If She's Found, page 1
If She's Found
A Thriller Novel
Alesha Dykema
Copyright © 2022 by Alesha Dykema
Cover Design by The Cover Collection
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental
For Ryan. Whose name is actually Cornelius Pumpernickel III of Brunswick. It’s in print now. Undeniable. I win.
Contents
1. Chapter One
2. Chapter Two
3. Chapter Three
4. Chapter Four
5. Chapter Five
6. Chapter Six
7. Chapter Seven
8. Chapter Eight
9. Chapter Nine
10. Chapter Ten
11. Chapter Eleven
12. Chapter Twelve
13. Chapter Thirteen
14. Chapter Fourteen
15. Chapter Fifteen
16. Chapter Sixteen
17. Chapter Seventeen
18. Chapter Eighteen
19. Chapter Nineteen
20. Chapter Twenty
21. Chapter Twenty-One
22. Chapter Twenty-Two
23. Chapter Twenty-Three
24. Chapter Twenty-Four
25. Chapter Twenty-Five
26. Chapter Twenty-Six
27. Chapter Twenty-Seven
28. Chapter Twenty-Eight
29. Chapter Twenty-Nine
30. Chapter Thirty
31. Chapter Thirty-One
32. Chapter Thirty-Two
33. Chapter Thirty-Three
34. Chapter Thirty-Four
35. Chapter Thirty-Five
36. Chapter Thirty-Six
37. Chapter Thirty-Seven
Acknowledgments
About The Author
Thank You
Connect With Alesha
Chapter one
The moment her eyes meet mine, I can tell she thinks I’ve killed my daughter.
“Hi. I’m Detective Anne Briar. I’ll be leading this case.”
She sticks her hand out. I take it. Shake it. Drop it.
“I have every hope and intention of bringing Bella back home, safe and sound. Please don’t hesitate to call or text me any time while we work to make that happen.”
Her speech sounds rehearsed. Like she’s said it a lot in her career as a missing persons detective. I wonder what her success rate is. How many people has she actually brought home “safe and sound?” How many kids even go missing in Spencer, Michigan?
A uniformed police officer edges around her in the doorway to make his way in and she steps further inside.
“I’m Charlie. This is my wife, Andi.” Charlie reaches over and shakes her hand.
Everything about Anne Briar is muted. Her skin is sallow, her hair is dull, and her clothes are faded. Her eyes, though—her eyes are intense, and they bore into mine. I look at the ground, not brave enough for the challenge.
Her hand juts out, holding a business card. I look up, but hesitate too long, and Charlie jumps into action. He reaches around me and takes the card. Then he’s thanking her and ushering her into our living room, but I can feel her eyes still on me as she walks away. Our eyes meet and my heart pounds in my throat as I glance away.
Mentally lashing myself, I follow them after grabbing my coffee from the counter. It’s been forty-eight hours since I’ve slept, and the exhaustion and shock is making my mind slow and unfocused when it needs to be sharp.
I stop at the edge of the living room, my attention taken by the group of people crowded around Bella’s bedroom door. Some are in uniforms, and some are not, but they all huddle together at the doorframe. What are they looking at? Looking for?
“Mrs. Miller?” Briar’s voice pulls me back to the living room.
“Sorry?” I say.
I think maybe she was talking to me. She looks at me expectantly but doesn’t repeat whatever she said. I turn to Charlie, who is sitting on the couch. His blue eyes are wide, and he looks on the brink of hysteria with his sandy blonde curls in disarray. He keeps running his hands through his hair, a nervous tick I hadn’t realized he had until now. He pats the space next to him.
“Detective Briar needs to ask us some questions,” he says.
I laugh a strangled sound and shake my head to dispel the confusion from my brain like a dog shakes water from its fur. As I move past Charlie to sit next to him, I cringe at my awkwardness. I take a sip from my cup while Briar pulls things from her messenger bag, and I wince at the cold liquid that hits my lips. It would probably look rude to get up and microwave it, so I just take another mouthful. I need the caffeine.
Normally, I couldn’t care less about coming off rude. I do, more often than not. But I care deeply about what this woman thinks of me. And I’m afraid we’re not off to a good start. I’m acting weird and need to calm down.
It’s only now that I’m sitting that I realize Briar is sitting in Bella’s chair; a blue recliner that belonged to my Aunt Margaret. It was the only thing of Margaret’s I kept after she died. Bella liked to cuddle up with a blanket to watch cartoons and eat her cereal in that chair.
“I’m sorry—but would you mind sitting in the other chair?” I point to the antique chair next to her that looks more like a decoration than a seating option, and that’s because it is.
She looks at the chair and then at me. I wonder what I’ll do if she refuses, but she smiles tightly and stands.
“Of course.” She perches at the edge of it, seemingly afraid to put her weight on the wicker woven seat. I don’t blame her. So much for not acting weird.
