Street Justice: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Nelscott, Kris

  When you looked like me, sometimes the best way to investigate was on the phone. I planned to do that after I examined the flyers more closely. Most of the questions I had to ask wouldn’t receive an answer if the person I spoke to knew what I looked like.

  My feet grew instantly warmer with new socks. I headed back to the kitchen, and poured myself another cup of coffee. I wrapped my ice-cold hands around the mug and started to read.

  I had kept the flyers in the three piles that Jonathan had sorted for me, but I hadn’t taken notes. I did remember the order I had place the piles in my folder.

  The top flyers were the girls whom Jonathan had some information about. Girls who had run away from home, girls who had left with boyfriends.

  I went through that pile slowly, making notes in pencil on the ones for which I could remember the exact details Jonathan had given me. Then I wrote those names on my yellow legal pad in a category I called We Think We Know.

  Some of those descriptions had sounded vaguely like excuses, and some hit a kind of red flag for me, especially the ones who theoretically ran off with boyfriends. Someone could have described what happened to Lacey in the same way.

  After a moment, I separated out the boyfriend-girls into their own pile. I crumpled up the legal paper, and started over. Four piles now.

  The first: We Think We Know. I wrote a series of names after that.

  The second: Boyfriends. I wrote five names after that.

  I made a note above We Think We Know, reminding myself that some of them might have fit in the boyfriend category as well. I couldn’t entirely remember.

  The next pile was the one I found the most daunting. It was an inch thick. Jonathan suspected that the girls named in this pile had disappeared because of some kind of foul play.

  I’d learned long ago not to dismiss rumor as an investigative tool. Jonathan believed it; he had heard stories about these girls; and some of those stories just might be true.

  The pile wasn’t as thick as the fourth and final pile. That one contained names and faces that Jonathan didn’t know. I set it aside for the moment, and looked at the file Jonathan flagged for me.

  The depth of that pile disturbed me. One reason it was so thick was that some of the flyers had been crumpled. Others had Polaroids glued on them, and some had little messages taped to them.

  I made a note on another sheet of legal paper. I needed to call Decker back and find out if he pulled flyers down at any point. I hadn’t asked how long they remained up or how he had gotten all of these. He had said they had been given to him, but he hadn’t really clarified by whom.

  I went slowly through this pile, looking at faces, looking at names. These girls all seemed impossibly young to me, all with smiles on their faces, most with too much makeup for girls who had been in junior high at the time, all trying to look older than their years.

  After that, the similarities stopped. The flyers were hand-drawn or stenciled. A few were on poster board, others were mimeographed, suggesting the involvement of a library or a school. Only two were actually printed. Jonathan believed that the Loring family hadn’t had enough money to pay for flyers, that Donna Loring’s brother had extorted the flyers from some unwilling business. He was probably right. Which meant that the second flyer was also of a girl with ties to the Blackstone Rangers.

  I set those two aside. I would start with them.

  Then I listed the names under my third category: Definitely missing.

  The fourth category, Unknown, broke my heart. I didn’t write the names down. There were too many. I set them aside for now. If the others led me in the wrong direction, then I would turn to these.

  I had to get up and move around. I couldn’t sit with this. Decker had told me that girls just disappeared, kids just disappeared, and he couldn’t do anything about it. He didn’t have the resources to do more than call the parents, and what I firmly believed he did not say was that if the parents didn’t pick up after the first one or two contacts, then they didn’t receive another call.

  These kids literally slipped through a crack or were forced into one, like Lacey nearly had been, and no one did a thing about it.

  And you are not the savior of the entire world, Grimshaw, Sinkovich had said to me, and he was right. But how did anyone look at these stacks of flyers and not realize that something had to change?

  These flyers ranged over years. I didn’t look to see if the fourth pile was filled with students who had disappeared before Jonathan’s time, but I would have bet that it was.

  Decker said twenty or so students per class per year. That was hundreds of students over time, kids whose parents didn’t have the resources to find them, kids who didn’t want to be found, kids who dropped out, and kids who were the victims of some kind of crime, like Lacey.

  I put my hand on the flyers. These were the kids someone cared enough about to search for. How many of those who had disappeared had tried as hard as they could and finally gave up—whatever giving up meant. It might have meant joining a gang or leaving the neighborhood. Or it might have meant truly giving up.

  I ran a hand through my hair, grabbed my coffee mug, and realized I hadn’t sipped any of the coffee. It was cold now, but I downed it.

  Jimmy would have been one of the kids who just vanished. If he hadn’t talked to me in Memphis, if I hadn’t been watching him, who knew what would have happened to him? His mother ran off two years ago this week, and Jimmy hadn’t told anyone. His brother had already moved out, and joined a gang.

  Jimmy had still been struggling, still tried to feed himself, still tried to go to school.

  Then the landlord evicted him. How did the average ten-year-old kid survive on the streets of Memphis in the winter? How did any kid? Jimmy wasn’t average, and the circumstances nearly destroyed him.

  I leaned against the counter.

