by Jodi Compton
“It’s okay. Besides, you haven’t heard the whole thing yet. She cheered up and agreed she was probably overreacting. Then she put her shirt back on and said that she had something for me.”
“Here it comes,” I said.
“Right. The prescription pad. She was sweet as saccharine. She told me she wanted me to have it, because she knew I could do a lot of good with it, for my patients. Then she asked me to write her a scrip for Valium.”
“Are you kidding?” But I knew he wasn’t.
“It all made sense then. She never thought there was a lump in her breast. She decided she’d soften me up by showing me her goods, and I’d be willing to do anything for her. I don’t know if she wanted the Valium for herself, or more likely, if she had a boyfriend who could turn around and sell it. I didn’t want to know.”
“You told her no, obviously,” I said. The reason for Ghislaine’s small scowl in the diner, when the subject of “Cisco” had first come up, was now quite clear.
“I told her no, I wasn’t going to get into the scrip-writing business, not even to help my patients, much less to start perpetrating prescription fraud. So she asked for the pad back. Again, I said no. I wasn’t going to use it, but I saw no reason she should have it.” Cicero paused, remembering. “Then she asked me what would happen if she told the cops about me. I said, ‘The same thing that would happen if I told the cops you stole a prescription pad, so let’s both pretend this never happened.’ She got up and said, ‘Fine, keep it.’ I was still worried about her threat to turn me in, so I told her she could take her forty dollars back. She did.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“When she picked up the money, she asked if I’d always been a paraplegic. I said no. She said, ‘I guess that’s why you can afford to let forty dollars walk out the door. Since you don’t have working equipment, you’re not paying for sex anymore.’ ”
I winced. When people can quote verbatim like that, it’s usually because the words in question had ricocheted around inside the psyche like the fragments of a hollow-point bullet.
“Hey, don’t look like that,” Cicero said. “She was ignorant.”
The truth was that I’d been nearly as naive as Ghislaine, shocked when Cicero had taken my hand and guided it down to where I could feel him stiffening under my touch. Later, he’d explained to me about reflex erections.
“Ignorant is excusable,” I said. “Spiteful is something else.”
“She probably doesn’t feel very good about herself,” Cicero said. “Unkind people often don’t.”
“You’re so charitable,” I said.
“What’s wrong with that?” he asked.
I looked out the window at the city below. “We don’t live in a world that rewards that anymore,” I said. “If it ever did.”
12
My first day back on daytime shifts was about as unproductive as I’d expected. I reported for work with shadows under my eyes and helped my body clock to readjust with a lot of coffee. On my lunch break, I went to Family Services and made the required minors-at-risk report on the Hennessys. I didn’t allow myself to feel as though I was letting Marlinchen down. The system was there to help kids like her; my report was part of that.
The most significant job of the day was a robbery. I took the call and interviewed witnesses. The details were familiar: two young white guys with nylon-stocking masks taking down a convenience store at gunpoint, quite similar to the robbery I’d investigated last week. We love patterns, I imagined telling the anonymous young gunmen, consolidating the two reports into one folder. Don’t quit while you’re ahead; just keep on doing it like you’re doing it. We’ll meet someday.
My phone rang, and I picked it up with my mind still half on the young robbers.
“Ms. Pribek?” The voice was clearly coming across long-distance wires. “This is Pete Benjamin.”
“Mr. Benjamin,” I said. Hugh Hennessy’s friend, who’d taken Aidan in. “Thank you for calling back.”
“I’ve already spoken to the authorities here, Ms. Pribek,” said Benjamin. “I’d be happy to tell you what I told Mr. Fredericks: Aidan didn’t disappear. He left of his own accord, which is unfortunate but not terribly unusual. There’s a long history of young people striking out on their own when they tire of the life a farm provides. And Aidan, unlike many young people, didn’t even have family ties to keep him here.”
When he fell silent, I asked him a question. “But specifically, what do you think led Aidan to leave when he did?”
