SK01 - Waist Deep (5 page)

8

He told me everything, but it wasn’t until he pulled out a picture of his little girl that I understood.

It was a glamour shot.
One of those pictures with soft, distilled light designed to make its subject look like a model.
Only I realized immediately that this girl didn’t need soft lights or a camera to make her beautiful.

The photo showed her from mid-thigh up.
She wore a pair of jeans that hugged her hips but
dipped low in front, exposing
her
flat stomach
.
The white blouse she wore had small ruffles along the button strip.
One hand rested on her hip and the other hung casually at her side.
Her breasts jutted out and she was artificially arching her back.

All of that might have been comical or some girl play-acting, if it hadn’t been for her face.
She wore a sultry look borrowed from the video cover of a thousand porn movies.
Her lips, painted a glossy red, were parted as if she had just been surprised by a moment of sexual pleasure and liked it.
Her eyes bore
into the camera, daring you to stare at her and not feel a pull from your loins.

“That’s my Kris,” Matt said.
“Goddamn heartbreaker.”

Heartbreaker?
More like a siren.

Jesus, didn’t he have a school picture he could show me?
A girl in braids or wearing braces or maybe even a nice sweatshirt with a cartoon character on the front?

“Why’d she run away?” I asked, but I knew the answer.
A girl like that can’t live with limits.
She would be the first girl in her class to develop breasts and get her period and those things would be commonplace to her while her peers were still sorting out the mystery of them.
She would stop being nervous around boys well before high school because she would discover early on what kind of power she could exert over them.

But I didn’t think Matt knew those things.
Or maybe he chose to ignore them.
Either way, he answered my question with a shrug and a look of heartfelt confusion.

“I wish I knew,” he said.
“I’ve beat myself up over it ever since it happened.
But I can’t figure it out.
I just don’t know.”

“Any discipline problems?”

He gave another shrug.
“A little.
Small stuff, really.
Curfew issues.
What she could and couldn’t wear.
Things like that.”

“Boyfriend?”

Matt shook his head.
“Nothing steady, as far as I know.
She was a pretty girl and a lot of boys called, but I think she got bored with them pretty quickly.”

I sat still and said nothing.
Maybe he was right.

Matt didn’t let the silence lie.
“You think it was a boyfriend?”

It was my turn to shrug.
“I don’t know.
I’m just asking questions.”

“But you think that might be a lead?”

“It’s something to look at,” I said.
“Girls her age who look like she does don’t usually date boys their own age.
They tend to gravitate toward the older ones.”

“Like freshmen dating the seniors?”

“Like that.
Only…”
I hesitated.

“Only what?”

How could I tell him that his
sixteen
-
year
-
old daughter could probably get into a club without being carded?
That she could wear something tight and hand the doorman a book of matches and he wouldn’t look at it, just hand it back to her with a dopey grin while he stared at her chest
.

I cleared my throat and decided to test the waters.
“She could probably pass for older than high school.”

Surprise widened his eyes.
“Really?”

It was crazy that he couldn’t see it, but I’ve come across parents who were even more blind than Matt seemed to be.
So I nodded.
“Yeah.
She could probably tell someone who didn’t know her that she was in college and he’d believe her.
And if she were a college age girl, she could date—“

“Are you sure it’s not just the picture?” Matt interrupted.
“Because you know they dress these things up.
It’s a model photo.”

“I know.
But even so—“

“She doesn’t look like this in person.”

Not around you, I thought.

“She looks younger,” he insisted.

“Okay,” I said.
“But the fact is that she can look like this with a little work.
So it’s possible.
A lot of things are possible.”

Matt let out a quavering breath and looked at me.
“This is why I need your help,” he told me.
“I never would’ve thought of things like this.”

“The police—“

Matt let out a barking laugh, short and explosive, and leaned back in his chair.
“She’s been gone almost two weeks and they haven’t done anything.
And from what you’re telling me, they won’t do anything unless they stumble across her.”

“She may just come home on her own,” I suggested.

Matt shook his head.
“I can’t
wait for that.
If something’s happened to her—“

He broke off and looked down at the floor.
When he raised his eyes again, they were filled with tears.
I clenched my jaw.

“Will you help me, Stef?”

“Matt—“

“
Look,
I know you’re not a cop anymore, but you were.
You know the system.
And you’re smart.
Hell, I knew that back in high school.”

If I’m so goddamn smart, I thought, why am I sitting here wishing I was drinking beer instead of cold coffee?

“Why don’t you hire a private investigator?”

“I want someone I can trust.”

I started to argue, but I knew what he meant.
He meant trust with her.
“I don’t have a P.I. license.
I can’t just—“

“You don’t need one,” Matt interrupted me again.
“I looked it up on the Internet last night.
The only time you need a license in Washington State is if you advertise or represent yourself as a private investigator.
But you can look into this as a private party.”

I shook my head.
“Matt, even that aside, I can’t afford it.
I’m on a fixed income.”

He was nodding as I spoke.
“Not a problem.
I’ve got money.
I was saving it for a vacation, but this is more important.”

“Matt—“

“Name your price.”

“I can’t take your vacation money.”

“You can’t do it for free.”

“I can’t do it all,” I told him.
“I’m all banged up, Matt.”

“Really?”
He leaned back and gave me a look of appraisal.
“
But you were
okay enough to get into that scrap at the rink last night?
”

Screw you!
was my first thought but I stopped the words, kept them inside and sat still for a long moment.
I watched Matt and he watched me.

When I was a cop, I must’ve done hundreds of interviews.
I talked to victims, witnesses, suspects, attorneys, other cops, my bosses, you name it.
I talked to people of all levels of social standing.
Men and women.
Guilty and innocent.
Black, white and brown.
Gays and straights.
Honest folks and absolute liars.
And as different as everyone wants to believe all those people are, what I discovered is that they were all pretty much the same.

