Find Me

by Carol O’Connell

  “It might be a mistake to give them rules.” Charles Butler was obviously in the mind-reading mode as he sipped coffee from a paper cup. “Makes it all a bit too innocent-like a school field trip.”

  “I’d like to clear them all off the road.” Riker shrugged. “But I can’t d o that without an act of Congress. The feds want the parents here.”

  “As bait?”

  “Yeah, but even if I spelled that out for these people, they still wouldn’t leave. Every time somebody dies, they think they’re getting a little closer to finding their kids. And they’re right about that. Cold, huh?”

  Mallory barreled down the road with the volume turned up sky high, and a group called The Who sang,“Won’t get fooled again.”

  Was this the one?

  Back in New York City, she had asked, “What was my father’s favorite song?”

  “There were so many,” Savannah had said, unwilling to admit that she did not know.

  And thereafter, Mallory had played a waiting game until one truth emerged and then another. Her enemy had weakened more each day.

  Savannah Sirus was one dead woman who would never come for a ride in this car.

  She-would-not-dare.

  Mallory rejoined the old road and entered a small Texas town. This was the home of Peyton Hale’s beloved Avalon Theater, a going concern when his letter was written. It was closed now. The movie posters had all come down, and the doors were padlocked. The glass of the ticket booth was cracked, and a nearby sign proclaimed this place as a landmark. The silver convertible was the only car on the street. Every parking space was hers for the taking. She had seen other ghost towns along the way, but there were people living in this one. A few of the storefronts were not empty, and one was a town museum that still posted hours.

  A diehard town.

  She crossed the old theater off her list with no sense of letdown this time. She had come to understand this kind of landmark, “-like a bookmark for a memory.”

  Down the road, she found the old Phillips 66 gas station, a tiny house of brick that had been restored for appearance only; it no longer pumped gas. Beyond that was a likely patch of road to bury a body, and troopers were hard at work digging it up. Kronewald’s pattern for the children’s graves was holding up in the state of Texas.

  She passed the diggers by. The young detective had had enough of the dead today, both the people and the places. Her car had been emptied of ghosts, and she was done with death. She rejoined the section of newer highway that had displaced the old Route 66 and put on some speed. The music was faster now, more frantic.

  “Rock ’n’ roll was the end of boyhood,” wrote Peyton Hale. “The music was wired into my skull, and my toes tapped to rhythms that only I could hear. Dogs were not so quick to come to me just for the pleasure of licking my hand. And the fathers of girls could see me coming from a long ways off. Oh, and the girls, they found me dangerous, and didn’t I love that? My salad days, my outlaw days. The road and the music-just sixteen. And now that I’m an old man of twenty-five, my road is disappearing as I write, as I ride.”

  Mallory took the next ramp that would turn her car east. She was heading back toward the grave-digging troopers, though she could not say why. Her debt to Kronewald was surely paid in full. Perhaps it was because April Waylon had come back for another ride, eyes popped wide and searching every bit of road, still so determined to find a lost child.

  It might be this one.

  The caravan was crossing from Oklahoma into Texas when Riker reached out and turned off the fire and brimstone of a radio evangelist. “Okay, that’s enough local color. Could you talk to Joe Finn when we stop for the night?”

  “No point,” said Charles Butler. “He won’t leave the road. Mr. Finn is really no different from the other parents.”

  “Oh, he’s different all right.” And Riker had had his fill of wild cards. “Finn’s daughter’s is buried in a Kansas cemetery, and he has to know that’s her body. I’m not buying into this denial crap. I’ve been through this before. It doesn’t last a year-usually just a few minutes. The parents shake their heads at you like you’re crazy. How can their kid be dead? ‘No, you made a mistake, you stupid cop.’ And then they cry. Now this guy, he wouldn’t even look at the corpse. I think Joe Finn wants payback. Probably figures he can find this freak before we do.”

  “No, he wouldn’t bring two children on a mission like that.”

  “You’re right. That’s nuts.” The detective turned to the passenger window and nursed a theory that fathers of murdered children were not very stable people.

