American Crow (6 page)

I berated myself for having taken the job
on, then for having developed a conscience. It was going to be another long
long night again, then another long day tomorrow, and I was going to be
jet-lagged, and pretty damned irritable as a
result.      

I placed a hand on the Somalian’s
shoulder as he fumbled with some keys to lock the doors then eyed his head
wound as he lowered the towel. The cut on his head looked deep. The one above
his eye like it needed stitches.

‘Come on, I’ll take you to the nearest
hospital. Just tell me where I need to go, okay?’

He offered a defiant smile then fainted
suddenly. I grabbed him instinctively to stop him falling to the ground then
held him vertical until his eyelids had fluttered open again.

‘Thanks,’ he said groggily. ‘The name’s
Moses.’

‘No worries. I’m Blake...’ I said,
cursing the blood smears he’d just left over my favourite jacket. ‘We’ll take
your car if you have one...’

*

When I woke up, there was a hand on my
shoulder shaking me gently. It was Moses. His head was bandaged heavily and his
arm was in a sling, but apart from that he looked better.

‘How long have we been in here?’

‘Three and a half hours.’ He cracked a
toothy smile. ‘You’ve been asleep all this time.’

I looked at the clock in the waiting
room. It was nearly eight o’clock in the morning. I didn’t feel too bad
surprisingly, but I wasn’t filled with the joys of spring either. My back felt
like a piece of cardboard.

‘I thought our hospitals were slow...’

He looked at me quizzically.

‘You know any good places to get a coffee
around here, Moses?’

‘Sure,’ he said extending a hand to pull
me up.

‘Good. You can buy me a fresh one then
drop me off at the Longfellow Gallery on Second Avenue South, just west of the
Thirty-Five. Do you know where that is?’

‘I think so. It’s just a short drive
across town.’

I followed the Somalian out to the car
lot where we’d parked his battered Toyota up in the early hours. Give it a few
hours, some strong espresso and freshen up in the toilets I thought, I would be
good to go again.

I needed to meet this friend of Henry’s
too. Walter Finch. He’d organized the work placement for Olivia and was
director of the gallery there. It was a decent enough place to start the
search, and I hoped somewhat optimistically, that he might have had some fresh
information on the girl since the last time he’d spoken to Henry. 

We arrived back at the white saloon and
both stood there in muted horror. Some asshole had clamped the car while we were
inside getting treatment. Perfect timing I thought, shaking my head in
disbelief, as Moses scratched his bandaged head. I’d been stuffed into a petrol
tank, fought off a gang of bikers, spent the night in a hospital waiting room
and now this...I wondered what else was in store if I continued with the job.

‘You wait here,’ I said, feeling
frustrated.

‘Where you going?’ Moses called out
sheepishly.

‘To find some implements that will unpick
that damned lock,’ I said, walking back to the hospital’s main entrance as the
snow started coming down heavier again, hoping against hope, that sooner rather
than later, everything was going to start getting that little bit easier, and
that that circling spider had completely lost interest...

Chapter Eight

‘watched’

I
t took a half hour to free the car, then another to get a
decent coffee and freshen up. When we finally pulled up outside the Longfellow
Gallery, the place was already open much to my relief, leaving me the best part
of the day afterwards to follow any subsequent leads that I managed to pick up
there.

I shook Moses’s hand and watched him
drive off into the distance slowly, then turned my attentions to the impressive
angular building before me, its glazed frontage reflecting the tangerine glow
of the rising Minnesotan sun.

I walked up the massive marble steps one
by one feeling weary, then passed through revolving doors into a huge
high-ceilinged lobby filled with an array of Romanesque statues, contemporary
sculptures and bird-like mobiles, suspended like futuristic pterodactyls in the
air.

I scanned my surroundings getting my
bearings like some brainless tourist then continued to the reception area where
a pensive looking girl in a pencil skirt and even tighter smile greeted me from
behind the desk.

‘I’m looking for the curator or the
director here, or whatever you call him…Walter Finch?’

‘Is he expecting you, sir?’ the assistant
said robotically, looking down at some administrative book as if she were
looking for a name.

‘Walter is a friend of a friend of mine
back in England. Hopefully he’ll be aware that I’m coming,’ I said brightly,
trying to gain more of her attention.    

She tweaked a perfunctory smile, turned
and pressed a button on her phone. I sighed and waited for Walter to come
online, beginning to feel annoyed at her prickliness.

‘Yea…’ I could hear a laconic voice
answer on the other end of the phone.

‘There is a mister...’

‘Blake,’ I said alternating from heel to
toe, anxious to get on with the task at hand.

