“Go piss up a rope,” I said.
“Love you, too, Terry.”
I put my hand on Louis’s shoulder. He was unbothered by my outburst, having seen enough of them to know how routine and fleeting they are. He just looked at the file cabinet, shook his head and stared down again at the list “I wouldn’t join two services and use the same name,” he said. “Especially if I joined them for the reason we think. No way. I’d want to be at least two different guys. I’d want to be as many guys as I could be.”
I knew he was right.
“This doesn’t mean we’re on the wrong track, Terry. I’m smelling the same thing you are. It just means we gotta dig him out.”
Ishmael walked into our area and gave me an utterly disdainful look. Pathos, with an undercurrent of triumph, and his usual dose of loathing. The look I gave him back was probably full of the same. He looked at my wreck of a file cabinet, then at me.
“A hiker found the girl off the Ortega Highway, way out in the sticks,” he said. “She’s with deputies at the Capo substation. She’s alive. Unharmed, they think. But definitely alive. Somehow, she saw through the hood. Claims she did. Says she knows what he looks like.”
Fourteen
An hour later — almost one o’clock — I got to talk to Brittany Elder at the substation. Her mother was already there. In a back office Brittany slumped liked a creature without bones into Abby’s lap. The girl’s eyes were dull and unfocused and there was a wide pink strip of inflamed skin across her mouth and cheeks where the tape had been. She hardly moved. Two dark eyes looked at the present but saw only the past. She had dirt on her dress and scuffs on her knees. On a desk in one corner of the office sat a white net robe and a black velvet hood, each bagged as evidence. I smiled at Abby Elder and she looked at me like I was an insane stranger. I wrote on a notepad:
CAN I ASK HER SOME QUESTIONS NOW? YOU
CAN STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE. THE SOONER
SHE TALKS THE BETTER SHE’LL BE. DON’T
ANSWER. JUST NOD IF IT’S OKAY TO TRY.
I walked over and angled the notepad up so Abby could see it but Brittany wouldn’t.
Abby nodded.
I cheerfully asked Louis, Johnny and the other deputies to leave the room. Johnny shut the door with perfect pitch: slowly, firmly, quietly.
“Well, Brittany,” I said, “I’m glad you’re doing all right. Your mom was just about sick with worry. I was, too. When my son was your age all I did was worry about him.”
Abby cocked an eye up at me. She was petting Brittany’s hair. I’d never mentioned my son to her, and I must have struck her as the childless type. I don’t know. She looked a little surprised.
“My name’s Terry, by the way. Your mom called me when she couldn’t find you. It’s my job to look for lost people sometimes. So, well... I’m just really glad you’re here. You did my job for me. You made me look good. So thanks.”
She stared into space, unblinking, her fists balled up by her chin, her mother’s arms around her.
“Brittany, you want a Coke or something?”
She shook her head.
Contact.
“Abby?”
“No, thank you.”
“Are you sure?”
I lifted my eyebrows and nodded encouragingly.
“You know, I really would love a Coke.”
“Me too,” I said. “So, one for you, and I guess I’ll have one. That’s two.”
I stood there and watched the wall clock for a few seconds. I looked through the window blinds to the stucco wall that ran behind the substation. Then I started walking toward the door.
“Me too,” Brittany mumbled into her fists. She wanted what the big people wanted.
Just like Matthew, I thought. He’d have followed me off a building.
Or into the sea.
Abby looked at me and she was smiling with tears running down her face. Brittany breathed in deeply, then out again.
“Coming up,” I said.
I left the room and scrambled across the parking lot to a liquor store to make the purchase. I got some candy and snacks, too, just in case. When I came back, Brittany was still sitting on her mother’s lap, but she now had both arms around her mother’s neck. They both looked at me as I walked toward them, and for the first time since six that morning I believed that somehow, some way, sometime not too long from then, Abby and Brittany Elder were going to be okay.
And that’s why I work this job.
Here is what she told me over the next twenty minutes:
She woke up when someone lifted her out of bed. She thought it was her daddy, but then she knew it wasn’t. She tried to call her mother, but her mouth was taped shut. She was jammed hard up against a man’s chest, with her head pushed to his chin, and he moved real fast and his breath was awful. She never saw him real good because it was dark and he had a bright light coming off his head that blinded her. He put her in a white van, and it was a big one because he was standing up with her. He put her in a bag that smelled like tennis shoes. It was tight at the top and she couldn’t get out. She cried for a long time while the car moved. He didn’t say anything. The radio had the news. Then the car stopped and he carried her into a room and put her on a bed. He let her out of the bag and put a dark thing over her head. She saw him for a second then. He had on a baseball hat and big sunglasses and something over his face. The hood had an opening for her to breathe through, but after she shook and moved around, she could see through it, just a little. The bedspread was red. It smelled like old people. They were in a room. There was a big glass wall with a snake in it and the snake was as big around as a telephone pole and about that long. It might not have been a real snake. The man stood and watched the snake for a while, and she saw him through the opening. He had a sharp, mean face and his hair was white and short. He wasn’t big or small or fat or thin. He went away and came back later dressed in something that was scaly. The scales were shiny, like a fish. Silver and gold and blue. He lay down on the bed beside her, with his back to her and he watched the snake. He moved funny. It was like he was crawling on his belly but not going anywhere. He had a hand on her while he did this. There was something up in the air behind her that made clicking noises every once in a while. She tried to scream and shake herself away from him, then he got over her and grabbed her arms and told her to be quiet because his mother was listening. He held real still then. Then he picked her up and carried her over to the glass. He put her up close to it and stood beside her. She couldn’t see anymore because the breathing hole went back down when he stood her up. He said, next time to the snake, or maybe to his mother. After a while he put her back in the bag. Then they drove in his car again and it stopped and he carried her inside the bag for a few minutes. He took her out of the bag and put something over her that he tied at the neck. It was a thing that rustled and felt dry when it brushed against her arms and legs. He cut the tape off her ankles but not her hands or mouth. Then she heard his footsteps on dried leaves and the footsteps got further away. After a long time she started walking. Then this lady came up and asked her if she was okay. Oh, and his eyes were brown.
And that was all.
Brittany fell asleep.
“We should go,” Abby whispered.
“Yes, you should. The deputies outside will take you to the Medical Center, where doctors can examine Brittany. They’re good and they’ll treat her well. Starting tonight, spend a few nights away from home. It’s going to be a while before she thinks of her bed as a friend. Please let me know where you are. Something that she’s forgotten for now could break this case. I’d like her to meet with our sketch artist as soon as possible. Tomorrow morning would be ideal for us.”