Page 65 of Sworn to Silence
I’m still thinking about the second victim when Glock walks in. “What’s up?”
“Close the door.”
He reaches behind him and the door clicks shut.
“I need you to drop everything,” I begin.
He moves to the visitor chair and sits. “All right.”
“This is just between you and me, Glock. No one can know what you’re doing or why. And I can’t tell you everything.”
“Tell me what you can and I’ll run with it.”
Relief flits through me that he trusts me enough to work blind. “I want you to dig up everything you can on a man by the name of Daniel Lapp.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s local. Amish. No one has seen him in sixteen years.”
The time frame doesn’t elude Glock, and for the first time he looks surprised. “He’sAmish?”
“People assumed he fled the lifestyle.”
“He got family here?”
I nod. “A brother. I’ve already talked to him.”
“He give you anything?”
“No.”
Glock studies me a little too closely. “You going to tell me why we’re looking at this guy?”
“I can’t. I just need you to trust me, okay?”
He nods. “Okay. I’ll see what I can dig up.”
Just like that. No questions. No objections at being left in the dark. I feel a pang of guilt. Like maybe I don’t deserve that kind of trust.
“This a priority?” he asks after a moment.
“The highest,” I answer, and hope to God he can find what I could not.
CHAPTER 16
The storage room down the hall from my office has undergone an extreme transformation from catchall to command center. An eight-foot folding table surrounded by mismatched chairs sits in the center of the room. At the front, a half-podium squats atop a rickety card table. Next to the podium is an easel affixed with a pad. Someone nailed a dry-erase board to the wall. A single telephone sits on the floor next to the wall jack, and I realize the cabling won’t reach all the way to the table.
Glock and I are the first to arrive. I’m glad because I need a few minutes to gather my thoughts and mentally prepare. It’s important for me to appear competent and in control, particularly since the investigation has become multi-jurisdictional.
“Not bad,” Glock comments, referring to Mona’s and Lois’s ingenuity.
“It’ll do in a pinch.” I muster a halfhearted smile. “How bad is my eye?”
“It’s in full bloom, Chief. Purple’s not a bad color on you, though.”
A flurry of activity at the door snags my attention. I glance over to see Detrick and two uniformed deputies enter. I motion to the table and chairs. “It’s every man for himself.”
Detrick crosses to me and extends a beefy hand. “ME give you anything on the vic?”
