The Timer Game (17 page)

The clients stirred uneasily. “She sure the hell isn’t here,” Opal said.

The man put down the knife. “Jazz left. Last night late.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“Stan.” Opal’s voice held a warning.

Stan raised his chin and spoke clearly. “She got a phone call and she ran out that door. Only took what she could carry. I know my rights. I studied that in school before I got sick. The right to free speech.”

“And the right to remain silent,” Opal barked.

Stan snapped his head down, his hands squeezing his sides and his chest heaving.

“See what you made him remember? Get out and don’t come back.”

“It’s my kid!” Grace cried. “Don’t any of you have kids you love? Sisters or nieces or kids of your own? Somebody must know where Jazz is. Please, my kid’s life depends on it.”

Concern and alarm creased their faces. “We can’t tell you anything else,” a woman mumbled. She wrung her hands.

Opal pushed Grace out the door. “If I ever see you here again, I’m going to press charges. Is that clear?” She closed the door in Grace’s face.

She stood helplessly, trying to figure out her next move. Jazz had left the night before; she could be anywhere. She’d have to check beaches, under viaducts, the seedy part of Midway, the approach to Old Town where the trolleys came, even Shelter Island wasn’t out of reach.

It was overwhelming. She couldn’t possibly find Jazz by three. Katie could already be out of the country by now. She checked her watch. Ten more minutes had gone by.

She didn’t know where to start. She made herself think through what Stan had blurted out. Jazz had only taken what she could carry. So she’d been walking. But was she met somewhere? Was she picked up?

And that was last night. A lifetime ago. A shape moved in the window and a curtain fluttered. It was the wispy-haired woman. Slowly she raised a stuffed lion. Made it wave a paw at Grace. The lion Eddie had won for Jazz at Belmont Park.

She was trying to tell Grace where Jazz had gone. Grace nodded and ran for her car.

Chapter 19

Saturday, 2:01 p.m.

Belmont Park in Mission Beach was seven acres of concrete, wooden rides, and concessions built near the promenade that fronted the beach. When she ran from the halfway house, Jazz might have dragged her meager possessions to somewhere in the canyons of the park. It was a distance on foot, but she could have taken the bike path next to the floodplain to reach it. Providing she was still medicated and nothing had altered her course. She’d left at night, plunging into the dark, a helpless, mentally ill woman fleeing with nothing to protect her from the demons she’d encounter in the world, more terrifying even than the ones she carried with her. Grace parked on the street and ran under the arched entrance. Overhead, the Giant Dipper roller coaster shivered down the track. Straight ahead the carousel twirled, the wooden horses and ostrich and giant rabbit moving in a ponderous circle, the patina on their necks faded and rubbed satiny by hundreds of thousands of tiny hands.

Costume. Everybody was in costume.

Grace felt her heart skid. She’d been hoping the park would be empty.

It was crowded with disguises.

The hard thing was keeping herself steady. Concentrating on the next thing. It was after two now. She had until three. Where would Jazz go? What would she do? Grace doubted she’d have money to ride anything, but she could still be anywhere in the park.
If
she was there. Impulsively, Grace trotted over to the ticket booth next to the museum and slid the photo of Jazz across the counter, raising her voice over the cacophony of clanging machinery, tinny music, shrieks from the coaster riders.

“Have you seen this woman?”

The ticket taker was in a Winnie the Poo costume with two fuzzy ears poking up like miniature tombstones. His eyes were bright and resigned. He studied the photo.

“I need to find her,” Grace repeated.

“Good luck.”

He shoved the photo back and Grace stopped it with her hand.

“You haven’t seen her?”

He half laughed. “In this crowd? It’s half-price carnival day. You buying ride tickets? ‘Cause I’ve got paying customers.” He looked past her to a man waiting behind her wearing a Zorro cape and clutching the hand of a toddler dressed as a dinosaur.

Grace pointed at the stuffed lion in the photo. “This. Where would they have gotten it?”

“Past the Coconut Climb there’s a basketball throw.” He raised his voice. “Next.”

Grace hurried past the carousel and the blur of hand-painted images, Lindbergh and the Hotel Del and Shamu and all the squealing children bobbing up and down on the historic wooden animals, their mothers close at hand, no missing children there, that was for sure.

