Free B009QTK5QA EBOK by Jeff Shelby Page B

sorry.”
    “Thanks.”
    “So we aren’t looking for a girl with the last name Tyler,” he said.
    “Pretty sure that’s the one thing that’s certain. I don’t see any way possible that she’d still have her real last name.”
    “Of course.” His mouth twisted for a moment, then he rocked forward in his chair and grabbed a yellow legal pad. “Tell me again the name of the girl. In the picture with her?”
    “Bailey Detwiler.”
    “And which school did she attend?”
    “Hawkins Elementary.”
    He scribbled on the pad. “She still a student in the district?”
    “No. Believe she’s moved out of state.”
    “What grade do you think she would’ve been in?”
    “Fourth or fifth is my best guess,” I said. “But I have no idea where she was in the educational process. But her age would put her about there.”
    “Right.” He tapped his pencil against his notepad. “I’m not sure class rosters will do us any good if we don’t know her name. I’m not exactly sure what we’d look for.”
    “Okay.”
    “But I’ll pull them anyway and see if anything shows itself,” he said. “But what I think we really need are yearbooks. You need to see faces, pictures. I think that would be your best bet, correct?”
    My heart skipped a beat. “Yeah.”
    He laid the pencil down. “Okay. I need at least a day to put this together.”
    “A day?” I said, not bothering to hide my disappointment.
    He nodded. “I’ll need to find the yearbooks, may even have to go to the school to get them. I’ll need to have a legitimate reason to loan them out. I’ll also need to print the rosters, which I’m not doing here at my office. I’ll need to do that at home.” He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t mind helping Isabel, but I need to be discreet in doing it. That’s the best I can do for you.”
    I chewed on my thumbnail for a moment. I felt like I was close to finding something. I wasn’t sure what, but for the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt like I was on the verge. I didn’t want to wait. But I also appreciated the fact that Tim was willing to help and I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that.
    “Give you my cell number then?” I said.
    He nodded. I recited it, watching his fingers fly across the sheet of paper as he wrote it down.
    “You’ll be around?” he asked.
    “Trust me.” I stood. “I’m not going anywhere.”

TWENTY-FOUR
     
     
    “Did he help you?” Isabel asked.
    I’d driven back to the apartments, forced to wait once again. She’d been waiting for me with an address for Codaselli. We were in her car, heading to wherever it was that he lived.
    “He’s trying,” I said.
    “Anything for sure?”
    “Dunno. Have to wait and see. He said he’ll call me.”
    “He’s careful,” she said. “The privacy issues with schools are sticky. As long as he knows he’s helping a kid, he’ll get me any info he can. But he’s very careful in the way he does it so it doesn’t come back to bite him in the ass.”
    I nodded, watching the cars beside us on the highway.
    “If he can get anything, he’ll be in touch. Soon.”
    “Where’s Codaselli’s home?” I asked, not wanting to talk about it any longer because there was nothing to talk about.
    “Edina,” she said. “Very wealthy area. Again, he likes to give the appearance that he’s legit. But that’s not where we’re going.”
    “Where are we going then?”
    “His office. It's in St. Louis Park, just a few miles south,” she said. “It’s the middle of the day. Think we might have better luck finding him there.”
    “Okay.”
    We drove for a while before exiting the highway and I was lost in thought, wondering if Elizabeth was nearby. Wondering if she was still enrolled in school. Wondering if I’d see her soon. Wondering who her friends were, what she did for fun. Was she like I remembered or was she so different that I wouldn’t recognize her?
    “This is it,” Isabel said, shaking me from my