by Donna Ball
Guy said, “You didn't have to thank me. She’s my daughter, too.”
Carol said nothing.
In a moment he added, “I said some pretty harsh things to you back then.”
“Nothing I hadn't already said to myself.”
Now he looked at her, his face merely a sketch in the darkness, but his voice was firm. “It wasn't your fault, Carol. Not the divorce, not Kelly. I know I waited too long to say it, but that was because it took me this long to get over feeling it was all my fault. Hell, maybe I'm still not over it. But I want you to know ... I've been hearing that message from your answering machine over and over in my head, and I don't think you're crazy for believing it’s Kelly.”
Carol tried to see what was in his eyes, but it was dark, and she was out of practice. She said, “Thank you,” and meant it.
He reached into his pocket and brought out a photograph. Carol did not have to see it to know it was one of the prints of Kelly she and Laura had circulated that afternoon.
“Do you think it will help?” he asked. There was nothing judgmental in his voice.
Carol drew in her breath for a quick reply, but changed it to a slow and simple shake of her head. “No,” she said softly. And she leaned her head back, fixing her gaze on the stars. “It's too little and too late. It wasn't even my idea, it was Laura's. All day long I've been asking myself why we didn't do more when she first disappeared, why we didn't blanket the state—the country—with fliers and pictures, and I didn't much like the answer I got.”
“You were following the advice of the police.”
“Yes.” It was little above a whisper. “I did what they told me because there was always a part of me that thought they might be right, that Kelly was just an ordinary runaway and that we couldn't find her because she didn't want to be found … and that made me angry. All the time I was screaming at the police for being incompetent, demanding that they make more of an effort to find her, all that time there was this part of me that was just so mad at her I was almost hoping we didn't find her. Mad and hurt and scared and ashamed of myself because I wasn't sure. In the end, I wasn't as sure as I pretended that Kelly wasn't just hiding out from us. That she hated me that much.”
Silence passed, not comfortable, but not painful either. Guy said, “We both made some mistakes.” Then he looked at her again. “Let's not let the past affect our judgment now, okay?”
After a moment, Carol nodded.
Guy stood up. “Come down and lock the door after me. And keep it locked from now on, day and night.”
Carol shivered in a gust of wind as they left the shelter of the partition. “Come on, Guy, you know if somebody wanted to get in, a lock wouldn't keep him out. This house was built for an island with a higher incidence of hurricanes than crime. What do you want me to do, get metal shutters and doors?”
Guy frowned. “I just want you to be careful.”
At the top of the stairs he paused, his expression altering slightly. His eyes were troubled but quietly confident as he said, “Kelly wouldn't have written that second note. She never would have said she was going to Hollywood.”
“She wanted to be a musician, not a movie star,” Carol agreed softly.
Guy looked away. “I never told you—but I flew to Los Angeles, right after that second note. I don't know what I was thinking. That she'd be hanging out in the airport or bus station, that I'd be walking down the street and see her ... it was crazy. What I saw was so many girls, dozens of them, hundreds of them, runaways living on the street. I flew back that same day. Like I say, it was crazy.”
Their eyes met in a moment that was as close to understanding as they had reached in three years, perhaps more. Then, together, they went down the stairs.
***
He was angry. He hated the anger for the ugly, consuming thing it was, for the energy it wasted and the time it took. There had been a time when the anger had power over him, when he let it control his actions and therefore his life. In anger, he had broken, crushed, destroyed … and lost. That was in the time before he had come to understand that anger was his enemy.
Now when he felt the familiar stirring of rage, the bite of frustration and the heat of blood lust, he knew what to do. He knew how to put that power to work for him. Anger, given its head, was waste. Anger properly channeled could result in enlightenment.
Enlightenment came tonight when he realized his anger was, in fact, foolish. He felt angry because he felt betrayed, but betrayal was impossible. The girl was incapable of it. She had followed her instincts, that was all, and she couldn't be blamed for that. It wasn't as though she had plotted to anger him, given measured and considered thought as to how best to betray him. Such complex reasoning was completely beyond her, and to attribute blame to her was to also give credit.
