He polished off the water in the glass and jiggled the glass. The cubes clinked against each other. “So when I tell him I’m gonna be a cop, he kinda nods and tells me he has one question for me. I say okay. He asks if I can take everyone hating my guts if it means doing the right thing, no matter what the right thing is. I think, then nod, say, yeah, I can handle that.” He smiled. “He says I know you can, I just wanted to hear you say it out loud. Don’t forget you said it out loud.”

I smiled in return. “Good cop, your dad.”

He nodded. “The best. Tough, tough dude.” He paused. “When you said a cop might be involved in your daughter’s kidnapping, I immediately remembered that conversation. And that I’d said it out loud. Put up or shut up, you know?”

I nodded again.

He set the glass down and pushed it away. “Before your daughter disappeared, Internal Affairs was looking at your guy Bazer.”

I shifted in my seat.

“I don’t have all the details yet,” Lasko said. “I’m still working on getting more specifics.”

“Are you gonna get dinged for this?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Think I’m good for now.”

I didn’t ask how or why he thought that. If he thought he had it covered, that was good enough for me. “Okay.”

Lasko took a cursory look around the deli before he spoke again. “Money went missing from an evidence locker. About two hundred and fifty large. Was discovered during a routine inventory check. I still don’t know whether Bazer was targeted directly or if they were just looking at the whole department. But they were looking.”

The knot in my stomach broke into multiple pieces and swirled in my gut. “What’d they find?”

He held up a finger. “Not there yet. Around the same time, there were some whispers that Bazer was on thin ice and that he was being looked at by bigger badges than IAD.”

“Like?”

“Feds. Not sure who.”

I thought for a minute. “I never heard any of that when I was there.”

He shrugged. “Source is good. And I’m not sure there was every anything official. I’m just saying his name came up.”

I nodded. It was hard for me to believe that something like that could’ve been going on under my nose while I was in the department, but if Bazer wanted to hide it and the Feds wanted to keep it quiet, it could’ve been done. If he said his source was good, I didn’t really have a reason to think otherwise.

“Why were they looking at him?” I asked. “Just the money?”

He shook his head. “No. Bigger. Larger scale corruption.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope.”

“So he was on the take? From who?”

“I don’t know that yet,” Lasko said. “But here’s where it gets weird.”

I waited.

“A few days after your daughter went missing, the money showed up,” Lasko said. “Bullshit story about how it was just misplaced. But it was found, entered in inventory and that was that.”

My stomach churned.

“Obviously, that could be the truth,” he said. “But if we’re looking at the big picture, that’s a pretty big coincidence given everything else that was going on.”

I nodded. It was. Could it all have been coincidental? Sure. But Lasko was right. Looking at the big picture and given that I was already suspicious of Bazer, it didn’t look good.

“One other thing,” Lasko said.

“What?”

“The money,” he said.

“Not following.”

“I went back and looked at the money,” he said. “Just to see what was there. Was pulled from a drug bust in Imperial Beach.”

I shrugged. “Ton of money, but I guess it fits.”

He shook his head. “No. It’s not the bust. That all fits. And I’m not sure this matters at all, but it just sort of rang a bell.”

I waited.

“The detective on the bust was the other name you gave me,” Paul Lasko said, raising his eyebrows at me. “Mike Lorenzo.”

ELEVEN

Lasko left and I sat there in the deli for a few more minutes, contemplating what he’d told me.

It shouldn’t have surprised me. I was the one who’d started drawing the conclusions about Bazer and Mike. I was the one who had the doubts. But hearing someone else say it, with something more than just conjecture, was jarring. We were still working with suspicion and circumstantial evidence, but it felt more substantial, more real.

I left the deli and headed home, only to find Chuck parked in front of the house again.

“We gotta stop meeting like this,” he said, grinning at me as I stepped out of the car.

“What’s up?” I asked.

He eyed me for a moment. “Maybe I should ask you the same question?”

I realized my tone had been sharp rather than welcoming. I waved him up the driveway. “Come in.”

He followed me. “I knocked on the door, but no one answered.”

“Girls are out shopping.”

“That’s pretty damn nice to hear,” he said. When I turned to look at him, he said, “Girls, I mean.”

I nodded and opened the front door. “It is.”

He shut the door behind us and I deposited my keys and wallet on the small table by the entryway. I offered Chuck something to drink, but he declined. I moved into the living room and sat down on one side of the sofa. He stretched out on the other.

“You look like you saw a ghost,” he said.

I shrugged. “Maybe.” I looked him over. “How’re you feeling?”

“Went to physical therapy for my shoulder today,” he said, rolling it forward, as if to show me it worked. “I’ve got two more appointments, then I’m done. Otherwise, close to normal.”

“Good.”

“Now tell me about the ghost.”

“I’m not sure there’s anything to tell,” I said.

“Try me.”

“Not that simple, Chuck.”

He folded his hands behind his head. “Joe, I know you’ve gotten used to working by yourself. You cut us all off when you took off looking for Elizabeth and I get it. That was your choice and what you had to do.” He paused. “But there are a lot of people who want to help you with this and now that you’re back here, it’s gonna be a lot harder to cut them out. Especially me. You saved my ass and whether you like it or not, the least I can do is be a sounding board. Because otherwise, it’s just gonna get real annoying if I keep showing up here and we only make small talk.”

He was right. I had gotten used to working by myself. I didn’t depend on anyone else. I ran all of the scenarios through my head in silence until things made sense. I asked for help when I needed it, but I did the thinking by myself because I’d spent so much time alone. He was right, though. I couldn’t operate the same way if I was re-entering my old life. I wasn’t sure I was doing that yet, but I was in my old home, living with my ex-wife, back in my hometown. I couldn’t pretend I was elsewhere.

“There’s a cop,” I said. “He’s helping me.”

Chuck gave a slight nod of his head. “Okay.”

“And we’re looking at some stuff,” I said.

“Stuff?”

I explained to him my suspicions and what Lasko brought to me. He listened without speaking, nodding occasionally, his eyes focused on me. It was somewhat strange having him there, upright, alert. When I’d come back to San Diego, I’d gotten used to seeing him in a hospital bed. It was like going back in time, seeing him nearly healthy and sitting the living room.

When I finished, he said, “Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Why the hell would either of them kidnap Elizabeth? And then sell her off?”

I shrugged. “Money? I don’t know.”

“So you’re making some jumps there,” he said.

“I know.”

“Be careful with jumps,” he said. “Don’t get so set on something that you don’t know for sure.”

I nodded. “Right.”

“But let’s say you’re right. Why would they do it?”

“Money’s the only thing I’ve got right now.”

“Nothing personal?” He raised his eyebrows. “No vendetta?”

I shook my head. “Not with Mike. No. Bazer? He and I were good until she disappeared. Then it went to shit. But before she disappeared, we were okay. So I don’t think it was personal.”