Читать книгу The Hunt - Andrew Welsh-Huggins - Страница 13

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IT WAS STILL MILD THE NEXT DAY WHEN I pulled into the parking lot of Byrnes’s apartment complex in Whitehall, a working-class suburb just east of Columbus.

“Thanks for coming,” he said, opening the door of his spare second-floor unit shortly after two o’clock. We walked into the living room, where a boy sat on the couch watching TV.

“This is Robbie,” Byrnes said. “Can you say hi?”

The boy, three or four, grudgingly nodded at me after some additional prodding. My eyes lingered a moment too long on the child, who was dark-complected, unlike Byrnes. “He’s Jessica’s son,” he explained. “I’ve got custody of him.”

So this story got even worse, I thought. We went into the kitchen, where Bill offered me a chair. One leg was shorter than the others, and I braced myself to keep from rocking. I looked around. The cupboards were clean and the counters were spare but tidy. The sink was empty. Robbie’s drawings covered the refrigerator.

“So,” I said after a couple of moments of silence passed. Byrnes watched me like a patient waiting for the doctor to give it to him straight. “When was the last time you saw your sister?”

“Early July. She called, asked if she could come over.”

“OK.”

“Her, and that girl Lisa.”

“Lisa?”

“Lisa Washington. The one they found in the river.”

“They knew each other?”

“They were friends, I guess.” He had a corrected harelip and a way of looking just past you when he talked, as if afraid of what he might see. But the worry in his eyes, when you could catch them, looked genuine.

“And did they? Come over?”

Byrnes nodded. “They stayed about an hour. Jessica seemed, I don’t know, a little preoccupied or something, but nothing she’d talk about. She played with Robbie. They both did. Seemed to cheer them up. Especially Lisa. Right at the end Jessica asked if she could borrow some money.”

“What’d you say?”

“I gave her a hundred bucks. It was all I had.”

“And that was it? Last time you saw her?”

“Yeah. But a couple weeks later she called. July 26. I only remember because it was the day after Lisa’s body was found. She didn’t leave a message. I called back, but there was no answer. That had happened before, so I didn’t think much about it.”

“But now you’ve reported her missing.”

He shrugged. “I read what that minister said. Everything that’s been going on, I thought I better.”

“And why’d you call him?”

“See if he’d seen her.” He glanced into the living room and lowered his voice. “Since she worked in the Bottoms, for a while. Friend of mine saw her once, on Sullivant, staring at guys in cars. The minister said he didn’t know her. But thought maybe you could help.”

“Do you have a picture of her?”

He pushed a manila envelope toward me. I opened it and pulled out two photos. The first was of a teenage girl, sixteen or seventeen, laughing at something out of the frame of the picture. She had a pretty face with freckles marching up her nose, light blue eyes, and brownish hair pulled back off a high forehead into a ponytail. There was something wild in her expression, a gleam in the eyes that hinted at rebellion. But basically hers was no different than the faces of a thousand other girls that age. Girls with nice clothes and straight teeth and futures that didn’t include bending their heads into the laps of men with working ATM cards. I put the picture down and examined the second. I almost didn’t recognize her. She was heavily made up, her eyes dark with eyeliner and mascara, her lips the red of cheap Christmas ribbon. She was curled on a bed wearing nothing but a scarlet bra and panties, sucking on her right forefinger, glowering at the camera. Glowering a generous word, because the photo was a cruel parody of seduction. She looked sexy the way roadkill looks like taxidermy. Even with the photo’s grainy quality, it was clear the light in the eyes of her lively, teenage self had dimmed, replaced by something opaque and exhausted. She looked much older than she should have, weary beyond her years, her face tense, her body strained as if recoiling from a blow. I examined the photo more closely and made out a dark line across her neck, which I first took for a strand of hair but then realized was a name tattooed in cursive. The first letter, B, was all I could decipher.

“When were these taken?”

“First one’s from high school,” Byrnes said. “Eleventh grade. At a sleepover, I think. Right before she left home. I found the second one on the Internet this summer, looking for her. It was on Reardoor.com. It’s a personals site.”

I nodded. I’d heard of it. There’d been a lot in the news lately about websites and the trafficking industry. Both Missy Loomis and Natasha Rumsey had advertised themselves that way. A congresswoman was holding hearings on the sites and whether they should be outlawed as facilitating prostitution.

I pointed at the Internet photo. “How recent is that?”

“Not very. Probably a year old.”

“The word on her neck. Do you know what that is?”

“Might be her pimp’s name. They do that sometimes. It was covered up when she was here last.”

“Who’s her pimp?”

“I don’t know. I asked but she wouldn’t tell me. Said it was too dangerous.”

Too dangerous for whom? I wondered. I said, “OK if I keep these?”