That was, of course, unthinkable.
She had acted from curiosity and impulse, and those were not malicious characteristics. In fact, when he thought about it, he realized it was not her actions he objected to so much as the fact that she had acted independently of him, without his permission or knowledge. That was not acceptable behavior, and for it she would have to be corrected.
That was when he began to appreciate the advantages of letting his anger work for him. Because when he thought about it, he began to see opportunities here, the ladder of learning unfolding, a chance to shape and mold his precious pet into an even more perfect specimen. In the end, he was almost grateful for her transgression. It couldn't have come at a more opportune time.
She had been alone too long, that was all. It was time he brought her a companion. And with that companion would come a built-in object lesson.
It felt good to be on the prowl again.
~
Chapter Thirteen
Mickie Anderson had been wasted for the past three days. The first two nights she had spent on the beach; the third one she spent with a guy she didn't know in a Panama City motel room with six other kids. It didn't matter. She wasn't going home again anyway. She was twenty years old and she didn't have to account to anyone for what she did.
She was flunking out of the University of Virginia, and her parents had made it clear she would either make it in college or she'd have to come home and get a job. Well, screw them. She could make it on her own. She didn't need their house and she didn't need their bullshit.
She'd planned spring break in Panama City for weeks, long before she knew that even perfect scores on her midterms—fat chance—wouldn't bring her average up enough to keep her off scholastic probation. She'd seen no reason to change her plans after her folks had given her their ultimatum, and she and a bunch of kids had taken turns driving down, making it in just over twelve hours. Since then, it had been one long party, a few good drugs, a lot of cheap booze, and a hell of a good time.
Today she'd hooked up with two of the kids she'd driven down with and they had picked up some Penn State hotshots who decided it might be cool to cruise on out of the city in search of bigger beaches. One of the Penn State guys, Donny, was kind of cute and had an eye for her, and Mickie sat on his lap on the drive to St. Theresa-by-the-Sea, where somebody had heard there was some action.
The beaches were bigger and not nearly as crowded as the ones they'd left, and Mickie was anxious for Donny to see her in her bikini, but he went off in search of beer with two of the other guys and left her behind. The girls wanted to cruise the beach anyway, but Mickie was mad. She blew them off and decided to try her luck on the streets.
She was feeling pretty good about herself—though still mad at Donny—when she stopped for a butterscotch-almond cone next door to a funky shop with Indian dream catchers, turquoise beads, and jeweled incense burners displayed in the window. With her frayed denim shorts slung low on her hips, and her shirt stuffed into her backpack purse to display her colorful bikini top, she got quite a few whistles, a lot of “whoa, Baby's” and more than enough stupid grins. One bicycler pretended to run into a telephone pole while twistin
g his head to watch her, which made her laugh. A carful of guys cruised the curb for half a block, hanging out of the windows and calling to her. She was ready for a break.
Mickie was a good-looking girl and she knew it. She had long dark hair that she wore in a braid for the beach, perfect skin, great legs and cute, C-cup breasts that looked good in skinny tank tops and skinnier bikinis. She tanned honey-gold, and except for a slight ruddiness on one shoulder that would even out with one more day on the beach, that tan was now at its peak. She turned heads, and she liked it. She knew she could walk into any bar on the strip and have a waitress job today, so what did she have to worry about? Her folks thought they were so smart. Hell, she might even try hooking if worse came to worse—or maybe if it didn't. There was good money on the street, and she knew that for a fact.
Licking her cone, looking for a place to be out of the sun, she went into the shop with the Indian junk in the window. It smelled like sandalwood and hashish, and a tuneless, rambling melody was being played from a stringed instrument on a CD somewhere. A man with a dark tan and gray hair pulled back into a braid that was almost as long as Mickie's looked up from behind the counter when she came in, smiled at her, and said, “How're you doin'?”
