Dead River Read Free Page A

sense.”
    “We need all the information we can get. It could help locate your daughter. Do you have any other children?”
    Adam again took a long breath and pushed the air out through pursed lips. “Yes, a nineteen-year-old daughter, Dawn. She’s out shopping with my wife.”
    “She go to college?”
    “Yes, FSU. She starts back in a couple of weeks.”
    “Does she get along with Sara Ann?”
    “Fine. They get along fine.”
    “How about a boyfriend?”
    “Yes, she has a boyfriend, Brad Richards.”
    “Could she be with him,” Atkins asked, as he lifted his right hand and twirled his pen, “out driving around in his car?”
    “No. Why would she leave her car running in the driveway and go off with him?” Adam rubbed the back of his neck and then wiped his sweaty palm on his shorts. “Look, I told you, Sara Ann’s diabetic. She’s insulin dependent. If she’s in a hypoglycemic state, she could be in a coma somewhere. She needs to be found immediately.”
    “According to what you’ve told me she’s only been unaccounted-for for about an hour,” Atkins grunted.
    Adam glanced down thumbing his temples, then looked up at the officer. “Unaccounted for? What do you mean ‘unaccounted’ for? My daughter’s missing. She’s gone. Something’s happened. Please, do something about it.”
    “Right now we don’t consider her to be a missing person, Mr. Riley. She’s simply not accounted for. There is a difference.”
    “This isn’t a game of semantics! My girl’s missing and you’re quibbling over what to call it? Why aren’t you out there looking for her?”
    “Hold on, don’t tell me how to do my job,” Atkins replied, as he pointed to the badge on his chest.
    “Please, I’m not telling you how to do your job. I’m simply saying you should be out there looking for her instead of asking all these questions.” The sweat pouring from his brow ran into his eyes. “I just want my daughter back. That’s all.”
    Atkins shook his head, and his eyes became thin slits. “Hold on,” he said, “I’ll be right back.”
    Adam could hear Atkins mumbling as he ambled toward his cruiser. “This’ll cost me an hour and a half of paperwork.”
    Atkins sat in his patrol car and talked on the radio. Adam resumed pacing across the driveway. His mind raced through one possibility after another as he desperately tried to ignore the worst-case scenario. He paced and turned, and paced and turned. He recalled the last time he saw his daughter. It was earlier that morning as she was getting ready to leave the house. She was going to watch Brad play soccer. God, where is she?
    After a few minutes that seemed like hours, Atkins rolled out of the driver’s seat. “Mr. Riley, I need to see you over here,” Atkins said, leaning back against his cruiser.
    Without losing a beat, Adam turned to his left and marched toward the black-and-white. “What’s going on?”
    “I have a crime investigation team on its way, and a few officers will be here soon to comb the area.”
    “Thank you, Officer. Oh God, thank you. What happens next?”
    “We wait.”
    “Wait?”
    “Yes, we wait for the forensics team to show up—and the search team.”
    “Then what?”
    “Then we wait for them to do their job.”
    Adam shook his head in silence.
    Masses of swirling black and gray clouds approached from the northwest. Atkins’s brown hair stood in tufts as the wind gusted around the two men. The hot, heavy air was temporarily swept away by a brisk cool breeze, and the familiar acrid scents that precede a thunderstorm hung thick in the air. When the wind dropped, the air was once again a humid blanket.
    Adam panned the sky and then looked at Atkins. “Do you think we should wait inside?”
    “No, we need to wait here.” Atkins folded his arms as he continued to lean against his cruiser. “We shouldn’t move around much, could destroy evidence.”
    Adam glanced up at the whirling dark clouds. “But … it looks