“All right, fine. I want you to find my daughter and return her to me. I want to be kept informed of your actions.” He hadn’t even taken a deep breath to think about my conditions. Either they didn’t bother him or he figured all along to break them, whatever they were going to be.
“One more thing. On missing child cases, I work two ways. One, I do all the work. The other way, you take off some time and go with me to help find her. Sometimes it means something to the kids knowing that a parent went looking for them. They aren’t so eager to take off again. Also, I charge less that way.”
Benson waved the offer away. “The money doesn’t mean anything to me. You do it.”
“Okay. You’ll get a telephone report daily and a written one on completion.” I hesitated a second. “Why haven’t you called the police?”
“The police! That’s a laugh. They couldn’t find their asses with both hands and a map. No, they’d just give her description to the scout cars and that’s it. They’d have to run her over to find her that way. Believe me, I’ve been looking. She’s gone to ground somewhere. I want a pro on the job and on this job only.” He bit off his sentence and dropped some ice cubes into his drink.
When he returned I started up again. “How did you get my name?”
He looked me straight in the face and sniggered. “I didn’t. My wife dug you up, remember.” I checked to see if I had fallen off the evolutionary ladder. “Where from I don’t know. When I decided to hire you I called my attorney. He said you were the one that popped the lid on the Saunders case. So I figured I’d give you a shot at this.”
“I’ll need a current photo of your daughter, a list of her friends, and a letter introducing me as your agent. While you’re doing that I’d like to look in her room to get a feeling for what kind of kid she is. Which room is hers?”
He pointed down the hall to the last door on the left and said he’d make up the list and the letter.
I went down to the door and stopped a moment, trying to clear my head, to be fresh for my first encounter with Miranda Benson. Her room would tell me something of who she was and what kind of world she lived in. If my head was clear I might be able to see the strands of wish and need that would propel her. From those I might get an inkling of her route and destination.
I took a deep breath, focused on the blank wall and stood there until my head was cleared. Then I entered her room.
The curtains and covers were pink and frilly. There was a dainty girl’s desk and an ornate girl’s bed, but that was all stuff her parents probably bought. There were no personal touches or flourishes; no wall full of rock star posters, no bed full of stuffed toys. I hate tossing kid’s rooms. The secrets were always the same and I shouldn’t be the first to know them.
I went to the desk and opened each drawer. The top one was full of school supplies. I leafed through some note pads full of geometric doodles. A series of ever darker rectangles, each getting smaller leading to a black center. A series of rectangles moving from black to yellow then back to a black center. Nothing else on the pages. The bottom two drawers were empty. I took out the drawers looking for any taped secrets; pictures, letters or a diary. I came up with nothing. I looked at her bookcase. A lot of old Newbery and Caldecott winners. I wondered who chose them. Lots of albums, alphabetically ordered and spanning the spectrum. I moved the bookcase away from the wall. Then I flipped through the most used books. Zippo. I moved the rug and the bed. I went to her dresser. The top drawers were full of rumpled jeans and tops. Some cotton shirts, long sleeve, and some similar denims. At the bottom was a black stretch tank top with EAT YOUR HEART OUT written across the bust in sequins. The next drawer was underwear, nightgowns, bras, a bikini, and tampons. The bottom drawer had some sweaters and a cheerleader’s outfit. They were all folded, crisp, clean and looked untouched. I took the drawers out. Nothing. I crossed to the closet. Dresses, skirts, cotton pants—also all folded, clean and untouched. Boots and heels on the far side. I bent down and touched them for dust and came up positive. On the near side well-worn Nikes and a pair of sandals. I sensed someone behind me and turned my head to see who it was. She had red toenails and dimpled knees. She was cute, wide-eyed, and serious. She was about seven.
“Hello. What’s your name?”
“Tammy.”
“Well, my name’s Leo. Pleased to meet you.” I got up off my knees, dusted off my pants and held out my hand to her. She slipped her tiny hand into mine. I sat down on the bed to be more on her level.
“You’re Randi’s sister, right?” She nodded yes.
“Do you have any other brothers or sisters?” No. “Do you know where your sister is?”
“She’s on a field trip. The other kids go on them sometimes at school.” I nodded understanding. A field trip for sure. Into the human zoo. A crazy place, only the predators are uncaged. I thought about how to ask her about her family.
“Find anything?” Benson was in the doorway, holding some papers. Before I could answer he snapped at his daughter. “Tammy, why don’t you go out and play?” She winced briefly, said, “Okay, Daddy,” and slipped out of the room.
