Chapter 1
Zachary had been surprised that Rose Bircher wanted to meet him in her lab rather than at home. Most women in her circumstances would have been at home, unable to focus on work. They would take a leave of absence until things could get straightened out.
But maybe that was an unjust judgment. He hadn’t known many parents in her circumstances and supposed that a mother could want to bury herself in her work just as much as a father.
He only waited in the reception area for a couple of minutes. There was a lot of white. White walls, white tiled floors, a sign on the wall with the lab’s name in silver letters mounted on a shiny white surface. It made him think of a school or hospital. Not a restful place. Somewhere important work was being done and people were all focused on their projects.
The door into the inner workspace opened and Zachary got his first glimpse at the woman who wanted to hire him.
Rose Bircher was casually dressed. No white lab jacket. She was a thirty-something woman, on the thin side, with straight brown hair and a pleasant face. She wore dark-rimmed glasses and an aqua polo shirt with the company logo. She looked at Zachary, giving him a quick once-over, then held out her hand.
“Mr. Goldman?”
“Just Zachary.”
“Rose. Thanks for coming. Follow me.” She turned away from him, back toward the door. “You want coffee?”
“Sure.”
“Good.” She led him first to a breakroom with a coffee machine, stacks of mugs, and a couple of vending machines. The smell of freshly brewed coffee filled the air. “We go through the stuff like water around here. And it’s pretty good.”
She poured them each a mug and handed one to Zachary. He followed her farther down the hall, through a bullpen with lots of cubicles and young people pounding away at keyboards, their eyes intent on their screens. Few looked up to see who was walking by as Zachary followed Rose to the meeting room.
Rose poked her head into one of the meeting rooms to make sure it was vacant and then motioned Zachary in. There was nothing special about the room. He’d seen a hundred like it before: a table, chairs, and a small side cabinet with supplies. A whiteboard on the wall. There was a projector and screen controlled by a remote and currently recessed out of view.
Rose sat down and motioned for Zachary to do the same.
“I really appreciate you coming.”
Zachary nodded.
Studying her, he could see the signs of stress on Rose’s face. Puffy skin under her eyes testified that she hadn’t slept well, though a layer of concealer kept the dark shadows from being visible. Faint lines across her forehead. Her hand shook as she raised the coffee mug to her mouth.
“I was told that you have investigated missing children before.”
Zachary nodded. He’d had a little experience in that area. Usually teenagers, though he had also rescued his ex-wife Bridget’s twin babies.
“I have some experience in that area, though I don’t do a lot of missing persons,” he told her honestly. “It is your daughter who is missing?” He asked it tentatively. She was too young to be the mother of a teenager. But she was not frantic like he expected the parent of a missing baby to be. But Rose had already surprised him in several respects.
“Yes.” she swallowed and stared past Zachary at the wall. “My daughter Claire. She is five.”
“Did you report her missing to the police?”
He had learned not to take this for granted. Not because it was like on TV where kidnappers for ransom told the parents not to call the police or FBI or else. Many parents did not report their children missing to the police because they knew who had taken the child. Often a family member. And they just wanted the child found and returned with the least disruption possible. Without making family business public or making a parent or grandparent look bad in front of their friends. People preferred to keep personal business quiet, even when it involved a child being taken.
“Yes. I talked to the police. They think that it was Claire’s father.”
That explained why he hadn’t seen anything about it on the TV or internet news. Parental abductions were routine, of little interest to the public unless there were some unique, attention-grabbing details.
“Are you married? Or were you?”
“No. I met him in school. We lived together for a while. But we weren’t really compatible. It didn’t work out.”
“Does he have shared custody? Visitation?”
“No. He didn’t want anything to do with Claire, and I respected that. He has never been involved in her life.”
“And that hasn’t changed lately? He hasn’t come to you asking if he could see her? Talk to her? Maybe he offered to pay something for child support?”
“No. We have some mutual friends, so I’ve kept track of him from a distance for the last few years. Occasionally, we’ve ended up at a party together or something like that. He asked for a picture once.”
“Recently?”
“How long ago is recent?” She held her palms up questioningly. “It was… maybe a couple of months ago.”
Zachary pulled out his notepad. He made sure that the date was filled in at the top of the page and wrote down Claire’s name and the fact that her birth father had asked for her photo a couple of months before. That could be significant. He had shown some interest in her recently. Depending on what kind of a picture it was, he might have been able to repurpose it for a passport photograph or other identification. Or maybe just a phone picture flashed at someone to prove that yes, he was Claire’s dad, or he wouldn’t have her picture on his phone, would he?
