“Who’s missing?”
“I don’t know everyone here. It’s too big.”
“I’ll give you the name of a policeman you can talk to,” I said. “You have a pencil and paper?”
“I have several pens and a pad, but I don’t need them. The police will think I’m an old nut with a fuzzy brain. Come talk to me.”
“I really don’t-”
“I can pay,” she said.
“It’s not the money,” I said.
“Sterling said you find people,” she said.
“Yes. I’m a process server.”
“Well, find the woman who was murdered,” she said.
“And find whoever killed her?” I added.
“If you wish,” she said. “I’m not crusading. I’m simply trying to prove that I am not a demented old woman. And I want to do something besides watching game shows and re-reading books from the library here that I’ve already read three times. Besides, murder is wrong.”
“I’ll try to stop by before noon.”
“Come any time,” she said. “I’m always here.”
I hung up. The sky was clear with a few pillow-drifting clouds. The air was cool. I could bike to the Seaside Assisted Living Facility on Beneva south of Clark in about half an hour but I wouldn’t have to.
I had been called the day before and asked to be at the office of Tycinker, Oliver and Schwartz, a law firm just off Palm Avenue. I regularly served papers for the partners. I assumed they had a job for me, maybe a summons or two. Two would be fine. I had some cash in a video box mixed in with my stack. I didn’t need the money, but I couldn’t turn down the request.
When I got to the office, parked my bike and chained it to the drainpipe next to the gray wooden sign that carried the name of the law firm, I thought I smelled gardenias. Catherine liked the smell of gardenias. Sometimes, like this moment, I smelled gardenias and wasn’t even sure they were really there.
I had told Ann about smelling things that weren’t there when I thought about Catherine. Ann thought it was either a healing compensatory delusion or I was getting migraine auras. I don’t get headaches. My teeth are fluoride protected. I’ve never had surgery and the worst illness I’ve had was the flu. I was cursed with almost perfect health.
I was expected, nodded to by the secretaries, told to go into Richard Tycinker’s office. Tycinker, solid, fifties, gray suit and colorful tie, sat behind his desk and shook his head as he looked at me. I was wearing my jeans, a washed-out white short-sleeved pullover with a collar and a little embossed koala bear on the pocket. Sitting in the chair across from Tycinker looking back over her shoulder at me was a woman who did not look impressed. I took off my Cubs cap.
“Miss Root, this is Mr. Fonesca,” Tycinker said.
She nodded and smiled, a sad smile. I had the feeling that I was supposed to recognize her. She was lean, almost skinny, pretty face, not much makeup. Her eyes met and held mine.
“You know about Miss Root’s son?” Tycinker asked solemnly. “Kyle?”
I remembered. Page three or four of the Herald-Tribune about a week ago. The article had said the boy was Nancy Root’s son, but his name hadn’t been Root.
“Kyle McClory,” Tycinker said. “His father and Nancy are divorced.”
Nancy Root was an actress. She appeared regularly at the Asolo Theater and Florida Studio Theater, in St. Pete, around the state and from time to time in regional productions around the country. Her name popped into bold type frequently in Marjorie North’s column. Once in a while she did a cabaret act, show tunes, ballads at the Ritz-Carlton. She had even had some small speaking roles in television shows like Law amp; Order, Profiler, Without a Trace and Just Shoot Me.
I had never seen her act or heard her sing. I had never gone to a play or a movie in Sarasota, seldom watched television and never been inside the Ritz-Carlton. The reviews always said she was good. It was a local given.
A hit-and-run driver on Eighth Street had killed Kyle McClory, fourteen, a student at Sarasota High School, half a block from Gillespie Park. Gillespie Park is a heavily Hispanic neighborhood just north of Fruitville, the street that marks the northern border of downtown Sarasota. The driver had driven away. One witness. I didn’t remember who. I didn’t have to ask if the driver had been found. I knew from the look on Nancy Root’s face that he or she hadn’t.
I could now place the look on the woman’s face. It was the look of pain and no answers that I had seen in any mirror I looked into. I knew what was coming. I was the right person for it. I was the wrong person for it. I didn’t want it, but I knew before the question was asked that I would do it.
“You want me to look for the person who killed your son?” I said.
“I want you to find the person who killed Kyle and drove away.”
“The police,” I said.
She shook her head and said firmly, “It’s a case. On a list. In a file. They’re ‘looking.’ That’s what they tell me,” she said. “Looking. I think they are. I just don’t know how hard. I don’t know what else they have to do. I don’t know if they really care. I’ve spoken to the detective in charge of the investigation, a Detective Ransom. He expressed his sympathy, promised he would give Kyle’s death the highest priority. He gave a very unconvincing performance. I want someone finding, looking full-time and finding. I want to know.”
“I understand,” I said.
“Nancy, Miss Root has been told that you’ve done an amazing job finding people for us,” Tycinker said, brushing a hint of nothing from his lapel.
“I have a job I’m working on,” I said, thinking about Dorothy Cgnozic and her night vision of murder.
“But you will do this?” she said.
“Coffee, Lewis?” Tycinker asked.
He wanted to catch my eye. He wanted his smile to remind me that I was on a small monthly retainer from his office and that I had access to the computer-hacking skills of Harvey, whose room was just down the hall. Tycinker and Company were my bread-and-butter clients. I looked at him and shook my head yes, acknowledging the offer of both the coffee and the job.
“I’ll get it,” he said, moving toward the door.
He could have picked up the phone and had someone bring the coffee but either he or Nancy Root wanted Tycinker out of the room and so Tycinker was gone.
I sat in the chair next to Nancy Root. She looked at my face. I was uncomfortable and looked away, placing my cap on my lap.
“What can you tell me?” I asked.
“That my son is dead,” she said. “That someone ran him down in the street, that there’s a witness who thinks it was intentional, that the driver wanted to kill Kyle. I don’t think the police believe him.”
I asked more questions. She answered. Tycinker came back with coffee, which reminded me that I hadn’t had anything to eat. He went back behind his desk, sat and listened, hands folded, lips pursed, head moving, turning toward whoever was talking.
Traffic whooshed gently by on Palm and I was aware of the passage of colors, yellow, red, black, blue, from people who had someplace to go.
We started with Nancy Root handing me an eight-by-ten color photograph of her son. It looked like it had been taken in his bedroom. There was a poster behind him on the wall of a dreadlocked black man in a soccer uniform about to kick a ball directly at the camera. His teeth were bared. The ball, the camera or whoever was looking at the photograph was his enemy.
Kyle looked like many teens, a little scrawny, mop of reddish hair, face like his mother’s, teeth a little large. Good-looking kid. I turned my cap over and laid the photograph gently inside, face-up, so I could look down at it.
Kyle had been a good student at Sarasota High. Not a great student, but a good one, his mother said. Played soccer, hoped to be a starter the next season, had there been another season for him. Liked science.
I could also tell he liked video games, the new kind with people scoring points for how many prostitutes and men in turbans they kill. She didn’t tell me that. I could see the boxes on the table behind the kid in the photograph in my lap.