"Any luck?" Jo careened her neck over Tom's shoulders, her eyes darting across the screens set up as a makeshift surveillance centre in the middle of Chad's lounge.
"It would have helped if he had his phone on him," Tom remarked pointedly, eyeing a fervent June sitting on a chair in the corner, out of their way. Her leg bouncing like a junkie. "She okay?"
"She can't remember anything useful to help Chad." Jo grabbed Tom's arm and pulled him aside. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Last time Cassie had him, it was in his own house, and the only reason anyone knew he was in trouble was, she sent mum a cryptic threat the night before. Mum did not understand what it was or from whom, but I knew he was having problems breaking off a relationship." Jo's voice rose ever-so-slightly in anger, and she lowered it back down to a hush. "I had dropped in to check on him by chance."
"We're doing our best to find him, Jo," Tom reassured her.
"Find her," she demanded instead. "I think you should look for her. She has a history. Don't you keep track of criminals?"
Tom glanced at his team. They were following leads of traffic cameras after getting a partial plate and general colour and make of the vehicle from the hospital CCTV. So far, they'd tracked three similar vehicles through multiple routes. One had ended up outside a church in Newtown. The second had pulled up into a parking lot at a club north of the city. The third was still being tracked. It had travelled through multiple suburbs and they lost it now and then at blind spots, only to see it turn up on a camera in another intersection. It was a painstaking task, and they weren't even sure it was the one they should look at.
There was also an alert out to all patrols, with the screenshot of Cassie and Chad, taken from the hospital CCTV. The advice was to approach the woman as armed and dangerous. Tom had asked what details he could release about Chad, to ask for the public for help. But Jo wanted to wait till Terry got there. She needed a motherly, authoritative figure present, someone who knew exactly what information about her as a writer could be used, if any.
"What about Cassie's image from the hospital?" Tom inquired at one point. "We could say she was seen forcing an unidentified man at gunpoint, and we're concerned for the man's safety as she has a history of violence. Let me use something, Jo!"
"Haven't you kept tabs on her?" Jo paced. "Let Terry get here. She handles media for Chad."
"Handle what?" Terry's voice boomed behind them as she stood before the front door. She tapped her heels on the outdoor carpet and dropped her umbrella by the side. "What the hell is going on, Jo?" she snapped before spotting Tom lingering behind her. "Detective Ash?"
"Austin," Tom corrected, offering a handshake. "Thank you for coming to assist."
Terry scanned Tom's team and June, sitting nervously in the corner, eyeing the screens. "She's still here?"
Jo nodded. "And Chad's not."
"Yeah, about that, what do you mean he is missing? Why the hell is he missing?"
Jo gave a simple one-word reply. "Cassie."
"Fuck!" Terry turned to Tom, "I knew something like this might happen again when he said he thought he'd seen her."
"Do you know much about this woman?" Tom asked.
"Not much really." Terry shook her head. "She's crazy, thinks Chad's name is really Zachary Eve and believes wholeheartedly she's married to him."
"Anything about her life before she became a problem in Chad's? Anything that could help us?"
"She's an only child from what I can remember, and I think bipolar or schizophrenia or something like that runs in the family. Her defence used to shorten her sentence last time. I only met her a few times when Chad used to invite her to events. She always gave me the creeps. Something unsettling about her. I guess we know what that was now."
Jo leaned against Tom, worry lining her face as Terry asked, "What have you done to find him so far, and what can I help with?"
"We're following the car we believe is hers. We're narrowing down on the IP address where the footage is being streamed, and an officer is coming down with everything we have on her in our archives, see if there's anything in there to give us some clue." Tom rubbed Jo's arm gently. "We could go public with the situation to see if anyone out there spotted them. If we mention he's a renowned author, we might get traction."
Terry shook her head. "Chad's anonymity is everything to him. He still wears disguise at signings. If you go public with this, he can't hide behind Zachary Eve anymore. He'll hate it."
Tom stared at Jo, and then Terry, surprised. "Your brother, and your client, is in danger, and we don't know where she'd taken him. The woman who took him isn't stable, and we have the biggest resource available at our disposal, the public, and you don't want me to ask them for help?"
"Not yet, not until you've run out of options," Terry adamantly countered. "This man has tried to keep his private life private far too hard, for far too long for it to disappear overnight. Reveal what you want about the woman, but I won't let you bring media to this house, or touch Chad. Not until it's the last resort." She turned to Jo for support. "Right, Jo?"