“Well, as I said, the rural lifestyle is very unsatisfying to young people.”
“Other than that, I mean,” I said.
There was a beat of silence. “I’m not sure why there has to be an ‘other than that.’ ”
“Let me put it this way: Did you talk to Aidan about what was going on in his life?” I asked.
“Aidan and I spoke daily,” Benjamin said.
I let the silence underline the evasiveness of his answer.
“I was not Aidan’s father. But if something were troubling him, I think I would have known,” Benjamin said.
“If I can ask,” I said, “why did you agree to take on Hugh Hennessy’s oldest son? It seems like a huge burden, even for a friend of the family.”
“Well,” Benjamin said, “Hugh and I went way back. Our families knew each other, and we grew up in the same neighborhood in Atlanta.” He paused. “I’ve had a lifelong interest in literature, so I guess you could also say I’m an admirer of Hugh’s work as well as an old friend.”
“So you were a frequent visitor at Hugh’s home, a familiar figure to Aidan?” I asked.
Another beat of silence. “Not really. Hugh and I were quite close in younger years, but he lived up north as an adult, and I inherited the farm and went home to work it. We really didn’t see each other as adults.” He anticipated my follow-up question. “Largely, I think Hugh thought of me to take in Aidan, and I agreed to do it, because I have a sizable farm and no one to help with it. Hugh was struggling to raise five children on his own; I had none. It seemed like an imbalance easily fixed. Hugh also sent money for Aidan’s needs: school clothes and so on.”
“Did Hugh pay for room and board?” I asked.
“No, I thought in light of the help Aidan would be to me, that wasn’t necessary.” He cleared his throat. “I should point out that the chores I asked of Aidan weren’t excessive. I was careful to give him time for his homework and such socializing as he wanted to do, which wasn’t much.”
“Right,” I said. “On Hugh’s end, do you know what motivated him to send Aidan away?”
“He was raising five children on his own,” said Benjamin. “I think it was terribly difficult for him. You know, Deputy Fredericks didn’t get into such personal detail during our talks.”
“We all have different ways of approaching the job,” I said, beginning to sketch on the pad on my desk. “Aidan ran away before,” I said. “Tell me about that.”
Benjamin cleared his throat. “That happened early on,” he said. “I think it’s not an uncommon reaction for children who’ve just been sent to live someplace new. They run away, because they don’t think two or more steps ahead. They simply think that if they can physically reach their old home, everything will be fine. The idea seems to be, ‘If I can get home, they’ll keep me.’ Aidan seemed to feel the same.”
“But he was sent back?”
“Yes.”
“Did Aidan try to run away again?” I asked. “Before this last time?”
“No,” Benjamin said. “No, after he came back from Minnesota, he settled in here. Our relationship wasn’t close, but it was cordial. If you’ve called hoping to find out about some fight or a watershed event that caused Aidan to run away, there simply wasn’t one.”
My sketch had turned into a winding highway. After Pete Benjamin and I hung up, I added a gesture of a walking figure in the distance, at the roadside, but beyond that I didn’t know what to add. A city skyline
ahead? An ocean and sunset? A prison?
From the official data banks I had access to, I’d learned that Aidan Hennessy had never been arrested, not even on a curfew violation or another of the “youth status offenses” that carry no penalty but would have identified him as a runaway and dumped him into the juvenile-services system.
That meant one of a couple of things. One, Aidan Hennessy was the rare runaway who was working and keeping himself alive without breaking the law at all. Two, he was keeping himself fed through the usual street crimes that runaways fall into, but was smart and lucky and hadn’t yet been arrested. Three, he was living off a woman.
Four, he was dead. For Marlinchen’s sake, that was a prospect I didn’t want to consider.
***
Before I left that day, I went to see Prewitt. It had taken a while, but I’d finally realized what it meant when Van Noord had told me I should keep my cell or pager on, so people knew where I was.
