Lenhardt reached around Infante, pressing a few computer keys, toggling back and forth between Penelope Jackson of Asheville, North Carolina, and Heather Bethany of yesterday and today. “I wish we had one of those computers that movie cops had,” he said.
“Yeah-then all we’d have to do is input Penelope Jackson and her last-known address and her whole life would be open to us. I can’t wait until they get around to inventing those computers. Those and jetpacks.”
“Nothing in NCIC?”
“Nothing in NCIC. No military record. And no report that this is a stolen vehicle.”
“You know,” Lenhardt said, reading through the information on the missing children site, “there’s a lot of detail here. Enough for a true-crime junkie to bone up, as it were.”
“Yeah, I thought of that. But there’s some stuff that’s not here. Their exact address, for example, on Algonquin Lane. And the patrol who pulled her over? He said she was babbling about an old pharmacy at Windsor Mill and Forest Park. There’s no such thing now. But I called the reference room at the Pratt, and there was a Windsor Hills Pharmacy there, around the time the girls disappeared.”
“Kevin called the lie-berry? Man, you are bucking for employee of the month. So what about the case file? That’s where you’re going to find the level of detail that will make it impossible for some Internet surfer to fake you out.”
Infante just gave his boss a look, the kind of look that conveys a world of meaning, a look available only to long-married couples or coworkers who’ve shared many years in the same bureaucracy.
“Do not fucking tell me-”
“I called for it yesterday afternoon, soon as I got back from the hospital. It’s not here.”
“Gone? Gone-gone? What the fuck?”
“There’s a note where the file should be, left by the former primary-a guy who’s since made sergeant and been posted to Hunt Valley. He was pretty sheepish when I tracked him down. Admitted he took it out for his predecessor on the case and just plain forgot about it.”
“Sheepish? He should have been shitting himself. Bad enough to let the file leave the building, but to send it off with a former police and forget about it?” Lenhardt shook his head at the excess of idiocy involved. “So who has it?”
Infante glanced down at the name. “ Chester V. Willoughby IV. Know him?”
“Know of him. He retired before I started out here, but he showed up at some of the homicide reunions. You could say he was…uh, atypical.”
“Atypical?”
“Well, for one thing he’s a fucking fourth. You might meet a junior police, but you ever know a fourth? And he came from money, didn’t even have to work. When did the file go out?”
“Two years ago.”
“Let’s just hope he hasn’t died since then. It wouldn’t be the first time that some obsessed old coot took a file home and we all but had to go to probate to get it back.”
“Man, I hope I’m not never like that.”
Lenhardt had reached for the in-house directory and began thumbing through it, then punching in numbers, starting the hunt for the old cop’s home address. “Hello-yeah, I’ll hold.” He rolled his eyes. “On fuckin’ hold with my own department. And who are you kidding, Infante?”
“What?”
“There are supposed to be cases that eat at you. If there aren’t, you’re just lucky. Or stupid. This guy caught the reddest of red balls, two angelic-looking girls, vanishing at a mall on a Saturday afternoon with hundreds of people around. I wouldn’t wipe my ass with a police who didn’t carry that with him for the rest of his life.” Then, back into the phone. “Yeah? Yeah. Chester Willoughby. You got an address on him?” Lenhardt was clearly put on hold again, and he mimed an up-and-down pumping motion with his left hand until the person came back on the line. “Great. Thanks.”
He hung up, laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“In the time that took, you coulda walked over there. He’s in Edenwald, behind the Towson Town Center mall, not even a mile from here.”
“Edenwald?”
“Retirement community, one of the pricey ones where you pay extra money so you can die in your own bed. Like I said, he comes from money.”
“Do you think that rich cops work more OT or less?”
“They probably work more, but don’t put in for it. Hey, maybe you ought to pretend you’re rich sometimes, see what it’s like to work an hour out of love.”
“Not even for your baby blues.”
“What if I kiss you first?”
“I’d rather take it up the ass and get the cash.”
“Well, that makes you a faggot and a whore.”
Whistling, Infante grabbed his keys and headed out, feeling about as content as he ever did.
CHAPTER 12
“Buenos días, Señora Toles.”
Miriam fished her keys out of her battered leather bag-“distressed” is what she would say if she were trying to sell it to someone-and unlocked the door to the gallery. She loved the way “Toles” sounded in Spanish-Toe-lez, instead of the flat, ugly syllable it was meant to be, “Tolls,” a word that denoted fees and payments. No matter how long she lived in Mexico, it never got old, this aural transformation of her maiden name.
“Buenos días, Javier.”
“Hace frío, Señora Toles .” Javier rubbed his bare arms, which were goose-pimply. Such a March day would have been considered a godsend back in Baltimore, not to mention Canada, but it was frigid by San Miguel de Allende’s standards.
“Perhaps it will snow,” she said in Spanish, and Javier laughed. He was simple-minded and laughed at almost anything, but Miriam still appreciated his ready laughter. Once, before, her sense of humor had been a key part of her personality. It was rare now that she made anyone laugh, which puzzled her, because Miriam felt she remained capable of wit. In her head she amused herself constantly. Granted, it was a cruel wit, but her sensibility had always been on the cynical side, even when the cynicism was unearned.
Javier had attached himself to the gallery and Miriam shortly after she began working there. A teenager at the time, he hosed down the sidewalk in front of the shop, cleaned its windows without being asked, and told the turistas in a confidential whisper that it was el mejor, the very best of all San Miguel de Allende’s shops. The owner, Joe Fleming, considered him a mixed blessing. “With that walleye and that cleft palate, he probably scares away as many customers as he brings us,” he complained to Miriam. But she liked the young man, whose affection for her seemed rooted in something much deeper than the tips she slipped him.
“¿Ha visto nieve?” Have you seen snow, Señora Toles?