Find Me (19 page)

Ray Adler poured hot coffee into her cup, then set a carton of milk on the table alongside a five-pound bag of sugar with another silver spoon sticking out of the tear in the top. “Now the last time Peyton came through, he was heading the other way, back to the West Coast, and it was ten years later. He had two college degrees and he was working on a third. That was a predictable outcome. Peyton was one smart kid.”

Mallory drank her coffee black and listened to the story of Ray’s father catching the young thief in the act of stealing engine parts by dead of night. This might have been her own story, but Lou Markowitz had caught her robbing a Jaguar when she was a child-a more precocious thief than Peyton Hale.

“My father didn’t t u rn him in,” said Ray. “Dad didn’t w ant to mess up a kid’s whole life for thirty dollars’ worth of parts. So he made Peyton work for what he stole. Well, it was like going back to school for my dad-and me, too. That boy could make a busted carburetor rise again from the dead and bark at the moon. In other words-the boy had a way with cars. All that summer, old junkers rolled into the garage, and they rolled out again the next best thing to new. It was magic. Our local trade doubled, and we even pulled in folks from Missouri. That’s when Peyton got Dad going on the autobody work, prefabs, real strange modifications. That got us business from four states. These days, I build race cars, too. I get work from as far away as Oregon. Oh, your father was so smart. The back seat of his car was just chock full of old paperbacks, real thick ones. Instead of a salary, Dad gave him a cut on the trade that summer. So when Peyton got back on the road again, he had a stake.”

“And he went back to school.”

“Yeah, he did. But he’d come back here every summer, work some to make his tuition, then drive on to California and back. Last time through, he was writing a history of Route 66. He wanted to get it all down on paper before it disappeared. But it was more than history. He was building a whole new philosophy around the car. Philosophy, that was his major in school. Odd thing is-it suited him. If you’d only known him, you’d see that clear as I do.”

Ray left the room for a minute or two and returned with a wooden box.

“These are things that got left behind on his last road trip.” He opened it with a key and a trace of reverence, as if it contained religious artifacts. Gently he picked up a photograph. “This is him and your mother. Yo u look just like Cass. That could be you standing there. But I don’t know the lady on his other arm.”

Mallory did.

Savannah Sirus’s young face was turned toward Peyton Hale who, like her mother, Cassandra, was smiling for the camera. Was this a picture of a crime in progress, maybe taken on the day when Savannah began to lay her plans?

The two men wore
more casual clothing this morning. Of course, Charles Butler’s b lue jeans and denim shirt were matched by the same dye lot, custom-tailored and more costly than the entire contents of the detective’s closet back home. However, Riker felt great affection and loyalty for his own flannel shirt and authentically faded jeans that fit in all the right places. Years of wear had made them baggy and threadbare at the knees- good driving jeans. He was at the wheel and on the way to the sheriff’s office as they rehashed last night’s conversation. “No, I’ve got no idea what her father’s name is. I never thought of anyone but Lou Marko-witz as her dad. You think Mallory’s hunting her real father down for payback?”

“Payback,” said Charles. “For what? Think about it. She’s only now looking for this absentee father? I’d let go of the vengeance idea.”

Riker knew that Mallory had been born out of wedlock, and now he could lay the blame for that on Savannah, the other woman. Charles was probably right. In all likelihood, father and daughter had never met by reason of mutual disinterest. Yet he still worked on a revenge theory. “Let’s say Cassandra was pregnant with Mallory when this guy took off and abandoned her. You don’t t hink that would piss the kid off?”

“Without knowing the circumstances, I couldn’t s ay. Now what about this FBI agent, Dale Berman? What exactly did
he
do to Mallory?”

“Oh,
Dale
doesn’t e ven know.” There were a hell of a lot of cops who could enlighten the man, but they no longer spoke to Special Agent Berman.

“It wouldn’t be a small thing,” said Charles, “not if you think Mallory still carries a grudge.”

