Cooler Than Blood

by Robert Lane

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said the trunk was jimmied with a crowbar. Did you find the crowbar?”

  He shifted his weight. “I assume it was a crowbar, or some other blunt instrument that we didn’t find. They didn’t try, as far as we could ascertain, to steal the car—not that it had much value. Problem is they left behind an Alpine aftermarket navigation system and rear speakers that would blow out the Orange Bowl. Easy thing to fence.”

  “And your deduction?”

  McGlashan must have tired of my staccato questions, or feared another unforced error like the crowbar, because he came back with, “What do you think?”

  “There was something in that car worth far more than a grand and the simple time it would have taken to snatch the stereo.”

  McGlashan nodded. “Coleman had two brothers, Randall and Zach. The clan is suspected of running meth labs in Hocking County, Ohio. The sheriff up there thinks they’re more than mom-and-pop; they probably export well beyond the county line. They live within an hour of Ms. Spencer’s hometown, but we found no connection.”

  That garnered my attention. “Within an hour and no connection? Little tough to swallow, isn’t it?”

  “To date…no connection.”

  “Who’s in charge?”

  “Where?”

  “The Coleman clan.”

  “According to the Hocking County sheriff, Randall, the older one, calls the shots. But they’ve got nothing to bring the boys in on.”

  Susan cut in. “What about Jenny?”

  McGlashan and I both switched our attention to her, and I said, “What did you notice about Coleman when he talked to you?” I didn’t think the question would move us forward, but I wanted Susan to be engaged.

  “Not much. We’d never seen him before that afternoon. We were lying out, and he stopped by. Said a few words, introduced himself, said he was from Georgia, and moved on. He leered at Jenny.”

  “Leered?”

  She shrugged. “Guys do it. Quick glance at me, then all over her, but he didn’t stay.”

  “Sound like he was from Georgia?”

  “No, now that I think about it.”

  “The head slap?”

  “You know, like you do when a gnat bites you. But it was…different.”

  “Why?”

  Susan considered that for a beat. “Because it was too…too violent, too hard for a bug.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing that I—”

  “Think.”

  She shot me a glance, and I remembered I really didn’t know this woman well, perhaps not at all.

  “He was red.”

  “Red?” The word held so many possibilities: a Native American, the movie, the fish, losing money, a commie sympathizer, Morgan’s latest flame.

  “Serious sunburn. One step away from the emergency room.”

  McGlashan shifted in his seat. “If I may, let me recap what we know.”

  I ignored him and gave Susan a hard stare. “You’re positive? Jenny had never seen this guy before the encounter on the beach? A guy who may have grown up less than an hour away from her? She leveling with you? This girl you barely know, yet you know she’s telling the truth?”

  “We checked,” McGlashan answered before Susan had a chance to leap out of her chair at me. “As I said, we found no connection. Even though Coleman’s home isn’t far from Jenny’s home in Ohi—”

  “That’s not her home,” Susan yelped at him.

  McGlashan blew out his breath then caught himself. “From where she was living, every day for the first eighteen years of her life.” My bet was that he and Susan had driven that around the lot a few times. He glanced at his watch.

  “You have nothing to tie the Coleman boys to Jenny?” I pressed him again.

  He paused, weary of my line of disbelief. “Nothing yet. The sheriff’s office in Hocking County interviewed Ms. Spencer’s stepfather—”

  “He is shit,” Susan blurted. “He wouldn’t tell the truth on his mother’s grave.”

  McGlashan let the moment defuse and addressed me. “The sheriff stated that neither Ms. Spencer’s stepfather or mother knew Billy Ray Coleman or any of the Coleman boys. They weren’t even privy to the fact that Ms. Spencer had decided to move in with Ms. Blake. She didn’t even notify them of her decision to leave. Simply left without telling them.” He leaned his good shoulder into the armrest of the chair. “Here’s what we got on Ms. Spencer’s disappearance. Ms. Blake came home from the grocery store two days ago, and Ms. Spencer was gone. No sign of forced entry, no prints. Her bag wasn’t packed. Her phone was here. We interviewed the neighbors. One thinks she saw Jenny leave the house around ten in the evening, like she was taking a stroll, but with purpose, the neighbor said. No one saw any suspicious vehicles on the street. No one—”

  “For God’s sake,” Susan said and leaned forward, arms on her knees. “She left without her shoes and her phone. Her phone. You really think an eighteen-year-old girl took off with forethought and purpose and left her phone?”

