Her First Mistake by Carey Baldwin (books for 10th graders txt) 📕

my brave little soldier. And then he’ll take us to live in a real house, and we’ll have dinner every night! Just think of it, Mia!

My tummy rumbles. Is Arnie rich?

She strokes my hair. Not rich, but he works hard, and he has big dreams.

Then Mommy says we have to dream big, too. Dreams are the future, and she knows how to make them happen for real.

You’ll tell him tonight?

I promise, she says and crosses her heart.

She’s crying hard. I won’t let you down, my precious Mia. Not this time. We’re going to live with Arnie, and I’m never going to have to worry again that the lady from the state will try to take you away from me.

Don’t let her take me away! I’m sobbing, too.

In the distance, I hear the faintest sound of tires grinding.

Twenty. Nineteen. Eighteen.

It’s time to go to the shed.

Seventeen. Sixteen.

My pocket vibrates.

Mia opened her eyes, took out her phone and looked down at the text from an unknown number:

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.

Thirty-Seven

By the time Mia arrived back at the Coopers’, Detective Samuels had assembled the entire family, minus Angelica, in the study.

Mia crossed the study’s threshold, feeling as empty as a bottomless well, unable to plumb the depths of her own darkness.

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.

That had to be Keisha harassing her about the keys, didn’t it?

It couldn’t mean anything else.

But what if it wasn’t Keisha? What if someone had seen her that night on Celeste’s street?

Doing what?

Mia didn’t own a gun, and she doubted she could overpower Celeste in hand-to-hand combat—the very idea was ludicrous. But suppose she had somehow managed to knock her friend out. Then what? Would she have carried the body back to her car—which showed no trace of dirt or blood—driven to some unknown location, dug a grave with her bare hands, and then awakened back in her bedroom with only a pair of damp tennis shoes and a single twig in her hair to show for it?

She gritted her teeth.

Whoever sent that text might have succeeded in making her hands shake and her knees weaken, but if the plan was to scare her off, to paralyze her with fear, or to get her to believe she’d done something she hadn’t, it wasn’t going to work.

Stiffening her back, she nodded to Detective Samuels. “Sorry I’m late.”

He motioned for Mia to take a seat next to Alma on the sofa, while two men, whom Mia recognized as detectives, rolled an oversized whiteboard into the room.

What looked to be a recorder stood upended on Baxter’s desk.

Not brave enough to make eye contact with anyone, she stared straight ahead, waiting for Samuels to begin. The crackle of paper being smoothed and the cawing of crows outside the window provided a foreboding soundtrack as the two detectives attached a giant map to the whiteboard. Then they took up a position on either side of the door, their jackets open just enough to provide a peek at their service weapons.

Were they anticipating that someone—like her—might try to make a run for it?

With one hand, Samuels pushed his jacket back, and, his pistol in full view, moved to the whiteboard. “All right, we ready?”

No reply from the cheap seats.

“I’ll take that as a yes. First off, I want to address, for the record, the purpose of this assembly. When Alma called me this morning, she made it known the family feels we, the police, either haven’t been doing our utmost to find Celeste, or that we’ve been derelict in our duty to keep the family informed. I’m here, this afternoon, to assure you we are leaving no stone unturned, and to provide an update—to the extent I can do so without jeopardizing an ongoing investigation. I’ve brought all of you together for the sake of efficiency, and to see if sharing information as a group might lead to some new insights. I’ll make a brief presentation, and then anyone with questions or information should speak up.”

Mia nodded along with the others.

“These—” with two fingers, Samuels thumped about a dozen spots on the map that had been encircled with black sharpie “—represent areas where we’ve conducted searches—in some cases multiple times. As you can see, we’ve covered large portions, both urban and rural, of San Diego County.”

“How did you determine which areas to search?” Baxter interrupted.

“Not randomly, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“I’m not implying a damn thing,” Baxter ground out. “I’m asking a reasonable question.”

“Baxter, please.” Alma sent him an admonishing look.

His face reddened. “Well?”

“The answer is that the determination is multifactorial.” Samuels held his hand up to indicate he’d like to finish before taking more questions. “This isn’t just us out there, folks. Our tip line is active, and we’ve been working Celeste’s case in conjunction with a number of other agencies: the FBI, the San Diego County Sheriff’s department, and the BI—California’s statewide bureau of criminal investigation.”

“But the case is under your primary direction,” Baxter said. “It’s your job to find my daughter.”

“Understood. I’m not trying to avoid accountability here. I simply want to reassure you we’re utilizing all our tools, calling on all our resources.”

“And getting nowhere.” Baxter folded his arms and sat back.

“Not as far as we’d like. We’re working our usual avenues—for instance, we’re checking on all the known sex offenders in the area—and we’re not done with that monumental undertaking yet. I’m also sorry to say we’re handicapped by a few things: the lack of a witness to a crime; the fact her car hadn’t been moved from the lot near the Piano Man, and there were no unexpected prints or other evidence in it; and finally the fact we haven’t located her cell phone—which nowadays is one of our most important sources of evidence. It last pinged off a tower near the alley where we found her empty purse. We believe the battery was removed shortly before midnight on Friday. We’ve canvassed her social media and subpoenaed her text messages, and those roads did generate leads.”

“What leads?