On the phones.
Ginny called the school board and set up an appointment to see the chairman the following afternoon. Then she went down the list of Alathea’s friends, asking their parents’ permission to visit their homes and talk to their kids. Calling for permission is a nice touch, when you can afford it—forestalls a certain number of complaints to the commission. I used the other phone to eliminate at least some of the obvious.
Didn’t take either of us very long. I’d never worked on a runaway before, but I knew a place that was in the business of telling people like me where to look. Tel-a-Help. Basically, it’s a referral agency for all the social services in San Reno County, including state and federal bureaus. They gave me five different numbers—The State Bureau of Children’s Services, the National Runaway Hotline, the National Drug Abuse Hotline, the San Reno County Crisis Hotline, and the police. I thanked them politely before crossing the police off my list.
I wanted to cross off the National Drug Abuse number, too—but I didn’t. Couldn’t afford to. It was one of the obvious possibilities I had to check, and I had a sick feeling about it. So I did that number first. It’s one of those toll-free 800 numbers. The way my head felt, you’d have thought I was about to pass out from anoxia—but I gave them my spiel and listened to their answer. “We’re a confidential information service, Mr. Axbrewder. We can’t give out the names of the young people who call us. But we always urge runaways to call their parents, and no reputable drug treatment facility or social service agency in the country would accept a thirteen-year-old girl without making some effort to contact her parents.” When I hung up, I was practically gasping for breath.
The Bureau of Children’s Services and the Crisis Hotline gave me variations on the same answer—confidentiality, always urging the runaways to get in touch with their parents, etc. In five minutes I was starting to understand Lona’s outrage at the new laws and the public machinery that exist for the “benefit” of runaways—which seems to mean, “protect them from their parents.”
But the National Runaway Hotline—another 800 number—was an improvement. Part of their business was to pass messages back and forth between kids and parents. And whenever possible they got the name of any runaway who called so that they could at least assure the parents their child was safe. All the names and messages were fed into a computer so that they could be retrieved instantly.
No one named Alathea—or Thea—Axbrewder had ever called the National Runaway Hotline.
I almost hung up—but snatched back the receiver and asked, “Did you ever get a call from a girl named Carol Christie?”
That was the wrong thing to say. All at once the voice at the other end of the line turned distant and suspicious. “Why do you ask, Mr. Axbrewder? Is she a relative of yours?”
I didn’t have any other way out, so I said, “She’s dead. I’m worried about Alathea, and I’m trying to find some kind of pattern.”
The voice was silent for a minute. Then it said carefully, “There’s no Carol Christie in the computer.”
“All right,” I said. “It was a dumb question. Tell me this. Out of all the kids who run away, how many call you? What percentage?”
“We don’t have any reliable figures, but our best estimate is only about twenty percent. We’re not as well known as we need to be.”
“Thanks.”
I hung up the phone, looked at Ginny. In spite of the AC I was sweating. But I wasn’t due for another crisis yet—and if one was coming there wasn’t anything I could do about it anyway, so I just tried to shove it out of my mind. When Ginny put down her phone, I asked, “What’ve you got?”
She pushed her list away from her. “We’re going to be busy this evening. How about you?”
“Nothing.” I sounded disgusted to myself.
“Relax,” she said. “If you found her this fast, you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself for the rest of the day.” She was jollying me—but her eyes had that worried look in them again. She gave me the impression that she was asking herself how long I could hold out without a drink.
I got up, went and faced her across the desk, and said, “I don’t like it when you look at me like that. Let’s go talk to Carol Christie’s parents.”
I was half hoping she had something better in mind. I wasn’t feeling any readier to visit them than when the idea first occurred to me. It was like calling the Drug Abuse Hotline—something in me was afraid of it. But we had to do it. We were looking for some kind of pattern, and we wouldn’t know if there was any connection between Carol Christie and Alathea unless we checked it out.
