Anonymity

by Janna McMahan

  DOB: Sept. 1,1996

  Missing Date: Sept. 6,2010

  Missing State: Utah

  Sex: Female

  Race: White

  Height: 510”

  Weight 135 lbs.

  Hair Color: Brown

  Eye Color: Green/Blue

  This girl was much heavier than Lorelei. He could see the perfectly aligned teeth of the happy child in the photo, but there were no teeth showing in Emily's photo. Still, it could be the same girl.

  He found the contact number for the Salt Lake City Police Department online and got in touch with a Lieutenant Smith in missing persons. He confirmed for Travis that he still had three missing teenage girls. One had come home.

  “Can you shoot me over that picture? I got some face identification software that'll tell me if it's a match or not,” Smith said.

  Travis e-mailed Lorelei's image. He waited on the line while the officer opened the file and ran the analysis.

  “Wow,” the lieutenant said. “If she was trying to change her appearance she sure accomplished that.”

  “So we got a match?” Travis asked.

  “It's a match,” the officer said. “No doubt about it.”

  Barbara

  IT WAS another clear day. The capitol's golden dome shimmered in the afternoon sun as Barbara approached downtown. She had just picked up her Acadia from being detailed for a second time. The first job hadn't touched the stagnant water funk emanating from the carpet after Emily borrowed it. This time around her vehicle smelled almost like a new car again.

  Barbara switched radio channels on the way into the city, making mental notes about which talk shows were in which time slots. Radio talent moved frequently. She used her drive time to keep up.

  She switched to conservative talk radio. Emily called it hate radio. She said the talk always focused on what was wrong with the other guy, never on personal responsibility. Barbara had to admit conservative radio loved to lay blame.

  Still, Barbara could usually find a grain of truth in conservative talk. After all, somebody has to be responsible for the economic mess the country was in, and she didn't think that somebody was her or Gerald. It was validating to have her frustrations expressed, even if the announcers and guests did tend to be a little on the angry side. She could always use a good dose of vitriol about illegal immigrants or taxes.

  Her usual exit was blocked by a semi. She was stuck five cars back, perfect pickings for the homeless guy who'd been working this territory for the past ten years. Today his sign read Homeless Hungry VET. Sometimes he waited for drivers to beckon him over. Other times, he walked along the traffic jam like a fireman collecting money for burned children.

  Barbara reached into the center console between her seats and pulled out a granola bar. She always had a moment of panic when anyone of his sort approached. She rolled the window open a few inches and passed the food through the slit.

  “Thank you, ma'am,” he said. “God bless you.” He didn't seem drunk, but you never knew.

  The intersection cleared, traffic moved, and she gladly left the bedraggled man behind.

  Talk shows warned listeners against giving money to the homeless. The general thinking was any money given would go directly to alcohol or drugs. Then the vagrants ended up in the emergency room, and taxpayers got stuck with the outrageous unpaid ER bills. Barbara supported clinics to help poor people as a better, less expensive way to provide indigent care.

  She had been thinking a lot about the homeless since Emily dragged that strange, hungry, tattooed girl into her house. That poor child was beyond help. There is no way to clean her up and make her presentable. Nobody would hire her except maybe as a clerk in a comic book shop or an adult toy store.

  Contrary to what Emily and Gerald might think, Barbara was not unsympathetic to this little Lorelei's plight. Although she'd never told anyone, Barbara had seen hunger. She'd gone to college on scholarship, but her parents hadn't been able to help with other expenses. She had been on her own when it came to room and board, so Barbara got a restaurant job and scrounged food. Restaurants expected the college kids who worked for them to pinch a little food here and there.

  And she had dated for dinner too. Although she had never been reduced to having sex for food, she had known girls who did. After all, birth control on campus was free. Food was not.

  Barbara had seen need and the desperation that comes with it. She sensed the trouble that followed Lorelei, and although Emily wasn't forthcoming with information, Barbara knew the girl was still hanging around. If she didn't take action, Lorelei was bound to bring bad luck into Emily's life.

