Dead Past (9 page)

Diane told him her thoughts about this being a good place to sell speed. He nodded.

Many of the rooms were dark and locked. The ones that were open had students studying at desks, at computers, around tables, on the floor. They studied in groups and alone. Many had brought sleeping bags and were asleep in corners with empty snack wrappers and drink cans littering the area around them like a nest. The Student Learning Center had been turned into a giant campground, and it looked like three-quarters of the campus was holed up here.

In each room that contained people Diane asked if anyone knew Star Duncan. She found two or three who knew who she was but didn’t know her well and didn’t know where she was. Unlike at the library, Diane didn’t hear as much gossip about the explosion and tragedy. She wondered if they didn’t know. It had happened on Saturday night; if they were here all weekend, they might not have heard.

Diane was only on the second floor and she was exhausted and depressed. Her back ached. She wanted to sit down and close her eyes, but there were so many rooms to go.

She pushed on, refusing to allow this search to bring the other search, the one for her daughter, Ariel, to the front of her mind. She couldn’t relive that again. Not now. Not while they couldn’t find Star.

She walked into a computer lab. Several students were on computers connected to the Internet. One was playing a game. None knew Star. The next room was a lounge with vending machines. There were only two people—young women who were maybe nineteen, surely not older. They could have been from the same family. Both blond, both much too thin, as seemed to be the style these days. Both were well dressed in expensive jeans and sweaters. They were sitting opposite each other at a snack table. One of them looked as if she was slipping something across the table to the other, who had folded money between her fingers. They stopped talking when they saw Diane. The one without the money held her hand flat on the table, palm down, as if hiding something under it.

“Do either of you know Star Duncan?” asked Diane, pretending to be oblivious to their transaction.

“Star who?”

“Duncan.”

They looked at each other and shook their heads and looked back at Diane.

“No.”

They kept their eyes on her as if suggesting that she should be leaving now.

Diane walked over to the vending machines and looked at the choices—candy, peanuts, snack cakes, beef jerky, popcorn. In the glass reflection she saw them watching her. She lingered over the selections and fished her phone from her pocket, flipped it open, and set it to camera mode.

“I’m not getting a signal,” Diane said as she raised the phone and pointed it in different directions. Pausing toward them, she silently snapped their picture.

“You won’t in here. They blocked the signal when they built the place. Mean of them.”

“Well, damn, how inconvenient,” said Diane, and flipped her phone shut, putting it back in her pocket. She fished change from her pocket, selected a candy bar for herself and a bag a peanuts for Frank, and left the room, noting the name Jessica Davenport written on one of the girl’s notebook as she passed.

Maybe if they were exchanging drugs, particularly methamphetamine, the police could get a line from them on who was behind the meth lab. It was a long shot. They were probably just talking girl stuff. But if they were exchanging drugs, it would be a lead.

Garnett didn’t believe the meth cook, who was probably killed in the explosion, was the only one involved with the lab. Partly, she was sure, because Garnett didn’t want the guilty party to be dead and beyond his grasp. He had told her the firemen found evidence the basement was vented so as not to release the odor of the meth production into the rest of the house. And there were other signs it could have been a high-output operation with a distribution network.

Diane wanted them caught. She wanted them in prison for a long time.

By the third floor Diane was aching all over and feeling nauseated from the worry and an empty stomach. Images of searching the jungle for Ariel came unbidden to her mind—finding the murdered nuns in the mission, hearing Ariel’s music playing on the tape recorder Diane had given her and that had been left along with Ariel’s bloody little shoe for Diane to find.

Diane stopped, took a breath, and closed her eyes.
No. Go away,
she whispered to her brain,
not those images now.

She leaned against the wall and unwrapped the candy bar she had bought from the vending machine. It was a Milky Way. It was soft from being in her warm jacket pocket. It tasted sweet and melted in her mouth. She needed the sugar jolt, but not the mess it made. She ate the whole large-sized bar, crumpled up the wrapper, and put it in her pocket. She fished out a Kleenex and wiped her hands and mouth.

