Free Isabel's Run by M. D. Grayson Page A

besides that—we owe you. We keep making you buy lunch at the sushi joint, and you just keep doing it. We were starting to feel a little guilty.”
    “What? You’ve just been using me as a meal ticket?”
    “Hell yeah,” he laughed. “We’re cops. We’ll take all the free lunches we can get.”
    “Well, it’s nice to know that at some point your conscience kicked in.”
    Dwayne laughed again. “At some point. But then again, maybe it’s just because it was your birthday—who knows?”
    We both laughed.
    “That why you called?” he asked.
    “Nah,” I said. “We need your advice.”
    “Shoot.”
    “After we left lunch today, we met with Toni’s little sister, Kelli.”
    “I didn’t even know you had a little sister, Toni.”
    “I do. She’s eighteen—graduates high school next week.”
    I said, “Anyway, we met with her this afternoon. She told us that a friend of hers called her and said she’d run away from home because her stepfather had raped her. We went and talked to the mom and the stepfather this afternoon. We got the mom before the stepdad came home. She admits that it’s possible, and she also said that stepdad has beaten her—the mom—in the past. We’re wondering who we should be talking to at SPD.”
    “Simple,” Dwayne said. “If you’re talking about the missing child, you need to talk to Nancy Stewart. Nancy’s the lieutenant in charge of our Vice and High Risk Victims Unit. She may want to bring in someone else, depending on the exact nature of the case, but I’d start with her. She’s an expert at that sort of thing. And she’s a real nice lady, too. Need me to set something up for you guys?”
    “Yeah, we’d really appreciate it.”
    “Let me call you right back.”
    Ten minutes and two hundred yards later, he called back.
    “You’re set,” he said. “She has a meeting first thing in the morning, but she can see you at eleven. That work?”
    “That’s perfect. Thanks, Dwayne.” It was really nice to have friends in high places.

Chapter 3
     
    I’M A PRETTY serious distance runner—have been ever since high school. My specialty now is half marathons. Seems that whatever your sport—baseball, football, running, you name it—at a certain level of performance, your body composition becomes a serious limiting factor. One of the keys to performing well is making sure your sport matches your body type. For me, it seems like the 13.1-mile half-marathon distance is ideal—it fits the best. It wasn’t always this way. In high school, I ran shorter, speedier distances, like the mile. Now, twelve years later, I like the longer races. They’re long enough that I can eventually run away from the pure speed guys (the 10k guys). And they’re short enough that I can still out-muscle the pure distance guys (like the marathoners). It’s the perfect distance for me. I like to compete in one race a month or thereabouts.
    My personal best time of 1:12 means I’m usually fast enough to be near the front of the pack—top ten or so—but usually not fast enough to win. It’s right there—but it’s just out of reach. Sometimes—generally right after I finish just out of the top five—my friends will be impressed on the one hand and offer advice on the other—advice like maybe if I’d trained just a little longer (like those other guys), I could have made the podium. I don’t think so. If I actually believed that more training would enable me to finish higher, I might try to carve out some more time. The reality is, at some point, it’s back to those natural, God-given physical limits. When that happens, all the extra training in the world won’t let you run like Usain Bolt or swim like Michael Phelps. You either got it, or you don’t. I’m okay with this. I accept it. Fact is, most people never explore the edge of their own limitations. Even though I don’t win very often (three times in the last five years), I run because I like to find that edge. I keep at