Carol O’Connell - Find Me

Mallory gave him half a smile and a look of utter satisfaction that only payback can bring. She turned away from him and walked toward the road with a casual stride, as if decking a federal agent might be an everyday thing with her.

Riker lay beside his duffel bag on the lumpy motel mattress. He was too tired to hunt for his toothbrush.

Charles Butler sat tailor fashion on the other bed. He was examining the contents of Savannah Sirus’s purse and a suitcase recently pulled from the trunk of the car. Riker’s o w n Polaroids of the dead woman were lined up in a neat row. This was all the physical evidence for the psychological autopsy of a suicide victim. And while the psychologist sorted these items, he spoke to the detective from some other compartment of his giant brain where he dealt with the more current problem. “Kronewald’s very tight with his information. You’re sure that Mallory knows the name of the FBI agent in charge?”

“Maybe not,” said Riker, “but he’s not the reason she’s on this road. Dale Berman is one coincidence I can buy. He was always ambitious. No sur- prise he’d worm his way into a major case.” Riker pinned his hopes on coincidence, for Mallory was not in any shape to settle old scores with that fed. Her foster father was dead and in the ground, beyond all pain and regret, so what would be the point of going after Dale? He had no desire to talk about this anymore-any reminder of that FBI agent depressed him. “So what can you tell me about the little girl from the caravan?”

“Dodie? She belongs in a hospital.” After gathering up all of Savannah Sirus’s clothing, Charles returned it to the suitcase. Then he laid out the remaining items on different squares of the bedspread pattern, patiently working on a suicide while discussing serial murder with his friend. “Dodie’s missing sister won’t fit the victim profile. Ariel Finn was a teenager.” He looked up at the detective on the next bed. “But you knew that, didn’t you? Of course. Sorry. The sheriff told you, right? Ye t you’re still interested in that little family.”

Charles began to move the items around, departing from his patchwork grid to create orderly piles. Savannah’s lipstick was paired with a checkbook, and a folded envelope shared a patchwork square with a black-and-white snapshot. “So you’re wondering if Dodie Finn might’ve been the real target. Maybe her sister Ariel got in the way.” And, in answer to a question that Riker had just thought of, Charles said, “If Dodie saw her sister’s murder, that would be consistent with her present condition. But I can’t t e ll you that’s what happened. I can’t w o rk magic.”

“Right.” The detective continued to watch his friend’s methodical sorting process. Savannah Sirus’s postmortem photos, all but one, were cast aside. The groupings of her personal effects made no sense to him. A driver’s license now kept company with the round-trip plane ticket.

“This woman wasn’t s u icidal before she met Mallory.” Charles picked up the plastic card. “Just look at her in this license photograph.”

Rolling on his side, Riker squinted at this picture the size of a postage stamp.

“This driver’s license is more interesting,” said Charles, “if you know it was renewed ten days before Miss Sirus arrived in New York. In this picture, her hair is styled. You see? She’s well groomed-eye makeup, rouge and lipstick.”

“The works.” Riker nodded, pretending that he could actually make out these details on the tiny photograph. There was no need to see it clearly. Charles had just described the war paint worn by a middle-aged woman who had a life worth living-until she stepped off a plane in New York City. It was easier to read the larger, more recent photograph in Charles’s other hand. This was the close-up of a dead woman with lank, dirty hair, and no makeup at all. “Mallory did all that damage in just three weeks?”

“Tell me you don’t b e lieve that Mallory deliberately drove this woman to kill herself.”

“Naw, o f course not,” said Riker. First he would have to know what Savannah had done to deserve it.

Charles held up a checkbook. “Miss Sirus was planning another sort of trip when she was interrupted.”

“I saw that,” said Riker. “The check entry for a cruise line.”

“This woman wanted to see the world. Thirty thousand dollars would buy stops in a great many ports. The check is recent, and this sort of trip would be booked and paid for months in advance. A woman with suicidal ideation wouldn’t be able to plan that far ahead. She wouldn’t see any future at all. And, apparently, Miss Sirus-I should say Dr. Sirus-had no money worries.” Charles held up a business card. “She was a dermatologist. Judging by her other checkbook entries, she was very successful. Mallory’s mother was a doctor, too.”

“But not so successful,” said Riker. Mallory’s natural mother had been a general practitioner in a tiny town. “Cassandra was probably paid in dead chickens and sacks of potatoes.”

“But there’s more,” said Charles. “Savannah’s from Chicago. Did you know that Mallory’s mother interned at a Chicago hospital?”

Ya wning, Riker said, “No, I didn’t. The brat never tells me anything.”

“But you knew Cassandra was originally from Louisiana.” Charles held up the driver’s license to bring his point home. “And Savannah is a southern name.”

Riker grinned. He had met New York hookers from Harlem to the Battery who called themselves Savannah.

Charles Butler wore such a patient smile, waiting for the tired detective to put it all together, not wanting to commit a rudeness by stating the obvious thing.

“All those phone calls would make sense,” said Riker, grudgingly, “if Savannah knew Mallory’s mother in her younger days.” He was thinking of a child’s trademark line on the telephone in the late-night hours: It’s Kathy-I’m lost. All those years ago, had she been trying to find an old friend of the family? Why then, after this happy little reunion, would Savannah Sirus kill herself in Mallory’s apartment? And what was the link to Route 66 and a child killer? He so longed to bang his head against the wall. In his experience, that actually helped.

“Can you find out if Miss Sirus ever lived in Louisiana?”

“No, Charles, I can’t put that name through cop channels-not till I know what happened back in New York. Somebody might get the idea that it wasn’t a suicide. So what else have you got?”

“I found a letter in the suitcase.”

“No way.” The detective had searched the luggage himself. Ah, but he had been sleeping in catnaps for days. So he had missed something else- maybe a lot of things.

“It was in the lining,” said Charles by way of apology for contradicting a friend.

“Read it to me.”

“It’s short,” said Charles. “Mallory dated it months ago. She writes, ‘I want the rest of my letters. I want all of them.’ ”

“What? Mallory isn’t t he letter-writing type. She e-mails.”

“Maybe Savannah doesn’t have a computer,” said Charles, the sworn enemy of technology. “Now consider all the times that Mallory called this woman. Miss Sirus may have stopped answering the phone. Then think about the days that Mallory missed from work-I mean, before she stopped showing up altogether. Maybe she turned up at Miss Sirus’s door in Chicago. Maybe the door was never opened to her. Hence this letter from Mallory. The postman always gets through.” Charles handed him a small black-and-white photograph. “This was also in the lining.”

Riker squinted at the small portrait of a long-haired boy. Reluctantly he pulled out his reading glasses and donned them. Now he could make out the youngster’s T-shirt design as an old album cover from another era. “Early Rolling Stones. The kid had taste.”