I head towards the safety of my car, but a man gets out of one of the media vans, blocking my path. He would have startled me, but he is just so pretty I figure he’s an on-air personality, and though he’s come upon me quickly, there isn’t anything menacing in his bearing.
“Nothing, huh?” he asks, and I understand he was hoping my visit would meet with success. He doesn’t know who I am, but he’s prepared for me to be his next segment of the story and he’s hoping that I’ll do something he can report on. I can read all of that in his smile.
“Nada. Zilch.”
“Sucks,” he says with regret. I know he means it. “Been camped out here a few days now, hoping for a break. Nothing much doing.” He puts out one big hand. “Curtis Diamond, WBCC Los Angeles,” he says. I can tell he figures I will know who he is.
“Hey,” I say in a way that I hope is admiring. It’s clear it’s what he’s used to, so it seems prudent to deliver. “I’m working on a book on Atwater,” I say, sticking to my story. “I talked with the mom briefly before. On the phone. It seemed worth a try to take a run at getting in.”
Curtis nods. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Can I interview you for my afternoon segment?” he asks. “I got a lot of nothing, and at least you’d be a talking head.”
I feel my eyes widen at the suggestion and panic clutch at my breast. For so many reasons, getting interviewed wouldn’t do at all. Me on TV. Thinking of it makes me want to duck for cover. I try to show none of that.
“It’s a work in progress,” I say, trying to think fast. “And, honestly, I don’t think it would serve my purpose to put my face up there ahead of my book.” Whatever that means, but he seems to understand the words better than I do because he gives in without a struggle.
“I see your point, I guess,” he says. “No sense getting the publicity machine working before there’s an actual book to promote.”
I feel myself sag with relief. There are nearly two hundred thousand words in the English language. Against all odds, I appear to have chosen the right ones.
“This case, though, you know. It’s an awful business.”
I nod. Nothing more is required of me. I am in agreement. It is an awful business, no matter how you look at it. We are here, far from our homes, because we imagine that we can get something done.
“Did you hear about the psychic?”
I shake my head: no.
“She went to the police here, before things got real rough.”
“Went to the police for what?”
“A police source told me: she approached them with information about Atwater’s whereabouts, but they wouldn’t listen.”
“You did a story?”
“Naw. I thought I might, but my news director nixed it. Said there were enough crackpots running around out there without us encouraging them.”
“Fair enough.”
“I guess.” Curtis seems a bit wistful. “I think it might have made good TV.”
I laugh, though I agree. It seems to me I have seen a good range of crackpots on television since all of this began. And I can’t, of course, judge good TV from any other kind though keeping the crackpot quotient to a minimum strikes me as a good idea.
We laugh together briefly, then I say goodbye and head for my car.
He stops me. “Here, take my card,” he says, pressing it into my hand. The stock is thick and creamy, the letters raised. There is a network logo emblazoned on it, and his name in stark letters: Curtis Diamond, Reporter. “Call me if you want to talk. I’m thinking I’ll get to interview you before long.” He flashes me a smile so white I fight the instinct to cover my eyes while I push the card into my bag without really looking at it.
“See you at the next stop,” I say, hoping that, too, will have meaning beyond my understanding. I don’t wait for his response, though. I walk straight-legged back to my rental car, outwardly calm, but feeling anything but. I know I wasn’t nearly exposed as a fraud, but I feel that way just the same. Maybe we all do, really. That’s the thing. Maybe we all always do whether we are lying or not.
I start the car and pull away gently, even though I feel like hitting the gas and getting out of there so quickly that the pea gravel under the car sprays the media van. I don’t want to punish ol’ Curtis; I just want to put distance between his practiced steely gaze and me.
The crappy neighborhood gives way rapidly to a better one, and with the media van out of my rearview, I pull the car up at the end of a cul-de-sac and go over my plan and my notes. Now that I am here in the real world, with actual reporters and an at-large bad guy, when I go over said notes I feel abashed and ever so slightly ashamed. What had I been thinking in coming out here? It’s all I’ve got, though, so I go over the rather broad plan in my head once again.
I know I want a full day to do my exploration of the northern part of the county. It is over an hour’s drive, and there are several stops I want to make along the way. And now I revise my mental picture. Before my arrival, I’d imagined peaceful semi-wilderness settings. Now I sketch media teams and trucks equipped with space gear into that image.
The platoons of media have altered the picture in other ways, too. The small town is full. I manage to book a hotel just outside the downtown core and only because I catch a break, walking in on a cancelation. The little inn is on the tidy side of modest. No hint of squalor, but far from the four-star places I generally stay when I am on a job. It has been my experience that getting in and out of hotels undetected is best done at a place with a large staff. Hotels so professional it’s possible to remain anonymous. Small places tend to be understaffed. Or worse, run by the owner. In either case, being remembered by someone is more likely in smaller places. And I pretty much never want that.
San Pasado is small enough, however, that there aren’t a lot of options, especially under the circumstances. The hotel I end up in is two brick stories and not far from one of the main streets. Austere but unremarkable. No room service and probably no ghosts.
