"I need to talk to Zoe Pelling," Gage said without introduction.
"I don't see a sticker in your window, sir," the man said.
"What?"
"Sir, you can't park—"
Gage pointed at his bum knee. "Did I look like I needed a sticker?" And when the man, nonplussed, didn't answer, Gage added: "Where's Quandecker's class?"
"I'm sorry?"
"I need to talk to Zoe Pelling. It's her first period class. Creative writing."
"Oh. Are you her father?"
Gage always hated this question, since he never knew how to answer it. Father seemed too presumptuous; legal guardian too cold and impersonal. "Look, can you just point me toward the class?"
"You'll need to check in at the office first."
"What?"
"Sir, we can't just—"
"Screw it. I'll find it myself."
Gage stepped past the security guard. A small kid in glasses bigger than his face was walking past, books under his arm, a pink slip of paper held in front like it was coated in holy water. Gage asked him where Quandecker's class was, and before the security guard could stop him, the kid told him.
It wasn't far. Boots squeaking, he walked the shadowy hall to the left, the security guard barking at him to stop. The commotion brought a couple suit-and-ties out of the office, but Gage was already at the door, jerking it open. A silver-haired woman in a gray shawl, seated on a stool at the front of the class, open book in hand, squinted at him over the tops of her reading glasses. His gaze swept across the room, searching the faces of the two dozen kids squeezed into their writing desks, but didn't see her. Felt the clench of panic take hold, like a fishing hook at the pit of his stomach. Searched again. She wasn't there.
The security guy grabbed his arm, but Gage jerked it away.
"Zoe Pelling?" he said to the teacher.
She shook her head. "No, sorry," she said. "She didn't show up today."
"Sir—" the security guard began.
"Anybody see her at all?" Gage said to the room. When nobody answered, he added, "It's important. I'm not mad at her. I just really need to find her."
Lots of shrugs, blank faces, and averted eyes, zombies with nose rings and creative haircuts. The suits showed up and the three men pulled him outside. He went willingly, his mind somewhere else, his panic turning into dread. What was this about? Was something wrong? The men wanted to know. Feeling numb, and not knowing how much he should say, he headed for the front the school. They followed on his heels.
"Sir?"
It was a girl, calling to him from behind. He turned and saw a gangly kid with dirty blonde hair and a tattoo of a skull and cross bones on her bare shoulder. One of the suits ushered her back into the room, but she spoke again before the door closed.
"Try the mall," she said. "I think—I think she sometimes goes there with her boyfriend. Starbucks, maybe."
* * * * *
Since the outlet mall was just over the hill, he was in the coffee shop less than five minutes later, dripping on their faux marble floors. Zoe wasn't one of the dozen people standing in line or seated at the smoked glass tables. He showed the staff the wrinkled three-by-five he had of her in his wallet—he'd gotten it from Mattie's things when she died—and they knew her but said she hadn't been in that day. She was in all the time, they told him, sometimes alone with a spiral notebook, sometimes with a guy. Usually with the guy, actually.
He hadn't known she had a boyfriend. He hadn't known she'd been skipping class so much either. Wasn't the school supposed to send him notice of these things? He tried the candy shop next door, the deli on the other end, even the Mexican restaurant on the opposite side—which wasn't even officially open, just unlocked because the manager was there to check supplies. No luck.
As he hurried under the covered sidewalks, rain drumming on the parked cars, he scanned the insides of all the stores. Didn't see her. Some of the stores hadn't opened, darkness within, and his own reflection staring back at him in the glass—a harried face under a sopping fedora, cheeks and nose slick with moisture, eyes jittery. Looking like that, he was lucky the school hadn't called the police before he'd even entered the building. Here comes meth addict. Or a child molester on the prowl.
The police . . . Should he call them? He stopped at the pay phone outside the candy shop. When the door opened, a mother with two smiling children coming out, he got a whiff of cotton candy and popcorn. He picked up the phone, pressing the cold plastic to his ear.
