He rubbed at his jaw. “Sure. I could see that.”

“I have a couple of ideas,” I said. “But that’s it. They’re just ideas. I don’t have a whole lot of solids. Just small things I’ve pieced together.”

“Okay,” he said. “But I’m not sure what I can do for you. I’m a cop, not a P.I.”

“I need a cop,” I said.

He tilted his head slightly, not understanding.

“You know anything about me?” I asked.

He hesitated just a fraction of a second, then shook his head. “Not really.”

“But you know I was a cop, right? I told you that when you stopped us.”

He shrugged, noncommittal.

“I’m having a hard time believing that you didn’t dig on me after I called and asked you to lunch,” I said. “But we can go with that for now.”

He didn’t say anything, just ran his thumb along the rim of his glass.

“I’ll preface what I’m going to tell you with this,” I said. “You don’t like anything I have to say, don’t want anything to do with me, no hard feelings. I buy lunch and you can walk away and we’re still friends.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“All I ask is if that does turn out to be how you feel, that you keep the conversation between us,” I continued. “Like it never happened.”

He fidgeted a little in the booth. “Not sure I’m comfortable with that up front.”

“Then I’ll just buy lunch and we can make small talk,” I said. “Because I need to know this conversation won’t go any further if you aren’t interested.”

Our sandwiches came and the waitress slid our plates in front of us. She refilled out waters and asked if we needed anything else. We told her we were good and she smiled and left.

He ate two bites of his sandwich, then said, “Okay. As long as you don’t confess to a crime, we’re good.”

Lasko was smart. He hadn’t committed right away, thinking through the possibilities and consequences before he agreed to hear me out. I liked that because it meant he was taking me seriously.

I didn’t waste any time or mince words. “I think someone in the Coronado P.D. was involved in my daughter’s abduction.”

If that shocked him, he didn’t show it. He took another bite of his sandwich and waited.

“Most of what I’ve got is circumstantial,” I said quickly. “Nothing hard. But my gut is telling me someone inside was a part of it. Two names in particular.” I paused. “You still interested?”

He picked up his napkin and wiped at his mouth. He set it back in his lap and nodded. “I’m listening.”

As he continued to eat, I explained to him where my suspicions came from, going all the way back to how Bazer treated me when Elizabeth first disappeared. I covered all of the details, even the smallest ones, in order to give him a full picture of what had gone on in the previous few weeks. I wanted him to know that what I was telling him wasn’t just some crackpot theory or some out of left field idea I’d concocted in order to deal with the trauma of having a child taken from me. I needed him to know that I’d spent hours thinking it through and that what I was telling him was a genuine possibility. It might have been wrong, but there was plausibility to my theory.

He pushed his plate to the side, balled his napkin up and tossed it on the plate. He leaned back in the booth. “That’s a lot of shit, Mr. Tyler.”

“Joe. And, yeah. It’s a lot of shit.”

He folded his arms across his chest and stared hard at me. “You’re missing one big piece, though.”

“What’s that?”

“The why,” he said. “You can draw some lines between your daughter and Bazer and Lorenzo, but you don’t have any lines to the why. Why would either of them take your daughter?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “And I know. I am missing the why. It’s the one thing I can’t get a handle on and it’s probably the most important piece.”

He nodded. “Agreed.”

“So I need to know if there is a why,” I said. “Because if there isn’t a why, then it probably doesn’t matter if I’m right about my theory or not. I won’t be able to prove a thing.”

He nodded again. “It won’t hold water.”

It was my turn to nod. “Agreed.”

“So then this is when you tell me why I’m here,” he said.

The waitress came and cleared our plates, asked if we needed anything else. We both shook our heads and she dropped the check on the table.

I reached for the folded piece of paper, slid it toward me. “I need someone who can poke around. On the inside. Someone who can ask questions without drawing too much attention. Someone who can tell the difference between bullshit and the truth.” I paused. “And someone willing to stick their nose into something that might be pretty goddamn ugly.”

He held my gaze from the other side of the table and I couldn’t read him.

He unfolded his arms and laid his hands flat on the table. “Why me? You don’t know me. You don’t know my history. Why are you asking me? And why do you trust me?” He shrugged. “Maybe I won’t keep my mouth shut. Maybe I’ll call Bazer as soon as I walk out of here and tell him he’s got a former cop out to get him.” His eyes narrowed. “Why me?”

It was a completely fair question and I would’ve been surprised if he hadn’t asked it.

“You cut us loose,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“When you stopped us,” I said. “You made the stop. You listened to me. You had to make some quick decisions. You didn’t worry about pissing off a superior by making the wrong decision or think you were smarter than the situation by drawing the whole thing out longer than it already was. You saw what was on the table, you made a decision and that was that.” I shrugged. “There was no bullshit. No jerking a chain to jerk a chain. You did your job. And helped me find my daughter.”

His expression was still neutral, his eyes still on mine.

“So I trust you,” I said. “I trust you to tell me if I’m right and I trust you to tell me if I’m wrong. Either way. And that’s what I need. Someone who doesn’t give a shit about department politics and will do the right thing, whatever that is.” I paused. “Am I out on a limb here because I really don’t know you? Probably. But I trust my gut. I trust you.”

He looked away from me, toward the front window of the deli. I didn’t think he was looking for anything specific, just thinking over what I’d said. Probably trying to make up his mind as to whether or not I was worth sticking his neck out for. I didn’t blame him for that. If he decided to help me, there was no going back. Cops didn’t like cops questioning from within. There was a reason most cops hated Internal Affairs. So just by asking Lasko, I was putting him in a tough situation.

He slid out of the booth and stood at the edge of the table, stuck out his hand. “Thanks for lunch.”

We shook. “You’re welcome.”

He pulled a pair of sunglasses from his pocket and set them on top of his head. “I’ll be in touch, Joe.”

I watched him walk out of the deli and I had no idea what he meant.

THREE

I left downtown, but instead of heading back toward Coronado, I pointed my car inland, toward Kearney Mesa. The midday traffic was non-existent and it was one of the few times that the time it took to get to Kearney Mesa was actually commensurate with the distance. Twenty minutes after leaving downtown, I was exiting the freeway and pulling up to a low-slung building near Montgomery Field that served as the San Diego field office for the FBI.

I took the elevator to the second floor and told the desk clerk that even though I didn’t have an appointment, I was hoping that Special Agent Dorothy Blundell might be inclined to meet with me. The clerk looked skeptical and asked me to have a seat. Three minutes later, Blundell was in the lobby.

“Mr. Tyler,” she said. “Nice to see you again.”

I nodded and we shook hands. She motioned for me to follow her and led me to the same conference room we’d used when we’d brought Elizabeth in after we’d rescued her from the warehouse in the south bay. Blundell took the seat at the head of the table and I sat down in the one to her left.