Page 91 of Nash Falls

“Sure thing, Mr. Nash. Anything to help find Maggie. I’ll go right after my shift ends.”

Nash next drove to the Perkinses’ home. He knew them from some HOA meetings and neighborhood barbeques. He had learned that Phil Perkins had been a banker and his wife a Realtor.

A sleepy-looking Phil answered the door in his pajamas and robe. After Nash explained about Maggie being kidnapped and what Adams had told Nash, Phil said that no one, certainly not the police, had come to his house the previous night.

Phil said, “What the hell is going on?”

Nash had an idea about that, and it scared the crap out of him.

CHAPTER

45

NASH LEFT A MESSAGE ATthe number Detective Ramos had left with him asking the detective to call him as soon as possible. He then drove back to his house. Judith was locked in their bathroom and he could hear her weeping. He walked to Maggie’s room and stood looking at the police tape strung across it like some visible virus overtaking his world.

He texted Morris for an update and received a terse reply: Working it.

He was exhausted and not thinking clearly. He knew he really should get some sleep, but how can you rest when your child is missing? And he really wasn’t sure what he felt about Judith right now. The fact of her affair with Rhett, which would have crushed him under any other circumstances, seemed pushed to the far recesses of his emotional universe. All that mattered was Maggie.

Is this how quickly one’s life falls apart? Before my father’s funeral my world was perfect. Now, it’s been shattered into pieces so small I can’t recognize a single bit of it.

Hours later, his phone buzzed, waking him from where he had finally fallen deeply asleep on the family room couch. Morning light was coming in through the window.

Shock said, “Is it true? Maggie’s gone? I saw the news this morning.”

A groggy Nash said, “Yes. Someone broke into our house and took her.”

“You think it’s connected to your stuff?”

“It has to be.”

“Does Judith know about all that?”

“No. I haven’t told her. And there was something weird.”

“What?”

He told Shock about the fake cops and the so-called swatting attempt.

“That would make sense,” said Shock. “A way in through the gate, nobody would question them. She might have been drugged or dead and in the trunk on the way out.”

This comment made Nash collapse forward and a sob escaped his lips. He tried to cover the phone, but didn’t quite make it.

“Damn, I’m sorry, Walter. I shouldn’t have been that blunt. I was thinkin’ with my pro hat on, not my human one.”

“It’s nothing I haven’t been thinking myself,” replied Nash as he straightened and slumped back on the sofa.

“Let me dig around. I’ll get back to you.”

Nash stumbled to the kitchen, where sunlight was streaming in all the windows, and made some coffee. He sucked down the cup greedily, as though the caffeine would give him some superpower to aid him in locating Maggie.

Twenty minutes later Judith came down the stairs. She was dressed to the nines with full makeup, hair teased out and frothy, and a half-dozen jangling bracelets on each wrist. She stopped on the bottom riser and eyed the unkempt and bloodshot-eyed Nash as he sat at the kitchen island in the clothes he’d slept in.

The only thing he could think of to say was “Going somewhere?”

She didn’t answer, but stepped into the kitchen, crossed the space, snagged a cup, and poured herself coffee. She leaned against a counter and drank it down.

Nash eyed her for a bit and then retreated into his own thoughts.