SK01 - Waist Deep

by Frank Zafiro

  When I was a cop, I must’ve done hundreds of interviews. I talked to victims, witnesses, suspects, attorneys, other cops, my bosses, you name it. I talked to people of all levels of social standing. Men and women. Guilty and innocent. Black, white and brown. Gays and straights. Honest folks and absolute liars. And as different as everyone wants to believe all those people are, what I discovered is that they were all pretty much the same.

  And that old cliché about the eyes being the windows to the soul? It’s true. They are. All the pain, all the anger, all the love or all the emptiness inside a person spills out through those two mysterious orbs. People naturally know it and look for it. Police officers know it and read it better than most people. When I was on the job, I could read it better than most cops.

  But not one hundred percent, huh? a nasty voice from inside my head reminded me. Not even close, hero.

  I ignored the voice and kept my eyes at Matt. The truth was in his eyes. I saw the pain. I saw fear holding on by a thread before slipping into panic.

  I wondered what Matt saw in my eyes.

  The words that tumbled out of my mouth surprised me. I knew I would probably regret them. “Okay, Matt. I’ll help. I’ll do what I can.”

  Relief washed over his face and filled his eyes. “Thank you,” he said softly.

  The tears that had welled up in his eyes now fell. I knew that they were born of gratitude, but to me their shimmer seemed more like an accusation.

  9

  After meeting with Matt, I really wanted to walk, but my knee wasn’t going to cooperate. After a little more than a block, the sharp pain kicked in, punctuated with a throb every few seconds. My walk became a limp and my limp became more pronounced the farther I walked.

  I slowed down to a pace that most senior citizens would’ve considered a shuffle and my knee responded immediately. The sharpness of the pain both dulled and dimmed and the throb began to fade. Some might say that was my reward for making a good choice. With age, they might say, we learn wisdom.

  Or we learn to accept defeat, I thought sardonically.

  It wasn’t an argument I was going to win, so I brushed it aside and kept my tortuous pace until I reached Coeur D’Alene Park. The park was nine square blocks located almost exactly in the center of Browne’s Addition. There were a few scattered trees, some play equipment and a lot of open space. In the center of the park was a gazebo. I made my way to it.

  The gazebo was a recent addition to the park. Some group or another built it in the name of community service. They got their picture in the newspaper and their name on the plaque on the steps of the gazebo. I’m grateful for it—it looks nice and is a pleasant place to sit during the day—but I’m sure that the hookers and dopers appreciate it just as much during the night hours.

  Instead of the classical white color of most gazebos, it was the color of natural wood. Or at least, it had been stained to look that way. I brushed aside a discarded newspaper and sat down.

  Matt had told me the rest of the story, leaning forward as he spoke rapidly. He’d waited a week before reporting Kris as a runaway. During that time, he searched for her until he ran out of places, then started over. He listed them for me and watched me as if he were looking for my approval. I merely nodded and motioned for him to continue.

  Matt told me about all of Kris’s friends, which sounded like an unimpressive bunch to me. Maybe if I’d bagged more cheerleaders in high school, I’d be more impressed with their type. But since the vacuous, self-centered cliché bearing pom-poms has so little to do with the real world, it’s hard to give much credit to the young girls who elect to slip into that role. Or the parents who allow them to.

  As he spoke, I stole several peeks at her picture. I had to constantly remind myself that this girl was sixteen, not twenty-four, despite the shape of her body and the age in her eyes. The feminine creature is a very crafty, deep enigma, capable of duping men of all ages. I had to remember that no matter what I saw in her eyes, even if some of it was genuine, she was still just a sixteen-year-old girl.

  Kris’s friends hadn’t been any help to Matt. Most had attitude. The few who told him anything said that they hadn’t seen much of her recently. None knew why, or would say if they did.

  I’d cleared my throat and asked Matt what Kris’s dream was.

  He’d crinkled his forehead for a moment, looking at me as if I’d just asked a question to which the answer was so obvious that even a child should know it.

  “An actor,” he’d said. “I told her that the term for a woman was ‘actress’ not ‘actor,’ but she said she didn’t care either way, because she planned to be a star, not just an actor or an actress and when someone reached that level, she was just a star, male or female.”

  A star, I thought. Great.

  Using a napkin, I scribbled down a list of Kris’s friends from Matt, though I doubted I’d bother talking to any of them unless something else came up to point that way.

  ”Where does Kris go to school?” I asked.

  “Fillmore High,” he told me.

  “Call the principal. I want to talk to her teachers and they’ll need your permission, I’m sure.”

  Matt had nodded and written down my request. All of his actions were feverish and full of hope.

  Sitting in the gazebo, I touched the envelope in my pocket. It was folded over twice and contained one thousand dollars in fifties. The roll was hard and thicker than I would’ve thought. One hundred dollars a day plus expenses. That was what he demanded to pay. He’d handed me the envelope and asked me to count it. When I didn’t, he told me how much was in the envelope and broke it down for me. A hundred dollars a day. Straight eight hour days would net me twelve-fifty an hour. Less than half of what I made when I wore the badge. “One week in advance, plus three hundred toward expenses,” he’d said.

