Without a Trace

by Catherine Anderson

  "What kind of dream?"

  "A nightmare, actually, about a small boy under a bed. For years it was the same dream, over and over. But lately, it's becoming more and more detailed." His eyes lifted to hers, haunted, aching. "I know this probably sounds crazy."

  "Extraordinary, perhaps, but not crazy. Please, go on."

  "It's, um, hard to explain, but the name Gino Santini has come to me in my sleep." He leaned forward in his chair. "Please, I know this sounds farfetched, and you're prob­ably thinking I'm some sort of kook, but at least hear me out."

  Sarah studied his face, touched beyond words by the des­peration she saw stamped upon his features. Settling back in his chair, he heaved a sigh and tugged the sleeves of his jacket down over his blue cuffs. His hands were trembling— large, broad hands that should have been rock steady. She couldn't recall ever having seen someone so reluctant to im­part information. When at last he began describing his dream, her stomach lurched.

  As he drew to a close, he said, "It's difficult to describe. It's almost as if there's something in my subconscious that's trying to—" He broke off and passed a hand over his eyes. "It's so real. So detailed. I can actually hear the blood dripping on the floor, smell it, feel the cold tiles against my skin."

  Sarah licked her lips with a cottony tongue. "A-and you say the man calls you Gino?"

  "Yes. The name Santini is sort of—" He cleared his throat again. "When I think of the name Gino, I hear this—" He broke off and gnawed his bottom lip, clearly uncomfortable. "I hate to say little voice—more like a whisper in my mind—Santini. It has to be a memory."

  Sarah could hear the clock ticking and tried to focus her attention on its soothing, predictable cadence. Despite the bright fluorescent lighting, she had envisioned his night­mare clearly, and the horror of it still surrounded her. "Have you asked your adoptive father about this?"

  "Yes. He not only grew angry, but refused to tell me anything." A muscle in his cheek rippled as he clenched and unclenched his teeth. "He's not well—his heart is bad—so that makes it difficult for me to insist he discuss it. How­ever, from the way he acted...well, I think he's hiding something."

  "Something horrible?" She couldn't miss the uncer­tainty in his eyes. "You're not the first person to go through this, you know. Though I'll admit, you seem to have far more reason than most, but we all wonder about some­thing...if our parents were crazy, if they loved us, if maybe they had two heads, or a hereditary, terminal disease that strikes unexpectedly at twenty-five and kills you within days. It's normal to be curious. If it weren't, I'd still be doing secretarial work at my old law firm, and Roots wouldn't exist."

  "You were adopted?"

  "That's how I got started with Roots. I, um, lost my adoptive parents seven years ago when I was twenty-two, so I decided to find my real family. I couldn't afford profes­sional help, so I did it by trial and error. After a year's work, I managed to locate my mom and a passel of brothers and sisters. Happy ending. Except that by then I was hooked, so I started to help other adoptees. Before I knew it, I was working at it full-time."

  "So you really do understand?"

  "I really do."

  He visibly relaxed. "Given my father's reaction when I've tried to question him, I think he knows something about my real parents, something he considers so awful that he's gone to great lengths to hide it from me all these years. And the other agencies became evasive and dropped my case a few days after they began investigating my adoptive parents' background. They claimed there was nothing to be found on them before they moved to Oregon. I can't help but think my father deliberately altered his personal records so I could never trace him back to my place of birth. That's possible, isn't it?"

  "I suppose."

  "So why couldn't you do an investigation on the name Santini? Could you find my biological parents doing the search backward like that?"

  "Actually that's not doing it backward. In closed states, getting an adoptee's birth name is quite often the hardest nut to crack."

  He leaned forward again, drawing so close she could see amber flecks in his brown eyes. "Will you help me?"

  Sarah longed to say yes. There was something about Michael De Lorio that attracted her, not just physically but emotionally as well. The torment on his face reached clear down inside her. "It isn't much to go on. If we had a vicin­ity to work in—the first and middle name of one or both birth parents... Do you know how many Santinis there might be in the United States?"

