Presumed Dead

by Mason Cross

  I looked up at the brick and glass entrance to the stadium itself. Turner Field had originally been built for the Olympics in ’96 and reconfigured for baseball. I watched the pedestrians move past in varying states of hurry. None of them looked much like Adeline Connor. The radio was tuned to news, but all they were talking about was the president’s latest outburst of unpresidential language, so I zapped through a few more stations until I found one playing a Hold Steady song. I was listening to the lyrics about that first night when my phone lit up with a withheld number. It was Correra. He told me he had knocked off for the day, but I could buy him a drink on his way home if I liked.

  Twenty minutes later, we were in a booth in the back of a bar called Damon’s. I paid for the drinks: a Coors Light for him, a Coca Cola for me, since I was in the birthplace of the drink.

  “Gotta love the modern world,” Correra said, opening up his laptop. “This is pretty new. Came out of Michigan State University. Biometric tattoo recognition technology. It’s not perfect, and if a design isn’t in the system, you won’t find it. By the way, Blake, I hope I don’t need to tell you—”

  “That this is all off the record?” I smiled. I had known a lot of cops, and Correra wasn’t the type to take a bribe. If he was, it would have cost a hell of a lot more than a box of pastries and a schooner of Coors Light. He was helping me because he liked me. That, and something else. He was curious about the problem, too. He didn’t necessarily believe that Adeline was alive, but it was intriguing enough for him to want to find out more.

  “That’s right. We never had this conversation.”

  “Understood.”

  He turned the laptop screen around. There was a picture of a man’s left arm, photographed under harsh neon light. The rest of him was cropped out in the picture, but the tattoo looked like a pretty good match for the drawing David Connor had made. Hearts and barbed wire.

  “Looks promising,” I said. I looked up at Correra. His expression told me it wasn’t as promising as I thought.

  “What? They forgot to take a name?”

  He shook his head.

  “There are three hundred guys in the metropolitan area with this tattoo? What?”

  “There’s a name. And only one name. Only problem is, the name also shows up on a homicide from a few weeks ago.”

  It took me a second for the full meaning of Correra’s words to hit me. “Somebody killed him?”

  He nodded. “Gang related, apparently. I’ve read the file, I would have said that too before I talked to you. Now? Now I’m not so sure.”

  28

  Carter Blake

  I once read a magazine article about a guy who was struck by lightning seven times. The odds against that are something like ten million to one. Impressive, in its way. But I thought that the odds of two people related to a missing persons case being killed in the same city in the same twenty-four-hour span in unrelated homicides had longer odds than that.

  Correra gave me some more details. The tattooed man’s name had been Vincent González. Twenty-seven years old, of Puerto Rican heritage, but born and raised in South Atlanta. Since the age of thirteen he had been in and out of juvie and the state pen, most recently on a possession bust. That last arrest had been when his tattoo had been photographed and added to the Atlanta PD’s database, part of a new program tying in with nationwide work by the FBI. He had been found dead in his apartment on the morning of Sunday September 30th. The day after Wheeler had been killed. González had been tied to a chair. He showed signs of a beating and he had been finished off with a knife. Throat cut. A different method to Wheeler’s killing, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t the same guy. González’s apartment building was a busy place according to the report, comings and goings all night. A blade was a lot quieter than a gun.

  A witness statement had been taken from a Miss Theresa Kiffin, 26, resident of the same block. She was an acquaintance of González. I suggested trying our luck with her, to see if she knew the brunette he had been talking to.

  Correra knew which of his colleagues was handling the Wheeler case. He had to look up the González case, and found it was being investigated by somebody different.

  “I’m going to need you to talk to them both,” he said. “No reason to connect these cases, on paper, but you just gave us a big reason to connect them.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” I said. “Why don’t you ask them to call me, and in the meantime, we can see what we can find out about González.”

  Correra went outside for a cigarette while he made some calls. I waited in the booth, thinking about the past couple of hours. I had tugged on a couple of loose threads and had unwound a completely different mystery from the one I had come here to investigate. It looked like I had uncovered a hidden link between two seemingly-unconnected murders, but I wasn’t a whole lot closer to finding the woman David Connor thought was his long-lost sister.

  My phone buzzed on the table and I answered it, even though the number was private.

  A familiar female voice. “It’s Deputy Green, we spoke yesterday.”

  I smiled at the fact she thought there was a need to remind me. “Good afternoon Deputy, good to hear from you.”

  She answered my unspoken question right away.

  “I’m calling for a couple of reasons. You said you might be headed to Atlanta today.”

  “I’m here,” I said. “Drove down this morning.”

  “You find your ghost yet?”

  “I’m working on it. Couple of interesting developments.”

  “Oh yes?” She sounded curious, despite herself.

  “What’s the other thing?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You said you were calling for a couple of reasons.”

  “Oh, the other thing was I believe you had some kind of altercation last night.”

  “I wouldn’t call it an altercation, exactly.”