  I glanced at McGlashan and raised my eyebrows.

  “Rutledge examined the phone and saw nothing of interest,” he said. “We’re keeping it for the time being.”

  “And the chances of any girl bolting without her phone?” I asked him.

  McGlashan placed his hands on the arms of the chair and maneuvered himself deeper into his seat. I didn’t think he was the type to veer from company manuals and policies, but he wasn’t a rookie. He addressed my question to Susan. I don’t like it when I ask the question, and the answer is directed to someone else.

  “Maybe she panicked. Maybe getting raped her opening night in Florida wasn’t the scene she envisioned. Local sheriff’s office in Ohio is questioning her friends. I think she’ll show up. Hopefully she’s not running from us. We made clear to her that our office sees no guilt in her actions. Maybe another guilt caught up with her. We…I…don’t know.” He shifted his gaze to me. “At this point she’s just a missing eighteen-year-old who has run before.” He paused and held my eyes for a few seconds. He was being asked to look for a girl with a history of fleeing. Literally bolted twice within one week. Jenny Spencer didn’t make his top one hundred things to worry about.

  He continued in my direction. “We’ve notified her mother, at her old home in Ohio, that if she shows to give us a jingle.” He checked his watch again in a well-timed stage maneuver then stood. “I’ve got to go.” He reached into his pocket and produced a business card for me. I stood and gave him mine. It had my name and cell number. “If you uncover anything, let me know.” He tossed Susan a nod. “Ms. Blake, I’m sure she’ll turn up. I can see myself out.”

  He went three steps, and I said, “Tell me about the follow-up interview.”

  McGlashan turned with an air of reluctance. “Standard procedure. Sometimes different things come out the second time around. Memories tend to travel their own path and at their own speed. We usually have a different person conduct the second interview, just to break it up. But I never got the chance.” He turned back and strolled out the front door with a pace that challenged further questioning.

  I asked Susan if I could see Jenny’s room. I followed her down a hall and into a room with a cherry floor and closed white shutters. Jenny hadn’t even unpacked. Her suitcase was open on the floor, and clothing spilled over its sides like it was trying to escape. Her bed was meticulously made, and a frayed stuffed yellow duck with a faded pink beak rested on the edge of the pillow. Above the bed hung a wooden sign: THERE IS A PLACE I BRING ALL OF ME, AND IT IS UNDOUBTEDLY THE SEA. I liked it. I entered the room and picked up a framed picture off her bed stand. A confident man beamed into the sun, half his face blocked by the shadow of his hat. He was on a boat. “Her father,” Susan said from behind me, although her voice sounded far away. “She finds it difficult to speak of him.”

  “Tell me.” I gently placed the picture back on the bedside table.

  She went to the windo
w and opened the shutters. She spoke with her back to me. “He died when she was twelve. Hunting accident in deer season.” She spun around. “There’s a word for that—harvesting, I believe. Anyway”—she took a step and smoothed out the bedspread—“that year they harvested four thousand one hundred twenty-nine deer and one man. She and her father were close. Her—my sister Angie—was never close to her only daughter. Angie’s caught up in her own world and followed their son, Orry, on the motocross circuit. Jenny’s dad, Larry”—she glanced up at me—“was a lot like you, spent years in the army. He bought an old boat, a Trojan, and he and Jenny used to go to Buckeye Lake on weekends. He was a wonderful man.” She glanced away from me, but her eyes focused on nothing. “He could’ve done a lot better than my sister.” She came back to me. “I’m sure he would’ve left her if it weren’t for the two kids.”

  “She come down on her—”

  “My sister remarried.” She gave the bedspread a flippant shove, like the stupid thing didn’t matter. “Guy named Boone, a part-time construction worker who wears sleeveless T-shirts and tinkers with an old Dodge Charger that hasn’t turned over in years.”