  "Hundreds, probably. That's why I've come to you. This is important to me—damned important. I can't live the rest of my life like this. It's driving me crazy."

  "The question is how important. I network with re­searchers all over the country, which eliminates long wait­ing periods getting information, but they charge me from twenty-five to sixty-five dollars an hour." She flashed him a smile. "You can run up a tab fast. A wild-goose chase could be extremely expensive. I'm not sure your adoptive parents' records can't be found. A simple error, such as in­verted initials, can throw a data search way off track."

  "Money isn't an issue. Whatever it costs, I'm willing to pay. But I'm telling you, I've been through this enough times to know, you won't find anything on my folks before they lived in Ashland—nothing."

  "Perhaps." Sarah paused to lend the word emphasis. "If that does prove to be so, could you approach your father again? Some adoptive parents resent it very much when a child wants to find his birth parents. He may reconsid—"

  "Impossible. He comes unglued every time the subject is broached, and he has a bad heart. I spoke with him on the phone just this morning. Same old story. He refuses to dis­cuss it."

  "I see." Sarah straightened the papers on her desk, smoothing the edges where her nervous fingers had dog-eared them. "Is there anyone else who might know where they lived before moving into the state? The reason I ask is that I might be able to pick up a lead if I had a general vi­cinity to work on."

  Michael shook his head, his expression defeated. Then he brightened. "Wait a minute. Father O'Connell down in Ashland might know. I was confirmed there when I was twelve. The church must have had proof of my baptism or I couldn't have received the sacrament."

  Sarah scribbled the priest's name on her notepad. "You don't think you were baptized in Ashland?"

  "It's unlikely. There's no record of my adoption in Oregon, and my folks, being Catholic, would have had me baptized immediately after."

  "I tell you what, Mr. De Lorio—"

  "Michael, please "

  "Michael." She felt her cheeks grown warm as she met his gaze; she had no idea why. He was simply dispensing with unnecessary formality. "Let me call this Father O'Connell and do a preliminary data request on the name De Lorio. If that's a lost cause, then I'll start looking under the name Santini. Sound fair?"

  "Then you'll take my case?"

  "It sounds like a challenge, and I've never turned my back on one yet."

  "I was afraid… well, what with the dream and all, I thought you might not want to get involved. When you add everything up—the blood, my father's reaction, the life­long secrecy, the agencies dropping my case—it's not so farfetched to think one of my natural parents might have been another Jack the Ripper or something."

  Rising from her desk, she extended her hand to him in farewell, repressing an amused smile. "I've had a number of clients, Michael, and I've never yet discovered anything sinister. Let me run a few preliminary tracers, then get back to you."

  His warm fingers tightened around hers, sending a warm shock of awareness up her arm. "If there are any unex­pected costs your office can't handle, you have my home and business numbers listed on the forms."

  After he left her office, Sarah gathered the papers he had filled out, fully intending to stow them in a file until she had time to work on them. Her stomach growled with hunger from missing lunch, and her peach yogurt beckoned to her from its hiding place in the file cabinet. She also needed to make an appointment with the vet
to have her tomcat, Moses, neutered before he single-handedly caused a feline population explosion. No two ways about it, she didn't have time to start on a new case today.

  But still she hesitated. In all her years working as a ge­nealogist, she'd never before encountered a client who'd had this sort of trouble finding his biological parents. There'd been failures, yes. But she'd never heard of agencies drop­ping a case a few days after beginning an investigation. Us­ing normal channels and the mail, dead ends usually took weeks or months to detect. That intrigued her.

  Was there something extraordinary about the De Lorio case? Had the other agencies found something confiden­tial? Better left unsaid? Blood on the floor. Could it be an actual memory?

  Sitting down at her desk, she leafed through the papers. Michael De Lorio's address was in one of the nicer sections of town. She ran a finger down the list of schools he had attended, then studied the information on his parents. Since their move to Oregon, there was nothing odd, nothing that could be considered a red flag.

