Cast in Stone (22 page)

"Chlorophyll
is the essence of life on the planet," I assured him.
Scientifically thwarted, he'd taken a more cultural approach.

"Oh,
yeah. Me and Sam Spade a thousand miles from home, surrounded by
about a million cheese-heads. Be still my heart."

"They
won't harm you. They'll all be out pruning their shrubs." Next,
he'd tried the old business excuse.

"I
am in business, ya know, Leo. What am I supposed to tell my
customers—Come back in a week or so, I'm goin' to Wisconsin to get
my bratwurst polished?"

"Mark
can handle things while you're gone."

"Fuckin'
kid will steal me blind."

From
the far end of the counter, Mark piped up. "I already steal you
blind."

I
knew I had him when he then slipped totally out of character and went
trolling for sympathy.

"Right,
so I'm gonna roll through a couple of major airports so the citizens
can gawk at the freak. Right? Sit in my little chair on the plane, in
the aisle"—he jabbed a thumb back over his shoulder—"in
the back, right next to the shifter, listening to the white-

knucklers
tooting 'Stairway to Heaven' on their sphincters."

"It's
a short flight," I countered.

"And
what then? You gonna load me and the chair on the roof of some rental
car, tool us over to the university?"

"There's
a company in Madison that'll rent us the same kind of van you've got.
Lift, hand controls, the whole ball of wax. You can drive."

This
was my trump card. Carl enjoyed nothing more than terrorizing the
citizenry in his specially equipped Chevy van, ignoring any and all
traffic laws, parking in places that would make a UPS driver blush. I
was banking that the prospect of having an entire new state at his
mercy would be more than he could resist.

"No
way. It'll be a piece of shit. Cheap. No way they'll have a—"

Mark
jumped in. "Exactly the same equipment you've got, Carl. I
talked to them myself this morning. I explained that you were a
discerning consumer."

"A
discerning consumer, huh. Those were your exact words?"

"Actually,
pain in the ass were my exact words."

By
9:00 a.m. Thursday morning, Carl and I had found our way to West Lake
Street in Madison, Wisconsin. We watched as the blue-clad janitor
slid back the bolts on the smoked-glass front doors of Alumni House.
An insistent, swirling breeze moved my hair about. Carl fidgeted with
the buttons on his chair, bumping over the uneven stones, rolling
three feet forward then three feet back.

"This
is a hell of a reach, Leo."

"I
know."

"I
can't believe this is all you got. Most of all I can't believe I let
you talk me into this crap." "It's all I've got."

"It's
pathetic."

"I
know," I repeated. "In my business, this is what I do when
I don't have anything. I just go around turning over rocks, waiting
to see what crawls out."

"This
isn't a rock; it's a crock."

"She's
consistently used Madison and the university as her background
story. She even managed to bounce it by a guy who knew a lot about
the place. It's the best thing I've got."

"It
ain't much," he said again. "Let's go." Flicking away
a butt, he suddenly rocketed forward. Most motorized wheelchairs are
intended to putt along at a top speed of three or four miles per
hour, a demure pace designed to fit nicely into normal foot-traffic
flow. Never having been one to go with the flow, Carl Cradduck had
commissioned modifications that would have turned many a NASCAR
driver green with envy. His chair in high gear was considerably
faster than any number of inexpensive foreign cars. A frightening top
speed, combined with Carl's utter disregard for his fellow man,
invariably turned crowded sidewalks and airport concourses into
human bowling alleys. I tried to stay out of the way and pretend
we weren't together.

Alumni
House was a surprise. From the lush carpets to the Philippine
mahogany paneling and hunt club prints, no expense had been spared in
an all-out effort to distance this island of good taste from the
general squalor of an urban university campus. The result was a kind
of no surprise, unevolved English manor-house elegance. Created
intact, climate controlled, simultaneously purified and
rarefied.

"How
may I help you, sir?" The name plate read Pamela Shincke. She
had about her an air of competence. Firmly in charge of the
reception area. The guardian of the gate. The keeper of the flame. I
sensed we were in good hands.

Her
appearance provided a much-needed contrast to the rest of the
furnishings. She was sporting a smile and one of those modern MTV
hairdos with those mysterious radar bangs that I still find it
difficult to believe any woman would inflict upon herself
intentionally. Maybe after three or four days of unshowered salt
and sailing, or after a death-defying ride on the back of a
motorcycle, but certainly'not purposely.

"We'd
like to see copies of the Badger Annual from nineteen-seventy-eight
through nineteen-ninety-two," I said.

Since
we had no knowledge of the girl's actual age, we'd decided to operate
from the premise that, right now, she was somewhere between
twenty-five and thirty-five. Allowing for error, we had decided to
cover a fourteen-year span—1978 through 1992.

Pamela
was eager to help.

"Certainly,
sir," she beamed. "Are you gentlemen by any chance Badgers
yourselves?"

"Badgers,"
Carl growled, "we don't need no stinking Badgers."

"Oh,"
Pamela said. "I get it. The movie with Humphrey Bogart. How
cute."

"The
annuals?" I said

"Which
campus?"

Carl
remained calm.

