Pursuit (26 page)

“Did you see this fellow Bink after your daughter disappeared?”

Venus dabbed at her eyes and nose, the crumpled Kleenex leaving white specks on her upper lip. “Yeah, I'm not proud of it, but Bink was a great comfort in those mixed-up days.”

“Was he ever questioned by the police? Taken in, anything like that?”

“No. By then we realized Marylou hadn't just run
away, I'd been talked to by the State Attorney's Office and was sitting in lockup trying to raise bail. Bink came to see me in jail. We spoke of going to the Caribbean or Mexico together. I told him where I buried the money from my—how should I say it?—dalliance, and he said he would need the money for my bond. Then the bastard disappeared.”

“What can you tell me about where he was from, where he worked?”

Venus wrung her hands as if trying to cleanse them. “Said he was an orphan, raised in the western part of the state, had a settlement with a big company over an injury he sustained years ago, wouldn't go into it. When I asked about his name, he wouldn't talk about it. Said, ‘He's another person.' ”

Julie looked up from her legal pad. “ ‘He's another person'? What do you think he meant by that?”

“I don't know. Just pillow talk. Besides his being less than average size, there was that forever-pleading bullshit singing. I never knew how long he'd be gone. Sometimes days on end, then show up in a broken-down piece a shit car or truck. Took my money and split, never saw him again. Left me in the pokey.” She inspected her chipped fingernail polish. “Was a shameful period for me.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Describe him, yeah. A weasel dressed in men's clothing. A would-be Hells Angel without balls. A loser.”

“I mean, for a police artist, describe how he looked.”

“How about a picture?”

“You've got a photograph of Bink Caldwell?”

“Oh yeah, he and my daughter had it taken a few weeks before she vanished. Got it at home; you want to see it? Hey, maybe the next time you see me, I'll be in
Lewisburg's federal lockup with the rest of the criminal elite. Shit.”

“Miss Riley, you're doing the right thing, thank you.”

Venus Riley's modular home, D unit, looked the same as before, a curdled-milk beige over a grey-blue, while next door it was beige over greenish yellow.

Inside, Julie smelled incense and burnt candles, evidence of a midnight get-together. She scolded herself for her judgment of Venus's livelihood. If it brought Cheryl closer to home, the woman, if she were so inclined, could stand naked on top of her mobile home and shout the teachings of Buddha.

“It's going to take a while; haven't been through these boxes in a coon's age.” Venus dragged two large cardboard boxes from the drawers beneath the couch. She teared up as she leafed through the mountain of photos. Julie watched, praying this wasn't an exercise in futility.

“Here's Marylou at six. Cute, huh?”

Julie took the photo and said all the required oohs and aahs while keeping an eye on Venus rummaging through the two cartons.

“Not here. Damn. Where in the dickens could—”

“Do you ever stick photos into books? Some people use them as markers.”

Venus was on her feet, darting around the kitchen, pulling out drawers and cupboard doors. “Here it is. Shoot. Greasy and bent; stuck it in a cookbook.”

Julie went to her side. The picture looked as if it had been taken at a photo booth. A male, seated with a girl, presumably Marylou, on his lap. The girl's curly hair dominated the three shots. The only clear picture of the man, at the bottom, where the camera caught the fellow's mustache
and goatee in a deep comic scowl, his pompadour flopped down over one eye. An oversized collar sporting a string tie hung down his chest. Julie didn't recognize him. She was disappointed it wasn't someone she had arrested or seen in the station, a lineup, or in court. She looked at the images again, sensing a familiarity, but laid it off as too many years of looking at weird-eyed bad guys.

“Miss Riley, may I take a photo of this?”

“Of course, that's why we're here.”

Julie snapped a shot, made sure it came through, and walked out to her car with Venus. “What a piece of dog crap that guy was.” The woman said the last part as if she were talking to herself. “So sorry, Sergeant. I honestly pray you get your daughter back safely.”

“If something comes up, may I contact you?” They hugged, Julie wishing she were more benevolent, but the woman had delayed the investigation by a number of days.

“It's been years since I've felt anything about Marylou. Call anytime. I'll be glad to talk.”

T
he continued back-and-forth
motion of the sardine can on the wood panel made Cheryl's arm ache. She stopped to massage her shoulder and switch hands. From time to time, the can would twist into jagged pieces of tin. Her remedy was to place the can under one of the legs of her metal cot and tamp the oily makeshift saw back into some reasonable semblance of a handle and blade. She might have been concerned about the noise of the cot's metal leg resounding off the concrete floor, but the late departure of King seemed to leave the evening open to all kinds of opportunities.

She played mind games to relieve the boredom of the continuous scratching. At times she would make a complete circle around what she referred to as her window of freedom. One more trip, and then she'd rest. She dug into the plywood again. The toughest section—the top horizontal plane. Her reach wasn't high enough to put any real power into her scraping. As night wore on, she felt the blade break through for the first time. It happened in the lower right-hand corner, making a hole the size of a dime.

