When Tess was a little girl, she had gone out an open window on the second story of her parents' home. She had been trying to re-create Goldilocks's flight, which seemed suspiciously easy to her. Sure enough, she had broken her collarbone, which had somewhat dimmed her pleasure in being right.
Last night, she had gone sailing out the window again, confident in own theories, and been proven wrong. That had knocked the wind out of her in much the same way.
But nothing hurt more than the thought that Crow had not trusted her with whatever secret he was hoarding. She had to find him-again, and before tomorrow. What was the law of missing objects? They can be found in the most obvious places. Crow was not an object, but he was in a city he didn't know all that well, with no car and very little money, and a mysterious deadline fast approaching.
The only thing to do, she realized, was to retrace her steps, as if she were looking for a set of keys, or a notebook, or her gym shoes. That was how you found things. Retrace your steps. Retrace them again and again and again. Think about the last time you saw or held the missing item. Retrace your steps. What you have lost is always there, you just don't always see it until the third, fourth, fifth time around.
Chris Ransome had said there was something unfinished between his son and Tess, an energy like a divining rod. It wasn't the kind of theory for which one won the Nobel Prize, but it was all she had.
Chapter 27
Before setting out, she stopped at La Casita to ask Mrs. Nguyen to keep an eye on Esskay for the rest of the day. She found the two fast friends watching yet another telenovela-Mi Amor, Mi Vida-and sharing a bag of pork rinds.
"Don't let her have too many of those," Tess cautioned. Esskay gave her a smug look, confident that she could charm the birds out of the trees. Or at least pry the pork rinds from Mrs. Nguyen's fingers.
"Okay. When you coming home?"
"No idea."
"Better take a jacket."
"Jacket? It's eighty-five degrees out there."
"See the sky?" Tess glanced at the little slice of sky visible from La Casita's office. It was bright blue, with a few white fluffy clouds. "No, other sky," Mrs. Nguyen said. "Blue norther coming in, from the northwest. Much rain, cool weather behind. Temperature drop twenty, thirty degrees just like that." She snapped her greasy fingers. "Chris Marrou on Channel Five said."
"I'll take a jacket, Mom," she said.
"And your gun!" Mrs. Nguyen called after Tess. "Always good for a girl to have her gun."
The cool front was only a rumor as Tess drove, windows down, re-covering all the ground she had covered in the past few weeks. She drove down the St. Mary's strip, where Primo's was already advertising "Lunch Box Nite!" and a new band called the Urkels. But the creepy manager was at the bank, and the smiling bartender had no news of Crow. She circled the Morgue, a forlorn place in daylight, all its doors locked and bolted, even the back entrance off the loading dock. She found the duplex on Magnolia Drive, where Crow's Volvo was still parked in the back. Had he left his car because he knew where to rendezvous with Emmie all along? She didn't think so. She thought Crow had done what she was now doing, moving in ever-widening circles, trying to find Emmie by visiting what he knew of her past. But Emmie had the home-field advantage.
She headed to Hector's, much scarier at three P.M. than it had been at two A.M. No Crow, no Emmie, she was told. Not since last Saturday night. Did she know if they would be there tomorrow? Doubtful, very doubtful.
The rhythm of driving was addictive, she couldn't stop. As long as she was moving, she was doing something. No location, no matter how tangentially related, should be overlooked. She ate an early dinner at Earl Abel's, glided past the Sterne house on Hermosa, cut over to Austin Highway, and saw the lonely band of picketers keeping vigil outside Sterne Foods. Her knowledge of San Antonio exhausted, she headed north, bypassing the town of Twin Sisters this time and going straight to the old Barrett place. She told herself she'd try Austin next, drive all night if she had to, watch the sun come up over I-35 and head back into San Antonio, repeat the whole crazy loop. Momentum was the only thing she had going for her.
Crime scene tape marked off the pool house at the Barrett place and a new pane of glass had replaced the one she had cut, but it was otherwise as she had first seen it. She shouldered her knapsack and walked around the house a few times before she peered through a kitchen window. There was a dark shape on the floor in the main room. Her stomach clutched-she really wasn't up for finding another body. But this shadow was flat and still, nothing more than the corner of a blanket, or a bedroll.
A bedroll? There had been nothing lying on the floor when she had made her first inventory of the house. She tried the door, found it unlocked, and stepped over the threshold.
"Hello?" she called.
"What do you want?"
The voice came from behind her. Crow stood in the doorway, backlit so she couldn't really see his face. The sky beyond him was unlike any she had ever seen-dark gray, with a stripe of navy blue on the horizon. A blue norther. She hadn't realized the term was so literal.
"You're alone?" she asked.
"Yes."
"I am, too."
"I know. I hid in the grove of pecan trees when I heard a car on the gravel driveway. I wouldn't have come out if anyone had been with you. Even Rick. I'm not turning myself in, Tess. Not yet."
"Not until tomorrow, right?"
He had come all the way into the house, and she could see his face now. He looked surprised and a little irritated. "How do you know about tomorrow? How did you find me?"
There was one answer for both questions. "Because I know you."
"You did once," he said. "Not anymore."
"No, it's the other way around. I know you better now than I ever did when we were together. Looking for you, I began to understand you, to find out things I should have known all along." His face remained guarded, closed to her. "There were times when I didn't understand you. But I always knew you wouldn't be involved in murder, Crow."
"Well, I'm not," he said, sounding at once angry and relieved. "But I can't go to the police, Tess. They'll keep me, thinking I can tell them where Emmie is. I can't. My only chance to find her is tomorrow."
"What is it about tomorrow? You've been fixated on that date since I got here."
"It's All Souls' Day-and the day of the All Soul Festival parade."
The parade, Gus Sterne's brainchild, his ego trip through the streets of San Antonio. "So what's Emmie going to do, Crow? She can't burn down a parade."
Instead of answering, he walked past Tess into the main room, where he crouched in front of one of the built-in bookcases. From the lowest shelf, he pulled out a scrapbook, then sat on the bedroll, inviting Tess to sit by him.
"Do you know where we are?" he asked, opening the book. It was a pretty volume, with a moss green velvet cover and pale gray pages.
"On the old Barrett place, near Twin Sisters, somewhere between Austin and San Antonio, in the state of Texas, in the United States of America," she answered dutifully.