“I know my daughter, Chief. And I know she’s held true to that promise just as I know she would never miss a piano lesson without letting somebody know. She reveres Aurelio and wouldn’t just stand him up like that. Gretchen and I have been texting and calling her all evening and… nothing. She may have a few secrets, but she would never just go radio silent on me like this.”
“Okay, but I’m still not entirely sure why I’m here and why you haven’t gone to local authorities or had Deputy Director Church mobilize Bureau resources—”
“As I said, I want this handled quietly and discreetly,” he cuts me off. “I do not want the media circus that would come with the child of a sitting senator being abducted.”
“Blake, you know as well as I do that media scrutiny sharply decreases the chances of us getting Ashley back alive,” Church says softly. “We just don’t want to add any more risk to the situation than there already is.”
It’s understandable. The media feeding frenzy around the abduction of the child of a US Senator would be intense and would very likely make the kidnapper, if there is one, feel boxed-in and desperate. That sort of heightened pressure could make it more likely that he would kill Ashley. I’ve seen it happen too many times before.
“I’m sure you’re wondering why we’re coming to you with this, and the reason is simple,” Barlow starts. “Lauren says there is nobody better and nobody she trusts more than you. And there’s nobody I trust more than her, so if she says you’re the one to do the job, then that’s good enough for me.”
I glance at DD Church, and she gives me a tight nod, which seems to confirm what Barlow said is true. I’m glad to have her confidence, but I worry it might wind up being misplaced in a case that has as high a potential for failure as this one. But there’s nothing I can do about that right now. All I can do is focus on the task at hand and do my best to bring it to a happy conclusion.
“Okay, so you haven’t had any contact with Ashley since when?” I ask.
“I talked to her on the phone this morning before she left for school. When I’m not able to be at home, we make a point of talking every morning,” he says.
“And where is home, Senator?”
“Arlington,” he replies. “I try to make it home every night, but some sessions go late into the night. On those occasions, I’ll just come here to get a few hours of sleep.”
I pull a notebook and pen out of my coat pocket and jot down a few notes. My initial thought was to search this home for evidence, but if this is his secondary home near the Capitol, not his primary residence with his daughter, there might not be much here. So, the fact that he was here while his daughter remained behind in Arlington, only about half an hour away, doesn’t immediately set off any alarm bells in my head.
“All right, so not since this morning,” I say. “And how did you know something was wrong, Senator?”
“Just call me Elliot,” he says. “Please. We don’t need to stand on formality here.”
“Very well. How did you know something was wrong?”
“Lieb called me at five-thirty to tell me that Ashley was not at Aurelio’s studio,” Barlow said. “Lieb told me he spoke with Aurelio, and he said Ashley never showed up for her lesson.”
“And who is Lieb?”
“Ashley’s driver-slash-bodyguard. He’s been with me for a while. He used to be on my personal detail, but when she got a little older, I assigned him to be her shadow…”
His voice trails off, and I watch as Barlow’s face turns red. He squeezes his eyes shut with a grimace as he struggles to fight off the waves of tears, that steely self-control I observed just moments ago seeming to be crumbling. The emotions I see in his face seem genuine, and sincerity rings in his voice loud and clear. I’m not getting any bad hits off the man. Barlow sniffs and runs a hand across his face as he collects himself. I take the time to jot down the driver’s name and a couple of other things I’ll want to follow up on.
“Sorry,” he says, his voice thick.
“Nothing for you to be sorry about,” I say. “I know this has to be difficult for you.”
Barlow nods and looks like he’s aged another ten years in the last few minutes. But he grits his teeth and narrows his eyes, then clears his throat and raises his eyes to mine.
“After speaking with Lieb, I called Violet—that’s Sam’s sister. She lives in the house in Arlington and keeps an eye on Ashley when I’m here,” he continues. “She confirmed that Ashley wasn’t at home, and she hadn’t been able to reach her either. I rushed home and couldn’t find her anywhere. That’s when I called Lauren.”
“Okay, but what is it that made you immediately jump to abduction?” I ask. “Is it possible she left with some friends or—”
“Absolutely not. She would have told me if she were going somewhere,” he says, his voice tight. “She would have called and let me know. She wouldn’t just disappear. Like I said, I allow Ash to keep her secrets, but when it comes to something like going somewhere that’s not on the schedule, we have a hard, fast rule to always tell each other.”
“Is it possible you two got your wires crossed? That she—”
“Again, no. Between my schedule and all the extracurriculars she does, we both have so much going on, we always write our schedules down on the calendar we keep. We always put our schedules down just to avoid worrying about each other. Always,” he says.
“And neither of you have ever forgotten to jot something down?”
“Not once in the last eight years,” he says firmly. “Our lives are on those calendars, Blake. You can go back through all of them and see exactly where we are and what we’ve done on any given day. It’s all right there.”
Documenting every single thing they do is taking organization to another level. But then, given how busy the Senator and his daughter’s lives are, I guess it’s probably helpful to know where each other will be at any given time just to avoid situations that could result in a misunderstanding that causes a lot of undue worry.
“There’s another thing,” he says. “I haven’t seen her phone ping on the tracking app since the end of school. It’s like she just vanished.”
I frown. “You track your own daughter?”
“Of course I do. Most parents do, in this day and age.”
“There are a ton of apps out there these days for parents to track their kids,” Church supplies. “There’s lots to discuss about the idea that parents should have immediate access to their kids’ locations at all times; but for our purposes, it’s become pretty helpful to solve cases. They’re like Ring cameras.”
I file that away. Not having kids myself, I didn’t realize that it was so prevalent. “So you both have a security guard tailing her and a constant live feed of her location?”
Barlow nods slowly. “I know it sounds like a lot, but… I just want to make sure she’s safe. I trust my daughter, but we agreed that for another level of security, we’d share our locations with each other. That no matter what happens… even if…”
He doesn’t need to finish the sentence. Even after putting multiple contingencies in place, even after fearing for the worst, it still happened. My heart breaks for the man.
Barlow twists the wedding band on his finger in a way that reminds me of the way a person who’s lost a limb might touch the spot where it used to be. Given the fact that his wife has been gone a long time now, and he’s still wearing his ring, it seems to pretty much be the same thing. Barlow sits up and picks up a picture frame that sits on the corner of his desk. It’s a photo of his daughter. His face turns red, and his eyes shimmer with fresh tears as he stares at it. The fear enveloping him is palpable.
“Can you help me, Blake?” Barlow asks. “Can you bring my little girl home?”
“I can look into it, Senator. But I’m not going to sit here and make you any promises about what I can and can’t do. I don’t believe in giving false hope to anybody just to make them feel better,” I tell him.
