Chapter 11
The single-story ranch house sat back from the road on a patchy lot, a property that had been slowly repurposed from living space to work space over the years until the line between the two had disappeared entirely.
An RV was parked along the side of the house, its tires soft, a power cord snaking from it through a cracked garage window.
A hand-painted sign on a post near the driveway read Spence Auto Detailing with a phone number beneath it.
Behind the sign, the garage door was open and Noah could see the front end of a sedan up on ramps, a shop vac, and a shelf of spray bottles and microfiber cloths organized with more care than anything else on the property.
Noah parked on the street and walked up. He knocked and waited. He heard footsteps inside, then the door opened. The man standing there was mid-forties, stocky, wearing grease-stained overalls unzipped to the waist with a thermal shirt underneath.
"Are you Mark Spence?"
"You have to phone if you want to book in your car for detailing."
"No. I'm from State Police. I’m here about your daughter. Fiona Spence."
Something in Mark's face tightened. He stepped aside and let Noah in.
The living room was small and cluttered. A television was on with the volume low. A plate with a half-eaten sandwich sat on the arm of a recliner. Noah didn't sit. Mark didn't offer.
"Her vehicle was found off Route 73," Noah said. "She's missing."
"I know. Ruby came by asking about her. I also received a phone call about her car." Mark pulled a pack of cigarettes from his overalls pocket and lit one. He exhaled toward the ceiling. "I'll tell you the same thing I told her. I haven’t heard from her. She's probably at her boyfriend's."
"She's not there."
He frowned. "How would you know?"
"I'm the boyfriend's father."
Mark studied him for a moment. Then he shrugged. “What do you want me to say? She's eighteen. It's not uncommon for her to stay over at friends' places. It's not like I keep a close eye on her."
"Father of the year."
“Oh, fuck off. If you're here to judge me, you can leave now." Mark crossed the room and opened the front door, holding it wide.
"Just trying to get answers."
"Yeah, well, maybe you can find them with her friends."
"Ruby?"
He nodded.
Noah walked out. The door closed behind him before he'd reached the bottom step. He stood in the driveway for a moment, looking at the RV and the garage and the detailing sign and the whole sad shape of a life that had room for a business but not for a daughter.
He got in his vehicle and left.
The fire escape was on the east side of the building, bolted to the brick in a zigzag of rusted iron that groaned when Ruby put her weight on it.
She'd walked past the building twice from the street, checking the windows, checking the entrance, making sure Garrett's truck wasn't in the lot behind it.
It wasn't. The studio was above a print shop that had closed at noon.
She was trying to decide if this was the worst idea she'd ever had.
It was. She climbed anyway.
The window on the second-floor landing was open about four inches, propped with a wooden block to let air through.
Ruby crouched and pushed it up. It slid without resistance, the frame swollen with humidity and loose in its track.
She swung one leg over the sill, then the other, and dropped into a room that smelled like darkroom chemicals and stale coffee.
The workspace was to the right, she could see the edge of a backdrop stand and umbrella lights through an open doorway.
To the left was living space, a kitchen counter, a couch, a television mounted on the wall.
Garrett lived here. Studio and apartment, all in one.
A setup that meant clients came to his home, which was a thought that made Ruby's skin crawl in a way she hadn't expected.
She started with the studio. A desk against the far wall held a laptop and stacks of printed proofs in clear sleeves. She flipped through them quickly. Landscapes. Headshots. A wedding from what appeared to be last fall. Nothing that told her anything about Fiona.
A filing cabinet beside the desk had three drawers. The top two held business records, invoices, model release forms. The bottom drawer was locked. Ruby pulled on it twice, hard, and the cheap lock gave way with a metallic pop that sounded louder than it was.
Inside were folders. She pulled them out and opened the first one on the desk. Photographs. Not landscapes. Not headshots.
Boudoir shots. Young women in lingerie, posed on a bed that Ruby recognized as the one visible through the doorway to the living space.
Some were tasteful in the way the industry defined tasteful, soft lighting and strategic angles.
