Lost in the System

by Nancy Jo Wilson

  I try to distance myself by fumbling around my desk for the intake form. I open a drawer and paw past a stapler, several sharpened pencils, and a beat-up copy of Devotions for Police Officers. I close it and open another drawer; it has neatly labeled files. “Intake Form,” reads the fourth label. I clear my throat a couple of times and steel my willpower. You’re only a hitcher, Smullian. Here today, gone tomorrow. This is not your problem.

  “Your name?” I ask, keeping my eyes locked on the form in front of me.

  “Lydia Hawthorne.”

  “Age?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  I continue until I have all the spaces, boxes, and lines filled in. The victim is David Hawthorne, fifteen. Missing for one day. I know all about police procedure from the chip, but there isn’t any information about how to conduct an interview. Grifter policy is to let the mark blather on and on. The more they talk, the more useful info you get. The most inconsequential tidbit can be a goldmine in the hands of a master. I figure it is the same for a cop. So, I lay down my pen and shift my chair to face her. Looking her in the eyes, I say, “Tell me what happened.”

  Lydia fiddles with the book she clutches in her lap. “I worked a double, night before last. I got home after he went to bed. At least, I think he was in bed. I didn’t actually see him; the door was shut and the light was off. I don’t normally work doubles. I don’t like him to be home alone, but we’ve been saving up for Rock the Universe this weekend. It was a chance to make a little more for our trip.”

  Rock the Universe?

  She keeps rambling, “David wants to see Skillet, and I’ve been dying to see Toby Mac. I hear he’s really good live.”

  Ah, a concert of some sort.

  “We got our tickets a while back, but there’s hotel, food, gas, souvenirs. We’ve been saving for months. David did odd jobs for Mrs. Granger, our neighbor, all summer—changing light bulbs, taking out her trash, carrying her groceries. She’s eighty-something. We’ve both worked hard for this trip. It’s supposed to be our first one together since—” New tears splash over her lower lids and down her cheeks. She fiddles with the book in her lap some more, tracing the edges with her fingers over and over. She pauses so long I am about to prompt her, when she looks up, tears gone, and continues.

  “Our parents died last November. Mom, Dad, and Jesse, our brother, were driving back from an away game in Chattanooga. Jesse’s soccer team was undefeated. Another car lost control on Monteagle and forced them into the rocks. Mom and Dad died instantly. Jesse held on for a couple of days, but he didn’t make it.

  “David hadn’t gone with them. He’d stayed at a friend’s house that day. I was down here going to UNF, so it made sense for David to move here from Nashville. Going to school and taking care of him was too much. I dropped out and started working at the diner. We couldn’t afford to keep the house in Nashville, so we sold it.” A gentle smile touches her lips. It is the first glimmer I see of the beauty she has on better days. “In this market, we were very blessed to find a buyer quickly. I put the money aside for David’s college.”

  I’d have used that money to get my butt out of the diner. What twenty-one- year-old puts a huge chunk of change in savings—for someone else?

  “David had it hard for a long time. I guess kind of a survivor’s guilt. He felt like he should have been there. That he’d been selfish not to go to Jesse’s game. I told him it was a blessing. Otherwise, I’d be all alone. He started getting better over the summer. He was excited about the new school year. That’s how I know he didn’t skip. He liked school.

  “When I went to work yesterday morning, he wasn’t up yet. When I got home from my shift, he wasn’t there. His backpack wasn’t there either—and no note. There was a message in my voicemail from the school saying he’d been absent. He wouldn’t take off somewhere without telling me. He wouldn’t do that to me. He knows I’d worry. The last time I saw him was two days ago. I went in later than usual that morning because of the double. I made him pancakes.” She finishes, reaching across the desk toward me. Her eyes fix on mine, doing their own quiet pleading as tears renew the tracks down her face. “You have to find him.”

  Strength failing, kryptonite working. Keep it together, Smullian.

  I break her gaze and try to maintain a business-like composure. “What about Mrs. Granger?” I ask. “Did you ask her if she’d seen him?”

