The Never Game

And you never have to search very hard to find the suicide note.

Shaw asked for some pictures of the young woman, in different outfits and taken from different angles. He produced ten good ones.

Mulliner sat but Shaw remained standing. Without looking through his notebook, he said, “She left at four in the afternoon, on Wednesday, two days ago, after she got home from school. Then went out for the bike ride at five-thirty and never came home. You posted an announcement of the reward early Thursday morning.”

Mulliner acknowledged the timing with a tilt of his head.

“It’s rare to offer a reward that soon after a disappearance — absent foul play.”

“I was just... you know. It was devastating. I was so worried.”

“I need to know everything, Frank.” Shaw’s blue eyes were focused on the offeror’s.

Mulliner’s right thumb and forefinger were kneading the orange golf ball again. His eyes were on the Post-it notes on the coffee table. He gathered them, ordered them, then stopped. “We had a fight, Fee and I. Wednesday. After she came home. A big fight.”

“Tell me.” Shaw spoke in a softer voice than a moment ago. He now sat.

“I did something stupid. I listed the house Wednesday and told the broker to hold off putting up the For Sale sign until I could tell Fee. The Realtor did anyway and a friend up the street saw it and called her. Fuck. I should’ve thought better.” His damp eyes looked up. “I tried everything to avoid moving. I’m working those two jobs. I borrowed money from my ex’s new husband. Think about that. I did everything I could but I just can’t afford to stay. It was our family house! Fee grew up in it, and I’m going to lose it. The taxes here in the county? Jesus, crushing. I found a new place in Gilroy, south of here. A long way south. It’s all I can afford. Sophie’s commute to the college and her job’ll be two hours. She won’t see her friends much.”

His laugh was bitter. “She said, ‘Great, we’re moving to the fucking Garlic Capital of the World.’ Which it is. ‘And you didn’t even tell me.’ I lost it. I screamed at her. How she didn’t appreciate what I did. How my commute’ll be even longer. She grabbed her backpack and stormed out.”

Mulliner’s eyes slid away from Shaw’s. “I was afraid if I told you, you’d be sure she ran off, and wouldn’t help.”

This answered the important question: Why the premature reward offer? Which had raised concerns in Shaw’s mind. Yes, Mulliner seemed truly distraught. He’d let the house go to hell. This testified to his genuine concerns about his daughter. Yet murderous spouses, business partners, siblings and, yes, even parents sometimes post a reward to give themselves the blush of innocence. And they tend to offer fast, the way Mulliner had done.

No, he wasn’t completely absolved. Yet admitting the fight, coupled with Shaw’s other conclusions about the man, suggested he had nothing to do with his daughter’s disappearance.

The reason for the early offer of a reward was legitimate: it would be unbearable to think that he’d been responsible for driving his daughter from the house and into the arms of a murderer or rapist or kidnapper.

Mulliner said now, his voice flat as Iowa and barely audible, “If anything happens to her... I’d just...” He stopped speaking and swallowed.

“I’ll help you,” Shaw said.

“Thank you!” A whisper. He now broke into real tears, racking. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry...”

“Not a worry.”

Mulliner looked at his watch. “Hell, I have to get to work. Last thing I want to do. But I can’t lose this job. Please call me. Whatever you find, call me right away.”

Shaw capped his pen and replaced it in his jacket pocket and rose, closing the notebook. He saw himself out.

6

In assessing how to proceed in pursuing a reward — or, for that matter, with most decisions in life — Colter Shaw followed his father’s advice.

“Countering a threat, approaching a task, you assess the odds of each eventuality, look at the most likely one first and then come up with a suitable strategy.”

The likelihood that you can outrun a forest fire sweeping uphill on a windy day: ten percent. The likelihood you can survive by starting a firebreak and lying in the ashes while the fire burns past you: eighty percent.

Ashton Shaw: “The odds of surviving a blizzard in the high mountains. If you hike out: thirty percent. If you shelter in a cave: eighty percent.”

“Unless,” eight-year-old Dorion, always the practical one, had pointed out, “there’s a momma grizzly bear with her cubs inside.”

“That’s right, Button. Then your odds go down to really, really tiny. Though here it’d be a black bear. Grizzlies are extinct in California.”

Shaw was now sitting in his Chevy outside the Mulliners’ residence, notebook on lap, computer open beside him. He was juggling percentages of Sophie’s fate.

While he hadn’t told Mulliner, he believed the highest percentage was that she was dead.