“Sure.”

“You said she left home. Was that here? Whitehall?”

He shook his head. “We grew up in Mount Alexandria.”

“I know it. I’m from close by there.” The small city was just under an hour east of Columbus. “You have family there still?”

“Just our mom.”

“Dad?”

“Died of cancer. My mom remarried.”

“When did you move here?”

“Five years ago. After I got out of the army.”

“What do you do?”

“I run a forklift at a warehouse, over in Reynoldsburg. But I’m taking classes. I want to do engineering someplace.”

“Any chance your mom knows where Jessica is?”

“I doubt it.”

“Have you asked her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Byrnes shifted in his seat. “There’s no point. I don’t think she would know. They didn’t get along.”

“Any reason?”

“They argued a lot, especially after my mom remarried.”

“How about your stepdad? Would he know?”

“They split up a while ago.”

“Do you know when Jessica came to Columbus?”

“After high school. I wasn’t around then—I left when I was eighteen.”

“Did she come here for work?”

“I think.”

“Any idea who she stayed with?”

“No. Like I said, I wasn’t around. I maybe wasn’t the greatest brother.” He looked away, ostensibly to check on Robbie in the other room.

“Don’t worry about stuff like that. Things happen no matter what we do, OK?”

“OK, I guess.”

“You know how long she’s been working the streets?”

“A while. At least since I got back.”

“What parts of town?”

“Bunch of places. Bottoms, like I said. East side, more recently. The Rest EZ, a lot of the times.”

“Rest EZ?”

“Motel, up there, on East Main.” He pointed through the wall behind him. “Where she, you know, met customers. It’s a pit. Columbus has been trying to shut it down. Too late now.”

“She stayed there?”

“Sometimes. She moved around a lot.”

“And you said she called the day after Lisa’s body was found?”

“Yeah. But no message, like I said.”

“Right.” It could mean anything, I thought. A grieving girl looking for comfort after her friend’s death. A frightened girl reaching out for help. Or a drug-addled girl looking for more money.

“What’d the police say?”

“They took it seriously. Guy came out and asked me a bunch of questions.”

“Do you know who?”

“I don’t remember. I’ve got his card in the other room. So what do you think? About finding her?”

I hesitated. I glanced into the other room at Robbie.

“Any idea who his father is?”

“Not a clue. Jessica just showed up with him. He was nothing but a baby. Said she couldn’t handle him. Long story short, I decided to keep him. Thought it was the right thing to do. Thought maybe, someday, Jessica might, you know—”

“She didn’t say anything about the dad?”

“She wasn’t around long enough. And to be honest, the guys she was with? I’m not sure I want to know. So can you help me or not?”

“Sure,” I said. No idea. “There’s just a couple of things—”

“I can pay. That’s not a problem. Just tell me how much.”

I looked around the spare kitchen. At the worn furniture in the living room. At Robbie, glued to the TV. I wondered if anyone knew who his father was. If even Jessica knew. I quoted Byrnes a number half my usual rate which wouldn’t even cover expenses. Even at that, I saw him blanch a moment before pulling out his wallet.

“You have that cop’s card?” I said after he’d handed me the cash. “And I’ll need your mom’s number.”

“Why?”

“Standard operating procedure. I talk to lots of people, job like this.”

“She hasn’t seen Jessica in a lot longer than me.”

“I still have to ask.”

“OK,” he said, doubtfully. He gave me her number, stood up, and went into the living room to hunt the detective’s card. When he came back we finished with the part I hate the most. I asked for identifying features in case of. He nodded. There was the pimp’s name on her neck. Some roses tattooed on her left shoulder. A broken collarbone from a sledding accident when they were kids. He didn’t know about dental records.

“Thanks,” he said when we were done and I stood at the door. “You’ll stay in touch?”

I told him I would. We shook hands and I walked downstairs to the parking lot. I got in my van, pulled out my phone, and dialed the number for the missing person detective. Larry Schwartzbaum. Name didn’t mean anything to me. I left a message, as I figured I would on a Sunday afternoon. I held off calling the mom. Tammy. I needed some more information first.

I drove south on Yearling until it bottomed out at Livingston. I pulled into the parking lot at Resch’s, went inside, and ordered a dozen doughnuts to go. I was supposed to have dinner at Anne’s that night and figured they might make a decent peace offering. Along with the flowers in the back of my van and a book of sci-fi stories I’d picked up for her at the Book Loft. I was back outside and had just started up the Odyssey when the guitar licks of “Livin’ on a Prayer” alerted me to an incoming call. I stared at the caller ID in surprise.

“Shelley?”

“It’s Dad,” my sister said. “He’s had a heart attack. They’re not sure he’s going to make it.”