Chapter Seven
Olivia followed the GPS directions for the next ninety minutes while Nicki interrogated her about Zoe’s disappearance.
By the time they were approaching the dot on the screen, it was nearly five o’clock.
Zoe had been missing for seventeen hours.
Neither Officer Billings nor Wendy had returned her calls, and Olivia knew firsthand what could happen in that length of time.
She pushed back at the memories. They wouldn’t help her find Zoe.
“I see no signs of life,” Nicki commented from the passenger seat.
The landscape had grown more and more rural, lots of trees and fields. They hadn’t seen a building for a while.
“How accurate is the last known location?” Olivia asked.
Nicki pointed to the car’s screen. “Just because this is the last known location doesn’t mean the phone is here now.
It means the phone was last used here. As to the accuracy of the ping .
. .” She shrugged. “It depends. In more populated areas, GPS in general is fairly accurate. Out here”—she waved a hand to indicate their surroundings—“who knows?”
“Right,” Olivia said.
Nicki frowned at her phone, which was plugged into the car and commanding the GPS. “Cell service has been spotty for the last fifteen or twenty miles, so the area might be larger than we’d like.”
Great.
Olivia watched the remaining distance countdown and slowed the vehicle. Nicki’s GPS used a woman’s voice with an Australian accent as it said, “You have reached your destination.”
Olivia pulled over. They stepped out of the vehicle and stood on the shoulder of the road. There was nothing in sight but forest. She retrieved her hiking boots from the back of her vehicle and changed her footwear. “Shall we look?”
“With good connectivity, the GPS can be accurate within a couple of square yards, so let’s give it a try.” Nicki stared at her phone screen. “We should be organized about this.”
“Let’s walk a grid pattern.” Olivia gestured in an east-west direction to parallel the direction of the road.
Then she began walking, slowly, eyes on the ground.
“Watch where you step. If Zoe tossed her phone out the Jeep window, it would be close to the road. If it’s deep in the woods, buried under dead leaves, we’ll never find it. ”
Nicki followed. Their footsteps crunched in dry foliage.
After thirty minutes of searching, Olivia stopped.
“We don’t know if the phone is here, so this feels pointless, like searching a haystack we’re not sure contains a needle.
We might have to come back with a metal detector.
Or the police can search the area with a K-9.
” Though Olivia wasn’t looking forward to an awkward conversation about why she was conducting her own investigation.
Also, she wasn’t sure they would bother to search for Zoe’s phone.
They weren’t convinced anything bad had happened to her.
But as Nicki would say, Whatever. Olivia wasn’t giving up.
From her true crime research, she knew the police were limited in what they could do to track a missing adult with no evidence that a crime had been committed.
Their resources were finite, and an adult was free to leave their spouse if they chose.
The police couldn’t proceed on their personal knowledge of the missing person, but Olivia could.
She would keep looking for Zoe the same way Lincoln hadn’t given up on her.
Olivia’s stomach clenched and her lungs tightened at the thought of Zoe being held captive.
Was she cold? Thirsty? What horrible things could already have been done to her?
Stop! You don’t know that she was taken.
Olivia led the way back to the car. “Why would Zoe come out here?” She opened her own GPS app and began scanning the area on the map.
She zoomed in on the closest dot. “There’s a building right over there, just around the corner past the bend in the road.
It’s only about two hundred yards from us.
” She looked up at the thick forest that lined the road on both sides.
In mid-September, the leaves had begun to turn, but the foliage was still dense enough to block the view.
“I don’t see any other buildings on the map within a half mile of here.
” She expanded the lone dot again. The back of her neck tingled as she read the description. “It’s a self-storage facility.”
Nicki said, “If Zoe needed to store something, why would she drive all the way out here? It’s not exactly convenient. Why not rent a unit closer to home?”
“She could have rented it before she moved to Scarlet Falls, or maybe she didn’t want it to be convenient.
” Maybe she didn’t want anyone to know. Olivia put the car in gear and pulled onto the road.
She steered around the bend, and the self-storage sign came into view.
The facility was old, run-down, and desolate-looking.
