“I’m afraid not. The school won’t send her . . .” I said, making a small joke. “No, she’s okay with it. To assist New Scotland Yard, who else?”
“I hate to tell you this, but I don’t think they really need it, Dad.” She laughed, and it was the first time I’d heard her do that since Emma disappeared. “So, what airport? How are you getting in town? Where are you staying?”
I gave her the details. She said she’d meet me at the hotel about 3:30 PM or so, when classes got out.
“We can do supper or something,” she said. “Wait till I tell Vicky. She’s really been worried.”
“And there’s more. Carson Hilgenberg, the new County Attorney? He’s coming with me.”
She actually laughed again. Two for two, except I didn’t think this one was particularly funny. “You’re kidding?” I’d discussed Carson with her more than once.
“No.”
“Well, you’re going to have a long trip, Dad.”
About 6:15, Sue suddenly said, “I’ll bet you didn’t get Traveler’s Checks.”
“Oh, shit.” The banks closed their windows at 4:30.
One phone call to Allen Jones, president of Northland Savings Bank and one of the interested parties in Lamar’s office this morning, and I was on my way to the bank. He came down in person, and issued the Traveler’s Checks himself.
“You want this in hundreds or fifties?” he asked, opening a small box that contained the checks.
I had decided to withdraw five hundred dollars from our checking account, but Allen had persuaded me to go for a thousand. That left, by the way, less than four hundred dollars in our account, so I decided to transfer a thousand from our savings, which just about zeroed that account out.
“You got your birth certificate?”
“Shit. No, I don’t. It’s in our safety deposit box.”
One phone call, and Sue was on her way with the key. She walked. It was only a block. We opened the box, got my birth certificate, and Allen very obligingly copied it for me.
While doing all this, Allen kept asking pointed questions that he’d been uncomfortable about raising in Lamar’s office.
“What do you think the chances of her being alive really are, Carl?”
“Hard to say,” I answered.
“No, come on. Just between us.”
I took a deep breath. “Very slim,” I said. “She’s too close to her mother to take off like this and not let her know.”
“Oh, I hope you’re wrong,” said Sue.
“Me, too.”
“I agree about her not doing this to her mother,” he said. “If she is dead, how long do you think it’ll take to find her?”
“That’s pure chance,” I said, “if the Brits are being straight about not having any leads.” I signed some more. “One of the biggest factors is the method of disposal. Some are more easily discovered than others.”
He took the signed Traveler’s checks, stacked them neatly, put them in two paper wallets, and completed his form. Then he handed them back to me. As he did, he said, “If you need more, just let me know, Carl. We can get a no interest emergency loan and get it to you within a couple of hours.”
“Thanks.”
“No questions will be asked,” he said. “Except for one thing.”
“Okay . . .”
“If you have to pay an informant, tell me. Don’t tell me what for, just tell me. If you have to do that, we won’t consider it a loan, and it’ll come directly out of my personal account.”
“Jesus, Allen, you don’t have to do that.”
“It’ll be my contribution. I know there’s no way that sort of money ever comes back. Just one thing. . . .”
“Sure.”
He grinned. “Don’t pay for any more information than you absolutely need.”
If I’d had any lingering doubts about the community feelings on my mission to find Emma, that settled them for good and all.
Sue and I got to bed early, because we both had to be up and running at 07:00. That was normal for her, but I seldom rolled out of bed until about 10:00, as I began my shift at noon.
Neither of us could sleep.
“Did you remember to pack your other shoes?” she asked, wide awake.
“Yep,” I answered, as alert as she was.
“And your sport coat?”
I hate sport coats, mostly because I hate ties. “There’s not room.” She’d convinced me to buy a sport coat a year ago, and I’d worn it once.
“There’s plenty of room, I’m sure. I’ll pack it for you.”
“I’m not gonna need a sport coat.”
“You will. Trust me. And I don’t want you to feel out of place over there. They dress much better than . . . well than you do.”
Sue had been very disappointed, but realistic about not being able to go with me. The fact that I was going to be cursed by Carson Hilgenberg’s presence had give her a good laugh, though, and may have taken some of the sting out of it.
“And your brown belt, too? You need it with the beige slacks.”
I chuckled in the dark. “Yes, that, too. You better get to sleep.”
“I should let you get to sleep,” she said. “This is unusual for you. Now, tell me again, how do you get a passport so fast?”
“They tell me you can do it in Chicago in a work day. So, that’s why I get to arise at 07:00.”
“Is Lamar driving you in?”
“What?”
“I said. . . .”
“Well, holy shit,” I said, “I can’t take my squad car and leave it in Chicago two weeks . . . and I sure as hell can’t take ours. . . .” I turned on my bed lamp, and reached for the phone. “You’re sure ahead of me on this one.”
“Naturally.”
I dialed the office, and recognized the voice that answered. “Hey, Betty, it’s Houseman . . .”
“You should be asleep.”
“Tell me. Anyway . . . ,” and I explained the problem with the cars. “I know you call Lamar at 06:00. When you do, ask him if he wants to give me a ride.”
