Baltimore 03 - Did You Miss Me?

fifty miles away.
    He could stay or he could start walking. He had a few hours of daylight left. Once the sun went down it would become dangerously cold. Like frostbite and losing-my-fingers cold . Not good. So start walking .
    He shouldered the pack he’d taken from the cabin, then stopped and looked back at the truck. If he could find a scrap of paper and a pen, he could leave a note in case somebody came by. At least someone would know where to look for him.
    He opened the glove box, found it empty. There was no registration. Nothing to ID the SOB. I should memorize the license plate . At least the cops will have a place to start . He felt under the passenger seat and pulled out a small gold purse, the kind with a loop a girl wore around her wrist. Kim had a couple, but this didn’t look like hers.
    Ford unzipped it and dumped the contents on the seat. And the hairs on the back of his neck lifted. He picked up the ID first. The girl was young and pretty with long, dark hair. Heather Lipton. It was an ID card from a high school in Wheeling, in northern West Virginia. Heather was a senior, due to graduate in six months.
    Oh . Something finally made sense. He’d demanded the old man tell him where the girl was. The guy’s eyes had flickered, like he was trying to figure out the best way to lie. I was talking about Kim . But his gut told him that the old man hadn’t been.
    Was Heather back there somewhere? Part of him screamed that he should go back to save her. But he needed help, and he’d passed none back in that direction. I can help her better if I move forward . If she’s still alive .
    It was possible that he was overreacting, that the old man had stolen this purse and that Heather was home right now, safe and sound. But Ford didn’t really think so.
    Her purse held a tube of red lipstick that looked brand new, five dollars, a folded piece of paper, and an unused concert ticket dated August 27 of that year.
    Ford blinked at the ticket. The band was hot, tickets incredibly hard to come by. Every show had been sold out weeks in advance. If Heather had missed this concert, something was seriously wrong. He unfolded the piece of paper and it all became clear.
    The paper was a receipt from Mountain Jack’s Towing and was dated the day of the concert ticket. On it was scrawled: Picked up, one 2004 Honda Civic, brown .
    Her car had broken down, Ford thought. With a ticket to the concert of the summer, Heather had probably decided to hitchhike. She’d never made it to the show.
    What should he do? Keep to the plan . Get help . He returned the items to the purse, except for the lipstick. For a moment he hesitated. What he had in mind would destroy it. What if there was DNA on the lipstick?
    If he died out here, the lipstick wouldn’t matter, so he twisted the lipstick tube and wrote on the windshield in big letters – HELP. Below it he wrote his name and the date. And his mother’s phone number. Finally he drew a big arrow down the middle of the truck’s hood, showing the direction he’d gone.
    With my luck the old man will find me first . Or the did-you-miss-me guy .
    At least he was somewhat armed. He had several knives in his pack. And a few strips of beef jerky and a couple cans of beans – the best of what he found in the old man’s cupboards. He took one of the jerky strips and started down the road, munching as he walked. He’d have to ration what was left. Who knew when he’d be found.
    I hope to God it’s soon . It’s getting really cold .
    Baltimore, Maryland, Tuesday, December 3, 1.05 P.M.
    Joseph arrived back at the movie theater to find the alley criss-crossed with twine, creating a precise grid that CSU would use to record the crime scene, layer by layer.
    In an alley filled with garbage, cataloging the evidence could take a very long time.
    We don’t have a long time . A search of the Millhouses’ home and their hardware store had yielded no sign of Ford or Kimberly. This hadn’t surprised Joseph. He hadn’t expected the Millhouses to stash the kids where they could be easily found. They didn’t have many leads. Yet. This crime scene was key.
    CSU had uncovered Isaac Zacharias’s body. Two pairs of taser electrodes were embedded in the victim, one pair in the abdomen and the other in his thigh. Joseph stopped at the red socks, studying the body. Didn’t appear to be any other wounds. If his throat was slashed post-mortem, then how did the man die?
    ‘Hear you had a close