Vanished - A Mystery (Dixon & Baudin Book 1) Read Free

was.
    Baudin got out and sat on the porch for a while, staring at the cars passing by. Children played at one of the houses, and their squeals echoed around the neighborhood. A neighbor across the street, a woman in flood pants and a tank top, waved to him, and he smiled and waved back.
    The bus dropped his daughter off a few minutes later not half a block from his house. She stared at the sidewalk as she walked, her black hair falling forward, and danced with the motion of her awkward teenage gait.
    “How was the first day?” he said.
    “Fine,” she mumbled and went inside.
    For a moment, he didn’t move. He looked over at the school bus and watched as it pulled away before he rose and went inside.
    The house was clean. He considered himself a minimalist and tried not to have clutter because he thought the external world a person saw every day influenced the internal. Messy homes would lead to messy thinking.
    “Did you make any friends, Heather?” he said as he sat at the dining table.
    She pulled out a half gallon of almond milk and poured a glass before searching the cupboards for snacks. “Not really. The kids here are weird.”
    “How?”
    “I don’t know. They all know each other from church or something.”
    “You wanna go to church?” he said, taking out a package of cigarettes and lighting one.
    “No.”
    “Let me tell you something, Heather, if someone tells you they know the secrets of the universe and all it takes is sacrifice, you run the other way. ’Cause you can bet your ass that sacrifice will be yours, not theirs.”
    She found some Oreos and put a few on a plate. Carefully, she took out each cookie and spread them on the plate evenly. Seeing her like this, in the kitchen, felt like a weight bearing down on Baudin’s chest. An ache he neither acknowledged nor denied.
    “Molly’s coming over to babysit tonight,” he said, pulling an ashtray close.
    “Who’s Molly?”
    “My cousin. You’ve met her. You were just young.”
    “Why’s she coming to babysit?”
    He tapped the ash off his cigarette and took only one more drag, knowing how much it annoyed Heather when he smoked in front of her. “I have to go out for a minute. Won’t be long.” He rose and kissed her forehead. “I love you, baby.”
    As he was leaving, she said, “Dad?”
    “Yeah?”
    “I don’t like it here. Are we ever gonna go back home?”
    He hesitated. “This is our home now, baby. For better or worse.”
     
     
    When night had fallen, Baudin dressed in jeans and a tank top, exposing the myriad tattoos that sleeved his arms. He tucked his badge away in his pocket and put on the ankle holster with its Smith & Wesson before pulling the jeans over.
    Molly pulled up just then and limped across the yard to the front door. He answered before she rang the doorbell.
    “What’s wrong?” Baudin asked.
    “Damn gout,” she said, brushing past him and sitting down on the couch. “They call it rich man’s disease, but I got it without the riches.”
    “You sure you okay to do this?”
    She waved him off. “Fine. Just get me the clicker.”
    He handed her the remote to the television. “She’s watching TV in her room. I shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours. Make sure she does her homework.”
    “Where you goin’?”
    “To make some friends.”
    She guffawed. “Shit. Since when do you need friends?”
    “Since I moved to a new city and the only person I know is my crippled-ass cousin.”
    She cackled and looked at him. “Stay outta trouble, Ethan. This ain’t LA. The people in charge here ain’t scared of the common folk like over there.”
    “I will. Thanks for doing this.”
    The night air was warm and stuck to the skin. He pulled out his cigarettes again and lit a fresh one, letting it dangle in his mouth as he got into his Mustang and pulled away.
    The city was small but spread out to make it appear larger than it was. Like any other city, night was when the real inhabitants came out. The ones