Brett Battles - Little Girl Gone

Logan weaved between the cars and crossed to the other side. Just as he was walking up to Barney’s car, his cell started to ring again.

His dad was in the front passenger seat, phone to his ear, so Logan tapped on his window. Harp turned in surprise, then smiled, and hung up.

“Hi, son,” he said as he opened his door.

Logan gave him a quick hug.

“Have you found her?” Tooney asked. He was stretched out on the backseat, a grimace on his face.

“Still looking,” Logan said, wishing he had a better answer.

“Scoot. Scoot,” Harp told his son, shooing Logan out of his way so he could get out.

Once his father closed the door behind him, Logan said, “Tooney shouldn’t be traveling. What were you guys thinking?”

“He was coming with or without us. Better with, don’t you think?”

“You couldn’t have done anything to stop him?”

“He was very insistent.”

On the other side of the car, Barney was helping Tooney get out. Harp used this as an excuse to end the conversation, and headed around the car to join them. Logan watched his dad for a moment, then followed.

Looking out at the traffic, Barney said, “This is why Glenda and I moved out of the city. Where are all these people going?”

“The road’s blocked up ahead,” Logan said.

“Accident?” Harp asked.

“Something like that.”

A ten year old Cadillac pulled into the lot, and stopped right next to them. The driver’s window rolled down, and Logan could see Jerry behind the wheel, and a few others inside.

“Jesus, I thought we’d lost you,” Jerry said.

Logan looked at his dad. “What? Did you bring everyone?”

“Just Barney and Jerry,” he said. “The rest of those guys are protection.”

“Just park right there,” Barney told Jerry, pointing at an empty spot two cars down.

“Protection?” Logan asked.

His father shrugged like it was no big deal.

Jerry and the three guys who’d been riding with him walked over a few moments later.

“Logan, this is Ken, Jack and Dev,” he said.

They were big guys, tough looking, like Hollywood’s idea of a biker gang, if the members of that gang were all over sixty. As Logan shook their hands, he said, “I think I’ve seen you guys around town.”

“Probably,” Dev said.

Harp leaned over and whispered, “They’re in the VFW. Marines in ’Nam. They know what they’re doing.”

“And what exactly are they supposed to be doing?” Logan asked, not lowering his voice.

“Later.”

Before Logan could push any further, Tooney said, “I want you to show me where this boyfriend lived. I want to see what you saw.”

“I’m not exactly sure he was her boyfriend.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s a little confusion between her friends about that.”

Tooney looked at Logan for a moment. “This boy, his house is near, though.”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“Show it to me.”

“That’s going to be a little difficult.”

“Why?”

“The reason the street up there is blocked off? The house he lived in burned down sometime in the night.”

“What?” Tooney, Jerry and Barney all said at once.

“But you were there late last night. That’s what you told me,” Logan’s dad said. “What time was that?”

“Around midnight. A lot of hours between then and morning for someone to light a match.”

They all fell silent, then Tooney said, “I still want to see it.”

Logan frowned, but nodded. What choice did he have?

He led them back to Pacific Avenue, glancing over his shoulder a couple of times to make sure he wasn’t walking too fast. They were keeping up just fine, his dad and Barney at the head of the group and Jerry at the rear. Tooney was in the middle, surrounded by the Cambria Marine Corp.

Some of the excitement on Pacific had dissipated by the time they reached the spot where Logan had been standing earlier. Two of the fire trucks had left, and it looked like the police were getting ready to open one of the traffic lanes.

“Don’t tell me that’s it,” Harp said. He was staring at the pile of burned wreckage across the street.

“I did say it burned down.”

“But you said you were inside it last night. That it was empty.”

“What part of this aren’t you understanding, Dad? Do you see the fire engine? Do you see the police? This only happened a few hours ago.”

“So you were able to get inside,” Barney said.

“Do you guys think I was lying?”

“No, of course not.”

“Definitely not,” Jerry added.

Logan looked at his father, waiting.

When Harp finally felt his gaze, he said, “What?”

Logan shook his head. “Nothing.”

Tooney hadn’t said a word since they got there, his full attention on what was left of the bungalow.

Logan squeezed by one of the marines, and stepped beside him. “You okay?”

“There was nothing inside?” Tooney asked.

“No. It was spotless.”

“Do you think this fire could have been an accident?”

“No way to know that for sure.”

Tooney turned to Logan, his eyes suddenly hard. “I did not ask what you know. I ask what you think.”

Looking back at the house, Logan said, “It seems kind of convenient to be an accident.” He could feel Tooney’s gaze a moment longer, then the older man turned away.

“What are you going to do now?”

Logan took a breath, and let his eyes drift along the perimeter the police had set up. It was like a big, half-circle jutting out from the properties neighboring the scene of the fire, and curving across the street to their side. It was marked off with yellow tape held in place by police cars strategically parked in the middle of the road.

