Little Girl Lost

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Really? I’d have expected a strong, proud black woman like you to have a strong, proud, black . . . friend.”

  “Trust me, I have plenty of strong, black, proud friends, lover boy.” Marsha smiles and exits the kitchen.

  Barnes carries his coffee back through the bustle and maze of desks. Still on the phone, Stef holds up an index finger, and he sits down to wait, rubbing his tired eyes and trying to get his head back into the case. Right now, it doesn’t feel like a priority. Perry Wayland’s life is likely not in danger. Barnes can’t even remember what the guy looks like, or why anyone gives a damn where he is. Rich SOB.

  Off the phone, Stef gives him a once-over. “You look like hell. Where have you been?”

  “Sorry. Family emergency.”

  “Everything okay now?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good. Guess who that was on the phone?”

  Ordinarily, Barnes would make a wiseass guess. Today, he can’t even come up with a legitimate one.

  “Wayland’s father-in-law, Biff Billington. Said Daddy’s Little Girl cried all night and he can’t stand to see her so upset.” Stef rolls his eyes. “So he’s doubling the reward. Just like that, the guy antes up a hundred grand.”

  “So . . . what, you don’t think a father should do everything in his power to help his daughter?”

  “You feeling all right, Barnes?”

  “That money’s a drop in the bucket to a guy like him. Who are we to judge?”

  “I’d judge a lot less if we could claim it ourselves. I could really use it right about now.”

  “Same.”

  “Oh, yeah? What would you do with it, kid?”

  “You know, the usual. Food, rent, pay down my mother’s credit card debt . . .” Provide for my newborn daughter. “How about you?”

  “Food, rent . . . OTB.”

  “So . . . the usual.”

  “Always.” Grinning, Stef grabs his keys and pulls on a brown tweed sport coat that wouldn’t close over his stomach if he ever bothered with buttons. “You ready to go?”

  Barnes nods, though he’s forgotten where they’re going. He knew on the way over here, but the detail seems to have flitted from his weary brain. Sleep deprivation impairs cognition, and he’s exhausted, with an endless day ahead.

  “Ray was expecting us an hour ago. You know how he gets.”

  Ray. Right. Over at the tow pound. They’re going to check out Wayland’s impounded Mercedes.

  “You see the papers today?”

  “No.”

  Stef grabs a stack of morning tabloids from his desk. “Get caught up on the way over.”

  Traffic is light along the West Side Highway. Barnes barely has time to scan the Daily News coverage of the case before they reach West Thirty-Eighth Street. Billionaire Boys Suicide Club might sell papers, but there’s no more evidence that Wayland had any personal connection to the subway jumpers than there is hard evidence that he dove over that railing.

  Staged suicide—classic for a guy like that. By now, he’s reinventing himself with his friend Miss White, hundreds or thousands of miles away from the ice princess he married.

  That’s a challenging task for most people—tough to disappear without a trace on a shoestring budget. A vast stash of cash makes it a whole lot easier to get out of town, even buy yourself a whole new identity. Who hasn’t dreamed about doing that?

  They’ve reached their destination, Pier 76 on the Hudson River. Barnes tucks the newspapers under the front seat as Stef pulls into a spot designated for NYPD.

  Open twenty-four hours, the tow pound is busy even at the ungodliest. You’d be hard-pressed to find another place in the city—other than Central Booking—filled with more irritated New Yorkers who aren’t about to admit having done anything wrong.

  A few dozen scowling people wait in a long line at the window, outraged about having to pay a couple of hundred dollars to reclaim their own vehicles. Several others sit on chairs filling out clipboard paperwork, grumbling to themselves and each other. Many are looking in their pockets for cash, some are looking for loopholes, and at least one is looking for trouble.

  “I swear it’s my car!” shouts the man at the front of the line. He has a fake tan and frothy, lemon-colored hair, and sports a muscle tee shirt, neckerchief, tight denim cutoffs, and tube socks with clogs.

  “Then where’s the documentation?” the clerk asks calmly, tucked behind bulletproof glass.

  “I gave you—”

  “And I’m giving it back, because it’s useless.”

