None of this made any sense.
Maybe Pammy could get school records for these kids. The university would know if they had officially dropped out or had withdrawn. Other students might have had no idea.
But that wouldn’t help with students like Ray Brady. He was the student who had told others that he had officially withdrawn from school after the Third World Liberation Front riots. He was the one who had been planning a protest against Governor Reagan just before disappearing.
Pammy glanced at the flyer and then back at the names.
She was almost willing—maybe she was willing—to believe that these kids had been targeted. Or arrested in the dead of night.
The us-versus-them mentality that she had decried when the Free Speech Movement started five years ago had crept into her consciousness.
But the paranoia didn’t exactly stand up to logic. Who would arrest students in a one-ton pickup truck? The Berkeley PD didn’t hide their presence in the neighborhood and had, more than once, dragged students off the streets and into a squad, sometimes clubbing them hard enough that the sound carried for blocks.
Governor Reagan clearly loved the show of force; he had proven that in May and June. He’d actually made speeches threatening a “bloodbath” against the students, and then his national guard troops had deliberately created that bloodbath.
Ten years ago, she never would have believed such behavior was possible in the United States.
And yet it had happened.
She had seen it with her own eyes.
She sighed. She felt as helpless as she had felt five years ago when her friend Linda Kaputo had died after a prolonged beating from her husband. Linda had been one of three friends whose violent ends had sparked Pammy to start teaching self-defense classes. The other two friends, Sue Ellen Gerry and Barbara Springer, had both suffered random attacks in public—Sue Ellen in a park, and Barbara as she walked to class. Both women had died of their injuries days later.
Pammy had always thought if they had just known how to fight back, they would have survived. When she trained young women, she always felt like she was training Sue Ellen and Barbara. When Pammy trained housewives, she felt like she was training Linda.
But Pammy wasn’t training Sue Ellen, Barbara, or Linda. Those women were gone. They had died horribly, and Pammy hadn’t been able to help them.
And she had no idea how the women she was training now would use that training. If they would use that training.
She made herself look at the names again. None of them were familiar to her, but she wasn’t an activist. She knew some professors who were, and some of the housewives who came here had found out about it through their women’s lib groups or through some consciousness-raising discussion.
She had no idea how many of the women who came to the gym were activists. It sounded like Strawberry was. It seemed like some of the students from the self-defense class were, although others seemed to be very judgmental about the activists.
Pammy really did try to stay out of all the politics, but it was hard. These days, Berkeley was politics, and very little else.
She adjusted the papers beneath her hand. The sound of the shower continued rattling through the pipes. She almost went back to remind Mattie to leave some hot water for the next class.
But Pammy had purchased an extra-large water heater, and the hot water probably wouldn’t run out. Especially since the gym was so empty right now.
Pammy tapped the photo of Darla Newsome. The photo made it seem as if she were smiling at the ceiling, as if she had not a care in the world. Darla was a starting point. Maybe she had become active in the last few months. Her father wouldn’t have known.
Darla would be easier to investigate than the woman that Eagle had seen. At least they had Darla’s name.
The front door to the gym opened, and Pammy looked up. Eagle walked inside, looking determined. Valentina Wilson followed her, eyes wide, but shoulders back as if she were being pulled in Eagle’s wake.
Pammy had never expected to see those two together. Maybe they weren’t together. Maybe they just happened to come in at the same time.
Eagle looked around the gym as if she was taking it all in. Val walked to the counter, a slight frown on her face. She was moving slower than she had in the morning. Clearly, her muscles were sore.
She had worked just a little too hard in the exercise session. Pammy wanted to tell her to slow down, but she also didn’t want to discourage her or frighten her by calling her out.
Eagle finished looking around the gym. Her dark gaze met Pammy’s. Eagle’s expression was hard. Pammy couldn’t tell if she was still angry.
“We alone?” Eagle asked.
“Mattie’s in the shower,” Pammy said, and then realized she couldn’t hear the sound of running water any longer.
