Knowing what I did about him, it didn’t take long to pick out his potential victims: women under the age of thirty, with a physical, emotional or psychological handicap. There were five of them in the past year, two of them current patients. That meant three who might be willing to talk to me.
Since I was working close to twenty-four hours a day, it was hard to get the time off, but a nice phony cough got me off the floor and home, supposedly in bed. I’d made copies of the files; the first was Melinda Hayes, a twenty-seven-year-old market analyst who worked at a brokerage house downtown. She was physically fine, but she had spent five years of her life on the run in Mexico with a father who had kidnapped her from her mother’s custody. It hadn’t been a good five years.
She agreed to see me at her office on the twenty-first floor of one of the taller buildings in downtown Chicago. The twenty-first floor was all her company, and if it wouldn’t have been overly ostentatious, I’m sure they would have papered the walls in gold. The reception area was full of actual antiques, oriental rugs over mahogany floors, and it screamed good taste.
I was greeted by the receptionist, who then called a secretary, who, in turn, took me to Ms Hayes’s office. Both of these women were my age, but they could easily have been runway models, they were that gorgeous.
But when I saw Melinda Hayes, the beauty of the other two women faded. She was of obvious mixed race, with beautiful café-au-lait skin, light brown hair pulled back in a French braid, almond-shaped eyes of piercing blue, full lips and a perfectly shaped, hourglass body.
She held out her hand to me, nails perfectly done, and said, ‘Dr MacDonald, is it?’
‘MacDonnell,’ I corrected, smiling. ‘Thank you for seeing me, Ms Hayes.’
‘Please, have a seat,’ she said, indicating one of two silk damask-covered side chairs. I took one and she took the other. ‘I must say, I’m curious. You mentioned Dr Hawthorne?’
‘Yes,’ I said, treading carefully. ‘I’m on his service at the hospital.’
The second model I’d seen earlier, the secretary, stuck her head in the door. ‘Melinda, may I get you and your guest some refreshments?’
Melinda Hayes arched an eyebrow at me in question, and I shook my head. Looking back at the door, I smiled and said, ‘No, thank you.’
‘I’m fine, Angela, thank you,’ Melinda said, sending the young woman on her way.
Turning back to me, Melinda Hayes said, ‘I’m curious how my name came up and why you’re here.’
‘Just going over old patient files,’ I lied, ‘to see if there’s any need for follow-up.’
Melinda Hayes laughed. ‘Is Emil that hard up for patients these days?’
‘No, of course not,’ I said, also laughing. ‘But do you think this would work if he was?’
Her laughter faded. ‘I suppose it would depend on the patient,’ she said and stood up. ‘Thank you for dropping by, although I can’t see why this wasn’t done by phone call. “No” is so much easier over the phone.’
‘Exactly why I’m here in person,’ I said, also standing, but smiling at her.
The smile she returned to me wasn’t the friendliest. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ she said, walking toward the door. Opening it, she called out, ‘Angela!’
The secretary came running, a tight smile on her face. ‘Yes, Melinda?’
‘Please see my guest out.’ Turning to me, she stuck out her hand. ‘So nice to meet you. Please tell your Dr Hawthorne to never contact me again.’
With that, she turned abruptly and went back into her office, slamming the door behind her.
Angela turned toward me and gave me a contrite smile. ‘Sorry,’ she said, leading me toward the elevator. ‘She gets that way sometimes.’
‘I hope I didn’t upset her,’ I said.
‘Doesn’t take much,’ Angela replied, almost under her breath.
I lowered my voice as I said, ‘Hard to work for, eh?’
‘You don’t know the half of it!’ Angela whispered back.
Putting my future as a physician at risk, I took a gulp of air and asked, ‘May I buy you a cup of coffee?’
EMIL
Emil Hawthorne was still sitting on his bale of hay, feeling sorry for himself. He didn’t stir until he heard a commotion at the back of the barn. He turned, just in time to see Holly Humphries’s backside slipping out a hole in the back wall of the barn. The kid was nowhere in sight.