  Te n miles of Texas prairie rolled by before Charles broke the silence. “Guilt always comes with a death in the family. Always. People dwell on last days and how they could’ve been different, given a second chance- and, of course, superhuman powers to see into the future. You can’t c u re them with logic. It’s the same when a child goes missing. That’s why these parents can’t leave this road. They’d be consumed by guilt if they didn’t d o everything in their power to bring their children home.”

  “Or die trying.”

  “I don’t think that enters into the equation. I’m sure you noticed that most of these people are single parents. They’ve lost spouses to divorce, one suicide that I know of. And then there’s alcoholism and depression. I know how you picked out the FBI moles so easily. They were playing the part of a happily married couple.”

  “The moles are doing a crummy job of keeping an eye on the kid.”

  “Sorry,” said Charles. “Sometimes I forget that Mallory’s not all that communicative. I thought you knew. The moles aren’t watching her at all. The other day, when Dodie disappeared under the table and Peter was screaming her name, the moles turned to look at Magritte. He’s their only concern. It makes sense. I’m sure you suspected that the killer was in the doctor’s therapy group. Murderers sometimes insinuate themselves into-”

  “Oh, shit,” said Riker. “That’s why Dale pulled that stunt with Joe Finn. He was painting a target on Dodie. He’s drawing fire away from his best witness-Magritte.”

  Witness? Or suspect?

  Riker answered his cell phone. It was the moles telling him that they had lost the Pattern Man to an exit ramp, and Dale Berman would not send agents to bring the little man back to the fold. Horace Kayhill was not one of the parents-not their problem.

  “So he’s expendable?… Yeah, right… ‘I’m sorry’doesn’t cut it, kid… No, you tell that idiot in charge-” The line was dead.

  Damn moles.

  Riker placed his next call to Special Agent Berman’s cell phone. “Dale?… Yeah, it’s about Horace Kayhill… No, Dale, you’re gonna send out a posse… Why? Well, if that little guy isn’t o n your shortlist, you’re a moron.” After another few moments of listening, he ended the call and folded his phone into his shirt pocket. “They’re going after him.”

  “Nicely played,” said Charles. “I know how much you despise Agent Berman, but you always use his first name-like an old friend.” He raised his eyebrows and shrugged to say, Just curious, not prying.

  Dr. Paul Magritte’s Lincoln was following the Mercedes when the old man saw Detective Riker turn around, twisting to reach into the back seat. The doctor eased up on the gas pedal to drop behind by one more car length. He took a last look at the blurry photograph of April Waylon. It had been taken while the woman was still losing blood from her slashed throat. This was the face of ongoing terror-not quite dead. He turned his attention back to the car in front of him. Riker was still facing this way.

  Perhaps guilt inspired the flight of fancy, the uneasy feeling that the detective’s line of vision could travel several car lengths, then bend and dip and turn to dark corners. Though Riker could not possibly know what Dr. Magritte held in his hand, the photograph was hastily concealed inside the folded maps on the dashboard.

  13

  Riker was so happy to hear Mallory’s voice. Apparently, in a lapse of apathy, she had forgotten to turn o
ff her cell phone.

  The grasslands of the Texas Panhandle were sliding by his passenger window while he told her the story of the dead wolf and a foiled plot to kill Dale Berman. A breeze ruffled the papers in his hand as he read her snatches of correspondence between the government and George Hastings. “Dale found the kid’s body, but he won’t release it for burial. So all this time goes by, months and months. Hastings gets tired of begging Dale for Jill’s body. He bypasses Dale’s field office and writes to Washington. Mallory, I got copies of everything. Now, all Hastings got back were form letters, but guess whose office they came from?”

  There was silence on the other end. Guessing games annoyed her. He gave her a broad hint. “The Assistant Director of Criminal Investigations.”

  “Harry Mars,” said Mallory. “He can’t be running this circus.”

  “He’s not, and I’ll tell you how I know. Mars’s office sent a whole slew of these damn form letters. It looks like a stall. I don’t think the FBI knows where Dale stashed the bodies of any of those kids. Interesting, huh? But I know he’s been digging them up for almost a year.”

