Cooler Than Blood (6 page)

“I’m sorry,” she said but didn’t look at me. “I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t even know you.”

True, but instead I limped out, “I’ll do my best.” I wish I’d said something else. She turned to face me. Her voice was strong, which surprised me.

“I don’t know…Maybe she did run. But everything I know says she didn’t. She’s me. She’s me twenty years ago. I know her like I know myself. She’s not out contemplating. Who the hell has time for that? She didn’t run. She has nowhere
to
run. You heard Detective McGlashan—someone was after Coleman. Jenny’s been abducted, Jake. Someone took her and—”

“And what?”

“No one gives a damn.” She turned, but not before I saw the tears. “I’m all she’s got.”

Her closing statement came out like the last bit of air from a birthday balloon long after the party was over.

CHAPTER 7

I
left Susan on her dock and headed to Fish Head to meet Morgan.

The only semblance of outside walls were rolled-up crinkled plastic that in all likelihood hadn’t been let down since the last northern blow in early March. Bright yellow-and-blue wooden booths ran against the side that faced the still waters of the marina. Leftover crayon drawings from the spring-break migration still littered the inside wall that separated the kitchen from the dining area. The humidity had curled the edges of the paper and dulled the once vibrant artwork of children. I grabbed a high stool next to Morgan and ordered a beer. No sign of Aussie. I drank a third of the longneck before I spoke.

“The detective is treating Jenny like a habitual runaway who’s likely to show up. I don’t—”

“Tossed her fifteen feet, believe that?” Morgan stared ahead at a dirty slushy machine that swirled green goo.

“Who?”

“Lady. Happened around three weeks ago. She and her husband were down visiting friends for a week. They went to view the sunset two blocks away while their hosts stayed behind and grilled fish. On their way back, a car hit them both. Tossed her into the struts of the bridge at Big Carlos Pass.”

“You know them?” It came out in an accusatory tone. I shouldn’t have asked, but he got me sometimes. The man was capable of mourning a farmer’s natural death in China and often did. My phone vibrated in my pocket.

“We know them all,” he replied. I wanted to reach for my phone but instead said, “Tell me.”

“That’s it. Took both of them to the hospital, where they realized she wasn’t going to see sunrise. The staff wheeled their gurneys next to each other so they could hold hands one more time. They held hands at the sunset then held hands thirty minutes later on gurneys. Last sunset. Lights out.” He turned and glanced at me for the first time since I’d arrived. “What did you learn about Jenny?” It wasn’t unusual for him to recover quickly from his self-induced sympathetic state.

“You okay?”

“Jenny.”

“She’s gone and—”

“You need to find her.”

“I’m aware of that,” I said. “But—”

“Death is an opportunist who rides our collar every day. Get your phone. You’re dying too.”

“You’re back that fast?” I reached into my pocket. I also decided I’d stick to T-shirts. No collars.

“Just took a moment.”

It was a text from McGlashan. God bless him. I had texted him a question before I had even reached my truck after I’d left Susan’s. I wanted to double back on a comment he’d made. I also wanted to see what type of team player he really was. If he ignored my text, as he had every right to, then my investigation would be that much more difficult. In response to my text, he provided an address on Susan’s street. “I’ve got to go,” I told Morgan. “I need to talk to someone who may have been the last known person to see Jenny. Catch you back at the condo.” I drained my beer and walked out, leaving Morgan contemplating the green slushy machine. Marmalade’s “Reflections of My Life,” like a melodic omniscient observer to all below, flowed out of the pitted corner-ceiling speakers tucked behind the ends of the rolled-up plastic curtains.

The house was three down from Susan’s. As I started my second series of raps on the sun-drenched door, it swung open. An advanced-middle-aged lady blocked my path, even though a light breeze would have swept her away. She had butch blond hair and silver earrings that dropped below the jagged ends of her strands. She gave me a glare and said, “My trees don’t need trimming.” An osprey screamed.

“I’m not here to—”

“Bushes are fine.”

“I’m looking for the—”

“I already got me someone to do the yard. I appreciate your time.” She started to close the door.

“—girl you told the police you saw walking with—”

“What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t.”

“Why not? Your mother never teach you manners?”

“Jake Travis.”

“See, you can do it. You law, Jake?”

“No, ma’am. Friend of the family.”

