She's Not There (11 page)

“When there's nothing left for me to learn, I lose interest and move on. I need a job where there's a whole lot to learn because I really do want to hang in.”

That had been my attitude exactly as I'd followed my own career path. I hired her.

Delby Jones told me shortly afterward that just keeping track of me was an endless learning curve. And she has become as loyal to me and to the FBI as she is to her girls. Everyone—including my director—wishes Delby were theirs. Recently she told me that on Saturday nights she'd started singing again. I've been shaking in my boots ever since. I told her that if she ever leaves, I'll need a ten-year notice. She thanked me for the compliment. She said, “I'm not leaving till Bunny Rabbit is in college.” Bunny Rabbit is how she refers to her youngest.

I'd said, “What if you become a singing star?”

She'd smiled. “I'm not a contender. It's just something I like to do. Sing. Jacks me up. Here's where I want to be a star. Right in your office, doin' some good.”

I told her if Bono ever wanted a girl singer, I would understand the enticement of U2. She went from smiling to laughing out loud as she went out the door shaking her head, mumbling, “U-Two. Hah!”

The FBI invented Caller ID. Delby picked up on the first ring. “Hey, boss.”

“Hey, Delby. Things still smooth?”

“'Course. I'd have called you if I so much as sensed a bump. That's what you people pay me for. How're things over there in the ocean with Prince Charming?”

“I had a bump.”

“Uh-oh.”

“A girl died a little over twenty-four hours ago. Seventeen years old. We guessed she'd OD'd on some nasty drug but the local … force … just got the preliminary autopsy report and there was no residue in the body. Looked like a sex crime, but no evidence of penetration or abuse. No typical sex stuff. So, Delby, I wasn't about to just forget about it and go fishing.”

“I'll bet.”

“I'm having the Rhode Island State Police send you the PA report. Get it directly to the lab. Tell Auerbach to stop in his tracks and look at it. Then call me if his guys find anything particularly awry.” Auerbach, lead technician at the FBI crime lab, is the expert extrapolator. He puts jigsaw puzzles together for us, ones that are missing half the pieces at least. He and his computer. Constructs what's missing and fits it in.

“Count on it. But … uh … boss?”

“What?”

“I take it you saw the body?”

“I
found
the body.”

“Oh, man. Oh,
man!
”

“I can't believe it either.”

“I'll get back to you as soon as Auerbach sees to pushing your orders through.”

“Thanks, Delby.”

“Welcome. Sorry, boss.”

I hung up. Fitzy said, “Wish I could press buttons like that. You're a pretty big cheese, aren't you?”

“Yes.”

Then Joe said, “How about we all go for a bike ride before breakfast. Pick the steepest roads on the island.”

Fitzy drained his cup, slurping the last dregs of cold coffee down. “I get the picture, tough guy. But I've got plenty to do, plenty of buttons to press, even though I'll come up empty. Keep people on their toes, at least.” He stood up. “So enjoy your ride.”

When he left, I said to Joe, “You knew he wouldn't take us up on that one, didn't you?”

“That's right.”

“I don't think I would have minded going to breakfast with him. Get a chance to talk to him some more, maybe hear a little more of what the Club Soda clientele had to say.”

Joe said
he
would have minded.

“You really don't like him, do you?”

“No. He's a waste. He didn't used to be. No excuse, as far as I can see.”

“Maybe there's an excuse you can't see.”

“I wonder if we'll need to pump up the tires a little.”

We didn't bike Coonymus Road, we took the long route along the western shore of the island, the Western Road. Joe said the road had never been named because it was hardly ever used except by cows traveling their pastures. Eventually, the road was paved and the nickname stuck. According to Joe, it passed a series of tracks, the first to his cottage, and the others mostly to beaches that didn't stand up to the ones along the rest of the shoreline. While I rode, I planned what I'd say to my director.

At breakfast, Fitzy didn't show. When Joe and I got home again, I took a shower and then I was ready to make my all-important phone call.