“Just a sec . . .” she said, and I could hear her rustling through some papers. . . . “Just making sure,” she said. “Okay, here we are . . . the previous dispatcher got a call about forty-five minutes ago . . . you will be riding with Carson Hilgenberg to Chicago.”
“Oh. Well, swell.” I guess I didn’t sound too enthusiastic, because she laughed, and so did Sue beside me.
“But, I’ll tell Lamar you called,” said Betty.
“Thanks.”
She told me that Carson was picking me up at 08:00.
“Delightful.”
After I hung up, Sue said, “You sounded pretty funny. What’s up?”
I told her about my ride. She thought it was very funny.
A few minutes later, when I was finally beginning to drift off, she said, “Now don’t take up too much of Jane’s study time, will you?”
“Huh? Oh, no. No, ’course not.”
“Make sure she’s safe, Carl.”
“Well, sure.” I was awake again. “Like I said, there are absolutely no indications that whatever has happened to Emma, that it’s associated with Jane.” Directly. I added that to myself. There was a fair chance that it might be someone they both may have known.
“Just promise you’ll send her home if you start to worry.”
I reached out and put my arm around her. “I started to worry the day we heard Emma was gone,” I said. “How about I send her home when I think I’m worried in a rational way. Not that I can send her home anyway. She’s over 21. But I’ll sure as hell make a strong suggestion. That okay?”
“All right.”
It must have been a good ten minutes later, as I was just dropping off, when she said, “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
I was just a bit too far gone down the road to sleep to have the safety mechanism kick in. “Yeah,” I said.
“What!”
It was a long night.
She didn’t forget the sport coat. She got it in. I wasn’t sure I could get it re-packed on the way home, but she got the thing in my suitcase.
Carson Hilgenberg honked his horn at my back door at about 08:20. Twenty minutes late. Sue had already left for school, after admonishing me once again that Jane was to be safe, in my estimation, or I was to persuade Jane to leave London. Right. Like I was going to be able do that, if she didn’t want to go.
I lugged my two bags plus carry-on out to Carson’s black Ford Expedition.
“Hey, big guy,” was his greeting. “Just toss ’em in the back, and hop in. The Windy City Express is about to leave!”
Carson was about twenty-six or twenty-seven. That made him about thirty years my junior. He’d been appointed county attorney when the office was vacated, and nobody else wanted the job. He’d managed to get through law school by the skin of his teeth, and had failed to pass the Iowa Bar Exam the first time he took it, before finally making it two years ago. Sue had said, once, that I used the term ‘idiot’ way too often. She’d asked me to name two people who I thought really deserved the label. I said “Carson Hilgenberg, and Carson Hilgenberg.”
I have to give him some credit, though. He was an idiot in the broadest, nicest sense. In fact, that made him the worst kind of idiot. He was well meaning, friendly, and not at all unpleasant. He was fairly well educated. And he really wasn’t dumb, either. He was just the sort who had always gotten by, and who would forget most of what he’d learned about torts, but never forget those zany antics of rush week. And he’d tell you about them. All of which meant that it wasn’t possible to really hate him, and eliminated all sorts of satisfying and vengeful retorts. It did mean that I usually found him pretty irritating.
“Hello, Carson,” I said, hoisting my bags into his SUV.
“I think this is going to be a worthwhile trip, don’t you?”
“I sure hope so,” I said. I slid onto the passenger seat, and fumbled with the belt. “We’ll have to see.”
He started forward just before I got my door completely closed. He’s like that.
Carson talked incessantly all the way to Chicago, mostly telling tales from his fraternity days. I was enthralled. During one of his infrequent pauses, I allowed as to how I was concerned that my passport wouldn’t be ready in time.
“Hell, Carl, it’s a piece of cake. Don’t worry. I’ve got a fraternity brother who just got one that way . . . no problems.”
“Glad to hear it,” I said, still concerned.
“Oh, yeah. He grabbed it the last time we went to Italy. . . .”
That got him going on the various times he’d been to Europe on what he termed the Hostelling, Drinking, and Screwing the Undergrads tours.
“You went with undergrads?” I was surprised.
“Oh, sure. I was sort of a proctor cum tour guide. Prime assignment. I got to go as an assistant to the instructor.”
“They let you out alone with undergrads?”
“I called it my sex education tour. Only I wasn’t the one who was learning.”
“Right.” I took a deep breath. “So, where all did you go?”
He seemed to have gravitated toward Italy and France, although he’d been to England and Wales.
“You got a favorite country over there, Carl?”
“Well,” I said, “it’s a little hard to say. Never been there.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Well, Sue and I sort of thought we’d go somewhere after we retire,” I said.
“Let me tell you, you’ll love Assisi. Really.”
I knew it was in Italy. I listened to his glowing description of it all the way to 53 West Jackson. I don’t know that it was related to his European travels, but I was glad Carson seemed to know Chicago so well. I never could have found the place. He’d been right. It was a piece of cake. It actually took less than an hour, all told.
Consequently, we were way early getting to O’Hare, the plane leaving at 7:30 PM, and us being there at 3:30 and all. We checked our luggage, and then headed toward our departure area. I thought Carson was going to get us arrested when he saw me empty my pockets at the security checkpoint and said, in a normal tone of voice, “Oh, you’re not wearing a gun?” I think we were very fortunate I had just placed my badge in the tray.