  “She said she thought she heard him leaving yesterday morning.”

  Note: Check with old lady.

  “What about his friends? Did you call them?”

  “He doesn’t really have any yet. As I said, it’s taken him some time to come out of his shell.”

  No friends she knows about. Note: Check with school.

  I hate to say it, but there is a real possibility he’s run away. He sounds like a textbook case. It’s a gift of people in my trade to suggest something, but make the mark think it was their idea. I use my skills to make the harsh question come from her.

  “A move like that can be hard at his age. He must miss his friends in Nashville a great deal.”

  “He Facebooks them from the library. I had to drop the smart phone. I couldn’t afford the bill. I just use a pay as you go flip phone. He doesn’t get to talk to them as much as he’d like.”

  I remember that she’d said the concert would be their first trip. Based on that, I set the hook. “Have you two gone back to see any of them since the move?”

  “No, he hasn’t seen his friends in almost a year.” A strange expression cascades over her face, her hand flies to her mouth. “Did he go home?” she asks, more to herself than me. She sits like that for a moment, her hand frozen where it is, her eyes drifting back and forth. She is thinking it through. I am thankful I didn’t have to suggest it.

  Then she drops her hand to my desk, straightens her back, and sets her jaw. “No,” she says with a rapid shake of her head. “No, he wouldn’t do that to me. He wouldn’t go off without telling me.” She punctuates the last two words by jabbing my desk with an emphatic forefinger. She shakes her head again. “He knows I’d worry. Something’s happened and you need to find out what,” she finishes, pointing the same finger at my chest. The crumpled girl is gone; this woman is feisty, and I admire her. I figure this display of spunkiness was closer to her true personality. This woman would take on raising a teenager without a second thought. She is a survivor.

  If you watch a show like Star Trek, you’d get the idea that situations like this don’t happen in the future. That there’s some utopian government taking care of young girls forced to raise their little brothers. What a joke. Think about it, if people like Lydia fall through the cracks in a place as small as the United States, how many must fall through the cracks in a place as large as the known universe? That imagined utopian government of the future is really a bunch of committees and subcommittees arguing about border disputes and mining rights. People in need are left to make their own way. With Dad in and out, my mom and me had to find creative forms of finance. I already told you she was working the My-Baby-Needs-Medicine scam when I was only a month old. Actually, I might have needed medicine, but you get the point.

  What about Lydia? The case makes me feel bad in the pit of my stomach, and it isn’t just because of her kryptonite tears. Every way I look at the situation, it is drakked and the outcome isn’t going to be happy. Either David ran away, which means that Lydia’s only surviving family member has betrayed her, or something bad has happened to him and, come on, hasn’t she seen enough tragedy?

  Con men succeed because they can rationalize everything they do. A really good one can rob a blind cripple and convince you it was the right thing. My own rules keep my conscience clear. I don’t grift anyone who can’t afford it or who doesn’t deserve it. Those principles have gotten me through 777 days of Life Mod unscathed. I don’t feel bad for Melinda, the secretary whose boss took advantage of her. She should have known all that overtime would come to no good. Yesterday, Marvin could
afford to have his Ferrari stolen. Financially, the theft would have been a small bump in the road. In either case, those schlubs created their own problems.

  I can’t rationalize Lydia. There is nothing to play on. I don’t want this to be my responsibility, even for just a day. I think briefly about taking the entire squad room hostage and screaming that I am being invaded by a body snatcher. If I did that, The Powers That Be would yank me out of Benigno faster than a galluden after a kwit. According to Acceptable Conduct and Behavior of Life Modification Candidates, “Any act which exposes the integrity of Life Modification Therapy will render the candidate’s therapy null and void. Said candidate will be returned to his body for alternative punishment.” Personally, I don’t want to know what is considered “alternative punishment.” Lydia is stuck with me, and I feel sorry for her. She deserves better.

  “Can my partner and I come look at his room? There might be some clues there.”

  “Yes, that would be fine.”

