Girl Missing (24 page)

And then, even more troubling, was the next thought: Could he have?

The phone was ringing when Kat walked into her office the next morning. She ignored it. Calmly she hung up her coat, slid her purse in the desk drawer, revved up the coffee machine for a six-cup pot. An IV infusion of caffeine was what she really needed this morning. It had been a sleepless night on a lumpy motel bed, and she was feeling as alert as a grizzly bear in January and just about as cheerful.

She found her desk littered with pink message slips, taped in a haphazard collage. Calls from her overwhelmed insurance agent, from the DA’s, from defense attorneys, from a mortuary. And from Adam, of course—five calls, judging by the number of slips. On the last slip, the night tech had scrawled in frustration: “
Call
this guy!” Kat crumpled up all the message slips from Adam and tossed them in the trash can.

The phone rang. She frowned at it, watched it ring once, twice, three times. Wearily she picked it up. “Kat Novak.”

“Kat! I’ve been trying to reach you—”

“Morning, Adam. How’re things?”

There was a long pause. “Obviously,” he said, “we have to talk.”

“About what?”

“About why you left.”

“Simple.” She leaned back and propped her feet up on a chair. “It was time to leave. You’ve been great to me, Adam. You really have. But I didn’t want to wear out the welcome. And I had to find my own place eventually, so I—”

“So you ran.”

“No. I walked.”

“You
ran
.”

Her spine stiffened. “And what, exactly, am I supposed to be running from?”

“From me. From the chance it might not work.”

“Look, I have things to do right now—”

“Is it so hard for you, Kat, to stick your neck out? It’s not easy for me, either. I take a step toward you, you take a step back. I say the wrong thing, look at you the wrong way, and you’re off like a shot. I don’t know how to deal with it.”

“Then don’t.”

“Is that what you really want?”

She sighed. “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know what I want.”

“I think you do. But you’re too scared to follow your heart.”

“How the hell do you know what’s in my heart?”

“Wild guess?”

“It’s not like Cinderella, okay?” she snapped. “Girls from the Projects don’t have fairy godmothers to spiff them up. And they don’t find happily-ever-afters in Surry Heights. Isabel gave me the straight scoop and I appreciate that. I’d be out to sea with your country-club set. Too many damn forks on the table. Too many cute French words. Face it, I can’t ski, I can’t ride a horse, and I can’t tell the difference between Burgundy and Beaujolais. It’s all red wine to me. I don’t see any way of getting past that. No matter how much you may lust after my body, you’ll find after a while that it isn’t enough. You’ll want a fancier package. And I’ll just want to be
me
.”

“I never took you for a coward before.”

She laughed. “Go ahead, insult me if it makes you feel better.”

“You’ll risk your neck for an old car. You’ll march into a damn combat zone without blinking.
But you’re too scared to take a chance on
me
.”

She looked down at one of the message slips taped to her desk, and noticed it was from the Greenwood Mortuary, in response to a call she’d made to them yesterday.

“Kat?” Adam asked. “Are you listening?”

“I can’t talk now,” she said, folding the slip in half. “I have to go to a burial.”

Grim affairs, burials. Grimmer still is a pauper’s burial. There are no gaudy sprays of gladioli, no wreaths, no sobbing family and friends. There is just a coffin and a muddy hole in the ground. And the burial crew, of course: in this case, two sallow-faced grave diggers, their hats dripping with rain, and a black-suited official from the Greenwood Mortuary, huddled beneath an umbrella. Mandy Barnett was being laid to her everlasting rest in the company of total strangers.

Kat stood in the shelter of a nearby maple tree and sadly watched the proceedings. It was the starkest of ceremonies, words uttered tonelessly under gray skies, rain splattering the coffin. The official kept glancing around, as
though to confirm that he was playing to an audience—any audience.
At least I’m here
, thought Kat.
Even if I am just another stranger at her graveside
. A short distance away, Vince Ratchet also stood watching the scene. Cemeteries were routine stops for the boys from Homicide. They knew that two types of people attended victims’ funerals: those who came to mourn, and those who came to gloat.