  “Come on, lady, what do you want from me, blood?”

  “Something more than a Polaroid would be a good start. Come back when you have paperwork. Next!”

  He trudges away, crossing paths with Stef and Barnes, and pauses to hold the snapshot alongside his face. “See this? I’m sitting in my car. You can see the plates and everything.”

  They glance at the shot of Lemonhead behind the wheel of a red Mustang.

  “Nice try,” Stef says.

  “What, you don’t think that’s me?”

  “Oh, it’s you. I may have lousy eyesight, but I’d know that yellow bouffant anywhere.”

  “If you want to start something with me, Chubs—”

  “He doesn’t.” Barnes nudges his bristling partner. “Come on, Ray’s waiting.”

  They find Ray in the cavernous indoor parking area reserved for vehicles that are part of a crime scene investigation. He’s taking notes on a clipboard beside a shiny red Alfa Romeo Milano missing all four tires.

  Barnes whistles. “Someone had a bad night.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. Car was double-parked on Avenue A, stripped clean by the time we got it. Owner was shot in the head.”

  “For double-parking?”

  “What? No! That would be crazy! It was a drug deal gone wrong,” he explains earnestly.

  Stef likes to say Ray isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Barnes thinks he’s just young and has yet to develop the jaded character that allows more seasoned cops to make grim jokes on the job.

  Stef leans into the windshield, hands cupped above his eyebrows. “They even took the bloodstains, huh?”

  “He wasn’t shot in there. Happened over in Tompkins Square.”

  Ah, the so-called shadiest park in town, a description that has nothing to do with trees.

  “Heard it was a war zone down there overnight,” Barnes says. “More than usual.”

  “Yeah, all hell broke loose after the shooting. They rounded up at least two dozen derelicts. Anyway . . . you’re here about that Mercedes from the GWB, right?”

  “Yeah, much as I wouldn’t mind test-driving that white Jag.” Stef gestures at the Alfa’s cordoned-off neighbor.

  “Sorry, not allowed.”

  “I know, Ray. Wow, fully loaded. I bet the tow driver couldn’t wait to pounce on this one. Where’d they find it? Sutton Place?”

  “Upper East Side. Kilo of coke under the seat. Owner’s a sixteen-year-old preppie. Come on, the Mercedes is back there.”

  Ray leads them along the row of cars. The vast space echoes with rumbling, beeping tow trucks maneuvering vehicles into empty spots. A couple are banged up, and most are stripped, like the Alfa. These days, you can’t leave a car for more than five minutes in certain neighborhoods without sacrificing hubcaps and more. But they find Perry Wayland’s black Mercedes intact.

  All three men pull on gloves. Ray takes a plastic bag from his pocket, removes a key, and turns it in the driver’s side door lock. “Key was left in the ignition.”

  “Happens all the time in bridge cases,” Stef says, opening the door and reaching across the front seats to pull the passenger’s side lock button for Barnes. “Not much use for it at the bottom of the river.”

  “Or on some remote tropical island,” Barnes adds, leaning in. He pictures Kirstin Wayland sitting here in the passenger’s seat just days ago, driving out to Long Island to hunt for her dream house. The Mercedes sme
lls like new leather and cologne. He opens the console—empty—then lifts the plush floor mat.

  “Already looked under there,” Ray says. “Thought maybe I’d find a bobby pin, loose change . . .”

  “Or a couple of hundred-dollar bills, right?” Stef asks.

  “Thousand-dollar bills, with this guy. Wait, do they even make thousand-dollar bills?”

  “Hell if I know. This car looks like it just rolled off the dealer lot. If he was abducted, then it happened without a struggle.”

  “Forensics dusted for prints.”

  Barnes closes the door and steps back. “I doubt they’ll turn up anything. Wayland’s probably on a beach by now—warm turquoise water, amazing women, bottomless mai tais . . .”

  “Bottomless women and amazing mai tais would be even better,” Stef says.

  “If Wayland’s on the beach, I bet the water’s cold and gray.”

  “Why’s that, Ray?”