  “You wouldn’t?”

  “A slight disagreement, resolved amicably by the time your co-worker showed up. Deputy Furman, was it?”

  “Feldman. I thought I told you to be careful.”

  “If you talk to the bartender, he should be able to reassure you.”

  “Already did. Jason says the other guys started it. You were lucky they were out-of-towners too. That kind of shit goes down with a local, it won’t matter who started it. It’ll go against you. Hard.”

  “That doesn’t sound entirely fair.”

  “Because it isn’t. I’m just telling you the way it is.” She paused, and I knew she was still curious about what I had found it Atlanta. “So tell me how you’re getting on.”

  I hesitated a moment, and decided to give her something. “I got a promising lead on a guy David Connor saw with Adeline.”

  “With the person he thinks was Adeline.”

  “The only problem was, the guy is dead.”

  If she was startled by that, it didn’t show in her reaction. “Bad break.”

  “For him, especially. He was killed within twenty-four hours of Wheeler.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Same cause of death?”

  “No, the other guy was killed with a blade, Wheeler was shot. But I don’t think this is any coincidence.”

  “You need to go to the Atlanta PD right now. I can—”

  As though it had been choreographed, Correra entered by the door, replacing his phone in his hip pocket as he came back toward the booth.

  “Way ahead of you. They’re looking at both cases now, trying to establish the link.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I have a couple of other loose ends to chase down.”

  “I think you should be careful. If the same person killed Wheeler and this other guy, it’s because they were related to … to whatever you’
re looking into.”

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” I said. “I’ll try not to become number three.”

  29

  Carter Blake

  “Pretty.”

  Theresa Kiffin, neighbor of the late Vincent González, was staring at David Connor’s sketch of Adeline appraisingly, but unfortunately for us, not in a way that suggested she recognized the subject. Correra and I were standing at the doorway of her one-bed apartment in Adair Park. In the room beyond her I could see a boy of about twelve with cropped hair lounging on an armchair, staring at a sitcom playing on an out-of-sight television.

  Theresa was skinny, with wispy blond hair that was almost white, and wore a lime-green tank top and ripped jeans. She didn’t seem to be too broken up over González’s recent death, but looking at the far-away focus of her gray eyes, I found it hard to believe she would get broken up about many things.

  “Know who she is?” Correra asked.

  “Should I?”

  Correra rolled his eyes. We had already explained we were looking for a woman who may have been a friend or acquaintance of Vincent González, her dear departed drinking buddy. Clearly Theresa was struggling to make the connection.

  “This is the woman we were talking about,” Correra prompted.

  “What’s her name?”

  “We don’t know that. Could be Adeline, something like that.”

  She shook her head. “She’s out of Vinnie’s league,” she said, adding quickly, “God rest his soul, I mean.”

  “She wouldn’t necessarily be his girlfriend.”

  “Vinnie had a lotta girlfriends. None who looked like this.” She handed the sketch back. “What’s this about?”

  “We’re trying to locate her. She may have information about Vinnie’s murder. She was seen talking to him outside Turner Field a few weeks back.”

  She shook her head. “Sorry.”

  I tried to recall David Connor’s description. “The woman was carrying a red bag. Dark red, like maroon or burgundy.”

  “Sor …” she began again and then something flared in her eyes. “Like a big insulated pack?”

  Correra glanced at me for direction.

  “Could be,” I said. I hadn’t pressed Connor on this detail. It had seemed incidental.

  She was forming a shape with her hands. “About this big? Yeah, that explains it.”

  “Are you going to tell us?” Correra asked after a wait.

  “What’s it worth?”

  “Depends what you tell us.”

  “Okay, the bag means she’s a Zoomr delivery girl.”

  “What?”

  “You know, Zoomr. Vinnie always got food delivered to him. There’s an app.”

  “They delivered to him in the middle of the street?”

  “Sure. There’s an app.”

  I took my phone out and quickly keyed it in. The logo was a stylized burgundy Z. No E in the name, obviously. I tapped to download the app as Correra continued questioning Theresa Kiffin.

  “How did they know he would be there?”

  “I told you, there’s an app, he ordered, they delivered to him.”

  Correra looked at me. “There’s an app,” I said.

  He gave a long sigh. “Millennials. Okay, where does this food come from?”

  “It depends. They have a whole bunch of places they pick up from, they’re a whatcha-call-it, third party supplier.”

  I decided to take over before Correra blew his top. “Anyplace in particular Vinnie liked to order from?”

  “Sure. Always a burrito. He liked Bank Street Burritos and Mexicana Grill.”

  I looked down at my phone. The Zoomr app had finished downloading. Both establishments were listed, along with the office of the company, which happened to be a couple of blocks from Correra’s building.

  Correra shrugged, as though coming round to the idea. “Do they deliver pastries?”

  She looked puzzled at the question. “I don’t know.”