  Sarah sighed and turned toward her telephone. There was no help for it. Moses was going to enjoy a few more nights on the prowl before Mom spoiled his fun. She had to get the preliminaries on this case out of the way or it'd be on her mind constantly. Jack the Ripper? Michael De Lorio had quite an imagination. A grin quirked the corners of her mouth as she dialed the number of the Catholic church in Ashland.

  A lilting Irish brogue boomed over the wire. "St. Jude's, Father O'Connell speakin'."

  Sarah tipped her head and smiled, immediately warming to the priest's friendly voice. "Hello, Father O'Connell, my name is Sarah Montague. I'm a genealogist working out of Eugene. I'm trying to assist one of your former parish­ioners in tracing his family tree. I was hoping you might help me?"

  "Genealogy, ye say? We-I-II-II, isn't that grand? Ah, what an interestin' field ye've chosen for yerself, lass. I've a keen yen to do some of that myself. I'm from Ireland, ye know. It's a fascinatin' place, to be sure."

  "So you'll help me?"

  "But of course! What is it I can do for ye?"

  "I was hoping you might have a record of my client's baptism. The man was adopted, you see, and we thought his records might give us some clue as to what part of the country he lived in at the time. The sacrament probably wasn't administered in your church, but he was confirmed there as a boy."

  "Then I'll have a record of his baptismal certificate, to be sure. He couldn't have been confirmed without it. What's the name, and I'll be lookin' it up for ye?"

  "De Lorio, Michael Robert De Lorio, son of Robert and Maria. It probably dates back thirty to thirty-five years."

  Dead silence resounded on the line for a moment. When Father O'Connell spoke again, his friendly voice had taken on a definite chill factor. "De Lorio, ye say?"

  "Yes, that's right, De Lorio."

  "Thirty to thirty-five years ago? Hmm, that's a long time, lass. It'll take me a wee while to find it."

  Sarah gripped the phone more tightly. "How long do you estimate?"

  "Well, that'd be hard to say. Why don't ye give me yer name and number, and I'll be gettin' back to ye with it, eh?"

  Sarah gave him the requested information. "I'd really appreciate a speedy reply."

  "Ah, yes. And I'll be gettin' back to ye, Miss Montague, that I will. Goodbye. God be with ye."

  The line clicked and went dead. She lowered the phone receiver to its cradle, realizing the Irishman's sudden reti­cence was an unmistakable don't-call-me-I'll-call-you stall tactic. Suspicion mushroomed inside her. What the hell was going on? Had she said something wrong? Offended the priest somehow? Or had it been the name De Lorio that had brought on the cold shoulder? Adding all the facts to­gether, Sarah knew it was the latter. Father O'Connell had been more than eager to help her. And he would have if she had asked questions about any other person than Michael De Lorio. That could only mean one thing: whatever it was Michael's father, Robert De Lorio, was hiding, it probably wasn't about Michael's birth parents, but about Robert himself. Otherwise, why would the priest have clammed up?

  She sighed and rubbed her forehead with tense fingers, staring at the forms Michael had filled out. He had hired many other investigators, from as far north as Seattle clear down to Los Angeles. She underlined the one from Washington, a place called Finders Keepers, then dialed the telephone number. A second later, a man named Paul Ra­fael answered.

  After introducing herself and briefing Mr. Rafael on her involvement with the De Lorio investigation, Sarah said, "I was hoping you could pull the De Lorio file and tell me why your agency dropped his case, whether it was because you hit a snag or if it was for some other less obvious reason."

  Rafael sighed. "I don't need to pull Dr. De Lorio's file to give you an answer, Ms. Montague. I handled that case, and I recall my reason for dropping it quite clearly."

  "Which was?"

  "I was told to back off."

  Sarah's scalp prickled. "By whom?"

  "I don't feel at liberty to tell you that. Suffice it to say that I had very good reason for agreeing and leave it at that. If you're smart, you'll do the same."

  "I see."

  "Probably not yet, but you will."

  That evening after work, Sarah parked her ten-speed in her driveway at the end of the cul-de-sac and shrugged out of her backpack, rubbing her neck and sighing. It was going to be a TV-dinner night; she was too tired to cook.