Rose watched him and didn’t make any comment about his messy, nearly unreadable handwriting.
“Does that mean you’re taking the case?”
“Let’s get a few more details first. Why do the police think Claire’s father has her? Have they talked to him? Where did she disappear from?”
“Such a high percentage of kidnappings are non-custodial parents or family members; that’s just what they assume from the beginning unless you have eyewitnesses who saw her being taken. And no one did. We were at a kids’ play place at the mall. I was… on my phone. You can’t keep an eye on your kid the whole time; there are all kinds of tunnels, slides, climbers, and ball pits. Your kid just gets swallowed up by this place with all the other kids…”
Zachary nodded. He had seen places like that. A great adventure for kids. Playing tag or dare with their friends, running off excess energy, exploring.
“How did he get her out of there? Don’t they have ID to make sure you can only take the kid you arrived with?”
“Yes. I don’t know how anyone could get her out of there. Some of their security cameras were down. I always thought they had really good security: guards, monitors, sign-in logs, all that kind of thing. But someone got in there and got my daughter out without anyone noticing. I called her and looked for her. I got frantic. They thought I was just being a helicopter parent and freaking out because she was out of sight. But when they made announcements and had their staff members walk around looking for her, no one could find her.”
Rose swallowed hard and sipped her coffee. Zachary wasn’t sure why she felt it necessary to mask her emotions, to make it look like this hadn’t affected her. Most mothers cried. They weren’t afraid to show him just how upset they were.
“How long has she been missing?”
Rose looked at her watch. “Three days.” She put her palms over her eyes, warming them. After three days with minimal sleep, she was undoubtedly feeling the strain. Scratchy, sticky, swollen eyes. A fatigue headache. Brain fog.
“Have the police talked to her father?”
“No. They tried to track him down to talk to him. But he’s out of the country. They haven’t been able to talk to him or to get other authorities to talk to him.” Her tone was flat.
“Out of the country? Where?”
She stared down at the surface of her coffee. Her eyes glittered with unshed tears, but she didn’t let them fall. She just stared as if mesmerized by the reflection of the light on the surface of her drink.
“Saudi Arabia.”
Chapter 2
Zachary’s heart sank. He wasn’t going to be able to do anything for Rose Bircher. Saudi Arabia? If Claire’s father had taken her there, there wasn’t much that Zachary—or anyone else—could do about it. That was one of the countries where non-custodial fathers liked to take kidnapped children—a country where he had all the rights, and Rose had virtually none. The authorities there would not cooperate with US authorities. They would not deal with the child’s mother.
“I’m not sure there is anything I can do to help you,” he told Rose gently.
She didn’t look surprised, her expression unchanging.
“I was told that you were unconventional. And stubborn. That you could get results where the police couldn’t.”
“Well… sometimes that has been true. But I can’t always find something helpful. The police are your best bet. I just… sometimes I can find something else that they missed or follow up on a hunch. But… Saudi Arabia is a long way away.”
“I know it is. But the police will only follow their specific protocol. And if they think that the child is out of the country and in a place where they can’t reach her… they just issue whatever paper they do to tell the government that they believe she is over there and object to them not helping with the kidnapping case… and that’s it. Then they just put a flag on his passport so that if he ever comes back into the country, they can pull him aside and talk to him.”
He wasn’t going to bring her back. If he had taken his daughter to Saudi Arabia, he intended to keep her there. He wasn’t going to bring her back to the US.
“What is his name? Claire’s father?”
Rose looked at him for a moment before answering, considering his response. Zachary examined it himself. If he couldn’t do anything for Rose and didn’t intend to take the case, then why ask for his name?
“Amir Osman.”
“Is he from there?”
“No. He was born in America. But I guess… with his family name he could get a visa or whatever you need to immigrate there.” She rubbed her temples. “I don’t know all the details of that kind of thing.”
“So he had been planning this for a while. He asked for her picture. He had to apply for whatever paperwork he needed to take her there.”
“I suppose.”
“Do the police have confirmation as to whether she was traveling with him?”
“He had a child with him. But a different name. Not Claire Bircher. He was also traveling with a woman. The child is supposed to be hers, not his.”
Zachary nodded. Just enough obfuscating to make it effective. If an Amber alert had been issued under the name Claire Bircher, no one would have connected her with a child of another name. Until it was too late.
And because Amir hadn’t had anything to do with his biological daughter before that and had never said he even wanted a visit with her, there was no reason for her mother to mention him when Claire went missing from the mall. It wasn’t a case of a non-custodial parent not returning her on time after a visit. There had been no reason to suspect that her biological father had any interest in her until it was too late. And getting a child back from a country like Saudi Arabia… Zachary had heard stories.