First, the big boss asked me how I was enjoying my vacation. I told him. I dwelt especially on my discovering the body of Dana Ganzi and its shocking condition. Then I said, “I've already asked the Rhode Island State Police Commissioner to send some stuff to Auerbach to look at. Depending on what I get back from Delby, I'd like to begin investigating this crime.”

He sighed. Then he said, “It's too soon, Poppy. You're personally involved or you'd accept that it's too soon. I believe the Rhode Island police can solve this without us. Why not give them a chance?”

“All I'm doing is involving Auerbach. If he sees more than Rhode Island did, the stuff he offers them might help them figure out what's going on sooner than later, and they won't need us after all.”

“Your offering help from us was also premature. How has this incident met the criteria—”

“It hasn't. But we're not official until you give me the okay. I'm simply taking a little poetic license.” I described the loophole that had come right to mind. “And if that doesn't cut it, then under the terms Congress gave us when they said we could do some preliminary findings before evidence of wire tapping—”

“Poppy.” His voice was now several decibels lower.

“Yes, sir.”

“This will be the extent of the preliminary findings until the crime meets the criteria as set forth by law.”

“Fair enough.”

“Several members of Congress have told me you should be a lobbyist when you get tired of the FBI.”

“I'm flattered.”

“You're not getting tired of it, are you?”

“No.”

“Whatever Auerbach gets will go back to Rhode Island, and then you wait for further instructions. From me.”

“Sir, it's just that I'd hoped to avoid what so often happens during a wait.”

He knew what I meant—any criminal involvement and the criminals had time to cut out. “Still, for the protection of us all, caution must prevail, mustn't it?”

“Yes.”

“Sit on it awhile, Poppy. Then come back to me if you feel you need to go further, and we will reconsider our role.”

I agreed. Because he was right.

*   *   *

The next afternoon I got my call back from Delby. She said, “Boss, Auerbach's finished and he is one nerved-up dude. Twitching the way he does when he's got a brand-new trail. He says that girl died from shock. Blood pressure crashed, basically. She was traumatized in a very fierce way. But Auerbach says nobody can explain how. Could only determine that the structural changes in her tissues were not caused by disease but by extraneous violence. The spasmed muscles were cadaveric contractions. That means she'd been in such physical torment
before
she died that
after
she died the rigor was extreme. He had me ask the coroner's office in Providence to do a few specific tests on a selection of tissues. I requested that they do them today.”

“Good.”

“You're not havin' much fun, are you, Poppy? I mean, recreation-wise.”

“I had been. It's a great place as long as you can do without Starbucks.”

“I hate Starbucks.”

“Then maybe you should consider coming for a visit.”

“Any black folk on Block Island?”

“None that I've seen.”

“I'm stickin' here in DC, then, with my own kind.”

We both laughed.

*   *   *

That night, Joe and I were at Fitzy's office, picking the cop up to go to dinner at an inn at the harborside. The chef there had temporarily left a well-known restaurant in Boston to help out his sister, who'd renovated the defunct hotel. Joe had called Fitzy and invited him along. Guilt. Joe told me that guilt was something he'd never experienced till he met me. He didn't think his job description allowed for it. For a long while, instead of guilt he drank, just like Fitzy, only in binges. He'd cut back earlier this year—no more binges—right about the time I took a brick to the head. Now, he was enjoying a fairly calm period at the ATF, a chance to become familiar with such things as guilt so he could handle his work with less self-destruction. My stepfather once said to me, “Why don't you find a man who plays the violin for a living?” I asked him where to look. “The Charles River on the Fourth of July.” There was a reason I'd loved him so.

At about eight o'clock, we were standing on the police station porch, Fitzy just opening the door, when a taxi pulled up. One of the taxi brothers waved to us. I still didn't know which was which. Irwin got out and told the brother to wait right there. He turned and saw us. He noted immediately I was wearing a little black dress instead of a T-shirt and that my hair was up instead of in a wet and straggly state. “Mr. and Mrs. Everett—we meet again.” Very sarcastic tone.