At the Coconut Climb, two plastic palm trees rose like a cartoon into the blue sky, and a man climbed the pole as casually as if he worked for the phone company. She threaded through a group of teens dressed in black, raced past a ride called Chaos that tipped its riders in a twisted spiral. A water plunge, and eateries, ice cream, a Fat Boyz, a video place.

At the basketball shoot, she spotted the familiar stuffed lions offered as prizes.

A middle-aged man steadied the ball and took a shot. It banged off the rim and Grace moved in, shoving the photo of Jazz at the attendant. “Have you seen her?”

The attendant frowned, studied the photo. “Not recently.”

“Not recently today or not recently?”

“It’s still my turn,” the man interrupted. The attendant scooped up the ball and gave it to him. The sun glanced off the metal hoop as the man rolled the ball off his fingers and it shot through the basket.

“Have you seen her today?” Grace pressed.

“I already told you, no,” the attendant said. His smile was mechanical as he detached a lion from the hanging stack and held it out to the man. “You can take this size with you, or try again and go up a size. Bigger’s better, right? Only five bucks.”

Grace pressed on through the crowd, hunting. Panic thumped up her chest and her face felt hot. If Jazz had left the park already, then Grace didn’t think she could find her in the time she had left, but if she was still there somewhere, then Grace had a shot. But what if she was wrong? What if Jazz had never made it there at all?

“Prepare for total Chaos,” a mechanical voice intoned, and the ride lifted skyward and the riders shrieked. She made one complete pass through the park, checking faces, hair colors. Across from an arrow pointing to Henna Tattoos
,
a police substation was tucked into the wall, and Grace resisted the impulse to open the door, sit down at the desk, spill everything.

She turned and looked back toward the center of the park. The Beach Blaster shuddered skyward, shaped like two giant claws holding fistfuls of riders in a metal King Kong grip.

A little girl dressed in pink stood staring up at it, her head tipped back.

She was wearing a pink princess costume. It was modified; somebody had ripped off the organza and ribbons Grace had added, but it was the costume and it was Katie.

Her hair rose in two ponytails, sparkling caramel-colored curls.

Grace took a step. “Katie?”

She must have screamed it because the little girl jerked around at the sound of her name.

A sparkly pink mask covered her face, but it was Katie. The golden-colored skin, the small, sturdy body. Relief surged up her body like a hot wire, and she closed the distance between them in a few short strides and scooped up her daughter and ripped off the mask.

The little girl had blue eyes and freckles.

She stared at Grace, her eyes blank with shock. Her body stiffened. She opened her mouth and screamed.

“What are you doing? What do you think you’re doing with my child?” A muscular woman in a Polo shirt and jeans ripped the child away. “Becky, honey, it’s okay.”

The woman had dropped her purse and the ice cream cones she was carrying, and the cones had fractured on the pavement, the ice cream slippery mounds already melting.

The little girl wailed and wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck, burrowing her face, her cheeks already slick with saliva and tears.

“I’m sorry,” Grace stammered.

It wasn’t Katie. The enormity of that took her breath away. She stared helplessly at the little girl.

“Get out of here before I call the police.” The woman gripped her daughter tightly and swung her away from Grace.

Grace turned and ran. She ran past the rides, the police substation, ran until she reached the cement retaining wall that looked out over the sand. She doubled over, heaving, staring blankly out to sea. A ship on the horizon stood motionless as if cut out of paper in some pirate book. Desolation swept over her and she fought to keep from crying and then she fought to keep from throwing up. Her daughter was still out there somewhere.

Two college-age students gamboled on the beach, tossing a soccer ball, but the sand looked cold and nobody was in the water. Along the water’s edge, a shirtless man jogged, a T-shirt binding his head, and behind her on the promenade, an endless surge of people passed by, their voices masked by the pounding of the surf.

She swallowed hard and pressed her fingers into the pebbly cement retaining wall, trying to get her bearings.

A man on a heavy Schwinn pedaled past in lazy arcs, a Hefty bag of aluminum cans slung over a shoulder. He wore red shorts and combat boots. He braked to a stop and checked the trash can near Grace.

“Excuse me. Do you know where anybody homeless might go around here during the day?”

He sorted trash and extracted a can, sliding it into his bag.

She raised her voice. “Excuse me.”

