Dead Past dffi-4

by Beverly Connor

  “Three,” he repeated. “If your sample is random, then of the thirty-two victims, thirteen or fourteen of them would be female.”

  “We don’t know if they were randomly located in the house when… when it exploded-or randomly recovered.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I’m just trying to occupy my mind. Here’s the library.”

  He parked his dark blue Expedition and they walked up the columned entrance to the library. Since 9/11, the entrance had huge concrete planters out front so that a vehicle loaded with explosives couldn’t get close to the front entrance. They walked past the planters containing spruce trees and up the granite steps.

  The information desk was manned by a young woman who looked as if she might be a student herself. Frank asked if there was a way to page a patron in the library. No, there was not. From the sympathetic look they got, they were not the first to ask.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to go to each floor and look,” she said. “If you know what courses your…”

  “Daughter,” supplied Frank.

  “Daughter is taking, you might start where those books or journals are shelved.” She handed them sheets of paper stapled together. “This is a map of the library.” She gave them a sympathetic smile that seemed to say, “I wish I could do more.”

  “Do you know what courses she’s taking this semester? Isn’t American History one?” asked Diane.

  Frank studied the maps of the floors. “American History, Anthropology, English, Algebra, and Fencing.”

  “Fencing?” said Diane.

  “She’s pretty good. She’s thinking about joining the fencing team,” said Frank.

  Extracurricular activities. She’s getting interested in college, just as Diane had hoped. Please, don’t let her be… Diane couldn’t even finish the thought.

  They decided to check the library floor by floor instead of going to the different subject areas. It seemed more methodical. The danger was over. There wasn’t a hurry to find Star, except for their own peace of mind. They wanted to be thorough.

  Bartram University’s library was a rambling structure built in stages, forming an old central core and younger wings. Varying shades of red brick walls told of different periods of construction. The beige tile floors were kept shined to a high gloss. The tables and chairs were of a light-colored wood and the bookshelves were metal.

  Small study areas defined by groups of tables and a few stuffed chairs and small sofas were scattered throughout the floor. Most of the patrons this evening were students who looked to be eighteen or nineteen, with a sprinkling of older people who Diane guessed were graduate students or faculty.

  She and Frank split up. He searched the study areas, Diane searched the stacks-looking between rows of bookshelves for any sign of Star’s short black hair with its spiky cut. As Diane passed through the stacks of books, she heard snatches of conversations. “I heard there were fifty bodies.” And, “You could hear them screaming two streets over as they burned.” God, students were gruesome, thought Diane, and prone to believe rumors. “I heard they are canceling finals and giving us all A’s-like a hardship situation.” And prone to wishful thinking. “OK, tell me again how to find the area beneath a curve. Something about rhyming?” “Riemman.” At least some were studying. “The making of palimpsests was possible even with papyri. Are you sure that’s what it says? It’s hard to read the writing.” History? Sounds like a tongue twister. Diane looked down another of the never-ending rows of bookshelves. Star… where are you, Star? She wanted to shout her name. What kind of large public building didn’t have a paging system? Come to think of if, the museum didn’t. She would have to check into that.

  Diane heard Frank ask several students if they knew Star Duncan. They didn’t. “A freshman? No we don’t know freshmen.”

  At the end of another row she saw Star-black spiky hair, pixy look. Diane all but ran toward her.

  “Star?” she called a little too loudly.

  Startled, the girl turned at the sound. It wasn’t Star. Disappointment almost made Diane sick.

  “I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else. Do you by any chance know Star Duncan?”

  “Star. I like the name. No, I don’t know her. Sorry.”

  Diane mumbled an apology for disturbing her and moved on, looking. She met up with Frank and together they headed for the elevators to look on the next floor. They passed a couple walking toward the main entrance. Both wore jeans. He had on a baseball cap that said NEW YORK YANKEES. They didn’t look like students and they were frowning. Diane wondered if they were looking for a lost child as she and Frank were.

  The elevator doors opened and they rode up to search the other four floors-Diane the stacks, Frank the study areas. They peeked in all the study carrels. Diane looked in the bathrooms. No Star. They didn’t find anyone who knew her. Finally they rode down, sick at heart and not knowing where else to look.

  “You could try calling home again. She may have decided to go there and study-where it would be quiet.”

  Frank nodded and took out his cell. “I’ll take Jin’s advice, too, and contact the company that made her phone to find out if it has GPS,” said Frank.

  Diane nodded, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. As they passed the information desk they heard a woman asking for Jenny Baker. Frank stopped.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I believe your daughter knows mine. Star Duncan. They study together.”

  The woman turned and stared at Frank. She had the same desperate expression the mother in the coffee tent had, that Frank had, that Diane herself must have.

  “Star? You’re her father? Jenny’s missing. Yes, she and Star study together. I told her Star is a bad influence. Jenny would never go to a party during finals. Never. Never. Not unless someone dragged her. She is a good girl.”

  Diane was startled at the recriminations. She felt Frank stiffen, but his face had on his detective expression, which was no expression.