  “All right,” said Mallory. “So we’re looking for a makeshift morgue somewhere in Dale’s comfort zone-near a Texas field office. Not all of the remains are skeletons. He’d want a place with refrigeration. Get the body count from Horace Kayhill’s maps.”

  “I can’t,” said Riker. “The Pattern Man defected. I’ve got agents and troopers out looking for the little guy. I even used a news helicopter. No luck. But all this new coverage might scare the freak off till we can find Horace.”

  “No,” said Mallory, “the perp is loving this. Imagine the thrill.”

  Riker could not, but he deferred to Mallory in all things sociopathic. “Oh, the feds finally ran a check against vehicle registration. One of the parents, Darwinia Sohlo-”

  “The name’s a fake,” said Mallory.

  The connection went dead, and it would be no use to call her back. His partner’s cell phone worked only one way-at her convenience.

  Riker was not inclined to trust the moles with the lives of any more people. He ordered Charles Butler to change lanes and drop back to the end of a parade that stretched out for more than a mile. And now he watched for exit signs and more defections to Route 66, but all the parents seemed content to drive I-40 to their next interview with the reporters.

  The radio was tuned to a news station, and the broadcaster was giving a traffic report on the caravan, “-so travelers should avoid that stretch of the interstate. Our helicopter counts two hundred and seventy-five cars going slower than the legal limit.”

  Understatement.

  The speedometer on the Mercedes was showing forty-five miles an hour and falling. The highway was hemorrhaging with the caravan, yet the traffic report had not deterred the local residents. All along the road were groups of people lining the prairie with cars and trucks, picnic baskets and babies in arms, young and old, waving at the cars driving by. Some held up signs of good luck and God love you lettered in bold print that Riker could read without glasses; there was nothing wrong with his long-distance vision, and so he was also able to see the first paper airplane take flight. It was caught by a tall man standing with his family. As the Mercedes rolled by, the airplane was unfolded in the Texan’s hands. It was a poster of a missing child.

  The news helicopter relayed this sight to the radio broadcaster as more paper planes took flight. Flocks of them sailed out from the windows of the caravan vehicles. The reporter was calling it a swarm-so many of them. Some soared upward, and others were captured by high-reaching hands and the lower reach of chasing children. Little ships with big hopes.

  Mallory’s store of coveted cell-phone numbers included one for Harry Mars, and her call went through to voice mail. She planned to trade on a cop’s good name-not her name, and so she left the message, “It’s Markowitz’s daughter.”

  She felt a pang, and supposed that it was guilt or something like it, and this was not the first time since leaving New York City. Now and again, she felt that she was cheating on the man who had raised her from the age of ten. It was the music that called him to mind, again and again, all along this road.

  Music was all her two fathers had in common. Louis Markowitz had never been young-except late in the evening after supper, when the volume on the stereo was cranked up high, and the old man had taught her to dance to rock ’n’ roll. His wife, gentle Helen, had called him a dancing fool and took her own turns with him on a floor with a pulled-back rug. Some of Mallory’s favorite memories were the dancing nights.

  Lou Markowitz had lived to dance.

  Peyton Hale had lived to drive. Cassandra had told her that defining detail about her real father, but not much else. Or had she? Mallory had been six going on seven the day her mother died. How many memories had been lost? She had always known her father’s name and where her green eyes had come from, though her mother had not kept any photographs, probably wanting no reminder of parting with him and the loss of him.

  Before the visit from Savannah Sirus, she had known nothing of her mother’s pain. It must have been reborn every morning when young Kathy jumped up and down on her mother’s bed, waking Cassandra with Peyton’s green eyes.

  Another pang.

  Her cell phone beeped.

  The restaurant’s parking lot would not hold all the vehicles. Reporters and FBI agents had arrived first to take up most of the spaces. Riker left the Mercedes to play traffic cop, and Charles Butler watched his friend unwind the mess of backed-up traffic on the road, steering cars onto adjoining land, shouting instructions to form neat rows, yelling, “Fake it! Just pretend you’re at the shopping mall!”

