Pursuit (5 page)

Quitting would have been easy. He didn't, only because he had signed the property settlement as a youngster, and he enjoyed his present circumstance.

Part of Charles's deal with the company included an office. A needless waste, but it amused him to still be tied
to Drew Inc. At thirty-eight, the envy of most other young guys in the plant, he was named disposition manager, a cooked-up position given to him after he'd worked the floor for twelve years. He never understood his duties, but it had something to do with solving problems, being a liaison between management and union, putting out labor fires, and holding hands. He appreciated the authority of his managerial position.

He nipped a sexual harassment complaint in the bud, so to speak, when he presented the company with the woman's resignation, a letter absolving her boss of any wrongdoing and her promise to Charles personally that she would settle in a place “far removed from Drew Inc.”

“Congrats on cleaning up that Russell dung heap. She's no longer a bother, right?” William Drew seemed to hate Charles and his unholy bond with the company but remained pleased with the outcome of the Russell situation.

“Yep, the fifty thousand was money well spent, sir.”

“You got the usual paperwork? Everything signed and agreed to?”

“She wouldn't meet with our lawyers, but I convinced her and her people that this was all the company could do. Otherwise, ‘See you in court, sweetheart.' ”

“You have such a succinct way of putting things. And she's . . . left town?”

“I can promise you, sir, you will not be hearing from her or her people.”

Charles took pride in his persuasive ability. It took barely an hour to convince Miss Russell to relent, her painful options being slender and nil.

The company never heard from her. Nor did anyone else.

He also made a number of friends on the production floor. Charles gained trust by playing a tricky game of “I'm on your side, dude” to “The men can be handled, sir. We just have to convince them it's in their best interest.”

The pay was good, and his hours were made flexible by a series of white lies, outside meetings, and pure bullshit. No one alive, other than the senior Drew and a long-past-departed exec, knew of his sweetheart agreement with the company involving his lakeside cabin and grounds.

He was, among other things, a lucky guy.

A nice woman by the name of Deidre took care of him early on when he was just settling into his new office. If it hadn't been for their torrid lovemaking, Charles would have considered her more of a mother figure. Her fastidious handling of his inexperience as disposition manager was touching. She coddled him. His favorite pastime was watching her walk away, her tight skirt and barely perceptible swagger reminding him of earlier times at the foster home.

They played spanking games. Deidre scolding Charlie for his bad-boy behavior, and giving him numerous erotic chores to perform. While little Charlie whined and begged for his titty pie, Deidre laughed a lot. Baby Charles, though, took it dead serious. Deidre, when married barely ten months, drifted into Charles's slim arms. Their brief affair didn't seem to bother a working relationship that sustained itself for nearly five years. They never spoke of it, Charles now limiting his office flirting to an occasional pat on the behind.

He reminisced, his thoughts drifting to topic A: his current enterprise, and the overwhelming piece de resistance project in his life.

So delicious and special, he restricted his daydreaming to a paltry couple times per work session. Sometimes he would indulge himself to twice that. Why shouldn't a man have a few hushed pastimes?

On his way to Bait Shack, Charles passed the First Episcopal Church. He had attended a few times, always struck by the devoted. Their prayerful, self-conscious attitudes got the better of him. Although he liked their summer dresses, the women all stank of simple bathwater and cheap soap.

Charles stopped at his front gate, the house situated considerably back from the road. His hundred-odd acres wasn't a farm as such, just virgin timberland, and because of the lake, it seemed even larger. But most important, it was isolated.

He reheated supper, a roast chicken from Splendid Farms, half of which he put back in the fridge. A fresh salad and a container of store-bought sweet beans divided between two plates. A muffin sat on a tray along with plastic utensils and fresh coffee. Charles looked at the inexpensive bottle of red wine and decided to be generous, pouring a substantial portion for himself and, in a large paper cup, an equal amount. He had tried a variety of enticements. Maybe a special dinner and wine would do the trick. He balanced the cup, paper plate, and coffee on the tray. Next to a heavy wood door, a large key ring hung from a hook. He took the key with the flashlight attached and opened the door to the basement.

In the late evening, he watched the pundits on the Slyboots channel, admiring their preening and dismissive attitudes. The stark pale blue light of the television washed
the room in melancholy. It reminded Charles of earlier days, running naked through the woods with Patty, her high-pitched laugh a stark contrast of things to come.