  “How did Jenny feel—?”

  “She spent only one day on the boat after her father died. Last summer with her brother, Orry, and two of his friends. She told me that Boone started calling her ‘woman,’ and it made her want to puke, and it was all she could do, being on her father’s boat, to not just break down and cry.” She took a step closer to me, as if words wouldn’t suffice and were no longer capable of conveying the message.

  “I take it that—”

  “He came at her jaybird naked three days later when she was in the shower after cheer practice. Jenny said she screamed so loud she scared herself. He backed down but said he knew where she slept.”

  I stood quietly, an immensely difficult thing for me to do. But I’d learned my lesson. Susan had cut me off three times and had to get the story out.

  “Jenny took off the day after she graduated. Didn’t tell anyone. See that saying?” She nodded toward the wooden sign above the bed. “Said she saw it in a magazine while flying to Orlando for cheer competition. She told me she was five miles above the face of the earth when she decided to live by the sea…to come to me.

  “I like that.” She shifted her gaze to the sign. “Five miles above the earth when you decide to live by the sea. As if up there, the choices are so clear, so obvious.” She turned back to me and picked up the cadence of her speech. “We had already bonded. We’d met several times over the years, and she spent a week here last summer. She texted me and said she wanted to come visit. Showed up a day later with a suitcase that I knew was packed for more than a visit.”

  “When did you learn of Boone?”

  “Just the other night. She doesn’t dwell on that. Her father”—she picked up the picture of a smiling Larry Spencer—“and his boat were the only two good things ever to cross her path.” She gave a slight shake of her head. “She told me the old boat leaked, and her job was to sit in the cuddy and work the busted hand pump, but it was hard because she and her dad always rubbed the teak with oil, and it was difficult to pump with the oil on her hands. She said she tried”—she wiped her eyes with her free hand and put the picture back—“but it was so hard when it was slippery.”

  I glanced at the picture of Larry Spencer. Army man. Kept his teak well-oiled. I liked the guy. He’d fit in well in my world. “I’m sure—”

  “She asked me if she had let her father down”—her eyes pleaded with mine—“when she was twelve and couldn’t pump very well because of her oiled hands? She asked me if I thought her dad was disappointed in her. Said sometimes she dreamed of him, and in her dreams, he’d say, ‘Pump, Jenny. Pump,’ and then she’d wake up feeling he was disappointed that she couldn’t pump very well, and she’d try to crawl back into the dream to talk to him. What do you say? What do you say to a girl who wants to crawl back into a dream to talk with her father?”

  I blew my breath out. “Damned if I know.” It came out disrespectful, although it wasn’t my intent.

  Susan landed a hard stare. “Someone took her,” she said with a hard shift of her emotions. She faced me, her dark eyes streaked with tears.

  “We don’t know that. She was under—”

  “Didn’t you hear him? Just a missing eighteen-year-old. They don’t care. Someone took her.” She took a step toward me, but I didn’t get it. My antenna wasn’t high enough.

  “You’ve got to understand McGlashan’s position. She’s eighteen. She already ran from one home without telling anyone, and after what she went through, he just can’t—”

  Another step. “She left her phone.”

  “She’ll probably—”

  “Didn’t you goddamn hear me? I’m all she’s got. Do you understand that?”

  I was oblivious to the charge of her words, the conviction of her mind, the strange brew of frustration, strength, and vulnerability that was coiled within.

  “I’ll ask around—”

  Her right hand flew in fast. I started to move but decided I deserved it, and she needed to get it out. She slapped me hard across my left cheek.

  “How can you stand there?” she shouted. “I’m all she’s got. Do you understand that?” She struck me again, but this time with her left hand, as if all of her wanted to get in on the act.

  I went to hold her, but she shoved me back with both hands and stumbled out of Jenny’s room. I gave her a minute then found her sitting at the end of her dock, much like I’d found her sitting at the end of my dock. The late afternoon sun softened the weathered planks and cast an orange glow on the port side of her Grady-White. What type of woman owns a Grady and wears a tight black dress? Her shoulders moved up and down twice in slow motion. A great white heron, perched on the edge of her lawn, seemed to consider the scene and took a tentative step away. Good instincts.