  Gerald would say she was overstepping her boundaries, but Barbara didn't care. A mother had to do what a mother had to do.

  Barbara turned onto Guadalupe and followed it downtown. She found a parking space on the street and retrieved the cardboard box from the backseat. She reached into the center console again and dumped the rest of the granola bars into the box. She crossed the street and stood in a barren plaza, looking around for the entrance.

  “You looking for the drop-in?” a boy asked.

  “Yes. I am.”

  “It's down there,” he said, pointing to concrete steps that ended at a gray metal door.

  “Thank you.”

  Inside, the place was empty of ragtag teenagers. She walked around, calling out for anyone. A plump, middle-aged woman stuck her head out of a small office.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “I'm looking for David. We met a while back.”

  “He's not here right now. I'm Amelia. Is there anything I can do for you? Do you have something you'd like to donate?” she said, motioning to the box.

  “Well, no. Actually, I'm looking for a young girl named Lorelei.”

  The woman shook her head. “We haven't seen Lorelei around here for a while.”

  “Do you have any suggestions for where I might look? I really need to find her.”

  “Sorry. I couldn't say.” She was getting nowhere with this woman, so Barbara thanked her and wandered back out to the plaza. The same boy was talking with friends.

  “Excuse me,” she said as she approached them. “I'm looking for a girl named Lorelei.”

  “Yeah, I know her,” he said, offering no other help. He had two metal studs on the outsides of his lower lips, the kind of thing that you can't stop looking at. The punctures were angry red, obviously infected. She tried to pull her eyes away.

  Barbara was relieved when a girl said, “She's the one with the bird on her face.”

  “Yes, that's her. Do you know where she is?”

  “She hangs with Mook's clan, doesn't she?” the girl said. “Down at Pease.”

  “Pease Park?”

  “Yeah, but like, she's been AWOL for days.”

  The boy said, “Yeah. Last time I saw her she was hanging with Fiona.”

  “Fiona? That name sounds familiar,” Barbara said.

  “She's the dead girl they found at Town Lake.”

  “Oh, yes. That's so sad. Did they ever find out what happened to her?”

  “She was a slinger. I bet the East Austin mafia got her,” the boy said.

  “I don't understand.”

  “A slinger, a broker, a scrub?” the girl said. “She sold drugs to UT students for a dealer. Sort of a go-between so she could pay for her own habit.”

  “She was a burnout,” the boy said. “She probably ripped them off or something. Piss them off and they'll f…uh, mess you up.”

  The girl said, “Oh yeah. For sure.”

  “So Lorelei hung around with this girl?”

  “Yeah. I saw them together. They were friends. They were at Lawrence's, right?”

  The boy nodded his agreement.

  “Who is Lawrence?”

  “Just some strung-out old paralyzed dude. She's probably not there,” the girl said.

  “She could be, if she took Fiona's business,” the boy said. “Or maybe she got spooked an
d went stealth.”

  “Is this place in East Austin?” Barbara asked.

  “You don't want to go there,” the girl said. “It's drugland. No place for a lady like you in a nice ride like that.”

  All three turned to look at her SUV.

  “We got a ride in one of those once,” Star said. Something passed between the two friends. Barbara couldn't read their expressions, and she had a sudden fear that they would rob her.

  “Yes, well.” Barbara was unsure what to say next. Then she realized how to manage things. “I have clothes in this box. They're about your size. Would you like a jacket?”

  “Depends.”

  Barbara opened the box and held out one of Emily's old velour sweatshirts. It was black with Juicy in cursive on the back. Barbara had always hated the expensive, tacky thing and was relieved when Emily wore it only once and pushed it to the back of her closet.

  “It's cute. I'll take it,” the girl said.

  “A trade,” Barbara said. “You tell me the address of drugland.”

  “Sure lady. It's your funeral,” she said.

  The boy gave her an address. She thanked them.