  “Do you have a picture of David we can send out on the wire?”

  “Yes,” she says, moving the book from her lap to the desk. It is a photo album. She flips it open to the first page. “Lydia and David” is spelled out in colorful bubble letters and surrounded with stickers. Underneath, it reads, “Psalm 68:5.”

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “It’s kind of our motto. ‘Father to the Fatherless—”

  She keeps talking, but I don’t hear anything else.

  IV

  After Lydia leaves, I sit at my desk mulling over what just happened. Until she spouted that phrase, I had viewed the past two days’ weirdness as random events. I had been certain it was all a glitch in the Life Mod system. But this is beyond glitch. This is intentional. Even I can’t convince myself it is a coincidence that her motto is the same as the statement uttered to me the day before by a disembodied voice when I was standing next to her. Using a cognitive recall trick, I think back to the first time I heard the voice. I was flipping through Marv’s charity cases. What were the names? Mentally, I go back to Buttoned-down Marv’s bland bedroom. I feel the mattress settle as I sit down. I hear the smooth roll of the drawer along its gliders. I feel the thick cardstock of the folders. I see the names. “Boles, Carter, Gondeck, Haw… Hawthorne!” Lydia and David Hawthorne. Could it be them? Has Marv worked for them? This is too weird. It has to be some phase of Life Modification They didn’t mention in the book.

  But that seems unlikely. Too many of the book’s rules have been broken for this to be part of the programming. Besides, felons who’ve been through the system talk, and I’ve never heard a story remotely like this. Usually, they talk about what they did with the wives and girlfriends or how strange life in the twenty-first century is compared to the twenty-fourth. What can possibly be normal about clothing boutiques for dogs?

  I decide to bury my head in the cases and not think about it. As I always say, the best way to deal with something that makes you uncomfortable is not to. Nose to the grindstone, Smullian my boy. All you have to do is survive the day.

  My mantra, however, is not working. In the back of my mind, I wonder what will happen if tomorrow is no better. As a distraction, I force myself to focus on being Benigno. I straighten my posture and ease back into proud, married, Latino detective mode. Then I walk purposefully (I am sure that Benigno always walks like his destination is of vital importance, even if it is just a trip to the copier) over to my partner’s desk. “Coward,” I say.

  Cheshire Charlie gives me a rueful grin. “Bad story?”

  “Yeah, it’s bad. I’ll fill you in on the way to her place. First, we’ve got to send his picture out to our agencies as well as Georgia and Tennessee as a possible runaway.”

  Charlie grabs the photo and studies the earnest face looking out from the surface. “Good-looking boy.”

  “Yep, like his sister. Blond, blue eyes. He’ll be road candy if we don’t find him. Name’s David Hawthorne.”

  Charlie shakes his head. “If these kids had any idea what goes on out there, they’d never leave home. Fuller from Economic called about the Clausen case while you were with what’s-her-name.”

  “Lydia.”

  “Lydia,” he says, letting the word roll off his tongue. “Fuller says all the accounts are empty, not just payroll. He interviewed the company’s owner. Turns out he signed over all signatory authority to Clausen and took his hands out of the day-to-day operations six months ago. Get this, it was Clausen’s idea. The owner was griping about his blood pressure, and Clausen suggested a sabbatical for the man’s health. Clausen had worked for him for years and was always trustworthy, so the owner thought nothing of it.”

  “Robert’s had no oversight for six months? No one’s that trustworthy.” Maybe the owner should have taken a mental health sabbatical.

  “Nope,” Charlie says with a touch of glee. “Man, when will people ever learn?”

  “If they learned, I’d be out of a job,” I say, amused at my own double entendre. Financial Planning Lesson Four—maintain dual signatures on all accounts, or don’t sign over your finances to someone who insists on being called Robert.

  Whether Robert planned it initially or not, he’d worked a long con. In a long con, people have time to get to know you, people have time to miss their assets, and you have a substantial chance of getting caught. He probably thinks he’s gotten away clean, but the police are on his tail. It is only a matter of time. All the greats—Cassie Chadwick, Arthur Orton, Cartosh N7q, just to name a few—died in prison or went nuts.

