The Zero Night

6

“We’ve located the boat,” Maggie announced to the detectives in the police conference room. “Lance Beaton says his cops found it abandoned at a launch in Billings Park in Superior. Based on the registration papers, we think it was stolen from a marina on our side of the water. We’re sending a forensics team to check it out, but Lance says it looks clean as a whistle. Looks like our man stole the boat, collected the ransom, and then ditched it.”

“Was he alone?” Guppo asked. “Or did he have a partner?”

Maggie shook her head. “Not sure. We don’t know whether he left a car in the park or whether someone met him there. Either way, once he was back on shore, he could have gone pretty much anywhere.”

She went to the whiteboard on the far end of the room and used magnetic clips to post several photographs of Chelsey Webster. One was from driver’s license records, and others had been printed from JPEGs that Gavin had sent her.

“Here’s our missing woman,” she said. “Chelsey Webster, forty-six years old, married to Gavin Webster for the last fourteen years. First marriage for both of them. She’s self-employed as a marketing consultant, whatever the hell that means. Gavin is supposed to be getting us a list of her clients and friends. She has no local relatives. Parents are dead, one sibling in Oregon. She went to UMD, worked at a couple of local ad agencies, then opened her own business shortly before marrying Gavin. Right now, that’s all we know about her background.”

She paced on her short legs, not saying anything for a couple of minutes. In front of her on the table was a jumbo-sized Coke from McDonald’s, and she sucked soda through the straw, making dimples in her cheeks. By now, the cops in the room were used to the way she did things. She thought on her feet, sifting through the facts, debating with herself in her head, before she was ready to talk. While the others waited for her, they checked their phones, and although it annoyed her, she’d given up complaining about it.

“Okay, we’ve got three tasks,” she went on finally. “First, find Chelsey Webster, alive or dead. For the time being, we operate on the assumption that she’s alive. We don’t know whether she’s still being held by the kidnappers or whether they’ve left her somewhere and moved on, now that they have the ransom money in hand. We’ve forwarded her picture to police around Minnesota and Wisconsin, plus the state patrol, park rangers, everybody. The chief has a press conference scheduled in an hour, and we’ll blast information to the media, too. That will generate tips from the public, but it also means we’ll be chasing a lot of dead ends.”

She eyed Guppo and Serena, who were sitting in the chairs closest to her. Guppo was eating Fritos and crunching them loudly and licking salt and corn dust off his chubby fingertips. She couldn’t recall a meeting where he wasn’t snacking on something. She also noticed Serena looking out the window toward the trees, as if she were somewhere else altogether.

“What did you two find at Gavin’s house?” she asked.

When Serena didn’t answer, Guppo took over, quickly swallowing a large mouthful of chips. “The damage and blood inside the house confirm that Chelsey was taken from there. None of the neighbors have security cameras that face the street, and no one saw or heard anything on Tuesday evening, so we don’t have descriptions of the kidnappers or their vehicle. One of the neighbors told Serena that their dog began barking right around nine o’clock. That’s probably the best bet for when the abduction actually occurred. Knowing the time helps narrow down the search, but there are so many ways out of that area that we’re not likely to pick anything up from cameras on the roads. Even so, we’ll review all the video we can find along 194, 53, Central Entrance, and 35. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Were there any reports of suspicious activity in the neighborhood in the last couple of weeks?” Maggie asked.

He shook his enormous head. “Nothing.”

“Did you ask about maintenance vans in the area? Contractors, plumbers, whatever? Something that wouldn’t necessarily attract attention if it was parked outside for a while.”

Guppo nodded. “We did, but still no luck.”

“Well, they had to know the layout of the house and the area to pull this off,” Maggie went on. “So either they had personal knowledge” — she put a little emphasis on the words personal knowledge — “or they conducted surveillance as they planned the crime.”

“Well, the camera that Serena found was hooked to the in-house Wi-Fi,” Guppo told the group. “I checked the device activity on their Wi-Fi log, and the camera started operating five days ago. The kidnappers have been watching them ever since.”

“So they were inside the house five days before the abduction?” Maggie asked.

“Right.”

“Why take the risk of planting the camera early?” Maggie asked. “Gavin or Chelsey might have discovered it.”

“Well, with the camera in place, they could see that Chelsey was home alone that night, so they knew when to make their move,” Guppo speculated.

“Was there any local storage? Can we download video that was recorded inside the house?”

Guppo shook his head. “No. The cam wasn’t configured to store data on the device itself. The feed went straight to an app.”

“Well, at least we can talk to Gavin and see what was going on at the house on the day the camera was installed. Maybe they had workers or contractors on-site for some reason.” Maggie looked at Serena. “Do you have anything to add?”

Serena started, as if coming out of a trance. “No, that’s all we have for now.”