Down the hall was a water fountain. Diane walked to it and bent over to take a drink. In the shiny surface of the fountain head, she thought she saw a distorted image of Star.

 

Diane spun around and came face-to-face with Star—baggy blue jean overalls, dark eye makeup, spiky hair and all.

“Star!”

Star was obviously surprised at seeing her. “Diane, what are you doing here?”

“Star,” was all Diane could say. She grabbed her and hugged her tightly. She smelled like popcorn. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.” She held her at arm’s length and looked at her.

“I see that,” Star said. “What’s up?”

“I’ve been looking all evening for you. Frank got in a few hours ago and we’ve both been looking for you everywhere.”

“I was here studying. I have a history test tomorrow.” She looked at her watch. “Today. And as you know, it’s real important that I get a good grade. The other kids are sweating their Hope scholarships; I’m sweating Paris.” She paused a beat. “I wasn’t expecting Uncle Frank until tomorrow. He knows I’d be somewhere studying.”

“I’m so glad to have found you.” Diane hugged her again.

“You know I love you to death,” said Star, “but you are acting really weird.”

It was only then that Diane took notice of a slight, brown-haired girl standing beside Star.

“Are you Jenny Baker?”

The girl nodded and looked as if she was a little afraid Diane might hug her, too.

“Your parents are looking for you. We saw them in the library.”

“The library? They’re looking for me? Why? I just saw them the day before yesterday.” Jenny and Star looked at each other and shrugged.

“What’s going on?” asked Star. “Why are you acting so funny?”

“There was a party on Rose Avenue last night,” Diane said cautiously.

“I know, I so wanted to go,” said Star. “It was supposed to be really cool. But you know, Paris comes first.”

“That’s really nice what you’re doing for Star,” said Jenny. “Shopping in Paris for clothes. Wow.”

“It will be my pleasure,” said Diane.

She smiled at the two of them—so overjoyed to find them healthy and whole—then quickly refocused her attention.

“We need to go find Frank. He’s searching the other side of the building.”

“What’s happened?” asked Star again. “Did the party get busted or something?”

Diane took Star’s hand. She reached over and took Jenny’s, too. Star and Jenny exchanged glances again, Jenny’s expression asking Star, “What’s up with her?”

“Diane, what is it?” asked Star.

“The house on Rose Avenue . . . there was a meth lab in the basement. It exploded while the party was going on and the house burned. Many of the kids didn’t make it out.”

Star sucked in her breath. The two looked at Diane, wide-eyed.

“You mean, they’re . . . dead?” said Jenny. She slipped her hand from Diane’s and put it over her mouth.

“Yes,” said Diane. “I’m very sorry to say that many are dead. When Frank couldn’t find you . . . well, you see why we panicked.” Diane looked at Jenny. “And why your parents panicked when they couldn’t get in touch with you. You need to call them.”

“I really was tempted to go to the party,” said Star. “If I wasn’t doing so bad in history . . .” She let her sentence trail off.

“I knew some of the people who were going,” said Jenny. “Bobby Coleman asked me to go with him,” she said to Star.

Bobby Coleman. Diane hoped her face was impassive. “We need to find Frank. If there’s a pay phone somewhere, Jenny, call your parents. If there’s not a phone you can go outside the building.” As Diane spoke, Star’s gaze never left her face.

“My parents don’t have a cell,” said Jenny.

“Then call home. Someone is probably there waiting in case you call,” said Diane. “Frank and I will be glad to take you home.”

Jenny nodded.

They both looked so young—and fragile.

Diane guessed that Frank was searching at about the same speed as she, so he could be on the same floor. They crossed over to the right side of the building. The problem was that the building had so many wings. Frank was likely to be as hard to find as Star. It was little more than chance that Diane had found her. They went down the hallways, looking into the rooms. Frank would be easy to spot. He looked nothing like the students.