Would the cops take him seriously? Would they even believe him? Although he and the police chief, Percy Quinn, had worked out some of their differences, they still didn't have the best relationship. He thought about Mattie, his old housekeeper—thought about her withering away of cancer a year earlier, begging him to take custody of her troubled granddaughter, Zoe. He'd told her he couldn't handle it. She'd insisted he could. And how long it had it been since he'd reluctantly agreed to her dying wish? Barely a year. And already he'd lost Zoe.
He thought about Janet, the way he'd seen her when he crawled into the bathroom, his knee turned to crushed gravel. He thought about the way her arm dangled over the side of the tub, lifeless, water dripping onto the white tiles. That's all he'd been able to see from his place on the floor, that arm, that slender, milky white arm, but he'd known she was dead anyway.
He put down the phone, closing his eyes and pushing those old memories from his mind. Not yet. He wouldn't call yet. Zoe could be at the house. Maybe she'd felt sick and gone home.
One his way out, he realized he hadn't checked the upper parking lot, so he swung the van up there. The rain had already stopped, the cloudy sky shimmering in the wet pavement. There were only a smattering of parked cars, which was a good thing since he didn't know what kind of car her so-called boyfriend drove—and if it had been any busier, his eyes would have easily swept past the black Honda civic with the duct-taped tail light. As it was, he spotted Zoe's distinctive spiked hair right off; even from behind, he'd know that silhouette anywhere. He felt an immediate surge of relief.
The guy in the driver seat had an even more unusual haircut than Zoe, a bright orange Mohawk that tapered to a point. From across the parking lot, it looked like he was wearing a traffic cone, an impression that didn't change when Gage rolled into the spot next to them, on Zoe's side. That hair color—it was nearly radioactive. It was the same color as the burning end of the cigarette hanging from the kid's mouth.
He and Zoe were having quite the animated conversation, with lots of pointed hand gestures and vigorous head shaking, and even when Gage killed the grumbling engine and rolled down the window Zoe still hadn't noticed him. Finally, Mohawk Boy pointed at Gage with a gloved hand, the fingers exposed, the nails painted the same color as his hair. When Zoe gazed over her shoulder, and saw Gage through her partially fogged window, the look she gave him could have frozen the ocean.
She rolled down her window, taking her time about it, tossing in a couple eye rolls for good measure, not showing even a hint of shame or embarrassment. She wore her usual getup: black t-shirt featuring some garage band he'd never heard of, lots of black eye shadow that made her already pale face seem cadaverous, and enough facial bling that she'd set off the alarms at the airport. While he waited, he counted seven pieces of jewelry, which meant she hadn't added anything in the last few weeks. If he could keep it to one new addition a month, she'd at least have a few unadorned parts of her face left when she graduated from high school in a year.
"What?" she said.
The way she said it, it wasn't so much a question as an insult. Until Zoe came to live with him, he hadn't realized that teenagers had a hundred different ways of saying fuck you without actually using the words.
Clouds of smoke wafted out of the car. It smelled like cigarettes as far as he could tell.
"Studying hard?" he said, then wished he hadn't. Always ready to poke the snake with a stick, that was him. When she didn't say anything, just went on glaring, he added, "
I've been looking for you."
"Obviously," she said, giving him another eye roll.
"What's with the attitude?"
"What do you want?"
"I wanted to know where you were, that's all. It's kind of hard when you're not where you're supposed to be. What if there's an emergency?"
She raised her thinly-plucked eyebrows, the diamond stud over her left eye glinting in the hazy air. "Is there an emergency?"
Gage hadn't thought about what he was going to say until this moment, and now he realized that telling her the truth would only scare her. This was a girl who didn't need any more scaring, not after what had happened a year ago. It was only in the last few weeks that she'd started consistently sleeping through the night. Being abducted, drugged, and nearly tossed to her death off the bluffs—it was a wonder she hadn't ended up in a mental institution. The only silver lining was that she hadn't been raped like the other surviving girls.