Ginny knew that as well as I did. She said, “Good idea,” and pushed herself out of her chair. She looked in Tuesday’s paper for the names of the Christies, then got their address out of the phone book. Five minutes later, we were back in the Olds.
The Christies lived quite a ways out, in what they call the North Valley. Puerta del Sol lays down its inhabitants horizontally instead of stacking them vertically, so it’s a sprawling place. And the way the population’s growing these days, there are suburbs and even industries sitting on ground that was neglected dirt ten years ago. The city spreads in all directions, but mostly north and south along the valley of the Flat River, where water is a little easier to come by.
Mr. and Mrs. Christie lived all the way out at the northern tip of the sprawl. Where the cowboy money lives. Half the people out there wear old Stetsons and plaid shirts and faded jeans and dusty boots, and if you met them on the street you wouldn’t know they’re solid gold on the hoof. Most of them probably get their money from things like real estate, but the way they dress you would think they get rich just by looking so by-God Western. Before we were within five miles of the Christies, every house we passed was an ersatz ranch, with a split-rail fence, three acres of ground, and two horses.
When we got to where we were going, we found that the Christies ran a stable, complete with riding lessons, trails, and about thirty of the mangiest-looking horses I’d ever seen. They used a converted horse trailer for an office. When we went inside, we found Mary Christie there, working on a set of books.
She looked up as we came in and said, “Howdy, folks. What can we do fer y’all?” Her cowboy twang was stretched pretty thin over an accent that sounded like it probably came from Boston. But she was dressed right in not-too-new, not-too-clean, let’s-go-muck-out-the-stalls clothes, with a red bandanna knotted around her neck.
Ginny said, “Mrs. Christie?” Her professional voice made it sound like she had every right in the world to be standing there asking personal questions. “I’m Ginny Fistoulari.” She flipped her ID out of her purse and showed Mrs. Christie the photocopy of her license. “This is Mr. Axbrewder. We’d like to ask you and your husband a few questions.”
It didn’t take much to make Mary Christie forget about horses. Ginny’s ID was enough. She practically jumped to her feet, went to a window behind her, and jerked out, “John!” There was an edge in her voice that sounded like panic at first, but I put it down to strain. It was only two days ago that her daughter had turned up dead. Then she came and stood in front of us with her arms clutched across her stomach as if she wanted to hide it. “Questions about what? What do you want?” Her twang had deserted her.
Ginny said evenly, “We’d like to talk to you about your daughter, Carol.”
“Why?” She was as jumpy as a hophead. “What has it got to do with you?” Then she was at the window again. “John!”
Now I knew it wasn’t just strain. Mrs. Christie was afraid of something.
From outside, a man’s voice—real cowboy, this time—answered, “Ah’m comin’.” Ten seconds later he was in the trailer with us.
He was tall and rangy, like a cowboy is supposed to be, with a grizzled, weather-bitten face and a cigarette stuck in his teeth. His battered old hat was pulled down tight on his head, probably so it wouldn’t fall off when he was riding. He scanned Ginny and me, then asked slowly, “Now,
what’s all this-here ruckus about?”
“They want to know about Carol,” Mary Christie said quickly—too quickly. “They want to ask questions about her.”
At that, her husband’s eyes narrowed until he was practically squinting at us. Deliberately he took the cigarette out of his mouth, threw it through the doorway. Then he said, “Naw, they don’t want to ask no questions. They was just leavin’.” If he was worried about the fact I was three inches taller and seventy pounds heavier than he was, he didn’t show it.
But I didn’t need Ginny to tell me this was no time for muscle. I just stood my ground and let her handle it.
She said, “We have good reason for asking.” If it came down to a bluff, she could match John Christie any day. “We don’t want to pry into anything that doesn’t concern us, but we’re working on a case that’s remarkably similar to Carol’s.” Remarkably similar, hell. Both girls were thirteen—period. “If you help us, we might be able to prevent the same thing from happening again.”