Mickie smiled back. He was kind of a cool-looking dude, his face younger than the gray hair would indicate, and he didn't give her any hassle about the cone. She appreciated that.
She wandered around the shop for a while, looking at quartz crystal pendants on leather thongs, beaded earrings, books with titles like Heal Yourself with Magic and Mother Earth's Guide to Inner Peace, and checked out some CDs from the tower. There were three or four kids in there with her and a man in a baseball cap and shorts. Nice buns on that one, though he was a little older than she generally liked.
One girl bought two fat violet candles, and a boy, who was loud and so stoned he had trouble counting out two tens, bought a leather bracelet studded with turquoise. Mickie was trying on silver rings shaped like dragons, dolphins, cats, and snakes, and she sensed the guy in the shorts watching her from across the aisle.
Probably thinks I'm going to cop one, she thought sourly, and returned a ring.
But to her surprise, he smiled at her and said in a friendly, easy tone, “It looked good on you. You should buy it.”
Warm for my form, thought Mickie, relaxing. She knew the signs, and if she played it right, she was likely to get more than a cheap silver ring out of this one.
“No dough,” she said, smiling, then giving him the full view of her tongue as she swept it across the ice cream cone.
“Shame.” The guy smiled back and came over to her. “It's no fun to go on vacation and run out of money.”
The guy wasn't even being subtle about it. This was going to be easy. “Bet that never happens to you,” she said, running her tongue around the ice cream again.
He chuckled. “Not often.”
She looked him over flirtatiously, lips pursed for a moment around the melting tip of the cone. He was your better-than-average-looking old dude, that was for sure. She wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen cruising in his Corvette.
“Cool necklace,” she commented, noticing the pendant on the leather thong he wore around his neck. Definitely not your average old dude.
Obligingly, he slipped it over his head to show it to her. Mickie took it, frowning a little as she examined the pendant. It was unusual, all right. It was a figurine of a woman in a long waistless dress with her hands tied behind her back and her eyes blindfolded. Mickie was a little creeped out, and glanced up at him warily. “So what are you, into S&M or something?”
But he just smiled. “You don't recognize it? It's from the Tarot. It represents a young woman on the brink of discovery, yet held back by forces beyond her control. Paralyzed, you might say, by indecision, fear, uncertainty, what have you. Ready to go out and make her mark in the world—but not quite able to.”
“Cool,” Mickie said and looked at the pendant again. That was interesting. When she looked at it like that, it wasn't creepy at all. It was—well, it was a lot like her.
“The pendant is actually a charm—or so people say. It's supposed to be particularly effective for young women in times of crisis. Brings them good luck.”
“No kidding?” She looked down at the necklace again. “Well, I guess I could use some of that.”
“Try it on,” he suggested.
Mickie pretended reluctance. “I don't know,” she said. But the pendant was heavy, probably real silver, one of those collector's items. No one she knew had ever had anything like it.
“Go on,” he insisted, and she slipped it over her head, making sure the figurine rested in the shallow between her breasts, where he could enjoy it.
“Does this mean we're going steady?” she asked playfully, and he laughed.
She wandered off down the aisle, licking the cone, making sure he'd follow. “So anyway, what makes you think I'm on vacation?”
He gestured toward the crowded streets, the busy little shop. “Isn't everyone?”
“What about you?”
“Nah. I'm on business.”
She looked him up and down, taking care to pay special attention to his legs, which weren't half bad at that. “Oh, yeah? Funny way to dress for business.”
“I'm in a funny business.”
“What's that?”
“I'm a director. You know, commercials and stuff.”
“Is that right?” Skepticism and disinterest mingled in her voice and she thought, Sure you are, dude. Sure you are.
He said, “As a matter of fact, I'm going to be shooting here for the next couple of days. You want to be in it? I need all the pretty girls I can get.”
“Yeah, I just bet you do.”
