Page 57 of Long Gone

I’m looking at the police report on your father’s car, and I have a couple of questions for you.

Call me when you get a chance.

I wasn’t surprised when my phone rang less than a minute later.

“What do you need?” he said after I answered.

“Do you know if your father’s car was clean the day he disappeared?”

“It was messy,” he said. “He dropped me off at school, and I offered to clean it over the weekend if he paid me twenty bucks.”

“Could he have had it cleaned by someone else?”

“Why are you asking?”

“The report and the photos show the car completely cleaned out.”

“He didn’t do that,” Anton said in a tight voice.

“And the position of the driver’s seat?” I asked.

“Not too close to the steering wheel, but not all the way back either. Somewhere in the middle.”

“That’s very helpful. Thank you.”

“You found something,” he said, sounding excited.

“I think there’s evidence to support the idea that your father didn’t leave his car at the airport. Someone else did.”

“So he’s dead,” he said in a flat tone.

“I’m not sure what this means. It’s only one piece of the puzzle. There’s a lot more to discover. I’ll let you and your mother know as soon as I know something.”

Someone had cleaned Hugo’s car. Why?

I scoured the report and looked for any mention of taking samples for evidence and didn’t find anything, so I called Detective Jones.

“I take it you got the report,” he said.

“I did, and a couple of things stuck out to me.”

“Okay…”

“His car was clean.”

“So?”

“His wife and his son say his car was typically messy, and they confirmed it was dirty the morning he disappeared.”

“So? He got it cleaned?”

“But his son was usually the one to clean it.”

“It was clean, Adams,” he said, sounding irritated. “So what?”

“What about his seat position?”

“What about it?”

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