  I accepted the money without a word. It was more money than I’d held at one time in years and I felt like a fraud taking it. The envelope’s weight gave me a sinking echo in my stomach. I knew that he was counting on me to find his daughter; knew that in his mind, it was as good as done now that he had hired me. I wondered if he’d read the newspapers ten years ago. Didn’t he know how I’d failed Amy Dugger? Or was he just that desperate?

  My thoughts flashed to the cold eyes of other cops looking at me. That small form on the morgue table, one half the body bag folded underneath her.

  I closed my eyes against the memory.

  That was a long time ago.

  But that doesn’t change what happened, a voice argued.

  I can never change what happened.

  No, I can’t.

  But I can help it from ever happening again.

  10

  The cold in the park felt good, but the stiffening in my joints from sitting outside finally forced me to head home.

  Inside my tiny apartment, I sat at the kitchen table and meticulously wrote out everything that Matt had told me about Kris Sinderling. I wrote questions in the margins to the left of my list of facts.

  Why’d she pull away from her friends?

  Why’d she run away?

  Is there a boyfriend?

  I studied the list and my questions, then pushed away the pad of paper. I went to the bathroom and took some aspirin, then spent the rest of the day staring at that pad of paper. I stared and I wished for a crisp new manila folder to neatly store the notes. I stared at the paper and at Kris’s glamour photo that Matt had let me keep and then back at my handwriting. I stared so long that ghosts abandoned their hiding places from behind the curves and strokes of my pen and emerged, fingers pointing, pointing, pointing.

  That night I slept.

  A little.

  And dreamt.

  11

  Her eyes were open.

  Cold.

  But she was grinning, her small cheeks rounded as her lips turned up in a smile that might welcome a new lunch box or her favorite teacher. It might have been the smile she flashed in answer to the q
uestion, Do you want me to push you on the swing, Amy? It was a child’s smile, full of innocence and hope and it sat upon her face like the sun.

  Until she saw me.

  Then the smile faded. Her mouth slackened and finally hung open lifelessly. Then I was able to see her matted hair, splotched with black dirt and rust.

  But it wasn’t rust.

  It is. It is rust! I screamed.

  But I knew it wasn’t.

  It was blood and I knew it and then the light faded from her eyes, fixing me with an accusing, silent cry.

  You’re too late, those eyes said.

  I’m sorry. I—

  But it doesn’t matter what I say.

  Her eyes were right.

  12

  I put some of Matt’s expense money to use early the next morning. After a small breakfast of toast and coffee in my apartment, I slipped on my cowboy boots and my leather jacket and called for a taxi.

  The driver was a clean-cut white kid in a pressed white shirt and a thin tie. He’d asked me my destination. When I told him Fillmore High School, he’d started the meter, asked me if I wanted to hear some music and drove on without a word. The interior of the cab was spotless and didn’t smell of anything other than the faintest whiff of pine. He navigated his cab through downtown quickly but without causing me to lurch in my seat and before long we were headed up Grand Boulevard. When I checked his speed, I noticed we were exactly one mile per hour under the speed limit.

  I nodded my approval and looked back out the window. I thought about the interviews ahead. A small tingle of excitement fluttered in my chest.

  Outside, the real estate was getting more expensive the closer we got to Fillmore.

  13

  Principal Roger Jenkins was not impressed with me.

  I could read it in his eyes. They narrowed when he scowled at me, carrying the look of the unjustly inconvenienced along with a wisp of suspicion. His handshake was brief, but firm. He allowed me into his office and shut the door behind us before settling behind his desk and asking for my credentials.

  I sat down in the chair in front of his desk. “I could show you my driver’s license so that you know I am who I say I am.”

  Principal Jenkins shook his head. “I meant a badge or whatever private investigator’s carry.”

  “I’m not a private investigator.”

  Principal Jenkins’s scowl deepened. “I was led to believe that you were.”

  I shook my head.

  When I didn’t offer an explanation, Jenkins leaned back, his expression unchanged. “Mr. Sinderling said that he would be sending a private investigator.”

  “Maybe you misunderstood,” I suggested mildly.

  The scowl deepened further. I wondered if the students ever called him Sphincter-Face. “I don’t think so,” he said with a hint of a sneer.

  I shrugged. “Mr. Sinderling is worried about his daughter. Maybe he misspoke. It doesn’t matter. Either way, he gave you my name, right?”

  Jenkins gave a short, abrupt nod.

  “Then there’s no problem.”

  He didn’t nod, but instead stared at me. I imagined it was the same fierce gaze he leveled at Freshmen boys caught scrawling dirty words on bathroom stalls. I was sure that he was used to people wilting under that stare, whether it were a student, staff member or even a parent. In his world, it was probably an extremely effective tactic, one that rarely, if ever, failed him.

  But I wasn’t from his world.

  Our little stare contest lasted another thirty seconds. I reflected impassivity back to him. I didn’t want to up the stakes, because it was starting to look like he was going to deny me access to conducting interviews at the school. I wasn’t sure if he had the authority or not, but it didn’t matter. He could deny me today and what was I going to do? Call the police? Sue him?