She made it sound practically inevitable. But Mr. Christie wasn’t having any. “You said one thing right,” he drawled. “You ain’t gonna pry. There ain’t no case on Carol. She was a good li’l girl, and you ain’t gonna dig up no dirt on her. If other folks want to let their young’uns screw around, it ain’t no concern of mine.”
Ginny faced him squarely. “Nobody said anything about dirt. That was your idea.” Then she asked harshly, “If Carol was such a good swimmer, how did she happen to drown?”
Christie felt that. For a second, his eyes went out of focus. His hands twitched as if he were getting ready to swing at Ginny. I shifted into position to block him. But instead of moving, he just said in a dead voice, “Get the hell outta here.”
Ginny considered him for a moment, then turned to Mary Christie. The woman was staring back at her with something like nausea in her face. Sharply Ginny said, “All right. Let it happen to other girls. Why should you care? There’s just one thing I have to know.” She knew how to be tough. “Did she write to you at all after she ran away? Was there a note?”
John Christie barked, “Mary!” For a minute she just stood there, squirming with indecision and grief. Then, abruptly, she jerked open one of the desk drawers, fumbled for a sheet of paper, and handed it to Ginny.
Ginny gave it to me without looking at it. If John Christie wanted it back, it was safer with me. I put it in my pocket.
“Thank you, Mrs. Christie,” Ginny said softly. “I hope you won’t regret helping us.” Then she went to the door. “Come on, Brew. Mr. Christie thinks we should leave.”
I followed her out, half expecting Christie to jump me as I went past him. But he didn’t. He slammed the door behind us, and a second later we heard him yelling, “God damn it, woman! You want the whole fuckin’ world to know?” We could hear him until we got into the Olds and shut the doors.
I didn’t say anything. I just took out the note, and we looked at it together.
It said, “Dear Mom and Dad, I have to go away for a while. I have a problem, and I have to take care of it myself. It might take a long time. Don’t worry about me. Love, Carol.”
It was written on half a sheet of good twenty-pound bond, but the handwriting was a mess.
4
We didn’t say anything. We didn’t have to. We both knew what to do next. Ginny started up the Olds, and we headed back into the city. Hurrying. We wanted to get to Lona.
It was after four o’clock when we reached her house, so we didn’t waste any time. Ginny was better at this kind of thing than I was. I waited in the car while she went to talk to Lona.
Even that way, it took a while. Lona didn’t want to let go of her note. It was the last tangible thing she had from Alathea. But we needed the original—a copy wouldn’t do us any good. I was relieved to see it in Ginny’s hand when she came back to the Olds.
With her sitting beside me, we compared the notes. The similarity of the wording made my stomach ache, but Ginny was looking at other things. She compared the writing quickly, pointed out that the ink and scripts were different, then started to examine the paper.
Lona’s note was written on half a sheet of twenty-pound bond.
Both sheets had been neatly torn—not cut—along one edge.
When Ginny held them up to the sun, we could see that they both had the same watermark.
I said, “Sonofabitch.” Something deep in my chest was trembling. I was overdue for another withdrawal crisis.
“This doesn’t prove anything,” Ginny said stiffly. “There’s a lot of this kind of paper around. It’s a big company. It doesn’t prove anything unless these notes came from the same sheet.” She put the notes up against the sun again, then said, “No chance. Look what happens when I put the torn edges together.”
I looked. The watermarks were facing in opposite directions. The top third of the mark on Lona’s note was cut off—and it wasn’t completed anywhere on the other sheet.
“Terrific.” I could taste bile in my mouth. The lining of my stomach wanted alcohol. Wanted to be numb. “Two thirteen-year-olds run away from home and write notes that say almost exactly the same thing on the same kind of paper, with the same kind of bad handwriting. Of course it’s just a coincidence. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“I didn’t say it was a coincidence,” she replied with elaborate patience. Just letting Axbrewder know she wasn’t senile yet. “I said it wasn’t proof.” Then she grinned—a shark’s grin, eager and dangerous. “That’s the difference between us and the police. We don’t need proof.” She threw the Olds into gear. “Let’s go talk to Encino.”
