Page 11 of Witness 8

We don’t take cases if we don’t believe the client is innocent.

‘Well, John,’ I said, ‘looks like you got yourself some more lawyers. We’ll need to do some digging around the case.’

I turned, glanced through the glass window on the back wall of the conference room. I only saw Denise at her desk.

‘Where’s Bloch?’ I asked.

Kate addressed her answer to the room. ‘Our investigator, Bloch, is currently assisting another private investigator in the search for Dyani Sandoval.’

‘The little girl who was snatched in Saratoga Springs?’ asked Al.

‘Yes, Bloch texted me this morning. She’s been up there all weekend. She thinks they’re close to finding her,’ said Kate.

‘Who is the PI?’ I asked.

‘Our friend, Gabriel Lake, freshly returned from a trip to London. He said he wanted Bloch for a matter of diplomacy.’

‘Diplomacy? Bloch?OurBloch?’ I asked.

Kate nodded, said, ‘I think his definition of diplomacy is a bit different from ours.’

3

Bloch

Bloch had been in upstate New York for three days.

She didn’t like being away from Kate, but right now Dyani Sandoval needed Bloch more than her childhood friend did. Seven days ago, John Sandoval was tending to his horses on his property. His daughter, Dyani, was practicing for the upcoming tryouts for the school cheerleading team about two hundred feet away. He watched her cartwheel and dance in her faded blue jeans. There had never been a school cheerleader of Native American descent on the team before, but John Sandoval just knew his little Dyani was going to make it. She had incredible stamina. The temperature was in the nineties, perspiration had darkened the back of her T-shirt, her dark hair shone with sweat, and still she danced and practiced her cheers. Always moving.

But her movement had brought her further away from the stables, and close to the white picket fence that bordered the road.

John wasn’t concerned when he first saw the white van on the road. He became uneasy as it slowed its approach the closer it got to his fence.

When it stopped and the big man got out of the passenger seat, John was already running for the fence. He watched the man grab Dyani round the waist from behind. Saw him lift her up, her legs kicking in the air. Watched him throw her over the fence like a bag of garbage. Saw him pick her up again, throw herin the back of the van and get in with her. The rear doors closed and the van pulled away at speed as John reached the fence.

This is what he had told the police in the initial report. Amber alerts went up statewide and in neighboring New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont. An unfathomable number of Native American children go missing every year. What made Dyani different was her father. John bred racehorses and he had powerful connections. One friend called another, and called another, and Gabriel Lake was tasked with finding Dyani.

He was a former specialist in the FBI, one of the bright stars of the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Until he was forced to retire early. One of Sandoval’s friends was an ex-Navy Seal who had gone into the security business. He knew about Lake through his connections with former seals who had joined law enforcement.

There was no one better to find Dyani.

Gabriel Lake was the man who hunted monsters.

Right then, at noon on a hot Monday in upstate New York, Lake was hunting for a piece of paper. Bloch drove the Jeep rental she’d picked up at Albany Airport. Lake had taken the bus upstate ahead of time and met Bloch at the airport. He said he preferred riding shotgun with Bloch. It gave him time to think. And time to organize his paperwork.

Lake had a plastic carrier bag on his lap stuffed to the brim with paper – newspaper clippings, pieces of torn maps, notes, police reports, printouts of pictures, napkins filled with scribblings in blue ink and what seemed like hundreds of small Post-It notes that spilled out of the bag like confetti whenever he shoved his hand inside.

‘You find it yet?’ asked Bloch.

‘It’s here. I have a system,’ he said.

‘You have a mess. That’s what you have,’ she said.

‘Don’t bother me when I’m in the system,’ he said.

His right leg bounced up and down on the floor of the Jeep. Maybe it was a nervous thing, or maybe Lake was just one of those guys whose motor was always running.

‘Got it,’ he said, and drew out a napkin.