Chapter 14 - The Father's Disappearance
The police did not assume kidnapping merely because Dad's car looked alarming.
They collected samples, reviewed traffic cameras, and asked about people who might have wanted to harm him.
I told them everything I knew, including the voicemail.
My mother sat in the interview room with her hands clenched inside her lap.
For the first time in years she looked at me without judging my clothes or rank.
"Find him," she whispered.
I wanted to tell her that she had given up the right to ask favors.
Instead I said, "I'm cooperating."
Investigators found footage of Dad entering a service alley with Daniel Price.
The two men argued beside a delivery entrance.
The camera angle did not show what happened afterward.
When I saw the still image, I recognized the alley.
It ran behind the old Pier Nine administration building.
The site had been partly demolished after the fire.
A parking lot occupied most of the original footprint.
Only a small brick records annex remained.
Caleb had once interviewed a maintenance worker there.
He gave the contact information to Harris, not to me.
I tried to accept that my role was to share evidence, not stage a rescue.
But at night I remembered Dad's terror in court.
A part of me still wanted him to come home alive so I could demand why he had never been there when I needed him.
On the second day, a forensic laboratory confirmed that the blood in the car was Dad's.
The quantity did not establish whether the injury had been life-threatening.
Then the police obtained security video showing Dad entering a rural medical clinic under an assumed name.
He had a bandaged hand and was walking without assistance.
He left twenty minutes later in a rented vehicle.
Dad had staged at least part of his disappearance.
Mom collapsed into a chair when she heard.
I felt the heat of familiar humiliation.
Even while the family unraveled, Dad had found another way to control what everyone believed.
That night he called Rebecca from an unlisted number.
He said he would cooperate if authorities guaranteed his safety from Price.
Rebecca directed him to his attorney and investigators.
Before hanging up, Dad asked her to pass along a message.
"Tell Evelyn the girl at Pier Nine was hidden for her protection."
I read the note twice.
"Her protection?" I asked.
Rebecca's expression tightened.
May you like
"I think we've misunderstood who he means by the girl."