  It would take months, maybe years, to find out what happened to all these girls. And even if I worked on it full time, I wouldn’t find all of them. Not counting the new girls who disappeared.

  Sinkovich told me I had to rejoice in the small victories. He would probably think that Voss’s death was a small victory, that Lacey’s rescue was a small victory.

  I would consider shutting down the Starlite a small victory.

  No, I would consider it a tiny victory.

  I poured myself another cup of coffee. It steamed. I opened the lid on the percolator. The bottom was beginning to look like sludge. Apparently I’d left the burner on too high.

  I moved the percolator to the sink. I would deal with that in a moment.

  I grabbed the legal pad and headed back to my office. I hadn’t expected to get there this early, but I needed a few answers.

  I turned on the gooseneck lamp, and sat down at my desk. In the group of index cards that Laura laughingly called my Rolodex, I had the school’s number. I dialed it.

  Mrs. Helgenstrom answered. I recognized her voice. I identified myself, exchanged a few pleasantries, then asked for Principal Decker.

  She hesitated. Then I realized I might get better answers from her.

  “If he’s busy,” I said, “can you answer some questions for me?”

  “I can try,” she said, and I didn’t think I was making up the relief in her voice. She hadn’t wanted to disturb him. She had probably received instructions to bar the Grimshaw family from talking to Decker.

  He probably felt there was only so much pressure he could take.

  “Principal Decker gave me a folder filled with flyers of missing girls,” and as I said that, I realized something that had been bothering me, something I had forgotten to ask him from the beginning. “Does he separate out missing children flyers by gender?”

  “I do,” Mrs. Helgenstrom said quietly. There was something in her voice, a firmness, an anger maybe, that seemed out of place for the professional woman I had talked with yesterday.

  “You gather the flyers,” I said, thinking aloud. “And you give them to Principal Decker
.”

  “I do,” she said. “He doesn’t like them cluttering up the board.”

  I had been right: I heard anger. Restrained, soft-spoken fury.

  “The board?” I asked.

  “When you come in? There’s an announcement board? We put school flyers there, and the community is allowed to use it for approved things. I approved the flyers that you have.”

  “But Principal Decker doesn’t like them,” I said, mostly to encourage her to continue.

  “We have a compromise. They stay on the board for a week. Or they’re supposed to anyway. I’m in charge of taking them down.”

  I got the message. She only took them down when the principal noticed.

  “And then you give him the flyers,” I said. “By gender.”

  “He thinks all the boys join the gangs, so I put the girls on his desk. I keep the boys out here.”

  I wished I could see her. I wished I had thought to ask this the day before.

  “Do you think all the boys join the gangs?”

  “No,” she said, and this time she spoke with such force that it almost felt like she was shouting. She must have heard herself, because she added, quieter this time, “No, I don’t. I think a lot of them get hurt or die and no one notices. I like your boy, Mr. Grimshaw. He’s wonderful. He’s ambitious. And some of the boys who disappear, they’re just like him.”

  That chill I had gotten from the van returned. Her words echoed my thoughts from earlier—and I didn’t like it.

  “What do you think Principal Decker can do?” I asked.

  “Now you sound just like him. What can he do? Pay attention, maybe.”

  “You pay attention,” I said, again to encourage her.

  “Of course I do. I’m the one who calls the families. I’m the one who notifies the police. I’m the only one who notices, and….” Her voice trailed off.

  She didn’t finish the sentence. She had no idea what anyone could do. She was doing what she could, and hoping someone else, someone with real authority, would step up.

  “I’m not sure what to do about this either, Mrs. Helgenstrom,” I said, speaking to her unspoken concern. “But I’m going to see what I can find out.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I do odd jobs like this, and it seems to me that we need to look closer at what’s going on here.”

  “Yes, we do,” she said. “We really do.”

  She sounded relieved, maybe not that I was going to do anything, but that I would at least look at the situation. I had a hunch no one had done so before.

  “If I stop by,” I said, “can I bring the folder and go over the names with you?”

  “The folder?” Her voice had gone frosty again. “He gave you the folder?”

  She clearly didn’t like that.

  “He did when I asked him if other girls had gone missing.” I almost added that he clearly wanted to do something about it, but I wasn’t sure if that was true. He might simply have wanted the problem out of his hands. “These aren’t all of the girls who dropped out in the last few years, is it?”

  “No,” she said. “Most never have anyone search for them.”

  And she would know, based on her phone calls and her own follow-ups. No one would have searched for Jimmy, if I hadn’t been watching out for him.

  “I’m not sure if I can help you much,” she continued, and it took me a moment to realize she was answering my earlier question. “What I know about most of those girls is on the flyer. I don’t think sitting here, going over it would help us.”

  I caught the implication. It might get her in trouble.

  “Principal Decker believes in helping kids who help themselves, doesn’t he?” I asked, wanting her to know that I understood her.

  “Oh, I’m not even sure he believes that,” she said. “I think he’s putting in his time now, and I don’t blame him. He has a nearly impossible job.”

  And hers was worse, as the go-between between him and the students, and him and the parents.

