The sky was a solid gray canopy, and even at ten in the morning the air still had the early dawn haze. Most cars drove with their lights on, the traffic sparse. He visited three art galleries and an art supply store in the span of an hour. His line was that he was a private investigator who'd been hired to find a missing young man and his wife who'd kidnapped his client's nephew, and he had reason to believe they'd come to Barnacle Bluffs. He also had reason to believe the woman loved art, so would it be possible to look through any old job applications they had on file, as well as the guest books over the last two years?
It was a small fib, but he figured if any of them recognized the girl on the news they would have come forward by now, and after the message on his stoop, he was reluctant to be more direct. Maybe he could slow the tsunami of gossip just a little.
All were cooperative. Why wouldn't they be, when it was an innocent little nephew? Neither of the galleries had job applications on file (they were both ma and pa outfits who didn't hire), but one of them had a guest book they dutifully let him examine. There were hundreds of entries in the last two years, and he recorded a couple dozen names on a yellow legal pad he'd brought with him. When the owners raised eyebrows at this, he said that the kidnappers were probably operating under an assumed name.
The art supply store, which was in the outlet mall, didn't have a guest book, but the tie-dyed manager did have a handful of job applications in a cardboard box in her office. She wouldn't let him look at the applications himself, no matter how persistent he was, but she did agree to give him a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers of everyone who'd applied in the last two years—a total of thirty-nine people, twenty-two of whom were women. All of the women had local addresses, either in Barnacle Bluffs or a nearby city. Of course, that didn't mean the addresses were valid.
When he walked outside, a young man with a blond beard and thick sideburns was sitting on the metal bench. His jeans were spotted with paint and there were holes in the knees. A brisk wind stirred up dust along the sidewalk and sent an empty paper Coke cup skittering across the parking lot. He caught a whiff of caramel corn from the ice cream shop next door.
"Dude, I heard you talking in there," the young man said.
Gage stopped, leaning on his cane. "Yeah?" he said.
"You know, if the girl was really into art, there is another place you should check. It's gonna sound kinda weird, but . . . the public library."
"The library?"
"Yeah. See, maybe five years ago, this rich dude who loved art donated all his art books to the library, and there are tons of them. If you're into art, word eventually gets around. They're in this special cabinet. You have to sign them out."
Gage thanked the kid and headed for the library. It was only three blocks from the outlet mall, in a drab concrete building that included City Hall and some state and county offices. His knee was acting up, and of course this guaranteed that the elevator would be out. A handwritten sign next to the elevator informed him that if he had a disability he could use the courtesy phone and somebody would help him use the freight elevator, but Gage couldn't bring himself to that level of humiliation. Instead, he winced his way up the concrete steps.
The library was larger than he expected. It only encompassed one floor, but it was the whole floor, the air-conditioned stillness neatly packed with row upon row of orange metal stacks, stations of computers, and plush reading chairs in the brightest shade of purple he'd ever seen. An elderly black man with white hair and wire-rimmed glasses was perched behind the reference desk, reading a newspaper. He glanced up when Gage approached. He was thin, with slightly effeminate mannerisms, and his brown tweed suit fit so loosely Gage figured he'd slip out of it if he stood up too fast.
Upon seeing him, Gage remembered an article a year or two back in The Bugle, something about the local librarian celebrating three decades of service. He also remembered that the man had been a widower for over ten years, and that his biggest passion beyond books were his prize-winning miniature poodles. The nameplate on his desk read ALBERT BERNARD. The short glass cases immediately behind the desk were filled with just the sort of massive tomes that might be art books.
"Can I help you?" he asked. His skin was jet black except for a few age spots on his forehead that looked like copper coins.
"Yes, Mr. Bernard—"
"Oh, do call me Al. First time here?"
Gage leaned against the counter, taking his weight off his knee. "Yes, though I can see now that was a mistake. What a marvelous library. Are those the art books behind you I've heard so much about?"
The man beamed with pride. "Why, yes! Are you an art aficionado, Mr. . . . ?"
Gage hesitated. Good old Al was just the sort of fellow who would remember, when he eventually saw Gage's face in the paper, that Gage had lied to him. Since this small-town librarian who'd been in Barnacle Bluffs for over three decades might be a valuable asset, he decided the truth was probably best. "Gage," he said, extending his hand. "Garrison Gage."
They shook. The man had a grip like a wet noodle, but his eyes were warm and welcoming.
"Pleasure to meet you, Garrison. Would you like to look at a particular book, or is there a type you're interested—"
"Actually, I have a different kind of request, Al. I'm really hoping you might be able to help me." Gage leaned in a little closer, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I'm a private investigator."
Now he really had Al's attention. The man straightened up in his chair.
"Oh?"
"Yes. I'm looking into the death of the girl who showed up on the beach a week ago Thursday."
"Oh, yes," Al said, "I've followed that terrible business closely. Just dreadful what happened to her. Absolutely dreadful. And to not even know who she is—so awful. You'd think someone would have come forward."
"I have reason to believe she was very into art," Gage said, "so I thought she might have come in here to look at your gorgeous art books."