“I’m not sure what you’re hoping I can do for you,” he told Rose. “The police have done everything they can, and I assume you’ve talked to experts in this kind of case. I don’t have a lot of familiarity with international kidnapping and certainly have no experience flying to another country to try to get her back.”
Rose took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“There hasn’t been much of an investigation into this case,” she said slowly. “I mean, on the surface, they’ve done everything they should. They locked down the mall and made sure that no one could get her out but, obviously, she was gone by the time that happened, because there was no sign of her. They set up roadblocks. They did a search with K9s. They talked about an Amber Alert, but it didn’t go out until quite a bit later because they didn’t have a description of the kidnapper or the vehicle. But once all that preliminary stuff was done and they found out that I am… estranged from Claire’s biological father, they decided that it was him. They put out all those travel alerts and searched to see if he had left the country during the window from the last time I saw Claire until they stopped him from traveling outside the United States.”
“And that was when they found he had already fled with his daughter.”
“With his girlfriend’s daughter. They don’t have any evidence that it was Claire.”
Zachary was starting to get a feeling for what Rose was getting at. “Do they have any footage of Amir with Claire?”
“No. They have a few fuzzy airport surveillance pictures of him… but there’s no way to tell if the girl with him is Claire or someone else. The girl in the picture is dark-haired.”
At Zachary’s look, she pulled out her phone and, after finding a picture, turned the screen around to face him. A little girl with long, blond hair and an impish smile.
“He might have dyed her hair.”
Rose nodded. “Of course. And that is what the police are assuming. They all assume that the girl Amir had with him when he left the country was Claire.”
“No full facial views”
“No. I thought all the airports had those check-in terminals that take a picture of you. But I guess they don’t. Or they don’t take pictures of kids who are too small to reach it, just their parents.”
Zachary nodded slowly. There were holes in airport security procedures, despite what the officials would have people believe. People still traveled under forged documents. And the holes for children were even bigger than those for adults. Children weren’t terrorists. They were vulnerable, but they were not a danger. It was a different mindset.
Zachary scratched a few more notes into his notepad and turned his eyes back to Rose.
“So there have been no confirmed sightings of Claire since you last saw her at the play place.”
“Yeah. Exactly.”
So, was she taken by a stranger? Or had she been taken by her birth father, passed off as another child, and flown out of the country? Without putting eyes on her, they couldn’t be sure. The police might be right. They probably were. The ex-spouse or the child’s non-custodial parent was the number one suspect in any child abduction case. It was far more likely to have been committed by a parent or other family member than by a stranger.
But Amir had not been part of Claire’s life. He would only know where to find them if he had been following them.
“How many times have you seen Amir in the last six months?”
Rose shook her head. “Not at all. Well, maybe once, I guess. When he asked about a picture.”
“You said that you sometimes run into him at events. You have mutual friends? Or are you in the same profession?” Zachary looked around him. “What exactly do you do here?”
“Like I said, I met him in college. We were both in computer science together. He went into industrial applications and I went into research, so we didn’t exactly follow the same path. But we were both techies. And… yeah… some mutual friends.”
“Have you talked to any of those friends about him? About Claire being missing?”
She shook her head. “No. Do you think I should?”
“If you could give me names and contact numbers, it might be better if I reach out to them. An unbiased third party rather than the mother accusing her ex of doing something.”
“Okay.” Rose didn’t argue about it or say Zachary wouldn’t find out anything talking to them. But if she’d been told by whoever referred her to Zachary that he was unconventional and dogged and might be able to find something out, then Rose would be more open to giving him whatever he needed without question. She looked at her phone. “Do you want me to read them out to you?”
“Why don’t you just share the contacts with me from your phone? Then I won’t get any digits reversed.”
She nodded her agreement and spent a few minutes reviewing her contacts list and texting some of them to Zachary.
“Maybe Amir would have talked to one of these people about Claire,” Zachary said. “If we can even get confirmation that he has been talking about her in the last few months, that would be a start. And if he has been saying that he wants to be a part of her life…”
Rose shook her head. “If he wanted to be a part of her life, then why wouldn’t he come to me and ask me about seeing her?”
“That would be the logical approach,” Zachary agreed. “But people make choices that aren’t logical. Maybe he figured you would say no, and he didn’t want to tip his hand. Easier to get away with it if he never let on that he wants to be in her life.”
“I guess,” Rose agreed. “If he’d been trying to get visitation or custody and then she disappeared from the mall or anywhere else, then he is the first one I would have thought of. It wouldn’t have been hours before the police put a stop on Amir leaving the country.”