  As she climbed the three steps to her secluded front porch, which was bordered on the street side by tall shrubs, she spied a note taped to her front door. Not another com­plaint about Moses, please? She rolled her eyes heaven­ward. Stupid cat. He'd probably been in Mr. Hansen's garbage can again. Or serenading the Siamese down the street at four o'clock in the morning.

  Sarah snatched the note off the door, expecting a long, heated description of Moses's latest offense. Instead, the message was a brief four words: CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT. Her stomach dropped. Whirling, she flung her backpack onto the porch and ran back down the steps.

  "Mosie? Mosie, love? Pretty cat, where are you?" Vi­sions of her pet lying dead in the shrubs assailed Sarah. His neck broken. Shot. Poisoned. Fear swelled in her throat. This morning, she'd let him out for a bit and, typical of Moses, he hadn't come back. Now she wished she'd been late to work and gone out to find him. "Moses? Moses, dinnertime."

  "Rrr-rrhow?"

  Sarah whipped around. Her tattered gray tomcat emerged from his favorite hideout in the shrubs, arching his back against the low-hung boughs, his green eyes slitted from sleep. Sarah's breath caught and she scooped him into her arms, giving him a fierce hug. "Oh, you miserable, ugly, immoral rounder you. I don't know why I love you. All you are is trouble."

  "Rrrhow?"

  "You're going directly in the house. And tomorrow you're paying a visit to the vet. That note scared me silly."

  As Sarah carried the cat to the front door, she gazed at the yellow piece of paper clutched in her hand. Why would anyone write something so deliberately cruel? To frighten her? Some of her neighbors had been upset by Moses's es­capades, but never that upset. Furthermore, curiosity wasn't one of Moses's downfalls. His two greatest sins were a big appetite, which led him unerringly to loose garbage-can lids, and female felines, whom he pursued in the wee hours of the morning—nine times out of ten under a neighbor's bed­room window.

  Unlocking the front door, she tossed the overweight tomcat into the entry, grabbed her backpack, then hesi­tated with one foot on the threshold to study the note more closely. Block printing, extremely sloppy, as if the writer had gone to great pains to disguise the handwriting. That struck her as odd. Her neighbors weren't usually shy when they complained about Moses.

  Curiosity killed the cat. Sarah's mother must have said that to her a thousand times when she was a kid, usually when Sarah was poking her nose where it didn't belong. It was an old adage, and when people used it, they usually di­rected it at others as a warning. Mind your own business, or you '11 be so
rry.

  She glanced uneasily over her shoulder, remembering Paul Rafael's vague warning. Suddenly she wasn't so cer­tain this note was about Moses. She hurried into the house and bolted the front door. As she walked into her living room, she recalled the strange phone conversation she'd had with Father O'Connell in Ashland. Had the priest told Michael's father, Robert De Lorio, about her call? Had the older De Lorio driven to Eugene, looked up her address in the phone book and left this note on her door to scare her off? Sarah froze midstride on the pale blue carpet.

  Am I jumping to crazy conclusions? She sighed and pressed the fingers of one hand to her throbbing temple. At this point, her instincts told her this case spelled trouble in capital letters. What was it Paul Rafael at Finders Keepers had said? Suffice it to say that I had very good reason for agreeing and leave it at that. If you’re smart, you '11 do the same. Should she tell Michael she'd changed her mind? She envisioned his haunted eyes. How could she jump ship when she knew how important this was to him? The answer to that one was easy; she couldn't. Not after having agreed to take the case and getting his hopes up. Nothing had actually happened, after all. And one thing she didn't do was re­nege on a deal.

  Dumping her backpack on a chair, she strode into the kitchen and rifled the cupboard for some ready-to-eat spa­ghetti, too drained since finding the note to even bother with a TV dinner. After opening the can and dumping the con­tents into a microwave-safe bowl, Sarah grabbed the dish­cloth to wipe up the mess she'd made. As she made a swipe at the drops of tomato sauce on the yellow countertop, she hesitated, remembering Michael's description of his dream. Blood dripping on yellow tile... A shiver ran over her as she recalled his words.