Find Me (14 page)

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.

Holding up her gold shield and police ID, she said, “My name is Mallory.”

She thought the man was going to cry.

“Oh, Christ.” His voice was hoarse. “Mallory? Well, if that ain’t enough to make you believe in signs and omens and God Almighty.” He only glanced at her police ID. Turning away from her, he held up one hand, beckoning her to follow him through a door to a private office, where he pointed to a chair. “Have a seat. I got a feeling this might take a while.”

Mallory settled into
an old armchair that was entirely too comfortable, not her idea of office décor. The rug of many colors had probably been braided early in the last century, and a telephone with extension buttons was all that she could date to modern times.

She had a shortlist of blunt questions and demands for the man seated behind the carved wooden desk, but this Missouri sheriff was part of a cop’s lifeline that extended from coast to coast. Instead of asking why he had run from the caravan parents, she said, “Tell me what you didn’t t e ll Magritte.”

“Probably nothing the old man didn’t already know,” said Sheriff Banner. “Eighteen months ago, we found the remains of a little kid, and she wasn’t o ne of ours. I figured that’s why all those folks turned out tonight.”

“How old was the girl?”

“Oh, she could’ve been tall for five or small for seven. Can’t be a hundred percent sure of the sex, either. Female was just the coroner’s best guess. So when the town picked a name for the gravestone, we wanted something that worked for a boy or a girl.”

“Then the body was decomposed.” She could not ask if it was buried or missing a hand. That would be like an invitation to a round of give-and-take. “You didn’t find it in plain sight.”

“Hell, no. She was buried and
way
past decomposed. Probably been in the ground for years. Never would’ve found her at all, but this old fart from California, he took it into his head to build himself a retirement house on Route 66. Said his best memories were on that old road. So a contractor’s crew found the body-the skeleton. Idiots. They didn’t have the sense to leave it be and call the cops. They brought what was left of that child into town in a sack-a sack of bones.”

“Anything unusual about the bones?”

“Nothing to tell us how she died-if that’s what you’re asking. When the bones were all laid out, we couldn’t account for one of her hands. My men were all over that construction site looking for it. Never did turn up.”

“Any chips on the wrist bones you had?”

It took a moment for the import to settle in, and he did not like this ugly picture she had planted in his mind. “No tool marks-it wasn’t chopped off. Could be predators got at the body before burial, but there were no teeth marks, either.”

Mallory preferred her own theory of a killer revisiting the grave after the child had gone to bones. “Did you ever ask the feds for help?”

“Bastards. They turned me down. Said she was probably a runaway. Did you know there’s ninety thousand runaway kids on the road in any given minute of a day? I guess they thought that little tidbit might be helpful, ’cause that’s all I ever got from them. Not their kind of case, they said. Then, about four months back, the feds went out to the cemetery and dug her up. Pissed
everybody
off. They wouldn’t t e ll us
nothin’.
I don’t t hink there’s more’n two or three people in this town that didn’t c hip in for the burial and the stone.” He slumped forward, as if the weight of this day had bowed his back. “I hope you can tell me something useful-before all those folks come knocking on my door tomorrow, maybe thinking that little girl was one of their own.”

That was not going to happen. There were rules about giving up details of another detective’s case, and this one belonged to Kronewald. However, this sheriff could catch a crumb or two if he was quick, and she thought he might be. “Did you ever get any flyers from other police departments-something similar?”

“Not really.” The man straightened his back a little. He had caught the drift of a serial killer in those words-and now they had a game. “Got a fax from Kansas awhile back. But that was about a teenager or a woman on the young side. And the Kansas victim was laid out in the middle of the road. No decomposition at all. One hand was missing. That was the only thing that matched up.” He sat back in his chair and waited for her to toss him another piece of an old puzzle. By all appearances, he was a patient man.

There was no point in asking if the Kansas police had found a child’s hand bones left in place of the missing adult hand; it was a detail that would have been withheld from the Missouri sheriff. And neither would Chicago Homicide want this known. “Did the fax mention anything odd left behind at the scene? Maybe the cops in Kansas had a few questions?”

“All I know is what I told you.” He waited her out for a few seconds, and now he nodded, understanding that no more information was coming his way. “Well, I expect you’ll be meeting up with the feds. There’s a whole pack of ’em about twenty miles down the road. If you talk to those bastards, I’d appreciate if you’d tell ’em we’d like to get the kid’s remains back for reburial… if they can’t find her own people. Whenever I ask, all I get are damn form letters.”