We were on the trail now—I could see it in her eyes.
I left it to her. I was thinking about the Christies. They were scared about something—and anything that could worry John Christie would probably frighten Lona to death.
We went down Mission, then crossed over on Gypsum until we hit Paseo Grande and turned right. A couple of miles down Paseo Grande we came to the new Municipal Building—the pride of the mayor, the joy of half a dozen construction companies, the flower of a couple architects, and the treasure of the bank that floated the loan. I didn’t know anyone else who liked it.
From the outside, it looks like a country club for millionaires. An ordinary citizen can no more walk in there and feel comfortable than fly to the moon. All those fountains and flower beds might’ve been a good idea, but unfortunately the main part of the building hangs over the fountains and flowers and walkways. A square mountain of white concrete leans on the back of your neck—from some angles you can’t even see what holds it up—so by the time you get to the doors and start climbing to wherever you have to go, you already feel intimidated. And of course there’s no parking. Official cars have a private garage—ordinary citizens have to scramble for what they can get.
We were lucky—we only had to walk a couple of blocks.
Inside, there isn’t a scrap of carpet or one warm soft color in the whole place. It looks like a brand-new abattoir. Since there aren’t any windows, and the blank fluorescent lighting is always the same, you can’t tell whether it’s day or night.
I suppose I should’ve been used to it. I’d been in the city jail, up on the top floor of the police department wing, at least a couple of times. But I was always at a disadvantage here. I could never remember the names of the cops who rousted me when I was drunk. I couldn’t remember anything about them, except they always looked short. But they knew who I was. The whole situation gave me a definite paranoid feeling.
But I figured I should be pretty safe in Missing Persons. They didn’t have any reason to know me. So I just kept my coat buttoned and my hands at my sides, hiding the .45 under my left arm, and followed Ginny, trying to ignore the fact I could feel another withdrawal attack coming on.
The sergeant at the front desk issued us passes and told us where to go in the dull mumble of a man who’d spent too many years repressing a secret yen to really tell people where to g
o. We did what he told us, and a couple of corridors later we were at a glass door. The glass was safety plate with steel mesh sandwiched into it, and it said MISSING PERSONS across the top. We went in.
A Formica counter stood so close to the entrance that the door almost hit it when it opened. Behind the counter, there were four desks and a row of file cabinets. That was all. Missing Persons wasn’t a very big item in the police budget.
Three cops sat at the desks, two women and a man. The man was a sergeant, so he out-ranked the women. Of course, they made us wait. Cops always make you wait as long as they can. It’s in the Officer’s Handbook. Eventually, however, one of the women, Policewoman Rand, asked us what we wanted. Ginny asked for Sergeant Encino, using her I‘m-an-important-citizen-don’t-mess-with-me voice. The man found himself off his butt and standing in front of us faster than he wanted to.
He was short, barely tall enough to stare at Ginny’s clavicles. He had dark olive skin that complemented his dark blue uniform, and his close-cut black hair was so tidy that you would think he trained it with a whip. His mustache was assertive but not aggressive. And he had Chicano eyes—sad, world-weary, and arrogant. Sure enough, both the name tag pinned over his left shirt pocket and the ID clipped to his right shirt pocket said, “Sgt. Raul Encino, Missing Persons.”
Ginny introduced herself, flashed her license, mentioned my name. Encino looked back at her with his face blank. That’s also in the Handbook—treat everyone like two of them and a sandwich would be just about right for lunch. “What can I do for you?” He had just enough accent to make what he said sound more interesting than it really was.
“Information,” Ginny said crisply. “We’re trying to find a young girl named Alathea Axbrewder. Her mother reported her missing eight days ago.”