  Jenny’s mother started to crumble. The young woman at the information desk, distressed and helpless, looked from one to the other of them. A brass pin fastened to her blouse said SHELLEY. Like the rest of them, Shelley didn’t know what to do. Just as both Frank and Diane reached for Mrs. Baker before she sank to the floor, a man rushed over from the direction of the men’s room, pulled her up, and put an arm around her.

  “I’m Clyde Baker. My wife’s distraught. We’re looking for our daughter. Someone said she might be studying in the library. Her cell’s not working, but she is bad about recharging it.” He sounded out of breath and as if he needed to explain why his wife was collapsing onto the floor. “Come on, Marsha.” He squeezed his wife’s shoulders. “We’ve got to look, honey. I’m sure she’s here.”

  “You might go to the Student Learning Center,” said Shelley, leaning over the desk. “It’s a new building and a lot of students study there, too. It’s that huge really tall building on North Campus. I think that they might have a PA system.”

  “Thanks,” said Frank, “We will.” He turned to the Bakers. “If I find Star and Jenny is with her, I’ll have her call you.”

  Clyde Baker nodded. His wife burst into tears.

  Chapter 9

  The Student Learning Center was a huge building. One of the tallest on Bartram’s campus, sprawled out over the hillside like a giant yellow brick dragon. Searching it would take hours, if not days. Surely there would be an intercom system.

  “It would be better if I searched and you went home to get some sleep,” said Frank, not taking his eyes off the building. “You have a long day tomorrow.”

  “I couldn’t sleep, waiting to hear from you,” Diane said. “We’d better get started.”

  They climbed the main entrance steps to the enormous carved double doors. Diane had the feeling she was up the bean stalk visiting the giant. Through the massive oak doors that opened amazingly easily, they stepped into a ballroom-sized foyer with a polished floor of what appeared to be salt-and-pepper
granite. A plaque on the wall said the stone was diorite mined nearby in North Georgia. What had Mike, the geologist at her museum, said diorite is? Something like mafic plutonic rock. She remembered thinking it sounded more as if it had come from another planet than from the bowels of the earth.

  Star… please don’t have gone to that party, her mind whispered.

  Beyond the foyer the floor was tile and the walls yellow brick set at off angles, giving the same uneven effect as the outer walls. Despite the uncomfortably hard appearance of the stone floor, several students were sitting on it studying with their backs against the wall. Some were curled up sleeping with their heads on their backpacks. Frank asked one of the students who was awake where the main office was. He was greeted with a stare.

  “Main office?”

  The kid looks no older than sixteen, thought Diane. She must be getting old.

  “Is there a main office? I mean, its classrooms.”

  “Yeah, there’s one,” said his companion, a yellow-haired kid who looked about the same age. He pointed to a hallway closed off by glass doors. “But it’s closed. They’ll be open tomorrow if you need to reserve a classroom or something. You wouldn’t happen to know the equation for slope?” He flipped through the pages of his book. Frank kneeled to eye level with the kid, took the notebook from him, and scribbled an equation. “Oh, yeah,” he said, turning it around and looking at what Frank had written.

  “What kind of test are you having?” Frank asked.

  “Calculus.” He hesitated a moment. “I’m in trouble, aren’t I? I should know slope.”

  “Sometimes it’s better to get a little sleep than it is to keep studying all night,” said Frank as he stood back up. “Let your brain relax.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right, but I have my Hope scholarship to think about.”

  It occurred to Diane that this would be ripe territory for dealers of speed. Floors and floors of kids who need to make the grade and have to stay awake all night to cram for exams. She wondered if the meth lab had supplied students here. As she looked for Star, she’d keep an eye out for dealers. She would like to take some of these kids who used drugs to the morgue and show them the consequences of the drug business. Explain to them that the reason some of the bodies didn’t have heads was because the heat from the fire caused pressure to build up in the skull until it exploded.

  Let Star be somewhere… anywhere other than the morgue tent.

  “Is there an intercom or PA system for the building?” asked Diane.

  “Sure,” answered the calculus kid.

  “Is it open so we can use it?” she asked.

  “You’re asking if they put a PA system where any one of us can use it when we want?” said the other kid. “Yeah, they’d do that.”

  “What was I thinking?” Diane smiled at the two of them. “Thanks for the information.”

  “Sure, thanks for the equation.”

  They started walking down the hall. Frank retrieved his phone from his jacket pocket.

  “I’m going to try Star one more time,” he said.

  “That won’t work in here,” called the calculus kid. “They blocked cell phone signals in this building so they won’t ring in class.”

  “Sure enough, no service.” Frank pocketed his cell.

  “But isn’t that a hopeful sign?” asked Diane. “I mean, surely, that’s why Star’s and Jenny’s cell phones don’t answer. They’re here somewhere.”

  She could see in Frank’s face that, like her, he really wanted that to be the case, but he was afraid to raise his hopes… and afraid not to.

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s hopeful. OK, we have to find them if they’re here. I suppose it’s wing by wing and floor by floor again. You’re sure I can’t talk you into going home?” He grabbed her hand and squeezed it.

  “It’ll take half as long if I help,” she said. “You take the right side of the building and I’ll take the left.” Diane lowered her voice. “Keep a lookout for other things, too.”