I went back to searching the room. I threw off the covers and moved the mattress. Then the springs, then the frame. I replaced the set of headphones that were hooked up to her stereo. I moved the bed back and saw a night light sticking out of a socket by the bed. I sat back on the bed wondering at that.
“No, nothing, just getting a sense of her. Has she changed her room in any way recently?”
“Yeah, she gave away her toys. Took down her posters. She let it all go to pot, always a mess.”
“How about her clothes?”
“She stopped wearing the clothes we bought her. It was always painter’s pants and big work shirts. Christ, she looked like a boy, buried in all that stuff. Anyway, here’s the stuff you wanted. Last year’s picture, the last friends she told us anything about and the authorization letter.” He handed them to me.
“Did she have a teacher or counselor she was close to or might have talked to?”
“No,” he said, as he scanned an internal tape. “Well, maybe Miss Simpson; she was her phys ed teacher and cheerleader coach.”
I added her name to the list and read the letter. “Who was her best friend, oldest and closest?”
“The Bradley girl. They just live down the block.”
I looked finally at the picture, a typical head and shoulders shot. She had blonde hair, layered short in front and long in back. Her eyebrows were darker, full and arched strongly across her face, emphasizing her pale blue eyes. Her nose was upturned and her full lower lip pouted out. Her chin was squared off, strong and dimpled. “How different does she look these days?”
“Her hair is straight, long, over her shoulders. She doesn’t take care of it. She’s lost some weight, living on junk food. You can see it in her face. Her cheeks are hollowed out.”
I looked at the picture and mentally modified it. I’d get a copy made and have an artist draw in the changes. “How big is she, and what was she wearing when she went to school Friday?”
“She’s about five foot three and ninety-five to one hundred pounds. She was wearing what she always wears: white painter’s pants, a blue long-sleeve work shirt and her Nikes.”
I pulled out a contract from my coat pocket and suggested to Mr. Benson we return to the living room. I wrote out the particulars and handed it to him. He skimmed it, signed it and went to another room. He returned with a check for seven hundred and fifty dollars. I pocketed it and told him he’d hear from me this evening. I was going to start with Becky Bradley today and try to get the teacher tomorrow at school. Benson was at the table staring into space when I let myself out. No one was home at the Bradley house when I stopped by. I decided to go over to the Route 1 corridor and grab a bite to eat.
Fairfax County is one of the richest counties in America, and the Route 1 corridor is a ten-mile slash through it of fast food places, gas stations, trailer parks, and hot
sheet motels. You can eat and go, gas and go, pick up your home and go, fuck and go. At the south end there’s a combat zone around Fort Belvoir of massage parlors, topless bars, and adult book stores.
No one lives on Route 1. Everybody’s just passing through no matter how long they stay. Olde Towne or Belle Haven is where they want to be. Every day you can get up and watch your neighbors a half mile on either side of the corridor living out your dreams. Far too often down here that sight ends in the late night shattering of glass, the thunderclap of gunfire and a police siren’s whiny song.
I pulled into the Dixie Pig’s lot, parked, and walked across to the front doors. The Dixie Pig is one of a handful of places on the corridor where they take more time to cook your food than you took to order it. It’s a landmark on Route 1, fifty years in one place. Entering it is like entering a time warp. The prices are from 1952 and so are the waitresses. In their beehive hairdos and starched whites, they call you honey and offer to sit on your lap as if they were eighteen and their daughters weren’t. The barbecue is hot, juicy, shredded pork on a homemade bun with tangy slaw. I ordered a sandwich and a beer. When the sandwich arrived I doused it with jalopeño vinegar. I ate and headed back to the Bradley house.
Buy All the Old Bargains Now!
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank the following people for the gracious donation of their expertise. The responsibility for the uses to which I put their knowledge is entirely mine. The pseudonymous Ms. Valens at security; Reverend James May-worm; Mark Schutz, M.D.; Officer Adam Schutz, MCPD; Neil Ruther, attorney-at-law; Chief Wade Pelletier and Officer Margie Young of the Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, Police Department; Captain Franko of the MAKO; Jim Holliday, adult cinema’s leading archivist and critic; Meg Hennigan; and Steven Spruill who believed I could write long before there was any reason to.
About the Author
Benjamin M. Schutz was an Edgar and Shamus Award–winning author, and was best known for his stories about PI Leo Haggerty. Based out of the Washington, DC, area, Schutz was also a practicing forensic and clinical psychologist, which influenced his writing a great deal. In his lifetime, he authored seven novels and a short story collection. Schutz passed away in 2008.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1985 by Benjamin M. Schutz
Cover design by Rebecca Lown
ISBN: 978-1-4804-9328-5
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