The Only Witness

by Pamela Beason

  He arrived bleary-eyed and rumpled at George Vancouver High School. As he extracted himself from the seat, he noticed that his khaki trousers were covered with black and orange hairs. He brushed his fingers over them. They seemed to be glued to the fabric. Damn it. He rummaged through the first aid kit in the trunk until he found some adhesive tape. He wound it around his hand, and standing with one foot on the back bumper of the car, managed to peel some of the fur from his pant legs. How much was stuck to the seat of his trousers? Did he look like a walking furball from behind?

  "Detective Finn!"

  He straightened, glad the woman hadn't caught him patting his own butt. She was short and plump, with curly blond hair, dressed in beige slacks, sandals, and a short-sleeved plaid shirt.

  She smiled. "I saw you on the news last night."

  He hated this aspect of small town America, the way everyone knew who everyone else was. If the department ever needed undercover work, they'd have to borrow a detective from another county.

  She held out a hand. "I'm Daisy Taylor, the local head of the Sister-Mothers Trust program."

  He suppressed a smile as he peeled the tape from his hand and turned to toss the wad into the trunk. 'Sluts on Toast' was what Brittany had called the group. He pulled on his jacket to cover his gun.

  The woman walked him toward the building. "Three girls are absent this morning, including Brittany. The other two are seniors who somehow got the impression that they don't need to attend this year. I'm going to have to speak to them. Of course, I didn't really expect Brittany today." She shook her head. "This is all so awful. I can't believe this is happening in Evansburg. I hope the girls and I can help in some way. We want to do anything we can."

  "I'll need the names of the missing girls." He'd get the women detectives to locate and interview them.

  "Odds are that they're at the outlet mall in Larch Creek; it has a McDonald's." She stopped and turned toward him. "I know this probably isn't my place, but I was sorry to hear about your wife." She put a hand on his forearm. "That just wasn't right."

  Did everyone in this burg know his life story?

  She blushed. "Sorry, I probably shouldn't have said that. But my brother works out at the college in the business school, and you know, people talk."

  Obviously, the whole town talked. Finn cleared his throat uncertainly.

  "My sister's newly single, too."

  He continued to stare at her. Was she actually trying to set him up on a date?

  "Well." She sniffed and then led him down a hallway past a glass case filled with two rows of photos. He stopped. On the top, under the label Graduating This Year, were pictures of four smiling teenage girls with babies in their arms. Names were typed and pinned neatly under each photo.

  In the lower row, under Graduating Next Year, was Brittany Morgan's photo. Brittany wore a yellow blouse and a green headband. Infant Ivy Rose laughed at the camera, her mouth open and her eyes shiny. The baby had a yellow and green ribbon wrapped around her head, with a big bow over her left ear, like she was someone's special present. There could be little doubt that she was Brittany's daughter—same ivory skin, same strawberry-blond hair, same bow-shaped lips.

  "Are there other Slu—Sister-Mother programs in the area?" he asked the teacher.

  "We're the only one in this county. Two of my girls come from more than thirty miles away. SMT is a nationwide program, though—we get funding for supplies and all our teaching materials from the federal education center in Texas. And we encourage the girls all over the country to communicate through our internet site, YoMama."

  "YoMama?"

  She smiled. "I know, it sounds silly; but it's catchy, right? We have all sorts of educational materials posted there, and the discussions are monitored to make sure nothing dangerous or illegal is going on. Only girls in the program can join the online group."

  "We'll need access, too."

  She eyed him doubtfully.

  "We need to make sure there's not a predator trolling the site," he told her. "The girls will never know we had access, and we'll be off as soon as this case is resolved."

  She nodded. "I guess I can have you invited to join; give me your email address before you leave. Can you come up with a user name that sounds like a teenage girl?"

  He blinked at her, taken by surprise.

  She fluttered a hand at him. "Never mind, I'll send you a couple of suggestions. Please don't identify yourself online in any way. These girls need access to a site where they can feel safe; the whole idea is to build a support group of teen moms so they don't feel isolated."