“I’m going to record this conversation so that I can refer back to it if needed. Is that okay?” She sets the voice recorder on the coffee table between us. It’s digital, not the old school kind with a tape inside.
“Yes, of course,” Charlie says with a nod.
They both look at me and I nod.
“Out loud, please. So permission to record can be heard.”
“Yes,” I say.
A murmur of voices erupts from down the hall just as one of the officers appears around the corner.
“Sorry to interrupt. But we need a picture of the girl.” The officer sounds breathless, though he’s only walked a few feet and he speaks with his head facing Charlie and me, but his eyes on Briar.
“Bella,” I say, getting to my feet.
His eyes flick to me. Skittish.
“‘The girl’s’ name is Bella.” I walk past him and go to the shelf on the entryway wall by the front door. There is a picture of Bella I took a few weeks ago. She went with me to have the photo printed and I let her pick the frame. I never could have imagined that a few weeks later it would be used for missing persons posters.
I turn the frame over and remove the photo, sliding the metal prongs to release the cardboard backing. I hold the picture in my hands and stare at her gummy smile. She’d finally started losing her baby teeth. Her two front adult teeth have started poking through and the two beside those are gone. Her face is flushed – she has the same sensitive fair skin as Charlie, and she’d been out in the sun most of that day. Her eyes shine, sea blue, also like her dad’s. But her wild, dark brown hair is mine. She has two braids, but her hair frizzes out in all directions.
You can see a sliver of the playground behind her, but what you can’t see are the streamers and balloons behind the camera. Purple, pink, blue, and yellow – all her favorite colors. The balloons that wished her a happy birthday. The cake with eight trick candles that inexplicably lit back up after being blown out.
I hand the picture to the officer with shaking hands.
“Are you using the picture for posters? We’ll get it back, right?” Charlie says.
“We’ll make fliers with the picture along with some important facts to handout and use in searches around the neighborhood. And yes, sir, we’ll return the picture to you as soon as possible.”
Taking my seat next to Charlie, I try to fight back a wave of nausea. My chest is so tight I’m afraid it will rip right open, spilling my insides all over the coffee table. I want to be alone. I want to close my eyes. The house is too bright with early summer sun glaring through the tall living room windows. For the first time since we moved in, I wish we had curtains.
Briar clears her throat, sitting taller in her chair, trying to get the focus back on her.
“When is the last time either of you saw Bella?” she says.
“Last night,” Charlie says. “We got her ready for bed and we both kissed her goodnight—“ Charlie’s voice breaks, and with it, my heart. We won’t survive this.
“Neither of you saw her again after putting her to bed last night?”
“No,” we both confirm.
“And what time was that?”
Charlie looks at me. “Around 8:30 PM,” I say.
“What time did you realize she was not in her room?”
“Eight,” Charlie says. “We wake her up at eight every morning.”
“And what time did you wake up?”
“Seven,” he says.
Her eyes shift to me
“Six,” I say.
These are the times we
But she suspects I know more than I’m telling. I see it in the way her eyes narrow ever so slightly. In the way her eyebrows just barely pull together. Something in her can see the darkness in me and that’s an excellent skill to have as a detective. Not good for me, however. Because I realize I’ve just given her an hour of opportunity. An hour that Charlie was asleep, and I was awake, and our daughter was gone.
“And when you got up at six, was there anything out of place? Any noises, anything not quite right that you can remember?”
“No.” It comes out a whisper, so I try again and say it louder. “Nothing felt different.”
“Okay. What did you do leading up to going into her room this morning?”
“I made coffee.” I look over to the kitchen and imagine myself going through my morning routine. “Then I got in the shower while it brewed.” I don’t normally shower in the morning. But I had to this morning. And so now I list it off as part of my regimen, so it doesn’t seem odd.
She nods for me to continue.
“I got dressed, put on my makeup, poured the coffee, and drank it in the kitchen.” I almost said ‘while checking work emails on my phone’ because that is what I usually do. But I didn’t check my emails this morning and I don’t know if that’s something they can verify. That reminds me, I need to text my boss to let her know I will not be coming in today.
“Is that it?” she asks.
“Yes. I’m usually drinking my coffee for five to ten minutes before I hear Charlie’s alarm. He takes fast showers, so I make him a cup of coffee when I hear the water turn on. Then we sit, drink our coffee, and talk about what we have going on that day.”
“So that was your morning before going into Bella’s room?” She turns to Charlie. “Wake up at seven, shower, and have coffee with your wife?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Which of you went to wake her up this morning?”
“I did,” I say. The words come out soft again, but I don’t repeat myself this time. This is the part I have to do well. A tear slips from my eye and falls down my cheek. It’s real. The story is a lie, but the grief is true. It takes everything in me not to fall to the floor and drown in it.
“Can you describe what you saw?”
“Nothing.” Anger swells inside me, but anger is the wrong emotion, so I smother it with worry and panic. The right emotions. “There was nothing. Bella wasn’t in her bed.”