‘Jesus H Christ on a bicycle!’ Emil said, standing up and running to the back of the barn. ‘Holly!’ he screamed through the hole. ‘Holly! You get back here! And bring that brat with you! Holly!’
Abruptly, he sat down on the barn’s dirt floor and thought seriously about crying again. He took a deep breath of air, pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed. When someone answered, he said, ‘Things aren’t going so well.’
HOLLY
Holly had no idea where she was. She was a Tulsa-born city girl, and didn’t know diddly about the woods. And now, she was deep in them. She wished, for the first time in her life, that she’d paid attention the one time she went to a Camp Fire Girls meeting; maybe now she’d know which way was north. Not that she had any idea which direction Tulsa might be.
After aging out of the foster care system, Holly had stayed in Tulsa, the only town she had ever known, and initially moved in with three girls she knew through the system, one of whom left crack vials in the living room, and one who had a different guy spending the night every night. Holly and the third girl, Vivian, left after one such boyfriend tried to climb into bed with Vivian. The two got a very small efficiency apartment where they were able to live for almost six months, until Holly came home from one of her minimum-wage jobs to find a note from Vivian saying she’d decided to move to Dallas to find her father.
Holly wished her well but ended up bunking on someone’s couch after her rent ran out on the efficiency apartment. She crashed on this couch until she met and moved in with the love of her life, Joshua. Joshua was a musician and didn’t have a last name, so Holly signed the lease on a one-bedroom apartment, the most space Holly had ever lived in without a foster parent or halfway house director.
Holly stuck with her minimum-wage jobs, since Joshua wasn’t yet making much money as a musician. Actually, he played for free most of the time – really, all the time – but he couldn’t hold down a job because his gigs kept him up until the wee hours of the morning, and how could he hold down a job like that? So Holly took on a second minimum-wage job to pay the rent on the one bedroom. There were months when they went without electricity and water because she couldn’t pay the bill, and often they would eat nothing but whatever leftovers Joshua brought home from the bars where he played for free. But Holly was in love and knew that one day Joshua would be a big star and she would live in a mansion and would be able to take acting lessons and maybe make her own movie.
Then one day she came home at her usual time from her earlier job to find Joshua in bed with another man. When she made a commotion about it, both Joshua and the other man suggested she join them. Holly packed her two bags’ worth of belongings and ended up on someone else’s couch. Again. She’d heard the landlord was trying to sue her over the broken lease, but since Holly had no actual address, she was never served.
The situation with Joshua had been over a year ago and she hadn’t even thought of another man since, she’d been that broken-hearted. She also hadn’t lived on her own since then. She brought the three bags containing all her worldly possessions with her when she came with Mr Smith, as the girl whose couch she’d been sleeping on had asked her to take her junk with her on the gig and to find somewhere else to live when it was over.
But now she couldn’t help thinking of Tulsa, of the last warm room she’d had, sleeping on Jenny’s couch, even though the girl told her not to come back. It had been a good couch, much better than the pine needles and fallen branches she saw around her now.
Holly looked down at her small charge, finally decidin
g she didn’t have a better idea. ‘Eli, do you know which way we should go?’
Eli shrugged. ‘No,’ he said, his lip starting to quiver.
OK, Holly told herself, squaring her shoulders. You’re the adult now. Get a grip. ‘We’re going this way!’ she told Eli, pointing toward a friendly-looking pine tree and, taking Eli’s hand, off they went.
SEVEN
DALTON
Well, you can’t just stand here, Dalton told himself sternly. You gotta do something. Unfortunately, he had no idea what it was that he was supposed to do. Finding his sister would probably be a good idea. But all he really wanted to do was to go home. Back to his mama’s house. Back to the bedroom he’d slept in almost every night since he was brought home from the hospital after he was born. Back to the room where his framed baptismal certificate hung on the wall, with the B-52 model airplane he’d put together when he was eight hanging from a string over his desk, his junior high football pennant, signed by the entire team, the football he received as MVP after the last game of his senior year and his bowling trophies from eight years on the Prophesy County Employees’ Bowling League. Back to his life, not some fantasy life of white picket fences and ladies in twin sweater sets with pearls.