Jo, though hesitant as hell, knew her brother, and knew Terry was right. He would hate it. "It's what he'd want."
"And did you say footage being streamed out of the house?" Terry finally asked, looking a little more than shocked. "You mean..."
"She was watching him like the last time?" Tom asked, and she nodded. "Yes. We think she's been watching him for at least a few weeks now."
"Holy shit."
Jo caught June's eye and tried to smile reassuringly. "What happens now?" she asked of Tom.
"We find the crumbs and follow it. Hopefully, the car will give us something." He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Shall I order you, ladies, some dinner? It may be a long night."
"I couldn't." Jo shook her head. Chad was somewhere out there, alone, scared, and probably hungrier than she was. She couldn't possibly eat, even though her insides were twisting.
An alert sounded from one screen and caught their attention.
Tom turned to his technicians at the keyboard. "What was that?"
The IT technician was a young-looking thing. If it wasn't for his receding hairline, one might have thought him under twenty, or at least twenty-five. "We have the IP address, sir." He had a goofy grin that made Jo forget Tom for a tad moment, but only a tad moment.
Jo shook her head, blaming the raging hormones for the weakness. She stayed by Tom's side as June joined them by the bank of screens.
"Where is that?" Tom pointed at the pin on the map.
The Tech quickly typed something in a search engine none of the Jo and others saw an aerial picture of an apartment complex. The man, whose name badge read 'Baker', clicked the street view and soon all eyes were staring at a semi-modern apartment building.
"Looks like a unit on the third floor," Baker said.
Tom leaned against the desk and stared hard at the building's facade. "Location?" Jo tried to match his glare.
"Sydenham, I can send the address to patrols." Baker pulled up the schematics of the apartment in question within seconds. "A studio or a single bedroom unit leased out by Century House Realty."
"Find me the name on that lease. We need to confirm it's her before I send in the team." Tom grabbed his phone and dialled a number off by heart and stepped away from the women.
Jo stared at the schematics of the apartment, a few suburbs from Chad's Summer Hill home, the very house she was standing in. Her breath caught in her throat and her stomach clenched sickly, as she asked, "How long has she been out?" Her question was for Terry than anyone.
Baker glanced at Jo, and despite Tom's order to locate the name on the lease, he accessed police records on a Cassandra Micah and quickly scanned through what he could find. "She's been out of psych care for at least five months from what I can tell."
Terry drew a sharp breath in next to Jo. "Damn. That's around the time he told me he felt he was being watched. I chalked it up to being paranoid."
"But he wasn't being paranoid," Jo interjected, flushing red. "Not this time, Terry."
"No. Not this time." Terry sighed, guilty as charged.
"Well, do we have a name?" Tom rejoined them, and Baker quickly placed a call to the Century House Realty. When he hung up, they were all waiting.
"It's leased to a Betty Lane Rawlings," Baker answered.
"Who is Betty Lane Rawlings and why the hell is she watching Chad?" Jo burst.
Tom gently prodded Baker, before turning to Jo and her posse. "Hovering like this isn't helping anyone, Jo."
"But." A stern look from him made her stop.
Tom glanced at his watch, and she couldn't help but look at her own watch. It was almost ten at night. She watched him pinch the bridge of his nose and suggest, "Why not take June and go over to your mother's, Jo? It's not good for you to stress like this, and I'm sure June will not feel any more useful watching us work."
"I'm not going anywhere, not till you find him. And I'm not taking her to mum's." Jo shook her head and planted herself down on the sofa across from the table. She turned to June apologetically. "I'm sorry, but you turning up in this state, isn't a good idea."
"Marjorie will panic," he stated.
"Like a headless snake!" Jo cracked a slight smile, despite everything.
Jo watched Terry grabbed June, pacing behind Baker by the arm then walk her over to the sofa and force her down. "Sit." It almost made her laugh.
"Baker. Rawlings?" Tom turned to his colleague.
Jo rubbed her belly absently, trying to divert her mind from bad thoughts and the hunger despite having told Tom she couldn't possibly eat. "Rawlings sounds familiar, though."
"It does, doesn't it?" Terry perched her elegant ass on the wide sofa arm.
Then they saw Baker's jaw nearly hit the floor.
"What?" Jo and Terry asked in unison, and she couldn't help but gawk at the woman in surprise.