Joe said, “Yes.”

He also noted the change in Joe. You don't need to see the label on a blazer to know it reads Armani. Then, choosing not to worry that we were not who we had pretended to be, he said to Fitzy, “I am feeling pressured by the campers to tell you that one of the girls made her way into town tonight and has not come back. They tell me she hitchhiked, even though I gave very specific directions to the campers not to do that. Now I'm sure—”

Fitzy said, “Get in my office here, Jack.”

He gestured to Joe and me to join him, though it would probably have been about as impossible to keep us from following as it would have been to keep the rats from hustling after the Pied Piper.

Fitzy's office was at the end of a hall leading from the front door. The two interior doors, one on each side of the hall, were open: the one on the right gave an upfront view of Fitzy's unmade bed and a bureau with all the drawers pulled out, their contents spilling forth; opposite, the door to the now-departed rookie's room revealed a stripped bed and a bureau, its top as bare as the top of Fitzy's. No mementos for our trooper, no pictures of someone keeping the home fires burning. In the office, there was a desk with a chair behind it and another chair off to the side.

Fitzy barked, “Sit down,” to Irwin. Joe and I melded into the corner.

Irwin sat while Fitzy booted up his computer.

“Okay, then, who's missing?”

“No one, really. A few of the girls do this sort of thing. Go into town and hook up with kids off the ferry. They party. She'll be back tonight. She only took off an hour or two ago. This is actually ridiculous. The counselor informed me that the girl is not a druggie, like the girl who killed herself with an overdose of God-only-knows-what. And according to my counselors, she has managed to do this before—sneak off for a few hours.”

Fitzy looked up at him. “I want the name of the girl who's missing.”

“I
told
you.… Never mind. The girl who went into town without permission is Rachel Shaw. You and Mrs. Everett met her in my office yesterday. Her and our other Rachel.”

“One Rachel said she was leaving for home today.”

“She did leave. It's the other one who went to town.”

“Address.”

Irwin handed him a three-by-five card. Fitzy copied what was on it and handed it back.

“Last time you saw her?”

“I have two dozen girls in my charge. I suppose the last time I was even aware of her was when you insisted on talking to her.”

“Three days ago one of your campers turned up dead. If I were you, I'd start to be aware.”

Irwin was not moved. “I had punished her for the attitude she showed during your interview with her. She was housebound. But the counselors say a taxi picked her up. She was not hitchhiking like that girl who died. I told you, this is not the first time she's done this.”

Fitzy stood up. “Hold on,” and he went outside to talk to the taxi brother. He came right back. “She took the same taxi you've got waiting for you out in the street. He saw her, as you say, hook up with some kids off the ferry. All the same, have you notified her parents?”

“I don't see why, at this point. It's only just dark, for God's sake. However, I will look for her myself. And she'd better—”

Fitzy had picked up the receiver of his phone. He handed it to Irwin. “Notify them.” Then he read the phone number off the card.

“This will cause unnecessary—”

“Dial, Jack.”

Irwin got an answering machine. He left a message that Rachel had gone into town which was in violation of camp rules. Even though he hated to upset them for no reason as he expected her to be back shortly, his personal policy was to inform the parents when their daughters broke a camp rule. “You know how teenage girls can be,” he explained to the machine. “At any rate, permit me to apologize for my counselor's lapse. She has been put on notice, rest assured.” He would call them again when Rachel returned. He added, “I have my two most experienced counselors in town, and we'll no doubt find her at one of the teen hangouts. As I say, I'm sure she'll be back shortly. I know that because we're showing a movie tonight and”—he glanced at the card—“Rachel won't want to miss it. Naturally, I am considering not allowing her to attend as a disciplinary measure. I will call you back within the hour. Actually, I will have Rachel call you from my office.” Then he hung up. He said to Fitzy, “Satisfied?”

Fitzy said, “You're a scam artist, Jack, and I am doing everything in my power to get someone out here to close up your camp. Those girls might as well be in prison; they'd be better off.”