  It was a little disturbing, imagining all those young girls around the United States talking about sex and stretch marks and breastfeeding.

  And then he stood before six of them. One girl's belly was so huge, it looked as if she might deliver by lunchtime. Two bounced infants on their laps. He'd read about a pact among teenagers back east to get pregnant at the same time, and he wondered if such planning had been in effect here. But no, it was more likely that a lack of planning was responsible for this particular population surge. Just what the world needed, more clueless parents raising kids. He hoped birth control information was part of the Sluts on Toast curriculum. Sister-Mothers Trust, he reminded himself.

  One blonde girl clutched a dark-skinned baby to her chest. Unlike Brittany Morgan, who had a sprinkle of freckles across her nose and cheeks, this girl had freckles on her arms and neck as well. The spots didn't cover her whole body, though; he caught a glimpse of the smooth curve of an ivory breast under the infant's rounded cheek. The girl noticed his gaze and pursed her lips into a sly smirk.

  The teacher's hand landed on his arm, and he realized she had just introduced him. He quickly jerked his gaze to a neutral spot above the girls' heads and cleared his throat, praying that his face was not as red as it felt.

  "As you know," he said, "Brittany Morgan's baby, Ivy Rose, is missing, and the police need your help to find her."

  Suspicious glances ricocheted among the girls. Maybe he should have said "we" instead of the "the police…"?

  "I know that officers visited a few of you last night. This morning I'm going to ask each of you a few questions. It shouldn't take long. Brittany's not in trouble. Nobody here is in trouble." In his mind, he added the word yet. "We need to get a picture of what Brittany and Ivy did yesterday and what was going on in their lives. Any detail you can think of might help."

  Daisy Taylor loaned him her class list, and he took the students in alphabetic order into the supply closet where the teacher had set two folding chairs facing each other. The room was claustrophobic, walled on two sides by shelves of erasable markers and paper towels and disposable diapers, a door at each end. He closed the one that led to the classroom and checked the other one—it opened onto a hallway, empty right now. He left that door open a crack for ventilation.

  He sat down with the first girl, the hugely pregnant one. Mandy. Their knees nearly touched in the small space. Damn. For his own protection, he should probably have an adult female present or tape these sessions. Mandy clutched her belly with both hands and acted as if this was the last place she wanted to be. If he asked a teacher or set up a camera, the girls would be less likely to talk. He'd have to take the risk.

  The diapers gave off a powdery smell, or was that the wipes? What he knew about babies could be etched on the head of a pin. Wendy had told him she wanted to move to Evansburg because it was a good family town. She hadn't ever actually said anything about babies; looking back, he knew he'd made assumptions that she was ready to start a family. Now it seemed like he was destined to be childless.

  The first two girls—Mandy and Alex—gave him nothing, except the news that half of the class was married, which he hadn't expected. But maybe teenagers were better suited to long-term relationships than middle-aged detectives. He wished them luck.

  Finally, the freckled girl—Brittany's friend Joy Saturno—provided a couple items of interest.

>   Joy twisted a plain gold wedding ring on her finger as she spoke. "Charlie." She blew out a breath. "Britt likes to pretend that Charlie was her boyfriend, but really she was just an easy hookup for him. I mean, she practically threw herself at him. He dumped her as soon as he found out she was pregnant. And he took a senior to the prom, not Britt."

  "How'd he feel about Ivy?"

  She rolled her eyes. "In Charlie's world, Ivy doesn't exist. And Britt really doesn't either, you know?"

  "But Charlie knows that Ivy's his baby?"

  Joy batted heavily mascaraed eyelashes at him. "It doesn't matter what Charlie says. Britt says that Charlie is Ivy's father. And she oughta know, don't you think?"

  The Wakefields had no use for the Morgans, according to Dawes. Was there real animosity there? Charlie had finally called in last night just before 11 p.m., claiming to have been studying in the library until it closed. Dawes, with the cooperation of the Cheney PD, was checking up on all the Wakefields' alibis. But so far it sounded as if none of the Wakefields had any interest in Ivy.

