Read The Last Detective for Free Online

frightened parents and children.
    “We'll call the FBI if it's necessary, but first we need to establish what happened.”
    “We know what happened: Someone stole my son.”
    Gittamon turned from the doors and went to the couch. Starkey sat with him, taking out a small spiral notebook.
    “I know that you're frightened, Ms. Chenier, I would be frightened, too. But it's important for us to understand Ben and whatever led up to this.”
    I said, “Nothing led up to this, Gittamon. Some asshole just grabbed him.”
    Lucy was good in court and was used to thinking about difficult things during stressful situations. This was infinitely worse, but she did well at keeping herself focused. Probably better than me.
    She said, “I understand, Sergeant, but this is my child.”
    “I know, so the sooner we do this, the sooner you'll have him back.”
    Gittamon asked Lucy a few general questions that didn't have anything to do with being grabbed off a hill. While they spoke, I wrote down everything the caller had said to me, then went upstairs for a picture of Ben and one of the snapshots Ben had found of me in my Army days. I had not looked at that picture or any of the others for years until Ben found them. I hadn't wanted to see them.
    Poitras was sitting on the Eames chair in the corner when I got back.
    He said, “PacBell's working on the trace. We'll have the source number in a couple of hours.”
    I gave the pictures to Gittamon.
    “This is Ben. The other picture is me. I wrote down what the man said, and I'm pretty sure I didn't leave anything out.”
    Gittamon glanced at the pictures, then passed them to Starkey.
    “Why the picture of you?”
    “The man who called said ‘five-two.' You see the man next to me holding the sign with the number? Five-two was our patrol number. I don't know what else this guy could have meant.”
    Starkey glanced up from the pictures.
    “You don't look old enough for Vietnam.”
    “I wasn't.”
    Gittamon said, “All right, what else did he say?”
    I pointed at the sheet.
    “I wrote it down for you word for word. He didn't say much—just the number and that he had Ben, and that he was paying me back for something.”
    Gittamon glanced over the sheet, then passed it to Starkey, too.
    Poitras said, “You recognize his voice?”
    “I don't have any idea who he is. I've been racking my brain, but, no, I didn't recognize it.”
    Gittamon took back the picture from Starkey and frowned at it.
    “Do you believe him to be one of the men in this picture?”
    “No, that's not possible. A few minutes after this picture was taken, we went out on a mission, and everyone was killed but me. That makes it stand out, the five-two; that's why I remember.”
    Lucy sighed softly. Starkey's mouth tightened as if she wanted a cigarette. Gittamon squirmed, as if he didn't want to talk about something so uncomfortable. I didn't want to talk about it, either.
    “Well, ah, was there some kind of incident?”
    “No, not if you're asking if it was my fault. It just went bad. I didn't do anything except survive.”
    I felt guilty that Ben was missing and embarrassed that he seemed to be missing because of me. Here we were all over again, another nightmare delivered to Lucy's doorstep by yours truly.
    I said, “I don't know what else the man on the phone could have meant. That's all it could be.”
    Starkey shifted toward Gittamon.
    “Maybe we should get Ben's description out to patrol.”
    Poitras nodded, telling her to get on with it. “Talk to the phone company, too. Have them set up a line trap on Elvis's phone.”
    Starkey took her cell phone into the entry. While Starkey was making the calls, Gittamon asked about my past few days with Ben. When I told him I found Ben looking through my closet, Gittamon raised his eyebrows.
    “So Ben knew about this five-two business?”
    “Not about the others getting killed, but he saw the pictures.”
    “And this was when?”
    “Earlier in the week. Three days