Chapter 62
Tuesday night
By the time JP arrived home, the sky had gone dark. Sabre sat at the dining table surrounded by files, legal pads, photographs, and old reports spread wide.
The television was on in the family room, low enough to blend into background noise. Morgan, Conner, and Dené were in their rooms. Gene had gone to a meeting. For once, the house felt still.
JP hung his hat. “Have you been at this since court?”
Sabre nodded absently. “I found some old investigator notes Rourke gave me years ago that were misfiled.”
JP sat beside her. “Anything useful?”
“Mostly old witness follow-ups.”
She slid a stack toward him while continuing through another. The Hannah Caldwell file had become a maze now. Old interviews, recent interviews, info about Todd Maddox and Bay, the Oceanside connection, fake identities, the yellow Mustang. Nothing lined up cleanly.
JP flipped through several pages while Sabre continued reading. Then suddenly she stopped.
JP noticed. “What is it?”
Sabre’s eyes remained fixed on the page in front of her. Slowly, she reached for her legal pad and flipped back several pages until she found the rough sketch of the tattoo. Sabre placed the sketch beside Rourke’s old note.
“JP.”
He leaned over. “What am I looking at? I see a handwritten phone number in the margin.”
“Look at what’s next to it. There’s a mark beside it. It’s small.”
JP picked up the note, adjusted his readers, and examined it more closely. Then he looked back at Sabre’s sketch. “It’s an exact match.”
A cold heaviness settled into Sabre’s stomach. She stared at the mark in silence. The thing that hit hardest was how unimportant it looked. It wasn’t dramatic or even hidden. It was just something he’d written in the margin almost nine years ago out of habit.
JP rotated the note. “The left side is a D. The right curve is an R.” He looked up. “Daniel Rourke.”
“No.” But even saying it, she could still see it. Now that it was there, the symbol refused to become anything else.
JP grabbed another page from the stack. Then another.
He showed them to Sabre.
The same mark appeared again, a little smaller this time. Then it scribbled near the bottom of a witness list, like shorthand or ownership.
Sabre sat back. All at once, conversations replayed differently in her mind.
“It all makes sense now. Rourke remembering the ladybug. Rourke showing up at court and casually asking if Bay had talked. He also pointed us toward leads that sounded useful enough to chase. He was always calm and helpful, too helpful.”
JP spread the marked papers across on the table. “This doesn’t prove he took Hannah.”
“No,” Sabre said quietly. And somehow that made it worse because this wasn’t evidence. It was recognition. The sudden horrible realization that something impossible had been sitting in front of them the entire time.
JP tapped the sketch of Bay’s tattoo. “She carries his mark.”
Sabre closed her eyes. “Not carries. She’s been branded, conditioned, owned.”
“Are you okay?” JP asked.
She looked down at the pages spread out, at Daniel Rourke’s unconscious little symbol repeated through years of notes, and at the tattoo on Bay’s arm. Neither of them had seen until now.
“No,” she admitted softly. “I’m not.”
JP nodded. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to be wrong about Rourke.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment because they both knew she wasn’t.
Finally, Sabre said, “We need to find Hannah, if that’s her. And even if it isn’t, he’s apparently been keeping Bay and another girl hostage. And we need to report this to the police.”
“I’ll call DuBois. He’ll know what to do.”
~~~
DuBois arrived at JP’s house thirty-five minutes later. They sat at the dining table where the paperwork was laid out.
“What exactly do you think you know?” DuBois asked.
JP explained everything from the beginning, the symbol, Bay’s tattoo, the matching marks in Rourke’s old notes, Bay confirming a blonde girl existed, and her fear about identifying the man she lived with.
“So, you think Rourke took Hannah Caldwell?” DuBois seemed skeptical.
“I think there’s enough smoke that we can’t ignore him,” JP responded.
Sabre looked exhausted. “When I ask Bay, she just says ‘no names’. But I’m sure she knows Hannah.”
DuBois pointed at the printouts with the DR marks. “This symbol thing matters, especially with Bay carrying it tattooed on her arm.”
“Do you think it’s enough for a warrant?” JP asked.
“I think so, especially since a minor child is involved.” DuBois glanced between the two. “Do you have anything else?”
JP upped the pace. “We know Bay stabbed Maddox and ran. And we now think the blonde girl came back afterward.”
That got DuBois’s full attention. “How sure?”
“I got that from a neighbor. She never told police because she said Nelson didn’t ask the right questions, but I’m not sure she was remembering everything correctly. She said she was a little under the weather.”
