Pursuit (23 page)

“I didn't do anything. Did I?”

“No, of course not.”

Smoothing her hair, Angie took a seat and then straightened her skirt. “Are you police?”

“If we were the police, would you still speak to us?” Todd gave Angie his card.

The girl studied it and fussed with a loose button on her shirt uniform. “Would three o'clock be okay? I have an hour-and-a-half break before dinner.”

“We don't have a lot of time, miss.” Julie smiled. “What we're dealing with is serious sh—well, an abduction. I'll speak to Mr. Mustache, get you to meet with us now.” Outside, the three of them stood next to the cruiser.

“We don't want to make trouble for you, but let's talk,” Julie said to Angie. “Do you want to sit in the car or—”

“I don't feel well. Could we go to my place?”

They drove the short distance to the girl's room above the tavern. Angie led them up the narrow stairwell, taking what felt like far too much time.

Julie stayed patient, thinking that with any luck the girl would give them something. Anything would be better than what they didn't have now.

“Excuse the room. Have a seat if you can find a spot.”

Julie cleared a chair of old magazines while Todd stood near the kitchen counter.

“Sorry, Officer. I don't mean to be deceitful. I just don't know how to think about it. I don't even know what to call it.” The girl sat on a single bed, gazing out the window at the metal fire escape.

The light caught a gleam in her eyes. “I was thumb tripping to West Memphis when—oh, I didn't even ask what you wanted of me. I assumed it was about my incident.”

“It's okay. Go on.”

“He hit me several times before I got settled in the car.” She paused, digging her nails into the mattress. “He put me in a nasty little room, odd wallpaper, a bed—really just a cot—a toilet stool, a fridge.” She continued to stare out the window. “At first he would be in the room every
night. What a horrible little human being. I had to wear this smelly black hood when he came into the room, so I couldn't see him. He would leave food, and I wouldn't see him for what seemed like a week. He would be different, trying to be sweet or charming.” She dropped her head into her hands.

“He talked about the stupidest things. A ring of rocks he looked down on from high places, girls who loved him. I have no idea what he meant by that. He was impossible to care about, even if you wanted to.” She paused. “He smelled of garlic, mostly. I was in a basement; it was cold and damp. He was short for a man. His body, was, I guess you would say, inadequate. I thought he would kill me—he talked of it.” She cast her eyes to the floor once again. “He would play sappy guitar music outside the room; the same passage over and over. It drove me nuts.”

“What did he say?” Julie tried not to break the spell. “Did he threaten you?”

“Uh-huh. Said some women deserved to die. Some days there were motorboats; the house might have been by a lake. One day he made me strip and put on the hood. He put me in the vehicle, and he must have driven for hours. Then he stopped and pulled me from the back of the truck and left me on the road.”

“You were hitchhiking, right? When you first got in the car, didn't you get a look at his face?”

“I should have, but he was bent over, getting something from the floor. The driver's footwell. He said something about my seat belt, so as I turned to grab it, he socked me hard. Maybe with a handle from a hammer. Wow, I don't even know why I would say that—about the hammer, I mean.” She paused. “Oh yeah. Once, after one of his nightly visits, I peeked under the hood and saw him
slapping a piece of round polished wood against his leg. It looked like he was going to hit me again.”

She circled the room. “Dirty little bastard.” She covered her face with crossed arms. “Excuse the language.” She went to the window. “Once in a while he would put his hands around my throat as if he were about to strangle me. Then he would laugh as if it were a joke. I never saw his face that well except the night he let me go, and even then it was pretty dark.

“His smell, I'll never forget that.” She waited, as if for permission to continue. “Cheap aftershave, sweat, and the garlic.” She turned back to Julie. “Where he let me out was close to a place called Heber Springs. There's a bunch of lakes there. That's where I might have been the whole time. He just drove around those hours to confuse me. If you catch him, tell him for me, ‘Angie thinks you're a coward.' ”

Julie walked over and gave the girl a hug, and then signaled to Todd that they were leaving.

Listening to the hums and rattles of the police car on the way back to Missouri, the day turned out to be a long one.

“You okay to drive, Todd?” She didn't hear his answer as she drifted into a dream—Cheryl giving a speech at her elementary school graduation.

“All people—white, black, brown, yellow—are equal in my eyes, as in the eyes of the Lord.” She continued her charmingly naive speech. “There is good in us all, every being has kindness that shines through, every man has the power to be gentle and decent.”

Julie woke up, wondering if Cheryl's innocence would betray her, and would she be able to see there were those who didn't obey the commandments?
Be strong, baby, be strong.