He was in conversation with a Fish and Wildlife officer when I came around, but he’d seen me standing outside his doorway.
“Come in, Detective Pribek,” Prewitt said, as the Fish and Wildlife man exited. “I didn’t expect to see you today. What’s on your mind.”
“I wanted to apologize for the other day, when I had my phone off the hook,” I said, moving to stand just inside the doorway. “I had an ear infection; you know that, right?”
“Of course,” he said. “You’re better today, I hope.”
“Yes, I am,” I said. Then, uncomfortably, I went on. “Lieutenant, when you sent Detective Van Noord by my house, was that about Gray Diaz?”
I was hoping he would be puzzled, and say, No, of course not.
“Yes,” he said.
So much for hopes.
“I didn’t check your personnel records, but you’re known for never taking sick leave,” Prewitt said. “Then Gray Diaz comes in to talk to you about your involvement in the death of Royce Stewart, and you come out looking ashen, tell Van Noord you’re sick, and leave. The next day you can’t be reached.” He let the words sink in. “It didn’t look very good; you can see that, can’t you?”
“You really thought I’d left town?” I said.
“I simply wanted your whereabouts confirmed,” he said mildly. “Bear in mind, Pribek, you have not been charged with anything, and until you are charged or indicted, your status here will remain unaffected. Nobody’s suggested any kind of leave for you.”
“I know that,” I said.
“What I’m suggesting is that if nobody around here is talking about Gray Diaz’s investigation, maybe you shouldn’t be the first to bring it up,” he said.
“I haven’t,” I said.
“On the contrary, you just walked into my office and mentioned it. I didn’t come to you,” he said. “About my decision to send Van Noord to your house: I was mildly troubled by a state of affairs, I acted on it, I satisfied my curiosity. That was the end of it, as far as I was concerned.”
“I didn’t mean to question your judgment, but I need to say one thing. I am not going to sneak out of town in the middle of the night,” I said. “No, what I’m really trying to say is something else.” I swallowed. “I did not kill Royce Stewart.”
“I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that,” Prewitt said blandly. “Is there anything else?”
“No,” I said. I had a little tremor in my chest from how bluntly I’d just spoken.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
At the door, I paused and turned back. “There is one other thing,” I said. “That unlicensed physician you asked me to look into? I’ve checked with my informants, and I haven’t been able to track it to a source.” My voice was very casual. “I really don’t think there’s anything to it.”
13
Last year, after his accident in Blue Earth, my husband had been missing for seven days. I’d exhausted my professional knowledge of missing-persons work in looking for him. I’d traveled and spoken to his family. Furthermore, as his wife, I’d had full access to Shiloh ’s accounts, his papers, his home. None of it had made any difference. It was as if he’d simply been erased.
With Aidan Hennessy, I was in the opposite situation. He should have been easy as hell to find. Aidan was an underage runaway, not a fugitive. The longer he spent on the road, the more likely it should have been that he’d be arrested for vagrancy or petty theft. He simply shouldn’t have been this hard to find.
Yet I’d spent three days working the various law-enforcement databases I had access to, and none of it was helping. Deputy Fredericks had e-mailed me Aidan’s last school-yearbook photo, but that didn’t count as an advance. Unless Aidan Hennessy fell into a drainage canal someplace near where I just happened to be, I didn’t think I was going to find him.
It was that frustration that drove me backward, on my next day off, to the elementary school where all the Hennessy children had received their early education, and which Donal still attended.
Marlinchen had mentioned her fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Hansen, in a brief phone conversation we’d had earlier that morning. Hansen had taught both Marlinchen and Aidan, although not in the same year, because Aidan had been held back to repeat the fourth grade. By my calculations, that made her the last teacher in Minnesota to be familiar with Aidan Hennessy, and the one most likely to remember him.
The school didn’t look impressive, given the relative wealth of the neighborhood it was in. It was an assortment of one-story redbrick buildings. Children swarmed around the play structures in the yard; it was their lunch recess.
