Chalk Man Page 2

  Parker opened the ones from BigArch5, who had an avatar of Sonic the Hedgehog, and winced. Each one was mean-spirited. “Yer a lozer!” the first one said. “Hey. Lozer. Saw you in class today. Why you so ugly?” said the second. Finally, the last one brought the deepest cut of all. “Yer so sad. Nobody likes you. Lozer.” Whoever BigArch5 was, his grammar and spelling sucked. But the comment about seeing Charlie in class probably made BigArch5 a classmate, so he would be easy enough to track down.

  HotGirl57 had an avatar that looked to be a cartooned version of a selfie that had her posing up at the camera with pursed lips, dark eyes and dark hair. The message had only one thing to say: “Hey. Hang in there. People suck.” Parker raised his eyebrows and gave a little nod. At least she was honest. He pulled up her profile. It was mostly private, but it showed that she lived in Burbank, which was only a fifteen-minute drive from East LA, so she’d be easy enough to pay a visit to as well. If she was actually a she, that was, and not a he hiding as an online she, which was totally possible. The pervs had their ways.

  WillowWalker10 had an avatar of . . . Captain America. Parker narrowed his eyes. Something in common with Charlie, right out of the gate. His suspicions were confirmed with the gut punch of what came up in the message: “Hallo, buddy! I got to stay home from school today. Wanna play?”

  There it was again: the odd spelling of “Hallo,” just like how it was written over the hole in the field.

  To this message, Charlie had replied. At 8:32 this morning. “Okay.”

  WillowWalker10 gave him five “thumbs up” emojis and a “Meet me in the cut-through.”

  “Sonofabitch,” Parker said aloud.

  A second of silence passed before Napoleon added, Yep.

  Chapter 3

  “Okay,” Captain Holland said a half hour later, leaning against the front of a black-and-white with his arms folded across his chest. “It appears that we either have a school friend that this kid has wandered off with for the day, off to Echo Park or some shit, or a pretty brazen child abductor.”

  “That sounds about right,” Parker said. He was standing with Murillo, Klink and a CSI by the name of Sandy Acosta, the four of them making a staggered line in front of the captain.

  “Sandy?” the cap said.

  “Well, unfortunately, we didn’t come up with much,” Acosta replied, before tightening her lips in apparent frustration. She was petite, with short brown hair and high cheekbones. With her round, Harry Potter glasses she looked every bit the part of the nerdy scientist. But as she broke down the various research scenes—the walkway, the grassy area, the hole in the wall, the entire inside of the Henson home and even the backyard—it was obvious that she was damned smart and not all that tolerant of ignorance. At one point, Murillo made a comment about blood drops that drew a sharp glare from her that would’ve cut through glass.

  “That was red wine, which we established almost instantly, Detective Murillo,” she said with juuuuust enough contempt to be the verbal equivalent of a knuckle rap to the balls.

  Evidently feeling phantom pains, Murillo cleared his throat and looked away.

  “We got a timeline yet?” Captain Holland asked as he squinted hard at his Apple Watch.

  Murillo flipped open his notebook. “Mom left him to go to work at 7:00 a.m. and came home to find him missing at 4:00 p.m. It’s 6:00 p.m. now so that’s . . .”

  “Eleven hours,” Klink finished. The two of them had been partners for such a long time that they often finished each other’s sentences like a married couple. “The last one to see him was a neighborhood lady. Wanda Perkins. Seventy-one. She saw him go into the cut-through between 8:30 and 9:00 a.m.”

  The cap nodded. “Okay. If we call it 9:00 a.m. then we’re a solid nine hours behind this situation already. What do you have, Parker?”

  “The kid exchanged messages on his Xbox with three different people in the last twenty-four hours. The first seems to be some sort of ass-wipe school bully. I sent a unit to the school to dig around the principal’s office for some common names of troublemakers. Even if we don’t get the right one, these kids all know each other’s Xbox gamertags pretty well, so we’ll find him. The second is from some girl in Burbank. Or someone pretending to be a girl. Seems benign but we’ll see. The last one is a problem. And a big one.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Whoever it was—let’s assume it’s a ‘he’ for now—messaged Charlie to say he was home from school too and asking if Charlie wanted to play.”