T
o be in
accordance with the truth, one must also understand how ugly it can be once it makes its appearance. Being honest for most of his life had been a mere suggestion; a whiff of a passing breeze, Charles mused. Common folk were anchored to their corny “Honesty is the best policy” cliches. Charles, however, believed that truth and lies were mere tools in life, the best policy being “Whatever it takes.”

William Drew called him at the Bait Shack to explain that the authorities wanted to interview all of the employees who'd been working at the plant when his niece had gone missing. “I know this is a pain in the behind for you, Charles, but it shouldn't take long.”

“Would you like me to organize the whole thing for you? I'll hustle the men in and out of the interview space; be the goodwill ambassador for the company.”

“Great. Especially since you are part of the management team. I'll leave the list with Deedee, and both of you can determine the best way to go with this. Oh, and we have a number of folks who worked here at the time
but have moved on. If they ask for their names, tell them they'll have to hunt them down on their own. Thanks again, Charles.”

“When did they say they'd be here?” Charles glanced at his watch.

“They didn't.” Deedee busied herself at her desk. “I was told midmorning. You seem fidgety today.”

“Oh, just another day at the mill. Nose to the grindstone. ‘A man's work is never done.' Blah-blah-blah.” He willed himself to relax, concentrating on his shoulders and the tension around his neck.

“Oh no, hold it, Slick-a-roonie. It's a
woman's
work that's never done. Let's keep our priorities in order, shall we?”

Charles tried to conjure up a laugh—not feeling it. “I'll get going on this group of fellows, have them come up in herds of two, since you say there will be a couple of
po
-lice.”

“You should be ashamed. They aren't cattle.”

“Of course not. I meant it only as a passing witticism. A mere jest to describe one's hardworking mates. Our fellow travelers on the road to . . . let me think, the well-traveled path to—”

“If it's fellow travelers, they'd be on their way to Moscow, silly.”

“But yes, of course. Dressed all in pink, get it? Commie tools, headed not for Moscow but for—”

“—San Francisco,” they answered.

Deedee waved toodle-loo.

It pleased him at times to play the innocent fool. He walked down the stairs into the factory proper. Wearing his best blue suit, new Van Heusen shirt, and conservative
grey tie, he looked down at the names, choosing the oldest and least likely candidates first. He rounded up the men and assembled them in the break room at the far end of the factory floor.

“The police want to talk to you people about an event that took place . . . ah, let's see.” He glanced down at his list as if the abduction date of William Drew's niece were there. It wasn't. But he knew the time sequence. “Well, it was somewhere in the neighborhood of seventeen years ago. You were all working here at the plant, so go on back to work and try and think of anything that might help the police. Mel Brown and Douglas Wright Vance, stick around.”

The rest of the men filed out, leaving the two older fellows sitting hangdog in their hard plastic chairs.

“Wait here in the break room til I call you, okay?” Charles flinched as he walked past the factory floor area of his nearly fatal overhead crane encounter.

Deedee scurried about, straightening books, adjusting papers. “I cleared that vacant space next door. The second cop could use my spot here.”

“Terrific. Now what?”

“They called; be here in ten minutes.”

Charles walked along the long hall connecting the executive wing with the office staff. This, he thought, might be a real test. A day he suspected would come, but not exactly like this. He continued pacing, trying to think of what to say if asked; how to comport himself. He knew he would get through this inconvenience, as it had been seventeen years,
and
given that the girl was a tramp and more than deserving; she was hardly missed. Bring it on.

“I've taken the opportunity to alert the men, sir. And I've asked them to stay at their stations until called. Will that suffice, Mr. Todd?” Charles looked him square in the eye.

“It's Detective, sir, and my last name is Devlin.”

He knew all that. He just wanted to be difficult; maybe appear naive.

“You haven't met Sergeant Worth, have you, Mr. Clegg?”

Charles had been facing away from the door when it opened. When he turned, he was pleased to see the mother of the young lady whose company he had shared the last ten days. Not in the conventional sense, but in a performer-audience-type relationship. Sitting at the top of the stairs, he had played his guitar and sang a number of times. The girl, Cheryl—whose attractive parent now stood in front of him—needed discipline after the concert. His captive's striking image was reflected in the face before him.

She looked tired, this clueless mother, her face lined with concern.

Charles called down to the break room for Mel Brown and Doug Vance. Over the course of the next hour and a half, he heard snippets of questions being asked of the eleven other men, individually, who'd worked at the factory those many years ago. “Did you know Trudy, your employer's niece?” “How did you learn of her disappearance?” “Have you ever talked to anyone about the event?” “How old are you, sir?” “Do you drive a Ford Bronco?”

When it was over, he felt confident. All the questions seemed fairly benign. The one question they didn't ask was, “Do you currently have a sixteen-year-old girl named Cheryl imprisoned in your basement?”