‘A Mr Blake to see you, sir, from
England. Are you expecting him?’ she said, glancing up stern-faced.

‘Who?’ Finch said.

‘There’s a man here, who says he...’

I leant over the desk at the limit of my
patience and pressed the speaker button so that he could hear me.

‘It’s the guy from England, trying to
find Olivia. Henry hopefully told you I was coming over, or someone did. We
need to talk...’

‘Err right, okay...come on up,’ he said,
sounding surprised.

I left the receptionist to her look of
disgust then wandered up the three winding flights of chrome and glass steps to
the offices, where I quickly found a door with Finch’s name on it. I knocked once
and entered, then pulled up a fancy purple chair opposite and took him in.

The guy before me was tall, bald and
bespectacled and looked seriously academic, the sort that drove a practical,
no-thrills car and had a practical no-thrills wife. He extended a limp hand and
smiled politely, his features tinged with a tangible anxiety. I reciprocated
the smile and tried to make it look genuine.    

‘Nice to make your acquaintance, Mr
Blake. Henry did ring to say that someone else was going to make an appearance,
but I plain forgot. I’m sorry. It’s just a little hectic around here at the
moment as we’re changing exhibitions, and it does tend to be all consuming. How
can I help?’ he said forcing another uncomfortable smile.

I looked him straight in the eye.

‘Well, have you had any contact?’

‘From Olivia?’

‘Yes...’ I said trying to suppress my air
of exasperation.

‘No, not since she vanished five or six
weeks ago, along with Ethan.’

‘And, who is this boy?’ I asked, playing
ignorant so that I could get Walter’s personal take on the situation.

‘He’s my nephew I’m ashamed to say. He
used to work in the cafe downstairs. They were here around the same time. She
got involved with him romantically I believe, then disappeared together a month
or so later.’ 

‘Do you have his address?’

‘Errr...maybe...’

He swivelled around in his chair and
tapped some keys on his computer. A few seconds later a printer whirred
somewhere in the corner.

‘And what about your sister? Have you
spoken to her recently?’ I pressed, feeling like I was wading through mud. ‘Has
she had any contact with either of them? Olivia was staying at her place,
right?’

‘I spoke to Chrissie around two or three
weeks ago. She said that she hadn’t heard from the girl, and would call if
there was any news.’

‘Can I give her a ring?’

‘Sure. You can go around to her house if
you like too. It’s just five minutes’ drive away over in Cooper.’

I felt like Finch was keen to get me out
of his office, that I unsettled him somehow. Maybe I looked too much like his
nephew and that ‘sort’. Maybe he was threatened by it. After all, he was that
beige-sort-of-guy, the safe sort who probably liked to have his life organized
into neat little boxes, though the abstract painting behind him made me think
that he had another side. The image appeared to resemble some frantic sexual
liaison, that didn’t appear wholly consensual…

Finch got up and walked over to the
printer, pulled out the resulting page and scribbled some addresses and numbers
on it.

‘Is there anything else?’ he said, his hand
shaking as he handed it over.

‘Yea, can you tell me how Olivia was just
before she left? Did she look angry, distressed, worried about anything?’

‘No, in truth, the reverse really. She
was enjoying her time here and was quite enthusiastic until she started hanging
out with Ethan and his cronies. In fact, he was a bad distraction all round in
my eyes I’m ashamed to say. You know, time-keeping, little errands forgotten
about. I was just about to have a word with her when they both disappeared.’

‘And what about Ethan? What do you know
about his habits?’

Walter drew a sharp breath and looked at
me over his glasses.

‘He hangs out with the gutter-punk crowd
who live over in Seward. You know, those eco-hippy types that want something
for nothing, yet keep telling us how to live our lives. I did him a favour
getting the café job because he’s family, not that he ever appreciated it...’

‘Right.’

Walter had a problem with kids who
rebelled, like he hadn’t probably. His attitude surprised me for someone of an
artistic background, but then again life was jam-packed with those sort of
ironies.

‘They blow in, blow out, feed off us all,
while we’re busting our asses earning a buck and paying our taxes,’ he
continued sharply. ‘Both of them are in with the wrong crowd, Mister Blake,
that’s what I think. They’re probably drugged up to the eyeballs as we speak,
bombed out in some back-street squat, moaning about those of us who have to
work for a living. Unwashed bums the lot of them.’

Walter’s outburst seemed at odds with his
passive air. The guy had serious issues, that much was clear. There was a
deep-rooted anger bubbling away somewhere inside of him that was all bottled
up. I’d seen it a thousand times with that supposedly liberal sort. Beneath
their manufactured smiles there was a whole lot of rage and regret that just
wanted to come pouring out at the slightest provocation. He probably had a wife
at home whom he just dreaded returning to every day…

‘I’ve got the picture...’ I said, tiring
of him.