Once in my room, I drop my bag on the floor and flop on the bed, grabbing the remote as I fall. Nothing much has changed in television land. Though no one has seen any sign of Atwater, the fever pitch has grown. I let the anxious voices lull me into fitful sleep, traveling and fretting having taken their toll. I wake at the sound of a vaguely familiar voice, noticing as I gain consciousness that, since the time I put my head down, the light has gone out of the day. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep, but it was long enough for me to have missed a West Coast sunset.
On the television, though, is a familiar face to go with the familiar voice. Curtis is standing not far from where I left him, and it must have been filmed around that time, too, because he is standing in sunlight, so it was apparently hours ago.
“Things have continued to be quietly tense here outside William Atwater’s childhood home.”
Quietly tense. I wonder what that even means.
“We had a recent visit from an author, who says she is working on a book about Atwater.”
My blood chills as I see a figure that is clearly me hunched behind the wheel of the rental car. I will myself to breathe. It was a very brief glimpse and the plate of the car was not shown. There is no way I could be recognized from what was revealed on-screen. Still. It feels like a close call. It feels like the possibility of endings.
“Though she said it was early days, this reporter was left with the impression that it would be a work of merit.”
“Curtis, can you share the author’s name?”
“I’m not at liberty to say, Jennifer,” he says blithely, and I find myself looking quizzically at the screen, head cocked, a smile forming. “But I recognized her as a leader in the world of true crime.”
And with that, my smile is full. No one is looking for me. No one knows to look for me. They are looking for someone sorta famous, and I am not that.
“Thanks, Curtis,” I mumble, knowing as I do so that the half-lie was for his benefit, not mine.
/> I get myself up and together and walk the few blocks into the heart of town. I am hungry and restless and I walk into both of those feelings.
The town is as charming as promised. I prowl around, looking for both food and inspiration. I keep to the shadows and see what I can see. That man over there—might he know something? That woman pushing a pram—had she recently seen someone suspicious? I wonder if this is how it is with small towns in general; when it’s possible to know everyone, everyone is both suspect and safe.
I settle on a couple of slices of pizza in a cobbled square, and sit in a courtyard while I nibble, watching people go past while I wonder and consider. At this moment, the task I have set myself seems larger than I am. This thought nearly paralyzes me.
There comes a time, after I’ve eaten, when I am no longer hungry and I feel there is no more for me to learn just by hanging out and watching. I take the long way through the town and back to my hotel.
Once there, I do it right this time: slip out of my clothes, leave them in a pile on the floor, turn off the television and the endless bleating of earnest and alarmed voices. And, finally, I pull the curtains shut and turn off the light. And then I sleep, sleep, sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
WHEN I WAKE, I discover I have been asleep for a freakishly long time. It was maybe ten when I lay down, and now, it is ten again: I have slept an entire half of a twenty-four-hour cycle away.
I get ready for the day, thinking I will grab breakfast on the road on the way to the Valley de Oro, but then I realize I am hungry now. And it’s not like anyone is expecting me. Once I shower and get myself ready for the day, it is after eleven and never mind breakfast, I’m ready for lunch.
Wandering through the streets I’d walked the night before, I am hit again with the double-barreled charm of this place. It doesn’t take long for me to find an eatery that is charming, as well.
I sit on a patio at the back of the restaurant at a wrought-iron table right next to an actual bubbling brook. The servers all have the clean look of the college students they probably are, and all the staff have names like Kelsey and Madison.
My server is a lanky blond who identifies herself as MacKenzie. I stop myself from saying “of course it is” when she tells me that’s her name.
The place is a microbrew, so I order beer in a tall glass. When it comes, it is pale and fruity. A grapefruit honey amber ale or something else that doesn’t generally belong in beer. I order it, because it is today’s special brew, but I don’t really pay attention. And, since it’s first thing in the morning for me, I get a coffee on the side.
The food on the menu looks very good, but I’m not hungry anymore. I was before, but now I can’t make it happen. After considering what healthy thing I should order to tempt myself, I tell MacKenzie I’d like some fries to go with the beer and coffee and call it a day.
The thing that keeps going through my mind—as I walk, as I sit, as I nibble: What am I doing here? Not in the restaurant, but in the town. On this chase. What do I hope to accomplish? What do I bring? I am no super sleuth and I have no extraordinary finding skills that I am aware of. I have finally gotten good at not losing my keys, but that took some doing. I find my keys only by practice and rote. I don’t think any of that will help in this situation. It is one thing for me to take out a target: someone at a known location when I have received instructions, sometimes down to fine details. But this is something else again. I think about badgers in holes or other even smaller animals, that’s what this feels like. Atwater has gone to ground. It is all too far out of my control and, in any case, the professionals have gotten here ahead of me. Journalistic professionals like Curtis Diamond and even actual police and FBI types. Surely, with all their experience, they will find him first. This has been a lark. Possibly even a diversion. But probably I should just pack up my shit and get out of Dodge.