‘Mary Ellen!’ he yelled into the night. ‘I’m leaving! Mary Ellen! You hear me? I’m going home!’
There was no answer, but Dalton hadn’t really expected one.
JEAN’S STORY
Angela had agreed to meet me in fifteen minutes at a coffee shop two blocks away from her office building. I drank two cups of coffee while waiting for her, wondering if she’d actually show up. Finally, she did: a tall, thin, lovely young woman in a short wool skirt and matching jacket, her dark brown hair falling straight and slightly beyond her shoulders.
She looked around furtively and then slipped into the seat across from me.
‘I really don’t know what I’m doing here,’ she said.
‘And I appreciate you taking this risk,’ I said, smiling at her. ‘I’m not trying to get Melinda in any trouble – or you, for that matter. This has to do with someone else entirely.’
‘Oh.’ Angela sounded slightly disappointed. ‘Well, whatever.’
‘Has she ever mentioned anyone by the name of Emil Hawthorne?’ I asked.
‘That shrink she was seeing?’ Angela asked, her eyes big.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘What do you know about him?’
Angela shrugged. ‘She saw him for about six months. I made the appointments. Melinda’s allergic to dialing a phone, you know.’
I nodded my understanding of an underling’s place in the world. ‘Did she ever say anything about him?’ I asked.
‘Not to me,’ she said. ‘But I heard her on the phone to some girlfriend singing his praises.’
Well, this is getting me nowhere fast, I thought. ‘Did she ever see him outside regular office hours?’ I asked.
Angela nodded her head. ‘Oh, yeah. Sometimes I’d make appointments for late in the afternoon, like six or so, or sometimes at night, like eight o’clock.’
‘And you made these appointments through his secretary?’ I asked.
Angela shrugged. ‘Sometimes. Sometimes I’d talk to the doctor himself.’
Getting excited, I tried to keep my voice calm as I asked, ‘When was this . . . that you’d talk to Dr Hawthorne?’
‘When I made appointments at night or on the weekend,’ she said. Then her eyes got wide. ‘Oh!’ She began to smile. ‘Oh,’ she repeated.
MARY ELLEN
To fly or not to fly, Mary Ellen thought, that is the question. She smiled, remembering the English teacher from her senior year and how she loved to quote from Hamlet. ‘Well, you’d be proud of me now, Mrs Jackson,’ Mary Ellen said aloud.
Mary Ellen stood up; the toes of her women’s size-twelve Nikes dangling over the edge. She raised her arms like wings and, with a push of her feet, began to fly.
DALTON
Following the reasoning that the minivan was pointed in the direction of a wooded area, where he now found himself, Dalton figured – and hoped – that going the opposite direction would lead him back to the highway.
He was still barefoot, still wearing pants that hit him mid-calf, but he was going home – come hell, high water or sore feet. He headed down the road, trying to keep to the smoother areas where car tires had paved the way and where there was less gravel to hurt his tender feet. It had been a long time since Dalton’s feet had been barefoot outdoors, and they were regretting this omission.
It was slow going, but he kept his feet moving and his eyes trained on the horizon, looking for any sign of lights, either the skyline of Tulsa, or just a farmhouse yard light; he didn’t care. Any light to show him the way home.
HOLLY
Holly had run away as fast as she could from the barn, considering the fact that she was carrying a four-year-old with breathing problems. But she told herself that this four-year-old was the whole reason to get the hell away from Mr Smith. Of course, he was the whole reason she was in this mess, too, she figured, but she didn’t want to dwell on that. ‘Can’t take this out on a kid,’ she told herself. ‘It’s not his fault. Mostly.’
There was a stand of trees not far from the barn and she’d headed there. She and Eli hunkered down behind a big oak, then watched the barn and waited. There was no sign of Mr Smith. She looked at Eli, who looked back at her, his eyes big.
‘Now what?’ he whispered.
