by Rex Burns
My next call was to Tom Jenkins to tell him I might be out of town for a day or so and why.
“You’re doing what?”
“That’s the help Admiral Combs asked for. So I told him I’d do what I could.”
“God, I haven’t seen him in years. How’s he doing?”
“Still a tough old buzzard.” I told Tom about Jenny, too, and Margaret and Dorcas. Tom wasn’t as close to them as I was; but in a town as small as Coronado, he’d known Margaret and there were a few summers when we’d done odd jobs and yard work for Mrs. Combs.
“Well, I hope you’re better at playing detective than you were at the four-hundred-yard dash. But any time, man. Just give me a call, and I’m available.”
The four-hundred-yard run. Tommy always would remember winning that regional track meet by half a step. I had almost forgotten, but Jenkins’s reminder brought back the sting of that loss. Tommy had gone on to the state meet and placed third, which was probably a hell of a lot better than I could have done. At the time it seemed important, all the more because our rivalry was intense. Fortunately, it had been based on friendship rather than enmity, and I was glad to learn that Tommy still had his fundamental good nature: he didn’t sound sore about another delay of our get-together.
There had been rivalry in surfing and skin-diving, as well—who could get the biggest wave, who brought in the biggest langousta. And thinking of that made my mind touch on other names and events and especially on the atmosphere, the way things used to look and feel. Some people said they remembered faces accurately; for me, faces were impressions surrounded by settings that were often more important. And anchored by moments. Now that I dredged it up, I could see Tommy at the edge of my vision, head thrown back in straining effort and elbow high with the lunge of his torso toward the tape. Then that white banner pulling away and taking with it all my dreams of glory as Tommy’s chest crossed the line first.
Strange how the past keeps welling up into the present. Images, flavors, sounds—all bringing back trivial moments that persist in memory. And it seems the importance of those moments is less for what actually happened than for the meanings that continue into the present.
CHAPTER 4
THE MOUNTAIN TOWN spread among pines and up and down hillsides. From the highway a grid of side streets led into the shadows of trees and past quiet houses. Aside from the motels and inns, most of the homes were small. The familiar clusters of gas station, restaurant, grocery store, and a dozen or so shops were strung along the highway. Graveled parking areas waited for the weekend influx of tourists. This far from the coast, the sun burned despite the altitude. A haze of pollen from the pines dusted the ground with yellow and gave a resiny tang to the air. The Golden Bear gift shop was on the edge of town, one of four adjoining stores linked by a boardwalk that tried to look rustic. Two horses were tied at one end, stamping and quivering their haunches against the bite of flies. In the hot silence of midday a distant car whined up the long hill toward town. Somewhere beyond the heavily treed ridge a small plane droned in the blue.
“Mrs. Gannet?”
The woman in a brightly flowered muumuu turned from arranging the greeting card selection. I introduced myself.
“I’m looking for Dorcas Wilcox. Her father tells me she works for you.”
“She did. I don’t know where she is now.” The woman patted at the knot of graying hair held at the back of her head by two long hairpins. It was a Spanish touch that matched her olive skin and dark eyes. “I haven’t seen or heard from her in three, four weeks. I told her father that. As well as the deputy that came by asking the same thing.” The knot of hair wagged once. “Poor girl.”
“When did the deputy come by?”
“About a week ago. A few days after Dori’s father did.”
“Did she work for you long?”
“Over a year. Did a good job, too. Mr. Steele your name is? Well, Dori had a real nice way with the customers, Mr. Steele.”
Maybe it was my cheerful personality or just the fact that I was asking questions, but Mrs. Gannet’s tone carried a note of blame for losing a good clerk.
“And she left without saying where she was going?”
A curt nod.
“Did you see her leave?”
“No. All I know is she’s somewhere else and not here.”
“Can you tell me about any friends she had? People who might know where she went?”
“You some kind of detective? That what you are?”