“No,” I said, ostensibly to him, but loudly enough for all the security people near me to hear very clearly. “The Department recommends we don’t take our service weapons with us on flights.” Jesus.
That conversation, unfortunately, distracted me. As I passed through the metal detector archway, the alarms went off. I knew right away what it was, but I got pulled aside anyway, frisked with a wand, and then motioned over to an adjacent area with a small chair, and asked to remove my shoes.
“It’s the case for my reading glasses,” I said. “It’s steel. I forgot to take it out of my shirt pocket.”
The security man just said, “Well, let’s just make sure.”
That’s what it was, all right. Carson tried to help by saying, from his vantage point of having passed through successfully, “I’ll bet it was your badge.”
The security guy smiled. “You a cop?”
“Yeah.” I nodded my head toward Carson. “He’s not. He’s an attorney.”
“No? Really? I couldn’t tell.”
That made me feel a bit better.
We walked about half a mile to gate K12, past what seemed to be an endless variety of shops, restaurants, and bars.
“This place,” I said to Carson, as we walked briskly down the concourse, “is like a shopping mall with airplanes.”
He liked that.
After finding gate K12, which turned out to be about as far from our entry point as it could possibly be, we sat in the departure lounge and ate some uniquely expensive cheap sandwiches, drank pretty expensive bad black coffee, and finally got around to talking about the case when Carson stated, “You know, Carl, I bet she’s dead.”
“Who, Emma?” Of course Emma, I thought. Don’t be rude.
“Emma. I don’t know about you,” he said, confidentially, “but I’ll bet she’s already been planted out on some moor or something. Could take years to find her. I read somewhere,” he said, lowering his voice, “that there was this family over there on the moor, and they actually ate their victims! Can you believe that?”
I sipped my coffee. “So, then, why are you going over there? If you think she’s a gonner.”
“Hey, Big Guy, a chance like this comes along once in a lifetime. I mean, we get to do some routine checking, and have a lot of time left over for sightseeing. All in the name of public service.”
The way he said sightseeing told me quite a bit. “Well, maybe,” I said. “But this is a working trip. We have lots to do. I think we could be pretty busy, if things go right.” Actually, I suspected that he was right. I just hoped he wasn’t. And I didn’t appreciate his attitude.
“I don’t know about you,” he said, evidently not having a clue as to the impression he was making on me, “but I intend to spend an hour or so at Scotland Yard, listen to their report, and then see what turns up while we’re there. They can call us back if they find anything.”
“New Scotland Yard,” I said.
“What?”
I explained.
“Oh.”
“Always nice to use the right term,” I said.
“Yeah. Thanks. Hey, you think they’ve got a Hooters in London?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t think so. . . .”
“I dunno,” he said, brightly. “I’ll have to check when we get in. They got these Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches . . . you ever have one?”
“ ’Fraid not.”
“How ’bout their Cuban sandwich?”
I shook my head.
“You tryin to tell me you’ve never been to Hooters?”
“I’m ’fraid so,” I said.
“How about a Cinnabon?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Uh, n
o.”
“Well, you’re in luck. There’s one right behind us!”
I went sort of reluctantly as we lugged our carry-on stuff with us, but each ended up with a huge cinnamon roll that was absolutely delicious. We camped in the dining enclave for a while, and Carson cranked up his laptop and checked his email.
“Wireless,” he said. “I don’t know what I’d do without it.”
Mine, which stayed on the floor with my gym bag, needed wires.
He may not have known what to do without it, but judging from the short time he had it opened, there weren’t any messages. He folded it up, and carefully wiped the crumbs from the case. “They don’t buss the tables here very often. It’s because they share ’em with other concessions. Jurisdictional problem.” He took a drink of coffee, and carefully wiped his mouth with a paper napkin.
“I hope we find out one way or the other when we get there,” he said.
“About Emma?”
“Yeah.”
“Me, too.”
“You know, I understand she had two roommates,” he said, around his cinnamon roll. “Maybe I can score with ’em?”
“Only one, if you know what’s good for you,” I said. He gave me a questioning look. “One of ’em’s my daughter.”
He was unflappable. “So, like, I should try for the other one, right?” He grinned.
“If you want to see thirty-five.”
“You know,” he said, after a minute, “I remember Emma when she was in high school. She was a cheerleader; she was a senior, I think, when I was in seventh or eighth grade.”
“That’d be about right.”
“Boy, I had the hots for her.”
I looked at him. “Must have done you a bunch of good.”
“Oh, you know, like a junior high kid has the hots. Nothing serious.” He flashed a big grin. “But I used to follow her around the halls, right after lunch. . . .”
“Carson Hilgenberg, junior stalker,” I said.
“That’s about it. Boy, it’d be a shame if she was dead. She had a truly gorgeous ass.” He seemed to realize he’d made a mistake as soon as he said it. “I mean, you know, she was a great gal and everything. I just meant . . .” The sentence just sort of trailed off.
“Yep.”
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