Carol O’Connell - Find Me

Or not.

He wondered if it was possible to blend a Beetle with a race car?

Twenty-five years after the letters were written, it was nearing the end of another blue-sky day, and a low-riding sun shone warm and bright. Mallory barreled down the Mother Road playing vintage rock ’n’ roll. Twenty miles later, the sky was clouding over, and she was searching for the next landmark along this stretch of road.

It was the right day in May, the right hour, but decades late.

The letter had described a line of trees, and there was none. She stared at the stark acreage and a row of thick stumps. Only the cement foundation of the old county store remained. And there were no brilliant colors in the sky, not today. The sun was just a patch of lighter gray on the overcast horizon line, a sign that the regional drought would soon end.

However, this stop had not been a complete waste of time. Music selections in the letters made more sense to her now. The current song, an upbeat tune, was all wrong for a sky that promised rain. She flicked one finger around the wheel of her iPod until the car stereo played a ballad to match the cloudy day of another letter, and now Bob Dylan sang to her:

“-and you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone-”

With the push of a button, the convertible’s black ragtop rose to give her cover, and Mallory latched it but left the windows open. She unfolded a letter, taking great care lest it fall apart with one more reading. She was seeking the description of the way the world used to be at this time of day, that time of life.

“-the present now will later be past-”

A hit-and-run gust of wind stole her letter, ripped it from her hand and escaped through the passenger window. She left the car at a dead run to chase the airborne sheet of paper across the open land, teased by the rise and fall of it as she ran toward it. Her angry eyes turned upward, as if to pin the blame on a Sunday-school God, Whom she had abandoned when she was six, going on seven, the year her mother died.

But she would not believe in such beings anymore. Kathy Mallory was a child of high technology and cold logic. Her nemesis of the moment was only the wind that carried her letter away, farther now and faster. Done with anger, on came panic-a novel emotion for a woman who carried a very large gun, someone who lacked a normal, healthy sense of fear. She was afraid of nothing until she heard the rumble of thunder. A storm was coming. As the letter rose higher and higher in the air, she was afraid it would be lost or wrecked by rain. And now her race was run against time.

The first drops fell. More panic. And then her anger returned in a twisted form of faith that her old enemy was truly up there, hiding from her, stealing from her again.

That Great Bastard in the sky, Mother Killer.

“God damn it!” she yelled into the wind, hands balling into fists, just six years old again, going on seven, and maddened by events beyond a child’s control. “Give it back !”

In that moment, the letter hovered in the air, motionless, levitating there, as birds do when they fly against the wind. Slowly, it drifted to earth. She ran toward it, heart a banging, as if this bit of paper meant more to her than life.

The laptop was open, and Special Agent Dale Berman scanned recent communiqués from Chicago. Staring at the photographs, he moved his head slowly from side to side. He had only finished half of Eddie Hobart’s field report, but everything was clear. At last he understood how the team of snatch-and-run gravediggers had wound up in a confrontation with a state trooper in the borderlands of Illinois.

“I liked the trooper,” said Eddie Hobart, draining his third shot of rye. “Nice kid.”

The FBI man nodded absently and poured himself another drink. The computer screen was showing him a picture that had been forwarded compliments of Chicago’s Detective Kronewald. It was a magnified image of an air valve on Gerald C. Linden’s flat tire. “I know you didn’t miss this tool mark.”

“Yeah, I did,” said Hobart. “No time to check it out at the scene, and Cadwaller ordered us to leave the tire behind. He said the helicopter was over the weight limit.”

“And was it?”

“No. We had some soil samples and the body bags from three more graves. Little bones don’t w e igh much. But the pilot only takes orders from ranking agents.” The civilian nodded toward the field report in Berman’s lap. “Officially, I’m taking the hit for everything. I should’ve left Cadwaller behind and loaded the tire instead.” Hobart was watching the computer screen when it flipped to the second photograph of a fingerprint on a phone battery. “I missed that, too.”

“The cops found it in a restaurant dumpster north of Chicago. That’s where the victim stopped for his last meal, and it was way off your route, Eddie.”

“No, that was my screwup. I didn’t e ven know the battery was missing from Linden’s c e ll phone. Never got a chance to open it. And I’m not sure I would’ve gotten around to it, even if I’d had the time to do my job right.”

“Well, somebody opened it.”

“Could’ve been the trooper or that New York cop, Mallory.” Hobart leaned closer to the screen. “Is the print any good?”

Agent Berman shook his head as he read the companion text. “Kronewald says it’s a smudged partial. No clear ridges. It’s not even useful for ruling a suspect out.”

“Well, it’s enough to make me feel like an idiot.”

“Don’t b e at yourself up, Eddie. You’re just burnt out on this case.” Dale Berman refreshed the civilian’s d rink-the anesthetic. “Too many little bodies.”

And then there was the problem of close confinement with an abrasive fool. Cadwaller had gone to a lot of trouble to insinuate himself into this investigation. To minimize the damage, Dale Berman had personally assigned the man to grave-robbing detail. More skillful agents had been sent off to deal with the Chicago cops. Bloody as that fight had been, Cadwaller had managed to make a bigger mess with the Illinois State Police.

And the tale was not over yet. It went on, blow by blow, as the sky grew darker. Ice cubes clinked in their glasses, and Special Agent Berman listened to his bedtime story of a tall blonde from New York City, the cop who had run the show at the Illinois diner. In the telling, Eddie Hobart appointed himself president of the Detective Mallory fan club.

Berman nodded and smiled. “She’s Lou Markowitz’s kid.”

“No shit!”

“You’ve heard of him? ’Course you have. Well, I knew her old man when I was with the New York Bureau. My team worked a big case with NYPD’s Special Crimes Unit, and we made a made a mess of it. I did. All my fault. We ll, Markowitz exploded. He cleaned all the feds out the cophouse, tossed us on the curb with the rest of the day’s t rash. Then his homicide squad wrapped the case in less than four hours. It was humiliating… and instructive. I had major respect for that old bastard. And I liked him… even while he was booting my ass out the door.” He stared at his glass. “You know… there are times when you hear that someone’s died… a man you worked with. And you say, ‘Aw, too bad.’ You really mean it, but then you go on with your golf game and never miss a stroke. Lou Markowitz’s death stopped a lot of people cold. Every agent in the New York Bureau turned out for his funeral. And there were others. They came from everywhere when the old man died.” He lifted his glass in a toast. “Hell of a cop.”

“And Mallory?”

“She’s a pisser. I noticed that Cadwaller isn’t even limping, no bullets to the kneecaps. Lou’s kid must’ve been having an off day.”