Bitter Root (18 page)

“Look, lady. I don’t really care who you are. These records aren’t
to leave this room. You ask for a specific date and John will bring you the
records. That’s how it works. Oh. You need to check your phone in at the desk.
No photographs are allowed. When you finish with one set of records, you can
request another. We close this office at four, so you are done at three
forty-five. Understand?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

She had been around her share of grumpy, uncooperative officials,
and she knew the best way to handle them was to be small and efficient. Operate
within their guidelines and perhaps, if she needed something extra, they would
oblige because she hadn’t been difficult. She could throw her power around if
she needed to, but found it better to work within the system.

She requested reports from June of 2007. John, the records clerk,
who was decidedly more cheerful than Mr. Information, was happy to bring her
the entire month’s reports. He was curious about her search and asked lots of
questions.

“So you’re looking for a runaway from Dulac? Heck, I’d guess
about half the kids born there run away. You ever been to Dulac? It’s not a
place people generally want to stay, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I’m looking for someone who ran away from there. A young
girl, maybe fourteen?”

“You got your work cut out for you, that’s for sure. I’ll bring
you the next month’s report. Don’t worry about Phil. He’s just a pain. If you
want, I’ll even run some parameters through my computer. You know? Narrow
things down a bit? It might help.”

“Oh, would you? That would be great. Thank you.”

“Sure. Write down the particulars and I’ll see what I come up
with.”

Griffith jotted down Adi’s age, ethnicity, and estimated
disappearance date. John took the slip and went back to his office while she
pored over the reports. So many young people had been reported missing it was
staggering. There were twice as many boys as girls, though, which helped. Her
eyes were beginning to blur with the effort when she finally closed the last
file. This wasn’t going to get easier. She needed a break. She took the files back
to the window and handed them to John.

“I’m going to stretch my legs. Can I bring you anything?”

“Well, that’s awfully nice, ma’am. I would love a Coke if you go
by the vending machines.”

“Which way would I find those?”

“Just go left out the door to the elevator and go to the
basement. The cafeteria and vending area is down there.”

“Will it be a problem for me to go down there?”

“Oh no. That’s all in the public area.”

“Great. I’ll be back shortly.”

She walked slowly down the corridor, enjoying the stretch in her
stiff legs. She hoped the computer search would turn up something useful. She
wondered how Adi’s day was going. Would she have trouble cooking with her knife
wound? She managed just fine yesterday.

She mentally ran through the list of possibles for Adi she had
written in her tablet. There were really only five likely candidates so far.
Two of them were strong possibilities, disappearing without a known companion.
One of the others was suspected to have gone to meet an Internet acquaintance.
That could be Adi, although the fact that she didn’t have any Internet presence
now made Griffith doubt it.

She reached the vending area and began feeding dollar bills into
the drink machine. She got a cola for John and a lemonade for herself. Drinks
in hand, she headed back to the records room. She walked to the window to hand
John his soda and he in turn handed her two files.

“These two are the most likely records to match your mystery girl
according to my computer. You were off on the date for one of them though. She
disappeared in March. Good luck, and thanks for the drink.”

“Thanks, John. I appreciate your help.”

She took the files to her table and opened the first one. The
picture of the girl was blurry, but she could be Adi. Same facial structure,
right age. Tall.

She read through the file. This girl, Kendrick Baptiste, had left
her home on the night of June twelfth. She had been in and out of trouble,
apparently, and didn’t care for her parents’ brand of punishment. The report
stated that police had been called to the home on two prior occasions. Once for
truancy and once after a teacher reported suspected abuse. The father had been
arrested in the second instance but released when no charges were filed.

Griffith recorded the pertinent information on her tablet. She
would check out the Baptiste family. Maybe discover something to solidify
whether this might be Adi.

The next file was from March of 2007. A fourteen-year-old girl
named Merley Nerbass had disappeared without explanation. Her parents had reported
her missing and were reported as being distraught over her disappearance. Foul
play was suspected, and the parents had been interviewed extensively, but there
had been no leads on her disappearance.

