“Still,” Isabel said. “He was the best. He knows everyone.”

The old man shook his head. “I’m not near what she says I am, Joe. But I might be able to give you a little direction.”

“Anything you can do, I would appreciate,” I said.

He folded his hands on the table and cleared his throat again. “When I said I’d heard of you, I wasn’t kidding. Did I mention the Topeka case?”

An awkward silence settled in at the table and I glanced at Isabel.

“Yes, you mentioned Topeka, Rodney,” she said, touching his elbow.

He frowned as the waitress came. She took our orders and wandered off.

“Anyway, when your name kept popping up, people saying you’d helped them, I starting seeing what I could learn about you,” he continued.

I knew information was out there. Old media coverage, message-board stories, and I kept Elizabeth’s profile alive in communities that involved missing children.

“I laughed when I read about your leaving the department in San Diego,” he said, a corner of his mouth turning up. “I assume they had a problem with all of the attention your daughter was bringing them? Pushed you out the door?”

“More or less.”

He shook his head. “Cops are great until things go wrong inside. Starts to make them look bad. They’ll turn on anyone and anything, even their own.”

I nodded. I couldn’t have put it any better.

His thin lips came together. “But I started digging. Nothing extensive, mind you. But just reading.” The corner of his mouth turned up again. “When you’re an old retired cop, there isn’t much else to do.”

Isabel rolled her eyes, indicating she didn’t buy the old man act. I didn’t either, really. His body may have been aged and frail, but there was something alert and vibrant about him.

“And I think I learned something about your daughter,” he said.

The familiar heart tremor started and I grabbed the glass of ice water in front of me, taking a long drink.

“If I knew for certain, I would’ve gotten in touch,” he said, quickly. “Please don’t think I was holding information back. It was my experience that one of the worst things you can do to a parent is give them a glimmer that isn’t there.”

Again, he was right. It was the worst. Getting one’s hope up and then having it crushed. I’d experienced it on both ends and I did my best to avoid it on both ends.

I set the glass down, let the cold water run down my throat. “What do you think you learned?”

Isabel sat rock still next to him, eyes fixed on the old man.

Rodney cleared his throat again and set his bright eyes on me. “I feel certain your daughter is alive.”

TWELVE

Our food came, but I was too unsettled to touch mine. I sat there in silence while they ate, thinking about where Elizabeth might be. What she might look like. If she remembered me.

“I don’t say that easily,” Rodney said, staring across the table at me, pushing his plate aside. “Because I know what hearing that means for you.”

I wasn’t sure if he really did or not. Unless your own child had been abducted, I wasn’t sure that anyone could quite understand what the roller coaster of information and emotions was like. But I did believe him that he wasn’t giving me some flippant opinion. If he was willing to look in my eyes and say those words, he had a reason.

I cleared my throat. “Why do you think Elizabeth is alive?”

He laid his hands flat on the table. “A couple of reasons. First, you’ve done an excellent job keeping her case alive.”

I shrugged. “I guess.”

He shook his head. “No. You have. You’ve been constant. Her presence, despite the time she’s been gone, hasn’t been diminished. People in the community still know her name. Her disappearance is still discussed. That’s a good thing. It makes people aware.”

“All parents don’t do that?” I asked.

“Most parents can’t,” he explained. “They become overwhelmed. They give up hope. They move on. They don’t forget their child, but they don’t have the energy to face their missing son or daughter every single day.” His eyes filled with sympathy. “You don’t seem to fall into that category.”

He was right. I’d given over my life to finding her. It had ended my career and my marriage. It consumed me. I had the energy. As long as I didn’t mind the isolation.

“So her disappearance and her name are still in the public consciousness,” Rodney said. “She hasn’t been forgotten. There are people who are still, in some way, looking for her. Not just you.”

I glanced at Isabel, then fiddled with the napkin under the glass of water, pulling at the corner.

“So this new lead…it’s a good one?” he asked.

“I think so. As good as I’ve had in a while. I think she was here in Minnesota.”

He nodded. “Do you know the statistics about children who are still alive after the first few weeks following their abduction?”

“I know the chances are better that they’re alive.”

“Not just better, Joe,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Astronomically better. It’s something like sixty percent at ninety days. Seventy-five percent after a year. But after several years?”  A faint smile crept on his old mouth. “It’s very likely that your daughter is alive somewhere.”

My heart beat quickly. He wasn’t telling me things I didn’t already know, but someone who knew what he was talking about was giving me hard numbers. Statistical probabilities that were in Elizabeth’s favor.

In my favor.

He folded his bony hands together on the table. “But here’s the biggest reason I think your daughter is alive.”

I tore off the corner of the napkin, rolled it into a ball and dropped it in the water.

“You know from the message-board world about the rumors that pop up,” he said, staring across the table at me. “People will say anything.”

“It’s the hardest part,” I said. “At least it used to be for me. Distinguishing leads or facts from utter crap.”

He nodded. “Yes. Exactly. People like to insert themselves in the drama. It is hurtful and insidious. I’d like to see those that spread false information treated just as harshly as abductors.”

The bell above the diner door jingled and two college-aged girls came in, shaking snow from their coats and laughing.

“But if you look hard enough, you can find grains of truth even in the rumors,” he continued. “And if you see something enough, there is usually some truth to be found in it. Maybe the story is that the child is living in some city in Africa. Ten people give ten different African countries. It might not be Africa, but it usually turns out that the child is alive somewhere.”

I wasn’t sure where he was going.

“And some horrific individuals will start reporting awful things about a child’s death,” he said, his voice dropping an octave. “Ten different ways the child has been killed. None of them may be true, but there’s a good chance that the child is no longer with us.”  He paused. “There is usually an inkling of truth if there’s enough crap out there.”

“Okay,” I said, a bit annoyed at what felt like his going on a tangent. “But what does that have to do with Elizabeth?”

Rodney settled back into the booth and drummed his fingers on the table. “I spent a lot of time researching your daughter’s disappearance after…after, um…” His voice trailed off, unable to recall what he was trying to remember.

“After you heard about Topeka?” Isabel offered.

He snapped his fingers. “Yes. After Topeka. I tried to find every word I could that was written about her, you, the disappearance.”  A mirthless smile crept across his face. “Again. A retired old cop has a lot of free time.”

Isabel smiled at him.

“But I don’t think there’s anything left for me to read about your daughter,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, still not understanding.

“People have claimed a lot of things about your daughter,” he said. “No doubt, you’ve seen them all.”