"It's possible," Al said, "but I'm positive I would remember if she came in. I saw her picture in the paper. However, I do have volunteers who staff the reference desk about ten hours a week, so she may have come in during that time. I could put you in touch with them, but quite a few are on the elderly side, so their memories are not as sharp as they once—"
"Could I take a look at the sign-in book?"
"Oh. Well. Yes, I suppose that would be fine. But if you already know her name, then why—"
"No, I don't. That's just it. I'm looking for names to check with names I've found elsewhere."
Al brought out a black ledger book. With the exquisite care of a curator at a fine museum, he rotated the book and opened it gingerly to the last entry. There were maybe twenty entries per page, no more than a couple per week, in blue and black ink, a name and a state, and over half of them in the same looping handwriting. He assumed that it was Al's, and it was a good thing, because it meant the patrons didn't fill it out themselves. The only part that was the patron's was the signature at the end of the line.
Gage set his things on the counter and opened the spiral notebook to a blank page. He flipped through the pages, seeing how long it was going to take to record every woman's information from the previous year. Before he started, however, one name jumped out at him. ABBY CARSON. It had nothing to do with the name itself. It had everything to do with the tiny doodle next to her signature—so small he had to look twice to make sure it wasn't just an ink smudge.
It was a dolphin.
Chapter 8
After jotting down the rest of the potential names he found in the library log—it never hurt to be thorough—Gage thanked Al and headed for his van. Her signature had been dated for the previous March, ten months earlier. While he'd been inside, the sun had rolled out of the clouds like a yellow marble from under a blanket of steel wool. It matched his mood. The sun might vanish into all that gray at any moment, but for now he felt a ray of hope. He had a name. It may not have been
the right name, it may not have even been a real name, but it was something. She had come to this library and looked at these books. He was sure of it.
The name Abby Carson didn't match any of the names he'd gotten from the art supply store or the galleries, but he refused to let his optimism be dimmed. Driving south, he enjoyed the warmth of the sun on his face. Inside the van, he could almost pretend it was summer. He picked up two turkey sandwiches from the Subway and ended up at Books and Oddities at a quarter to noon.
When he came in, there was nobody at the front counter. He heard Alex's low rumbling voice coming from the back of the store.
"Be with you in a second," he called.
"It's just me," Gage said.
Alex appeared a moment later and Gage held up the plastic bag containing the sandwiches.
"I come bearing gifts," he said.
"I see that. Was helping a gentlemen locate our expansive collection of Louis L'Amour paperbacks. So how goes the battle?"
"I may have just won a battle," Gage said. "The first battle, anyway."
"Really?"
"We'll see. Can I use your computer?"
Alex reached for his sandwich, putting on the face of the pouting adolescent. "Is that all I am to you? A free Internet connection?"
"Hey, that sandwich set me back five bucks."
While the computer was booting, Gage caught Alex up on the message on the doorstep and the dolphin doodle in the library sign-in book. He kept his voice to a whisper until an elderly man with hearing aids as big as Mickey Mouse ears shuffled out of the back, paid for two tattered Westerns, and left. Since Alex said the man had been the only customer in the store at the time, they were able to talk more freely.
"So what do you make of it?" Gage said.
Alex wiped cranberry sauce off his mustache. "I think this is probably going to be a little more complicated than a drunk boyfriend killing his girl in the heat of passion. What do you make of it?"
"About the same."
"Any theories?"
"Tons. But first I want to see what the computer tells us."
Gage finished the last bite of the sandwich, polished it off with the rest of the bottled water Alex brought from his fridge in the back, then got to work on the computer. Gage had dropped his own computer out his apartment window after Janet died—along with enough other objects that a few neighbors felt compelled to call the police—but he'd used Alex's computer enough that he still knew his way around them. He did some searches for the names Abby Carson and Abigail Carson, hitting the major search engines as well as the all the popular social networking sites. He turned up hundreds of them. Those that had pictures, none of them matched. Alex watched over his shoulder.
"You think that's her real name?" he asked.
"No," Gage said, "But I want to eliminate the obvious first. Would you mind checking the FBI database?"
Gage scooted out of the chair. With a sigh, Alex took the seat, and with quick, one-finger hunting and pecking brought up the FBI database. He punched in a password and entered her name on a couple different screens. There were several Abigail Carsons with criminal records, but all were much older than the girl. He did bring up some younger Abigail and Abby Carsons searching some related files, and Gage dutifully jotted them down the relevant information.
"You really going to track each one of those down?" Alex asked.
"I will if I don't turn up something another way," Gage said. "Hey, do you have a road map of the western United States?"
Alex slid open the cabinet beneath the cash register and flipped through a stack of papers there. "I think I've got some AAA guides here . . . Yeah, here's one."
He handed it to Gage, who folded open the wrinkled map and set it on the counter. It was so well used it felt like tissue paper. Gage zeroed in on the shop where the girl had supposedly gotten her tattoo, in Kooby, tracing his finger east along the twisting highway.
