Free Cold Springs by Rick Riordan

before the patrol officers arrived—”
    “Sergeant,” Detective Prost broke in again.
    Damarodas paused from ticking off the items on his fingers, his index finger hooked on his pinky. “You haven't heard from your daughter, Mr. Zedman?”
    John hated that his lips were quivering. He hated that this insignificant man could make him nervous. “I told you, Sergeant. Mallory only comes here every other weekend. Her mother has full custody.”
    Damarodas nodded, looking disappointed. “My mistake, then. I came out here thinking perhaps you'd heard from Mallory today. I thought she would be here.”
    “And why would you think that?”
    “We had a lead on your daughter,” Damarodas said. “A possible sighting.”
    “A sighting.”
    “We're still piecing things together. This just happened about an hour ago.”
    John resisted the urge to ask. Damarodas wanted him to ask—wanted that little bit of power—but John wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.
    “The BART police,” Damarodas said at last. “A supervisor I know, he called me, reported a girl matching your daughter's description at Rockridge station. Apparently she made an impression with the officer on duty. Jumped a turnstile, spilled cash all over the platform, threw herself into the rail pit. She was pulled out by a large man—white guy, like six-six, six-seven, blond buzz cut, beige overcoat. Said he was picking the girl up for her parents, had paperwork to prove it. They let him go. Supervisor heard about it, made the connection, called me. I figured the girl would be back here by now.”
    Zedman's throat was closing up. He couldn't breathe. Damarodas' eyes were like the air at thirty thousand feet—clear and thin and inhospitably bright. He wanted to put them out with a poker.
    “Sir?” Damarodas said. “You know this guy?”
    “I hired no one to pick up my daughter.”
    “Your ex-wife, then?”
    John had a sudden, vivid memory of holding Mallory the day she was born, stroking his thumb over the warm velvet of her forehead, the blond fuzz of her scalp, understanding what it was like to love somebody so much you would take a bullet for her.
    He remembered the night Katherine had died—rushing back to the Mission, scooping up Mallory and holding her in that big black leather chair while she trembled, so small and cold, John knowing even then that something inside her had broken. In the next room, Chadwick had been sobbing, his fingers curled in the fabric of Katherine's empty bed, and John had vowed
—Nothing else will ever happen to my girl. I will never again let Mallory out of my sight.
    He swallowed his bitterness, the coppery taste of failure. He thought about the demands in the latest letter. He thought about Chadwick, coming back into his life, taking his daughter.
    “I know the man you're describing, Sergeant. My ex-wife must've hired him.”
    John told him about Chadwick, what he knew about Chadwick's job in Texas, which wasn't much—bits and pieces of gossip from Norma, rumors of his pathetic self-imposed exile that they shook their heads over when they had lunch in the city.
    He should've seen this coming—Ann's revenge for him challenging the custody arrangement again. While he was busy trying to save their daughter, all Ann could think about was hurting him.
    “Chadwick.” Damarodas wrote the name in his notepad, stared down at it. “Well, damn.”
    “Sergeant?”
    Damarodas closed his notepad. “Unfortunate timing, your wife sending your daughter out of state. You knew nothing about this?”
    “That's another question Mr. Zedman has already answered,” Detective Prost said. “I think it's time we left.”
    Damarodas picked up his coffee, took a sip, then set it carefully back on the table. “I appreciate your openness, sir. I'll be in touch.”
    The two cops walked through the entry hall, Damarodas scanning the art prints with a look of mild consternation, as if wondering which of them were done by professional