“‘Cause I told that man with the shoulder that looks likes it wants to fall right off everything I saw. I never spoke to her, just saw her skipping down the street that day. I was out with Happy—he’s my dog. He’s inside eating right now, or he’d be all over you, but you don’t need to worry. I’ll tell you, though…I gotta keep an eye on him. Got one osprey that tracks him every time he’s out, and I’m afraid Happy might just go airborne one day. You see them birds flying with fish in their claws? Can you imagine seeing one with a dog? Lord, what a sight. Plus they screech all day and night. You can barely…”

A talker. God in heaven, I can’t tolerate talkers. A year ago, I would have said I hate talkers, but Kathleen’s been counseling me on how not to see everything in extremes. How not go through life like a sixteen-pound bowling ball smashing social gutter guards.

“My cat, Pamela—she’s around here somewhere. Picked her up at the humane society. They got a day in and day out listed for all the animals.” She dialed up her volume and leaned into me. “You believe that? Day out is when they euthanize them. I never thought of dying in those words. I was saying about those birds—”

Enough.

“I’m sorry. Your name?”

“I said, ‘Those hawks give me a headache.’ How do you think his shoulder got like that?”

“I didn’t get your name.”

“Never gave it to you. What is this, the first day for your new brain?”

I blew my breath out, took a step back, and put both my palms up. “Help me.”

“What?”

“Help me find this girl.”

She was quiet for a moment. Maybe there is a supreme power. “Sure. Sure, Jake Travis. I can do that. What are you standing outside for?” She extended her hand. “Patricia Wilkinson.” I stepped over her threshold, and she led me in with a crushing handshake. “You go ahead and call me Patty. All my deceased husband’s friends do. They’re the only men in my life anymore. Besides, I never made a very good Patricia.”

Two minutes, and a few thousand words later, I drained the last half of a beer Patty had popped on me. I sat on her lanai on a flowered vinyl couch that was under a picture of J. R. Ewing. She burned more calories talking than I did running, but I found myself strangely enjoying her company.

Don’t think I’m softening down here; I wanted out of her house as soon as possible. I desired to see—and hear—as little of her as possible during my remaining days.

But I liked her.

I placed the bottle on a coaster next to a pink-porcelain crocodile ashtray that looked as if it had handled decades of smokes and said, “You noticed that Jenny walked with purpose.”

“That’s right.” I waited, but no more words spilled forth. I think Patty had run the deck on the English branch of the Proto-Germanic languages.

“What exactly does that look like?”

Patty leaned in, and her earrings, like giant pendulums, followed a split second behind her head. “Like I said, I saw her leave the house and head down the street, toward the Laundromat. Told Funny Shoulder that she seemed in a hurry. No purse or nothing. I’d say that was with purpose.”

“Anything else that convinced you she had purpose?”

“Yup.”

“What?”

“Her feet.”

Chatty Patty had suddenly gone underground on me. “What about her feet, Patty?”

“She didn’t have on no shoes.”

Patty Wilkinson took a sip of her bourbon on the rocks and shifted Happy from one knee to another. Happy’s eyes fluttered open at the minor disruption then returned to dreamland.

“Did you tell that to Detective McGlashan?”

“No.” She drained her glass and plopped it down on a side table but left her eyes and hand on it. She fondled the empty glass. “He, if you ask me—you know…” She brought her eyes up to mine. “You younger guys like your beer, but you’ll come around to the real stuff one day. Trust me—we all take that road. Like I was saying, he didn’t really seem all that interested. Know what I mean? Let me ask you something, Jake. What do you think the chances are of
any
woman walking barefoot on those damn shells that litter this street unless she thought it was just a quick trip or she was in a big-time hurry?”

I didn’t bother to tell her I’d been down that road. “I imagine slim to—”

“Mr. Jake, there’s nothing to imagine here. That girl was a scootin’, and I’ll tell you something else too.”

I waited, but she was done. Patty Wilkinson displayed proficiency in both silence and noise. I kick-started her. “What might that be?”

“Wherever she is?”

“Yes?”

“She got nothin’ on her feet.”

CHAPTER 8

Jenny

R
eally? I wound up with Angie for a mom, and my dad—the only smile the Almighty ever threw my way—is corralled with 4,129 tick-infested deer and replaced with a pair of exposed armpits with a Hostess Twinkie for a brain. And then,
she thought
, I reach the promised land only to be attacked by a whacko with an aversion to sunscreen. And now I’m trapped in this horse shed with no shoes. All I wanted was to finally enjoy my youth, and now I’ve got to grow up fast. Warp speed, girl.