Griffith flipped to the last page of the report and there was a
picture. It could also be Adi. She was younger, softer. If it was her, she had
changed a good deal in eight years. She wondered why Merley had run. Nothing in
the file led her to believe there was abuse at home. No records of police
visits. No arrests. Yet, the police had suspected something anyway. The last
known address of the parents was listed, and Griffith noted it.

She closed the files and returned them to the window. “Thanks
again. You made this a lot easier.”

“No problem.”

Griffith pushed through the door and out into the corridor. She
contemplated which family she should check out first. The Baptiste family held
more promise, the daughter having trouble at home and not wanting to be there.
The other family, the Nerbasses, sounded more like a child abduction or
something of that nature. Showing up on these people’s doorsteps to ask about
their missing kids was problematic, though. She had to come up with some way of
getting the information without directly asking about the girls. That way, if
she found Adi’s family and the perceived danger originated there, she wouldn’t
lead them back to Adi. She’d promised Adi she’d be careful, and although Adi
didn’t know about this part of what she was doing, it didn’t make that promise
any less relevant.

She would use the extremely high rate of runaways as a starting
point for a cover. When she approached the families, it would be to hear how
losing their child affected them emotionally and economically. She could
explore the possibility that the recessed economy was a contributing factor to
the runaway issue, and the effect such an event had on the most vulnerable
families.

She headed south on state Highway Fifty-seven. The rural highway
was sparsely traveled. Most of the buildings she encountered were metal frame
buildings housing oil and gas enterprises. She did pass a couple of
restaurants, but none that encouraged her to stop.

She noticed suddenly that water was now on both sides of the
highway. She slowed to a stop. That wasn’t right. Dulac was just before the
waters of Lake Quittman and Bayou Dulac converged. She looked at her GPS and
realized she had driven right through the small town. She turned her car around
and slowly backtracked.

Apparently, Dulac was really more of a postal code than a town.
Her GPS assured her she had reached her destination, but there wasn’t really
any way of knowing you were there. She pulled to the side of the highway and
reached for her tablet. She punched the address of the Baptiste family into her
maps app and the computerized voice directed her to the small house on piers.

The cedar-sided house was elevated about ten feet off the ground.
She pulled into the driveway and parked. She looked up at the house, wondering
if she was making a mistake appearing unannounced. She opened her door and
started up the wide staircase.

“That’s far enough, lady. What you want here?”

Griffith couldn’t see where the voice was coming from. She smiled
and called, “Hello. I’m here researching a story. My name is Griffith McNaulty.
I’m a freelance journalist.”

“A reporter, huh? What story are you here about?”

“I’m writing a story about the high number of runaways in this
area. May I come up?”

“Well, sure, come on.”

Griffith climbed the remaining steps to a wide wooden deck. She
could feel the salt in the air that blew steadily from the Gulf. The woman who
had spoken to her was waiting at the door of the house. She appeared to be in
her fifties, dressed in a light cotton housecoat and slippers. She had her hair
wrapped in curlers and an unlit cigarette hanging from her overly rouged lips.

“Hi, Mrs.?”

“I’m Mabel. Mabel Baptiste. Come in out of the sun.”

Griffith entered the darkened house. She was hit with the smell
of stale cigarette smoke and musty furniture. She waited while her eyes
adjusted to the light.

“Mrs. Baptiste, thanks for being willing to talk to me.”

“It’s Mabel. Here, let’s sit.” She pointed to the scruffy sofa.

Griffith walked to the hard wooden dining set and pulled out a
chair. “Is this okay? I have a bad back, and I have to sit on hard chairs.”

“Heck, I know just what you mean, dear. Want something to drink?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“So you say you’re writing about runaways? What’s that got to do
with me?”

“I’m exploring how families cope with the long-term effects of
losing a child. I understand you have a daughter who ran away in her teens.”

“Kendrick? Oh Lord, you’re digging up really old news there.”