"I'd really prefer you go back to school," Gage said.
"That's nice," she said. "Anything else?"
"You going to introduce me to your friend?"
"No."
"Okay."
She sighed. "His name's Mike. Mike, this is Garrison. He's my . . . I'm living at his house right now."
Gage noted how she shifted gears in the middle of the sentence so she wouldn't have to refer to him in any way that implied a familial relationship—adopted parent, godfather, stepdad—but it didn't bother him. Not much, anyway. It wasn't like he'd asked to take custody of her, after all.
He leaned out the window she he could get a better look at the boy. "Nice to meet you, son. You can call me Mr. Gage. I'm kind of old school that way."
"Maybe you should buzz off," the boy said.
"Oh, thanks for that," Gage said. "I always appreciate thoughtful suggestions from today's youth."
"Zoe don't need a Mr. Cleaver, dude. Maybe you should just, like, leave her alone."
"All right, I'll take that under consideration. Hey, you got a summer job yet?"
"Huh?"
"Because I hear the highway department pays top dollar for flaggers. With a haircut like that, you wouldn't even have to carry a sign."
It took the kid a few seconds to get it, but when he did he was so flustered all he could manage to do was flip Gage the bird.
"See, there you go," Gage said, "you've already proved you're a natural with hand signals."
"Stop," Zoe said.
Her eyes misted; he could see her fighting for control. That was another thing that had gotten worse after her ordeal—she was much more likely to cry at the drop of a hat, and often for seemingly inexplicable reasons. She hadn't been that way before. She'd always treated a show of tears as a sign that she'd lost some type of competition.
"You wanna split?" Mike asked.
She responded with an almost imperceptible nod. Cone Head started up the car. It ran about as well as his van, coughing up a cloud of gassy fumes, the engine sounding like a blender doing its best to churn up a metal chain. Gage tried to think of a way to make things better.
"It'd sure be nice if you two went back to school," he said.
"School is for jerk offs," she said, and started rolling up the window.
"Think Mattie would have said that?"
It was a low blow, a cheap shot—the kind of thing bound to get a reaction out of her. And it did. She winced, the window frozen halfway up, and the tears finally came. Then, as if the thin transparent glass would prevent him from seeing, she hurriedly rolled it up the rest of the way, not looking at him once. She barked something at her boyfriend and he threw the car into gear, tires screeching, his rusty tail pipe leaving a black serpentine trail.
He watched to see if they'd turn left, toward the school, but the Honda turned right, speeding down the hill to the highway. It irritated him, but he was also strangely comforted.
If she wasn't at school, then Bruzzi wouldn't be able to find her either.
Chapter 3
After swinging by his house to make sure Zoe hadn't gone back there—and to pick up his Berretta—Gage headed south of town. The weighty presence of the gun in its holster, pressing against his side under his leather jacket, made him feel slightly better. But only slightly.
The sky stretched over the highway like an old wool sweater, the grayness thick in some places and thin in others, shafts of sunlight lancing through the thin areas onto the rippled ocean to his right. By the time he pulled into the gravel parking lot of the Horseshoe Mall, enough sunlight managed to squeeze through cloud cover that the wooden siding looked more red than crimson, more cheerful than drab. After five years in Barnacle Bluffs, these sudden changes in weather no longer surprised him. He actually found them strangely reassuring. It was like the city was just as unsettled as he was.
Books and Oddities didn't officially open until ten, but Gage wasn't surprised to find the familiar silver-blue Sienna van parked out front at five to nine. In fact, he wouldn't have been surprised to find it there at seven, since the owner spent more time in his bookstore than at his house—even more so when his wife's sister was in town. Gage parked next to the van and headed up the slightly off-kilter boardwalk, a moist breeze snapping him in the back like a whip.
The open sign was off but the door was unlocked. Gage entered a cramped store that smelled faintly of moldy paper, a dozen rows of pine shelves crammed with books, mostly paperbacks, banks of buzzing fluorescent lights above each row. Nobody sat at the counter. Gage heard the squeak of a cart.
