Read Online Ring of Truth by Nancy Pickard - Free Book Online Page B

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    “She's pretty,” he told the officer. “And she's in good shape. She works out.”
    “You have children?” she asked, thinking of the cesarian scar, and of youngsters missing their mommy.
    “No.”
    “Oh. Any other distinguishing marks?”
    There was a brief pause, before he said quickly, “I can't think of any.”
    “What about the car she was driving?”
    “It's a 1998 Mercury Mystique. It's white.”
    “Do you know the license number?”
    “It's a personalized one, WG-PRYR. That's the name of her realty company—A Wing and a Prayer. Because I'm a minister and she's a realtor.” He cleared his throat, sounding alittle embarrassed by it. “Will somebody come out to my house, or should I come down to you?”
    “Not yet, sir. I have to tell you that most adults who seem to be missing have their own reasons for being gone. Statistically, your wife is likely to show up sometime soon, or maybe you'll realize there's a reason she left.”
    “No, not Susanna. Please, believe me.”
    “I'll send out the word to look for her license.”
    “Yes, thank you! But what else—”
    “Nothing right now, sir.”
    “Nothing else? But—”
    “She'll come home, sir.”
    “No, she'd be here if she could be. Please—”
    But the young transfer from vice had done all she could do for the husband at that point. His description of his wife went into a current file, where it would wait until any further action might be required.
    On second thought, and feeling bad about the minister, the officer attempted to get her boss to issue an all-points bulletin on the license plate. He laughed her out of his office. “Are you kidding? Can you imagine how embarrassing that would be for her, a minister's wife? We come rolling up to the motel where she's shacked up with a deacon, and then she sues us, or the deacon does.”
    “The husband says—”
    “Yeah, they all do.”
    “He was really upset.”
    “They all are.”
    “Okay.”
    What could she do? Maybe his wife really was shacked up with a deacon.
    No alert went out for the license plate.
    * * *

    At ten minutes to two A.M., the Bahia Beach police chief, Marty Rocowski, known as Rocco to everybody who didn't call him “Sir” was awakened by an urgent phone call. He reached for it too late to avoid waking his wife, who propped herself on an elbow and stared across the pillows at her thirty-seven-year-old husband who hardly ever got a whole night's sleep. Which meant that she didn't, either. The seven-year-olds that she taught in an inner-city school were going to get a sleepy teacher yet again this coming Monday morning. Seeing that she was listening anyway, Rocco put the call on speaker so his wife could hear, too.
    “Rocco, this is Tammi Golding.”
    Police chief and wife exchanged surprised glances.
    The caller was a prominent local attorney and regular golf partner of his wife's.
    “Good morning, Tammi,” Rocco said, with an emphasis on the word “morning.” Knowing this couldn't possibly be a call bringing good news, he shot straight to the point. “What's wrong?”
    Her familiar voice, grating and aggressive and stripped of all its usual characteristic humor, filled their bedroom. “I'm sorry to roust you out of sleep like this, but the wife of one of my clients has gone missing. My client, the husband, got detoured by 911. He got the runaround from Missing Persons—wait three days, that crap. But this is the real deal, Rocco. She's gone, and she's not a woman who would do this. I'm telling you that somebody's got to take this seriously. He does. I do. I want you to, and I want you to make somebody down at the department take it seriously, too. This is a minister's wife, for God's sake, Rocco. She hasn't run away from home. She's really missing, and she's been missing for hours, and the only possible explanation is that she's dead, or she's hurt, or she's been abducted. Or something else bad has happened to her. She's in trouble somewhere, we know it,