“I’m trying to find a missing person,” Max said. “She was in this neighborhood on November sixth.” Max pointed at the window and the camera beyond. “I was hoping I might take a look at the footage from your camera.”

The woman both coughed and laughed. “Like hell.”

“I know this is an unusual request—”

“I ain’t showing you dick—not unless you have a badge. You don’t have a badge hiding under that mop, do ya?”

“This woman may be in trouble.”

“Buy a beer or get the fuck out.” She turned away, dismissing him.

He knew someone with a badge—many, really, but one in particular he’d once trusted with his life. He shook the thought away. It would be cruel to ask her for a favor after the way he had treated her. Could he be a bigger asshole?

He should go home, tell Lyle that he’d found nothing. That was the truth, wasn’t it? For all Max knew, the surveillance camera didn’t even work, and if it did, what were the chances it had caught anything useful?

He got in his car, sat behind the wheel, and stared at the brick wall of the bar. He thought of meeting Sandy and Pip, that morning at the grocery store. Lyle was right. They had been preparing for Halloween, not an escape. Pip was going to be a pirate. He had smiled at Max. Now he was out there somewhere—missing.

Max knew that he had not done all that he could. Maybe he could call up one of the other detectives he’d worked with? Surely he had been liked well enough that he could ask such a small favor now? But if Niki ever found out, he might as well just walk up to her in the Homicide unit and slap her across the face. She was the last person he should ask a favor of, but he could think of no alternative.

If she still worked the day shift, she would be off duty already. He could drop by her house, assuming she still lived at that address, but an ambush like that seemed all wrong. He decided to bed down at a cheap motel—consider what he was about to do. Had he exhausted every alternative? He needed to be sure before he ripped the bandage off that wound.

CHAPTER 16

Reed Harris hated bartending. He hated smiling and pretending and sucking up to assholes for tips. But right now, he had to walk a fine line. He needed the world to see that he was a man grieving for the loss of his son, but at the same time, a man who hadn’t been allowed to see his boy for going on three years. He packaged his faux grief as disappointment: disappointment that he’d lost the possibility of a future with his son, disappointment that Sandy had been so selfish, and disappointment that he had stuck around Grand Rapids in the forlorn hope of once again seeing his boy. With that last one, he had started laying the groundwork for his own eventual departure.