  “Strange coincidence,” Klink said sarcastically.

  “Yeah,” Parker said with a grim nod. “And he used the word ‘hallo.’ The same spelling of the word chalked on the wall in the field.”

  “Well. That’s definitely no coincidence,” the cap grumbled. “That’s our guy.”

  “Yeah. He musta been watching the house somehow,” Murillo said, casting a swift glance around the neighborhood, “and knew Charlie was home alone.”

  “Could be a neighbor,” Klink added, glancing around as well.

  “Maybe. Not unheard of,” the cap replied.

  “Or someone who saw that Charlie was online playing Call of Duty,” Parker interjected. “Regardless, he knew the area, knew about the cut-through and told Charlie to meet him there.”

  “That swings it back to a local. Who knows? Maybe a neighbor who was online. Whatever. We got an ID to the . . . uh . . . computer name thing?” The cap furrowed his brow.

  “Gamertag. And no. Someone from the tech unit is on the way here to analyze the Xbox and the DSL router. We may know more then. But the person’s gamertag is WillowWalker10.”

  The captain shook his head. “Well, shit. That’s not ominous at all.”

  “Yeah. And it’s a blank profile.”

  Klink put his hands on his hips. “Well. You gotta have a Microsoft email address and credit card associated with the account in order to open an Xbox Live account, so we may—”

  Parker cut him off. “If he’s a true pedo, I’m guessing he used a fake email and stolen credit card to set it up.”

  “Unless we get lucky,” Murillo countered.

  Klink shook his head. “Which we never do.”

  Acosta looked troubled. “You still need me, Cap? If not, I really want to finish processing the scene and seeing what we can get back to the lab to help you guys out with.”

  “Do you have anything else?” the cap asked.

  “Besides multiple sets of fingerprints in the house? Well . . . a few beer cans and old newspapers from the grassy area, a lollipop wrapper from outside the hole in the wall that led to the street, and, of course, the chalk writings on the wall.”

  “The writings? What can those give us?”

  “First, we’ll analyze them as best we can to determine if they were written by the same hand. On the face of things, it looks like we have at least two people writing: the one who wrote the words on the wall in the cut-through and the individual who wrote the odd greeting near the hole in the wall near the grassy area.”

  “I dunno,” Murillo said, “looks to me like a kid’s writing in the cut-through.”

  The cap sighed. “Or someone trying to make it look like a kid’s writing.”

  Acosta nodded. “That’s why we want to analyze each one.”

  Parker was afraid to suggest it but he did anyway, in as passive a way as he could. “I’m sure you saw Charlie’s homework writing on the sheets of paper on his desk.”

  Acosta seemed to appreciate the effort, mostly. “Of course. And that’s what we’ll compare it with. And . . . well . . . if one of the chalk sticks was small, worn down or something we might get lucky and he might’ve scraped a knuckle or two on the brick, which would leave us trace amounts of blood or skin fragments for DNA.”

  “Awesome,” Klink said.

  “What gets me,” Parker said out of nowhere, even surprising himself, “is the way he spelled ‘hello.’”

  “You mean misspelled it?” Captain Holland counte
red.

  “Maybe. I knew a few Brits in my time in the military. If the guy spelled it phonetically . . .”

  Klink half-sniggered, with zero humor in his face. “What? You mean, as in ‘Hallo, Guvnor!’ or some shit?”

  “I dunno, Klink,” Parker said with a glance, before he looked to the cap to drive his point home, “but he also put emphasis on certain letters, lower case on the ‘h’ and ‘a,’ uppercase on the rest.”

  “Okay. Maybe. Something to keep in mind. For now? We all know the drill. Missing person? We have forty-eight hours. Missing child? Probably twenty-four, tops. After that, the trail goes from barely warm to ice cold, so we have to move quick. Acosta, you can go for now. Get back to me as soon as possible with anything you have, okay?”

  “Yes, sir,” Acosta said, before she walked off to her car without a glance to any of the rest of them.

