Find Me

by Carol O’Connell

  Mallory recalled another line of the letter, the one that had lured her in here; and now she recognized it as the punch line to this joke on a grand scale: “The Midwest is a very scary place.”

  The FBI rendezvous point was near another gravesite, and the special agent in charge could observe the diggers from the window of his room.

  Dale Berman was a man of ordinary features and below average height, yet he knew that most of his associates would describe him as handsome in the way that professionally charming people can seem more attractive than they truly are-taller and wittier, too. For the past six months, he had joked about spending his retirement years writing a book on Route 66, a tourist guide on how to survive in these motels. Whether the accommo- dations were deluxe or as shabby as this one, he always slept on the side of the bed that was opposite the telephone, for near that phone-side pillow, the last ten thousand guests had planted their rear ends while calling home.

  Special Agent Berman would soon be taking early retirement, and his wife, playful old girl, was counting off the calendar dates by carving wide notches into their front door so he could not fail to have his paperwork in order when the great day came.

  He squinted as he leaned closer to the window, watching his team of gravediggers racing the light of day, brushing away the dirt and sifting it for clues to a skeleton’s identity. In response to a knock at his door, he called out, “It’s open!” He turned to face his last appointment of the day. The man entering the room was the senior forensics technician from the Illinois digs. That sector of the investigation had always been a battleground.

  The state of Missouri was less like a war zone due to more covert body snatching. Agents and civilian employees had been gathering here for hours. He planned to address his troops en masse tomorrow. He would deliver an uplifting line of bull, impressions of progress in the hunt for a serial killer also known by a song title, “Mack the Knife.”

  Dale Berman’s favorite rendition of that fine old standard was sung by Bobby Darin, and it conjured up Las Vegas nights, smoky rooms and the clink of ice in a glass of booze. It was the only murder song he knew. Once, the boxer’s c hild had been able to hum more of it for him. But these days, Dodie Finn only had a few notes left in her crazy little brain. He had recently issued memos to the agents who traveled with him and to those flung out along Route 66: Anyone caught singing that song, humming or whistling that song, would be dismissed or shot at the discretion of the SAC, the special agent in charge-himself.

  The phone was ringing in his pocket. He responded while waving his guest to a chair and a waiting glass of rye. He held up a bottle. “Your favorite brand, right?”

  After listening to his caller, Berman sighed and tossed the cell phone on the bed. Turning to face the civilian forensics man, he feigned a smile. “The Illinois situation just keeps getting better and better. Could I have any more shit on my plate today, Eddie? I don’t t hink so.”

  The forensics man, Eddie Hobart, held a sheaf of papers in one hand and a half-empty glass in the other. He was clearly waiting for his reprimand and probably wondering why it was taking so long. “I guess you’ve seen Agent Cadwaller’s report already.”

  “No, Eddie, can’t s ay I have. The paperwork caught fire while the man was still holding it in his hand.” Dale Berman clicked his butane lighter and lit a cigarette. “He’s rewriting it now.”

  Brad Cadwaller’s new report would not lay blame on any member of the forensics team. No one in Dale Berman’s c o mmand ever made mistakes-not on paper.

  How could Riker possibly sleep through the noise of the portable siren perched on the roof of the Mercedes?

  Charles Butler quite enjoyed the racket-so invigorating-and most of all he loved the sensation of speed. Following Riker’s instructions, he had taken the interstate highway, the quicker to close the gap between themselves and Mallory. Ninety miles an hour was his personal best lawbreak-ing in this evening traffic, and he hoped that his passenger, upon awakening, would not be too disappointed in their progress.

  His eyes strayed to the sleeping rider. Should he awaken Riker to tell him that something was not quite right? No, he lacked the heart to disturb this man who had driven eight hundred miles in one mad flight. Still, the problem of time and distance would not go away. The dashboard was littered with Riker’s notes on Mallory’s g asoline purchases between New York and Chicago. If the detective had not been bone tired at the outset of this journey, he would have worked it out for himself with only the times listed at every stop. A V o lkswagen could not have covered that distance so quickly. Even the Mercedes could not do it.

