Chapter 76
CINDY THOMAS HAD the lights down low. She thought it made the apartment feel like a cave.
Dark, quiet, empty. She would never admit it, but she was currently pouting in her apartment.
She knew Lindsay Boxer and Alain Creasy were working on her investigation.
She understood it wasn’t safe or commonplace for a reporter to tag along with detectives.
But those facts didn’t make it any less frustrating.
She glanced at the cherrywood dining room table that doubled as her desk. She made a point to keep it in order. When she lived alone, that sort of thing had never occurred to her. Living alone had been quite a while ago. She tried to match her husband’s considerate behavior.
Cindy already had a stack of filled notepads on this case.
Somehow she had to turn them into a full-blown book.
She hadn’t worked out a title yet, but she supposed that would come when she had some kind of resolution of the investigation.
For now, the stack of notepads was nothing but a giant question mark. And it gnawed at her.
Her phone played Katy Perry’s “Roar.” Cindy answered it immediately. There was silence after she said hello. And she heard someone say something. Finally, she asked, “Who’s this?”
After another moment of confusion, a male voice said, “It’s me, Eric.”
“Eric Snaff?”
“The one and only.” The words were slurred.
“Are you drunk?”
“Yes, I believe I am. I believe you would be too if you went through everything I have.” Then he started to sob.
Cindy listened patiently as, in between bouts of crying, Eric tried to explain how desperate he felt.
Cindy wanted to get some direction in this conversation. She said, “Tell me about Jason Cortlandt. I interviewed him and I’m curious to get your opinion about how you guys fell out.”
There was a long sigh on the other end of the phone.
Slowly, Eric said, “He didn’t work at the facility for that long.
Maybe a year at most. He was sloppy and inattentive.
A disaster waiting to happen.” He had stumbled over the word “disaster.” “I don’t even know why the guy worked there. He didn’t seem to care about kids.”
Eric took a moment to gather his thoughts.
“But I let all that slide for a while. It’s hard finding people to work at a youth center like ours.
Until I found out he had started living with a girl from the facility.
She’d already graduated. But it was still wrong.
I reported it and he decided to quit instead of answer touchy questions. ”
“And you think that’s enough of a reason for him to take Nicole?”
“I’m not saying he kidnapped her. He just… got into her head. He introduced her to a fast crowd. She got a little wild.” It was the first time Eric had admitted that his daughter wasn’t a perfect, straight-A student.
He continued. “Nicole never seemed satisfied in high school. She was always looking ahead to something else. When I saw Jason Cortlandt had called Nicole on her cell phone, I asked her about it.” He just stopped talking.
Cindy waited and finally had to prompt him. “What was her answer?”
“Nicole’s answer was to buy a burner phone on her own. It was really a first sign she was shutting me out of her life.” He was quiet again.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Cindy told him.
Eric said, “What about something drastic?”