"That's what I thought," he said. "No reason she would have used this highway unless she was coming from directly east. If she was coming up the Interstate, she would have come west a different way, ending up in another town. Florence maybe."
"You're assuming she always wanted to come to the coast," Alex said.
Gage nodded. "More than that, I'm assuming she always wanted to come to the Oregon coast."
"Why? It could have been a spur of the moment decision. Maybe she was heading to Canada and changed her mind."
"Possibly," Gage said, "but I don't think so. Based on what she told the Indian, I think she had her sights set on here. She sounds like she was intent on being an artist and that she wanted to paint dolphins. For some reason, she thought she would find them here."
"That's nutty. It's too damn cold for dolphins."
"Yeah, but she didn't know that."
"How do you know she didn't live in Grants Pass? Or someplace in Eastern Oregon?"
Gage studied the map. "If she lived in Oregon, it's a good bet she'd have been to the coast at some point. Or at least she would have heard there were no dolphins on our coast."
Alex snorted. "You obviously haven't met the same Oregonians as I have."
"Stick with me," Gage said. He traced his finger along the various highways, going east and south. He kept going for a moment, like a mouse hitting a dead end before doubling back, then stopped and leaned in closer. "Carson City," he said, then he looked up at Alex. "Abby Carson."
"You think she was from there?"
Gage shook his head. "Probably not. I think she might have stopped there, maybe had a good time. When she had to come up with a name at the library, it was the first thing she thought of. It's difficult to come up with something truly random on the spur of the moment. She was also probably on the run from somebody. Or didn't want somebody to know she was here."
"Why do you say that?"
"The name," Gage said. "Why else would she go to the trouble of writing a fake name in a stupid library log book unless she was afraid somebody might find her?"
"You don't know that it's fake."
"My friend, I don't know anything," Gage said. "It's just a series of suppositions that I'm hoping leads me to see a greater pattern."
"In other words, guesswork."
He shrugged. "One man's guesswork is another man's investigation. But since we haven't dug up anything so far on her name, it's a good bet, right?" Gage settled back into the computer chair and rested his chin on his hands. "Let's say she ran away from somebody. An abusive father. A controlling husband. We don't know."
Alex leaned against the counter. "She could have been running with somebody."
"No," Gage said, "the Indian said she was hitchhiking by herself, remember? She's young, on her own, with little money, and she signs a fake name. No, I'd say she was running. And whoever she was running from never reported her missing."
"Otherwise the police would have turned up something by now." Alex nodded. "Okay, I follow you there. So now what?"
"Now . . . I've got to winnow the field. Since no one's reported her missing, let's assume no one's really looking. Do you think you could dig up all the girls raised in foster homes with first names of Abby or Abigail in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico? Focus on girls between seventeen and, say, twenty-two. And towns along this stretch have priority." He pointed at the highways and Interstates that ran from Kooby through Carson City and beyond.
"I can probably get a list together," Alex said.
"Good," Gage said. "Something else is bothering me, though."
"What?"
"Well, she came to Barnacle Bluffs a year ago, right? What was she doing all that time? It's too small a town for somebody to manage complete anonymity. Partial anonymity, maybe, we're big enough for that. But to have no one remember her? More likely there are people who remember her but aren't willing to say."
They paused while an old lady pushing a walker came inside, accompanied by a stout, middle-aged woman. The old woman placed a stack of romance novels on the counte
r, and then the two women disappeared into the stacks. Alex counted up the books and wrote a dollar amount on a slip of paper, which he placed inside the cover of the top book.
"Well," Alex said, speaking more quietly than before, "you could say there's only one person who'd remember her—the person who picked her up outside the Indian's store. Maybe he chained her to his bed and it took her a year to escape."
"No," Gage said. "Remember, we're operating under the assumption that was her at the library. She obviously had at least a couple of weeks to get settled. Maybe she was staying at a hotel while she looked for a job, or maybe she was just camping on the beach. It may not be Miami here, but it doesn't get too cold in the spring. Maybe she was abducted, but not right away. Let's say she got a job. What kind of job could you get where nobody who knows you is willing to come forward?"
Alex looked at the romance book for a long time. It pictured a buxom woman, her breasts nearly popping out of her dress, being roughly embraced by a man whose chest was more defined than nature would ever allow. "Of course the first thing that comes to mind is hooker," he said.
"It was the first thing that came to my mind, too," Gage said. "Do you know if there's an organization running the trade around here?"
"No," Alex said, "but I bet your friend Chief Quinn does."
"I doubt he'd tell me."
"Oh, and here I thought the two of you hit it off so well—as you always seem to do with the local law enforcement. Or is it something else? You saying he's crooked?"
"I don't know him well enough to know," Gage said.
"You know, you could use your leverage against him. Threaten to go to The Bugle with that info about his wife."
Gage drummed his fingers on the glass. "I don't want to play that card too often. It's only one possibility anyway. Maybe she didn't fall quite so far. There's that place on the outskirts of town, that strip joint. The Gold Cabaret. Maybe she got a job there. Even if she did get into the trade, I can't see her going straight to selling sex in one fell swoop."
The Gray and Guilty Sea Page 7