Carol O’Connell - Find Me

She was a busy woman.

And so he began his murder story at the end. “We had Ariel’s body in the local mortuary for a solid week, but Joe refused to make the identification. Said it couldn’t be his daughter. How could Ariel be dead? No, she was only lost, he said. Well, the neighbors buried her in the church cemetery down the road. The headstone’s blank. They figure one day Joe will come to his senses, and then they can get on with the engraving. We’re very patient people around here.”

As they neared the edge of the road, he spoke of the day when Ariel was last seen alive. “Joe’s a widower. A neighbor woman stayed with the kids when their father was on the road. But that morning little Peter woke up with a cold, and Mrs. Henry drove back to her own place to get him some cough medicine. So it was just the three kids in the house, Ariel, Peter and Dodie.”

“Where was Joe Finn that morning?”

“He was in a Kansas City hospital. His last fight tore him up real bad. When I gave him the news, his eyes were so swollen he couldn’t see. But he just had to get home to his children. Well, he damn sure couldn’t drive, but he would’ve walked all the way home if I hadn’t g iven him a ride.”

“So the three kids were in the house,” she said, prompting him, only wanting him to get on with it.

“Ariel was trying to get the little one-that’s Dodie-ready for school. Peter was in his bedroom, but Dodie had a set of lungs on her, and he could hear his little sister badgering Ariel to finish making up her lunch box or she’d be late and the bus would leave without her.” He pointed to the edge of the driveway. “That’s where the school bus stopped.”

“Did they all take the same bus?”

“No, Dodie missed the cutoff date for first grade, and she was real disappointed, so Joe sprung for a year of charter school. Peter went to a public school a lot closer to the house. His bus came by about forty minutes later. But, like I said, the boy was sick that day.”

“And Ariel?”

“Oh, no bus for her. She was a smart one. Graduated from high school when she was just fifteen. She had a scholarship to an eastern college, but that got put off a year. Joe thought she was just too young to leave home.”

“You know this family pretty well.”

“I’ve known Joe Finn all his life.” Myles White stopped at the end of the driveway. “I see where you’re going with the business of the buses. You think the killer staked out the house for a while-learned everybody’s habits. Some might figure that he just drove by that day and saw Dodie out h ere all by herself. Now, I’m with you. I think he was waiting for her.”

“So you knew the real target was Dodie.”

“Oh, yeah-and I’m gettin’to that.” He turned back to look at the house. “So Peter was up in his bedroom when he heard Ariel yelling at Dodie to wait for her lunch box, and it was real loud like she was calling across the yard. Then Peter heard the screen door slam and figured she’d gone after Dodie.” Myles White looked down at the ground near the corner of the shed. “This is where Ariel dropped the lunch box.” He walked toward the midpoint of the shed on the side that faced the road. “And this is where I found Ariel’s b lood, but not her body. The ground was drenched with it. I knew she had to be dead.”

Mallory nodded. The killer’s vehicle would have concealed the act of murder from any traffic on this road. “I guess Dodie wasn’t much help with the investigation.”

“Oh, sure she was. She told me the color of the van and gave me the first three numbers on the license plate. It turned up abandoned in Oklahoma, just the other side of the state line. But that was months later. The owner never reported it stolen. It was an old junker, and he didn’t t hink it was even worth a phone call to the police.”

“Did the feds help you find that van?”

“They didn’t help with squat. Months went by, and they never answered a letter or returned a phone call. Then one day they turned up to interview Dodie. Well, Joe told them to go straight to hell. I think I would’ve felt the same in his place. Then the feds sicced Child Welfare on him, and he lost the kids for a while. Peter went into foster care and the feds made off with Dodie. Called it protective custody of a material witness.”

“So that’s when they realized that Dodie was the target, not her sister.”

“But I told them that the day Ariel was taken.”

“Then they didn’t c are until they could link her to a bigger case.” And now Mallory had to wonder if another one-handed corpse had turned up on Route 66 in those intervening months. That would’ve sent up the red flag for Ariel’s murder. Maybe Gerald Linden wasn’t t he first parent to die.

“Feds.” Myles White spat out this word. “It took me weeks to clear up the bogus charges and get those kids back for Joe. Dodie wasn’t t he same when she came home again. She was real quiet-and that was never her nature.”

“Any idea what happened while she was in custody?”

“No way to know,” said Myles White. “Just a theory. I think they gave her the idea that Ariel’s d e ath was her fault. It’s not true. Her sister never had a chance that day. I figure he went after her because he didn’t w ant to leave any witnesses. And Ariel never screamed-all that time when he was stabbing her.” The man looked up at the sky. “I know you’ve seen the autopsy photos. You know how long it took for her to die? All those wounds.”

“I’ll tell you why she didn’t s c ream,” said Mallory. “She was protecting the kids. She didn’t w ant Peter to come outside, and she bought Dodie some time to run. And you’re wrong about one thing. Ariel did have a chance to save herself that day. Ariel could’ve run, too, but she stayed to fight.”

Myles White slowly moved his head from side to side. This did not square with his notions about tender young girls. “You’re saying-”

“I’ll show you,” said Mallory, who was not inclined to say things twice. She opened her knapsack and pulled out the autopsy photographs. “Look here.” She pointed to the reddened knuckles of Ariel Finn’s right hand. “She tried to deck him. So Ariel made the first strike. She only had one chance to land that punch. After that, she would’ve been warding off the knife blade, fighting for her life.”

“Oh, God.” His fingers trembled as he held the photograph. “I’ve looked at these pictures a hundred times.”

But this quiet farming community was not a murder capital, and this man had only seen what he had expected to see-the defensive wounds of a helpless girl. He had not understood the lesser damage to Ariel’s right hand-wounds of a fighter-just like her father.

They walked back to the house in silence.

Riker ended his day in the same place where it had begun. Back from the road and a new search for strays, he could hardly keep his eyes open. All this time had been wasted. He was no closer to Mallory, and one of the caravan strays had eluded him.

Nahlman shared half her sandwich and poured more coffee into their cups. “Enough. You’re done. I told them what the risks were. Why don’t they listen?”

“I was watching their faces this morning-while you were reaming them out. They were looking around, counting heads and figuring the odds. It was like they were playing some backward kind of lottery.”

Agent Allen joined them. A cell phone was pressed to one ear as he spoke with his boss and relayed apologies to Riker. “Agent Berman’s s o rry he can’t s u pply any backup, but he’s really spread thin.”

Riker ripped the cell phone from the younger man’s hand and relayed a string of obscenities to Dale Berman that concluded with the words “shit for brains.” He ended the call by sailing the cell phone far across the Oklahoma grasslands.