Eagle sighed. “That’s alone enough, I guess.”
Pammy couldn’t judge Eagle’s mood. She didn’t seem as angry as she had before, but she did seem determined.
Eagle walked to the counter, ending up beside Val, who seemed very comfortable with her. That was a new development. Pammy had no idea they knew each other.
“I owe you an apology,” Eagle said to Pammy. “I was rude.”
Eagle didn’t apologize. Ever. She’d said harsh things before, and she’d come in days later as if nothing had happened.
Pammy thought for a moment. Eagle had been more than rude. She had been out of line.
She said, “I’m not going to tell you it was okay. Your words hurt.”
“They were supposed to,” Eagle said.
Eagle’s matter-of-fact comment took Pammy’s breath away. Apparently the apology was hollow.
Val looked at Eagle sideways, clearly shocked at what Eagle had just said.
But Eagle wasn’t done. She raised her chin.
“I say things,” she said. “Mean things. Before I think about them. That’s why I don’t spend much time with people. My mouth gets away from me. Especially when I’m angry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t.”
She sounded miserable, even though her expression remained impassive. This apology was real then. And heartfelt.
Eagle broke the eye contact. She shifted, then looked around the gym. “That hippie-di—that Strawberry girl, she’s not here, is she?”
Eagle’s tone had changed. It was almost as if she had put on another person entirely, the way someone would shrug on a coat.
Val’s lips turned up in bemusement. So she too had caught the change in tone.
Pammy was beginning to think there wasn’t much that Val missed.
“Strawberry’s not here,” Pammy said.
“Good,” Eagle said. “She drives me nuts.”
That was obvious. Pammy declined to comment on it though. Val nodded slightly, as if she already knew how Eagle felt.
Pammy wanted to ask how Val had gotten roped into all of this, but didn’t know how to ask. Or if it was really any of Pammy’s business.
Pammy had had the sense the day before that Val hadn’t known anyone, but maybe she had misread Val. Maybe Val had known Eagle. Which begged the question: Why hadn’t Val said anything about it?
“You gotta get her to give us those lists,” Eagle said.
Pammy blinked in surprise. She had lost track of the conversation.
“Pammy,” Eagle said, apparently realizing that Pammy hadn’t been paying attention. “The lists from that Strawberry girl? We need them.”
The plural also surprised Pammy. Did Eagle’s use of “us” and “we” mean Eagle and Pammy? Or Eagle and Val? Or all three of them?
“Us?” Pammy asked.
Eagle whirled back around, her expression fierce. She was angry again. Or maybe she hadn’t really stopped being angry.
“I thought you were on board with finding the guy with the truck,” she said. “Am I wrong?”
Pammy’s heart pounded. Eagle was volatile this afternoon. Eagle usually wasn’t that volatile.
&
nbsp; “No, you’re not wrong,” Pammy said. “I am on board with finding the guy in the truck.”
“Hence, we,” Eagle said. “And Val’s helping too.”
Pammy looked at her. Val’s bemused smile grew into something soft, and she nodded.
Pammy had no idea how Val could help, but Val seemed to have some kind of idea.
“So,” Eagle said, “I don’t know what happened after I left, but—”
“I got a list.” Pammy patted the sheets of paper in front of her. “I have a self-defense class filled with university students and they have all been warned about this guy with the truck. Plus, many of them knew someone who has seemingly vanished without a trace.”
Her words echoed in the empty gym. Val’s skin had gone ashen. Pammy had no idea what upset her. The fact that the students had helped was a good thing.
Eagle’s eyebrows went up. “You got a list. Already?”
“And everyone knew about this guy?” Val asked. “What’s going on here?”
The scared Val had returned, not the strong woman Pammy had seen glimpses of.
Eagle frowned at Val, then placed a hand on her back. Pammy did all she could not to look surprised. Eagle didn’t voluntarily touch anyone.
