none had been recent, and nothing that would’ve created the need to skip town.
From what DJ gathered, the guy had been a normal husband and father, completely clean.
He remembered another one of Barker’s refrains. ‘Nobody’s a whistle, DJ,’ which he took to mean that nobody was as clean as a whistle. Sometimes his partner’s attempts at being a wise old sage got in the way of the actual message.
Could that be it? Was he too clean? Is that what Barker’s looking at? I’m not seeing a damn thing.
DJ flipped to another page.
Winthrop had packed up his workout gear that morning, kissed his wife goodbye, and then left for the gym. That was the last time Sara had seen him, and three days later, his BMW hatchback had been located in a grocery store parking lot. There were no odd fingerprints: only his, his wife’s, and those of their three children. No secondary DNA traces, no blood, no out of the ordinary hair samples. No signs of forced entry on the car. No signs of foul play whatsoever.
The only strange thing that Detective Wallace had noted was the fact that the car was so clean on the inside, and it looked like it’d been washed as recently as that day. He’d reasoned that the car of a father with three young children should be filled with cracker crumbs, errant french fries, and enough dirt to cover a baseball diamond. Wallace had checked credit card transactions for any car wash visits in an effort to set up a timeline of his whereabouts, but came up empty.
No money was ever removed from their bank accounts, and no additional pings on credit card usage had ever turned up. His side of the closet contained every bit of clothing he owned. Wherever Brian had gone, the only things that went with him were his keys, his wallet, his gym bag, and the sweat suit he was wearing when he walked out the door.
Except for a number of unreliable sightings, Brian Winthrop had evaporated.
“Barker,” he said.
His partner looked up from his copy of the report.
“I got nothing. The guy’s a ghost, man. Poof ...gone.”
Barker said, “You’re partly right.”
“How so?”
“He’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Anything in those reported sightings look fishy to you?”
“Other than the fact that they’re unreliable?”
“Take another look.”
DJ hated it when Barker made a point of testing him, but he played along. He checked the list again. “Outskirts of Portland, the day after they found his car. Somebody thought they saw him in Eugene after that. Grants Pass. Eureka. The last one was in San Francisco, three weeks after he disappeared. Who’d remember to be looking for some guy three weeks later?”
“And?”
“And what, Barker? Six feet tall, brown hair, brown eyes. Great, we just narrowed our options down to half the male population in the US. It could’ve been anybody. You say it all the time—what people see and what they think they see are two completely different things.”
“We’re supposed to question their reliability, JonJon. That’s what we’re here for, but you gotta understand that the mind makes connections,” Barker said, pointing at his temple. “It’s a dang complex computer. What sticks out to me—and what you should be seeing, too—is that if these sightings were real, he might’ve been heading south . Why was he hightailing it south? That means something.”
DJ shoved himself up from the desk, grabbing his badge and gun. “This is pathetic,” he said. “When the real Barker shows up, the one that doesn’t make assumptions based on complete nonsense, let me know. I’m going to look for this woman’s children that are missing right now , not some guy who vanished two years ago.”
“The signs are there, DJ. It’s connected somehow. Why? Why would he be going south?”
“Because that’s how the news traveled, Barker. People saw his picture on television, it created an image
From what DJ gathered, the guy had been a normal husband and father, completely clean.
He remembered another one of Barker’s refrains. ‘Nobody’s a whistle, DJ,’ which he took to mean that nobody was as clean as a whistle. Sometimes his partner’s attempts at being a wise old sage got in the way of the actual message.
Could that be it? Was he too clean? Is that what Barker’s looking at? I’m not seeing a damn thing.
DJ flipped to another page.
Winthrop had packed up his workout gear that morning, kissed his wife goodbye, and then left for the gym. That was the last time Sara had seen him, and three days later, his BMW hatchback had been located in a grocery store parking lot. There were no odd fingerprints: only his, his wife’s, and those of their three children. No secondary DNA traces, no blood, no out of the ordinary hair samples. No signs of forced entry on the car. No signs of foul play whatsoever.
The only strange thing that Detective Wallace had noted was the fact that the car was so clean on the inside, and it looked like it’d been washed as recently as that day. He’d reasoned that the car of a father with three young children should be filled with cracker crumbs, errant french fries, and enough dirt to cover a baseball diamond. Wallace had checked credit card transactions for any car wash visits in an effort to set up a timeline of his whereabouts, but came up empty.
No money was ever removed from their bank accounts, and no additional pings on credit card usage had ever turned up. His side of the closet contained every bit of clothing he owned. Wherever Brian had gone, the only things that went with him were his keys, his wallet, his gym bag, and the sweat suit he was wearing when he walked out the door.
Except for a number of unreliable sightings, Brian Winthrop had evaporated.
“Barker,” he said.
His partner looked up from his copy of the report.
“I got nothing. The guy’s a ghost, man. Poof ...gone.”
Barker said, “You’re partly right.”
“How so?”
“He’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Anything in those reported sightings look fishy to you?”
“Other than the fact that they’re unreliable?”
“Take another look.”
DJ hated it when Barker made a point of testing him, but he played along. He checked the list again. “Outskirts of Portland, the day after they found his car. Somebody thought they saw him in Eugene after that. Grants Pass. Eureka. The last one was in San Francisco, three weeks after he disappeared. Who’d remember to be looking for some guy three weeks later?”
“And?”
“And what, Barker? Six feet tall, brown hair, brown eyes. Great, we just narrowed our options down to half the male population in the US. It could’ve been anybody. You say it all the time—what people see and what they think they see are two completely different things.”
“We’re supposed to question their reliability, JonJon. That’s what we’re here for, but you gotta understand that the mind makes connections,” Barker said, pointing at his temple. “It’s a dang complex computer. What sticks out to me—and what you should be seeing, too—is that if these sightings were real, he might’ve been heading south . Why was he hightailing it south? That means something.”
DJ shoved himself up from the desk, grabbing his badge and gun. “This is pathetic,” he said. “When the real Barker shows up, the one that doesn’t make assumptions based on complete nonsense, let me know. I’m going to look for this woman’s children that are missing right now , not some guy who vanished two years ago.”
“The signs are there, DJ. It’s connected somehow. Why? Why would he be going south?”
“Because that’s how the news traveled, Barker. People saw his picture on television, it created an image
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