Mallory stared at the bulletin board on the wall behind the man’s desk. It was a jumble of paperwork, duty rosters, letters and posters. Dead center was the snapshot of a gravestone, a grand affair of carved filigree and angels, but no dates of birth or death. So many flowers, heaps of them covered the ground.

Curiosity renewed, the sheriff followed the track of her startled eyes to this photograph. “Oh God, you didn’t know.” Pushpins went flying as he ripped it from the corkboard, and an apology was in his voice when he said, “I thought you came on her account. I’m so sorry.” He handed her the photograph. “That’s the kid’s grave. We used that picture on the flyers. Like I said, we needed a name that would work as well for a boy or a girl. Now, that shot’s a little blurry. The line you can’t read-that one just says ‘Someone’s child.’ ”

But all the stone-carved text that she could make out was the largest lettering that spelled
Mallory
-just Mallory.

Near the southwest
edge of Illinois, Detective Riker ordered a late supper at the roadside diner where, earlier in the day, a severed hand had been found in the trunk of a car. Their waitress, Sally, was recounting Mallory’s skill in flipping burgers and how the young cop had helped her to take down all the posters of missing children.

“It was enough to break your heart,” she said, “all those little kids.”

Riker carried his coffee cup back to the booth, where his traveling companion was poring over the contents of Savannah Sirus’s handbag.

“Sorry,” said Charles Butler. “If you’re looking for some connection between a suicide and serial murderer, it’s not in this purse.”

“Naw, t hat would’ve been too easy.” Riker looked out the window at the local remains of Route 66. “But I know that suicide has something to do with Mallory being on this road. I don’t b e lieve in coincidence. She’s hunting. And there’s gotta be a connection to Kronewald’s case. You know what’s really got me worried? She drove her car right through another cop’s crime scene. Now that’s
rude.
”

“But hardly a solid connection.”

“Mallory lives for cases like this one. And it’s not like she’s got a life outside of the Job anymore.” Riker ducked his head in apology for raising a hurtful point.

Once, Kathy Mallory had been a regular fixture in Charles Butler’s life. This man had entered her small social orbit via the backdoor of friendship with Louis Markowitz. Lou, that crafty old man, had ruthlessly woven Charles into a safety net created for Mallory-so she would not be alone when he died. Lou had not been able to count on his foster child to make friends on her own. She would not know how.

But the introduction to Lou’s pretty daughter had come with a terrible cost. And sometimes Riker wondered if Charles’s one-sided love affair had also been part of the old man’s plan. No-call it faith-Lou’s cracked idea that Mallory could one day grow a human heart that could beat and love back.

He wanted to ask what she had done to drive this man away. Instead, Riker stared at the dead woman’s handbag on the table. “A woman dies in Mallory’s apartment, and the kid disappears the same day. At least there’s a solid connection there.”

“But you said it didn’t happen in that order. You told me that Mallory left town before-” And here Charles Butler faltered. He picked up Savannah’s round-trip airline ticket, proof of the woman’s b e lief in life after New York City. His expression abruptly changed to a gentleman’s equivalent of the
“Oh, shit”
response. “You think Mallory helped her over the edge? Yo u think she pushed this woman into suicidal ideation… and then left town,
knowing
what would happen? Did the gun belong to Savannah Sirus?”

This was not really a volley of questions; it was a mind-reading act. “Charles, sometimes you’re even stranger than Mallory.”

The empty store
that bordered the caravan’s c ampsite stood open, and the long line had dwindled to a few men and women holding toiletry kits and towels, waiting for their turn at the restroom inside. The owner’s s o n had been patient while the hat was passed. Paul Magritte counted the dollar bills, the tens and fives as he laid them in the teenager’s hand.

“Oh, yes,” the older man assured him, “we’ll leave the restroom spotless.” He was walking away from this transaction when he heard a familiar voice.

“Stop right there, old man.”

He turned around to see Mallory coming up behind him with a slow stalking gait. Where had she come from? Strange girl-so stealthy. None of the dogs had barked.

Her voice had changed, no rising notes; it was almost mechanical, and this was more unsettling than malice when she said, “You forgot to mention some critical details of your little road trip.”

She was no taller than he was, no more than five feet ten. When she had closed the distance between them, their reflections in the dark glass of the store window showed two people of equal height. And yet he had the unshakable feeling that he was looking up at her. The old man wondered how she worked this trick upon him. He watched two other people exiting the small building. In passing, these larger men also appeared to be looking upward when they glanced her way.