  Finn had let his mind wander in speculation; he pulled it back to what Joy was saying.

  "Britt was always going on and on about how Ivy was the prettiest baby ever." Joy pushed her long blonde bangs aside and rolled her eyes. "Red hair, ivory skin, blue blue eyes—la la la. She was so sure Ivy would win the Pretty Baby contest today."

  "Pretty Baby?" Finn asked.

  "It's like a modeling contest for babies, you know? They're coming after school. You pay them to take pictures and then they call you back if they want to use your baby as a model. If you win, you get a thousand dollars."

  At this point Joy leaned close, wafting a breath of spearmint gum his way and revealing a startling amount of freckled cleavage under her sleeveless blouse. He leaned back, jerked his eyes to the hallway door. Through the opening, he watched a woman scrub a black mark from the wall across the hallway. She wore a blue janitor's coverall with what looked like sergeant's stripes embroidered on the sleeve. A young man with a tie and black hair scraped back in a short ponytail stopped and touched her on the arm, then pointed down the hall. She nodded and they both walked off in the direction the man had indicated.

  "But I'm Britt's friend, so I had to tell her," Joy continued, "Ivy wouldn't even come close to winning. They want ethnic now, like my Ruben, not some Ivory Snow baby."

  "How did Brittany take it when you said that?" he asked.

  "She acted like she didn't believe me. But I could tell she really did." Joy nodded, urging Finn to believe her.

  "So she was upset," he said. Was this normal teen girl cattiness?

  "Besides, I think they only give prizes to babies of married couples," Joy added. "You know, to set a good example. I told her that, too."

  Were the married girls pitted against the single girls? He'd have to ask Mrs. Taylor. Were there other divisions within the class? He noted the tiny gold crosses dangling from Joy's earlobes and remembered Brittany's curious bumper sticker—The Dinosaurs Died for Our Sins. "Do you girls ever discuss evolution?"

  "Evolution? Puhl-leaze." Joy rolled her eyes. "Like we don't have anything better to do than talk about dinosaurs and Jesus?"

  He dismissed Joy and took a break outside before interviewing the next girl. His phone chirped; he snapped it open. "Finn."

  The station operator said, "I've got the FBI for you."

  He'd been expecting them. The next voice sounded young and female. "This is Special Agent Alice Foster, Detective Finn. I'm with the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team in Los Angeles."

  "Los Angeles? I'm in Washington State."

  "Yes, I know. My team is charged with responding to child abduction notifications all along the west coast. I received notice that you posted information about a possible infant kidnapping from…" There was a rustle of paper. "Evansville, Washington?"

  "Evansburg."

  "Do you have a suspect?"

  He quickly reiterated the details of the case, his irritation rising. He'd typed the same information into the FBI record only a few hours ago.

  "If it's a murder, then of course we have no role in this."

  No kidding. "I understand."

  "We'll post the photo and vitals on our nationwide network, and we will send you a profile of similar kidnappers, as well as a list of all known child molesters in your area."

  "Good." He resisted the urge to tell her that the Washington State Sex Offenders list was probably more up to date than her lists. Uniforms were knocking on all those doors at this very moment.

  "We will send an agent to your location as soon as we can. But until then we have full confidence that the Evansville police will do their best to resolve this case."

  He didn't bother to correct her again. "Right."

  "Please keep us posted about any developments in this case."

  "Of course." He punched End and stuck the phone back in his pocket. He'd covered the bases and done all the legally required reports. Once in awhile the FBI was helpful with their profiles and their maps and computer systems, but often they just created more paperwork. They'd been involved in several of his investigations in Chicago, but in every single case the locals had caught the perpetrator, not the feds.

  He paced along the front steps of the school to stretch his legs, thinking about Brittany and her classmates. Would a teenager throw out her baby because the infant couldn't win a beauty contest? Brittany hadn't seemed callous to him. But then he remembered one of his juvie cases from Chicago. A sixteen-year-old girl whacked a friend in the head with a baseball bat, killing the other girl instantly. Her stated reason: her friend had splashed a Coke on her new softball uniform; she hadn't meant to kill her. Zero impulse control, a frequent teen problem. Did Brittany fit in that category?