“Okay, so these people basically grabbed Chelsey and vanished into thin air,” Maggie concluded with a scowl. “That brings us to task number two. Let’s find out who did this. Ultimately, identifying the kidnappers may also be our best bet at locating Chelsey, unless we get lucky with a call to the tip line. I checked in with police in the larger cities around the state to see if they had reports of similar abductions, just in case we have a kidnapping ring operating here that hasn’t come to light yet. Nothing was on their radar. To me, that suggests that this was most likely a one-off crime specifically targeted at Chelsey Webster.”

She paused.

“That also leads me to task number three. We need to decide whether Gavin Webster is a victim or a suspect. A few months ago, he was a struggling low-end lawyer. Now, thanks to his dead sister, he’s got millions in the bank. One way or another, money is the obvious motive here. Either someone saw an opportunity to extort a big payday from Gavin, or Gavin decided he’d rather spend his windfall as a single person, not a married person. Regardless, I think there’s likely to be some kind of connection between Gavin and Chelsey and whoever did this. Someone knew about the inheritance, and someone knew the two of them well enough to come up with this plan.”

Guppo had finished his Fritos and was examining the inside of the bag for crumbs. “Does your gut lean one way or another on Gavin?”

“I... don’t... know,” she said slowly, because that was the same question Maggie had been asking herself since three in the morning. Normally, her instincts didn’t waffle about suspects. She knew almost immediately whether she trusted what someone was telling her. But Gavin was different. Maybe it was all the time he’d spent confusing juries and lying to defend guilty clients, but she found herself struggling to get inside his head.

“If he was involved, he’s covering it well,” she went on. “For the time being, it doesn’t matter, because our plan’s the same regardless. I want to know everything there is to know about both of them. Gavin. Chelsey. Their marriage. Their work. Their clients. Their friends. I want phone records, credit card records, bank statements. And I want to know who gave Gavin one hundred thousand dollars in cash. He won’t say, and that means the money is probably dirty.”

She clapped her hands like a football coach.

“Okay, everybody, let’s get busy. We’ll meet back here in six hours for another update. If Chelsey Webster is still alive, she’s at risk with every minute that goes by. I want to find her, and I want to find her now.”

After everyone else filed out of the room, Serena watched Maggie slump into one of the chairs and put her feet up on the conference table. Maggie drank her Coke until there was nothing left in the paper cup, and then she worked her straw around the bottom, making an annoying slurping noise. Serena waited.

“I want you to go to Rice Lake,” Maggie said finally.

“What’s there?”

“Gavin’s parents. They’re his alibi. He says he was there for a couple of days, and he didn’t head home until eight o’clock in the evening. I want to know exactly when he left, but don’t let them know we suspect anything. And get everything you can out of them. The marriage. The inheritance. If they heard stories about any of Gavin’s clients. Whatever you can find out.”

Serena nodded. “The neighbors across the street said Chelsey was concerned about Gavin. She was wondering whether he was cheating. She told them he was acting odd about the money, too. Odd enough that she joked about her safety. It may be nothing. Then again—”

“Interesting,” Maggie replied. “Well, see if the parents think the inheritance changed Gavin. That amount of money can turn people weird.”

“I will.”

Serena stood up, but Maggie used her index finger to direct her back to her seat. “Hang on. I’m not done.”

“Okay.”

Maggie took a long time to say anything more. “I can’t believe I have to ask you this, but did you steal somebody’s dog, Serena?”

Serena shrugged. She’d known what the question was going to be, and she knew that Maggie already knew the answer. “Yeah. I did. Well, I rescued a dog, actually.”

“Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

The more upset she was, the more Maggie swore.

“These people were abusing their dog,” Serena replied by way of excuse. “They left him out in the pouring rain, and they didn’t bring him in even after I told them to.”

“Then you call animal control. You don’t just take it.”

“I call animal control, and months later, maybe they do something, but more likely, they do nothing.”

“You’re a police detective, not the Humane Society.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that.”

“Well, you say you’re aware, but then you went and stole a dog,” Maggie snapped.

“What do you want me to do?”

Maggie rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to deliver what Serena assumed would be another expletive. Then she took a deep breath and stopped herself. She went on with a veneer of calm. “Serena, I know you’re going through shit. I’m sorry about that. I feel for you, I really do. I already told you that you don’t need to be here. I have no problem with you taking time to get your head together.”

“I’m fine,” Serena reiterated.

Maggie exploded again. “You are not fine! You fucking stole a dog!”

“Look—” Serena began, but Maggie interrupted her sharply.

“Stop. Listen to me. If you’re going to be here, I need your head in the game. Is that clear? This is a big investigation, and we’re dealing with a defense lawyer. Everything has to be done by the book. If Gavin is guilty, our case has to be bulletproof. If he’s not guilty, he will crucify us in the media over any slipup. I can’t cut you any slack because you’re Stride’s wife or because we’re friends.”

Serena opted not to point out that they weren’t really friends. Instead, she simply said, “Understood.”

“If you make a mistake, you’re off this case. Got it?”

“Got it.”

Maggie nodded. “Fine. Go to Rice Lake. Talk to Gavin’s parents. And Serena?”

“What?”

“Give those people back their dog.”