Robert Wilson - The Chronoliths

I dumped the map window and called one of the numbers Janice had given me, a police lieutenant by the name of Ramone Dudley. His interface told me he was unavailable but that my call had been logged for return.

While I waited I entered the other number Janice had pressed on me, the “support group,” which turned out to be the home terminal of a middle-aged woman named Regina Lee Sadler. She wore a bathrobe when she answered, and her hair was dripping. I apologized for calling her out of the shower.

“Makes no mind,” she said, her voice a Southern contralto as dark as her complexion. “Unless you’re calling from that goddamned collection agency, pardon my French.”

I explained about Kaitlin.

“Yes,” she said, “in fact I know about that. We have a couple other parents from that incident just joined us — mostly moms, of course. The dads tend to resist the kind of help we offer, God knows why. You seem not be a member of that stiff-necked clan, however.”

“I wasn’t here when Kait disappeared.” I told her about Janice and Whit.

“So you’re an absentee father,” she said.

“Not by choice. Mrs. Sadler, can I ask you a frank question?”

“I would prefer that to the other kind. And most people call me Regina Lee.”

“Do I have anything to gain by meeting these folks? Will it help me get my daughter home?”

“No. No, I can’t promise you that. Our group exists for our own purposes. We save ourselves . A lot of parents in this situation, they are very vulnerable to despair. It helps some people to be able to share then-feelings with others in similar straits. And I suspect you are tuning me out right now, saying to yourself, ‘Well, I don’t need that touchy-feely crap.’ And maybe you don’t. But some of us do, and we are not ashamed of it.”

“I see.”

“Not to say there isn’t a certain amount of networking. A lot of our people have hired private investigators, freelance skip-tracers, deprogrammers, and so on, and they do compare notes and share information, but I will tell you frankly that I have very little faith in such activity and the results I’ve seen bear that out.”

I told her those were the people I’d like to talk to, if only to learn from their failures.

“Well, if you come to our gathering tonight—” She gave me the address of a church hall. “If you show up, you’ll certainly be able to have a conversation of that nature. But may I ask something of you in return? Don’t come as a skeptic. Bring an open mind. About yourself, I mean. You seem all calm and collected, but I know from personal experience what you’re going through, how easy it is to grasp at straws when a loved one is in danger. And make no mistake, your Kaitlin is in danger.”

“I do know that, Mrs. Sadler.”

“There’s knowing it and there’s knowing it.” She looked over her shoulder, perhaps at a clock. “I ought to be getting fixed up, but may I say I hope to see you this evening?”

“Thank you.”

“I pray you find a positive outcome, Mr. Warden, whatever you do.”

I thanked her again.

The meeting took place in the assembly hall of a Presbyterian church in what had been a working-class neighborhood before it slipped into outright poverty some few years ago. Regina Lee Sadler, strutting across the stage in a flowered dress and with an old-fashioned handless mike bobbing in front of her head, looked both more robust and about twenty pounds heavier than she had looked in the video window. I wondered if Regina Lee was vain enough to have installed a slimming ap in her interface.

I didn’t introduce myself, just lurked in the back of the hall. It wasn’t exactly a Twelve-Step meeting, but it wasn’t far off. Five new members introduced themselves and their problems. Four had lost children to Kuinist or haj cells within the last month. One had been missing her daughter for more than a year and wanted a place where she could share her grief… not that she had given up hope, she insisted, not at all, but she was just very, very tired and thought she might be able to sleep through the night for a change, if only she had someone to talk to.

There was muted, sympathetic applause.

Then Regina Lee stood up again and read from a printed sheet of news and updates — children recovered, rumors of new Kuinist movements in the West and South, a truckload of underage pilgrims intercepted at the Mexican border. I took notes.

At that point the meeting became more personal as attendees divided up into “workshops” to discuss “coping strategies,” and I slipped quietly out the door.

I would have gone directly back to the motel if not for the woman sitting on the church steps smoking a cigarette.

She was about my age, her expression careworn but thoughtful and focused. Her hair was short and lustrous in the street light. Her eyes were shadowed as she glanced up at me. “Sorry,” she said automatically, stubbing out the cigarette.

I told her it was all right. Under a recent statute tobacco preparations were illegal for trade without an addict’s certificate and a prescription, but I considered myself broadminded — I had grown up in the days of legal tobacco. “Had enough?” she asked, waving a hand at the church door.

“For now,” I said.

She nodded. “Regina Lee is good for a lot of people, and God knows she’s unstoppable. But I don’t need what she’s handing out. I don’t think so, anyhow.”

We introduced ourselves. She was Ashlee Mills, and her son was Adam. Adam was eighteen years old, deeply involved in the local Kuinist network; he had been missing for six days now. Just like Kaitlin. So we compared notes. Adam had been involved with Whit Delahunt’s junior auxiliary, as well as a handful of other radical organizations. So they probably would have known each other.

“That’s a coincidence,” Ashlee said.

I told her no, there was no such thing.

We were still talking when Regina Lee’s meeting began to break up, crowding us off the church steps. I offered to buy her coffee somewhere nearby — she lived in the neighborhood.

Ashlee gave me a thoughtful look, frank and a little intimidating. She struck me as a woman who harbored no illusions about men. Then she said, “Okay. There’s an all-night coffee shop next to the drugstore, just around the corner.” We walked there.

Ashlee was conspicuously not wealthy. Her skirt and blouse looked like Goodwill purchases, cared-for but a long way from new. But she wore them with a dignity that was innate, not practiced. At the restaurant she counted out dollar coins to pay for her coffee; I told her not to bother and pushed my card across the counter. She gave me another long look, then nodded. We found a quiet corner table away from the jabbering video panels.

She said, “You’ll want to know about my son.”

I nodded. “But this isn’t one of Regina Lee’s workshops. What I really want to know is how I can help my daughter.”

“I can’t promise you anything to that effect, Mr. Warden.”

“That’s what everybody tells me.”

“Everybody is right, I’m sorry to say. At least in my experience.”

Ashlee had been born and educated in Southern California, had come to Minneapolis to work as a medical receptionist for her uncle, a podiatrist who had since died of an aneurysm. At the reception desk she had met Tucker Kellog, a tool and dye programmer, and married him at the age of twenty. Tucker left home when their son Adam was five years old. He had been unavailable since. Ashlee filed for divorce and could have sued for child support but chose not to. She was better off without Tucker in her life, she said, even peripherally. She had reverted to her maiden name ten years ago.

She loved her son Adam, but he had been a trial. “Parent to parent, Mr. Warden, there were times when I was in despair. Even when he was little, it was hard keeping Adam in school. Nobody likes school, I guess, but whatever it is that made the rest of us show up every day, sense of duty or fear of the consequences, whatever it is, Adam didn’t feel it. He couldn’t be bullied into it and he couldn’t be shamed into it.”