In Mandy Barnett’s case, no one at all appeared. Those who passed through the cemetery this afternoon seemed intent on their own business: a couple bearing flowers to a loved one; an elderly woman, picking dead leaves off a grave; a groundskeeper, rattling by in a golf cart filled with tools. They all glanced at the coffin, but their looks were only mildly curious.

The rain let up to a fine drizzle. In a still mist, the burial crew set to work, shoveling earth into the trench. Ratchet came over to Kat and muttered, “This was a bust. Not a goddamn soul.” He fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose. “And I’ll probably catch pneumonia for my trouble.”

“You’d think there’d be someone,” said Kat.

“Weather might have something to do with
it.” Ratchet glanced up at the sky and pulled his raincoat closer. “Or maybe she didn’t have any friends.”

“Everyone has a connection. To someone.”

“Well, I think we got us a dead end.” Ratchet looked back at the grave. “Real dead.”

“So there’s nothing new?”

“Nada. Lou’s ready to call it quits. Told me not to bother coming out here today.”

“But you came.”

“Hate to walk away from a case. Even if Lou thinks it’s a waste of time.”

They watched as the last shovelful of dirt was tossed onto the grave. The crew patted it down, gave their handiwork one final inspection, and walked away.

After a while, so did Ratchet.

Kat was left standing alone under the tree. Slowly she crossed the wet grass to the grave and stared down at the mound. There was no headstone yet, no marker. Nothing to identify the woman who lay beneath this bare pile of dirt.
Who were you, Mandy Barnett? Were you so alone in this world that no one even noticed when you left it?

“It’s not as if you can do anything about it,” said a voice behind her.

She turned and saw Adam. He was standing a few feet away, mist sheening his hair.

She looked back down at the grave. “I know.”

“So why did you come?”

“I guess I feel sorry for her. For anyone who doesn’t have a mourner to her name.”

Adam came to stand beside her. “You don’t know a thing about her, Kat. Maybe she didn’t want any friends. Or deserve any friends. Maybe she was a monster.”

“Or just a victim.”

He took her arm. “We’ll never know. So let’s just go inside somewhere. Get warm and dry.”

“I have to go back to work.” She paused as a flicker of movement drifted through her peripheral vision. She focused on two figures, a woman and a child, both dressed in black, standing beneath a distant tree. It was an eerie apparition, almost ghostly through the mist. They seemed to be gazing in her direction, their faces very still and solemn. Or was it Mandy Barnett’s grave they were looking at?

Suddenly the woman noticed that Kat had spotted them. At once the woman grabbed the child’s hand and began to lead her away, across the grass.

“Wait!” called Kat.

The woman was moving quickly now, almost dragging the child after her.

Kat started after them. “I have to talk to you!”

The woman and child were already scurrying toward a parked car. Kat dashed across the last patch of lawn, reaching the blacktop just as the woman slammed her car door shut.

“Wait!” said Kat, rapping on the window. “Did you know Mandy Barnett?”

She caught a glimpse of the woman’s frightened face, staring at her through the glass, and then the car jerked away. Kat was flung backward. The car made a sharp U-turn, spun around in the parking lot, and took off toward the cemetery gates.

Footsteps thudded toward her across the pavement. “What’s going on?” said Adam.

Without a word, Kat turned and made a dash for her car.

“Kat?” he yelled. “What the hell—”

“Get in!” she snapped, sliding into the driver’s seat.

“Why?”

“Okay,
don’t
get in!”

He got in. At once Kat turned the ignition and hit the gas pedal. They screeched across
the slick blacktop and through the cemetery gates.

“We’ve got a choice,” said Kat as they approached the first intersection. “East or west. Which way?”

“Uh … east is back to town. She’d probably go that way.”

“Then we go west.”

“What?”

“Just a hunch. Trust me.” Kat turned west.