  “I’ve never been to Minnesota, but it’s not exactly tropical.”

  Stef scowls. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I found a clipping in the car about Minnesota.”

  “You think he’s at the World Series?”

  “No. That’s the weird thing.” He produces a plastic evidence bag that contains a piece of newsprint. It’s torn on two sides; straight-edged on the others.

  “Someone cut this out of the paper with scissors,” Barnes notes. “There isn’t enough border outside the text on the right-angle edges to be the corner of a page.”

  “You’re right. Those cuts aren’t factory made. They’re a little jagged,” Stef agrees. “So that means Wayland—or someone he knows, or someone who was in this car—clipped this from a paper because he wanted to save it, or it meant something to him.”

  Less than a column’s width and about two inches long, the piece is missing most of a headline and key pieces of information, but there’s enough for the gist of the article. Barnes shakes his head. “Wayland didn’t go to Minnesota, Ray. At least, not to Lake Wobegon.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because it isn’t a real place. This article is about Garrison Keillor, the author who does that public radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. It was a big deal when it went off the air a few months ago.”

  NPR, though? Kirstie had said Wayland wasn’t into culture. With a gloved hand, Barnes turns over the plastic-shrouded newsprint. The reverse side is a true crime retrospective. Looks like it marks the anniversary of the Manson murders, or . . .

  No, not the Manson case. A similar one, much closer to home. Barnes turns to Stef and Ray.

  “Either Wayland was a closeted Garrison Keillor fan, or he had some morbid fascination with the Brooklyn Butcher.”

  Amelia dozed off before the bus left the Port Authority. She’d been looking forward to seeing the countryside beyond the urban area where she’s spent her entire life, but she slept her way through the Hudson Valley, across the Catskills, and north through farmland to the fringes of the Finger Lakes.

  She awakens to disembark on Seneca Street in downtown Ithaca like Dorothy stepping into a technicolor Oz. Cayuga Lake gleams in the distance, electric blue as the sky framing the Cornell clock tower on the northeast hillside and Ithaca College campus in the southeast. Golden midday sun shimmers like a waterfall over lush hillside foliage in splashy citrus shades.

  Starved, she spots a restaurant awning down the block and heads in that direction, passing quaint, small town storefronts and a smattering of pedestrians. According to a sign on the awning, it marks not just a restaurant, but the DeWitt Mall. Having seldom ventured beyond the five boroughs, Amelia has never been to an actual shopping mall, but she’s seen plenty on TV. They’re always vast, brightly lit modern buildings with escalators, chain stores, and food courts.

  This old-fashioned brick-and-stone façade looks more like a school and is occupied by locally owned businesses: a guitar store, bookstore, antiques store, and the restaurant, called Moosewood. It doesn’t look like a fancy place. She has plenty of leftover money from the bus ticket, and she’ll order something cheap and simple.

  A waitress greets Amelia with a friendly smile. She has long gray braids and granny glasses, and she’s wearing jeans and clogs beneath an apron.

  Amelia sits at a table by the window with her bag by her feet, one strap around her ankle, and searches the menu for something she can afford. And likes. Or even recognizes.

  “Need more time?” the waitress asks, poised with an order pad and pen.

  “I was just looking for . . . a hot dog, maybe?”

  “Sorry, sweetie. This is a vegetarian restaurant. You must be new in town. Where are you from?”

  “New York . . . City,” she adds, remembering that Ithaca is also in New York State. It just feels like another state. Or country. World.

  “I should have guessed. Street smarts.” She gestures at the bag strap wrapped around Amelia’s leg under her chair. “I used to do that, too, back in the day. New York is my hometown, but I came up here for college thirty years ago and never left. Now, what can I get for you?”

  “I should probably . . .” Amelia pushes back her chair. “Is there, maybe, a McDonald’s around here or something?”

  “Hold on. If you’re in the mood for a burger, you can get one right here.”

  “But I thought—”

  “It’s a tofu burger. Try it. I’m an owner—it’s a cooperative—so I might be biased when I tell you the food is great, but you’ll love it. I promise.”