  The cap sighed and continued, “So. Let’s divvy this up, then. Parker you’re solo, with Campos still on desk duty, so it’s a three-man team on this one with you, Murillo and Klink. Murillo can follow up with everyone here in the neighborhood and check them out for priors and what not. So, in the meantime, you and Klink take the girl in Burbank and follow up with the school bully. I’ll have the tech guys report to me what they find out on the Xbox and router and we’ll all reconvene in my office in two hours, got it?”

  Parker, Klink and Murillo all nodded. “Got it.”

  When he was back in his car, Parker was not surprised that Napoleon reappeared. He was in the passenger seat. As they both waited for Klink to grab his stuff from the Henson house and join them, Parker glanced over at Napoleon and spat it out. “I’m not gonna lie, I’m a bit worried about you on this one.”

  I know.

  “I won’t even say his name—”

  You can say it. Joaquin Murietta. But that demon is gone and cooked, well done, Parker.

  “So, you’re saying that this case . . . a missing child . . . a possible pedophile . . .”

  I’m saying that I’ll be fine.

  “Why?”

  Napoleon sighed in frustration. I’m tellin’ ya . . . sometimes I don’t know who’s training who here.

  “Well. No one is training anyone, anymore.”

  Here’s the thing, Parker.

  “What’s that?”

  Joaquin Murietta? He was all about the flesh. But this guy?

  “Yeah?”

  He’s all about the soul.

  “Care to elaborate?”

  Napoleon looked at Parker intently. For some reason, he wants to sacrifice him.

  “Sacrifice him? Why?”

  Napoleon looked up at the sky. Because he’s mad. Because for some reason, he wants to unleash an attack on heaven.

  Parker gave a slow blink of shock. “Well . . . I have no idea how to respond to that. Except, maybe, to say that that’s definitely above my paygrade.”

  As a member of Acosta’s forensic team walked past the car with an armful of equipment, Napoleon nodded. Mine too, I’m afraid. Then, with a heavy sigh he looked back to Parker. And yet still, we must find a way to stop it.

  Chapter 4

  Hotgirl57 was definitely a she.

  The Forensic Technology team had given them a name and address and now here she was. Her real name was Ava Thomas, and she opened the door of her small apartment in shorts that were too short, a t-shirt that was too tight, and eyes all full up with an innocence that was either true to her twenty-one years or one hell of a brilliant disguise.

  Both Parker and Klink diverted their eyes to nothing but her face, which was standard operating procedure for any man of sound mind looking at a far younger woman. Parker didn’t care if it was politically correct to think it or not, but as a man, you couldn’t win. You had to look at someone to see them in the first damned place, but in this situation all you had to do was look a split second too long and you crossed the line, going from respectable human being to outright creeper.

  It didn’t help that Ava had a smile of blinding white teeth and big dark eyes that were looking at Parker with intense curiosity.

  Parker gave her a quick nod, introduced himself and Klink and asked if they could come in.

  Her response was swift and surprising. “I don’t think so,” she said.

  Parker tilted his head. “May I ask why not?”

  “Because,” she sneered, “I don’t like cops.”

  Her fair complexion was offset by her long black hair, which was box braided and fell to her waist. Still looking at Parker, she defiantly, almost dramatically, swung her hair over her shoulder and behind her back. As she scratched her forehead, Parker noticed that she had a tattoo on her left forearm, written in script, that seemed to directly contradict her look, reading: Not A Good Time.

  If she was hiding Charlie Henson inside, she was the dumbest kidnapper in history to call this much suspicion to herself by being so aggressive with them just ten seconds into their conversation. Parker squinted at her and could not help but suppress a smirk. “Oh? Okay. Let me make a note of that. Doesn’t. Like. Cops. Okay. Got it.”

  “Good then. We’re done here. Have a nice day!” she replied as she began to close the door.

  Perhaps it was the way she said it, with seventy percent sass and thirty percent disrespect. Whatever it was, she instantly brought out the inner dad in Parker, which until now he didn’t even know existed. He put his foot against the door. “I don’t think so.”