The road took them past a shopping mall, past a Pizza Hut, an Exxon gas station, a Burger King—the institutional underpinnings of Anytown, USA. At the first red light, Kat pulled to a stop behind a line of cars. The windshield filmed over with mist. She turned on the wipers.

A block ahead, a dark green Chevy pulled out of a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot.

“There they are,” said Kat.

Adam shook his head in amazement. “You were right.”

“First rule of escape: Never move in a straight line. See? She’s heading north. I bet she’ll circle back toward town. The long way around.”

The light turned green. Kat turned north, in pursuit of the Chevy. She kept her distance,
with two cars between them. Half a mile along, the Chevy turned east. As she’d predicted, her quarry was moving in a wide circle, taking secondary roads back to town.

“Is this why you went to the burial?” asked Adam.

“The same reason the cops went. To see who’d turn up to pay their last respects. I figured someone would. The same anonymous person who slipped Greenwood Mortuary the cash for that coffin. It was just bottom-of-the-line plywood and veneer, but it was paid for. Our mystery lady in that Chevy must’ve been the one.”

“Did you get a look at her?”

“Just a glimpse. Late twenties, maybe. And a kid about six years old.”

They followed the Chevy to the Stanhope district, a blue-collar suburb of single-family homes lined up on postage-stamp lots. From a block away, they saw the Chevy pull into a driveway. The woman got out and helped the child from the car, and together they climbed the porch steps into a house. It was a pink stucco box, irredeemably ugly, with cast-iron bars on the windows and a TV antenna the size of an oil rig on the roof.

Kat parked. For a moment they sat studying the house. “What do you think?” she said.

“It’s like approaching a trapped animal. She could be dangerous. Why don’t we just call the police?”

“No, I think she’s afraid of the police. Otherwise she’d have called
them
.”

After a pause, he nodded. “All right, we can try talking to her. But the first sign of trouble and we’re
out
of there. Is that clear?”

They got out of the car, and she smiled across the roof at him. “Absolutely.”

They could hear the sound of the TV as they approached the front door. Some kids’ show—cartoon voices, twinkly music. Kat stood off to the side of the porch, and Adam knocked.

A little girl appeared at the screen door.

Adam flashed his million-dollar smile. “Can I talk to your mommy?” he said.

“She’s not here.”

“Can you call her, then?”

“She’s not here.”

“Well, is she in another room or something?”

“No.” The voice wavered, dropped to a whisper. “She went away to heaven.”

Adam stared at her pityingly. “I’m sorry.”

There was a silence, then the girl said, “You wanna talk to my auntie Lila?”

“Missy? Who’s out there?” called a voice.

“Just a man,” said the girl.

Bare feet slapped across the floor and a woman came to the screen door. She peered out blankly at Adam. Then her gaze shifted and she caught sight of Kat, standing off to the side. The woman froze in recognition.

“It’s all right,” said Kat. “My name’s Dr. Novak. I’m with the medical examiner—”

“It was you. At the cemetery …”

“I’ve been trying to find someone who knew Mandy Barnett.”

“My mommy?” said the child.

The woman looked down at the girl. “Go on, honey. Go watch TV.”

“But she’s talking about my mommy.”

“Just grown-up stuff. Listen! I think
Spongebob
is on! Go on, you watch it.”

The girl, faced with the choice of adult conversation or her favorite cartoon, chose the latter. She scampered off into the next room.

The woman looked back at Kat. “Why’re you asking about Mandy? You with the police?”

“I told you, I’m with the medical examiner’s
office.” She paused. “I think Mandy Barnett was murdered.”

The woman was silent as she considered her next move. “It’s not like I know anything,” she said.

“Then why are you afraid?”

“Because people might think I know more than I do.”

“Tell us what you know,” said Adam. “Then we’ll all know it. And you won’t have to be afraid.”

The woman glanced toward the sound of the TV, now blaring out a cereal commercial. She looked back at Kat. Then, slowly, she unlatched the screen door and motioned them to come in.