  “You might find her just walking around somewhere,” he said and motioned down the street. “We're not allowed to stay in one spot very long or we violate camping rules. Just drive around. You might get lucky and run up on her.”

  “Thank you.”

  “If you go to East Austin, don't get out of your fancy ride,” the girl said.

  “I won't.”

  “And if you find Lorelei, tell her Star and Monkey said hey.” They looked at each other with an odd grin, as if they knew an inside joke.

  She drove up the hill into the Penbrooke neighborhood, behind Pease Park and across the Winsor Street Bridge, without any sign of Lorelei. In a parking lot, she asked a few teens if they had seen her. Barbara drove to all the spots in the city that made sense, but she had no luck. Desperate, she decided to give East Austin a try.

  The last time she'd spent any time in East Austin was back in the eighties when Gerald brought her to the Victory Grill to see Stevie Ray Vaughan. Before they had a child, Gerald used to drag her to jazz clubs and blues clubs. But that seemed like a lifetime ago as she rolled slowly along the streets wondering exactly what she was looking for.

  She passed through parts of town where things were looking up. New construction. New restaurants. Retail.

  Then suddenly, there was the expected decline.

  Barbara was used to illegals waiting for offers of work on Cesar Chavez. They wanted to be inconspicuous except to those who would offer a job for the day. But she immediately felt a different street presence driving into this part of town. All eyes were on her.

  In squalid apartment complexes, men in sunglasses peered from dark doorways, televisions flickering behind them. A few dominated the sidewalk, making direct eye contact as she drove by. It was a life she'd only seen on cable and in the movies.

  A pitiful man in a wheelchair gazed longingly out his door. Children played with beer bottles in parking lots. How could a child ever survive this? Why would any girl voluntarily come here? Even one who warned the world away with tough tattoos?

  On her second pass through the neighborhood, a man wearing a wife beater and enough hardware in his face to attract lightning approached her. Barbara stepped on the gas and crushed his curses with the growl of the engine, although there was no mistaking his sign language in the rearview mirror.

  Lorelei

  SHE HAD serious cramps. In the bathroom at a fast-food joint, she'd neatly folded toilet paper into a thick square and positioned it in her panties, but that wouldn't hold her flow for long.

  Elda went into the drugstore with her. Mook went in separately with the intention of creating a diversion so they could rack a box of tampons and some Midol. Lorelei hated to steal, but tampons were expensive.

  The feminine hygiene aisle was directly in front of the cash register, but the pimply teen checking out a loud woman didn't seem to be paying attention to them. At the other end of the aisle was a door with a one-way window. Lorelei decided it was too risky and leaned into Elda to whisper this when they heard the crash.

  Cans rolled toward the front door, something metal pinged across the hard floor and Mook called out, “Oh, man, I'm so sorry! Oh, man, I'll clean it up. Here, let me clean it up.”

  The door on the office flew open and a rotund man with wire-framed glasses and a bad comb-over was on the job.

  “Get out of here!” He flapped his arms at Mook. “You kids are nothing but trouble! Get out!”

  The girls shoved boxes of tampons and drugs into their packs. When Lorelei turned, the cashier was looking past his customer directly at her.

  “Please,” she mouthed.

  He nodded only slightly toward the door. Elda pushed her and they ran. Mook was right behind them. They sprinted a couple of blocks and ducked into an alley.

  When they were sure nobody was following, they walked on. They passed a few cafés with tables on the sidewalk. At one empty table, Mook snatched an abandoned sandwich off a plate without missing a step. He walked along casually, chewing and talking. Foot traffic parted for them. Parents pulled their children aside to let them pass.

  The first person to see it was Mook.

  “Shit. Look at that.” He opened the glass door of a newspaper stand and pulled out a copy of Be Here Now.

  “That's Lorelei,” Elda said. “Look, Lorelei. It's you.”

  All three stared at the cover.

  “I can't believe it. She told me nobody would ever see those pictures. She promised. Open it up. See if there are more.”

  Elda took the paper and stood between them. She found the spread on being young and homeless in Austin. There were three color photos on the double truck spread. One was a shot of Mook playing video games.

