I FELT VERY UNCOMFORTABLE as I walked back to the van. A parent looking for keys wouldn’t have parked at the end of the block. He would have parked in the school lot and backtracked.
But I figured the burly guy was the only person who had heard my reason for being in that alley, and he had watched me until he couldn’t see me any longer. I had probably reached the intersection before he went back inside.
If I were him, I would have sprinted back in. It was too cold to stand outside without a coat for longer than five minutes. Even though he had his arms crossed and had his bare hands tucked against his chest, he was probably shivering by the time I vanished from his view. He would have gone in, and then he would have to make his way through a busy kitchen and into the restaurant if he wanted to monitor my progress.
I was betting he wouldn’t even go to that much effort. He had believed my goofy key story after all.
Still, I hurried around that corner, picking my way as
quickly as I could across that ice-covered sidewalk. I didn’t
want to look like a man in a hurry, even though I was a man in a hurry.
The street was still pretty empty, and the hotel looked closed. But I wanted to put it behind me, at least for now.
I made it to the van in probably half the time it took to walk down the block. I unlocked the door, crawled inside, and turned the key in the ignition. I resisted the urge to put the blower on, knowing that it would just hit me with cold air.
But I was shivering, too.
I had been outside for forty-five minutes, which was too long in this weather.
I put the van in gear and headed out. By the time I got to the bank, it would be open. I could get my second weapon out of the safe-deposit box. Then I needed to figure out a way to get another backup gun. I hated to think of the expense, but I didn’t want to explain to anyone I knew what had happened to my original weapon. I couldn’t even say I was buying the gun for Franklin, because he had made it very clear to all concerned that he didn’t want weapons of any kind in his house, not with the children nearby.
Children—and Jimmy in particular—were why my second gun was in the bank and why I usually kept my primary weapon locked in the glove box of the van. Hard to get to, but there if I needed it.
And I had needed it.
Thank heavens Jimmy had listened to me. Thank heavens he hadn’t touched it the day before.
We might have had a very different discussion at the hospital. If things had gone as well.
It took me longer than expected at the bank. I hadn’t expected lines first thing in the morning. But I went to the safe-deposit box, trying not to look nervous or suspicious, and took out my gun. It was a Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless. Even though they stopped making these things about twenty years ago, Chicago was littered with them. They’d been the gun of choice for the bootleggers, gangsters, and thugs that had dominated this town thirty years ago.
They weren’t cheap, though; everyone wanted a gun that could fit into the pocket and not fire accidentally. I’d been lucky to score two of them. Now I would have to find another, without seeming like I was looking for it.
I took this gun out and hefted it in my palm. Small and sleek. It looked like it had when I put it here last fall. I slipped the gun into the pocket of my parka, a move which felt strangely uncomfortable after yesterday.
Then I returned to the van and drove home. Before I got out of the van, I placed the gun in the van’s glove box next to the extra magazines, where the previous gun had been.
It felt good to get the gun off my person.
I wanted to change before I saw Laura. Besides, it would take me at least forty minutes to get downtown in the middle of the morning and at least fifteen to find a place to park.
I had just peeled off the sweater when the phone rang. Busy day. I hurried into my office to answer.
“Investigations,” I said, sounding as curt as I felt.
“Mr. Grimshaw?” A woman’s voice that sounded vaguely familiar.
I closed my eyes. I didn’t need another complication today. “Yes?”
“It’s Darlene Pellman. You know, we talked yesterday about the Model Cities job?”
That seemed like three weeks ago. I made myself sound warm. “Mrs. Pellman. I’m sorry I had to get off the phone so quickly.”
“Oh, that was no problem,” she said. “It’s actually why I called. I was concerned and then your son wasn’t at the after-school program, and I wondered. Well, I figured rather than ask around, I would simply ask you.”
I felt a spurt of irritation. She probably had asked around and hadn’t gotten the answers she wanted.
And then I realized the thought was uncharitable. She thought we were friends. She probably was concerned.
“As you could probably tell, we had a family emergency,” I said, not really knowing what to say to her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I hope everything has worked out all right?”