  “Hey!”

  “We’re here to ask you—”

  She put her hands on her hips like an eight-year-old and snapped her neck at him like the girls in South Central LA used to do when he was a foot patrol officer, except she was white, so it looked a little off. “Excuse me?! I told you that I have nothing to say to any cops!”

  It didn’t help the growing dynamic between them that she was now glaring at him like a petulant child. Her attitude was so thick and negative that he wondered if it could actually be real. He knew he was not her parent—not anyone’s parent yet, though he and Trudy had talked about kids someday—but he could not help but wonder if Ms. Thomas had ever been told “no” very often as a child.

  Perhaps sensing that Parker was about to send her to the corner for a timeout, Klink jumped in. “Ms. Thomas. Please. We’re here to ask you about a little boy named Charlie Henson.”

  This seemed to throw her off. A look of confusion contorted her face. “Charlie who?”

  Okay. So she didn’t know Charlie’s real name. Or maybe his full name. Parker pressed. “Charlie. From Xbox. You sent him a message this morning?”

  She squinted at them as her eyes went from right to left and back again. Then it hit her. “You mean . . . Bucky?”

  Just as Parker thought. She only knew Charlie from his gamertag.

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “He’s missing.”

  A look of shock came over her face. “He’s missing?”

  “I’m afraid he is,” Klink said.

  The cop-hater in her disappeared instantly. As if in a trance, she let go of the door and motioned for them to come in. But the shock in her face and her body language already confirmed to Parker that she was not a suspect, at least not directly. “Oh. My. God,” she said as she closed the door behind them. “How?”

  “We don’t know yet. But when his mother came home from work today, he was gone.”

  Her minimalist apartment contained a sofa, chair and small bamboo coffee table in the living room. Parker and Klink took the sofa, Ava took the chair. Nearby was a two-chair dinette set by a tiny kitchen. The bathroom was visible past the hall that probably led to a bedroom. He turned his attention back to Ava, who was shaking her head slowly from side to side. She seemed beyond stunned now.

  “I-I-uh . . . how can I help?”

  On the coffee table before them was an art history textbook, a notebook and a laptop turned at just enough of an angle that Parker could see that it was opened up to the website for C
al State Los Angeles. So, Ava was a student. Did it mean anything? Parker didn’t know yet, but he scribbled it in the notebook of his mind because, well, in his job, there was homework to do, too. “Well. How long have you known Charlie?”

  She shrugged and thought about it for a few seconds. “I dunno. Probably five, six months.”

  “And your communications with him have only been online?”

  “Yeah. I mean, how else do you—”

  “So, you’ve never met with him in person then?”

  “No. Of course not. We chatted here and there when we both happened to be online at the same time. He’d be playing one game; I’d be playing another.”

  “What did you guys chat about?”

  She shrugged again. It seemed to be her go-to gesture. “The usual stuff for a kid that age. Ya know. School. Girls.”

  “Girls?”

  “Yeah. I think he kinda looked to me like a big sister or something. I was a girl. He was trying to figure out how to talk to girls.”

  Parker squinted. Something was off. “Talk to girls? How, exactly?”

  “Ya know. How to pick them up when they were down. How to encourage them. It was pretty sweet. He had a friend, he never told me her name, but he was always worried about her. How depressed she was and stuff. Not your usual worries of a hormone-filled teenage boy who has a crush.”

  It hit Parker like a brick. Because he wasn’t worried about a crush. He was worried about his mother.

  “You called him a teenager. How’d you know that?” Klink asked.

  “Because he told me one day. I mean, well, I asked him. He said he’d just turned thirteen.” Then, seeing something in their eyes, she added, “Why? Isn’t he?”

  “No, Ms. Thomas. He isn’t. Charlie’s actually ten.”

  Parker almost felt sorry for her, cop-hater or not. She just kept getting hit with more and more and it showed. Her face went slack. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No.”

  “Well . . . I mean . . . he did sound young but I dunno . . . when you’re playing and chatting online, with the headsets and all, it’s hard to tell sometimes. And the stuff he talked about . . .”