the gun up.
    Pulling the trigger.
    Bill, waking to that sound and a world-shattering nightmare of guilt, remorse, despair. Must have wrecked his marriage, too. Hard for a mother to forgive something like that.
    My voice cracked. “I’m sorry, Bill. I really am. I can’t imagine how that must feel. But right now there’s another child out there. She’s missing, and someone might have her. I’m looking.”
    Spreading his hands, he visibly steeled himself. “How can I help?”
    “You guys monitor for North Bay Distributors, right?” An innocuous name for the company, obviously designed to keep a low profile.
    “Sure.”
    “Tell me about the security system. Is it any good?”
    “Pretty deep, though it’s geared toward monetary loss rather than burglary prevention.”
    “Go on.”
    “Well,” he scratched at the knee of his suit trousers, “there’s just one security guard on during the day, and none at night. If I was a heist crew I could crash the gate, ram the door, be in and out in two minutes with a million bucks worth of stuff and no way the police could react in time. No, their security system is state of the art, but it’s for preventing white-collar crime. Very tight access.”
    “So it cuts their potential losses and ensures that any break-in is going to be obvious, quickly found out, and limited by the time it takes to fill a couple trash bags with expensive Schedule 1 narcotics.”
    Bill smiled without humor. “Actually there are much pricier things in there than Oxy. Some specialized drugs go for thousands a dose. They’re kept in heavy vaults. No smash-and-grab will get those.”
    “So, bottom line, it’s a lot cheaper to pay for insurance than round-the-clock guards or heavier fortifications.”
    “Yeah. But what does that have to do with a child?”
    I cleared my throat, trying to split the difference on how much I was willing to tell him. I had to keep his sympathy, but I didn’t want to spread so much information that it might get to the cops or elsewhere and endanger Talia. “Bear with me a little longer. If you wanted to make more than a quick heist…say, if you wanted to clean the place out of the good stuff, how would you do it?”
    “Inside job, of course.” He looked at me as if I had gone simple, and then realized my question had been rhetorical. “The girl. Leverage. Who is it?”
    “I –”
    Bill’s face lit up as his cop mind went visibly into overdrive. “It has to be someone that works at the warehouse. There are six people that have access. Obviously none of them are a willing part of it or nobody’d be leaning on them. So one of them has a kid and she’s been taken. Give me five minutes to look them up and I’ll tell you who.”
    “Damn, Bill. You’re wasted in this job.”
    “I was a good cop,” he said simply as he stood with a convulsive motion and looked away. “But I made my twenty for retirement and this job pays really well, so…”
    “I get it.”
    “No, you don’t.”
    Bill walked over to the fridge and opened the freezer. He rooted inside and came up with a bottle of vodka, unscrewed the top and took a long pull of the subzero liquid with the motions of a professional alcoholic. He saluted me with the bottle. “But now you do.”
    I held my hand up. “I just saw your eyes light up with the old fire. You