“Her name is Francine Murray,” said Mr. Daiman to Carmine. “She ought to have been on that bus over there” – he pointed – “but she didn’t turn up. She was present for her last period, Chemistry, and as far as I can ascertain, she left the building with a group of friends. They scatter once they’re in the yard, depending which bus they’re on or if they’re walking – Lieutenant Delmonico, this is terrible, terrible!”
“Getting upset won’t help her or us, Mr. Daiman,” Carmine said. “The most important thing is, what does Francine look like?”
“Like the missing girls,” Daiman said, beginning to weep. “So pretty! So popular! A grades, never any trouble, a great example to her fellow students.”
“Is she of Caribbean origin, sir?”
“Not to my knowledge,” the principal said, wiping his eyes. “I guess that’s why we didn’t notice – the news items all said part Hispanic, and she isn’t. One of those real Old Connecticut black families, white intermarriage. It happens, Lieutenant, no matter how much people oppose it. Oh, dear God, dear God, what am I going to do?”
“Mr. Daiman, are you trying to say that one of Francine’s parents is black and the other white?” Carmine asked.
“I believe so, yes, I believe so.”
Abe and Corey had gone to talk to the uniforms, tell them to search each bus and then get it on its way, but keep Francine’s friends in a group until they could be interviewed.
“You’re sure she’s not in the school somewhere?” Carmine asked Sergeant O’Brien when he led his cops and teacher guides out of the enormous building.
“Lieutenant, she is not inside, I swear. We opened every closet, looked under every desk, in every rest room, the cafeteria, the gyms, the classrooms, the assembly room, storage rooms, the furnace room, attics, the science labs, janitor’s room – every goddamn corner,” O’Brien said, sweating.
“Who saw her last?” Carmine asked the teachers, some in tears, all shaking with shock.
“She walked out of my classroom with her friends,” said Miss Corwyn of Chemistry. “I stayed behind to straighten up, I didn’t follow them. Oh, I wish I had!”
“Don’t castigate yourself, ma’am, you weren’t to know,” said Carmine, assessing the others. “Anyone else see her?”
No, no one had. And no, no one had seen any strangers.
He’s done it again, thought Carmine, walking up to the knot of frightened young people who had claimed friendship with Francine Murray. He’s snatched her away without a soul’s seeing him. It’s sixty-two days since Mercedes Alvarez disappeared, we’ve been on our toes, warned people, showed photos of the kind of girl he targets, tightened up on school security, thrown all our resources into this. We ought to have caught him! So what does he do? He lulls us into certainty that the Caribbean is a mandatory part of his obsessions, then switches to a different ethnic group. And I put Danny Marciano down for suggesting it. Oh, Travis, of all places! An ant heap! Fifteen hundred students! Half of this city thinks of Travis as a training ground for hoods, punks and low life, forgetting that it’s also a place where whole bunches of decent kids, black and white, get a pretty good education.
Francine’s best friend was a black girl named Kimmy Wilson.
“She was with us when we came out of Chemistry, sir,” Kimmy said through sniffles.
“You’re all in Chemistry?”
“Yes, sir, we’re all planning pre-med.”
“Go on, Kimmy.”
“I thought she’d gone to the rest room. Francine has a weak bladder, she’s always going to the rest room. I didn’t think about it because I know what she’s like. I didn’t think!” The tears gushed. “Oh, why didn’t I go with her?”
“Do you travel on the same bus, Kimmy?”
“Yes, sir.” Kimmy made a huge effort to master her feelings. “We both live on Whitney out in the Valley.” She pointed at two weeping white girls. “So do Charlene and Roxanne. None of us thought about her until the bus driver called the roll and she didn’t answer.”
“Do you know your bus driver?”
“Not her name, sir, not today’s. I know her face.”
By five o’clock Travis High was deserted. Having combed it and the neighborhood, the police cordon was spreading ever outward while word ran through the Hollow that the Connecticut Monster had struck again. Not a spic. A genuine black girl. While Carmine was on his way to the Murray house, Mohammed el Nesr, informed by Wesley le Clerc, was calling his troops together.
Halfway to the Valley the Ford pulled up at a phone booth and Carmine talked to Danny Marciano without the annoyances of a car radio; some of the press could tune into that, and it was noisy into the bargain.
“No absentees at the Hug, Danny?”
“Only Cecil Potter and Otis Green, who’d already finished for the day. Both of them were at home when Miss Dupre called. She says everyone else was present and accounted for.”
“What can you tell me about the Murrays? All I managed to find out is that one parent is black, the other white.”
“They’re just like all the rest, Carmine – the salt of the earth,” said Marciano, sighing. “Only difference is no Caribbean connection as far as anyone knows. They’re regulars at the local Baptist church, so I took the liberty of calling its minister, a Leon Williams, and asking him to go over and break the news. It’s spreading at the speed of light, and I didn’t want some bug-eyed neighbor getting there first.”
“Thanks for that, Danny. What else?”
“The black half is the father. He’s a research associate in electrical engineering in the Susskind Science Tower, which means he’s junior faculty on reasonable pay. Mom is white. She works the lunch rush in the Susskind cafeteria, so she’s there to see the kids off to school, and home again before they are. They have two boys, both younger than Francine, who go to the Higgins middle school. The Reverend Williams told me that the Murrays caused a bit of talk when they moved to Whitney nine years ago, but the novelty faded and now they’re just a part of the local woodwork. Very well liked, have friends of both colors.”
“Thanks, Danny. See you later.”
The Valley was an area with a fairly mixed population, not affluent, but not impoverished either. Racial tensions broke out there from time to time, usually when a new white family arrived, but property rates were not sufficiently high to make blackness a real financial liability. It was not an area famous for hate mail, killing of pets, dumping of trash, graffiti.
As the Ford turned onto Whitney, all half-acre blocks with modest houses, Carmine could feel Abe and Corey stiffen.
“Jesus, Carmine, how did we let this happen?” Abe burst out.
“Because he changed pace, Abe. He outfoxed us.”
As they drew up to a yellow-painted house Carmine put his hand on Corey’s shoulder. “You guys stay here. If I need you, I’ll holler, okay?”
The Reverend Leon Williams admitted him to the Murray house. This is becoming a habit, Carmine.
The two sons were elsewhere; sounds from a TV came faintly. Seated together on a sofa, the parents were trying valiantly to remain composed; she held his hand as if it were a lifeline.
“You’re not Caribbean, Mr. Murray?” Carmine asked.
“No, definitely not. The Murrays have been in Connecticut since before the Civil War, fought for the North. And my wife is from Wilkes-Barre.”
“Have you a recent photograph of Francine?”
A sister to the other eleven.
And so it went all over again, the same questions he’d asked eleven other families: whom Francine saw, what good deeds she did, if she’d mentioned any new friend or acquaintance, if she’d noticed anyone watching her, following her. As always, the answers were no.