  Turns out she’s wrong about that. But Amelia—no stranger to broken promises—takes it in stride. Not wanting to hurt the waitress/owner’s feelings, she hides the unappetizing brownish-gray patty under a ruffle of verdant lettuce that bears no resemblance to the anemic heads of iceberg back home. It’s served not on a ketchup-smeared white bun, but on thick wheat toast spread with thousand island dressing. There are French fries on the side, but they’re made from sweet potatoes. Amelia pokes at them until the waitress shows up with a smoothie “on the house.”

  At last, something Amelia can stomach. It’s fresh and vibrant as the foliage beyond the window, and she drains the glass.

  “Are you here looking at colleges?”

  “No, I’m looking . . . for someone. Dr. Silas Moss?” she adds, on the off chance that the waitress knows him.

  The name is promptly met with a smile and nod.

  “Si’s one of our regulars. Not a fan of tofu, either. Does he know you’re coming?”

  “No, I . . . I guess I should have made an appointment. Maybe I should go back to New York and call him at his office next—”

  “See, that’s the thing about should-haves. They’re always too late. I don’t believe in regrets. What’s your name?”

  “Amelia Crenshaw.”

  “I’m Aline. Listen, Amelia, I’m guessing that you went to an awful lot of trouble and expense to get here today. See it through.”

  “But . . . I mean, I didn’t think about . . .” Anything. I just ran. “I didn’t see any cabs, and—”

  “Cabs? Oh, city girl.” Aline chortles. “Silas lives around the corner. Ten-minute walk, tops. Go out the door, hang a right onto North Cayuga Street, and keep going till you see a three-story yellow Victorian with a big wraparound porch and maroon shutters—on the left, in the middle of the block right after the park. You can’t miss it.”

  “I . . .”

  “You’re going.”

  Amelia smiles. “I’m going. Thank you. Can I have the check, please?”

  “Someone already took care of that, sweetie.”

  “What? Oh! You didn’t have to—”

  “Not me, I swear. And they wanted to be anonymous, so that’s all I’m saying.”

  Flabbergasted, she looks around the crowded restaurant filled with strangers. “But . . . why would anyone pay my bill?”

  “Someday, when you come across someone who looks like they need a friend, or a favor . . . you’ll do
the same for them.”

  Tears welling, Amelia ventures back out into the cool sunshine and hangs a right up North Cayuga Street.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Margaret Costello’s child doesn’t seem to exist.

  Red has spent hours searching for an overlooked clue in painstakingly labeled folders that hold a stash of microfiche printouts, photographs, press clippings, stolen documents, and medical records dating back to 1967, the year before the Brooklyn Butcher murders. Nothing.

  Red yawns and shifts in the uncomfortable wooden chair, restless.

  Too much adrenaline. Too much to do. Too much caffeine. Too much . . .

  The Tylenol bottle sits like a centerpiece amid the books and papers spread across the table.

  No, not nearly enough of that.

  White had said to use the pills sparingly because they’re addictive. Who cares about that now, though? Judgment Day is coming. Afterward, mortal problems will cease to exist for the chosen few.

  Chosen four.

  That’s two too many.

  Red snatches up the bottle, dumps out a couple of pills, and swallows them without water. They burn going down, leaving a chemical aftertaste, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but finding that girl.

  Back to studying a pair of images in the Costello file, just in case . . .

  One is a newspaper clipping showing the Costello house on Sixty-Fourth Street in Bensonhurst, the morning after the crimes. It looks almost exactly the same today, captured in a glossy print Red had snapped on September 3, 1987, according to the date stamped in the lower right corner. The two-story house has a flat roof and unadorned yellow brick façade. Two windows upstairs and two down, with a door between them. Margaret’s room was upstairs in the back, according to another clipping that details the crimes and speculates how the killer might have gotten into the house.

  Back when the article had been written, the police and press didn’t know that Oran had a key. They suspected a mob hit, because the parents and grandmother had emigrated from Sicily. But Joe Costello had no known mafia ties. Besides, a hitman wouldn’t have been so sloppy, and wouldn’t have left witnesses alive.