  Might she be driving a different type of car?

  Charles’s mind was full of maps and distances. When Mallory had suggested an onboard navigation computer for this car, his eidetic memory had enabled him to recite a virtual atlas of roads for her. She had grudgingly admitted that he was an onboard navigator. As a quasi-Luddite, he had relished that rare win in his ongoing battle against all things computerized and sanitized. He missed those arguments. He missed Mallory.

  So he argued with her in absentia.

  How could you outstrip the performance of a superior automobile?

  No explanation would work with hard logic and geography, time and space.

  Oh, fool, I.

  The mechanical paradox linked him back to another odd thing: Mallory was totally immersed in high technology, and yet she was traveling without a computer. Perhaps she had exchanged the love of one machine for another. Had she tinkered with her car? Over the years of their friendship, he had never known her to take an interest in automotive engineering. Well, what was an automobile anymore but a mass of computer chips that ate gasoline? Ah, but no amount of tinkering would change the fact that, in comparison to his own car, her V o lkswagen had a smaller, relatively low-performance engine.

  Or not.

  He wondered if it was possible to blend a Beetle with a race car?

  Twenty-five years after the letters were written, it was nearing the end of another blue-sky day, and a low-riding sun shone warm and bright. Mallory barreled down the Mother Road playing vintage rock ’n’ roll. Twenty miles later, the sky was clouding over, and she was searching for the next landmark along this stretch of road.

  It was the right day in May, the right hour, but decades late.

  The letter had described a line of trees, and there was none. She stared at the stark acreage and a row of thick stumps. Only the cement foundation of the old county store remained. And there were no brilliant colors in the sky, not today. The sun was just a patch of lighter gray on the overcast horizon line, a sign that the regional drought would soon end.

  However, this stop had not been a complete waste of time. Music selections in the letters made more sense to her now. The current song, an upbeat tune, was all wrong for a sky that promised rain. She flicked one finger around the wheel of her iPod until the car stereo played a ballad to match the cloudy day of another letter, and now Bob Dylan sang to her:

  “-and you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone-”

  With the push of a button, the convertible’s black ragtop rose to give her cover, and Mallory latched it but left the windows open. She unfolded a letter, taking great care lest it fall apart with one more reading. She was seeking the description of the way the world used to be at this time of day, that time of life.

  “-the present now will later be past-”

  A hit-and-run gust of wind stole her letter, ripped it from her hand and escaped through the passenger window. She left the car at a dead run to chase the airborne sheet of paper across the open land, teased by the rise and fall of it as she ran toward it. Her angry eyes turned upward, as if to pin the blame on a Sunday-school God, Whom she had abandoned when she was six, going on seven, the year her mother died.

  But she would not believe in such beings anymore. Kathy Mallory was a child of high technology and cold logic. Her nemesis of the moment was only the wind that carried he
r letter away, farther now and faster. Done with anger, on came panic-a novel emotion for a woman who carried a very large gun, someone who lacked a normal, healthy sense of fear. She was afraid of nothing until she heard the rumble of thunder. A storm was coming. As the letter rose higher and higher in the air, she was afraid it would be lost or wrecked by rain. And now her race was run against time.

  The first drops fell. More panic. And then her anger returned in a twisted form of faith that her old enemy was truly up there, hiding from her, stealing from her again.

  That Great Bastard in the sky, Mother Killer.

  “God damn it!” she yelled into the wind, hands balling into fists, just six years old again, going on seven, and maddened by events beyond a child’s control. “Give it back !”

  In that moment, the letter hovered in the air, motionless, levitating there, as birds do when they fly against the wind. Slowly, it drifted to earth. She ran toward it, heart a banging, as if this bit of paper meant more to her than life.