  “The problem, Mr. Kopriva,” he said in a low voice, “is that I am not comfortable letting an imposter private detective have free reign at my school. All for a runaway child.”

  “Principal Jenkins,” I responded formally, in a low tone that matched his, “I am not an imposter. I have not represented myself as a private investigator. I am a private party, designated by Mr. Sinderling to investigate the circumstances surrounding his missing daughter. And he has specifically authorized me to speak to his daughter’s teachers on his behalf.”

  “It’s not a matter of—” he began.

  “Let’s just end this little pissing contest right here,” I interrupted.

  Jenkins eyes widened briefly, then narrowed again. “All right. How?”

  “It’s simple,” I said. “You don’t want me here. I understand that. But I’m not going to bother anyone except Kris’s teachers and only for a few minutes. You can come along or send someone along if you want to.”

  “Or,” he said, “I can ask you to leave before I call security.”

  I nodded. “Yes, you can. In fact, go ahead and do it right now.” I motioned toward his telephone. “Pick up the phone and call them.”

  “Actually,” Jenkins said, removing a digital phone from his belt and holding it up, “we use these.”

  “Well, welcome to the new Millennium,” I said.

  “You’re very rude, Mr. Kopriva,” Jenkins said dryly.

  “You’re very arrogant,” I shot back and leaned forward in my chair. “You go ahead and call security. Have me escorted off the property. Enjoy your power trip. Then get back to checking hall passes.”

  Jenkins’s scowl had never really left his face, but it tightened again. I almost laughed at my earlier thought about his pinched face.

  “Think about this, though,” I said. “You said Kris was just a runaway. You may be right. I’m sure in your line of work, you hear about runaways all the time, so it’s probably no big thing. But to Matt Sinderling, it is a big deal. It’s a very big deal.”

  “I’m sure it is,” he said dryly.

  “I’ll tell you something else, Principal Jenkins. I’ve seen a ton of runaways, too. I used to be a cop until I got hurt. I’ll bet you’ve seen a happy ending in most cases, with little Billy or little Susie returning home after a day or two, or moving in with Grandma or some friends.”

  His scowl slackened and I could see I was right. I pressed on.

  “I saw some of the same things happen, but I also saw a lot of runaways that didn’t have happy endings. Those stories ended in drugs, prostitution, even death. Stuff you probably read about in the newspaper but have never had to deal with.”

  Jenkins shrugged slightly. “I’m certain that those horror stories are extremely rare.”

  “No,” I said. “Not rare at all. Just dirty little stories that no one ever hears about because they don’t want to listen. And because it never happens to someone we know. But what if it happened to someone like Kris Sinderling? A beautiful, young, middle-class white girl? Do you think that story would play in the media, Principal Jenkins?”

  He considered my words, then shrugged. “It might. The public has an insatiable appetite for tragedy. Particularly of the salacious kind.”

  “Yes, they do,” I said. “And the headlines would be all about what happened to this beautiful young girl. But after that, secondary stories would spring up. Like how somebody tried to investigate early on. Someone tried to find her, but when he went to her school, the principal turned him aside and wouldn’t allow him to ask a few teachers a question or two.” I fanned my hands in front of me, simulating a headline. “Principal Says Slain Girl ‘Only A Runaway.’”

  Jenkins’s brow furrowed.

  I dropped my hands to my lap. “Your choice,” I told him.

  He fixed me with the same stare he had used earlier. I reflected nothing back. After a few moments, he raised the small telephone to his mouth. There was a sharp transmission beep.

  “Security,” he said.

  14

  I hobbled down the empty school hallway, my knee stiff after sitting in Jenkins’s office. Battered orange locker
s stood like silent sentries along the walls. Posters announcing fundraisers and school dances were taped above the lockers. I smiled slightly at the inanity of high school.

  “What’s so funny?” asked the man to my right. He gave me what he probably thought was a hard stare. His large belly strained the tan polo shirt he wore. The words District 17 and Bill were embroidered on the left breast. He carried a digital telephone and wore black slacks and black boots to round out the ensemble. I wondered briefly if the school district had given any thought to how much this outfit resembled the uniform Nazis wore.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just happy to be alive.”

  Bill grunted disapprovingly. He came to a stop and pointed to a door. “Teacher’s lounge,” he said.

  I nodded my thanks, but he didn’t leave. It was apparent that Jenkins was going to take me up on my offer of having an escort. We went in together.

  When I was a kid, the Teacher’s Lounge held some mythical quality. It was a forbidden zone for students. Not even the teacher’s aides or those with most-favored status were allowed in. When I got a little older, I imagined it to be a den of iniquity where my English teacher quickly gave his last four papers a ‘B’ grade in order to turn his attentions to the supple prize that was my French teacher. In spite of the historical irony of the French and English getting along, I figured it had to be true. There was no other explanation for how I passed English in high school. Mr. Henderson was too busy trying to bang Miss Couture. It had to be.

  In reality, the lounge looked like any other break room in the country. It could have been lifted whole and dropped in any office building in River City and it would’ve fit right in. Coffee pot, sink, a lunch table and a couple of easy chairs, along with a TV in the corner.

  Another image of childhood crushed, I thought sarcastically.