  Since neither option works for me, I prefer short cons. They don’t yield as big a payout, but people usually never even know they’ve been hit. Heck, sometimes they thank you for taking their money.

  “I checked with security at Jax International and Amtrak. They’ve received and distributed Clausen’s photo. Miller’s on the bus station. He’s got a new case, too.” Charlie adopts a serious look. “Some bag lady reported that her cat, Elvis, is stealing her hair pins. She wants him arrested. I told Miller we had a litter pan in holding.”

  I give the Benigno-appropriate light laugh and return to business. “I’ll get this picture on the wire. Then we can head over to David’s and Lydia’s apartment.”

  “Hey, did you notice how she filled out the back of those jeans?”

  “No, I did not.”

  Of course, I did. Here she is in her darkest hour, and I was checking out her well-formed glutes. What can I say? I’m a dog.

  “Just ’cause you’re married doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate the scenery.”

  I love the way Chuckles thinks, but I’m not me. I’m Benigno.

  “She’s a child,” I say, with proper indignation. “Maybe if you stopped watching the scenery, you’d hold onto a woman for longer than three months.”

  “Ouch,” Charlie says, clutching his chest. “Not all of us are lucky enough to meet a woman as great as Marisol.”

  “She’s one-in-a-million.”

  “I just want you to know, Benny, if anything happens to you in the line of duty, I’ll make it my personal mission to make sure all of her needs are met.”

  “You could try, but she’s too much woman for you. And don’t call me Benny.”

  Charlie laughs good-naturedly as we walk to the car. I fill him in on the case on the way to Lydia’s apartment. He thinks the same thing I do—David is on his way to Nashville. “Little twerp,” he mutters as we knock on the door. “She gives up everything for him, and this is how he repays her.”

  Lydia opens it and leads us inside. I make perfunctory introductions as we assess the apartment. It is small, two bedrooms with a dining-slash-living room. Charlie leans over to me and whispers, “I know some foster kids that would give their eyeteeth to be in a home like this. Little Twerp.”

  Chuckles hit the nail on the head. This is a home. Lydia has gone out of her way to make a welcoming environment. One might dub the furniture style early-garage-sale, but each piece sports coordin
ated colorful pillows and throws. The table displays matching placemats and napkins. Sunny curtains cover the windows and framed pictures of the family hang on the walls.

  “You’ve done a real nice job with the place,” Charlie says.

  “Thanks,” Lydia answers.

  “This is a lot to maintain on a waitress’s salary.”

  “David gets social security. It’s still tight though.”

  While they are talking, I feel the room closing in on me. My heart bangs against my ribs. It becomes harder and harder to breathe. I need to get out; I’m suffocating standing there. “I left something in the car,” I say, practically bolting for the fresh air. I don’t even wait for an answer. Upon arriving at the car, I open the door and lean inside. I need to support my story in case one of them looks out of the window. My breath comes in quick gasps, and I exert every ounce of self-control to suppress hyperventilation.

  “I hate this day. I hate this day. I hate this day,” I grunt through clenched teeth. “How can everything go to flarp in such a short time?” The truth is, when my mom died, I’d have given my eyeteeth to live in a home like that. But I didn’t have a grandma, or sister, or, even, a third cousin twice removed to take care of me. I had to do what I had to do. Here is David being handed everything on a platter—a family, a roof over his head, meals on a regular basis—and he is flushing it away.

  Before I can stop it, my memory slams back to the colony hospital where my mom took her last breath. Galwa wasn’t blessed with the high-tech medicine found on more populated planets. The cancer ate her from the inside out. At twelve, I was slight for my age and the cavernous hallway that led to her room swallowed me. The light burned her eyes, so the two of us sat in the dark. Days before, she’d said, “I love you, Smully,” but uttered nothing since. That didn’t keep me from hoping she’d speak again. Then her hand slipped from mine, and I knew I was alone.