Chapter 53
Saturday late morning
National City didn’t pretend to be anything it wasn’t. Tight streets. Faded duplexes. Cars parked half on curbs. Music bleeding through open windows even in the middle of the day. The kind of neighborhood where people weren’t quick to give out information.
JP parked across the street from the address Rochelle had given him. It was a unit in a small apartment complex with stucco cracked in thin lines, a security screen on the front door, and curtains drawn but not carefully.
He watched a minute, but there was no movement. Then he got out, crossed over, and knocked once.
He waited, then knocked again. A bolt slid, and the door opened just enough to show a man behind it, Marcus Caldwell.
He was a little older than in the photos, and harder too.
His muscular body stood about six-foot-three, with the kind of face that had stopped expecting anything good and adjusted accordingly.
“What?”
“My name’s JP Torn. I’m a private investigator out of San Diego.”
Marcus didn’t blink.
“I’m looking into something tied to Hannah Caldwell.”
His expression shifted to curiosity, and Marcus opened the door wider. “Come in.”
Inside was clean enough but worn and sparsely furnished.
Marcus gestured to a chair. JP sat. Marcus stayed standing a moment, then dropped into the couch across from him.
“Are you working for the cops?”
“No. I work for a lawyer named Sabre Brown. She was Hannah’s attorney for the dependency case.”
His face reddened. “She should’ve never let the girl go home with her mom.”
JP didn’t want to get into that. “I’m working a case that overlaps with Hannah’s. I’m here to understand what might’ve been missed.”
Marcus studied him. “You think Hayes didn’t do it?”
“Hayes took her all right. I’m just not sure someone else wasn’t involved.” JP had a wild thought about Yvonne’s exes.
“Did you ever try to get Hayes to talk?”
Marcus gave a humorless half-smile. “I have friends in Donovan,” Marcus said. “People who don’t mind asking hard questions. It didn’t matter. Hayes stuck to his story.”
“What story?”
“That he lost her.” Marcus reached for a can of soda on the floor. “Said he stopped to buy some booze, and she was gone when he came back.”
“Do you believe that?”
“No,” Marcus said. “But I believe Hayes isn’t smart enough to hold a secret like that for years without cracking. So, if he took her, someone else ended up with her. Or she got away. Or she didn’t make it.” The man shrugged once. “All bad options.”
“What about Yvonne?”
Marcus looked at him differently now. “Yvonne was stupid. She was always with a loser.”
JP raised an eyebrow.
Marcus smirked. “Yeah, like me. But she went from bad to worse. Hayes was a worthless piece of crap. But Yvonne herself, she wouldn’t have done it. She’s devastated still. I’m sure she blames herself for bringing Hayes into Hannah’s life.”
He shook his head. “Yvonne made bad choices, but she didn’t cross lines like that. She wouldn’t take her own kid and disappear. She would’ve stayed and fought, even if she lost.”
That was the cleanest thing Marcus had said so far.
“What about family? Any chance anyone could have tried to save her?”
“You mean Rochelle?”
“Not necessarily, but yeah, her too.”
“She thought she knew better than everyone.”
“Did she?”
Marcus gave another humorless smile. “Sometimes she wasn’t wrong.”
“Could she have taken Hannah?”
“Rochelle was the good half of me,” he said. “She would never do something like that. Hannah should’ve gone to her, but Yvonne was doing all her programs, and they believed her when she said Hayes wasn’t around.”
“So, is there anyone else in the family who would’ve taken her?” JP asked.
“No.”
“That confident?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because the ones who loved the girl would’ve stayed within the law,” Marcus said. “And the ones who didn’t love her enough wouldn’t bother.”
“What did you do after she disappeared?” he asked.
“I drove around the neighborhood,” he said. “I looked, asked around, the same as everyone else who thought they were going to find something.”
“Did you ever see anything?”
Marcus looked away.
There it was. JP waited him out.
Marcus rubbed his jaw.
“Not while I was looking,” he said. “But maybe by accident. A couple of weeks later, I was up in Oceanside. I stopped at a light near the coast, and I see this car pull up next to me on my left. There was a girl in the passenger seat who looked like Hannah.”
“Are you sure?”
“No,” Marcus said. “I hadn’t seen her for a while before all that. She could’ve changed some. Or I could’ve been seeing what I wanted to see.”
“Did she see you?” JP asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did she react?”
“No.”
“Did she look scared?”
Marcus thought about it. “No.”
“What about the driver?” JP asked.
“It was a man. I didn’t really get a good look at him. I was too busy looking at the little girl.”
“What kind of car?” JP asked.
“A yellow Mustang, an older one. It was a ’65 or ’66. I can’t tell the difference. Hard to miss.”
That car again. “When did this happen?”
“Two, maybe three weeks after she was taken.”
“Did you try to follow the car?”
Marcus shook his head. “The light changed. They turned left. I hesitated. Then I told myself I was seeing things.”
“Did you report it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Marcus’ eyes narrowed. “Because I didn’t know if it was her,” he said. “And I wasn’t about to go tell cops I saw something I couldn’t prove. They weren’t listening much by then anyway.”
JP didn’t argue, nor did he point out what most fathers would’ve done. It seemed so wrong, him not reporting it or chasing the car until something broke. JP fought the urge to give him a piece of his mind.
He stood. “I appreciate your time.”
Marcus didn’t get up.
At the door, JP paused. “If it was her,” he said, “she was alive.”
Marcus looked at him but didn’t respond.
JP stepped outside. The street noise came back— cars, voices, someone yelling at a dog.
Back in his truck, JP sat for a moment before writing some notes. The last line read: He didn’t report, didn’t follow.
JP closed the notebook. He understood doubt. He didn’t understand letting it drive away.