“No. I’m just a friend of the family. Her grandfather asked me to help. I have two daughters, so I have a pretty good idea what her parents are going through.”
She studied my face for a moment. “And if you find her, you’re going to make her go back, that it?”
“No. She’s over twenty-one. I can’t make her go anywhere she doesn’t want to go. What I’m trying to do is find out whether or not she needs help. If she doesn’t, fine. If she does, somebody ought to know.”
The woman scratched again in the bun of hair and seemed to ponder something. “She was trying to be on her own. She said the last thing she wanted was help from her parents.”
“I can understand that. My daughters like their independence, too. But if they happen to get into more trouble than they can handle, I want to know about it. I’m sure you’d feel the same way.”
The woman’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I really don’t know where she is. Dori’s a nice person—the quiet kind, maybe, but she’s got a good heart. And that’s the ones usually get hurt. I just hope that poor girl’s not in bigger trouble than she was when she left.”
“What kind of trouble was she in when she left, Mrs. Gannet?”
The brown eyes blinked a time or two. “Pregnant.”
I digested that snippet of news. “Did she tell her parents?”
“She doesn’t want them to know. That’s why she didn’t want to see her parents when they came up a month or so ago.”
“But she told you.”
“Didn’t have to—I know the signs. A man might not, but a woman who’s had her own kids knows the signs.”
“And you saw the signs.”
“I did.”
“Do you think she was afraid to tell her parents?”
The hostility was replaced by puzzlement as the woman shook her head. “No, I don’t think that was it. I honestly don’t. I mean it’s not like getting pregnant’s a big sin anymore. I mean there’s all these movie stars knocking each other up and showing their bellies off in the newspapers, and all these high school classes for teenage mothers. So it’s not that big a deal. That’s what I told her.” She sought her words. “But Dori didn’t like to talk about herself a lot. Good with the customers—talk about the weather, whatever, but it was like pulling teeth to get her to talk about herself.”
“Do you think she’s gone to have an abortion?”
The woman’s head shook again. “I asked her if that’s what she was planning. Besides, she would have done that a while back—you know, after missing only a couple periods. What she said was the baby was a bond.”
“A bond? With the father?”
“Didn’t say that. Just that it was a bond. And a pledge to the future—exact words: ‘a pledge to the future.’ ”
“Did she say who the father was?”
“No.”
“Do you have any idea?”
A brief snort. “Some damned man, wouldn’t you say?”
I sure couldn’t say it wasn’t. “Can you tell me about any of her friends?”
She mentioned a few names, people in the community whom Dorcas talked with or saw every day. “As far as any real close friends, men or women, I can’t say, and she didn’t talk about them. She could’ve been living with somebody, but I wouldn’t know. I never went to her cabin until she started missing work.”
“Mrs. Gannet, I’m not going to harass Dorcas. I’m not going to make her do anything she doesn’t want to—I couldn’t. But her family is
very worried about her; they have no idea if she’s safe, if she’s happy, if she needs help.” I added, “That’s all I want to learn—that she’s all right.”
“If I knew where she is, I’d have told the sheriff. I don’t know, so I can’t tell you, either.”
“Can you at least tell me how to get to her cabin?”
That she could do.
The cabin sat back from a graveled county road; a two-rut dirt track led to it between scattered ponderosas. A deep porch ran around two sides and a wooden swing seat dangled from rusty chains. Its windows were framed by pierced bargeboard touched up with red and blue painted flowers. That gave it a Swiss look and drew attention from the badly faded stain on the log siding. A window box showed a tiny smear of color from geraniums that were surrendering to drought. My heels clumped loudly on the varnished boards of the porch and I pulled open the creaking screen door to knock on the wooden one. As Henry had said, the place was empty—looked empty, sounded empty, felt empty. I didn’t expect any answer to my knock and that’s what I got.
