Page 56 of Dear Wife

“I’m going to forget you even suggested it, since we don’t have a warrant. Not yet anyway.” I drum my fingers on the desk, considering my next move. “Actually, I do have something I’d like you to do, and that’s keep a watch on the police department sites for me. The website, Facebook and Twitter pages, log-ins on the scanner and whatever else we’ve got out there. I want to know about any strange hits.”

“Definestrange.”

“Clusters of IPs coming from somewhere outside of Pine Bluff, most likely a city in the South.”

She gives me a skeptical look. “You think Sabine is on the run?”

“Maybe. Jeffrey said some things that made her seem like she might be unstable, and—”

“Oh, come on. You don’t believe that bullshit story he fed toMandy in the Morning, do you?”

“Not necessarily. But the sister confirmed Sabine has tried to leave before, and I have reason to believe she had some medical issues that may have been in play here, as well.”

I don’t mention that last little tip came from Jeffrey, and his carefully placed suggestion that Sabine might not have been pregnant. I found some old medical records on her laptop that indicate a string of failed pregnancies, along with correspondence with a local pharmacy about some prescriptions. All leads I’m still chasing down.

I push up out of the chair. “Just keep a watch on the sites, will you? Let me know if you see a bunch of hits coming from the same location. Call me the second you find something.”

“You got it.” Jade scribbles something on a sticky note, then turns back to the monitors. “Now, get out of here, will you? I got shit to do.”

I slide the map from her desk and duck into the hall, my cell phone buzzing with a message from Charlie. I swipe and read the text, which is terse and to the point:Bingo.Charlie is a man of few words, but it’s one I want to hear. I step into the stairwell and give him a call.

“I found a bank account,” he says by way of hello. “Wells Fargo, opened a little over three weeks ago at a branch in Texarkana. Her first deposit was a thousand dollars, which it looks like she made in cash. Since then, no more money flowing in.”

My throat clenches in excitement, followed by a surge of something a lot less pleasant. A thousand dollars is a hell of a lot of cash. An amount that doesn’t just go missing overnight, not without raising some red flags. An amount she would have to have been squirreling away for months in order to not get noticed.

“And the withdrawals?” I say from between clenched teeth, because for fucking sure there are withdrawals.

“A five hundred withdrawal last week, followed by withdrawals of twenty or thirty bucks a pop, and they’re all over the place. North Platte, Nebraska. Lexington, Kentucky. Amarillo, Texas. Boise, Phoenix, Charlotte, Pittsburgh, Colum—”

“She’s trying to throw us off.”

“Sure looks that way,” Charlie confirms. “At this pace, she’s got another three and a half weeks before the account runs dry. You want me to keep following the transactions?”

I drop my head and stare at the stairwell floor, grimy linoleum that looks like it hasn’t been cleaned since the last century, and try not to scream. My pulse jumps, ticking away in my temples. Charlie can follow the transactions, but no way in hell it’s her at the ATM machines. This is a ploy to throw me off, to send me scurrying down an opposite road, in an opposite direction.

Good thing I’m not that stupid.

“Keep an eye on the account,” I tell Charlie, “but don’t get excited until there’s a deposit, and then I want eyes on that camera footage. In the meantime, focus on what else she’s got up her sleeve. Because there’s more coming, that’s for damn sure. Call me when you find it.”

“Roger that,” he says, and the line goes dead.

I spend the rest of the day chasing leads.

From a search of the prescription drug database, which the Arkansas Department of Health tells me I don’t need a warrant for as long as I have a case number and probable cause. From Sabine’s doctors, her general practitioner and ob-gyn, neither of whom were as forthcoming. Both demanded a warrant before saying the first word. And from Dr. Lee, the urologist from Suite 203, where Jeffrey was pissing in a cup when fifty-one miles away, his wife walked out of a Super1 and disappeared. Dr. Lee wouldn’t tell me anything, either.

Which leaves me with Jeffrey. I pull to a stop at the curb and take in the stone and cedar siding, the neatly manicured lawn, the decorative woodwork around the dormers on the upstairs windows. What is this place—four thousand square feet? Five? Even before Sabine went missing, it was more house than two people could ever need. Soon, this big fancy house and everything in it will be all his.

I ring the bell, and his pleasant expression clouds over when he sees it’s me.

“Good thing the reporters have packed up and gone.” I hike a thumb over my shoulder, in the general direction of the trampled grass at the edge of his lawn. “Pine Bluff Detective questions Jeffrey Hardison in broad daylight, news at nine.”

“Talk to my attorney.”

He moves to shut the door, but he doesn’t get far. I put out a foot, stop it with my boot.

“Riddle me this,” I say, leaning against the door frame with a shoulder. “Why would a guy give the detective investigating his wife’s disappearance a bogus alibi, when he alreadyhasan alibi—a real one that’s easily verified. I just can’t figure it out. Not unless he has something to hide.”

I catch a flash ofoh shitpass over his face before he blinks it away. “Are you always this cryptic, Detective?” he says, but his sarcasm falls a little flat. “This would go a lot faster if you just say what you came here to say.”

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