I want to say more—I’d planned to say more, but I’m second-guessing what I should tell her and what might get me caught in this web of lies and my breaths feel shallow and short.
Charlie jumps in. “I heard Andi call Bella’s name. But not in the right way,” he says.
“What do you mean? ‘Not in the right way?’”
“She would call her name to wake her up. But it was a question. Like when you’re looking for someone.”
Bella–Bella? Where are you? Bella?
This part is true, too.
I realize she doesn’t look at Charlie with the same accusatory glare. It doesn’t take a detective to see Charlie’s heart of gold. It practically beams straight out of his chest.
“Is there any chance that Bella left the house on her own? Has she ever tried to sneak out or run away before?”
My face scrunches in a mixture of confusion and annoyance. She’s eight, not sixteen.
“No,” I say plainly.
Briar nods but continues down her same implausible path. “If she did find herself outside alone, though. Where would she go? Does she have friends or family nearby that she might walk to?”
“No,” I repeat. “We have no family nearby and she wouldn’t walk to her friends’ houses in the middle of the night. She wouldn’t even know how to get to most of them.”
I roll the skin of the inside of my cheek between my teeth, biting down, wanting the taste of blood and the pain of breaking skin. The overwhelming desire to be alone washes over me again. I’m in shock and I’m tired and I just need a minute alone to process the worst day of my life. Which I was sure had already happened years ago, but I was wrong. So wrong.
“I’m sorry,” I say as the detective opens her mouth to ask another question. “I understand these questions are important, but it feels like we’re wasting time sitting here when we could be looking for Bella.” Isn’t that what all the parents say? There is nothing she and her team can do for me. For Bella. But I’ve watched enough crime dramas.
“Police officers are out there looking for her now. They’re going door to door and looking all around the neighborhood for any signs of her,” she says.
Charlie puts his arm around me and hugs me to his side. I want to pull away. I don’t want to be touched right now, but I sit still. Not wanting the detective to infer anything from my rejection of his comfort.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I say, getting to my feet. Weaving past the two men in the hallway outside Bella’s room, I try to keep my eyes on my feet. The shutter sound of a camera goes off behind me as they take photos of her room, looking for evidence.
Pressing the door shut and turning the lock, I steady myself on the vanity. How is this my life? I force myself to look at my reflection, to look myself in the eyes. Dark brown circles surrounded by bloodshot white. My hair, brown and flat, falls limply around my face and lays just past my shoulders. My lips are specked with dark spots where I’ve picked the skin from them. The eye makeup I haphazardly threw on this morning, now gathers in the corners of my eyes. I look like shit.
I splash cold water on my face and then use the damp towel on the back of the door to dry off. Taking one last look in the mirror, I pull my hair forward, covering the round scar on the side of my neck. A habit I developed as a teenager. I glance over at the tub where drops of water still sit on the ledge from our morning showers and feel a stab of anxiousness in my chest. I forgot to bleach the tub.
Chapter two
Walking back to the living room with sweat gathering at my lower back, I hear Charlie in the middle of explaining that we don’t have any sort of home security system.
“I really don’t know that anyone in the neighborhood does. It never seemed necessary—” Charlie says, trailing off and looking at his hands.
This town was a good one, not too long ago. It still isn‘t necessarily bad, but it’s on the downhill. Even so, most people here still live like it’s ‘back in the day’ when people didn’t lock their doors and left their windows open at night. They don’t have cameras.
I was supposed to handle most of the talking to the police. But Charlie took over when he saw me crumbling. I have to pull myself together. Just for a little while longer. I sit down beside my husband and take a deep breath as his fingers lace with mine. I wiggle them loose and reach for my coffee cup.
I force myself to meet Briar’s eyes. Innocent people aren’t afraid of eye contact.
“Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt you or Bella?” Briar asks, pushing a stray hair away from her face. It’s not blonde, but not brown. She’s pulled it back in a bun, but a few pieces have escaped her clip.
I pretend to think. But not too long. I shake my head. “No. No one.”
She has us list out every person we know—coworkers, acquaintances, friends. It isn’t an incredibly long list. Shorter than what I imagine most other peoples’ list would be. Most are people Charlie knows, some are friends of Bella’s. I only list my coworkers.
“Was anything else missing? Any clothes, shoes, or any other belongings?” Briar asks.
I shake my head but remember the voice recorder. “No. Not that I can tell.”
Butterflies kick off in my stomach at the lie. It’s exhausting. Paying attention to the direction my eyes point when I talk. What my hands are doing. The way my voice sounds. All while officers walk to and from the house. In and out of Bella’s room.
We gave them full access to the rest of the house, but they’ve seemed mostly focused on her bedroom. A man looked at the main entry points of the house and dusted them for fingerprints when the crime scene team first arrived. The tub was a major oversight and I try to listen both to Briar and what’s going on around the corner. I wouldn’t know if they moved into the bathroom. They could have a Q-Tip circling the tub drain right this moment.