“Are you kidding me?” Riker rolled to a stop and cut the engine a block away from the sheriff ’s o ffice. “Did you ever hear her call Lou Markowitz by his first name? No, you never did. In her kiddy days, she called him Hey Cop. Years later, after she’d warmed up to Lou, his name was Hey Markowitz. She loved that old man, I know she did. But right up to the end, the kid was still packing grudges from her days as a runt street thief. Lou was always the cop who caught her. She
never
forgets,
never
forgives.”

“But surely Dale Berman factors into-”

Riker waved off any further discussion of the FBI man’s o ffenses. This was a subject that always made him sad. He restarted the car and glanced at the dashboard clock as he eased back on the road. “Mallory should be in Oklahoma by now.”

“You mean Kansas. That’s the next state on Route 66.”

“The Kansas segment is real small,” said Riker. “You blink, you miss it.” When he finally chased Mallory down, he would have to deal with payback for his own black mark in her personal account books. It would only have taken her six seconds to make a connection between himself and the Chicago LoJack tracker. She would vote him the cop most likely to activate her antitheft device and spy on her. And this time her paranoia would nicely mesh with reality. Only one telling question remained: Did she know Savannah Sirus was dead?

He had to see her eyes when he gave her the news.

And now he thought of another question. He did not want to pry into this personal area, but he had no choice. Everything that might contribute to Mallory’s c u rrent malady was also the detective’s personal business. “Hey, Charles? Is the kid holding a grudge against
you
?”

“No, why would she?” The man faced the windshield not wanting to meet his friend’s eyes, and he wore the slight blush of a lie-a small one, most likely a lie of omission. Poor Charles had a give-away face that could not hide a falsehood or a good hand in a game of cards.

The Mercedes slowed to a crawl when the sheriff ‘s o ffice was in sight. Riker was not willing to end this conversation just yet. “I’m guessing you two had a fight. Mallory holes up in her apartment for months, and you go off to Europe. What am I supposed to think? So what happened?”

“I asked her to marry me.” Charles pointed to the windshield. “Oh, look. A reception committee.”

Startled, Riker almost hit a deputy as he turned the wheel to enter the municipal lot. Another man in uniform flagged down the Mercedes and waved them into a parking space.

Charles rolled down the passenger window and asked, “We’re not late, are we?”

“No, sir,” said the deputy. “Things just got off to an early start. The FBI agents didn’t w ant to wait.” He ushered them inside the building and down the hall to a small conference room and a meeting in progress.

Sheriff Banner made the introductions, gesturing first to the old man. “You’ve met Dr. Magritte.” He turned to face two strangers on the other side of the room. “But not these folks.”

Riker had expected to see a young couple from the caravan, the two people he had picked out for embedded FBI moles, but these were new faces. He ignored the younger agent, who had just started shaving last week, and he stared at the woman.

No one would call her pretty, but she was appealing. He would guess her age at forty by the strands of silver mixed in with the brown, but the short haircut gave her a youthful tomboy look. And a man could get lost in those tranquil gray eyes. The sun had popped out a few freckles on her nose, and she had a slight overbite; these were Riker’s o t her favorite qualities in a woman. The lady was dressed from a catalogue for campers. There was even a Swiss Army knife clipped to her belt. Riker wondered where she carried her gun; it was that well hidden.

The light-haired man beside her was attired from the same mail-order box, but he was much younger, a recent graduate of the FBI academy with the requisite well-scrubbed, earnest face-no wrinkles, no experience.

“Agents Christine Nahlman and Barry Allen,” said the sheriff. “They’ll be traveling undercover with the caravan. Dr. Magritte’s cooperating with the FBI.”

“So that makes four of you,” said Riker, nodding to the woman. In this count, he was including the two campers he believed to be FBI moles. Agent Nahlman’s s ilence was slightly frosty, neatly confirming this theory.

“This is for you.” Sheriff Banner reached across the conference table to hand a folded paper to Riker. “It’s a message from their boss, the agent in charge. He called this morning to make their arrangements.”

Riker opened the sheet of paper and read Dale Berman’s s imple question, “What’s eating Mallory?” This was followed by the FBI man’s c o veted cell-phone number, one that even Dale’s wife would not have.

The detective waved this note as he faced the two federal agents. “So you guys met my partner? Detective Mallory?”