  The laptop was open, and Special Agent Dale Berman scanned recent communiqués from Chicago. Staring at the photographs, he moved his head slowly from side to side. He had only finished half of Eddie Hobart’s field report, but everything was clear. At last he understood how the team of snatch-and-run gravediggers had wound up in a confrontation with a state trooper in the borderlands of Illinois.

  “I liked the trooper,” said Eddie Hobart, draining his third shot of rye. “Nice kid.”

  The FBI man nodded absently and poured himself another drink. The computer screen was showing him a picture that had been forwarded compliments of Chicago’s Detective Kronewald. It was a magnified image of an air valve on Gerald C. Linden’s flat tire. “I know you didn’t miss this tool mark.”

  “Yeah, I did,” said Hobart. “No time to check it out at the scene, and Cadwaller ordered us to leave the tire behind. He said the helicopter was over the weight limit.”

  “And was it?”

  “No. We had some soil samples and the body bags from three more graves. Little bones don’t w e igh much. But the pilot only takes orders from ranking agents.” The civilian nodded toward the field report in Berman’s lap. “Officially, I’m taking the hit for everything. I should’ve left Cadwaller behind and loaded the tire instead.” Hobart was watching the computer screen when it flipped to the second photograph of a fingerprint on a phone battery. “I missed that, too.”

  “The cops found it in a restaurant dumpster north of Chicago. That’s where the victim stopped for his last meal, and it was way off your route, Eddie.”

  “No, that was my screwup. I didn’t e ven know the battery was missing from Linden’s c e ll phone. Never got a chance to open it. And I’m not sure I would’ve gotten around to it, even if I’d had the time to do my job right.”

  “Well, somebody opened it.”

  “Could’ve been the trooper or that New York cop, Mallory.” Hobart leaned closer to the screen. “Is the print any good?”

  Agent Berman shook his head as he read the companion text. “Kronewald says it’s a smudged partial. No clear ridges. It’s not even useful for ruling a suspect out.”

  “Well, it’s enough to make me feel like an idiot.”

  “Don’t b e at yourself up, Eddie. You’re just burnt out on this case.” Dale Berman refreshed the civilian’s d rink-the anesthetic. “Too many little bodies.”

  And then there was the problem of close confinement with an abrasive fool. Cadwaller had gone to a lot of trouble to insinuate himself into this investigation. To minimize the damage, Dale Berman had personally assigned the man to grave-robbing detail. More skillful agents had been sent off to deal with the Chicago cops. Bloody as that fight had been, Cadwaller had managed to make a bigger mess with the Illinois State Police.

  And the tale was not over yet. It went on, blow by blow, as the sky grew darker. Ice cubes clinked in their glasses, and Special Agent Berman listened to his bedtime story of a tall blonde from New York City, the cop who had run the show at the Illinois diner. In the telling, Eddie Hobart appointed himself president of the Detective Mallory fan club.

  Berman nodded and smiled. “She’s Lou Markowitz’s kid.”

  “No shit!”

  “You’ve heard of him? ’Course you have. Well, I knew her old man when I was with the New York Bureau. My team worked a big case with NYPD’s Special Crimes Unit, and we made a made a mess of it. I did. All my fault. We ll, Markowitz exploded. He cleaned all the feds out the cophouse, tossed us on the curb with the rest of the day’s t rash. Then his homicide squad wrapped the case in less than four hours. It was humiliating… and instructive. I had major respect for that old bastard. And I liked him… even while he was booting my ass out the door.” He stared at his glass. “You know… there are times when you hear that someone’s died… a man you worked with. And you say, ‘Aw, too bad.’ You really mean it, but then you go on with your golf game and never miss a stroke. Lou Markowitz’s death stopped a lot of people cold. Every agent in the New York Bureau turned out for his funeral. And there were others. They came from everywhere when the old man died.” He lifted his glass in a toast. “Hell of a cop.”

  “And Mallory?”

  “She’s a pisser. I noticed that Cadwaller isn’t even limping, no bullets to the kneecaps. Lou’s kid must’ve been having an off day.”

  The storm had ended, and no rain had reached this patch of road. The moon was rising.