She glanced around for the fifty-thousandth time, but nothing had changed. A single-car garage. Old. A solitary bulb hanging from the rafters by a black wire the thickness of a pencil. The doors hinged on the side and swung out. Green picnic bench seats, eight feet in length, were stacked one atop another. They’d been painted, by Jenny’s estimate, at least three times. When she did sit, she sat on a white Adirondack chair with a broad armrest painted green to match the picnic table benches. Most of the time, she paced. It was five steps before she hit the grill with no propane tank and was forced to turn toward the door. She’d done five gazillion round trips.

Above her was a rowboat suspended by an old ski rope. Jenny had climbed on top of the green benches to peer inside the aluminum boat. Nothing but old life jackets that held a decade of dust, mouse turds, and a once-white life preserver cushion with a faded blue anchor design on one side and diagrams for tying nautical knots on the other. She didn’t find any of it particularly disgusting. After Boone walked in on her when she was in the shower with his stiff prick that looked like a celery stalk with a swollen mushroom cap on top, then showed his grocery-bag ass on the way out, there wasn’t much the world could serve up to gross Jenny out. A workout mat with two clean sheets abutted one wall and served as her bed. Three bamboo fishing poles that practically ran the length of the garage hung from hooks. Jenny tried not to look at them because when she did it made her miss her father. Not that he, as far as she knew, ever had a bamboo pole, but that didn’t matter. He would know about them and tell her how to use them.

“Hey, bozo,” she yelled. “I got to pee. You hear me?”

Bozo only came every four hours. Or was it three? No clue. He wore a green facemask, like the guys she went skiing with at Mad River Mountain, west of Columbus. But those guys were her age and dug the retro look. Her bozo never spoke, just led her to an outhouse with a Liberty Bell knocker on the outside, red shag carpet on the inside, and a black-and-white picture of the TV cast of
M*A*S*H
on a wall. There—in an outhouse in Florida—stood the final bastion of the seventies.

The only other structure on the property was a tin-roofed, colorless, single-story home with a front porch. One corner was a solid foot higher than the opposite end. A few trees with blankets of Spanish moss, a blue minivan on a gravel lot, and an entire landscape of nothing completed the canvas. Jenny didn’t know Florida could be so empty. They certainly kept that out of the magazines, didn’t they?

Not that she was supposed to see any of it.

“Keep that hood on at all times, girl,” Green Mask had told her the first time he’d come to take her to the outhouse. He had placed a burlap sack over her head while they were still in the garage. It smelled like the chicken incubator in Mrs. Sobisky’s first-grade class. That was when Jenny discovered she didn’t like cute things if they smelled. He led her out of the garage and to the outhouse.

“You put it back on before you come out, or I’ll kill you. Understand?” He closed the outhouse door.

“Sure,” Jenny had replied. She dropped the sack down the hole and did her business. She stepped out of the outhouse and batted her eyes at the sun.

“Kill me.”

He had not.

Instead, he had inflated the atmosphere with enough air to launch a hot air balloon, jerked her right arm, and yanked her back into the garage. After that, he never covered her head, but it didn’t matter. Jenny never imagined a place so perfectly synchronized—flat and meaningless.

Her stomach rumbled. Bozo brought food three times a day, and the final time was approaching. He always served the same questions, and she always smacked back the same answers:

“Where’s the money? What did he tell you?”

“I don’t know. I already told you.”

Jenny surveyed the garage.
There’s got to be something
, she thought.
After all, I did Glow Boy with a stick.
But she’d already searched the garage and found nothing to use as a weapon. An ancient refrigerator with a pull-down handle and a monotone hum held a case of bottled water. She opened the refrigerator to get a water she didn’t need. She contemplated the bottles for a moment then placed three of them in the freezer. She climbed up to the rowboat, tore the straps off the boat cushion, and put them in the pockets of her shorts.

She sat. She paced.

She sat again in the chair and fingered her light blue T-shirt. Still somewhat clean, but how many days would she have to wear it? She leaned back and closed her eyes. Her hands twitched. No phone. She hadn’t gone a day without her iPhone since never.

She listened to Snow Patrol’s “Run” in her head.

She performed her mental chants:
I’m going to watch a sunset on the beach. I’m going to blaze out of this place. I’m going to wring life until it begs me to stop.

She did push-ups on the floor. Crunches on the exercise mat.

She paced. She sat.

I can’t believe
, she thought,
that I walked out of Aunt Susan’s house—oops, forgot she doesn’t like that “aunt” stuff, probably reminds her that she’s related to my mom—walked out of Susan’s house without my phone or shoes. Ouch. But he said it was urgent, and what was he doing there in the first place?

Jerk.