Oh, yes, they had-no doubt about it. And, in the strained exchange of glances between them, he could see that theirs had not been a happy experience. Riker smiled. “The kid makes a hell of a first impression, doesn’t she?” And by that, he meant permanent damage. “So how’s old Dale? Haven’t seen the guy in a while. No recent bullet holes, no broken bones?”

“She kicked him in the balls.” Agent Barry Allen’s voice had a trace of awe.

“That’s my baby.” Riker said this with pride-and relief. Dale Berman’s punishment could have been so much worse.

After looking over the FBI-approved route map, he listened to their plans to make Oklahoma by nightfall and agreed that it was doable on the interstate, where they could get up some speed. Then he sided with Dr. Magritte after hearing the old man’s c o ncerns about the proposed hotel.

“The doc’s right. They should camp on this private land.” Riker held up the map marked with a prearranged site. “It’s isolated, easier to keep all the sheep together. Yo u don’t w anna move these people indoors tonight, not even if it rains. No walls between them and you.”

Nahlman, the older, seasoned field agent, was nodding in agreement, but her younger partner asked, “Why?”

“Well,” said Riker, always patient with kids, “you wanna be able to hear the screams.”

“Your dad only stayed
two weeks that last visit,” said Ray Adler. “Just time enough to rebuild the wrecked Porsche.”

Mallory was hardly listening anymore. She stared at the photograph of her father, taken when he was her own age. His blond hair was tied back, and his smile was slightly crooked and winning. “Handsome and wild,” her mother once said on that rare occasion when she was willing to talk about him with her six-year-old daughter. The photograph had one other detail, a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles tucked into the breast pocket of his shirt. “He wore glasses.”

“Well, he
owned
glasses.” Ray laid down an earlier photograph of himself and Peyton Hale as teenage boys. “Your dad’s only sixteen in this one.

See the eyeglasses in his pocket? Never once caught him wearing them. Men can be as vain as women-sometimes more so.”

Ray wore his own spectacles as he sorted through the papers in the box. “Your dad wrote me from time to time. Always got a Christmas card. After he came through that last time, I got a few postcards from the road, then nothing.” Sitting well back in his chair, he pushed his glasses to the top of his head. “Nothing in all this time.” Ray heaved a sigh, then looked down at the floor for a moment of silence. “I love Peyton Hale. And I wouldn’t say that about another man in this world.” He turned his sad eyes to Mallory. “If you meet your father on the road, you give him my regards. If he’s dead, then lie to me. I don’t e ver want to hear that.”

He pushed the box toward her. “That’s all yours now. Old notebooks, more pictures and such. You might want some quiet time to look it over.” He rose from the table. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta check on my crew. I’ve got them working on a roll bar for that car of yours.”

“I don’t
want
a roll bar.”

“But you’re gonna get one. If you flip that thing, you’ll die.”

Having already seen a gravestone with her name on it, Mallory did not offer further protest. When Ray had quit the house, she opened one of Peyton Hale’s notebooks and read the opening lines.
“In the beginning, there was the wheel. Then along came the fire of the internal combustion engine. The car was born. And away we go. It’s a romance that has no end.”

Next she picked up the photograph of her parents posed with Savannah Sirus. After ripping the latter-the interloper-from the picture, Mallory dropped the torn piece into an ashtray and looked around for matches to burn it. Throwing Savannah into the garbage can was not enough. Only total destruction would do.

The two parents
from the caravan had arrived. They were excited and hopeful. Anticipation was everything to them. These two still abided in that fantasy world where little girls never died, where a lost child could still be found innocently wandering in the woods, perhaps a little dirty after all this time-years of time-but no worse for wear, no harm done-not dead, not murdered. The mother and father were looking into the corners of the room, leaning a bit to see around the long table and chairs. Charles Butler winced. They thought they were here to pick up their living daughter and take her home.

The Missouri sheriff held up a keychain fob in the shape of a horseshoe. The mother seized it, ripped it from the plastic bag and kissed it. And then the sheriff told her that the fob had been found with the remains of her child.