Invisible Prey

could be something that Jesse thought up on her own. But she was set to go, she seemed ready…”
    “I’m on my way,” Lucas said. “Call me when you get close.”

12
    K ATHY B ARTH WAS STANDING in front of her house talking to a uniformed St. Paul cop and a woman in a green turban. Lucas parked at the curb and cut across the small front lawn. They all turned to look at him. Barth called, “Did you find her?” and Lucas knew from the tone of her voice that she wasn’t involved in whatever had happened to her daughter; wherever she’d gone.
    “I just heard,” Lucas said. “Virgil Flowers was down at the grand jury, he’s on his way up.” To the cop: “You guys looking?”
    The cop shrugged, “Yeah, we’re looking, but she’s only a couple hours late. We don’t usually even look this soon, for a sixteen-year-old.”
    “Get everybody looking,” Lucas said. “She was supposed to be talking to a grand jury about now. If there’s a problem, I’ll talk to the chief. We need everybody you can spare.” To Barth: “We need to know what she was wearing…the names of all her friends. I need to talk to her best friend right now.”
    The woman in the turban hadn’t said anything, but now spoke to Barth: “Kelly McGuire.”
    “I called, but she’s not home yet,” Barth said. Her face was taut with anxiety. She’d seen it all before, on TV, the missing girl, the frantic mother. “She’s at a dance place and the phone’s off the hook. She won’t be home until five-thirty.”
    “You know what dance place?” Lucas asked.
    “Over on Snelling, by the college,” Barth said. “Just south of Grand.”
    “I know it,” Lucas said to the cop, “I’m going over there. Let me give you my cell number…” The cop wrote the number on a pad. “If you need any more authority, call me. I’ll call the governor if I have to. Talk to whoever you need to, and tell them that this could be serious. You want everybody out there looking, because the press is gonna get on top of this and by tomorrow, if we don’t have this kid, the shit is gonna hit the fan.”
    “All right, all right,” the cop said. And to Barth: “You said she had a yellow vest…”
    Lucas hustled back to his car, cranked it, and took off. The dance studio was called Aphrodite, the name in red neon with green streaks around it. The windows were covered by venetian blinds, but through the slots between the blinds and the window posts, you could see the hardwood floor and an occasional dancer in tights.
    Lucas parked at a hydrant and pushed through the studio’s outer door. An office was straight ahead, the floor to the right, with a door in the back leading to the locker rooms; it smelled like a gym. An instructor had a half-dozen girls working from a barre, the girls all identically dressed in black. Another woman, older, sat behind a desk in the office, and peered at Lucas over a pair of reading glasses. Lucas stepped over and she said, “Can I help you?”
    Lucas held out his ID. “I’m with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. We have a missing girl, and I need to talk to one of your students. A Kelly McGuire?”
    “Who’s missing?” the woman asked.
    “One of her classmates. Is Kelly still here?”
    “Yes…Just a minute.” She got up, stepped onto the floor, and called, “Kelly? Could you come over here for a moment?”
    McGuire was a short, slender, dark-haired girl who actually looked like professional dancers Lucas had met. She frowned as she stepped away from the barre and walked across the floor: “Did something happen?”
    Everybody paused to listen. Lucas said, “Ah, I’m a police officer, I need to talk to you for a second about a friend of yours. Could you step outside, maybe?”
    “I’ll have to get my shoes…Or, it’s nice, I could go barefoot…” She took off her dance shoes and followed Lucas outside. “What happened?”
    “Have you seen Jesse Barth today?” Lucas asked.
    “Yes. When school got out.” Her eyes were wide; she’d see it all on TV, too. “I talked to her, we usually walk home, but I had a band practice and then my dance lesson…Is she hurt?”
    “We can’t locate her at the moment,” Lucas said. “She was…”
    “She was going to testify to a jury today, tonight,” McGuire said. “She was pretty nervous about it.”
    “If she decided to chicken out, where would she go?” Lucas asked. “Does she have any special friends, a boyfriend?”
    McGuire was troubled: