Find Me

by Carol O'Connell

  Mallory entered the state of Texas miles and hours ahead of the caravan. Stopping in the small town of Shamrock, she made her duty call to the U-Drop Inn, but it was too early in the day to find this landmark saloon open for business. She only stayed long enough to make a checkmark on her list of things to see. She had greater hopes for the next stop.

  She traveled westward toward the map coordinates for a patch of dirt, then pulled off the road and stopped the car on a flat Texas prairie “—with a vista that went to the end of the world.” She stepped out and walked toward the horizon line. Every sign of life on earth was behind her and out of sight.

  And she waited.

  “There is only one way to see America,” wrote Peyton Hale. “An airplane or a train won’t do. You have to feel the earth underfoot. You must be alone and in danger of losing your way. Oh, the sheer size of this country can send a man to his knees. This prairie, this great expanse of open space has that power. It’s the overwhelming sense of emptiness you feel. Only a few steps away from the road and you’re lost—and then you’re changed.”

  Without once falling to her knees and unchanged in any way, Mallory returned to the car, where she opened her notebook and crossed off one more disappointment.

  Not his fault.

  For her, the sense of emptiness was the familiar thing.

  After driving only a few miles, she summoned up a passenger. Sometimes there were so many ghosts in the car that Mallory could not breathe. This time the murder victim was forced to ride in the back seat. Mallory could not quite let go of April Waylon, but, dead or alive, the woman was annoying.

  The recently killed mother caught her eye in the rearview mirror and smiled. Dead April leaned forward to say, “It wasn’t your fault, you know. I mean—my murder. You can’t be expected to save the same people over and over again.” In Mallory’s mind, a door suddenly appeared in the back seat of a two-door convertible. It flew open, and April was pushed out of the car.

  Her foster mother, Helen Markowitz, was resurrected to ride in the front seat. Mallory had restored the soft roundness that had been lost to cancer years ago.

  Gentle Helen, never leave me.

  “Oh, Kathy, just look at this mess.” The dead woman was staring at the empty soda cans and wadded-up credit-card receipts that littered the floor mat. There was no derision in Helen’s tone. She had been the kindest of people—and the neatest. Everything Mallory knew about cleaning solvents and dust mites she had learned from this extraordinary housekeeper, and then she had taken it to great extremes, never tolerating one thing out of place and not one spot of dirt, not one—

  “Something’s gone wrong,” said Helen, frowning at the discarded paper cups. “This is not like you, Kathy.” Tactfully, the late Helen Markowitz said nothing about the dust on the dashboard, but Mallory noticed it and silently inventoried other signs of trouble: a chipped fingernail, a windshield covered with bugs, and a lying mirror that showed her eyes full of tears. But her face was dry. Maybe these were her father’s green eyes—his tears.

  At the last stop in Oklahoma, when all the people had been fed and the reporters, too, Riker went over the same instructions for parents who had recently joined up. The ranks of the caravan had swelled to fill every bit of the lot. “Pump your own gas. Don’t leave your car unattended anywhere on this road.”

  The FBI and local police had managed to contain the detail of victim mutilation, the chopped-off right hands, but the press had acquired the news and names of the murdered caravan parents. And now Dr. Magritte was allowed to convene the campers in a minute of silent prayer for those who had lost their lives on Route 66. The prayer group was hardly a tableau of statues in silent reverence. They were antsy, feet shifting, anxious to be gone—and smiling.

  Riker understood. One of their number had died yesterday, but they were still alive. Civilians and their television ideas of murder—they believed that everything would be all right if they only followed the good camper’s guidelines for traversing a road of sudden death.

  “It might be a mistake to give them rules.” Charles Butler was obviously in the mind-reading mode as he sipped coffee from a paper cup. “Makes it all a bit too innocent—like a school fieldtrip.”

  “I’d like to clear them all off the road.” Riker shrugged. “But I can’t do that without an act of Congress. The feds want the parents here.”

  “As bait?”

  “Yeah, but even if I spelled that out for these people, they still wouldn’t leave. Every time somebody dies, they think they’re getting a little closer to finding their kids. And they’re right about that. Cold, huh?”

  Mallory barreled down the road with the volume turned up sky high, and a group called The Who sang, “Won’t get fooled again.”

  Was this the one?

  Back in New York City, she had asked, “What was my father’s favorite song?”

  “There were so many,” Savannah had said, unwilling to admit that she did not know.

  And thereafter, Mallory had played a waiting game until one truth emerged and then another. Her enemy had weakened more each day.

  Savannah Sirus was one dead woman who would never come for a ride in this car.

  She—would—not—dare.

  Mallory rejoined the old road and entered a small Texas town. This was the home of Peyton Hale’s beloved Avalon Theater, a going concern when his letter was written. It was closed now. The movie posters had all come down, and the doors were padlocked. The glass of the ticket booth was cracked, and a nearby sign proclaimed this place as a landmark. The silver convertible was the only car on the street. Every parking space was hers for the taking. She had seen other ghost towns along the way, but there were people living in this one. A few of the storefronts were not empty, and one was a town museum that still posted hours.

  A die hard town.

  She crossed the old theater off her list with no sense of letdown this time. She had come to understand this kind of landmark, “—like a bookmark for a memory.”

  Down the road, she found the old Phillips 66 gas station, a tiny house of brick that had been restored for appearance only; it no longer pumped gas. Beyond that was a likely patch of road to bury a body, and troopers were hard at work digging it up. Kronewald’s pattern for the children’s graves was holding up in the state of Texas.

  She passed the diggers by. The young detective had had enough of the dead today, both the people and the places. Her car had been emptied of ghosts, and she was done with death. She rejoined the section of newer highway that had displaced the old Route 66 and put on some speed. The music was faster now, more frantic.

  “Rock ’n’ roll was the end of boyhood,” wrote Peyton Hale. “The music was wired into my skull, and my toes tapped to rhythms that only I could hear. Dogs were not so quick to come to me just for the pleasure of licking my hand. And the fathers of girls could see me coming from a long ways off. Oh, and the girls, they found me dangerous, and didn’t I love that? My salad days, my outlaw days. The road and the music—just sixteen. And now that I’m an old man of twenty-five, my road is disappearing as I write, as I ride.”

  Mallory took the next ramp that would turn her car east. She was heading back toward the grave-digging troopers, though she could not say why. Her debt to Kronewald was surely paid in full. Perhaps it was because April Waylon had come back for another ride, eyes popped wide and searching every bit of road, still so determined to find a lost child.

  It might be this one.

  The caravan was crossing from Oklahoma into Texas when Riker reached out and turned off the fire and brimstone of a radio evangelist. “Okay, that’s enough local color. Could you talk to Joe Finn when we stop for the night?”

  “No point,” said Charles Butler. “He won’t leave the road. Mr. Finn is really no different from the other parents.”

  “Oh, he’s different all right.” And Riker had had his fill of wild cards. “Finn’s daughter’s is buried in a Kansas cemetery, and he has to know
that’s her body. I’m not buying into this denial crap. I’ve been through this before. It doesn’t last a year—usually just a few minutes. The parents shake their heads at you like you’re crazy. How can their kid be dead? ‘No, you made a mistake, you stupid cop.’ And then they cry. Now this guy, he wouldn’t even look at the corpse. I think Joe Finn wants payback. Probably figures he can find this freak before we do.”

  “No, he wouldn’t bring two children on a mission like that.”

  “You’re right. That’s nuts.” The detective turned to the passenger window and nursed a theory that fathers of murdered children were not very stable people.

  Ten miles of Texas prairie rolled by before Charles broke the silence. “Guilt always comes with a death in the family. Always. People dwell on last days and how they could’ve been different, given a second chance—and, of course, superhuman powers to see into the future. You can’t cure them with logic. It’s the same when a child goes missing. That’s why these parents can’t leave this road. They’d be consumed by guilt if they didn’t do everything in their power to bring their children home.”

  “Or die trying.”

  “I don’t think that enters into the equation. I’m sure you noticed that most of these people are single parents. They’ve lost spouses to divorce, one suicide that I know of. And then there’s alcoholism and depression. I know how you picked out the FBI moles so easily. They were playing the part of a happily married couple.”

  “The moles are doing a crummy job of keeping an eye on the kid.”

  “Sorry,” said Charles. “Sometimes I forget that Mallory’s not all that communicative. I thought you knew. The moles aren’t watching her at all. The other day, when Do die disappeared under the table and Peter was screaming her name, the moles turned to look at Magritte. He’s their only concern. It makes sense. I’m sure you suspected that the killer was in the doctor’s therapy group. Murderers sometimes insinuate themselves into—”

  “Oh, shit,” said Riker. “That’s why Dale pulled that stunt with Joe Finn. He was painting a target on Do die. He’s drawing fire away from his best witness—Magritte.”

  Witness? Or suspect?

  Riker answered his cell phone. It was the moles telling him that they had lost the Pattern Man to an exit ramp, and Dale Berman would not send agents to bring the little man back to the fold. Horace Kay hill was not one of the parents—not their problem.

  “So he’s expendable?…Yeah, right…. ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t cut it, kid…. No, you tell that idiot in charge—” The line was dead.

  Damn moles.

  Riker placed his next call to Special Agent Berman’s cell phone. “Dale?…Yeah, it’s about Horace Kayhill…. No, Dale, you’re gonna send out a posse…. Why? Well, if that little guy isn’t on your shortlist, you’re a moron.” After another few moments of listening, he ended the call and folded his phone into his shirt pocket. “They’re going after him.”

  “Nicely played,” said Charles. “I know how much you despise Agent Berman, but you always use his first name—like an old friend.” He raised his eyebrows and shrugged to say, Just curious, not prying.

  Dr. Paul Magritte’s Lincoln was following the Mercedes when the old man saw Detective Riker turn around, twisting to reach into the back seat. The doctor eased up on the gas pedal to drop behind by one more car length. He took a last look at the blurry photograph of April Waylon. It had been taken while the woman was still losing blood from her slashed throat. This was the face of ongoing terror—not quite dead. He turned his attention back to the car in front of him. Riker was still facing this way.

  Perhaps guilt inspired the flight of fancy, the uneasy feeling that the detective’s line of vision could travel several car lengths, then bend and dip and turn to dark corners. Though Riker could not possibly know what Dr. Magritte held in his hand, the photograph was hastily concealed inside the folded maps on the dashboard.

  13

  Riker was so happy to hear Mallory’s voice. Apparently, in a lapse of apathy, she had forgotten to turn off her cell phone.

  The grasslands of the Texas Panhandle were sliding by his passenger window while he told her the story of the dead wolf and a foiled plot to kill Dale Berman. A breeze ruffled the papers in his hand as he read her snatches of correspondence between the government and George Hastings. “Dale found the kid’s body, but he won’t release it for burial. So all this time goes by, months and months. Hastings gets tired of begging Dale for Jill’s body. He bypasses Dale’s field office and writes to Washington. Mallory, I got copies of everything. Now, all Hastings got back were form letters, but guess whose office they came from?”

  There was silence on the other end. Guessing games annoyed her. He gave her a broad hint. “The Assistant Director of Criminal Investigations.”

  “Harry Mars,” said Mallory. “He can’t be running this circus.”

  “He’s not, and I’ll tell you how I know. Mars’s office sent a whole slew of these damn form letters. It looks like a stall. I don’t think the FBI knows where Dale stashed the bodies of any of those kids. Interesting, huh? But I know he’s been digging them up for almost a year.”

  “All right,” said Mallory. “So we’re looking for a makeshift morgue somewhere in Dale’s comfort zone—near a Texas field office. Not all of the remains are skeletons. He’d want a place with refrigeration. Get the body count from Horace Kayhill’s maps.”

  “I can’t,” said Riker. “The Pattern Man defected. I’ve got agents and troopers out looking for the little guy. I even used a news helicopter. No luck. But all this new coverage might scare the freak off till we can find Horace.”

  “No,” said Mallory, “the perp is loving this. Imagine the thrill.”

  Riker could not, but he deferred to Mallory in all things sociopathic. “Oh, the feds finally ran a check against vehicle registration. One of the parents, Darwinia Sohlo—”

  “The name’s a fake,” said Mallory.

  The connection went dead, and it would be no use to call her back. His partner’s cell phone worked only one way—at her convenience.

  Riker was not inclined to trust the moles with the lives of any more people. He ordered Charles Butler to change lanes and drop back to the end of a parade that stretched out for more than a mile. And now he watched for exit signs and more defections to Route 66, but all the parents seemed content to drive I-40 to their next interview with the reporters.

  The radio was tuned to a news station, and the broadcaster was giving a traffic report on the caravan, “—so travelers should avoid that stretch of the interstate. Our helicopter counts two hundred and seventy-five cars going slower than the legal limit.”

  Understatement.

  The speedometer on the Mercedes was showing forty-five miles an hour and falling. The highway was hemorrhaging with the caravan, yet the traffic report had not deterred the local residents. All along the road were groups of people lining the prairie with cars and trucks, picnic baskets and babies in arms, young and old, waving at the cars driving by. Some held up signs of good luck and God love you lettered in bold print that Riker could read without glasses; there was nothing wrong with his long-distance vision, and so he was also able to see the first paper airplane take flight. It was caught by a tall man standing with his family. As the Mercedes rolled by, the airplane was unfolded in the Texan’s hands. It was a poster of a missing child.

  The news helicopter relayed this sight to the radio broadcaster as more paper planes took flight. Flocks of them sailed out from the windows of the caravan vehicles. The reporter was calling it a swarm—so many of them. Some soared upward, and others were captured by high-reaching hands and the lower reach of chasing children.

  Little ships with big hopes.

  Mallory’s store of coveted cell-phone numbers included one for Harry Mars, and her call went through to voice mail. She planned to trade on a cop’s good name—not her name, and so she left the message, “It’s Markowitz’s daughter.”

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nbsp; She felt a pang, and supposed that it was guilt or something like it, and this was not the first time since leaving New York City. Now and again, she felt that she was cheating on the man who had raised her from the age of ten. It was the music that called him to mind, again and again, all along this road.

  Music was all her two fathers had in common. Louis Markowitz had never been young—except late in the evening after supper, when the volume on the stereo was cranked up high, and the old man had taught her to dance to rock ’n’ roll. His wife, gentle Helen, had called him a dancing fool and took her own turns with him on a floor with a pulled-back rug. Some of Mallory’s favorite memories were the dancing nights.

  Lou Markowitz had lived to dance.

  Peyton Hale had lived to drive. Cassandra had told her that defining detail about her real father, but not much else. Or had she? Mallory had been six going on seven the day her mother died. How many memories had been lost? She had always known her father’s name and where her green eyes had come from, though her mother had not kept any photographs, probably wanting no reminder of parting with him and the loss of him.

  Before the visit from Savannah Sirus, she had known nothing of her mother’s pain. It must have been reborn every morning when young Kathy jumped up and down on her mother’s bed, waking Cassandra with Peyton’s green eyes.

  Another pang.

  Her cell phone beeped.

  The restaurant’s parking lot would not hold all the vehicles. Reporters and FBI agents had arrived first to take up most of the spaces. Riker left the Mercedes to play traffic cop, and Charles Butler watched his friend unwind the mess of backed-up traffic on the road, steering cars onto adjoining land, shouting instructions to form neat rows, yelling, “Fake it! Just pretend you’re at the shopping mall!”

  In search of his own parking space, Charles was looking out over the herd of media in the parking lot when the cacophony of beeping began. The reporters were all answering cell phones.