Page 43 of Forbidden Want

“And the McDades wanted her back.”

“And not reporting the disappearance looks suspicious later on.”

“So when the school call in officials for this little girl who just vanished…”

“Maybe those officials would take a closer look at the family and their not-so-legitimate practices.”

“Right,” he said, “so they had to call the cops.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“And then what?”

“Then nothing. There’s talk of searches in the surrounding neighborhood. They canvassed neighbors. No one saw anything. No one heard anything.”

“People are trained to say that,” he said. “They know better than to talk to the cops about the McDades.”

“Right.”

“It has to be connected,” he said, forking up some noodles. “It has to be. No way a McDade goes missing and it’s just a coincidence. It has to be connected to the business. No one would take the risk of upsetting the McDades just ‘cause she was pretty. Even kiddie fiddlers value their lives.”

“You’d think…” she said, sliding to the edge of her seat, food perched precariously on her knee. “Except you want to hear the juicy part?” Still chewing, he raised his brows in confirmation. She put her plate on an end table to lean over her folded legs. “They recorded the interviews.”

“Probably so no one could be disappeared later on if the cops reported something the family didn’t like.”

“Maybe,” she said, less interested in the why than the contents themselves. “They talk to Clancy, Dorsey’s dad. Usual questions. Relationship with his daughter. Undue stress. Any enemies…” Strat smiled. “I know, right? So they ask him if there’s anyone else they should talk to. Anyone who’d know more about Dorsey’s life or might be a person of interest…”

She paused.

“And…?”

“This is where it gets interesting. Clancy mentions teachers, nannies, he’s sort of vague, she had this friend and that… Then from absolutely nowhere, want to know what he says?”

“Goddamnit, yes,” he said, stabbing the fork into his food.

“You don’t want to talk to Silvio Manzani,” she said, dropping back in the chair like she’d dropped the microphone.

He frowned. “Wait… What the hell has Manzani got to do with it?”

She threw up her arms in a shrug. “I have no idea! It was totally random.”

“Did they talk to Manzani?” he asked. “Can’t imagine they’d be dumb enough not to take that as a lead on something.”

“I don’t know. After that, everything just fades out. They put the investigation on the back burner. They take almost everyone off the case, reroute personnel, and the media stops following the story.”

“That’s weird.”

“I know.”

“You want to talk to someone non-official.”

“Not a cop or a reporter,” she said, “someone who’d have known what was going on at the time.”

“On the street,” Strat said. “Yeah. Someone knows something. I always figured they did. Maybe I should’ve paid attention to the gossip… There’s always talk, even if guys don’t know what actually went down.”

“Rumors, whispers, speculation,” she said. “That’s what I thought too. We need a common denominator. Someone who’d know both families. Do work for the McDades and Manzanis. They’d be most reliable, right? To hear it from both sides?”

“I work for both of them. I mean, I have, used to. Not anymore.”

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