The Miraculous Plot of Leiter & Lott (21 page)

Yet as she walked up the other side, Val regretted her impulse not to speak.
 
Maybe the girl wouldn't have listened to advice, but a conversation may have been initiated, leading to it. A conversation that tactfully avoided whether there were other adults exploiting her, besides the one who'd branded a child with the symbol of death.

Goth
girls, they were called. Girls obsessed with gothic symbols, dark clothes, vampires. She'd seen them before, hanging around seedy bars downtown. Had even asked about them, once. Perhaps a segment of Tucson This Week could profile them, maybe even interview some of them. Find out if their parents were neglectful or abusive. Discover their motivations, their fascinations. An idea, at least. One that might reassert her flagging influence over the show's direction and ratings.

When she emerged into view of Broadway, Val saw to her dismay that the Taco Bell franchise was closed for renovation, and its outside pay phone missing.
 
With little traffic to impede her crossing the road to the convenience store on the other side, however, she targeted the store just as the last gradations of dusk fell to night above the eerily illuminated roadway.
 

Halfway across, she saw that a middle aged woman waited near the corner.
 
Closer still, she noted that the woman had Native American features, her long black hair pulled to one side in a braid. Tight blue jeans were tucked into tall calfskin boots, and her pockmarked face seemed stitched together of patchwork fragments of flesh, as though she'd been cut and reassembled by a plastic surgeon who made house calls.

"
Slow'n
down there, honey," the woman said, smiling slyly as Val approached.

Again, Val opened her mouth to say something, but didn't.

    
"
Whas
the hurry?" the woman wondered next, grinning soullessly as Val passed.
 
Her teeth glowed chicken fat yellow in the sodium light. "Ya late for a date?"

    
"I'm sorry, I. . ." Val managed, trailing off. Not looking back, she walked determinedly toward the bright box of light, where inside she knew were aisles stacked with the most popular basic staples. Bread and milk, along with things like cigarettes and beer and tabloid newspapers and aspirin. Fumbling through the half shredded phonebook attached to the battered cubical outside, she searched for the number to a towing service, before remembering the auto club card in her purse. At this, she let the phone book drop, and heard it swing down on its levered holder to bang hard against the plastic backing of the cubical.
 
A piece of paper fluttered out, which she saw only peripherally, not looking down at it while she dialed. Only after she hung up did she look.

To her surprise, it was a $5 bill. She stared at the Lincoln Memorial on the reverse in disbelief. The Memorial was more green than white.
Green with envy,
the phrase came to her. And then, like a piece of advice from her mother, another saying popped into her mind.
 

Luck favors the prepared.
 

"I'm lucky," she whispered aloud, as though saying it might make it true.

She reached down, picked up the bill in fascination. While she waited for help she folded it into a triangle shape, like a flag is folded. A little paper flag.
 
She thought of giving the flag to the unlucky woman on the corner, but then saw that the woman was gone. Picked up, too.
 

Too late, too late. . .for a very important date.

"I'm lucky," she repeated louder, against the darkness, half expecting a reply. When none came, she felt a sense of relief, and pushed the folded bill carefully into her purse. Then she looked back toward the tunnel across the street, now dark and open like the mouth of a snake.

 

The piece was brief. A notice, really. Like an obituary, minus the photo. Val's hand paused stiffly on the edge of page nine. Near the bottom of the newspaper the title read, Young Woman Murdered Under Bridge. With her free hand, she set down her coffee cup too quickly. It hit the edge of the saucer and tipped over.
 
Coffee spread and was absorbed by the paper like a blotter. She lifted the paper before the stain could reach the article on which she focused. Then she read the two short paragraphs there, and released it. The newsprint sank and darkened.
 
As did her heart.

The girl suddenly had a name, now. It was Sarah Collins. She was 15. She would never be 16, Val realized, sweet or otherwise. Never go to college, have a career or children. Never again laugh or travel or eat chocolates or sit by the ocean with a book. Or anything else.
Ever.
It was all over for Sarah, because someone had cut her throat. An attempted assault, the act was interrupted by a passing motorist, who'd called 911 but couldn't give a description of the assailant. And it had all happened around 7 PM, right after Val's car had been towed. Right after she'd emerged from the same tunnel, walking up on the other side. Meaning the killer must have been behind her. Maybe even following her.

You lucky thing, you
.

Val pushed herself back from the kitchen table. She tried to remember whether she'd seen the girl when she passed back again under the bridges in the towing service truck. Had she even looked? No, she'd forgotten the girl, being absorbed in her own problems. Yet in all likelihood this girl, this
Sarah
, had still been standing there, dressed in black, with no police cars yet, just that ominous lighting.
 

Val reached for her cell phone. She flipped it open, intending to tell the police she'd seen the girl, at least. Almost talked to her. Give them a sense of her demeanor. But what had
been
her demeanor? Why was she waiting there?
 
Was it for someone she knew?

Her thumb hovered over the buttons. Then she realized that her cell was still dead. As broken as her relationship with David. She crossed the kitchen toward the wall phone beside the refrigerator, but then saw the clock above the sink, and imagined being grilled about whether she'd witnessed anyone walking in the girl's direction, along the eerie sidewalk flanking the road.
 
And she'd seen no one. Maybe Sarah wasn't even the Goth girl she's seen, but someone else. There was no picture, after all. And she was almost late for work, already. Perhaps the best thing would be to ask Greg for his advice, before she called.
 

Yes,
the voice inside her head advised,
you
do that.

Crossing the kitchen again, toward the door, Val dropped a dry towel over the damp newspaper on her way out.