"Be with you in a second," came a gruff voice from the back.
"Alex, it's me."
"Ah. Well, then you can wait."
Gage took off his fedora and set it on the glass counter, peering at the first edition of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest prominently featured inside, along with other books by notable Oregon authors. "Hey," he said, "I'm a customer, too. I've bought a lot of books in your store."
The squeaking cart stopped. A book slid onto a shelf. "I'm afraid we haven't gotten any new books in our erotica section, sir," Alex said.
"Funny guy. And here I thought this was a family-oriented establishment."
"It is," Alex said. "I corrupt whole families with my wicked literature. By the way, you're girlfriend called a little while ago looking for you. She wants you to swing by the office."
"Carmen?"
"You have more than one girlfriend?"
"She say what it's about?"
Alex grunted. "What am I, your secretary? You know, pal, you really should get around to getting a phone one of these days. Even an old fashioned land line would be an improvement. Then you can be only one century behind the rest of us."
"I'll keep that in mind," Gage said, though he wouldn't. The more people pressed him to get a phone, the more sure he was he didn't want one. "Say, there really is something I want to talk—"
"Did you bring me any donuts?"
"Sadly, no."
"Well, that's why you can wait. You know better than to show up without donuts."
"Bruzzi's in town," Gage said.
There was silence for a moment, the two of them alone with the buzzing lights. Then Alex emerged from the stacks, his face sober, his cart left behind but three slender paperbacks held in his right hand. He peered at Gage over the tops of his reading glasses, the bags under his eyes even bigger than usual, what was left of his thinning gray hair even more disheveled. He was stooped, short, and perpetually frumpy, a ballpoint pen in the front pocket of his wrinkled button-up shirt, coffee stains on his tan slacks. He was just the sort of person most would expect to find in a used bookstore—although he'd looked the same way when he'd worked for the FBI, too.
"Blue Face Bruzzi?" he said.
"The one and only."
"Jesus."
"Yeah, that's why I'm here."
"Where did you see him?"
Quickly, Gage told him about his meeting with Bruzzi at the diner. Alex listened thoughtfully, the furrows on
his forehead deepening. When Gage was finished, Alex placed the paperbacks on the counter—a couple of yellowed Louis L'Amour Westerns—and circled to the other side, depositing himself on the squeaky swivel chair in front of the computer. He was pecking on the keyboard even before the monitor flickered to life, a steady clicking that picked up speed like a train leaving the station. His hands seldom left the keyboard. He'd told Gage once that he saw it as a defeat if he was forced to use the mouse rather than keyboard strokes to accomplish what he wanted.
This went on for a few minutes. Gage drifted behind the counter himself, looking over Alex's shoulder, but he knew better than to interrupt his friend when he was so focused. Newspaper articles scrolled rapidly past. The FBI database—Alex did consulting work for them, so he still had access—was brought up, files searched, records plumbed. By the time Alex was satisfied he'd gotten the information he needed, Gage already had a sense of what had happened from what'd he'd glimpsed on the screen. And he felt rage begin its slow boil.
"Out on good behavior?" Gage said. "In six years for accessory to murder? How is that even possible?"
"Well, he got a new trial a year later," Alex said.
"I saw that. Jury tampering? I was at that first trial. I don't remember the defense making any noises about it."
Alex took of his glasses and rubbed his eyes. The red groove where the glasses often sat on his nose was so deep he could have balanced a penny in it. "Supposedly it came to light later," he said. "Probably something cooked up by his friends in low places, but the judge bought it. And at that trial, the prosecution agreed to a plea bargain that put him away for only ten. Three years were knocked for good behavior."
"Unbelievable," Gage said. "Why would they agree to a plea bargain? The evidence hadn't changed—it was probably even stronger." He slapped his hand on the glass counter hard enough to vibrate the books inside. "They could have won a second time. Something's not right."
A Desperate Place for Dying Page 2