After a second and louder try, I walked around the building, listening for noises and looking at the tightly closed and curtained windows. Behind the cabin the round silver ball of an LP gas tank seemed jarringly out of place against the pines and rock outcroppings. A small building served as a storage shed and pump house. On one side, a stone barbecue grill rose from a cleared patch of gritty dirt. A pair of sandy streaks and an oil patch showed where a car habitually parked. A rusted steel drum used as a trash barrel stood empty. Nothing looked disturbed; the dusty pine needles lay flat and unscuffed, and any footprints had been erased by wind.
I went back to the porch and slipped a plastic wallet calendar under the tongue of the locked doorknob. It was a trick I hadn’t used in a long time, and I have to admit it didn’t go as well as it did in training. But with a few choice words and a half-dozen tries, I finally popped the latch and opened the door to the musty smell of an airless room. A faint odor of gas came from the burning pilot light of the stove, and an electric shudder told me the refrigerator had kicked on. I spent a few minutes walking through the small rooms—the living/dining area had a portable television set. A bookcase was crammed mostly with paperbacks whose titles indicated interest in religions and mythologies, philosophy and ritual. The kitchen’s open shelves were masked by gingham curtains that matched the yellow-and-white-checked cloth at the windows. In the bedroom a queen-sized platform bed took up almost all the space. A single bureau and a closet, also curtained off by gingham, made up the furniture. A tiny bathroom with a shower stall had been added off the bedroom. I started my detailed search there.
It wasn’t too different from the old search-and-seizure training, except I didn’t expect to find anything incriminating so I didn’t have to worry about evidence bags and the chain of possession. What I did note as I finished with a survey of the refrigerator’s contents was that Dorcas had apparently left willingly and planned only a short stay. The plastic containers of leftovers blossoming with hairy mold, the half-carton of sour milk, the open dish of butter, all indicated haste in leaving and possibly an intent to return soon. But her toothbrush was missing from the bathroom, as were the cleansing solutions for her contact lenses. No deodorant. An almost full box of sanitary napkins under the bathroom sink, which she wouldn’t need if she was pregnant. No money or checkbook, no purse or wallet with necessary identification or keys. Some of her clothes filled the drawers and hung in the closet. But there was no suitcase or clothes bag, and a tangle of empty hangers was shoved to one end of the bar. A plastic napkin holder on a kitchen shelf held a few bills—telephone, electricity, and a gasoline company credit report. The telephone company’s record of charges listed a total of five toll calls to two different numbers; the area code that wasn’t La Jolla was 303, and that listed three calls. The gasoline bill had a series of fill-ups from a few stations in La Jolla and Brown’s Full Service in Julian. The last entry was almost a month ago. I pocketed the slips and gave the cabin one last check. The trash can under the sink held smelly food scraps and some torn papers. Using a plastic Baggie for a glove, I lifted out a ripped sheet of paper and fitted it together on the sideboard of the sink. Through the blurs of dripped grease and splattered food, I could make out half of a letter written in now-smeared ballpoint pen: “ … so if you do, it will blow your mind, Dori. I mean that. Shirley was all twisted up about it at first, you know what a sweat bead she can be, but she’s really into it now and says it’s really changed her life. Anyway I hope you can, you won’t regret it, I promise. Always the same, Dwayne.”
I slipped the letter into another plastic Baggie and took one last look around. Before I locked the door, I dumped a coffee can of water on the reedy geraniums—maybe that would hold them until the next rain, if it ever rained again in Southern California. At the end of the drive, I checked the mailbox. It held a handful of mail addressed to occupant. I left it there and headed back up the graveled county road to Julian.
Brown’s Self-Service sat surrounded by a sun-baked and oil-stained concrete pad. A girl in cutoff jeans and a T-shirt advertising Foster’s Lager Beer stood behind the cash register.
“Dori Wilcox? She’s missing?”
“She may just be on a trip somewhere. But her family’s worried.”
“You know, I haven’t seen her in a while … She gets her gas here maybe every other week, so I haven’t noticed like I would if she came in all the time.”
“Can you remember when she was in last?”
