“Oh?”
“And don’t bring me any fruit or stuff to eat. I won’t be hungry.”
Chapter Twenty Nine
Fleetwood arrived just before six o’clock.
Powder appeared to be asleep, but as she closed the door his eyes opened, and he said, “My clothes are in the closet. Get them for me.”
“No ‘hello’?”
“We haven’t got tune.”
Fleetwood hesitated, and then went to the closet. The hanging rail was too high for her to take the hangers from, but she tugged the clothes down.
When she brought them. Powder was sitting on the edge of the bed. After a moment of struggling, he asked her to help him with his trousers, socks, and shoes.
Finally he stood up.
Fleetwood said, “What am I doing? I’ve gotten into the habit of doing what you tell me and not even asking questions. I must be crazy.”
“You’d make someone a wonderful old-fashioned wife,” Powder said. “Come on. We may already be too late. They change shifts about now. You go ahead and hold the elevator. I’ll get to it as fast as I can. They’re not used to me in clothes. I should make it.”
Fleetwood looked at him. “You sure you don’t want a ride on my lap?”
“Cut the cackle, will you? I’m not up to it.”
Powder made his escape without hitches.
In the main lobby, he told Fleetwood, “Bring your car around. I’ll stand by the door looking lackadaisical and elegant.”
Fleetwood brought the car to the front. It took her twenty minutes.
Powder slid into it slowly. Once settled he said, “I’m not going to complain about the time I had to wait,” he said. “I understand and make allowance for your being a cripple.” A spasm of pain came on him. She didn’t notice it at first as she was working her way to the main road.
But she didn’t ask if he wanted to go back. She said, “You mind telling me where we’re heading?”
“Three Three Eight Wilmington Road.”
“And just where is that?”
“In Aurora.”
“What?”
“Aurora. It’s a town near where Indiana borders Kentucky and Ohio. Follow the signs to Cincinnati on Interstate Seventy-four. We’ll turn off at Greensburg, and go through Versailles. It may be a little farther, but it’s more scenic.”
After they cleared the Wanamaker exit of I-74, Powder asked Fleetwood to pull the car onto the berm.
When the car had stopped, he slouched in the passenger seat for a moment. Then he rubbed his face.
“I’m hungry,” he said. “And I hurt.”
She began to speak.
He interrupted. “But I can’t have anything to eat or drink. I’m going to sleep for a while. That, at least, I can do. Just about anywhere, which is where I am. What I wanted to tell you was that you shouldn’t worry, if I may be so presumptuous as to think you might have. I’ll be all right when we get there.”
He paused. Then he said, “That’s where you kids waste so much of your energy.”
“Where’s that?”
“Feeling good when you don’t have to. You worry if you don’t feel great all the time. You get my age, you learn how to save up and feel good when you have to. OK. Let’s get moving.”
“It’s your show,” she said.
“Damn right,” Powder said. He tried to shift in his seat, but it was hard.
He closed his eyes.
After about two hours of driving, Fleetwood prodded Powder’s arm.
He didn’t respond.
She prodded it again, and then she pulled over to the side of the road, killed the motor, and turned to the quiescent figure lying awkwardly in her passenger seat.
“Powder?”
With both hands, she shook his arm gently.
After a moment, the body came to life. He snapped himself into an attentive, upright position, as if responding to danger.
He looked around. Then the pain flooded in.
“Hey, take it easy, lady,” he said. “I’m a sick man.” Involuntarily he groaned. “Jesus,” he said. “Medicine must be doing me good. Sure tastes bad.”
“We’re on the edge of Aurora.”
“Sounds lovely,” he said. “I hope this idea of yours works out. It’s a long way to come on a wild-goose chase.”
The address Powder had was of a small brick house with an immaculate front yard and a brilliant flower garden edging both the building and the large cement patio outside the front door. A cool breeze rustled the leaves of the neighborhood trees and through an arboreal gap the rippling upper Ohio River was plainly visible.
There was no sign of life from the front as Powder and Fleetwood paused to admire the view and the balmy evening. Then together they faced the patio, which was two steps above the path.
“You go on,” Fleetwood said.
“Like hell.” Powder turned her chair around. His full remaining strength, combined with her pull on the wheels, was just sufficient to get her up the two steps.
Powder leaned on the back of the chair, pale and too tired to speak.
After a couple of minutes’ rest he knocked on the door with his fist.
After a few moments, the door was thrown open by a woman in her sixties. She was tiny, and her taut face was ringed with white curls.
She studied first Powder and then Fleetwood. “I don’t subscribe to charities. And I don’t buy at the door.”
“Neither do we,” Powder said.
“What do you want?” the woman asked.
“We are looking for Sarah, Mrs. Crismore,” Powder said.
“My name ain’t Crismore,” the woman said.
“But you know who I mean.”
“I do. Crismore. The name of her people. If you want to call them that.” The woman narrowed her eyes. “You don’t look like police, but you sound like ’em.”