  “She did it to me too,” he said. “That bitch.”

  Elda said, “She took pictures of Betsy that day too. I thought you knew.”

  “That's so fucked up,” he said.

  “You're a rock star, Lorelei. Really,” Elda said. “You look amazing.”

  “I can't believe she did this to me. She promised,” Lorelei said. “Anybody got any minutes I can use to call her?”

  “No, nobody's got any minutes,” Mook said.

  “I gotta go,” Lorelei said, but she didn't move.

  Then they all realized they were standing by a bus stop.

  “I got a bus card with a few bucks left on it,” Elda said. “You're welcome to it.”

  Thirty minutes on a swaying city bus siphoned her fury. Lorelei walked from SoCo to Emily's in a stupor. The house was dark when she arrived. She sat on the porch swing, trying to stoke her outrage and sense of betrayal, but part of her softened with the memory that she had been welcome here.

  She noticed an open bedroom window, and she thought about climbing inside. She'd done it before, but only at abandoned houses. That's when she saw the box by the door. On the top, in bold letters, was written, For Lorelei.

  Freaky. Had Emily known she was coming?

  Inside the lock folded top of the cardboard box, Lorelei found a handful of granola bars, three pairs of jeans, four shirts, a hat, gloves and an awesomely cute jacket. The note read:

  These are all for Lorelei. I didn't think you'd mind. Please make sure she gets them. Mom

  The jacket was a little tight, but it would do. Lorelei unfurled a wad of dirty clothes from her backpack and filled it with the new things. There were even socks and pretty underwear. Lorelei put a sock to her nose and inhaled the perfume of fabric softener, a luxury that made her mother flash to mind.

  She stuffed her old, dirty clothes into the box and carried it around back to the trash. She heard Emily's car approaching and sneaked back to the porch where she hid. There was no way Emily could have seen her. She waited, arms slack at her sides, peering through the front window from the shadows of the porch.

  The kitchen ligh
t came on. Emily moved into the den and switched on a couple of lamps. She came toward the front door and Lorelei's heart fluttered, but Emily just leaned down and gathered mail from the floor inside the door. The lurking girl's anger simmered as she followed the sounds of movement from room to room through the open window. She waited, contemplating what she would say when she finally had the guts to knock on the door.

  Emily came back into the den. Lorelei raised her hand to rap, hesitated, then knocked.

  The porch light came on. The front door shuddered as Emily pulled it open.

  “Lorelei, thank God,” Emily said as she stepped outside. “I'm so happy to see you.”

  “Shut up! I've got something to say.”

  “Okay. I'm listening.”

  Lorelei hadn't expected that reaction. Emily waited while Lorelei searched for words, but when she saw the girl was unsure what to say, Emily blurted out her story.

  “Travis stole your photos off my laptop.”

  “How'd he even know they were there? You showed him. I know you did.”

  “He saw them when we were looking at other shots for his article. When Fiona's body was found, it kicked his entire story into high gear. It was wrong to let him see your photos. I can't tell you how sorry I am.”

  “I said don't talk.”

  “Okay.”

  “You took photos of Mook too.”

  “I did give Travis those shots, but I swear to you, I didn't give him your pictures.”

  “I said shut up! I never hurt you. I never did nothing to you. Look what you did to me.”

  Emily cast her eyes down.

  “I trusted you, and you screwed me. I can't stay in Austin now. There's no way. Did you know that every single person that walks down the street in this town is going to know me now? Those guys, those bum hunters. They have a picture of me now.”

  “I know.”

  “Yes. Thanks to you I'm now the most recognizable person in Austin.”

  Emily's expression changed to puzzled. “Hey, I used to have a jacket just like that.”

  “Really. What a coincidence.”

  “Where'd you get that?”

  “Shut up. You make me sick. You know what you are? You're a poser! You act like you care about somebody, like you want to be somebody's friend, but you don't. You wanted something from me, and when you got it you were like, so screw her.”