Lawrence Block - The Best American Mystery Stories 1999

Several days later, a storm moved in off the Pacific and dropped nearly five inches of much needed rain across the north state. It was the beginning of the end of the drought. But it had come too late for my father.

To this day, I don’t know what it was he hit coming home from the bar that night. It could have been a deer or a cow, I suppose. But it wasn’t Joey Egan, and I’m grateful for that, grateful beyond description.

I still think back to those times when I was a boy and he would come in from the fields with his shirt slung over his shoulder and every muscle of his body taut and perfectly defined. And like most boys, there are still the times when I wish I could have grown up to be that man.

The shame of it is... I don’t think I ever really got to know who he was.

It was the hottest day of the year, middle of August, heat and humidity both in the nineties, sun a ball of relentless fire in a hard blue sky. I had just returned to my office after a 10K run that was supposed to raise money for research on heart disease. It seemed appropriate: I felt like cardiac arrest was imminent. My gym shorts and T-shirt were soaked through with sweat. My plan to take a long shower had just been thwarted by a cryptic phone call from the chief of police: “You there? Don’t leave.” Click.

When the door opened, I was untying my running shoes. I left them on, laces dangling. The office already had enough of a locker-room ambiance. My visitor was a well-mannered young lady, though, and didn’t even wrinkle her nose.

“You look like Hulk Hogan,” she said, after we exchanged hellos and she had taken a seat across the desk from me. “Well, not your face, ” she added.

“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it sincerely.

“Your hair’s the wrong color, too.” There seemed to be a bit of accusation in her tone.

“I could bleach it.”

She nodded solemnly. “But your face is wrong. You wouldn’t look like him anyway.”

“True,” I said. My face had been called a lot of things over the years but never wrong .

“He said you can help me.”

“Hulk Hogan did?”

She gave me a scornful look. “That man at the police station. He said he was the chief of police, but I don’t know. He didn’t look like a chief of police. Not like on TV. On TV they wear...”

“Suits?”

“Uh-huh. He had on blue jeans.”

“Kinda hot for a suit today.”

“He looked like a cowboy. And he had freckles. More than me even.”

Her freckles were sprinkled like fairy dust across her cheeks and nose. Two dark, skinny braids hung just past her shoulders. Short curly tendrils had escaped and clung damply to her face. She missed being pretty by a nose — but she’d grow into it in a few years and then she’d be a knock-out. A faded kitten graced the front of her limp pink T-shirt. Her denim shorts had frayed hems and her canvas shoes had long since gone from white to dingy gray. She stood up suddenly, reaching into her shorts pocket and extracting two pieces of grape-flavored bubble gum. “Want one?” she asked.

“Thanks.” I took the proffered piece, which was warm from being in her pocket. We sat in companionable silence for a moment, chewing on big wads of purple gum. When mine was soft enough to talk around, I said, “What do you need help with?”

She was trying to blow a bubble; her tongue stretched a hole in the gum. “Phooey.”

I blew a bubble about the size of a softball, holding it long enough to bask in her admiration before sucking it back in.

“I can’t do it.” Her chin puckered a little bit.

“How old are you?”

“Seven.”

“I think I was eight before I could blow bubbles.”

She perked up, the future suddenly looking brighter. After chewing for a while and trying another bubble, she spoke with sudden urgency: “Jennifer’s gone.”

“I see. It’s a missing person case.”

“Uh-huh. Can you find her?”

I wanted to say yes. Instead I said, “When did you see her last?” as I flipped a steno book open and poised a pen over it.

“Yesterday. I left her in the backyard. I’m not s’pose to — Mommy told me and told me to take good care of her — but I forgot and then she wasn’t there anymore.”

“I see. What does she look like?”

She picked up the end of one of her braids, holding it delicately between her thumb and index finger, then drew it across her face, beneath her nose, like a plaited mustache. Apparently the gesture indicated she was engaged in thought. When she let go, the braid swung back into place and she spoke briskly. “Her hair’s red. Not red really, it’s more like orange but people always say red hair. That’s funny, isn’t it? It’s orange.”

“Red hair.” I wrote it down. “I guess it’s just a figure of speech. What about her eyes?”

“Blue.”

“Sounds pretty.”

“Oh, she is. She’s beautiful. Mommy’s real mad ’cause I lost her. She told me and told me I better take good care of her ’cause she cost — I don’t know how much — a whole lot.”

“Uh-huh. What was she wearing?”

“A blue dress made out of... like shiny stuff. With lace and a ribbon right here.” She touched the delicate hollow in her throat. “And white shoes but she didn’t have any socks on. Her socks got lost.”

“How long have you had her?”

“I got her for my birthday.”

“When was that?”

“July eight. I’m seven years old. I’ll be eight years old on my next birthday.”

“Uh-huh. About how big is... uh...”

“This big.” She held her hands about a foot apart. “Her name’s... well, her real name’s Megan Ann, but I call her Jennifer.”

I nodded solemnly, as if I followed the logic of that.

“Mommy doesn’t...”

I waited expectantly.

“She doesn’t like me to use that name.”

“Megan Ann? It’s a pretty name.”

She nodded, and for just a second I thought she was going to cry, then she abruptly said, “He said people pay you money.” She made it sound as though there just might be a little larceny in my soul.

“The police chief? Well, he’s right, I usually get paid, but — do you know what a sliding scale is?”

“There’s a slide in the playground.”

“This is different. A sliding scale means I charge different people different amounts. It depends on how much they can afford to pay me.”

She considered that briefly, then stood up and dug into her shorts pocket. She put some linty coins on my desk. Two quarters, one dime, seven pennies. Sitting down again, she said, “Is that enough?”

“That should do it.”

“Are you going to find her?”

“Well, I’ll try to. I can’t make any promises.”

She looked at the coins on the desk, apparently having second thoughts.

“I tell you what — I’ll work on a contingency basis. That means you only have to pay me after I find her. If I don’t find her, you don’t owe me anything.”

Her face brightened and she quickly returned the coins to her pocket.

“I need some more information before I can start looking. First, what’s your name?”

“Kristin Michelle Baker.” She spelled all three names for me, slowly, standing up and leaning over the desk to peer at the steno pad, checking my accuracy.

“What’s your address and phone number?”

“Um... one one seven South Twenty-first Street. Apartment H. It’s right over there.” She pointed vaguely eastward. “We don’t have a telephone.”

“Okay. You had a long walk to the police station.”

“It was hot.”

Her apartment building was two blocks east of my office and half a block south, an old building that had seen better days, many years ago. Her walk downtown would have taken her straight down Main Street to Seventh, where the police station was. From my office to the center of town, Main Street is lined with businesses and traffic is fairly steady. My building is at the end of the business district, though, and once you cross Nineteenth and head east, you’re in a neighborhood that’s as close to a slum as you can get in a small town. “Is your mom at work?”