With both hands wrapped tightly around her bent can,
Cheryl pulled down hard on the vertical boundary. Again and again she ran the blade up and down the indented groove. She switched over to the other side and began the relentless routine of the left vertical line. The constant sawing raised blisters and welts on her palms. She opened another can of the pungent fish and continued.

Cheryl rested. Lying on the hard cot, she gazed at the escape hole, a bright orange light coming through the right corner. She swallowed hard and lifted herself atop the squat refrigerator, pressing her eye to the hole. A dark cloud streak blotted part of the bright light of the moon.

When Cheryl looked at the debris made while outlining the window shape, she knew it would not be possible to hide this escape attempt. It would have to be now. A full commitment over the next few hours or probably not at all.

She sawed back and forth on the bottom portion of the window, the tone changed from a low, throaty rumble to a higher reed-like squeak. She felt a roughness the last few horizontal swipes, and then she was through. She attacked the right vertical upright. A new vibration at the bottom as the sides fought to stay together. She stayed at the right upright until it broke through from the dime-sized hole to the top. Cheryl wedged her fingers into the corner. Two sides of her work were now free, but the plywood would budge apart only a few inches. She slid down off the fridge and slumped onto the cot.

The moonlight spilled in from the scarred wood frame, and she wondered how to finish this before stinky garlic man came down to fetch her. Cheryl pulled the thin mattress off the metal cot and examined the connection between the rails holding the wire springs. She saw a simple C-shaped hook on the rails and a corresponding knob on
the headboard portion that secured the hook. She turned the cot upside down and stomped her tennis-shoed foot onto the connections, the cot separating into three pieces.

Experimenting with the footboard of the cot wedged under the corner of the plywood, Cheryl thought there was too much room between the fridge and the window for her to have something to pry against. She laid the metal footboard upright on the fridge and placed the cot rails on top, forcing the rail under the crack in the window opening.

When she pushed down at the other end of the mattress rail, the plywood came apart with a loud split. She moved the whole apparatus to the left—toward the wall, about a foot—and repeated her levering. Once again the large panel protested the surrender of the glued plywood. It was a hole—not yet big enough to crawl out of, but promising.

She paused to look at the wind-stroked patch of clouds from her escape hatch. Cheryl climbed back on top of the fridge and, with her hands, pried the remaining cracked pieces of wood away from the window. The latch on the metal frame gave way. The window itself would open only a few inches until she cleared away the last few stubborn pieces of the plywood. She thought a four-inch strip of wood left at the top of the window was probably nailed to a two-by-four.

Cheryl once again placed the cot rail under the strip of wood and jammed the headboard on top of the fridge to give herself a place for her lever. With all her weight on the rail, the plywood strip splintered with a sharp crack and the breaking of glass. The edge of the bed rail had punctured the window. She broke the rest of the glass and scraped
away the shards from the metal frame with her last sardine can. She raised the window, hinged from the top, and noticed a hook in the rafter above her head, left over from the old days when the basement was simply a basement and not a dungeon. A number of jagged plywood pieces still stuck out into the window opening. She hooked the casement opening and breathed in the fresh lakefront air.

The sound, when it came, had the temper and dread of an atomic bomb. An automobile; her worst fear. She saw headlights flashing against the tree branches in the back of the property next to the lake. Cheryl knew the basement window wasn't visible from where he was driving. But would he check on her? It was late. Would he be tired? Maybe she should try to get through the narrow window now or wait until he was asleep.

She hesitated, knowing that if he came down the steps and opened the door for her to come with him, he would see the dismantled cot. If he saw the cot, then it followed that he would come into the room to see what was going on. She knew he would kill her if he saw her work at the window. What was keeping him from not killing her, anyway?

Cheryl slumped against the cold wall, holding her breath against the options. Another hour, and she could have been free. She closed her eyes, wondering what her mom was doing, knowing that even now in the middle of the night, she would be thinking of her. Sounds from a television or radio upstairs came through the newly made opening. King must have had a window open just above her.

There seemed to be nothing more to do but wait. She pulled the thin blanket off the mattress and wrapped it
around her legs. The sudden warmth made her sleepy. She drifted back to high school.

“Girls do not normally take wood shop, Miss Worth.”

“With due respect, sir, I know of a boy, Ivan Bell, taking home ec this semester.”

The principal drummed his fingers on an algebra book and cleared his throat a few times. “Ivan is an honor student whose family owns a restaurant, Miss Worth. The idea of him taking a cooking class seems a good one. How do you compare to that?”

“Well, my family doesn't own a restaurant or a woodworking facility, to make the comparison, but I come from a single-parent family, and it would be a big help to my mother if I did some chores around the house. You know, fix the screen door, repair the tread on the basement staircase. That kind of thing.”

The principal looked up at Cheryl from his paper-strewn desk. “This is not an attention-grabbing trick, is it, Miss Worth?”

Her answer was no answer.

“Go on, take shop class if you want. I'll okay it. But if you cut off a finger or get an eye poked out from a flying piece of metal from a band saw, don't come yelling to me, understand?”

She ended up loving shop and made buddies with a couple of the tough guys who had ridiculed her. It seemed a sweet memory until she heard footsteps on the basement stairs.

Elvis was back in the building.