  In search of his own parking space, Charles was looking out over the herd of media in the parking lot when the cacophony of beeping began. The reporters were all answering cell phones.

  Oh, stampede.

  They were running for their vehicles. He saw the small fleet of news helicopters stirring up dust down the road, rotors whirring, lifting. FBI agents swarmed out of the restaurant, all heading for their vehicles. The sick sound of one fender hitting another could be heard as cars and vans crowded the narrow road leading back to the highway.

  Charles now had his choice of prime parking spaces and selected one by the front door. A pleasant surprise awaited him inside-no long line to order food. While he filled a tray for two, Riker had procured a table by the window, and the parents were still filing in the front door-only the parents. Outside in the nearly empty lot, Dr. Magritte was flanked by the FBI moles, the only agents left behind.

  Odd.

  Well, what could happen here? It was broad daylight. The caravan was perfectly safe. Yet a sense of abandonment pervaded the dining room. All eyes were on the parking lot, though the exodus of FBI and media was over.

  Riker held a cell phone to one ear as his fingers drummed the tabletop, the sure sign of a man left on hold. “Still here,” he said to the phone, “you bastard.”

  Ah, the man must be speaking with Kronewald.

  Riker jotted down a few lines on a napkin and ended the call.

  Charles was looking out the window when he asked, “Where do you suppose they went-the agents and reporters?”

  “They’re heading down the road about ten miles.” The detective dropped the cell phone into his shirt pocket.

  Charles set down the tray of fast food, and then turned back to the window. “But I couldn’t help noticing that they went off in different directions.”

  “Yeah.” Riker waved one hand toward the east. “According to Kronewald, in that direction, you’ve got local cops digging up a dirt parking lot. To the west-a grave across the street from a nursing home. Most of the feds will be back soon. The media won’t. Digging up little bones makes a better lead on the evening news. Two gravesites, no waiting. So much more entertaining than parents holding up their posters and begging for help.”

  “This is Mallory’s work?”

&nb
sp; “No, this time it’s Chicago PD. They got a new toy, geographic profiling. They’re giving grave locations to local police. Now the feds are playing catch-up with the cops. Police in eight states report directly to Kronewald. That old bastard’s just rolling in glory. So he finally won the war-he’s running the show. Oh, and he tells me the sun rises and sets on Kathy Mallory. That kid really knows how to stock up the Favor Bank.”

  Both men were looking at the nearly empty parking lot when one of the FBI vehicles returned. Cadwaller stepped out of the car and pulled his suit jacket from a hanger in the rear seat. He approached the window near Charles and Riker’s t able and used the glass reflection to smooth down his red hair, not caring that this toilette was being performed only inches from their faces.

  “A coat hanger,” said Riker, whose own suit jacket was wadded up in his duffel bag. “Not a hook but a hanger.” For some reason, this made the detective suspicious. “And check out his car. See the little beads of water on the trunk? Crimes scenes east and west of here, and this guy stops off to get his car washed.”

  Charles nodded. Perhaps that was excessively tidy. Even Mallory had allowed her car to accumulate streaks and dirt, not to mention the bugs on her windshield.

  Cadwaller turned around to look over the surrounding ten cars, all that remained in a lot that boasted a hundred parking spaces. The agent watched Mallory’s car roll into a parking space, and then, with a moue of distaste for her dirty windshield, he turned back to his own vehicle to get a briefcase from the front seat.

  “Ah,” said Riker, with great satisfaction. His eyes were fixed on the silver convertible. “The champ of neat freaks has arrived.”

  Mallory slowly stepped out of the car, her attention already riveted on the FBI agent.

  “And now,” said Riker, with the flair of a sports announcer, “she’s spotted the contender. It’s a match made in hell. She just noticed that his car’s cleaner than hers.”

  Cadwaller straightened his perfectly straight tie and headed for the restaurant door, unaware that Mallory was right behind him, her eyes narrowed and fixed on the back of his neck.