  “I’m sorry,” she said but didn’t look at me. “I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t even know you.”

  True, but instead I limped out, “I’ll do my best.” I wish I’d said something else. She turned to face me. Her voice was strong, which surprised me.

  “I don’t know…Maybe she did run. But everything I know says she didn’t. She’s me. She’s me twenty years ago. I know her like I know myself. She’s not out contemplating. Who the hell has time for that? She didn’t run. She has nowhere to run. You heard Detective McGlashan—someone was after Coleman. Jenny’s been abducted, Jake. Someone took her and—”

  “And what?”

  “No one gives a damn.” She turned, but not before I saw the tears. “I’m all she’s got.”

  Her closing statement came out like the last bit of air from a birthday balloon long after the party was over.

  CHAPTER 7

  I left Susan on her dock and headed to Fish Head to meet Morgan.

  The only semblance of outside walls were rolled-up crinkled plastic that in all likelihood hadn’t been let down since the last northern blow in early March. Bright yellow-and-blue wooden booths ran against the side that faced the still waters of the marina. Leftover crayon drawings from the spring-break migration still littered the inside wall that separated the kitchen from the dining area. The humidity had curled the edges of the paper and dulled the once vibrant artwork of children. I grabbed a high stool next to Morgan and ordered a beer. No sign of Aussie. I drank a third of the longneck before I spoke.

  “The detective is treating Jenny like a habitual runaway who’s likely to show up. I don’t—”

  “Tossed her fifteen feet, believe that?” Morgan stared ahead at a dirty slushy machine that swirled green goo.

  “Who?”

  “Lady. Happened around three weeks ago. She and her husband were down visiting friends for a week. They went to view the sunset two blocks away while their hosts stayed behind and grilled fish. On their way back, a car hit them both. Tossed her into the struts of the bridge at Big Carlos Pass.”

&nb
sp; “You know them?” It came out in an accusatory tone. I shouldn’t have asked, but he got me sometimes. The man was capable of mourning a farmer’s natural death in China and often did. My phone vibrated in my pocket.

  “We know them all,” he replied. I wanted to reach for my phone but instead said, “Tell me.”

  “That’s it. Took both of them to the hospital, where they realized she wasn’t going to see sunrise. The staff wheeled their gurneys next to each other so they could hold hands one more time. They held hands at the sunset then held hands thirty minutes later on gurneys. Last sunset. Lights out.” He turned and glanced at me for the first time since I’d arrived. “What did you learn about Jenny?” It wasn’t unusual for him to recover quickly from his self-induced sympathetic state.

  “You okay?”

  “Jenny.”

  “She’s gone and—”

  “You need to find her.”

  “I’m aware of that,” I said. “But—”

  “Death is an opportunist who rides our collar every day. Get your phone. You’re dying too.”

  “You’re back that fast?” I reached into my pocket. I also decided I’d stick to T-shirts. No collars.

  “Just took a moment.”

  It was a text from McGlashan. God bless him. I had texted him a question before I had even reached my truck after I’d left Susan’s. I wanted to double back on a comment he’d made. I also wanted to see what type of team player he really was. If he ignored my text, as he had every right to, then my investigation would be that much more difficult. In response to my text, he provided an address on Susan’s street. “I’ve got to go,” I told Morgan. “I need to talk to someone who may have been the last known person to see Jenny. Catch you back at the condo.” I drained my beer and walked out, leaving Morgan contemplating the green slushy machine. Marmalade’s “Reflections of My Life,” like a melodic omniscient observer to all below, flowed out of the pitted corner-ceiling speakers tucked behind the ends of the rolled-up plastic curtains.

  The house was three down from Susan’s. As I started my second series of raps on the sun-drenched door, it swung open. An advanced-middle-aged lady blocked my path, even though a light breeze would have swept her away. She had butch blond hair and silver earrings that dropped below the jagged ends of her strands. She gave me a glare and said, “My trees don’t need trimming.” An osprey screamed.