She drove into the entrance and parked in front of the office.
Nicki reached for the door handle. “Do we have a plan?”
“We’re going to tell the truth. We’re looking for our friend, who is missing, and she has a unit here.”
“And you think that’ll work?”
“You never know what will work. We can only try.”
The office was cold and smelled musty. A young man in his early twenties perched on a stool behind the counter, reading what appeared to be a textbook. His gaze passed right over Olivia as if she were invisible and focused on Nicki. “Can I help you?”
Nicki picked up on his interest and stepped up to the counter, cocked a hip, and twirled one of the many locks of hair that had escaped her messy bun. “We’re looking for my aunt.”
Aunt?
“She’s missing, and we think she rented a storage unit here. We’re really worried.” She turned impressively sad eyes on him. “We think she was here the other day. We’re trying to retrace her steps, ya know. Would you look at a picture of her and tell us if you’ve seen her?”
Olivia was impressed with Nicki’s improvisation. She hadn’t known her niece could act so fluidly—and lie so easily.
The young man swallowed. “Uh. Sure.”
Nicki nudged Olivia with an elbow. “Show him a picture of your sister.”
“My sister, right.” Olivia fished out her phone from her pocket and pulled up a photo of Zoe. She turned the cell so he could see the screen.
He glanced at it for two seconds at the most. “Yeah, I’ve seen her here.”
“Recently?” Nicki sounded hopeful.
“A few weeks ago?” He didn’t sound sure.
“I don’t remember which day, but within the last month for sure.
I remember her because she came in and paid for the whole year in cash.
Not many people do that. Most people use a credit card and have their account set to auto pay every month, occasionally I get a check, but this was my first all-cash payment. ”
Olivia glanced through the window. The office sat in front of the property.
Vehicles had to pass through a gate with a keypad and an arm barrier to access the actual units.
The fence didn’t look hard to climb. There was no razor wire coiled at the top.
No notice that the fence was electrified.
But you couldn’t drive a vehicle to your unit without passing through the gate.
“Is there any way to check? Do renters need to punch in a unique code?”
“No.” He ripped his gaze from Nicki and followed Olivia’s line of sight. “There’s only one code for the gate. Everybody uses it. It’s our zip code.”
Doesn’t seem very secure. But then, nothing about the facility appeared to be modern or up to date. A sign on the wall posted very low unit rental rates. You get what you pay for.
“Do you know which unit is hers?” Nicki asked.
He shook his head. “It won’t matter. The units are locked.”
Nicki held up her own keys. “I have her key.”
Liar liar.
He looked doubtful. “I don’t know if I’m allowed to give out that kind of information.”
“We’re not asking for her personal information,” Olivia said. “We just want to see if the key fits.”
“Please.” Nicki dropped her chin, her lips quivered, and she contorted her face into a ridiculously sad expression.
Is that a tear? Her eyes suddenly opened wide.
“I wonder if she could have accidentally locked herself inside her unit or had a medical emergency while she was inside. She could be in there right now.” She stopped just short of suggesting her “aunt” could have died and was now decomposing in her storage unit.
“How many days has she been missing?” She began to count on her fingers. “It’s been kind of warm . . .”
The young man caught the implication. His eyes bugged. “Shit.” He turned to a computer so old the plastic had yellowed. He typed. “Her name?”
“Zoe March,” Olivia said.
“That’s her,” the young man said.
Bingo.
“Thank you!” Nicki rewarded him with a few bats of her eyes. “You have a really good memory.”
“It’s unit 160,” he said, all concerns of client privacy seemingly banished by Nicki’s praise and the thought that a corpse could be decomposing in the facility.
Nicki touched his forearm. “Thank you so much. You might have saved her life.”
He blushed. “You’ll let me know, right? I mean, if she’s . . .” His gaze slid to the window.
“Of course. Thanks again.” Nicki led the way out of the office. Olivia hurried after her, and they slid into the Prius.
Olivia fastened her seat belt. “I’m not sure whether to be impressed or concerned at your ability to lie on the spot.”
“You can be both,” Nicki said.