  His cell phone vibrated. He checked the readout. Speak of the devil. "Detective Finn," he answered.

  "It's me, Brittany Morgan. I just remembered something. You said we couldn't have an Amber Alert because we didn't have a car description or anything. But now I remember—Talking Hands Ranch."

  He needed another cup of coffee if he had to follow teenage leaps like this all day. "Talking Hands Ranch?"

  "There was a gray van parked next to my car at the Food Mart. It had these mirror windows, and the writing on the side said Talking Hands Ranch."

  It wasn't the usual stranger-lurking-in-the-shadows story that most of the guilty invented. He whipped out his notepad and jotted the information down. "Was there a logo?"

  "You mean like a picture? Ummm ... no."

  "The type of van?"

  "Well, it was big and gray, and it had mirror windows. But the writing on the side, that's got to be important, right? I mean, that's a weird name, Talking Hands Ranch, right? Like maybe it's a deaf school or something, Talking Hands? So now can I get an Amber Alert?"

  He'd already explained to her that they needed a reasonable suspicion of who the kidnapper was and the vehicle used. "We can't do anything without a plate or a person."

  A sob rasped through the phone. Oh great, now he was making young girls cry. "But that's really important information, the Talking Hands Ranch name," he told her. "I'll look into that right away."

  His phone beeped the second-call tone, and he quickly ended the call with Brittany and switched over. It was Mason, the department's resident geek.

  "It's gonna take a week to sort through all the stuff on this kid's computer, Finn."

  "Keep an eye out for any messages from Charles Wakefield—that's the baby's father."

  "Is that another kid?"

  "College kid now. He's nineteen."

  "Okay, still a kid, he's probably on Facebook and Twitter. W-A-K-E-F-I-E-L-D? Any relationship to the County Executive?"

  "Son."

  "Ugh. Well, like I said, it's gonna take awhile to wade around in all this muck. But I have already come across one interesting item I wanted you to know about."

  "What?"

  "Brittany Morgan routinely
visits this website called YoMama."

  "Yes, I found out about it this morning. It's part of the school program for pregnant teens. I've asked for access to their email loops."

  "There's all kinds of stuff about losing weight and breastfeeding and diaper rash and what to feed a baby. Can you believe that? They have to be told what to feed their babies?"

  "And?" Finn prompted.

  "Brittany's user name is Hot-dash-T. Get it—Hottie?"

  "I get it." Sounded like a porn name. Why did so many teenage girls act like skanks these days?

  "She connected there with someone named SKORGirl." Mason spelled the user name for him.

  Finn rubbed his forehead. Daisy Taylor's face appeared at the window. He held up five fingers to indicate he'd be back soon. "Is that name supposed to mean something to me?"

  "SK, then OR—it might be Serena Kinsey, the girl in Oregon whose baby Tika went missing from her yard a month ago. Brittany was emailing her before that and they were both bitching about how boring it was to be stuck with a baby every night. Then after Tika disappeared, Hot-T's mail is all about how SKORGirl didn't do anything wrong and shouldn't beat up on herself. And then last night, at nine-thirty, Hot-T sent SKORGirl a message: 'Now we're truly like sisters. I know exactly what you're going through. Because now Ivy's gone too.'" Mason paused. "Do you think these girls conspired to get rid of their babies?"

  It was at least an interesting coincidence. "Which town was the Kinsey case in?"

  Finn heard faint typing sounds, then, "Portland."

  "Thanks, Mason. Keep at it." Finn called the station, assigned a tech to research business records on Talking Hands Ranch and call Portland for a copy of the Kinsey case report. With the desk sergeant, he confirmed that the garbage bin detail had so far turned up no human remains or baby items.

  "Unless you count a lot of used diapers, of course. We've received plenty of complaints, though," the sergeant said. "The phone's ringing off the wall with people asking why the cops are wasting taxpayer dollars going through their garbage. They also want to know when the garbage will be picked up."