Free Ring of Truth by Nancy Pickard

and we can't find her, and we've calledeverybody, and we need help, and we need it right now. As you know, I am not given to hysteria, and I am on the verge of hysteria here.”
    “You sound personally involved,” he observed, with a question in his tone.
    “I care about these people,” she shot back, sounding defensive.
    “Who's your client?”
    “BobWing. Sands Gospel Church.”
    “You don't mean that anti–death penalty minister?”
    “Yes, I do, Rocco, that's exactly who it is. Bob Wing. It's his wife, Susanna, that's missing.”
    The police chief, who was only human, after all, paused for a brief moment to appreciate the moment. Everybody knew that Tammi Golding did the legal work for the Sands Gospel capital-punishment crusades. Locally, she and the Reverend Bob Wing were a pair of burrs under the seat of every cop, judge, and prosecutor who favored the death penalty. Rocco's own wife had been known to quote Tammi to him. He couldn't resist saying, “If his wife has been abducted, or killed, there is a certain irony in this situation, don't you think so,Tammi?”
    “I don't give a damn about the irony,” his wife's golfing partner nearly screamed at him. Across the bed, his wife made a grimacing, apologetic, expression at the noise. “I care about finding Bob's wife! Please, Rocco, throw your weight around, pull strings, do something, or what the hell good does it do me to have friends in high places?”
    The police chief's wife smiled faintly at that.
    “Have you got this on speakerphone, Rocco? Betty, are you listening to this? If you are, kick his ass out of bed. And don't count on me for golf today, not unless we find Susanna before our tee-off time. Betty?”
    “I hear you, Tammi! I hope she's all right! Do I know her?”

    “I doubt it, Betty,” called the voice over the speakerphone.
    “I've heard you talk about her though, right? Weren't you telling me some story about them—”
    “Not me. Gotta go. We're organizing search parties.”
    The police chief, who didn't personally know the minister or his missing wife, couldn't help but feel amused as he called his own Missing Persons Department to get them moving on the report. Not that he wished anyone ill—of course he didn't—but as his old grandmother might have said, My goodness, how things that go around do eventually tend to come around. If this man's wife turned out to have been kidnaped or even killed by somebody who could get the death penalty for it, what would the good minister do then?
    Picket his own wife's murderer's execution?
    Marty Rocowski allowed himself a small smile as he placed his call.
    The search to locate Susanna Louise Wing commenced officially five minutes later. Shortly after that the police chief was showered, shaved, and dressed, and heading down to his office at the Bahia Beach Police Headquarters on Twenty-Third Street, between Sunrise and Gulf avenues. Back home, Betty Rocowski rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. While she tossed and turned, Rocco drove A1A, enjoying the beach road in the darkness, rolling down his windows so he could hear the ocean, feel the breeze. Himself a firm believer in the death penalty, Chief Rocowski wanted to be sure this missing persons case was handled impeccably. He would make sure that nobody could accuse his police force of failing to do their duty for the wife of a man who was loathed by his officers.

Susanna
5
     
    Confronted with two anxious visitors, I am not yet up to normal social response, much less solicitousness. “How'd you find me?” is the best I can do, after Jenny and Anne Carmichael scurry past me with their canvas boat bag. As stupid and trivial as the question sounds, their answer is important to me. I try hard to barricade myself from exactly this sort of thing, these uninvited visitors. Partly, that's to protect me when I'm writing; partly, it's to protect me, period, from some of my nutso book subjects. If I wanted to be found, I'd be in the phone