He bounced the remote in his hands, suppressing an urge to shatter his television.

Patty had been naive, exuberant in nearly everything she undertook. She believed the world to be dominated by truly good people. Surrounding herself with all manner of hangers-on at work, her treating friends like family became maddening. Bringing home strangers, he predicted, would bring about a cataclysmic event. To his chagrin, his childlike bride persisted in her innocent ways.

Her quick tongue and wit annoyed him. He thought people of a certain caliber seemed arrogant to those of lesser education or advantages in life. Her pertness gnawed at him; a cheerfulness in the face of devastation rattled his very being.

He enjoyed only her athletic body; a tribute to a lifetime of exercise. Patty finished her degree and went on to teach, saying to him nearly every day, “I want to experience everything before I die. The good, the bad, the sublime. I want my life to amount to something.”

When Charles tried to explain to her the reality of the cold, cold world, she would laugh.

“Reality is what one makes of it; beauty can be found in a trash heap.”

And that is exactly where they found her.

J
ulie didn't mind
the storeroom work. She devised a system, laying out files on a long worktable. Much of the text was standard procedure, dry statements of assaults leading to deaths, outright homicides, and abductions. As Captain Walker explained, most of the files were recently reviewed by other officers; their notes on the various events, self-explanatory.

She had worked briefly on some of these herself. The Herod case, a homicide ten years earlier where the wife allegedly killed the husband and then disappeared. Cops called it a “forty-nine-dollar divorce,” in reference to the cheap Saturday night special handguns often favored in these killings. The woman's picture in the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
looked provocative. Julie's daughter, Cheryl, was almost seven at the time. She recalled her asking, “Who's the pretty woman, Mommy? Did she do a bad thing?”

“Dear, we just don't know. We can't find her. When we do, we'll ask her. Okay?”

They never found the woman; she'd simply vanished. An odd part of her job—pursuing people who harmed others. Not so much godlike in terms of discipline for the
community but an attempt at balance for those who had been wronged.

Julie, lugging a stack of files, knocked politely on Captain Walker's door. “Got a minute, sir? I'd like you to take a look at a couple items.”

“What's up, Worth? What do you have?” He sat down, closing a Missouri State Patrol convention brochure and its intended agenda.

Julie pulled a two-page report from her binder. “A disappearance seventeen years ago. That in itself is not unusual, but three others took place over a period of ten months—all within a couple-hundred-mile radius. At the time, they were thought to be runaways.”

“Females, I presume.”

Julie nodded. “Tracked a mother of one these women to a trailer park. When I phoned her, she says, ‘It took you near a decade or more to get back to us. Why you botherin' now?' I asked Mom if the girl took any items with her when she left: clothes, toiletries, anything. She said, ‘Marylou left cocky, naive, and naked as a jay.' That doesn't sound like a runaway to me.”

Walker puzzled with a ring of keys, dropping them in an ashtray. “The problem with cold cases is they're just that. People just don't give a damn. Tell you what. Pursue the three-runaways in any order you want, but keep it to yourself.”

“Oh, another gal. Name's Preston. I'd like to talk to her about her sister's disappearance. Okay?”

“Keep it to yourself.”

“Can I bring my partner into this?”

“Not until your admin duty runs out. Otherwise, if the commish finds out, I'll be down in the basement with
you, and I am way too old for that. Good luck, and, of course, not a word of this to anyone.”

“Mrs. Preston?”

A slight pause. “Who's calling?”

“My name is Sergeant Juliette Worth. Missouri State Patrol, Criminal Investigation.”

“Criminal?”

“No need to be frightened. Are you Beverly Preston?”

“Maybe.”

Julie thought she'd heard some strange answers to an “Are you so and so?” inquiry, but “maybe” was the weirdest.

“May I have a few minutes of your time? I'd like to come out to your place and speak with you.”

“Does this have to do with Betty? It will be several months before the sun crosses the equator, so day and night are still unequal.”

Julie explained the recent opening of unsolved case files and that she would like to speak to a family member in regard to the missing Betty Preston. Telephone number changes were made over the years, the victim's family having kept the police department up to date. Preston agreed to have Julie come to her home. Julie wasn't sure it would lead to anything, but it was good to get out. She got into her Dodge Charger work vehicle, appreciating the drive to Walnut Springs, a bedroom community just twenty miles west of Saint Louis. She could get to the Preston house before the spring equinox. She smiled at her own joke.