A Bad Day for Sunshine (Sunshine Vicram #1) - Darynda Jones Page 0,21
in her back. Death by a thousand paper cuts suddenly seemed much worse than she’d previously imagined.
“After we deglass you, that is,” Quincy added.
They started toward her office again, the EMT right behind them, when Anita stepped out of the restroom, her hands pressed against her abdomen.
“Mrs. Escobar, are you okay?”
“Please, Sheriff, call me Anita, and I’m sorry about this.” She gestured toward the bathroom. “I have stomach issues. Every time I get upset or excited or nervous, I have to, you know, find a restroom.”
“That’s . . . unfortunate,” she said, surprised the woman worked at a sheriff’s station. “And you can call me Sun. Or Sunny. Or Sunshine.” She rolled her eyes. She really needed to choose one and stick to it. “I need you to get all the info you can on Mrs. St. Aubin. Her daughter is missing.”
“Again?” Anita asked. Shaking her head, she started for her desk, but Sun stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
“What do you mean? Has she gone missing before?”
Anita closed her mouth as though she’d said something she shouldn’t have. “Nope. Nuh-uh. Forget I mentioned it.” She started for her desk again. “Carry on.”
When Sun’s questioning expression elicited only a shrug from Quincy, she walked back to Mrs. St. Aubin. An EMT was checking her vitals while she cradled a cup of coffee.
Sun knelt in front of her again. “Mrs. St. Aubin, has your daughter ever run away?”
“What? No. She didn’t run away. She just, she was scared. But it doesn’t matter now. We don’t have much time.”
A terrified parent was one thing, but Marianna St. Aubin seemed awfully sure of her daughter’s potential fate. Sun’s suspicious mind began to work overtime. Maybe that little statement about forever meant something, after all.
“Why?” she asked, her voice taking on a harder edge. “Why don’t we have much time?”
Mrs. St. Aubin blinked in surprise, then stumbled through an explanation. “Well, isn’t that what they say? The first forty-eight hours are the most vital?”
She had her there. But still. “You said he.”
“What?” The woman was shaking so badly that hot coffee sloshed over the side of her cup. She gasped and almost dropped it.
“You said, ‘He took her.’ Who is he?”
“No one.” She handed the cup to Zee and brought her scalded hand to her mouth. “I don’t know. It was just a guess. Isn’t it usually a male?” Then she turned, her sense of entitlement taking over. “I don’t see what any of that has to do with my missing daughter, Sheriff. Are you going to do your job or not?”
Mrs. St. Aubin’s words were just as much defense mechanism as entitlement, so Sun didn’t take them too personally. She let the events of the day turn over in her mind before standing and heading back to her office. The deputies were easing the car down the stairs and out of the station as a tow truck waited nearby.
“What are you thinking?” Quincy asked.
“I’m thinking Mrs. St. Aubin isn’t being completely honest with us.”
“What gave it away?” he asked, his tone dripping with sarcasm.
“But right now, there’s a fourteen-year-old girl out there somewhere, and we need to find her.”
“Agreed. Are you sure you’re up for this? What with it being your first day and all?”
“Up for it? This is why I became a law enforcement officer.”
“To save abducted girls?” he asked.
She eyed him a long moment, then said, “To catch criminals.”
After an excruciating session in which the EMT begged Sun repeatedly to go the urgent care facility, claiming a couple of her cuts needed stitches, he dressed them the best he could so Sun could don a fresh shirt and she and Quincy could drive Mrs. St. Aubin to her house to investigate the possible abduction site.
She set the deputies on various tasks like calling the school to see if the girl showed up there and getting her phone records, with her mother’s blessing.
Mrs. St. Aubin questioned Sun the entire way to her house. “Why aren’t you calling in the FBI or the CIA or whatever other organization needs to be notified? Shouldn’t you be calling for backup?”
At that moment, Sun just wanted to keep the woman calm. “We need to inspect the site before we call anyone in.”
“But we don’t have much time.” The woman was in a state of near panic, but Sun knew one thing Mrs. St. Aubin didn’t. They don’t always kill them in the first forty-eight hours. Sometimes they hold them for days.