“We are police officers,” Powder said, “although we are out of our jurisdiction. We’d like to come in for a few minutes.”
Powder took his identification wallet from his pocket and opened it for the woman to examine. Taking his lead, Fleetwood did the same.
The woman studied them unhurriedly.
“Look all right,” she said, as if convinced against her will. She stepped back. “Come on in then, if you have to.”
In the living room an old man sat in an armchair that faced a side window of the house. After she seated Powder and Fleetwood, the woman went to the man and said, “Indianapolis police about the Crismore girl. Remember her?”
Without turning toward the visitors, the old man grunted dismissively.
“Name’s Mayberry,” the woman said, as she returned. She sat facing them. “Had a lot of children through here, over the years, my old man and me.” She nodded toward the mantelpiece over the room’s fireplace. More than twenty photographs of children stared individually out of dime-store frames.
“Orphans and rejects,” Mrs. Mayberry continued. “County gives you a little money to bed and board them. Learn them standards and decency. Some pick it up and some don’t.”
She thought for a moment. “Sarah learned,” she said, drawing her memory back. She rose and took a picture from the mantel. She studied the back of it. “Sarah was a good girl. Real quiet. Helpful,” she said, as if doubtfully. “Why are the police after her?”
Fleetwood said, “We work in the Missing Persons Department. Sarah is missing.”
“Oh dear,” Mrs. Mayberry said without concern. She studied the photograph again. “Always helping people and things. No, no real complaints about this one.”
“How did she come to you?” Fleetwood asked.
“Father killed the rest of the family and himself. Left her. Nobody knew why. Maybe he lost count. There was seven kids. He got the other six.”
Mrs. Mayberry put the picture back in its place. “Missing?” she asked. “It’s happened before, you know.”
“When?” Powder asked.
“Child broke its n
eck once. Fell out’n a tree. Eighteen years old and climbing trees. Spotted some broke-winged bird. Five months in bed. The high school graduated her anyhow and a college near here saw about her in the paper and give her a scholarship to be a teacher. Stupid work for a quiet child, I say. But she wouldn’t have gone to college otherwise. Still, time come for her to go and she wandered off. Found her next day in the woods. But I suppose that’s not the same kind of thing you’re working on.”
“No,” Fleetwood said.
“When did you last hear from her?” Powder asked.
“Had a card said she got work in Indianapolis. Last summer. Never really thought she’d make the grade.” Mrs. Mayberry shrugged. “But I’m sometimes wrong.”
Chapter Thirty
Powder was silent for several miles. He held his head.
“Hurting?” Fleetwood sked.
“Only for a grown-up kid who thinks she’s bad when it’s really everybody else.”
Fleetwood said nothing.
“I’m a bit numb,” Powder said. Then, “If it weren’t summer vacation, I’d say we should head to Madison. Where she went to college. Maybe you can get someone to answer the phone there tomorrow.”
“So, what now?”
“Wake me when we get to the city limits.”
Fifteen minutes later. Powder roused himself to say, slurrily, “Put the radio on. It won’t bother me.”
About twenty miles from downtown Indianapolis, Powder sat up and asked, clearly, “Why do you need so badly to stay a cop?”
Fleetwood was caught in a fifty-five-mile-per-hour reverie. “What?”
Powder repeated the question word for word and added, “It’s an obsession with you. What’s wrong with not being a cop? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know what to say to you.”
“Just answer the question. I want to know.”
Fleetwood spoke slowly. “I remember the times when I was on the street, or entering buildings, or waiting . . .” Her voice drifted away. Powder tuned the radio off.
“I remember times,” she said, “when to stay alive I had to be aware of everything going on around me because something in a window, or a noise behind, some little thing . . . if I missed it, I might be dead.”
Powder listened while she was silent.
“And at tunes like that,” Fleetwood said, “I felt more alive than any other tunes in my life.”
When they got inside the bypass loop around the city. Powder said,
“We’re not going back to the hospital yet.”
Fleetwood looked at him.
She said, “Where to?”
Powder gave her the address on Tacoma that had been the listed address of Sarah Crismore.
“She’s not in the hospital,” Powder said. “She’s not in Aurora. She’s got to be somewhere.”
“How about you telling me something, Powder?”
“Maybe.”
“You were half-dead when we started this jaunt and you’re worse now. Why the urgency about finding this woman?”
“I need to have it settled. At least up to a point.”
“Won’t it keep?”
Powder was quiet for a moment before he said, “No.”
They approached the address in silence, a modem brick apartment building with two dozen units.
Posted on the wall next to the mailboxes was a telephone number for inquiries. But Powder buzzed number 1 instead.
A fat woman in a heavy brown dress came into the lobby and asked Powder through the glass who he was.
Powder showed his police identification. The woman let him and Fleetwood in. He said,“There must be someone on the premises with spare keys to the apartments in the building. Do you know who it is?”
“I do,” the woman said in a resonant voice.
“Who is it, please?”
“Me,” the woman said. “You got a warrant?”
“No,” Powder said. He looked the woman in the eyes.