I stood up satisfied that I’d got
something to work on, eager to leave his office and get on with the search.

‘And your sister might be in now if I go
around there?’

‘Perhaps. Though she’s pretty elusive at
the moment. She’s got a part-time job at the hospital and sometimes her shifts
change. She might be able to give you more on the girl than I can though, on
both of them in fact. Her and Ethan are closer than he and I. Henry went around
there too, when he came over a few weekends back, but she wasn’t around. And I
haven’t spoken to her for a good fortnight or so, as I say.’

Walter sighed heavily. 

‘I hope you find the girl soon, Mr Blake,
for her father’s sake. He’s a good man, Henry. Let us know when she surfaces,
please…’

He shook my extended hand vigorously;
relieved a little bit too much that I was going. I said my thanks and headed
back down to the main lobby, then decided to take a detour to the gallery café
to see if I could dig up anything on Ethan from some of his former work
colleagues.

As I approached, a plump girl with
generous eyes looked up from the table she was wiping and smiled warmly.

‘Hey...’ she said extending me that
genial Minnesotan welcome.

‘How you doing?’

‘You from Britain?’

‘Sure am.’

‘Kool. Like the gallery?’

‘Scintillating. Look, the name’s Blake,
I’m trying to find…’

‘Olivia?’ she said chirpily.

‘Have you heard anything?’

‘No, not since she left. All that I know
was that she was enjoying herself at the gallery, but Ethan wanted her to go on
some sort of road trip with him. He can be pretty persuasive.’

‘Okay…and have you heard from either of
them since?’

‘Na, he’s pretty elusive and I haven’t
got his number ‘cus we’re not that tight. Hey, can I get you a coffee? It’s on
the house, cus you’re a Brit and you’re cute.’

I forced a smile and threw some more
questions her way as she worked the noisy machine, then discovered quickly that
that was all she did know.

I drank my coffee in silence, staring out
of the massive floor to ceiling windows, at several metalwork tipis erected on
the grass outside, celebrating the region’s Sioux and Ojibwa heritage. It was
looking more and more likely that Olivia had just absconded, that she was
simply trying to find some happiness after all the tragedy in her life whilst
enjoying a bit of teenage romance, as I’d initially thought.

I took in the skyscrapers in the distance
thinking how Laura would have loved to explore the city, then headed back out
onto the steps where I stopped halfway down to breathe some of the sharp spring
air into my lungs.

Henry was a worrier, perhaps had been
over-zealous with his parenting and that had driven Olivia away, but the girl
could just as easily be a spoilt brat too, who needed to take a fall in order
to appreciate what was good in her life.

Maybe I was just there to pick up the
pieces, like so many of the other teenage disappearance cases I’d worked on.
Maybe she just needed to stretch her wings for a bit, then have them clipped a
little?

Even if she had hooked up with the wrong
crowd too, it was more than likely that she would be unharmed and in good
health when I found her. The odds were still stacked in my favour. I could talk
her around into returning so Lenny and I could pick up the full thirty clicks
or whatever it was from Deacon.

At the very least I could take a
photograph, or get her to speak on the phone to prove that she was still alive,
so Lenny could get the first ten. It was a promising situation whatever way you
looked at it. The assignment had gotten me out of the holiday park, my
moroseness, and given me a better perspective on everything, if nothing else.
All I needed was the first decent lead to join the dots and I could wrap things
up in perhaps a couple of days.

I wandered over to some rainbow-coloured
taxis parked in the bays directly opposite the gallery still deep in thought.
As I opened the door on the first in the line, I noticed a white Oldsmobile
parked on the other side with a guy sat in the front seat reading a newspaper,
trying to look as if he was waiting for somebody. Something told me he wasn’t
waiting on his cousin Billy to do the tour around the new exhibition...

I carried on as if unaware and gave the
driver his instructions as I climbed in the back. As we pulled out and melted into
the morning traffic I saw the Oldsmobile edge out discreetly in the side-view
mirror, then tail us a few cars back, confirming my suspicions. I tensed,
feeling that poisonous spider get a little closer again…

The search for Olivia Deacon had taken a sinister
turn suddenly, just as all the pieces of the case looked to be fitting snugly
together. It was always the damned same with the jobs Lenny gave me...

I cracked a bemused smile and wondered
just how easy the case was going to be now, now there could be other darker
elements involved, then reflected on how much time I actually had to find the
banker’s daughter safe and well, before someone else did. Someone perhaps, with
the worst of intentions...