Safe And Sound. J.D. Rhoades

Fedder was not taking the disappearance of her daughter well. Her eyes were red from crying, and her hands shook as she lit a cigarette. It was the third one Marie had seen her light since she and Keller had arrived.

      They were seated in the living room of her two-bedroom apartment. Carly Fedder lived in one of the cookie-cutter apartment complexes that were expanding outward into the rural areas surrounding the growing city of Fayetteville.

      “The son of a bitch,” she said. She took a deep, angry drag on the cigarette. She was slim, blond, and blue-eyed. She looked like a high school cheerleader who had managed to keep her figure, but fatigue had worn furrows in the corners of her mouth and eyes.

      “Mrs. Fedder—” Marie began.

      “It’s Ms.,” the woman interrupted. “We were never married.” She took another drag.

      Marie tried to ignore the anger that hung in the air like the smoke from the cigarette. “How do you know David Lundgren took your daughter?”

      She looked at Marie as if the question was idiotic. “Because he told me he was going to take her. He said he wasn’t going to wait for the courts.”

      “What did he mean by that?” Marie asked.

      Carly didn’t answer. Instead she looked at Keller and said, “What’s he doing here?”

      Keller stared back. He kept all expression from his face. He decided to let Marie answer.

      “Mr. Keller is a friend of mine,” Marie said. “He’s helping me. He has some…military experience.”

      “Great,” Carly snapped. “One of them.” She turned to Marie as if Keller had ceased to exist. “What if I don’t want him along?”

      “Suits the shit out of me,” Keller said as he stood up. “I only came along as a favor to Ms. Jones.”

      Carly’s laugh was nasty. She addressed Marie again. “Oh, now I get it,” she said. “I’ll bet you’ve got him jumping through hoops right now, honey. But when you run out of tricks, he’ll leave. They all do.”

      Keller gritted his teeth. “I’ll be in the car.” He was almost to the door before he heard a small voice behind him. “I’m sorry.”

      He stopped and turned. Carly was turned toward him, but her eyes were cast down to the floor. “I’m sorry,” she said again. She looked up at him, her eyes brimming with tears. There was something contrived, almost theatrical, about it, as if she had studied the signs of contrition and was putting them on.

      “I’m not the only one you need to apologize to,” Keller said. He jerked his chin at Marie.

      She turned to Marie. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, “I’m just really wound up about this.” She smiled. “Tammy said you’re a mother. You understand, don’t you?”

      Marie gave a different smile back, the smile of one being polite to someone she’d rather be strangling. “Sure,” she said. “And the sooner we get to work, the sooner we get your daughter back. Have you got any pictures of her?”

      Carly leaped up. “Of course,” she said, too brightly. She walked over to the television, where a small forest of framed pictures covered the top. She picked one out and handed it, frame and all, to Marie. “That’s her,” she said. “That’s Alyssa.”

      Marie studied it for a moment, then handed it to Keller.

      It was a standard portrait photograph, the kind available in department stores across the country. The girl in the photo appeared to be about five years old. Like her mother, she was blond and blue-eyed. What ever the photographer had been waving off camera to make the little girl smile, it had obviously delighted her. Her face was scrunched up in the expression of pure, spontaneous joy that adults lose along the way and never seem to regain.

      “Pretty,” Keller said.

      “She’s my life,” Carly said. Again, the words sounded as if they were being read off a script. But the tears that followed seemed real enough. “Find her. Please, please find her.”

      “We’ll try, ma’am,” Marie said. It was a voice Keller hadn’t heard from her since she left the police force, a voice of competence and reassurance. “Tell me about Alyssa’s father,” Marie went on.

      “What about him?”

      “Where you met, for one thing.”

      Carly took a tissue out of a nearly empty box on the coffee table and blew her nose. “I was waitressing at Bennigan’s. He and some of his buddies came in one night. We got to talking. He was young, good-looking, built…” She shrugged. “We hit it off.”

      “How long were you together?” Marie asked.

      Carly looked away. “We were never really together, not in any kind of boyfriend-girlfriend way. He was gone a lot. He’d give me a call when he was in town. I knew he was in the service, but he never would talk a lot about what he did, so I figured it was some kind of Special Forces deal.”

      “Why?” Keller said.

      She looked confused. “What do you mean?”

      “You make it sound like you weren’t all that close. If you were just fuck buddies, why’d you think his not opening up meant he was Special Ops?”

      She reddened slightly at the words. “It was just…something about the way he carried himself. I’ve dated a few guys in the service before, but he was different. Nothing fazed him, nothing rattled him. Like he was above it all.”

      “How did he react when you told him you were pregnant?” Marie asked.

      “He wasn’t happy about it,” she said. “But I told him I wasn’t going to have an abortion. He didn’t get mad or blow up or anything, he just walked out.” She took another tissue. “He called a few days later, said we’d be taken care of. He was going to arrange an allotment from his pay for support.”

      “Did he see much of Alyssa?”

      Keller saw the muscles in her jaw clench. “He was gone when she was born. He called me a few days later. I asked him where the hell he’d been.”

      “What did he say?”

      “He seemed surprised I had even asked the question. Like I said, we didn’t usually talk about where he was or what he did. I told him that all that had changed now, that I had to know I could count on him. He said it couldn’t work like that. I hung up on him.”

      Marie looked puzzled. “So he didn’t visit with her?”

      Fedder shook her head. “He didn’t call anymore. The checks came, but…no Dave.”

      “But you said…” Keller began.

      “Oh, he called once, a few days before he took my daughter. He said he’d heard what I was up to, the way I was living, and he wasn’t going to let his daughter grow up in that environment.”

      Keller and Marie exchanged glances. “What did he mean by that?” Marie said.

      She looked defiant. “Look, I moved on with my life, okay? I’m thirty-five years old. I’m a grown-up. I can live any damn way I please.”

      “Was he unhappy about another relationship?”

      “I don’t know what the hell he was unhappy about,” she snapped. “And just what did he mean, his daughter? If he’s not going to be there for her…” She was getting wound up. Marie tried to calm her. “Ms. Fedder,” she began.

      “Look, are you going to help me find my daughter or are you and this tin soldier here going to cover up for him, like everybody else?”

      Keller started to respond. Marie silenced him with a warning glance. “What do you mean, everybody else?” she said.

      “I called the JAG