She stared back at him for a moment. Then chuckled. “Ask a silly question,” she said. “Which one you want?”
“I don’t know the number. But it was recently vacated by a woman in her twenties, who lived alone.”
“Oh yeah,” the woman said dismissively, “the teacher. Number eleven. One floor up.” The woman disappeared for a moment and reappeared with a key. Then she frowned. “What’s there goes with the place. She cleared her own stuff out.”
Powder nodded wearily. “Thanks.”
“You want me to come up?”
“No,” Powder said.
“OK,” the woman said. She made a point of looking past Powder to Fleetwood’s wheelchair. She shrugged and retreated to her apartment.
Powder turned to Fleetwood. “Go in and talk to her.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know,” he said irritably. “When she last saw Sarah Crismore or . . . anything. I don’t care. Just do it.”
Fleetwood looked at him, puzzled and even hurt.
“Because I don’t want you watching me try to climb these stairs. All right?”
Powder spent only a few minutes in the apartment. It was minimally furnished, but clearly unoccupied. No sheets on the bed, no food in the cabinets, no personal papers.
No occupant.
He knocked on the door of number 1 when he got back down.
Fleetwood thanked the heavy woman in the brown dress for her cooperation and Powder returned the apartment key.
When they were in the car Fleetwood said, “Sarah Crismore hasn’t been back since she cleared out.”
“Surprise, surprise.”
“But there are some letters for her.”
Powder squinted and turned to Fleetwood.
“She gave them to me,” Fleetwood said. She passed them over, and turned on the internal car light.
Powder flipped through the five envelopes. Three were of commercial origin. Two appeared to be letters, one postmarked in Indianapolis and one that had been hand-delivered.
Powder snorted and put them in his lap. He turned the light out.
Fleetwood said, “She didn’t leave a forwarding address.”
Powder was still silent.
“You’re not going to open them?” Fleetwood asked.
“And commit a federal crime?”
“Well, what now?” Fleetwood asked.
“What now? What now? Goddamned broken record,” Powder snapped.
They sat for a few moments.
Fleetwood almost asked if he was in pain.
Powder, with eyes closed, said, “She’s got to be somewhere, right?”
“Right.”
“So, how to track her.” It was a statement.
He was taking short breaths.
After several moments Powder said, “What did she wear when she left the hospital? No clothes coming in. What did she wear going out? What’s she wearing now?”
“As far as they know, she walked out in hospital pajamas.”
“The kind with the ties at the back?” Powder asked. “No. Either she pinched some or she called someone to come to her, bring things, pick her up.”
“Do you know what time it is?” the man asked at the door.
“Time I was in bed,” Powder said. He held up his identification.
“What’s that?” The man looked at the ID. “Police?”
“Are you Paul Kanouse?”
“Yes. Are you really a policeman?”
“I am,” Powder said.
“Well, what do you want?”
“I want Sarah Crismore, Mr. Kanouse.”
The man went rigid.
A voice from inside the house asked, “Who is it? Paul, who is it?”
Kanouse called to the voice, “Just Ken, wanting help pushing his car to a start. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Kanouse joined Powder on the front porch and closed the door behind him.
Powder said, “I was going to ask you to come out to my car anyway. My colleague is waitin
g for us there.”
They joined Fleetwood, and sat in the vehicle in front of the house.
“I think,” Powder told her, “that Mr. Kanouse knows where Sarah Crismore is.”
“Has Sarah done something wrong? Has she committed some crime?” Kanouse asked.
Powder rubbed his face.
“You know where she is, yes?”
Kanouse hesitated.
“And you helped her get out of County Hospital. What did she do, call you?”
Kanouse looked increasingly frightened. “I don’t know how you knew about me.”
“You were her lover, weren’t you?”
“I hadn’t seen her for weeks,” he protested. “I didn’t know where she was or what had happened to her. Out of the blue she called me to meet her at the hospital with some clothes.”
“Which you did”
“Yeah,” he said.
“And what then?”
“I found her . . . a place to stay.”
“Where?”
“I . . . don’t want to tell you. She doesn’t want people to know.”
Powder was silent for a moment. Then said, “All right.”
Kanouse was as surprised as Fleetwood was.
Powder said, “How is she?”
“OK.”
“She didn’t tell you what she was in hospital for?”
“No,” Kanouse said. “I saw her face. . . . I didn’t ask.”
“You’ve seen her today?”
Lowering his voice, Kanouse said, “Well, sure.”
“And what does she say about the future?”
“Just that she’ll be out of my hair in a few days.”
“How exactly?”
Kanouse seemed surprised by the question. “I don’t know. I’ve loaned her a little money. I think she’s going someplace. To her stepparents, maybe. I don’t think she has any other family.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
“What?”
“Her being out of your hair.”
“Not too long ago I would have begged her to stay.”
“But ...?”
“She seemed to . . . go funny. And she dumped me.”
“Is she still funny?”
“There’s something not quite right.” He sighed with some feeling. “Always did seem too good to be true.”
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