Zachary nodded his agreement. “Who was the first person?”
“What?”
“You said he would have been the first person you thought of. As being her abductor. Who was the first person you thought of?”
“Oh… well, I just thought of someone who had been hanging around the play place. Some perv who went to watch the kids and was watching for a little girl to be by herself. A stranger, like on TV. I know parental abductions are more common, but I never thought of Amir as being her parent. I’m the only parent she’s ever had in her life.”
“What about your parents? Is there anyone else who helps to take care of her?”
“They’re in New York. They only see her now and then when they come for a visit. And they don’t babysit.”
“Do you have a caregiver? Who looks after her while you’re at work?”
“She’s in school now. I have a woman who does after-school care until I can get there. But it’s only an hour or so. A woman in the neighborhood who looks after a bunch of kids.”
“A day home.”
“Like that, yes. But just for after school.”
“Can you give me her information?”
Rose shrugged and conceded.
“Did you see anyone at the play place you were suspicious of? Uncomfortable around?”
“Well, like any other mother, I kept a pretty close eye on any men who were there without a wife or girlfriend. The play place isn’t supposed to let people without kids of their own in. You know, it’s supposed to be a safe place where pedophiles can’t hang around watching kids. It’s just kids and their parents.”
“I don’t imagine it’s too hard to get around that. Tell them that your wife and kid are already there. Point someone out and say you’re with them. Or go with your sister or best friend and her kid.”
Rose sighed and nodded. “It’s great if everyone is honest and follows the rules, but the people who really want to get around the rules will.”
“Like gun registration,” Zachary suggested. “The people who follow the rules are the ones who are not planning to break the laws. Those who are planning to use their guns for illegal purposes are the ones who don’t register them.”
“Right.”
“Was there anyone at the play place that day that stuck out to you?” Zachary waited a few seconds to see if she would answer before prompting her further. “Anyone you felt was watching Claire? Or watching you?”
She hesitated, then shook her head. Zachary raised his brows. “Who did you just think of?”
“No one. I didn’t think anyone was watching Claire.”
“Someone watching you?”
There was another instant of hesitation before Rose shook her head. “No.”
“Did the police get any surveillance video from the play place?”
“Some. But they said that only a few of the cameras were recording.” She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I always thought they were much more secure than they really are. There are lots of cameras around and signs saying that you are on camera. I don’t know if they were even all real cameras. But only a couple were maintained.”
“Did they show you any of the surveillance videos? Show you any pictures of men who had been hanging around that might have been suspicious? What did you tell them when they first arrived?”
“They didn’t show me anything. I guess they must not have found anyone suspicious.”
“I’ll see if I can get copies of them. You never know. The police might have missed something.” He’d been able to spot tiny details on videos before. Details the police had missed or not thought important.
“What did you tell the police when they first arrived? That Claire had disappeared? That she was gone? That she had been taken? What did you think had happened?”
“I said… that someone must have taken her.”
“You’d never had any episodes with Claire before? When you lost track of her for a few minutes, thought something had happened, and then found her again?”
“No… maybe when I lost sight of her for a minute, but I always found her again. She stayed close by. She’d be on the other side of the clothes rack at the department store. Or looking at a toy or snack she wanted to buy. Something like that.”
“And at the park? School? The play place? What did she like to do? Did she ever play hide-and-seek? Play a prank on you?”
“No. She was a pretty easy kid. Lots of energy, but she was a good girl. Mostly, she followed the rules. She was never far away.”
“So when you couldn’t find her, she didn’t come back to you, didn’t come when you called, you believed that someone had abducted her.”
Rose nodded. “Yes.”
“A stranger. You never thought that someone you knew might have come and… taken her out for ice cream or taken her because they didn’t think you were a good parent. Or Amir because he wanted her to be a part of his life and didn’t think you would allow it.”
Rose shook her head slowly. “None of those things ever occurred to me.”
Zachary looked at the notes he had written down while they talked. The girl was missing. The police thought the case was solved, but the girl was out of their reach.
But there was no proof that Claire was with Amir. He understood why Rose felt so unsettled about the case. Not angry because Amir had come and stolen Claire away, but full of questions and not sure the police were right about what had happened to her little girl.
“Okay.” Zachary dug a card out of his pocket and laid it before her. “Those are my rates. I’ll need a small retainer to get started. I will see what I can dig up.”
She let out her breath in a long sigh. “Thank you. I needed somebody in my court. I really don’t think Amir took her to Saudi Arabia.”
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