“I don’t think we’re in any danger,” Eagle said softly, almost tenderly.
Pammy felt a frown crease her forehead. She really hadn’t seen Eagle like this before. It was strange.
Val took a deep breath as if she were gathering herself. Then she nodded and seemed somehow stronger.
Eagle removed her hand from Val’s back.
Pammy’s gaze met Eagle’s and Pammy tried to ask a silent question about their relationship, but Eagle tilted her head, as if she were telling Pammy to get on with it.
Pammy straightened slightly. She slid the sheets closer to her.
“It’s a bigger list than I expected.” Her gaze met Val’s. “I’m hoping that most of these kids were mistaken.”
Val didn’t respond, but Eagle did. She put her fingers on the sheets. “This it?”
“Yes,” Pammy said.
Eagle pulled the sheets to her, then turned them around. Val leaned over and looked at the sheets as well.
“What’s this?” Eagle asked, pointing at the words across from the names.
“What activities they were involved in,” Pammy said. “If they were part of the campus anti-war movement or the Third World Liberation Front or maybe a feminist group, then I had the students mark that down.”
Val was standing on her tiptoes so she could see past Eagle. “They all seem to be involved in something.”
“Yeah.” Eagle took the top sheet and looked under it. Then she laid the top sheet flat again.
She turned to Val, not to Pammy.
“Remember when I said something wasn’t adding up?” Eagle asked Val. “This, this is what’s not adding up.”
Val nodded slowly as if she didn’t quite understand. Pammy truly didn’t understand what they were talking about and she was starting to get annoyed.
“I wasn’t part of any discussion the two of you had,” Pammy said.
Val opened her mouth, then closed it and glanced at Eagle. Eagle wasn’t paying much attention. She was looking around the gym again. Then she leaned back and peered at the plate-glass window.
Eagle tapped her right thumbnail against her teeth, clearly thinking about something, shook her head slightly, and then sighed.
Finally, she looked back at Pammy.
“We just came from Telegraph,” Eagle said. “We had some lunch at Caffe Med and—”
“Caffe Med?” Pammy asked. Now things had gotten even stranger. “You hate Caffe Med.”
“Yeah, well, Robbie’s was blocked by some bongo players, and we had pizza yesterday,” Eagle said. “Caffe Med wasn’t the best, but it was food.”
Considering how many times Eagle had railed against the bad coffee at Caffe Med, this revelation was almost as shocking as the fact that Eagle had gone willingly to Telegraph with lunch in mind.
“Anyway,” Eagle said, “it’s street kid hell down there, and even the Mini Mob was out in force.”
The Mini Mob were a group of underage street kids, many of them already drug addicts. Pammy hated thinking about them. She’d called the state more than once about them, but the kids seemed to have a sixth sense about the arrival of authorities. Whenever someone official showed up on Telegraph to deal with the street children—and that’s what they were, children—the little kids vanished.
“And,” Eagle was saying, “we were talking about what Strawberry said about a lot of students disappearing, and how it wasn’t making sense.”
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” Pammy said, agreeing. “No matter what Jill says, kids don’t just vanish from class. There’s always a warning—”
“Yeah,” Eagle said dismissively, “that’s not what I’m confused over. What doesn’t make sense is that the kids Strawberry seems to know are actually doing something. If you were picking off young women for some sick reason or if you were set on ridding the world of hippies, why would you take kids who had friends and family and were actually attending class and doing things?”
“Oh, my,” Val said. She peered at the sheets again. “That was your revelation?”
“It’s not a revelation,” Eagle said to her, as if Pammy weren’t even there. “It’s a question.”
“And a good one,” Val said. “Because anyone with a modicum of criminality and self-preservation wouldn’t go after kids with friends and family. That person would pick off the dropouts and street kids and no one else.”
Pammy felt her heart sink. Eagle was right. These names and that sheet of paper didn’t make any sense at all.
None of this did.
“Maybe someone is picking off the street kids,” Pammy said.
