Emily Locke 01 - Final Approach

bottle of Johnson & Johnson is waiting for her. I don’t want to shower there.
    In the kitchen, I open the cupboard to find some tea. Instead, I find Annette’s Cheerios and graham crackers. I burst into tears and collapse on my floor.
    I try to get a grip. I start some laundry. The dryer is full of Jack’s clothes. Do I fold them?
    His car’s in the garage and his sunglasses are still on the dash.
    This is supposed to be a busy house. There is supposed to be a little girl pestering me right now to stop writing in my journal and pick her up instead. There is supposed to be a lawn mower humming in the backyard, and when I look out this window, I should see Jack out there wiping sweat off of his forehead. Instead, the only noise I hear is in my mind and the things I look at sting my eyes like the sun.
    ***
    “You saw the tattoo in Austin?” Richard asked.
    Jeannie and I sat across from him at a Denny’s near his office. Our waitress had come twice for our order, but we’d been too preoccupied to choose. My tattered journal was beside me in the booth, touching my leg. I felt strangely unwilling to part with it and ran my finger over its spiral binding.
    “The day I found Mattie, I saw that cursive T. The manager at the restaurant had it, and it was in the same place on his wrist.”
    Jeannie emptied a package of Equal into her coffee. Richard didn’t seem to notice his.
    “I suppose that could be a coincidence, but—”
    I cut him off. “But there’s a common thread, missing kids.”
    He nodded.
    “There’s more.” I pointed out that both Karen Lyons’ home security system and mine had failed on the nights of our respective break-ins.
    Richard snapped his fingers. “That reminds me. We know how Casey’s abductor got in.”
    I wanted to continue my line of thought but his new information derailed me.
    “Karen Lyons’ back door is one of those lead glass styles…you know, with the big pane that takes up most of the door?” He outlined a rectangle in the space between us. “A closer look at the door showed how the alarm was bypassed. The kidnapper removed the glass, frame and all.”
    “What?” Jeannie screwed up her face in disbelief.
    “The whole frame,” he said again. “He, or they, took out the entire frame and set it aside. The alarm didn’t sound because no entry was breached and no glass was broken.”
    “And since it happened at night,” I said, thinking out loud, “She wouldn’t have had her motion detectors on. Nobody has those on while they’re at home.”
    “Exactly.”
    I thought about Karen’s security bypass and mine from years ago. Both clever schemes, obviously planned by someone with experience.
    “Why take the time to replace the frame before leaving?” Jeannie said. “That doesn’t make sense.”
    I thought about what had happened at my own house. “It makes sense if you want to buy time. When my house was broken into, it took days to figure out how my system was skirted. Similar circumstances here. What if Casey and Mattie’s kidnappings are related? Could the same people be responsible?”
    “Suppose we go with that,” Richard said. “How would a couple in Texas become interested in a boy from Cleveland? It seems random.”
    “The couple with Mattie thought they were adopting him,” I said. “Maybe they were mixed up in underground baby-brokering.”
    Jeannie smooshed her Equal wrapper into a tight little ball.
    “Keith Shelton’s a petroleum engineer,” I continued. “Texas has hundreds of oil refineries. That could be the Cleveland-Texas connection.”
    “It doesn’t explain how they’d know about his boy,” Jeannie said.
    “The planes,” Richard said. He looked at me. “Emily, the day you found Mattie, didn’t his parents fly from Cleveland to Austin on a private plane?”
    I thought back, and fragments of that day realigned in my mind.
    “It was Keith’s company’s jet,” I said. “His vice president wanted to help them out, so they wouldn’t have to wait for a commercial flight. I’d forgotten, but I read it a few days ago—”
    “You folks ready?” The waitress was back. We made hasty choices and she lumbered toward the kitchen with our orders.
    Richard asked me to finish what I was saying.
    “She read it in her old journal,” Jeannie answered for me. “When you showed up at work last week, you really stirred the pot, mister.” Her tone was borderline sour.
    Richard raised his eyebrows, as if this were news to him. I