The Lost and the Damned (3 page)

Next was the runaway theory. Also on the table. Maybe she just got up and left. She got frustrated with life and walked away. I can’t say I never thought of that when I was younger and times were tough. Her father had just died and that’s always a traumatic experience. I leafed through the dossier, but there was no mention of when and whether she was told about her father’s death. Maybe she heard and immediately went on walkabout to get her head together. Possible, but it had been quite a few months. Another problem: her face was plastered everywhere. If there was a record or electronics store, it had her picture. It’d be hard for her to be just hitchhiking and traveling without being noticed. Not unless she purposely disguised herself. And if she was deliberately hiding, there were going to be problems with this job.

My flight was called and I joined the slow moving line of travelers as we lurched onto the plane. I had a window seat, wedged in next to an old man with a curious smell who was not willing to give up his armrest under any circumstances. The plane had an uneventful takeoff while I continued to look over the dossier. Without access to the internet, I had just the dossier and my notebook where I wrote down the dream notes. I paged through the dossier for a while, but I didn’t make any new connections on Katie. Snack service came by, nothing for free, not even peanuts. They had the same Three Musketeers bar I had seen at a news stand in the terminal for sixty cents, but the flight attendant wanted three dollars for it. What’s that, a dollar a musketeer?

After snack service, I went back to my notebook. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the dream was not only significant, it was significant to this job. The conversation between the two men in my dreams was provocative, but its contents were banal. The one-armed man with the numbers suggested more, if not because the numbers did not even have a mundane function. What did they mean? I found an empty notebook page and wrote them down again. I tried adding them together, dividing them. Were they a safe combination? It was too short for a credit card. An access code? The one-armed man had said “Now”, the only word that was intelligible from his voice. What did it mean? Was it even “Now”? Maybe those were the only syllables that got through.

I rubbed my forehead and looked out the window. Maybe I was pushing too hard on this. The Vanders dossier, the numbers, the dream – maybe I needed a break. I hadn’t slept well the night before. I closed the window shade and leaned against the window, closing my eyes. Maybe I could have drifted off to sleep, but instead my rest was interrupted by an obnoxiously loud conversation from three rows up. Two men were discussing their recent rock climbing trip in Austin. The conversation itself would have been normally innocuous, but for some reason their volume was way louder than necessary since they were sitting next to each other. I had the suspicion that they were talking loudly so that everyone was aware of their great outdoors yuppie lifestyle.

I tried to block them out, but one went on at great length about his climbing at Enchanted Rock State Park. He talked about the rock faces he climbed, the young lady he impressed up there, and the exciting night camping with that same lady. I heard about everything, the rope, their pulleys, the type of boots they wore, the tent, the brand of their GPS tracker –

I bolted up in my seat, wide awake. I opened the window shade for some light and grabbed my notebook. Maybe I had been thinking about it wrong. The one-armed man had the numbers on two different sheets of paper. I rewrote the numbers, separating them as I recalled them on the sheet. On one line I had 44 47 and on the next line I had 072 32. I looked down at it and the format just looked so familiar. I thought back to the word. I wrote “Now” down at the bottom of the page and circled it.

I tapped my pen on the pad as I thought. I felt so close to it, but I just hadn’t gotten it. I stared at the numbers. Then it hit me.

I grabbed the pen. Now. N and W. N44 47 and W072 32. GPS coordinates. The one-armed man was trying to tell me a location.

Two

When I arrived in Chicago O’Hare, I didn’t go directly to baggage claim where a representative from Intersperse was supposed to meet me. Instead, I pulled my laptop out of my bag and hooked it up to an internet terminal. I had to try the coordinates. I had to know what was there at those coordinates. A city? My mind had raced through the possibilities throughout the flight. I just had to know.

I loaded my laptop up and entered my credit card number to use the wifi. I could write it off as a business expense later, which was good, since the rates were gouging. Captive audience, I guess. I went to my map search page of choice and plugged in N44 47 W072 32. I had to wait through the slow internet for the page to load. Finally it loaded, and…

Nothing.