“It's nothing much, won't make you famous or anything. Just a promo for the chamber of commerce. But I could pay you, say, fifty bucks for a half hour's work?”
If he had said he was filming a Coke commercial or a rock video, Mickie wouldn't have bought it for a minute. But the chamber of commerce ... it sounded just hokey enough to be on the level. And fifty bucks was fifty bucks.
She said, “No shit?”
And he responded solemnly, “No shit.”
She giggled, then turned a provocative shoulder to him and strolled a few more steps down the aisle. “So, like, what would I have to do?”
“Play volleyball on the beach. You can even wear what you've got on.”
“I'm no good at volleyball. I hate getting all sweaty.”
He laughed. “You don't really play. You just pretend. And don't worry about getting sweaty, that's what we have makeup people for.”
“Could I bring my friends? I'm here with friends.”
A momentary annoyance seemed to cross his face, but it was quickly gone again. “Sorry,” he said smoothly. “Closed set.”
Mickie shrugged disinterestedly and turned back to her cone.
He said in a moment, “Truth is—I wasn't going to mention this—but if you weren't on vacation, and if you were in the market for something a little more permanent, I'm looking for a production assistant, and I thought maybe we could talk about it after I finish shooting this afternoon. I start filming in Daytona next week though, so whoever I got would have to be able to travel on pretty short notice.”
Daytona. Production assistant. She was interested, oh, yes, she was, but it wouldn't do to let him know that.
She said casually, “So what kind of money are we talking about there?”
“Five hundred a week plus expenses.”
She stared at him, big eyed. Whatever hope she had of nonchalance was abandoned. “Whoa. Making commercials must pay some okay bucks.”
He grinned. “That's why they call it 'commercial.' Anyway, you might mention it to your friends. I'll interview anyone who's interested.”
Mickie made sure that was one thing she would not do. The less competition the better.
She said, “Why can't we talk about it now?”
/>
He glanced at his watch. It was gold, and looked to be the real thing. “Sorry, I have to go set up for the shoot. But if you're interested, I'll be at the pier—you know the one by the public parking lot—at four. I'm picking up a few other kids there and driving them to the site. I'll have you back by six.”
She thought it over. “Maybe I'll see you there.”
He smiled. “I hope so.” He turned toward the door.
“Hey, wait.” She reached to slip the necklace over her head. “Don't you want this back?”
He smiled. “Keep it,” he said, “for good luck. And maybe it will remind you to think about that job.”
“Hey, thanks.” She grinned as he turned toward the door. “And I will—think about it, I mean.”
He waved at her. “You know where to find me.”
She finished off the cone, browsed a little more, and went back out on the street, feeling pretty damn good about life in general. Then she saw Donny across the street, and she thought maybe that good luck charm was starting to work already. She waved at him, and he waved back enthusiastically. She dodged traffic to get to him, then jumped in his arms and clamped her legs around his waist. He laughed and whirled her around and for the next hour or so she forgot all about commercials and trips to Daytona and the man in the Indian shop.
But he did not forget about her.
~
Chapter Fourteen
Bridge Construction Causes Traffic Delays
Teen Rescued From Near Drowning
Twelve Arrested for Ordinance Violations
Bicyclist Injured in Collision
Guy manipulated the various headlines on his computer, trying to decide on a lead story, but only half his attention was on his work. The weekend had come and gone, and the machine attached to his telephone had not been activated once, nor had Carol's. He was beginning to feel foolish, more than a little impatient, and perhaps worst of all, to wonder about the soundness of his judgment.
They said survivors of tragedy—be it violent crime, war, even an airplane crash—were never afterward to achieve the same level of security they had known before the event. It was as though, once that barrier of “it can't happen to me” was removed, they almost began to expect the worst, to take it as their due. He and Carol had survived a tragedy. Would he have been so quick to assume the call was more than an idle prank if he hadn't stepped over that line of “it can't happen to me” once before, and seen what was on the other side?