  “He is going to a meeting tomorrow with other district principals and the school board to talk about the strike vote,” she said. “He’ll be gone from eleven through lunch.”

  I nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see me. “If I have something to confirm, I’ll check in then,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  I was about to hang up when I heard her speak again. I thought she said my name. I brought the receiver back up to my ear. “Yes?”

  “The fact that you’re doing this,” she said very quietly. “There’s a special place in Heaven for people like you.”

  I almost laughed out loud. There was no place in Heaven for a man like me. But I appreciated the sentiment.

  I thanked her and hung up. I almost left the legal pad here and started to make the rest of my calls, but I wasn’t done.

  I needed to get a few facts straight first.

  TWENTY-NINE

  BY THE TIME I returned to the kitchen, my coffee had cooled enough to drink. I took a sip and winced. It tasted burned. But I was too lazy to clean out the percolator and make myself a new cup. I had more important things to do.

  I sat down at the table, and looked at the two printed black-and-white flyers. I picked up Donna Loring’s flyer first.

  It was definitely professionally done. The heading—Missing!—ran like a banner across the top, followed by If You Have Seen This Girl, Call The Number Below!

  The phone number, at the bottom of the page, had a South Side exchange. Next to the final digit were the words Day or Night!

  The flyer had two photographs of Donna. On the upper left, what appeared to be a school photograph. It showed a very pretty girl with straight-combed hair, a blouse with something I’d heard Lacey mockingly describe as a Peter Pan collar, and a plaid jumper over it all. She had a tentative smile, as if whoever took the picture made her nervous.

  The second photo, on the lower right, was a candid shot. Donna was laughing, her head tilted back just a little, her mouth open in an infectious grin, her eyes bright. She looked older here, but when I inspected closely, I realized the difference was the careful application of makeup. Her skin, which had a young teenager’s blotchiness in the first photo, had the smoothness that good liquid foundation created. Her hair was still smooth, but it didn’t look contrived. She wore hoop earrings, eye shadow, and lipstick, although I couldn’t see the color on any of it. Her shirt was short-sleeved and was unbuttoned far enough to show too much cleavage for a girl her age.

  Next to the school photo were these facts:

  Donna Elizabeth Loring

  Born October 1, 1955

  Brown hair (naturally kinky)

  Chocolate brown eyes

  Distinctive mole on her left wrist

  Straight-A student

  Good friend, great sister, beloved daughter

  Help us find her!

  A different paragraph ran below the school photograph (to the left of the candid shot)

  Donna Loring disappeared from school on Tuesday, October 29, 1968. She was last seen on the school grounds at noon by several teachers, but she did not show up to her afternoon classes. Some reports state she was talking to a tall adult male just before she vanished. Any and all information welcome. Confidentiality maintained, if need be. Please call!

  The placement of the photos, the design, all convinced me that the flyer wasn’t just professional printed; it had been professionally designed as well. “Confidentiality maintained” was not a term that the average family would use. That was something a member of law enforcement or someone who had been in trouble with the law would add.

  There was also a hint that whoever designed the flyer thought she was dead. They added an identifying mark, something that coroners used to help ID an unrecognizable body.

  Jonathan had read this, and then he had run his hand over the flyer. I had thought that perhaps he was closer to Donna Loring than he let on, but now I wasn’t so certain. What ha
ppened to her had happened to Lacey, only Lacey had Jimmy and Keith to defend her.

  Jonathan wasn’t dumb; he had realized just then how lucky his sister had been.

  The second printed flyer looked very similar to Donna Loring’s. It had the same heading, and had two photographs, spaced apart for balance. A phone number at the bottom, asking for calls day or night, and two informational paragraphs.

  The missing girl was named Wanda Nason. She was thinner than Donna had been and she actually looked a bit scared in her school photograph. She wore a white blouse with a gigantic flower pin on one shoulder, her straightened hair pulled back on the same side with a barrette.

  The candid shot showed a girl who didn’t seem to smile easily. Her head dipped away from the camera, as if she didn’t want to be photographed, and her right hand was up, fingers splayed, as if she tried to block the camera. She wore a light-colored blouse, but I couldn’t tell if it was white, and a beaded necklace with a large cross on the end. I couldn’t tell if the necklace doubled as a rosary.

  The paragraphs were similar to those on the Donna Loring flyer in structure and terminology.

  The first paragraph read:

  Mary Wanda Nason

  Born December 11, 1955

  Brown hair

  Dark brown eyes

  Small scar on her lower lip

  Beloved only child of MaryAnn Nason

  Help us find her!

  The second paragraph chilled me in its similarity to the paragraph about Donna’s disappearance, and in what almost happened to Lacey:

  Wanda Nason disappeared from school on Tuesday, March 18, 1969. She was last seen in her morning classes, but she did not show up to her afternoon classes. Any and all information welcome. Confidentiality maintained, if need be. Please call!

  I pulled out the other flyers in that pile. Most identified the date of disappearance. Some mentioned that the girl had been in or around the school. Only a few had the day of the week—and they all had the same day:

  Tuesday.

  That was not a coincidence.