Or more specifically, the middle of nowhere. It was in Vermont, so it was somewhere. But it wasn’t anywhere. It wasn’t on a road or near a town. I switched to satellite view and it was just a patch of green. I zoomed in as much as I could, but there were just trees as far as I could see. At that location there was a fold between where satellite pictures were taken, so there was a line where they did not match up. But even with the mismatch, there was… nothing.

I was crestfallen. I was sure I had made a great breakthrough. Even more than that, I was sure I interpreted the dream correctly. I just knew it was right. It felt right. I just had a hard time getting my mind around the fact that there was nothing at those coordinates. I was missing something. I just didn’t know what.

I nearly slammed my laptop closed, but thought better of it at the last second. I bought a regular priced Three Musketeers bar from a news stand and put the energy from my frustration into getting down to baggage claim to meet the Intersperse rep before he got bored and left.

The Intersperse guy was easy to find. He was the one holding the sign with my name misspelled: K-E-E-T-S. I considered biting his head off in righteous indignation, but I just skipped it. I get mad, he gets pissy, and at the end of the day, he still won’t be putting the A in my name.  Alan, the representative, was middle management. High enough up to be briefed on the Vanders Situation, but low enough down he had to wait for me at the airport. Because of the situation, it couldn’t be a lackey that met me – there’s too much opportunity for something to slip out of management and into the peons, then leaked to the unwashed masses. So it had to be an exec or manager. And since he was at the bottom of the food chain, Alan was pretty unhappy that he had to meet me.

We did the typical meet and greet, then got into his car. I had only carry-on, so we weren’t stuck waiting for luggage which would never come. I was only supposed to be in Chicago for a night or two, assuming I found no lead. Even if I did, I had become adept at stuffing a nice kit of essentials into a single suitcase. It’s less an art and more a necessity when you’re on the move when following someone. Alan’s car was a new black Lexus. Probably his promotion present to himself or a company car. He didn’t have interest in talking so I settled back in the seat and rested while he drove to the local Intersperse office.

Intersperse Records is headquartered in New York, not Chicago, so its presence in Chicago was a relatively small office space. A few offices, some cubes, some framed posters of gold and platinum albums on the walls. The cube workers were mostly hooked up to headsets, rattling away about albums, deals, and up-and-coming acts. We bypassed the cubes and Alan herded me into a conference room before excusing himself to check messages.

The conference room was dominated by a meeting table that was larger than the meeting room could comfortably contain. The chairs were pushed almost to the walls. If there was a full meeting, people couldn’t get by occupied chairs, so the first person in would need take the farthest seat for maximum occupancy. On the table sat a conference phone and its satellite microphones. One wall was dominated by a white board that still had company business strategy left unerased. There were boxes, arrows, and squiggles that someone might be mortified by my seeing, but people often don’t realize that most of that type of stuff is meaningless to someone who wasn’t at the meeting.

Alan appeared again, explaining that Robbie, the band member I was meeting, would be late. He then sighed, simply saying, “Musicians,” before shrugging. He left again, leaving me in the room alone. I considered making long distance calls to Thailand to pass the time, but decided against it. I grabbed my dossier and notebook. I jotted down some brief questions of what I planned to ask Robbie and then looked through the dossier. It really didn’t matter what I asked him. I doubted that he’d have too much to tell me. This was one lead that had been tapped far too many times, a lead with which I’d be scraping the bottom of the barrel. If there was any lead here, anyone with half a brain would have found it already. Still, there was always the chance I’d find that one thing that would click in my head. For half a million dollars, I’d be willing to run down the stupidest leads if one of them got me to Katie Vanders.

It was forty-five minutes later when Robbie was herded into the room. He took a seat at the end of the table opposite to me. He put down a travel mug of something that smelled like alcohol on the table and then took out a pack of cigarettes. Alan quickly told him that he couldn’t smoke in the office.  Robbie nodded. Then Alan left, leaving us alone. Robbie immediately lit up a cigarette, savoring the feeling before putting his feet up on the table. He said nothing and simply smoked his cigarette.

