“You don’t have to.”

“Be better if I’m there,” she said. “Just to break the ice.”

“Who is he?”

She pushed down her sleeves, shaking her arms until they dropped to her wrists. “Someone who can probably help you. I wouldn’t have suggested you go to Tess if I thought otherwise.”

I hated that she was talking in circles and keeping me in the dark. But I didn’t really have any other choice but to trust her.

“I don’t need the dresser,” I said. “I didn’t bring anything with me.”

“Okay. I think I might have a chair, though, so you’ve got something to sit on.”

“That would be good. Thanks.”

She nodded. “Yep.”  She stared at me for a moment. “Just call him. Trust me. He can help. Not trying to be obtuse here, alright? It’s just…” She waved a hand in the air. “Just call him, alright?”

It was going to have to be because it was all I had.

ELEVEN

I glanced at my watch. “He said he’d be here at one.”

Isabel made a face. “It’s five minutes after. Chill out.”

We were sitting in a cafe not far from the apartment. I’d called Rodney after we talked and got no sense of him over the phone, only that he was happy to meet us for lunch. As soon as we sat down in the booth, Isabel began asking me questions about Elizabeth, which I answered truthfully and which brought up the normal pain and anxiety for me.

It was never easy talking about her. I could start out removed from her, but the more details I spoke of, the more I missed her and the more painful it became to wonder about where she was and what happened to her. I could compartmentalize those things on a daily basis, but talking about them was like going from dipping my toe in scalding hot water to submerging my entire body into it.

“If anyone can help you, it’s Rodney,” she said. “He’ll be here. Just don’t judge.”

“What is there to judge?”

She smiled. “Just don’t judge.”

The waitress came, dropped off our menus and iced water, and we told her we were waiting for one more.

“Where is Elizabeth’s mother?” Isabel asked, redirecting me back to the conversation about my daughter.

“She’s still in San Diego,” I said.

“You’re divorced?”

I nodded.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “She and I, we’re…okay. I think. I don’t know.”

She nodded, but I wasn’t sure if she really understood. Our divorce had nothing to do with how I felt about Lauren and everything to do with losing a child. I was certain that my feelings for Lauren had never changed, only that other things had gotten in the way of showing them. Seeing her the previous few weeks had been cathartic, but I wasn’t sure anything had really changed. She was still trying to move forward and I was still stuck in neutral, still stuck on Elizabeth.

“You married?” I asked, looking for any excuse to turn the conversation away from me for a moment.

She shook her head. “Always a bridesmaid, not interested in being a bride.”

“Ever?”

“Never say never,” she said. “But right now? I like my life. I saw my parents make a mess of their marriage. I’m not sure I’m good marriage material.”

“How so?”

She sipped from the Diet Coke the waitress had delivered. “I’m independent. I’m stubborn. I like my work. Not sure I want kids. I’m selfish. And those are just the reasons at the top of the list.”

She was attractive. She was smart. She had her own career. Someone would break her down, eventually. Make her feel like she couldn’t live without them. Which was a good thing.

“And I don’t like the complications of dating relationships,” she said, twirling the straw in her glass. “So I’m pretty sure I’d suck at marriage.”

There was something in the twirling and the way she said it that made me think maybe she’d been burned or hurt in the past. Something that made her gun shy and defensive. And something that would eventually give way for the right person.

Her eyes shifted from me toward the front of the diner. “There he is.”

An old man using a walker pushed his way through the door while a massive man weighing well over three hundred pounds held the door open for him.

“Wow,” I said. “He’s big.”

“Yeah, he is,” Isabel said. “But that’s not him.”

The man with the walker paused, scanning the restaurant. Isabel held up a hand and he nodded and began moving our way.

“Oh,” I said, not sure what else to say.

“You’ll see,” she said. “Don’t judge.”

The old man’s eyes moved to me as he pushed toward us. He wore a flannel shirt beneath a thick wool coat that hung below his waist and gray slacks over bright white walking shoes. His thin white hair was brushed back over his pink scalp, sticking up in several different directions.

He reached the table and cleared his throat. “Hello, Isabel.”

She slid out of the booth and hugged him awkwardly as he wrapped one arm around her. She helped him extricate from the walker and slide into her side of the booth.

He extended a hand across the table and stared at me with clear eyes. “Rodney Gorman.”

“Joe Tyler.”  I thought for a moment. “Gorman. You’re related to Tess?”

He nodded and kept his eyes on me. “I’m her father. And I’ve heard of you.”

I wondered why no one told me he was Tess’s father. “Really?”

He glanced at Isabel, then moved his eyes back to me. “Yes. A friend of mine in Kansas City told me about you.”

I thought for a moment, but couldn’t pull anything up. “I’m sorry, I don’t…”

“A family from Topeka,” he said. “You found their daughter. Four years ago. They had relatives in Kansas City that knew my friend.”

Topeka rung the bell for my memory, but he got part of it wrong. “I found their son, I think.”

He blinked several times. “Yes. Their son.”

I couldn’t recall the family’s name, but I remembered finding their nine-year-old son. The parents had divorced and managed to do so on amicable terms but their extended families had not. The father’s parents decided that the mother wasn’t taking care of the boy and tried to turn a weekend with their grandson into an abduction. They’d run to Florida and stashed him with other relatives, claiming the boy had been taken in his sleep.

It hadn’t required much work. Nothing added up when I spoke to them and the dissension within the family was easy to see. The police knew, too. They just thought it was the mother’s side of the family and placed their focus on them.

The grandparents had cracked quickly.

I just happened to be the one to crack them.

“They were very grateful for your work,” Rodney said. “They said you were…determined.”

I shrugged because I wasn’t sure what to say to that.

“So I asked around a bit more.”  He paused. “Turns out you’ve helped a lot of people.”

“I try. I hope so.”

“But Isabel here tells me you’re here for you,” he said. He cleared his throat. “For your daughter.”

“Yes, sir. I am. I’m chasing a lead that found its way to me.”

He chuckled. “Mr. Tyler. Please don’t call me sir. It makes me feel older than I already am and I’m still strong enough to lift up that damn walker and smack you in the face with it.”

I smiled. “Okay. Please call me Joe then.”

He nodded.

“Rodney was in Minneapolis PD for years,” Isabel said. “Then with BCA. He was a state investigator.”

“That was a long time ago, Izzy,” he said.

“They kept him on an extra ten years because he was so good,” she said, ignoring him. “His solve rate was nearly perfect.”

“And you know what nearly perfect means, right?” he said, narrowing his eyes.

I nodded. “Left a couple on the table.”

“Damn right, I did,” he said, his face darkening. “There was nothing near perfect about not getting those cases closed.”

I’d heard that before from cops. It wasn’t about the cases they solved or managed to close. It was the ones that stayed open, that they couldn’t figure out, that remained with them until they were dead. It was why Mike Lorenzo still worked Elizabeth’s disappearance. Yes, we were friends, but the cop in him couldn’t let it go.