Others weren't. The further she went into the folder, the less clothing there was and the younger the faces got.
She recognized two of the girls from the Strutz Agency wall.
One of them she was almost certain was still in high school.
She kept looking. Second folder, third. More of the same. Different girls, same bed, same lighting. None of them were Fiona. But the pattern was clear enough and it made her hands shake with something that was equal parts anger and fear.
She was reaching for the fourth folder when she heard the front door open downstairs.
Footsteps on the stairs. Heavy. Unhurried. The sound of keys being tossed onto a surface.
Ruby grabbed the folders and held them against her chest. There was nowhere to go. The fire escape window was behind her but she'd have to cross the hallway to reach it, and the footsteps were already at the top of the stairs. She stepped back against the wall beside the cabinet and waited.
Garrett walked into the studio and saw her.
For a second neither of them moved. He was carrying a camera bag over one shoulder and a takeout container in his free hand. His eyes went from Ruby to the open drawer to the folders in her arms, and his face changed. The confusion burned off fast and what replaced it was cold.
"What the hell are you doing in here?"
Ruby threw the folders at him. Photographs spilled across the floor between them, scattering in a fan of bare skin and staged poses.
"You're a pervert," she said. "Where is Fiona?"
Garrett stared at the photos on the floor. Then back at her. "You broke into my studio."
"Where is she?"
"She missed her appointment. I told you that. She never showed." He set the camera bag and the food down on the desk, slowly, the way someone moves when they're deciding what to do next. "You broke in through my window. You went through my private files."
"Those girls are underage."
"Those girls signed release forms. They're clients."
"They're children."
"Go to the cops, then." He stepped closer.
"Tell them what you found. And while you're at it, explain how you found it.
Breaking and entering. Trespassing. Theft.
" His voice was quiet and steady and it was worse than shouting.
"No one is going to believe you. You're a ski rental clerk who broke into a man's home. That's the story. That's all there is."
Ruby felt the wall behind her. She'd backed up without realizing it. Garrett was between her and the hallway now, between her and the fire escape, and the front entrance was through the living space behind him.
"I know Fiona was coming to see you," she said. Her voice was thinner than she wanted it to be. "I know she left to drive here Thursday night and she never came back."
"And I told you she never arrived. That's not my problem."
"Then whose problem is it?"
His face shifted. He moved fast. His hand caught her by the collar of her shirt and he shoved her sideways into the wall.
The impact knocked the air out of her and sent a framed print crashing to the floor beside her head.
His face was close, close enough that she could smell the coffee on his breath and see the small red veins in the whites of his eyes.
"You have some nerve," he said through his teeth.
"Coming into my home. Going through my things.
Calling me names." His grip tightened on her collar, twisting the fabric.
"You want to know what happened to your friend?
Maybe she got smart and left. Maybe she realized that people like you drag her down. "
Ruby brought her knee up hard into his thigh.
It wasn't where she'd aimed but it was enough.
His grip loosened for a second and she twisted free, stumbling past him into the hallway.
He grabbed at her arm and caught it, his fingers digging into the skin above her elbow.
She wrenched away and felt something pull at her shoulder but she was moving, through the living space, past the kitchen counter, toward the front entrance.
She hit the door with both hands, got it open, and half fell down the staircase to the street.
She didn't stop until she was in her car with the doors locked and her hands shaking so badly she could barely fit the key in the ignition.
Callie was at her desk working through a stack of missing persons reports when the front desk officer approached.
"Deputy Thorne. Someone's asking for you."
Ruby Caswell was sitting in the lobby on a plastic chair with her knees pulled up and her arms wrapped around herself.
She was wearing a T-shirt with the collar stretched and torn on one side, and there were bruises forming on her upper arm, four distinct marks that Callie recognized immediately as fingerprints.
Her left cheek was red and beginning to swell where it had hit something hard.
"Ruby," Callie said. "What happened to you?"
Ruby looked up and Callie saw that she'd been crying but wasn't anymore. Her eyes were dry and steady and furious.