Before Baker could explain what had shocked him, another officer, half drenched from the pouring rain, stomped into the house, announcing he had the "Files," and produced a box labelled 'Micah-Gilligan Case files 2011-2013'.
Tom grabbed the box, set it on the edge of the table, and lifted the lid, bringing out the topmost folder to scan. Jo could see Baker stared at Tom as if waiting for the man's attention.
"Oh, for God's sake, spit it out!" Terry barked impatiently beside Jo. "What is it? Who is Rawlings?"
Tom's head snapped up, and he turned to Baker. "Well?"
"Betty is Betty Lane Rawlings-Micah," Baker spoke, carefully. "Seems she dropped her second husband's name after an ugly divorce and went back to Rawlings, her first husband's name."
"She is Cassie's mother?" June's voice crackled, dry and husky, and it made Jo jump.
"That's what her birth certificate says." Baker nodded.
The newly arrived officer, catching onto the progress, turned to Tom. "Is that a go on the apartment then, Detective Austin?"
Tom glanced from the file in his hand and the box in front of him to Baker's screen, no doubt at the birth certificate that seemed to have surprised them all. Jo saw him give a brisk nod. "I want a sit-rep as soon as you have them and eyes."
The officer nodded and rushed back out into the downpour, speaking into his radio as he went.
Jo turned back to Baker, intently eyeing this screen. "What about the traffic cams?"
'Yeah, what about the traffic cams?' Jo wanted to reiterate. She was sick of sitting on the sofa so she pushed herself off and walked back to where Tom was, eyeing the grainy, low-resolution screen as 'the car' speed through a red light camera. Jo caught sight of the screen as the flash went off.
"Can you access that photo? Let's see if it's who we think it is?" asked Tom.
"Can we?" Baker grinned, turning to two lackeys at his disposal. "Boys, one of you on the photo, if you please?"
Within minutes, the guy in the far corner raised his hand as if he were still in school. "I got it."
June joined them, curious to see this photo. Jo gave her arm a run as she came to stand beside her. They both turned to the red-light camera photo on the screen, zoomed. And there he was, in black and white, driving the car with a terrified look on his face, Chad. Beside him on the passenger seat sat Cassie, small and unassuming.
"When was this taken?" Tom asked.
The man looked at the time stamp on the corner of the image. "At 18:47 pm, Detective."
June glanced at her watch. "That's almost..."
"Two hours ago," Jo finished.
"Find out where that car went, now!" Tom jabbed a finger on the image. "We need that address for the team. I'm calling them off the apartment."
Jo grabbed his arm as he reached for his radio. "But that's where the signal is going."
He nodded. "But it's not where they went. The apartment's only a secondary crime scene. Techs will look after it." He shrugged her off and radioed in the change of address, and to approach the apartment only when the crime scene unit gets there.
"Where else could she take him?" June whispered off Baker's shoulder, eyes riveted on Chad's face.
Jo swallowed the fear that was rising up her throat, wondering the same thing.
"I want everything on Betty Lane Rawlings!" Tom barked as soon as he was off his radio. "I want to know who else she might know, who she might go to, who might help her."
To be honest, Jo wanted to know all those things too, pronto. But all she could do was standby and wait.
♡
The hour stretched into eons. The pizza Tom had ordered disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, except for the slices the women had barely touched. None of them could eat, despite being famished.
Three men, three determined search angles, and by the end, all it yielded was the fact Cassie was a single-child, married early and divorced her abusive husband within a couple of years. She'd miscarried twice, requiring hospitalization once, and that was when she'd had her first delusional episode. She was then relinquished to the care of her widowed mother, whose reliance on painkillers was not unnoticed. Betty Lane Rawlings, on the other hand, had a picture-perfect first marriage, except her husband, Cassie's father had died in a suspected suicide, leaving behind their only property in her name, a Federation-Era house in a sought-after area of Sydenham. A house which was minutes from Summer Hill, and Chad's house. It was still under Betty's name.
As he bit down on the last of his slice, Tom watched Baker plug in the address into a search engine and bring up a photo of an old house that could do with some love and care.
"It's the old lady's house?" he asked, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.
Tom stared at the single-story house. Its red brick and elaborate veranda, with its multi-faceted roof, topped off with a terracotta chimney. He eyed the map on which they'd been highlighting the route the third car was taking. It was in the same heading as the house as far as he could tell. His eyes widened as his mind connected the dots.
"She took him to the house!" He slapped a hand down on the table. "She took him to the damn house!"
(Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter on Pixabay)