Robert Paul Baker was the lead guitarist and front man of SVMM. He was the last known person to have seen Katie before her disappearance. He wore thick silver rimmed sunglasses, even though we were inside under fluorescent lights. He wore black leather pants, a torn T-shirt, and a leather jacket with fur around the collar. There were diamond-crusted rings all over his hands and a gold chain hanging from his neck. In every way his appearance screamed “Rock Star”, as if his album playing at most record stores hadn’t nailed that.

“So, Mr. Baker,” I started, “Or do you prefer Robbie?”

“Robbie,” he said simply, blowing a smoke ring.

“So you were the last person to see Katie Vanders?”

“Yup,” he said.

“At Club 413?”

“Yup,” he said.

“Care to elaborate on that?” I said.

“Look, you’re not the first one of you wankers to come up here,” he said. He had what sounded like a British accent, but it was obviously fake. It just sounded off. “And every time one of you comes up here, they trot me out and I have to play twenty questions. I’m bloody sick of it by now.”

I decided to change tactics. “Do you know anyone who might have seen her after she left Club 413? I could go talk them instead…”

“Nope, I haven’t heard of anyone else. She went out the door and that was it.”

“No boyfriend?”

“’Boyfriend’ has a different meaning when you’re talking about Katie-fucking-Vanders. There was a guy in her life, but finally he couldn’t stand her shit either. Steve, I think. Left town a week or two before she went missing.”

“Where to?”

“I heard LA. But honestly, no idea.”

“Know his last name?” I asked.

“Nope.”

LA. I sighed as I made a note of it. Another haystack of a city I could search for my needle in. She probably felt she couldn’t live her life without this Steve, picked up and went to him and was living in some shithole with him, laughing about the publicity.

“Any of the other band members hear from her? Were they friends with her?”

“Nope. I was the closest thing to a friend in a band, which the others thought I was crazy for. Now I see what they mean.”

“I still don’t get it,” I said, “you were the last one to see her.”

“Yeah, and? What don’t you get?”

“But no one reported her missing for,” I paged through my dossier, “A week. You were her bandmate. Didn’t you notice she didn’t show up for practices or anything? Weren’t you friends?”

“Look, mate,” he said, “there’s something you need to understand about Katie. She was just like that. The girl would go out dancing and be out for a few nights, showing up at her flat like something the cat dragged in. She didn’t work, so she just partied all the time. Drugs, alcohol, you name it. She was into the boys too. She claims she was pining for that Steve, but that didn’t stop her from hooking up after shows. Everyone wanted a piece of her anyway, it might has well have been the Vanders Band back then.”

“But it’s different now?” I prompted.

“A bit,” he said, calming down. “It’s still her face everywhere. But with her missing, the rest of the band has actually gotten some attention. They profile us and just propose that she’s at rehab or something. I get to be the actual front man of the band.”

We were both thinking it, I figured I’d put it on the table. “So you directly benefitted from her disappearing.”

“Yeah, congratulations, boy detective, your subscription to the Hardy Boys fan club has paid off!” he said. “Yeah, I had something to gain. And that was exactly my diabolical plan: on the eve of hitting it big, when we’re still a crappy band getting low paying club dates, I do something nefarious to my lead singer so that we can’t tour live and we have to pussyfoot around her disappearance. Fucking brilliant, mate, you’ve cracked this case!” He grabbed his mug and took a large drink.

“Bit of an angry streak, eh?”

“Of course, wouldn’t you be? You have someone who you think is your friend, who you spend years working on something with, putting up with her attitude and bullshit because she is a fucking amazing vocalist, you do the legwork on going big which she doesn’t help with since you didn’t know she is secretly heir to millions, and then she splits, leaving you holding the bag? Fuck yeah I’m pissed. I put three years of my life into this band, shrugging off other invites from bands that did better while we struggled. I believed in SVMM, I believed in Katie. I fucking waited tables during the day, for every bloody wanker than came in, just so we could get SVMM off the ground and make some big bucks. I did all the work. Katie did nothing, Dave was useless, and Vince was lucky to join the band right before we hit. I wasn’t happy when people ran her background and found that she was a trust fund kid. It never mattered to her if we made big bucks, since she was already rich. So yeah, I have some anger.”