Katrina Prado - The Whore of Babylon, A Memoir

Suddenly, the telephone rings. I leap to the dresser, snatching up the receiver.

“Hello?” I say, breathless. I look at the clock on my nightstand: four forty-five.

“Your daughter is dead. I cut her.” The voice is gruff and full of hate. “Did you hear me? I cut the bitch-”

I slam the receiver down. The raw and sour taste of bile rises in my throat. Rob stirs.

“Who was that?” he asks.

“Another crank call,” I say.

The reporter warned us that this would happen. He said there were lots of sick people out there who enjoy it when others suffer.

I walk back to the window fighting the sting of tears, my back to Rob.

“I want to hire a private investigator,” I say.

I hear the swish and flutter of blanket and sheet.

“How much will that cost?” Rob asks as he makes his way to the bathroom.

“What difference does it make?” I respond.

The plash of urine against water followed by the flush of the toilet obfuscates my question. Rob tramps back into the bedroom, pads across the room, directly behind me.

“We don’t have any money,” he says sadly.

Though we are not touching, I can smell his familiar odor: stale sweat and morning breath.

“We’ve got two thousand dollars in savings,” I say. “And we could probably get an advance on the MasterCard.”

“Isn’t that card maxed out?” he asks. He runs his hand through his hair. “Besides, what’s a PI gonna do that the cops aren’t already doing?” he asks.

His hand snakes round my shoulder. I lean my head against his chest, tears filling my eyes yet again, stopping for the moment, the constant burn of exhaustion. The bitter tang of salt coats my tongue.

“I don’t know,” I say. My voice is so high it is nearly a squeak. “But we have to do something.”

His other hand his on my head now, fingers gently and tenderly massaging my scalp.

“She’s probably staying at a friend’s house,” he says.

I hear it; the overwhelming desire that things will be just fine in a day or two. I feel it too sometimes. As if by sheer will we could simply wish a happy ending. It’s intoxicating at moments when I am the weakest. Maybe if I just go to work and finish the laundry, ignoring the entire nightmare long enough it will go away. I clench my jaw and stiffen.

“Maybe she’s not at a friend’s house. Maybe she’s in trouble and she can’t get to us. Maybe she’s hurt, or-” I stop suddenly, unable to give voice to the unthinkable.

Rob breaks our embrace and turns away, wiping his eyes with the heels of his hands. Was he crying?

“I gotta get ready for work,” he says. A minute later the pelt of water against plastic announces that he is in the shower.

My fingers scan the yellow pages. Most of the private investigator ads are small and discreet. I dial a local name, a Mr. Bart Strong with an Antioch number. A voice message begins but is then quickly replaced by a husky, cracked voice:

“This is Bart.”

I open my mouth to speak but suddenly find myself tongue-tied.

“‘Lo?”

“My daughter is missing,” I say finally.

We arrange a time for me to come to his office, which is wedged between a tattoo parlor and dilapidated beauty salon in downtown Antioch, near the water. The briny smell of the delta mingles with car exhaust. Gigantic elms and blue oaks line the street. The hum of traffic from nearby Third Street buzzes in my ears. With one hand on the door, I pat my purse and the twenty, crisp one hundred dollar bills I withdrew on my way over, closing our savings account. I draw in a deep breath and open the door.

Inside, a heavy patina of pipe tobacco coats the air. Motes of dust, like confetti, glimmer along bands of light from three small windows at the back of the room. Bookcases filled to bursting line both side walls. Books, phone directories and thick texts are stacked on the floor near the bookshelves, fighting for space with seemingly dozens of manila file folders. In the center of the large room is a huge desk and behind the desk, a man who looks to be in his fifties or sixties sits eyeing me. Somewhere behind me I hear the unyielding tock of a wall clock.

“Mrs. Skinner, I presume?”

I walk forward, shaking his proffered hand. His grip is firm.

“Yes.”

“Please,” he gestures, “have a seat. I’m Bart. Bart Strong.”

His eyes are a warm, inviting hazel green. He’s wearing jeans, a T-shirt and on top of that, what looks to be a khaki and olive colored hunting or fishing vest. I don’t recognize the faint undertones of his cologne.

“I need you to find my daughter,” I say. Unaccountably, relief floods my voice. Everything spills out suddenly. Robyn’s increasingly defiant behavior, the fights, the money I found in her room, the police, the seemingly useless television spot. As I talk, my hand finds its way into my purse withdrawing a photograph.

“Here’s her picture,” I say holding Robyn’s image out to him.

He takes the picture and looks at it a moment before placing it on the desk.

“She’s only fifteen,” I say. Then emotion clots my throat and I must stop.

He looks down, rubs his cheek with one hand, fingertips scratch absently at a graying sideburn as he considers Robyn’s face. My desperation embarrasses him, I’m sure of it, but I don’t care. I’d gladly beg on my hands and knees if it meant finding Robyn.

Bart hunches his shoulders, leans forward dropping his elbows to his desk. In front of him is a pipe, maroon brown with a long black mouthpiece. The smell of his pipe tobacco is suddenly fresh in my nose again. He toys with it a moment. He asks a question or two, the same types of things the police asked. Did Robyn have a habit of staying away from home? Was anything of any significance missing from her room?

I answer his questions, impatient to move forward. Wanting only for him to leap from the desk, picture in hand, and dash from the room to scour the earth in order to find my daughter.

He is quiet a moment.

“You do search for missing persons, don’t you?” I ask, suddenly nervous.

“Oh sure,” he says. “Most of my work these days is insurance fraud,” he jerks a thumb in the direction of the files on the floor. “But missing persons, unfaithful spouses, you name it, I’ve done it.”

“About your fee,” I begin.

“I charge five hundred a day plus expenses. That includes photographic proof. If I do find her.” He gives me a pointed look. “But I don’t do any recovery, kidnapping, or extractions.”

“Extractions?”

“If she’s hooked up with some cult. Something like that.”

I tease out the thin envelope of cash from my purse, our entire savings. How can so much money feel so puny and inconsequential?

“Here is two thousand dollars,” I say. The money falls to his desk with a breezy thump. “It’s all I have.”

He eyes the envelope a moment and then breaths in a somber lungful of air and gives me a grim look.

“Do you want the honest to God truth about your daughter?”

My bottom lip begins to quiver, just slightly, but I’m sure Bart has noticed. I bite down hard, trying to stop the tremor and my eyes well with tears. I nod.

At that moment, in the distance, a car slams on its brakes. The sliding scream of rubber against asphalt fills the air as both Bart and I lock eyes. The wailing continues for three or four seconds. And then we hear, not the scorching impact of a crash, but mercifully, silence. Bart continues.

“Honestly? Your daughter probably ran away.” He folds his hands together like a disappointed second grade teacher. “She might be doing drugs, she might not. If you’ve already tried all her friends and she’s not living with any of them, she’s probably on the streets.”