  Diane told him her thoughts about this being a good place to sell speed. He nodded.

  Many of the rooms were dark and locked. The ones that were open had students studying at desks, at computers, around tables, on the floor. They studied in groups and alone. Many had brought sleeping bags and were asleep in corners with empty snack wrappers and drink cans littering the area around them like a nest. The Student Learning Center had been turned into a giant campground, and it looked like three-quarters of the campus was holed up here.

  In each room that contained people Diane asked if anyone knew Star Duncan. She found two or three who knew who she was but didn’t know her well and didn’t know where she was. Unlike at the library, Diane didn’t hear as much gossip about the explosion and tragedy. She wondered if they didn’t know. It had happened on Saturday night; if they were here all weekend, they might not have heard.

  Diane was only on the second floor and she was exhausted and depressed. Her back ached. She wanted to sit down and close her eyes, but there were so many rooms to go.

  She pushed on, refusing to allow this search to bring the other search, the one for her daughter, Ariel, to the front of her mind. She couldn’t relive that again. Not now. Not while they couldn’t find Star.

  She walked into a computer lab. Several students were on computers connected to the Internet. One was playing a game. None knew Star. The next room was a lounge with vending machines. There were only two people-young women who were maybe nineteen, surely not older. They could have been from the same family. Both blond, both much too thin, as seemed to be the style these days. Both were well dressed in expensive jeans and sweaters. They were sitting opposite each other at a snack table. One of them looked as if she was slipping something across the table to the other, who had folded money between her fingers. They stopped talking when they saw Diane. The one without the money held her hand flat on the table, palm down, as if hiding something under it.

  “Do either of you know Star Duncan?” asked Diane, pretending to be oblivious to their transaction.

  “Star who?”

  “Duncan.”

  They looked at each other and shook their heads and looked back at Diane.

  “No.”

  They kept their eyes on her as if suggesting that she should be leaving now.

  Diane walked over to the vending machines and looked at the choices-candy, peanuts, snack cakes, beef jerky, popcorn. In the glass reflection she saw them watching her. She lingered over the selections and fished her phone from her pocket, flipped it open, and set it to camera mode.

  “I’m not getting a signal,” Diane said as she raised the phone and pointed it in different directions. Pausing toward them, she silently snapped their picture.

  “You won’t in here. They blocked the signal when they built the place. Mean of them.”

  “Well, damn, how inconvenient,” said Diane, and flipped her phone shut, putting it back in her pocket. She fished change from her pocket, selected a candy bar for herself and a bag a peanuts for Frank, and left the room, noting the name Jessica Davenport written on one of the girl’s notebook as she passed.

  Maybe if they were exchanging drugs, particularly methamphetamine, the police could get a line from them on who was behind the meth lab. It was a long shot. They were probably just talking girl stuff. But if they were exchanging drugs, it would be a lead.

  Garnett didn’t believe the meth cook, who was probably killed in the explosion, was the only one involved with the lab. Partly, she was sure, because Garnett didn’t want the guilty party to be dead and beyond his grasp. He had told her the firemen found evidence the basement was vented so as not to release the odor of the meth production into the rest of the house. And there were other signs it could have been a high-output operation with a distribution network.

  Diane wanted them caught. She wanted them in prison for a long time.

  By the third floor Diane was aching all over and feeling nauseated from the worry and an
empty stomach. Images of searching the jungle for Ariel came unbidden to her mind-finding the murdered nuns in the mission, hearing Ariel’s music playing on the tape recorder Diane had given her and that had been left along with Ariel’s bloody little shoe for Diane to find.

  Oh, God, don’t think about that.

  Diane stopped, took a breath, and closed her eyes. No. Go away, she whispered to her brain, not those images now.

  She leaned against the wall and unwrapped the candy bar she had bought from the vending machine. It was a Milky Way. It was soft from being in her warm jacket pocket. It tasted sweet and melted in her mouth. She needed the sugar jolt, but not the mess it made. She ate the whole large-sized bar, crumpled up the wrapper, and put it in her pocket. She fished out a Kleenex and wiped her hands and mouth.

  Down the hall was a water fountain. Diane walked to it and bent over to take a drink. In the shiny surface of the fountain head, she thought she saw a distorted image of Star.

  Chapter 10

  Diane spun around and came face-to-face with Star-baggy blue jean overalls, dark eye makeup, spiky hair and all.

  “Star!”

  Star was obviously surprised at seeing her. “Diane, what are you doing here?”

  “Star,” was all Diane could say. She grabbed her and hugged her tightly. She smelled like popcorn. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.” She held her at arm’s length and looked at her.

  “I see that,” Star said. “What’s up?”

  “I’ve been looking all evening for you. Frank got in a few hours ago and we’ve both been looking for you everywhere.”

  “I was here studying. I have a history test tomorrow.” She looked at her watch. “Today. And as you know, it’s real important that I get a good grade. The other kids are sweating their Hope scholarships; I’m sweating Paris.” She paused a beat. “I wasn’t expecting Uncle Frank until tomorrow. He knows I’d be somewhere studying.”

  “I’m so glad to have found you.” Diane hugged her again.