"How
many are there?" he asked.

"Two-year
or four-year?" she asked.

Carl
flicked me a short, murderous glance.

"Four-year,"
I said quickly.

"Twelve
in addition to the main campus here in Madison."

"I
see," said Carl through his teeth. "And I take it that each
campus issues its own annual?"

"Yes,
sir. Altogether, the University of Wisconsin has nearly a hundred
fifty thousand students. Just imagine how big just one yearbook for
all the campuses would be."

I
tried not to.

She
picked a brochure from the counter, leaned over, and handed it to
Carl. "This might help you, sir. It lists all the campuses, the
number of students on each campus, and all that kind of stuff."

"Thank
you so much." Carl beamed back. "My colleague and I had
better discuss this before we proceed."

"Would
you like to use our reading room?"

She
gestured toward a large conference room on our immediate left.

"You're
too kind," Carl said.

She
came out from behind the counter.

"It's
my pleasure. Things have been kind of slow around here lately. To
tell you the truth, it's nice to have somebody in here. Homecoming's
not for another month. That's when we get real busy around here.
That and graduation time."

She
led us into a large room, decorated in the same dark woods and thick
fabrics as the reception area but considerably lightened by a set of
leaded windows running along the top of the three exterior walls.

"I
was just going to make coffee. Can I get you gentlemen a cup?"

"Please,"
I said.

"Many
thanks," answered Carl.

"If
there's anything else you need, just let me know."

"Thanks
again," Carl said.

She
closed the door behind her. Carl watched her go and then motored up
to the edge of the table.

"You
suppose she's that nice all the time?" he asked.

"I
think it's a distinct possibility." "Scary."

"Yeah,"
I agreed.

Carl
placed both palms on the table.

"Let's
see here, Einstein. Thirteen campuses times twelve years. What's
that, about a hundred and a half?" "Something like that."

"So,
you wanna call and get us a flight out of this shit burg or should I
do it?"

As
a professional investigator, I sensed that Carl was losing his
enthusiasm for the task.

"It
all points here to Madison," I said quickly. "The address
she had given for her missing aunt was in Madison. The stories of her
childhood and college days all supposedly took place in Madison. It's
gotta be Madison."

"Yeah,
but what if, Leo? What if? What if we dragged our moldy asses all the
way out here into cheesehead bumfuck and it turns out that the trim
went to"—he fingered the list of campuses in his hand—"the
Parkside campus or Riverfalls, or maybe even Oshkosh by fucking gosh?
What then, huh?"

"No
way we can go through that many annuals," I conceded.

"No
shit, Sherlock."

"We'll
have to try to cover as many bases as possible." "This is
sick."

I
persisted. "How many total students did she say they had?"

"Just
under a hundred-fifty thousand."

Carl
smoothed the list on the table and pulled a pen from his pocket. I
leaned over his shoulder.

"If
we just do these..." He circled Madison, Milwaukee, Eau Claire,
and Oshkosh.

"Whitewater
too," I added. "It's the only other campus with more than
ten thousand students."

"Okay,
Madison, Milwaukee, Eau Claire, Osh fucking Kosh, and
Whitewater. How many total bodies is that?"

We
both mumbled slightly as we totaled the columns

"Almost
two-thirds of them," Carl said. "Just over ninety-five
thousand on those five campuses."

"Even
then, that's sixty annuals," he groused. "We better get
started."

Carl
folded his arms over his thin chest. No comment. No movement.
Just the thousand-yard stare. When I returned ten minutes later with
my arms full of annuals, he still hadn't moved.

"I
figured we'd do all the Madisons first," I said.

Carl
uncrossed his arms, drumming now with his fingers on the control
panel of his chair. "You fuck," he said.

I
ignored him. "Should we start at the ends and work toward the
middle or start in the middle and work toward the ends?"

No
reply. More drumming.

"Okay,"
I said. "I'll do from seventy-eight through eighty-four. You do
eighty-five through ninety-two." I began to sort the bright red
pile. "Every other year," Carl said. "Excuse me?"

"Every
other fucking year. You do the odds. I'll do the evens. It'll keep us
from seeing the same faces too often." He added another "You
fuck" as an afterthought.

Scanning
pictures looking for a specific face turned out to be harder than I'd
imagined. It took me the better part of an hour to find my rhythm.
Going too slow slipped me into an inattentive fog where, after about
a half hour, I wouldn't have recognized my mother. I had to
completely redo the senior section of 1989 when I'd started off too
slow. Too fast and I didn't have time to mentally allow for either
the ravages of time or the vagaries of fashion. It was trial and
error. At my workable speed, it took me about two hours to work my
way through my first yearbook. Even then, there was no way to be
certain that I hadn't mentally drifted off and missed her somewhere
along the way.

By
eleven-thirty, Carl hadn't uttered a syllable. He hadn't even gone
out for a smoke. Other than to turn pages he hadn't moved. Pamela had
appeared at regular intervals to freshen our coffee. I decided not to
mention lunch. I was afraid that if he ever got out of the room I'd
never get him back in, so I shut up and kept working. Two-thirds of
the way through the 1985 edition, I came across a possible.