They passed the two young women from the student lounge. Star spoke to them. Their gaze darted to Diane’s face for a fraction of a second as they walked by at a fast clip.

“Well, what’s wrong with those two?” said Star. “They are such snobs. Just wait till I get back from Paris with my new clothes.”

So they had known Star after all,
thought Diane.
They just didn’t want me to linger so they could get on with whatever they were getting on with. Damn little witches.

“What do you know about those two?” Diane asked Star as she peeked into a classroom.

“Jessica Davenport and Jamie Dempsey. I call them the Jersey Devils. They are so full of themselves.”

Diane would wait until they were alone to question Star further. But at least now she had two names to give to Garnett as possible leads. She opened a door to the computer lab just as Frank was coming out.

“Diane . . .” Then he spotted Star. “Dear God in heaven,” he said and put his arms around her. Star buried her head in his chest.

When Star had been under arrest and her parents and brother dead, she had tried to kill herself. With the desolation of her grief and the feeling that there was nowhere for her to go, she had lost hope that the world would ever be right again. Frank’s asking to adopt her virtually turned her around. He had made her feel that she was worth something and, more importantly, he had believed her when she said she was innocent. Star was still a handful from time to time, but Diane knew that she was truly grateful that Frank loved and cared about her.

The four of them walked out of the building and down the sidewalk to Frank’s Expedition. On the way, Jenny called home on her cell. A neighbor answered and Jenny looked surprised. But Diane knew that parents in their situation would leave someone to answer the phone, waiting for any word about their daughter.

Just as they were about to drive off, Jenny saw her parents’ car turning into the parking lot. She yelled for Frank to stop, opened the door, and got out. Her mother and father saw her about the same time and came running to her, leaving their car in the middle of the road.

After seeing so many burned bodies during the past twenty-four hours, Diane was relieved beyond words to see two happy endings. She thought of Bobby Coleman’s parents, and the parents of the girl with the blond wavy hair. Nothing would ever bring them closure. Diane knew there was no such thing.

Through her passenger-side window, Diane saw someone she recognized walking out of the Student Learning Center to the parking lot. It was the blond girl’s mother from the coffee tent. She was alone. Diane wanted to cry.

“Bobby Coleman’s dead, isn’t he?” said Star. Her voice startled Diane out of her thoughts.

“The police haven’t released any information, yet,” Diane said.

“But he’s dead. I could tell by your face. The way you had no expression. That’s what you do when you don’t want anyone to see you react—you set your face like that.”

“Yes, honey, he is. But please don’t tell anyone. I don’t know if his parents have been told.” Diane was silent for several seconds as the Expedition sped across the icy street toward her apartment. “He was the first one to be identified.”

After a minute, Diane looked in back. Star was curled up on the seat asleep. She wished she could have found Ariel curled up somewhere in the jungle. She was so thankful they had found Star.

“What’s this about your car being jacked?” Frank said in a low voice.

“Some kid running from the fire. He tried to get Keith’s car but Keith sped off. He came to me next. I was stuck in the snow.”

“Diane . . . ,” he whispered. “I can’t leave you alone for any length of time.”

“Apparently not.”

“How did you manage? Not anything dramatic and dangerous, I hope?”

“No. He was injured from the explosion.”

She made a motion as if chopping her hand off. Frank winced.

“I persuaded him to get into the backseat and I locked him in. He couldn’t get out because the child locks were on, and he couldn’t climb over to the front in his condition. It gave me time to run. By that time the police came. That’s about all there was to it.”
Besides him shooting out my car window
, she thought.

“How is he?” asked Frank. “Will Garnett be able to question him?”

“Yes, he was going to do that today. The kid was one of the few survivors well enough to talk.”

They arrived at her house and Frank walked her to her door.

“I’m so grateful we found Star,” she said.

He gave her a kiss on the lips—a short kiss, then one that lingered. “I’m glad you were there to help,” he said when he raised his head. “I was pretty frantic. I ran into another parent in the Learning Center looking for her daughter, too. It was scary. I hope she found her.”