‘Damned if I know,’ Holly whispered back.
JEAN’S STORY
‘So, you’re saying Melinda was screwing the doctor?’ Angela said excitedly, leaning on the table, her arms extending so far they almost touched my hands. I pulled back. This woman seemed a little too excited about this entire thing.
‘No, of course I’m not saying that,’ I said, backpedaling like crazy.
‘You are! You are saying that!’ Angela said, a gleam in her eye and a smile on her face.
‘You really don’t like Melinda, do you?’ I asked.
‘Good God, no! Who would? She’s an A-class bitch with a capital “B”. The only reason she even has that job is that her uncle owns the company. If she were any good, she’d be a VP or something by now, but she really stinks at what she does. Well, let’s face it, Melinda stinks at everything. Except drinking,’ Angela said, a smirk on her face. ‘She’s very, very good at that.’
Angela’s lack of compassion – or, more accurately, her lack of humanity – was draining. But she didn’t know of the possible abuse Melinda had faced at the hands of Emil Hawthorne.
There must have been something in my expression that gave away my feelings.
Angela’s body language spoke volumes. She removed her arms from the table, leaning back. If there hadn’t been a back to her chair, she would have landed on the floor.
‘It’s not my fault Melinda’s a bitch!’ she said defensively. Then she sighed and moved forward again. ‘Look, from day one Melinda treated me like I was dirt, beneath her in too many ways to count. I don’t have a college degree, I’m half Hispanic on my mother’s side and I can’t afford designer fashions. Those are the kinds of things Melinda cares about,’ Angela said, a trace of bitterness in her voice.
‘I came into this job ready to win friends and influence people, you know, like that old book says? My dad swears by that book. Made all us kids read it.’ She shook her head. ‘But Melinda . . . How could I win her friendship when she wasn’t even in the race?’
‘Do you remember how long she saw Dr Hawthorne?’ I asked.
‘About six months. At first, she was seeing him once every other week. Then once a week. Toward the end, she was seeing him two or three times a week. Then boom. Nothing. Stopped seeing him completely. Just like that.’
I check my notes. ‘Around November of last year?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘That sounds right. I know it was before the holidays because she was bitchier than usual around Christmas. Actually kept my Chris
tmas bonus in her desk drawer until after New Year’s! Screwed up my Christmas shopping big time. Did it on purpose, too,’ Angela said, slumping in her chair as she remembered. ‘God, what a bitch.’
PART III
THE SEARCHERS
EIGHT
MILT
‘What do you mean?’ Clovis Pettigrew asked me. She looked from me to her son-in-law to my wife. ‘Are you telling me my grandson’s been kidnapped?’
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ I said, feeling even worse about it now, standing in front of this Mighty Dog of a woman, than I had earlier, if that was at all possible.
‘All right, Sheriff. Let’s see if I can get this straight,’ she said, squaring her shoulders and bringing her body up to its full height of five foot nothing. ‘My son’s been missing since Thursday night, and, let’s let our hair down here, Sheriff: you’ve got no idea where my boy is. Now you’re telling me my four-year-old grandson has been kidnapped. Is this correct?’
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ I said.
She turned to look at her son-in-law. ‘Where’s Mary Ellen?’
Hoisting up his two-year-old higher on his hip, Rodney Knight said, ‘I wish I knew.’
Clovis Pettigrew turned to me. ‘My son, my grandson and my daughter?’
I held up my hands in self-defense. ‘I got nothing to do with that!’
‘She asked me to watch Eli because she had a family emergency,’ Jean told Miz Pettigrew. Jean was sitting on the couch, flanked on one side by her business partner, Anne Louise, and on the other by their secretary, DeSandra.
‘And you did such a fine job of helping out,’ Dalton’s mama said sarcastically.
Jean opened her mouth and looked at me, then closed it. Jean’s a bit above getting defensive, although Clovis Pettigrew could bring out the worst in just about anybody. DeSandra, who must have somehow figured out that Miz Pettigrew’s comment was less than flattering to Jean, jumped to her feet.
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