“I’m not homeless,” he interrupted. He stared at her belligerently. A scar cut down a cheek. Whatever had happened had narrowly missed an eye. A front tooth was broken.

“No,” she said. “Of course not. Not you. Her.”

She extended the photo, and he took it. The waves crashed. A gull screamed. He nodded and passed the photo back. He spiraled a finger, and at first, Grace thought he was giving her the universal symbol for crazy, but then his finger slowed and he pointed down the beach, away from the lifeguard tower.

“I’d check out there. Sometimes they like to hang out there.”

“Where?” she cried.

But he was on his bike and gone.

Grace took off her shoes and went onto the beach, looking. People dozed and slept but none of them was Jazz. Grace made herself slow down, checking every mound, every hollow in the sand, every shadow.

Against the retaining wall near a public bathroom she spotted a figure.

A figure with long black hair.

Grace ran.

__

Jazz’s beautiful black hair was snarled in clumps and tangled with sand. She lay limp, hands clasped, covered in a filthy ski jacket. Next to her was a battered Safeway cart stuffed with junk. A toaster and cord dangled over the handle.

Grace shook her shoulder. “Jazz?”

The young woman’s eyes snapped open and she reared up, gripping a filled Hefty bag she used as a pillow. She was trembling. She had wide vacant eyes and chapped lips and her bony hands were reddened from sleeping outdoors. One night without shelter had done this. A week from now, she’d be unrecognizable.

“It’s fine, it’s fine. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Jazz scrubbed a hand across her mouth. “Sad day, sad, sad day.”

“I won’t hurt you, I promise. Jazz, do you know where my daughter is? Katie. Do you know where she is?”

Jazz gripped the Hefty bag and rocked. “I’ve been waiting. I’m the keeper and you have come.”

She couldn’t do this anymore and she grabbed Jazz and shook her hard. “Where’s my daughter?”

Jazz wailed, the sound a pure cry of keening grief, and Grace snapped her hands away and took a step back. Katie wasn’t there. Katie had never been there. Terrorizing Jazz wouldn’t bring her back.

“I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Jazz covered her face with a thin arm, her shoulders shaking. Grace lowered her voice and fought for control.

“What are you keeping for me?”

“It’s the Bad Thing but it’s my job.” Jazz’s voice was muffled by her arm and Grace squatted so she was at eye level.

“Give it to me, Jazz. Now.”

Jazz gripped Grace’s wrist with surprising strength and dragged her close, until Grace smelled the reek of sour breath. Her eyes slid to the palm trees behind Grace.

“Can’t take a bath, it’s acid, eats right through.” She shuddered and her bony shoulders shook. Jazz must be off her meds by now, her thinking disorganized, seeing things.

Grace clenched Jazz’s shoulders and spoke slowly. “Jazz. The thing you have for me. I need that, whatever it is. I came to get it. Here I am. Let me look, okay? In your things.”

Jazz sucked in a breath and moaned. “Things things rings sings pings I took them I took them I confess. Mess, oh God what a mess the patroness of mess, the protector of complector. The Goddess of fire and ruin. Runes. Run. Better run. Have to run.”

She swatted Grace’s hands away as if warding off bats.

“What are you protecting, Jazz? What does the Spikeman want me to have?”

Jazz reared her head and gnashed her teeth. Saliva flew. She scrabbled to her knees and rocked. “I have a gargoyle in my left ear, hurts hurts bite.”

“Give it to me, Jazz.” Grace’s voice was soothing. “Give me whatever he gave you to guard. I’ll take it now and you’ll be free.”

Jazz lunged at Grace, her fists thrashing, and Grace grabbed her arms to contain her. Jazz writhed and moaned. A strong, spastic kick upset the cart and a Hefty bag spilled to the ground.

Jazz’s dark eyes glittered. She bit her cracked lip and a bright bead of blood appeared. “The Bad Thing’s in the bag. In the bag in the bag in the bag.”

Grace knelt and ripped it open.

“I did my job.”

“Yes, honey. Yes, you did.”

“It was hard. I did my job.”

“Yes. Yes.” Grace ripped open the bag. Papers. Charts. Marked with
THE CENTER FOR BIOCHIMERA
on the tags. She blew out a breath. “Good work, Jazz. I’ll take you home now. Come on.”