~ * ~

The tapping sound her heels made echoed hollowly down the hallway as Val walked toward the station's control booth, next to where a taping of
Tucson This Week
was about to commence. Station manager Greg Lomax joined her just before their engineer and cameraman began setting up in the adjacent studio.
 
Greg was a balding man with thin red hair, a pot belly, and new bright white dentures on display in place of his former uneven nicotine-stained teeth. He had a birthmark on his neck that looked like the mother ship for a whole battle fleet of scattered freckles and pale discolorations. Although nothing looked malignant yet, time would tell.
  

"What happened to
you
?" Greg asked her, nonetheless.

"Car broke down last night," she replied, distracted by his noticing that she'd rushed in applying makeup. "Had to get a rental."
 

"Uh huh."

"Greg, I--"
 
She paused, at losing his attention, to follow his gaze back to a young blond bimbo who sat beyond the glass opposite Cliff White, the show's handsome jock host. “Who is she?”

“Actress from L.A.,” Greg informed her. “Has a role in the horror film shooting out in Starr Pass. Francine
Rydel
?”

“Never heard of her," Val said, indulging the passing thought:
not even from you.

Greg didn't elaborate, although there was a hint of recrimination in his askance glance. Val suppressed the urge to remind him that she'd twice acquired the governor for the show, but then reminded herself that Greg wasn't favoring politicians anymore, and was also more likely to recall a guest she'd booked whose job was making balloon animals at street fairs. A man who kept popping an attempted giraffe out of nervousness. It was why he'd taken to preempting her choices by scheduling guests himself, sometimes.
 

"I know we've got ratings problems," Val conceded, trying not to let her frustration show, "but I do have a story idea I think you'll like, this time."

Greg made a rolling motion with one hand toward the engineer. "Can it wait?"

"Actually, no. There was a girl killed last night under the bridge over on Park Avenue, Greg. No knife at the scene, so no suicide. But in another way, maybe it was. I mean, if she was fascinated with death. And I think she was.
 
Maybe even wished for it." Val paused before embellishing her summation, "So death found her, and granted her wish."

Greg turned to stare at her, briefly fascinated himself, just as she'd hoped.
 
"You knew this girl?"

"Not exactly."

"Well, what, then?
 
Where'd you hear about her?"

"In the paper this morning."

"I read the paper this morning. Didn't see any--"

"Wasn't exactly page one. That's why I'd like to do a story. On her, and girls like her. Goth girls. As in 'gothic.'
 
These girls dress in black, wear purple eye shadow, and hang out downtown after dark. They're also into vampires, and weird stuff on the internet."

"By weird stuff you mean what. . . fetishes?"

"I don't--
 
I. . ."
 
She took a short breath. "Possibly."

Greg seemed intrigued, then confused. "And you came up with this by reading some clip over breakfast?"

"You like it?"

"It's different, I'll give you that."

"Then what does it matter?"

"This is an interview show, is why. You'd need to talk to her family and friends on camera. Would they agree to that?"

"I can find out."

Greg shrugged and turned back toward the viewing window. "I'll need more than speculation before I run the idea by Claire," he concluded. He nodded toward where his B-movie star had begun describing her astonishing rise to mediocrity, then added, "I know you can't get Brad Pitt, Val, but do a little research first, okay?"

Val thought about Claire Robinson, the station's owner. A society maven who lived in the foothills next to a country club fairway, Mrs. Robinson only came downtown once a month in her Lincoln Town Car, and usually only stayed ten minutes. If she was suddenly taking a more active interest, in an attempt to salvage the station's ratings from viewers who'd tired of politics, things were worse than she'd imagined.

“In the meantime,” Greg said, focusing on
blondie
in the other room, "how about you interview a ball player from the Colorado Rockies?”

"What?"
 
Val winced at the idea. "I was hoping for something more meaningful."

Greg chuckled. "Hey, you want meaningful, think about his fan base."

"Whose?"

"Ramon Vasquez. Even
you've
heard of him, right?”

Val fidgeted, wondering if the suggestion was really his, or Claire's. Then she shifted stance, and came out with it. "What if I told you that last night, when my car broke down, I think I saw the murdered girl? Her name is Sarah Collins, by the way. Or
was.
"

Greg pivoted to face her directly. "You
saw
her?"

Val nodded. "In the tunnel, under the bridge. Looked like she was waiting for someone. Or maybe not. I don't know. Maybe she was just there for the rush.
 
The atmosphere."

"The
what?"

"It's eerie under there. Kinda dwarfs you. Get the chills even now, just thinking about it."

"What are you telling me, Valerie?"

"I'm not sure. But tell me. What is it that you think I should do. . . call the police? Because I really didn't see anything. Didn't speak to the girl, either.
 
Just walked past her."

Greg put one hand on top of his head, as though to keep it attached. Then he did a slow 360, like a marionette. "Do they know the time of death?" he asked.

"Yeah. . ."

"Well, does it jibe with when you saw this girl?"

"Close enough."

Greg crooked his jaw for an instant, narrowing his eyes. "And you read about this
when?"

Val rechecked her watch. "Less than an hour ago."

"What about witnesses? Were you seen in the area?"

Val remembered the man in the pickup, but dismissed the incident, shaking her head. "No, I don't think so."

Now her boss let air hiss out between his teeth in giving a short, humorless laugh. It was a variation on his trademark guffaw--a foreshortened snippet of a longer version that sounded like marbles in a blender, going from grate to grind and back again. "Hell," he concluded, "I don't know what you're waiting for, Val, but never mind the story, just call the cops. Do it now."