“I’m sorry if I’m opening old wounds, but when she ran away, and
you reported her missing, what did you feel? How did you manage the anguish of
not knowing where she was?”

“Anguish? Nah, you got that wrong. I wasn’t worried. I mean,
sure, she ran away, but I knew where she’d gone. Ran right to the scumbag she’s
with now. She wasn’t even gone from home more than three weeks. I turned her in
to the cops so they’d scare her into staying home. I knew she’d turn up, just
like a bad penny.”

“I guess I was given the wrong information. I understood she was
still missing.”

“No, no way. She was freeloading here till last March.”

“Oh, I see. So she wouldn’t really fit into my story.”

“What? Aw, come on now, I’m sure I can think up something that
would be a good story. Lemme just think a minute.”

“Oh no, really, that’s okay. I need to talk with parents who
haven’t recovered their children.”

“Well, couldn’t you use Kendra as, like, I don’t know…the happy
ending, kind of?”

“I don’t know about that…”

“Really, I mean, sometimes kids run away and come on back home. I
think that’s important to show, you know? Come on, please?”

“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to hear your story. So tell me about
when Kendra ran away.”

Mabel’s eyes lit up and she railed about her wayward daughter and
the fights they’d had.

“Really, I mean, what was I supposed to do? Her daddy sure wasn’t
interested in helping keep a handle on her. So I grounded her. No way did I
think she should be running off to see a twenty-year-old man when she was just
coming up to fourteen. That just wasn’t right. Didn’t do me no good, though.
She waited till I had to work a double down at the diner, and she packed up and
left. I was madder than a nest of hornets when I found her gone. I called up
the sheriff right away to hunt her down. She never let me forget that.”

“I’m sure it must have been a trying time. Did the sheriff locate
her or did she just return home?”

“Ha. That sheriff was just about as useful as a case of ringworm.
No, he didn’t help at all. I finally got tired of her running wild and went
after her. She came home, but the sour grapes. Ugh. Anyway, that’s all I can
say about it.”

“Well, thank you for your time, Mabel. And thanks for sharing
your story with me.”

“You going to send me a copy of your story when you get it
published?”

“It will probably be in an online journal. I can send you a
link.”

“Well, shoot. That isn’t going to work. I don’t have a computer.”
She looked thoughtful. “Are you going to talk to any other folks around here?
Some of them has computers and might let me take a peek.”

“Yes, actually. I was going to talk to the Nerbass family next.”

Mabel’s entire body stiffened and she squinted suspiciously at
Griffith.

“Nerbass? You mean J.B. Nerbass?”

“Yes, John Bertram and Eloise. I understand their daughter ran
away.”

The tension amped up in the room. Mabel grabbed Griffith by the
elbow and propelled her to the door.

“I never did talk to you, you hear me, lady? You were never here.
I swear on the Bible, I never laid eyes upon you. Now you get on out of here.”

“What is it? What did I do?”

“You just get on out of here. And don’t you be talking to no one
else, if you know what’s good for you. Just get back in your shiny car and
get.”

Griffith was stunned by the vehemence in Mabel’s voice and
puzzled as to what she had said. She complied with the request and drove out of
sight before pulling over to assess the situation. Something she had said had
turned an attention seeking woman into a closemouthed, hostile person. Who
exactly was John Bertram Nerbass, and why did his name inspire fear?

She considered her next move carefully. Her plan had been to do
much the same as she had done with Mabel. Enter the Nerbass address into her
maps app and show up at their door. Now she wasn’t sure that was a good idea.
She drove up the highway a little farther and found a small diner. She would
call them first, get an idea of how she would be received. She could always
come back on another day.

She ordered a shrimp po’boy and an iced tea. Armed with her
search engine, she looked for a contact number for the Nerbasses. The number of
pages that came up with the J.B. Nerbass search surprised her. She’d expected
it to be hard to find anything about the family, but clearly, the name J.B.
Nerbass held some clout. She randomly clicked a link. It opened to a picture of
Mr. Nerbass with a state senator at a black-tie function. She read the text.