And that old cliché about the eyes being the windows to the soul?
It’s true.
They are.
All the pain, all the anger, all the love or all the emptiness inside a person spills out through those two mysterious orbs.
People naturally know it and look for it.
Police officers know it and read it better than most people.
When I was on the job, I could read it better than most cops.

But not one hundred percent, huh?
a nasty voice from inside my head reminded me.
Not even close, hero.

I ignored the voice and kept my eyes at Matt.
The truth was in his eyes.
I saw the pain.
I saw fear holding on by a thread before slipping into panic.

I wondered what Matt saw in my eyes.

The words that tumbled o
ut of my mouth surprised me.
I knew I would
probably
regret them.
“Okay, Matt.
I’ll help.
I’ll do what I can.”

Relief washed over his face and filled his eyes.
“Thank you,” he said softly.

The tears that had welled up in his eyes now fell.
I knew that they were born of gratitude, but to me their shimmer seemed more like an accusation.

9

After meeting with Matt, I really wanted to walk, but my knee wasn’t going to cooperate.
After a little more than a block, the sharp pain kicked in, punctuated with a throb every few seconds.
My walk became a limp and my limp became more pronounced the farther I walked.

I slowed down to a
pace
that most senior citizens would’ve considered a shuffle and my knee responded immediately.
The sharpness of the pain both dulled and dimmed and the throb began to fade.
Some might say that was my reward for making a good choice.
With age, they might say, we learn wisdom.

Or we learn to accept defeat, I thought sardonically.

It wasn’t an argument I was going to win, so I brushed it aside and kept my
tortuous
pace until I reached
Coeur
D’Alene Park.
The park was nine square blocks located almost exactly in the center of Browne’s
Addition
.
There were a few scattered trees, some play equipment and a lot of open space.
In the center of the park was a
gazebo
.
I made my way to it.

The gazebo was a recent addition to the park.
Some group or another built it in the name of community service
. They
got their picture in the newspaper and their name on the plaque on the steps of the gazebo.
I’m grateful for it—it looks nice and is a pleasant place to sit during the day—but I’m sure that the hookers and dopers appreciate it just as much during the night hours.

Instead of the classical white color of most gazebos, it was the color of natural wood.
Or at least, it had been stained to look that way.
I brushed aside a discarded newspaper
and sat down.

Matt had told me the rest of the story, leaning forward as he spoke rapidly.
He’
d waited a week before reporting Kris as a runaway.
During that time, he
searched for her until he ran out of places, then started over.
He listed them for me and watched me as if he were looking for my approval.
I merely nodded and motioned for him to continue.

Matt told me about all of Kris’s friends, which sounded like an unimpressive bunch to me.
Maybe if I’d bagged more cheerleaders in high school, I’d be more impressed with their type.
But since the vacuous, self-centered cliché bearing pom-poms has so little to do with the real world, it’s hard to give much credit to the young girls who elect to slip into that role.
Or the parents who allow them to.

As he spoke, I stole several peeks at her picture.
I had to constantly remind myself that this girl was
sixteen
, not twenty-four, despite the shape of her body and the age in her eyes.
The feminine creature is a very crafty, deep enigma, capable of duping men of all ages.
I had to remember that no matter what I saw in her eyes, even if some of it was genuine, she was still just a
sixteen
-
year
-
old girl.

Kris’s friends hadn’t been any help to Matt.
Most had attitude.
The few who told him
anything said
that they hadn’t seen much of her recently.
None knew why, or would say if they did.

I’d cleared my throat and asked Matt what Kris’s dream was.

He’d crinkled his forehead for a moment, looking at me as if I’d just asked a question to which the answer was so obvious that even a child should know it.

“An actor,” he’d said.
“I told her that the term for a woman was ‘actress’ not ‘actor,’ but she said she didn’t care either way, because she planned to be a star, not just an actor or an actress and when someone reached that level, she was just a star, male or female.”

A star, I thought.
Great.

Using a napkin, I scribbled down a list of Kris’s friends from Matt, though I doubted I’d bother talking to any of them unless something else came up to point that way.

”Where does Kris go to school?” I asked.

“Fillmore High,” he told me.

“Call the principal.
I want to talk to her teachers and they’ll need your permission, I’m sure.”

Matt had nodded and written down my request.
All of his actions were feverish and full of hope.

Sitting in the gazebo, I touched the envelope in my pocket.
It was folded over twice and contained one thousand dollars in fifties.
The roll was hard and thicker than I would’ve thought.
One hundred dollars a day plus expenses.
That was what he demanded to pay.
He’d handed me the envelope and asked me to count it.
When I didn’t, he told me how much was in the envelope and broke it down for me.
A hundred dollars a day.
Straight eight hour days would net me
twelve-fifty
an hour.
Less than half of what I made when I wore the badge.
“One week in advance, plus three hundred toward expenses,” he’d said.

I accepted the money
without a word
.
It was more money than I’d held at one time in years and I felt like a fraud taking it.
The envelope’s weight gave me a sinking echo in my stomach.
I knew that he was counting on me to find his daughter; knew that in his mind, it was as good as done now that he had hired me.
I wondered if he’d read the newspapers ten years ago. Didn’t he know how I’d failed Amy Dugger? Or was he just that desperate?

My thoughts flashed to the cold eyes of other cops
looking at
me. That small form on the morgue table, one half the body bag folded underneath her.

I closed my eyes
against the memory
.

That was a long time ago.

But that doesn’t change what happened
, a voice argued.

I can never change what happened.

No, I can’t.

But I can help it from ever happening again.