“We don’t know yet,” I said. “It’ll take a while for things to resolve. But the urgent part of the emergency is over.”
“That’s a blessing at least.” She paused as if she was going to ask more and then decided against it. “I suppose you won’t go after the Model City’s job then?”
“It wasn’t for me, Mrs. Pellman. I was going to encourage you. Did I? I don’t really remember.”
“You did,” she said. “I spoke to my husband. He thinks that I should try.”
“He’s right,” I said. “I will put in a good word if you need
it.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll let you know when I see the application.”
She sounded like she was about to hang up when I realized she was one of those people who kept track of everyone else. Such people could be useful if handled well.
“Mrs. Pellman,” I said slowly, picking my words carefully. “I—um—am working on a case, and when we were starting up the after-school program, you mentioned how much you appreciated it because it kept kids out of trouble.”
“I still feel that way, Mr. Grimshaw,” she said primly. “Me, too,” I said, “but it got me to wondering about the
trouble you were referring to. I had assumed you were talking about the gangs. Was I right?”
“Oh, that and other things.” She sounded a bit relieved, as if I had hit on a topic she was used to discussing. “Some of the kids, they end up dealing drugs. And the girls get in trouble, you know, and drop out, and that’s no good for anyone either. They lapse into poverty or worse, and their children grow up to become new gang members.”
I wasn’t going to jump on the girls immediately, particularly if Mrs. Pellman had heard gossip about Lacey. I would work my way back to that.
“I figured the drug dealing was connected to the gangs,” I said.
“Mostly,” Mrs. Pellman said. “Although there are a lot of other sources for drugs in this city.”
“That there are,” I said. “Girls getting in trouble, though, that happens in the best of schools, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose,” she said. “But so many, you know, find an older boy and just run off, thinking it’s true love, when we both know what it is.”
“I guess we do.” I worked at sounding rueful. “Lots of kids go missing these days.”
“They do,” she said. “It’s those hippies and that drug culture. They run away and think they’re going to change the world. The police won’t even look for teenagers any more.”
“They won’t?” I asked. I didn’t know that. “Black children?”
“All children,” she said. “Teenagers. I know white people who are getting very frustrated with the police over this.”
I noted she didn’t say “some of my white friends.” I didn’t doubt her story’s veracity, though. It sounded true, particularly with what I’d been hearing on the local news.
“I would have thought the police would at least have searched for missing white children,” I said.
“They do when the children are under twelve. But if they’re teens and they have any contact with that so-called counterculture, the police want nothing to do with them. Too many runaways going off to rock concerts or San Francisco or
something.” She actually tut-tutted. “It’s enough to drive you crazy.”
It was enough to make me even tenser. Maybe I was reading something into her assumptions, but Marvella’s words ran through my mind.
How do you know it was instead of?
If she had been right, if Voss had gone after other girls, then it stood to reason that some of them would go missing, like Mrs. Pellman said.
A shiver ran through me. I hoped I was making all of this
up.
“Well,” I said, not sure how to ask her more without making her curious about Lacey, “let me know if you need that recommendation.”
“Oh, I will, Mr. Grimshaw. Thank you for that and for the suggestion.”
“No problem,” I said, and hung up.
I stood with my hand on the receiver for a long time, just letting the conversation replay in my mind. My reaction was pure paranoia, nothing more. She hadn’t said that she personally knew anyone who had gone missing, only that it happened.
Anyone who read the news knew that.
And she had called to get gossip on yesterday’s events. So she liked to spread stories, liked to make things sound more dramatic than they were.
But the back of that hotel had no fire escapes and the windows were boarded off. And Voss had said he took drugged, pliable girls to a back room where he kept them for days until the fight went out of them.
Girls who wouldn’t want to go home after that.
Girls who might not feel like they could.
Surely, this sort of thing didn’t happen to girls with an actual loving family, like Lacey. Surely, she would have gone home the moment she was freed from that back room.
Wouldn’t she?
I honestly didn’t know.
And I wasn’t sure how I could find out.