  Mallory turned off the music and her headlights, not wanting to announce herself as the car approached the glow of campfires and lanterns. She cut the engine and coasted into the lot of a convenience store. Its windows were dark, and there was a for-sale sign in the window. Her car rolled to a stop on the far side of the wood-frame building, keeping to the shadows and out of the moonlight. Most of the caravan vehicles were parked together off to one side. She left the car and rounded the store for a look at the encampment. Groups of people were gathered around small fires and cookstoves, and there were more of them now. Paul Magritte’s party had grown by a score of travelers since leaving Illinois.

  A woman stood in the lighted doorway of a Winnebago. She was handing out camping supplies to a small group of people in an orderly line, and Mallory took them for newcomers. One man was presented with a shiny new hatchet. It was small, but just the thing for chopping the hand off a homicide victim.

  The caravan had not been here long. She could see pup tents and larger ones being raised on the perimeter of this caravan city. Some of these people were very poor; there were bedrolls laid out under loose canvas that had been slung over cars and moored to trees.

  Where was the protection detail? She should not have been able to come this close to the campsite unchallenged.

  The headlights of a new arrival were pulling into a gravel road that bordered the field, but this was no FBI vehicle. She could make out the star of a sheriff ’s logo painted on the door. And she knew that the driver had not come to protect these people. She could read his angry face when he stepped out of the car. He reached down to uproot the stake of a no-trespassing sign. The sheriff was on a mission to run the campers off this land, down that road and well out of his jurisdiction. He would only need to hold up the sign-all the authority necessary to send them on their way.

  Evidently, Paul Magritte had also come to this same conclusion. The old man had spotted the official car, and he hurried his steps to head off the sheriff before the lawman could advance more than a few yards. The wind was with Mallory, and she could hear the conversation from her hiding place.

  “Good evening, sir.” Magritte held up a piece of paper. “This is the owner’s c o nsent to use the land. I made the arrangements a while back, as you can see by the date.”

  The sheriff lowered the no-trespassing sign, as if it were a gun that he had only half-decided on firing. He leaned it against one leg, freeing both hands to take a proffered flashlight and the paper from the old man. He read the letter of permission, then raised his suspicious
eyes to say, “There’s still the problem of sanitation.” He looked out over the caravan city. “I don’t see no outhouse, no Port-O-Potties.” He waved the paper, saying, “This don’t mean-”

  “All taken care of,” said Magritte. “The owner’s s o n is on the way with a key to that building.” He pointed to the abandoned store, and Mallory withdrew to deeper shadow. “We’ll have the use of the restroom inside. The owner wanted cash, so it’s just a matter of passing the hat to pay his son. And we have mobile homes with toilet facilities.”

  Other campers had noticed the sheriff ’s c ruiser, and they came running, waving their posters of children’s faces, all speaking at once. Louder voices in the babble were more distinct, asking if he had any news of Christie, who was sixteen on her last birthday; had he heard of Marsha, only six years old when she was taken; and the rest of the names rolled on and over one another.

  The sheriff backed away from them, looking guilty, as if he had killed all their babies single-handed. He was addressing the dirt when he muttered something too low for Mallory to clearly hear. It might have been a prayer or a curse, for God was in the wording. And now he fled to his cruiser and fired up the engine. Wheels spinning, gravel flying, then back on hard pavement again, his roof rack of lights died off down the road.

  He had escaped.

  Mallory returned to her car. Her headlights were dark as she rolled quietly out of the lot to pursue the sheriff ’s c ruiser down a moonlit road. The night was bright and he might have seen her if he had once looked back, but he never did. And this was another sign of guilt in Mallory’s e yes. She followed him into a town, where he parked his car in front of a municipal building with several doors, and one had a sign for the sheriff ’s o ffice. She was still his silent shadow as she followed him inside. The man never heard her footsteps, but he caught a look of surprise from the deputy at the reception desk. The sheriff turned to see her standing behind him, and it spooked him.