DuBois rubbed his jaw. “Let me see if I got this straight. You think the blonde, who you believe to be Hannah, killed Maddox.”
“I think she is, at the very least, a witness and maybe a suspect. I believe she has more answers than we have questions.”
DuBois looked toward Sabre. “How afraid of this guy is Bay?”
“She thinks naming him puts both of them in imminent danger.”
DuBois closed his notebook. “Here’s the problem. If Rourke’s been controlling these girls for years and suddenly thinks Bay talked, he will be on the move. And if he relocates the other girl now,” DuBois continued, “we may lose Hannah, or whoever she is, permanently.”
Sabre looked worried. “What do we do?”
DuBois stood now too. “We don’t confront him yet. It’s too risky. We need location first. We need to get it quietly.”
“Agreed,” JP said.
The detective pointed toward Sabre. “You need to keep talking to Bay.”
“She’s barely hanging on.”
“I know,” he said. “But if she thinks we’re getting close, she may give you something else.”
Sabre nodded reluctantly.
DuBois looked over at JP. “And you dig into every person connected to Rourke. Quietly.”
“Agreed.”
“If he catches wind of our suspicions before we know where Hannah is we’ll probably never find her. I’ll get a warrant, then notify Nelson and Missing Persons. But we need a plan to catch him as soon as possible and without tipping him off.”
“We can’t go at him as cops,” JP said. “I can set up a meeting with him, then we follow him. He’ll eventually lead us to his house and to Hannah or whoever he has hiding there.”
“I’ll meet with him,” Sabre said. “He won’t say no to me.”
“I don’t really like that idea,” JP said. “But she’s not wrong. He’ll jump if Sabre calls.”
DuBois glanced from JP to Sabre. “Am I missing something?”
“JP thinks he’s smitten with me,” Sabre said.
“Which is all the more reason for you to stay out of it,” JP said.
“This is urgent,” Sabre said. “Besides, I’ll meet him for lunch or something, with lots of people around. And I know you’ll both be close by.”
“You just need to make sure it sounds natural,” DuBois said.
“What do I tell him?”
JP looked at the files spread across the table. “The truth.”
Sabre spun toward him.
“Part of it anyway.”
DuBois nodded. “That’s probably safest. Maybe you could tell him Bay said something that changed how you see the situation.”
JP sat back down, thinking it through carefully. “We can’t use Bay directly.”
“No,” DuBois agreed. “If Rourke thinks she’s talking, he could disappear tonight.”
JP nodded. “Whatever we bring him has to feel old. Historical. Something that sounds like we’re chasing the past instead of getting close to the present.”
“The Mustang,” Sabre said. “We still have legitimate questions about the car.”
DuBois nodded. “And it’s harmless enough not to spook him.”
“I’ll tell him JP tried tracing it but hit a wall.” Sabre suggested.
“Which is true,” JP added.
“And then,” Sabre said, “I’ll ask whether he developed anything on the Mustang back then that didn’t make it into the official file.”
JP cleared his throat. “That sounds perfect. It’s exactly the kind of thing an attorney revisiting an old case would ask the original investigator.”
“And more importantly, it sounds like you’re stuck.” DuBois added.
“Right,” Sabre said. “Like we’re not close, or dangerous, just chasing another dead end from nine years ago.”
“He’ll come,” JP said.
“Investigators hate unfinished work. And he’ll think he can help steer us again. But mostly because he’ll do anything Sabre asks him to.”
DuBois looked at Sabre. “Are you comfortable selling that?”
“No,” she admitted honestly. “But I can do it.”
DuBois started pacing. “Meet him in a public place in the daytime. There won’t be any visible police near the actual meeting. We’ll follow him in a tag team.”
“He’s still a PI,” JP warned. “He’ll notice bad surveillance.”
“What if he asks why now?” Sabre asked.
JP answered. “Because Marcus’ sighting finally gave the Mustang context. It’s simple and believable.”
Sabre stared at Rourke’s number for a moment before making the call. The line rang twice.
“Sabre.” Rourke’s voice was warm and familiar.
Sabre kept hers steady. “I’d like to run something by you on the Hannah Caldwell case.”
“I’m kind of busy right now, but I could meet you tomorrow for lunch if that would work.”
“That would be perfect. How about Dockside 1953 at 12:15?”
“I can pick you up at the courthouse if you want?”
“Thanks, but it’ll be easier if I just meet you there.”
“It’s a date.”
“Date, my ass,” JP grumbled.