I am sitting, sipping at the final mouthful of beer, nibbling at the last of the perfect French fries, when I feel the buzz and energy of the restaurant shift. It is almost a physical thing.
“What is it?” I ask MacKenzie as she passes. I can see that the hands on the tray she is carrying are not quite steady. “What’s going on?”
“Arden’s daughter is missing,” she says, indicating a petite redhead with a stricken expression just inside the doors. The redhead is talking to a small group and wringing her hands. I can see that decisions are being made.
“Missing,” I repeat.
“She disappeared from her day care.” MacKenzie’s voice has risen an octave. The fear she is expressing is real. “Arden just got a call.”
“How old? The child, I mean.”
“She’s just five. The whole town is spooked right now, right? It could be anything. It’s not necessarily …”
“She’s thinking Atwater?”
The girl nods. Drops her voice. “I mean, Ashley wouldn’t have just wandered away. She’s just this little kid, you know?”
MacKenzie bustles off and I sit and consider. As I do, it comes to me: fate or kismet or dumb blind luck has led me to the hottest point in the search. And I am here before everyone else: before the police or the occupants of the media trucks or the experts from the media circus’s front lines. It seems crass to try and speak with the upset mother, but I don’t have anything to lose. I figure maybe she doesn’t, either.
“Hey, Arden,” I say as I approach her.
The young woman turns saucer-like eyes to me.
“Yes?” Whatever else is true, she is scared as hell. I can practically smell it on her.
“MacKenzie just told me. About your daughter. I’m … I’m working on a book …”
“A book?”
“On …” I find myself reluctant to say the name.
“On him?”
“Yes. And I have discovered things about him. I know some things. Maybe I could help.”
“Help find Ashley?”
“Maybe. I mean … I’m here, right? Maybe for a reason. I could try.”
She turns wild eyes on me and looks me up and down. She looks at me like I’m speaking a foreign language or like I’m a freak, and in the shadow of her glance, that’s exactly how I feel.
“My daughter is missing,” she says. And there is dignity and fear and contempt in her tone. And I feel all of that, too. “I’m not interested in helping with your book.”
Maybe something else was said. I’m not sure, because I slink back to my table, with my head down, keep my eyes to my computer. Address again the last of my beer; my fries. The dregs of my coffee are long gone, but I suddenly wish for at least the solid hit of a caffeine buzz.
For the balance of my time in the restaurant, I try to continue the research I’d been doing online, and think about where I will go now, where I will aim the rental. After a while, my mortification eases, and I get into balancing out places on the map with Google street views and local images and other things that help me build a picture of the place I’m about to go.
“She disappeared from day care.” The voice at my elbow startles me. It is unexpected. I try not to show it.
“That’s what MacKenzie told me,” I say. “That’s terrible.” I say it with compassion, and I don’t have to work hard at it; it’s right there.
“Yuh.” She surprises me by swinging down into the seat opposite mine. I give her my complete attention. Now that she is sitting across from me, I can see she has remarkable eyes. They are slate gray and rimmed with brown-gold. Just now her pupils are dilated, most likely with fear. Fight or flight. She wouldn’t have to say anything for me to know that, whatever else is true, she is scared as hell.
“Ashley’s day care called me,” she says in a whisper that feels like a scream. There isn’t much sound, but the reverberation from the words takes a long time to die. And she’s desperate, I can see that, too. I figure that’s the reason she is now sitting across from me. “I’m trying to decide what I should do.” And then, “I mean, I have to do something, right?”<
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“Have the police been called?”
She nods. “Yeah. They told me they called the cops even before they called me.”
Something in that tells me that the day care thinks the situation is serious. You call the cops and you call the mom? That probably means they’ve already checked under all the rocks in the playground. I’m not sure but I’m imagining: losing kids is probably crappy for business.
“What’d the cops say?”
“They’re on their way.”
I nod. “So you’ve done what you can,” I say.
“Yes, that’s right,” she says, “but I don’t want to just sit here. Pick up tips. I feel there’s something I should do.”
“Take me there,” I say before I can think about it and shut myself up.
“What?” she says.
“To the day care. That way you won’t have to be alone.”
“But I don’t know you,” she says. Her nails are painted. One of them is chipped. There’s something touching in that.
“Does it matter?”
She meets my eyes with that gray-gold look again and I can see the answer to the question. Does it matter that I don’t know her or her daughter? In this case, no. It does not. So we head out.
While we drive, Arden fills me in: she doesn’t have a car. She tells me the whole story, but I only retain a small percentage of the details. Something about her mother and a trip to the coast and a bunch of other things I’m certain at first hearing won’t concern me. The upshot is, Arden doesn’t have a car and I do, so I end up driving the rental to places I would have never found on my own. I just follow Arden’s voice. Left here. Right there. Seventeen miles down this highway. I hesitate at that. Why is she taking me so far afield? She sees my hesitation and understands.
“Yuh. It’s weirdly far out, I know. In North County. But day care is cheaper out here and my ex got me a deal.”’
“Ashley’s dad?”
“Yeah.”
Endings Page 10