  Correra’s phone rang as we left Kiffin and headed back down the stairs. It was his wife, asking why he wasn’t home for dinner yet. He turned away from me and I heard him deliver an apology with a good-humored tone that said both parties were used to their roles in calls like this. Correra hung up.

  “I was making it home in time today, before you showed up.”

  He suggested that he should take the Zoomr company office, since he might have more luck with a request to look at employment records. He took one of the copies of Connor’s drawing and told me to call him in an hour.

  30

  Carter Blake

  The redheaded woman serving at Mexicana Grill recognized the woman in the picture, which was great. Unfortunately, she hadn’t seen her in weeks, and suggested she might have moved on to a different job.

  Bank Street Burritos, a mile south, was getting busy ahead of the evening rush. I went in and took my place at the end of the line at the counter. There were a few tables, but most of the customers were perched on stools at the window. Nobody looked anything like Adeline Connor. I took Connor’s sketch out and glanced at it again, ready to show it to the guy behind the counter.

  And then I noticed the woman at the head of the line had dark hair. She wore jeans and a black leather jacket over a white blouse. She was a brunette, slim, five-seven, late twenties or early thirties. The right physical attributes, the right age. I froze. She collected her order, something wrapped up to go, and then stood aside to let the next person in line order. She was putting her change in her purse and looking down as she turned around.

  I didn’t take my eyes off her. And then she looked up. She didn’t catch my eye, but I had a full view of her face now. I glanced down at the sketch, back up again. It was her.

  She slung the purse over her shoulder and headed toward the exit. Her path took her within touching distance. I quickly turned the sketch over and lowered my eyes as she passed.

  I heard the little bell on the door chime as she opened it and stepped out onto the street. I angled my eyes a little to look out the window as I counted to ten. She didn’t go past, so she had gone the other way.

  I turned right out of the door and scanned the people on the sidewalk until I saw the black leather jacket and the strap of the purse over her shoulder.

  I followed, keeping ten paces behind her, weaving between the oncoming pedestrians and making sure not to take my eyes from her. She walked three blocks north, never looking back once. Then she looked left and right and jaywalked between the traffic to the opposite side of the road. She appeared to be heading into a big glass-and-steel building with a sign identifying it as the Philips Arena. Below was a smaller sign indicating “MARTA Entry”: the city’s rapid transit system.

  I glanced both ways and followed her across the road, ignoring the blare of a bus’s horn as I made the other side and followed her through a set of doors. We descended a long escalator into the station. I had to let her out of my sight briefly to buy a ticket at the automatic machine, and then hurried through the turnstile.

  There was a train at the platform and the door alarm was already sounding. I ran for the nearest set of doors and just made it as they closed on me, sticking for a second, and then just letting me through. As the train moved away, I looked around the car. It was busy. Everybody was following the universal public transportation etiquette: eyes down, don’t talk to anybody. People of all shapes and sizes, all ages and races, were staring down at phones and books and newspapers. I didn’t see the woman with dark hair. I was in the rearmost car. I walked back toward the door into the next one, swinging between the support posts and smiling politely as other passengers grudgingly moved out of my way.

  She wasn’t in the next car either. I started to wonder if I had missed her on the platform somehow. I recalled the mental snapshot I had taken as I descended the es
calator. No, the platform had been empty apart from four or five people. Had she noticed me following? Doubled-back just to lose me? I didn’t think so, but if she had, it was as smooth a counter-surveillance move as I had ever seen, particularly as there had only been one entrance and exit to the station. The train exited the tunnel, flooding the car with bright sunlight.

  And then I saw her. Standing at the far end of the last car, holding one of the posts with one hand, the other resting on her purse, holding it around the front in a safety position that was probably unconscious. I took a standing position at the first set of doors and kept her in the corner of my vision.

  She got off at King Memorial station. I waited for a couple of people to get off ahead of me and followed her onto the platform. This station was elevated, and I followed her down three flights of stairs to street level. I emerged into a quieter neighborhood. Lots of residential buildings, narrower sidewalks, not so many stores, not so many people. I hung back, considering what I would do if she went into one of the houses or apartments. I could wait for her to go in and then ring the buzzer, or approach her while she hunted for her keys at the door. Neither was ideal. She walked two blocks and turned a corner, then crossed the road and entered a public park. Still not looking back. If she was aware of the tail, she knew how to hide it. A minute later, she stopped at a long bench in front of a pond and sat down. She unwrapped the burrito and took a bite out of it. With her free hand, she reached into her bag and took out a small tablet device.

  After consideration, I decided I probably wouldn’t get a better opportunity to get close to her without freaking her out. I walked over and sat on the opposite side of the bench. She glanced at me, gave a polite smile, and shifted her bag a little closer, before looking down at her tablet.

  I looked out at the ducks on the pond while I considered my opening gambit. “Excuse me, but have you been missing, presumed dead for the last fifteen years by any chance?” Perhaps not. I was still working out what to say when she turned and spoke to me.