The girl frowned and then shook her head. “I really can’t. She could have come by when I was off. You know, in the evening or something.”
“Could you look through your credit card receipts, say starting about two weeks ago?”
“That’s a lot of receipts!”
“It could be very important.” I practiced my friendly smile. “You might have the only information that can tell me where she is.” Finally the girl nodded. “Thanks. I have to go by the post office—maybe they know something about her. I’ll be back in a while.”
For a dollar fee, the post office provides a person’s change of address if they’ve filed a c.o.a. card; for a few minutes’ time, the route carrier can often provide information about anyone going on vacation or stopping their mail for a short while, or even a new name that might get deliveries at an old address. I didn’t have to pay my dollar because, as I suspected, Dorcas hadn’t filed a change of address. But the postal clerk told me where the carrier for that route would probably be eating lunch. I found the woman’s car, a “Caution—Frequent Stops” sign taped in the four-wheel drive’s back window. It was parked in the shade of a county roadside park overlooking the coast range and the haze-filled valleys below.
Lunch was a tuna fish sandwich. I smelled it on the hot breeze that lifted up the steep, rocky flank of the mountain. A deeply tanned arm spotted with turquoise jewelry waved at the occasional fly which smelled the same aroma. “Wilcox?” The name didn’t register, but she was sorry to hear the girl was missing.
“She lives in a dark brown log cabin about a mile and a half down Country Road V.”
Most reasonably honest citizens, I’d learned over years of investigative work, were eager to provide information if it didn’t cost them anything. In fact, one of the challenges of interviewing witnesses was to be able to winnow fact from helpful invention—something the FBI agents often overlooked in compiling dossiers on suspects and which had contributed to ill will between that agency and my own. The mail carrier wanted to help but it wasn’t until I described the cabin that she recognized the name. “Oh—the Potts place! Sure—Wilcox—moved in maybe a year ago, right?”
I nodded. “Did anyone else ever get their mail delivered there?”
The woman shook her head, curly dark hair spilling over the collar of her plaid shirt. As a contract carrier, she wore civilian clothes instead of a uniform. “Not that I remember. Just the one name.” She explained, “I remember addresses be
tter than names. Folks are always moving in and out of these cabins, especially in summer.”
“Did she say anything about going away for a while?”
The woman shook her head again. Silver and turquoise Navaho earrings glinted in the sun. “I didn’t see much of her—just the mailbox.”
“And she didn’t get much mail?”
“Books—she’s the book one.” The woman finished her sandwich and swigged at a thermos. “She was always getting these padded book mailers. Couple weeks ago she got a big one that didn’t fit in the mailbox so I had to drive in and leave it on the porch.”
“Remember where it came from?”
“Lord, no! It came from out of state, I think. … I remember that. From an ashram or something. Had a little Buddha picture with flames all around it. But that’s all I remember.”
The girl at Brown’s Full Service was waiting for me. “I found it!” She held up a dimly legible card with Dori Wilcox’s signature and automobile license number for identification. Unleaded, eleven dollars and thirteen cents’ worth, and the date was the sixth of the month. A little over a week ago. My guess was she filled the tank before driving wherever she was headed. And I guessed, too, that she might have used the credit card since then.
“Good work, miss! This may help a great deal.”
The girl tried not to look too proud. “Well, all I did was look through the receipts.”
“Does Dorcas have any particular friends in town? A boyfriend, maybe?”
“No, I don’t think so. She pretty much stays by herself. I mean she’s friendly and all, but I never see her with anybody, and she doesn’t date any of the boys around here. A place this small, there’s only a couple bars to go to and you see everybody there.”
“Do you know what kind of car she drives?”
“Sure—a white Mustang convertible. A classic, you know? I told her if she ever wanted to sell it, I’d be interested. It’s boss!”
I stopped at the post office once more, mailing a check to the gasoline company to cover Dorcas’s bill. I also asked them to please note the new address for future correspondence.