“I’m sure someone is,” Eagle said matter-of-factly. She still wasn’t looking at Pammy. Eagle continually examining the sheets, as if shifting them would make the information change.
Pammy hated it when Eagle took that tone. That something’s going wrong, but I don’t care tone.
“That’s one of the reasons I hate Bezerkeley.” Eagle almost seemed to be speaking to the papers in front of her instead of Pammy and Val. “All this so-called freedom just means that people get preyed upon.”
Val’s eyes widened and she looked at Pammy as if shocked at Eagle’s words. If someone hadn’t been around Eagle much, those words were surprising. But Pammy had heard Eagle say similar things in the past.
“But that woman I saw,” Eagle was saying, “she wasn’t living on the street. She wore clean clothes. She seemed put together.”
“How can you know that if you only saw her for a few minutes?” Pammy asked.
“A few seconds,” Val corrected softly, clearly agreeing with Pammy on this.
“Time slows down in a crisis.” Eagle raised her head. “You take in details. I don’t know why, but you do. I saw some things about that woman. Not enough, mind you. But I keep replaying it over and over in my mind. And when you do that, you examine what your assumptions are.”
“What do you mean, your assumptions?” Pammy asked.
“I automatically assumed that she was someone who could’ve come to the gym,” Eagle said. “Doesn’t mean she did. Just means she wouldn’t have looked out of place here.”
Pammy frowned. How would she even know if one of her gym members were missing? So many people just stopped coming because the exercise didn’t work for them or because they didn’t want to come to campus any more.
Pammy never checked up on them. She didn’t feel that it was her job.
“So,” Val asked into the silence, “she was white?”
Pammy looked at her, startled. Pammy hadn’t thought to ask that. She had just assumed it.
“Yes.” Eagle looked a little startled as well. “She had very pale skin.”
White skin was common here. Both Pammy and Eagle assumed it. Even Eagle who
, apparently, wasn’t white after all. No wonder Eagle had looked startled.
Pammy didn’t like how that question made her feel. It made her worry about her own perceptions of the world. She expected everyone to be white.
And even worse, Val, who had only spent two days here, expected anyone who came to the gym to be white.
Pammy looked at Val, but Val wasn’t looking at her. Thank heavens. Because Val just made Pammy see something about herself and her gym, something she wasn’t sure she liked.
Eagle seemed to have shrugged off the thought. She had slid the papers over and was now examining the flyer.
“Your little friend Darla here,” Eagle said, “she’s part of the pattern too. She had an apartment that she was paying regular rent on. Until a few weeks before she disappeared, she’d been in regular contact with her family. She wasn’t a street kid. Street kids, they have either disowned or been disowned by their families. It’s a point of pride for them.”
Eagle was right about that too. Shortly after she’d opened the gym, Pammy would bring an occasional box of leftovers to some of the street kids until one of them started screaming at her, telling her that they didn’t need her bourgeois pity. They got along just fine without Establishment assholes like her, thank you very much.
Eagle tapped the paper again. “Now you have this. These kids, all involved in different things. But your hippie-di—ah, hell, that girl Strawberry, she said they were part of the Movement, as if it’s one thing. Is it?”
Pammy shrugged. It seemed like one thing to her, kids involved in all sorts of causes. But she hadn’t discussed it. She hadn’t discussed it with anyone.
Val saw that shrug, and added one of her own. “I wouldn’t know about Berkeley,” she said. “Things are very different here. There are activist college students in Chicago, but they haven’t taken over the whole city.”
“They haven’t taken over all of Berkeley either,” Pammy said. She sounded defensive. Hell, she felt defensive. And protective.
Even though Eagle hated “Berzerkeley,” Pammy loved it, in all its strange glory.
“But the activists and the street kids have taken over an important center of Berkeley,” Val said. “In Chicago, they took over Old Towne, a part of the city no one else wanted. They really weren’t in the rest of the city.”
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