“I got the names of two of your daughter’s friends. I’m going to see if either of them might know anything helpful.”

“Who are these friends?”

“A guy named Anthony, and a girl,” Logan said, then paused to recall her name. “Lara Mendonca.”

Tooney nodded.

“You know them?”

“I’ve heard Elyse mention them before.”

“Do you know Anthony’s last name?”

Tooney’s nod turned into a shake. “No. If she say, I don’t remember.”

That would have been helpful, but not the end of the world. “I was thinking I could get it from their—”

Logan fell silent as he caught a glimpse of a man in the crowd across the street, beyond the taped-off area on the far side.

“Tooney,” he said. “How’s your eyesight?”

“My eyesight? It’s okay.”

“Very casually, I want you to look at that group of people on the other side of the emergency crews. There’s a man near the wall, wearing a dark sports coat.” Logan waited until Tooney was facing the right direction. “Do you see him?”

There was no immediate response.

“Tooney,” Logan urged.

“I see him.”

By the tremble in his voice, Logan knew Tooney had also made the same connection he had.

“Get back to the cars,” Logan said loud enough for them all to hear.

“What’s going on?” Dev asked. He seemed to be the Marine in charge.

“Take them someplace where they can get some breakfast,” Logan whispered. “But make sure no one follows you.”

“Trouble?”

“Possibly.”

Dev nodded. “Let’s go guys.”

Harp looked at Logan. “Why? We just got here.”

“I don’t have time to get into it,” Logan told him. “Just do what Dev says.”

“What are you going to—”

“Dad, do it!”

His father’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “Okay. Sure. If you think we should.”

As soon as they walked off, Logan glanced back at the man across the street. The same man who’d held a gun to Tooney’s head the previous morning.

11

There was only about a ten-foot section of sidewalk blocked off on Logan’s side of the street. He moved over to the tape, then checked the man again. The guy was focused on the emergency crews, and had apparently still not noticed him. As soon as Logan was sure no cops or firemen were looking in his direction, he ducked under the tape.

“Hey, you’re not supposed to be in there,” a woman in the crowd said.

Logan ignored her, and moved with purpose across the short bit of no man’s land to the tape on the other side, then ducked under and joined the handful of people standing there. He then checked to make sure Tooney’s assailant was still in the same place.

Only he wasn’t.

Logan stepped off the curb, searching the crowd where the man had been standing. Suddenly the assailant emerged from the back of the crowd, took a quick look at Logan, then sprinted away down the sidewalk. Logan swept around an older couple watching the action from the middle of the road, then rushed after the man.

It was immediately apparent the guy had not chosen the best escape route. There were no cross streets or driveways on the east side Pacific Avenue in that area, so he and Logan were hemmed in between homes and apartments on the right, and a near solid line of parked cars on the left. And while the man may have been in pretty good shape, it was doubtful he was a runner like Logan. With every stride the distance between them shrank.

Forty feet, thirty-five, thirty.

Then, just a little ahead of them, a pickup truck pulled out from the curb, creating an opening in the wall of parked cars. The man seized the opportunity, and shot through it into the street, crossing at a diagonal to the other side where there were plenty of cross streets to chose from.

As Logan neared the opening, the gate of one of the properties opened, and a woman emerged, stepping directly into his path. He twisted to his left, grazing a parked sedan at the curb, to get around her.

“Hey, watch it!” she yelled.

Having lost some of the ground he’d gained, Logan raced through the opening as fast as he could. Crossing the street, he noticed a police car speeding down Pacific, its lights flashing. The job at Aaron’s place apparently done, some other crisis in the city was in need of the cops’ presence.

Ahead, Tooney’s attacker ducked off Pacific onto what turned out to be a block-long pedestrian street with houses lining either side. Logan dug deep, attempting to once more close the gap, but was only halfway down the wide walking path when the man turned to the right at the end of the block, and moved out of sight.

He turned just barely in time to see the man veer onto a narrow walkway between two of the houses on the left, and disappear again.

Logan followed right behind him, closing the distance between them to twenty feet as he burst out onto the concrete pathway of the Venice Boardwalk that ran along the front of the houses. On the other side of the path was a strip of grass, then the wide sandy beach.

The man had gone to the right, so Logan did the same. Unlike the roads they’d run on to this point, there were others around now—joggers and walkers and people with dogs. Logan weaved in and out, anticipating those in front of him, and trying not to get tangled up in any leashes.

To Logan’s left, the grassy strip that separated the path from the sand gave way to a mostly empty parking lot. Ahead, he could see the road that led into the lot, and thought there was at least a fifty percent chance the man would turn down it and head away from the beach. But when the guy got there, he kept going straight.

That was fine by Logan. The fewer turns they took, the quicker he would catch him.

As he swung around a middle-aged man walking a border collie, intending to cross the street and continue down the concrete boardwalk, a police car pulled across his path, and slammed on its brakes.