On her lunch break, Mrs. Hansen was grading papers in her classroom. I stepped inside and immediately felt like a giantess as I walked up through the low desks toward the larger one where Mrs. Hansen sat. She was full-breasted for a woman otherwise slightly built- I gauged her at about five-one- and wore glasses on a gold chain over her off-white shell sweater. Her blond hair was shoulder-length, cut in a flattering way close around the face. Only by looking closely could you see she was nearing 50.
“Can I help you?” Hansen said.
“I hope so,” I said. “My name is Sarah Pribek. I’m a detective, and I wanted to talk to you about a runaway I’m looking for.” I laid Marlinchen’s old photo of Aidan on her desk.
Hansen took the photo and raised her eyebrows, then furrowed them in a slightly exaggerated show of scrutiny. “Oh, my goodness, yes,” she said. “Aidan Hennessy. His little brother Donal might have been one of my students last year, but he went to Ms. Campbell instead.” She frowned. “Aidan had a sister, too. I taught her the year before. They were…” Then she broke off.
“They were supposed to advance to your class together,” I finished for her. “They’re twins, but he was held back a year. You’re not revealing anything the family didn’t share with me.”
She nodded affirmation. “That’s correct. What was the girl’s name, again? Something unusual.”
“Marlinchen,” I said.
“He and his sister would be in high school now, correct?”
“She is,” I said. “He’s been a runaway for six months.”
“Oh, my,” Hansen said. “That’s too bad.” She exaggerated her facial expressions, like adults who deal with the young often do, but the feeling underneath seemed genuine.
“You liked him?”
“Yes, I did,” she said. “A sweet boy. Not a lot of self-confidence. Didn’t raise his hand or volunteer answers.” Then she seemed to realign herself behind the desk, as for a formal Q and A with me. “I don’t know how much I can help you. He was my student some time ago. Five years.”
There was no place for me to sit. In nearly every other situation, a person with a desk has a chair on the other side for visitors. Not so with schoolteachers. I leaned back against the nearest student desk and immediately thought better of it as it began to slide away from my weight.
“He’s been living out of state for those five years,” I told her. “You’re the last teacher
in this district who would have taught him. I’m just curious about what you remember.”
Hansen frowned apologetically. “Not very much,” she said. “Aidan stands out in my memory mostly because of that missing finger. I used to see it whenever he was writing at his desk, and it always gave me a little bit of a turn.”
“You must remember something more,” I encouraged her. “You said you liked him.”
Hansen played with the glasses on her chain. “Sometimes you get a”- she waffled a hand in the air-“a feeling from students. Aidan seemed old beyond his years, but that might have been because he was older than his classmates, at least when I had him. And taller.” She paused, thinking. “But he seemed ill at ease sometimes, uncomfortable around adults.”
“Do you know why?” I asked.
“He wasn’t the ablest of students; often that erodes children’s self-esteem, particularly in front of grown-ups, who kids see as authority figures who judge them on classroom achievements.” She paused. “Aidan seemed more at ease on the playground. He was athletic and confident.”
“Did he get into fights?” I asked.
Hansen smiled. “Yes, he did. Aidan was very protective of his sister and two younger brothers. Particularly the one who was bookish.”
“Liam,” I said.
“Yes, Liam. He was a mark for bullies. Aidan crossed paths with some of them.” She paused. “I should say that Aidan probably fought on his own behalf, too; he wasn’t a saint. But he wasn’t… I don’t remember him as hostile. I find it impossible to like the bullies, and I liked Aidan.”
I nodded. “Were there behavior problems beyond fighting?”
She considered. “He didn’t always do his homework.”
“He’d forget?” I asked.
Hansen shook her head. “I think he just couldn’t grasp some of the material,” she said. “As I said, he wasn’t the best of students.”
“Neither was I,” I said, smiling wryly. “Thanks for your time.”