The LT was quiet for several seconds. “There was someone else in the lobby that day,” he said slowly.
“What? How do you know? Who?” Mitch spat out the questions in rapid succession.
“Lance. He’s the one that told me about you hittingAdam. He came straight up right after it happened and told me as if he’d witnessed it firsthand.”
“I thought he’d left. Fuck.”
“Yeah, fuck.” The LT sounded dejected.
“LT, you can’t say anything to him. I’ve got to find Maggie as soon as possible, and since the damn tracker may be useless, he might be my best hope right now.”
“Don’t do anything stupid, MacDonald.”
“You know me…” Mitch forced a chuckle.
The LT groaned. “Yeah, I do. You want me to get SWAT together and have them on standby?”
“Yes. I’ll be in touch. Thanks, LT.”
He called the detective’s line to find out if anyone working knew how to track the device Maggie had. After talking to the fourth one, he figured Morrison would be back before he could find anyone that knew their head from their ass.
“Look, just have Morrison call me as soon as he has something.” Mitch hung up exasperated.
He called Adam but only got his voicemail. He left a hasty message to “call him as soon as fucking possible.” Next, he called the store, but no one answered there, either.
Finally, he called dispatch. Time to pay his old friend a visit.
“Mind if I sit here?” Mitch asked as he sat. The bar was old and musty, its wood-paneled walls saturated with smoke and dreams. The jukebox played a bluesy tune for nobody but the bartender and one sad soul.
This wasn’t the kind of place where you came to pick up chicks. This wasn’t even the kind of place where you came to get drunk fast. This was the kind of place you came to if you had a gambling problem and wanted to find a bookie that would happily take your money, no matter what the bet.
“Shit.”
“Thought you might say that.”
“What do you want?” Lance continued to stare into hisdrink. He looked haggard and miserable. Three of his five fingers had splints on them.
“Manuel has Maggie, and I need to find them. Now.” His tone left no doubt of how serious he was or how far he would go to get the information he needed.
Lance’s head dropped even further. “God, I am a fuck up,” he muttered. “I didn’t want to give her up, I swear. They started breaking my fingers, and I could only take so much.”
“Yeah, well, be that as it may, I need information. You can deal with your other bullshit problems when I go. Where’s Manuel?”
“I swear to God, Mitch, I don’t know. I knew where the old place was but haven’t had contact with him since he cleared out. I thought this was over. I thought I could walk away, but that’s never going to happen.” He seemed on the verge of tears.
Lance pulled out his phone and laid it on the bar between them. “Code to get in is my badge number. Manuel’s number is in the contacts.”
“Your badge numberfor now.” Mitch didn’t feel one bit sorry for him. Lance had made his bed. He picked up the phone and walked out without another word.
“Okay, so between the tracker and the signal from Manuel’s phone, we’ve narrowed it down to a few blocks. Now what?” Adam asked.
Mitch and Adam were at his kitchen table with a map of New York City spread out between them. Adam had drawn a red circle around the general area where Maggie was most likely being held.
“That’s mostly an industrial area with lots of big buildings. It would take us forever to search it all, not to mention it would be pretty conspicuous. We’d give ourselves away long before finding her,” said Mitch.
“Could we get a better signal on the cell phone tracking if we called him? Or if we got closer to the phone itself?” Adam asked. They’d used Lance’s phone to get Manuel’snumber and then had it traced. The cell phone company could only tell them the towers it was closest to, though, not an exact location.
“Not according to dispatch. This may be the best we get from the phone,” said Mitch. “They’re sending plainclothes officers to check the area, but we only have so many. Morrison did say the tracker would give a better signal the closer we got to it. We may have to rely on that once we’re on the ground and hope all the concrete doesn’t mess up the signal.”
