Pretty Girl Gone (10 page)

“I was?” I asked innocently.

“Seventy-six in a thirty-five-mile zone. That’s awfully fast. Especially on an icy road.”

“Thirty-five!”

“The speed limit changed at the top of the hill.”

I had driven into an old-fashioned, small-town speed trap and there was no arguing about it. I said, “I’m so sorry, Officer. I didn’t realize.” I was grateful that the cold wind blew in my face. It made my eyes water and helped give me an expression of pleading innocence—at least that’s what I was going for.

“Nice-looking car,” Mallinger said.

“The salesman said the design was influenced by Bauhaus, whoever he is.”

“Bauhaus is not a
he.
It’s an influential German school of design that held that art should be practical as well as aesthetically pleasing.”

“Wow. That’s really smart. I bet you could go on
Jeopardy
or something.”

The officer smirked and gave her head a half shake.

“Some women might get away with the dumb blonde routine, but you’re not a woman and you’re not blond. Are you?”

“It was worth a try.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Would it help if I told you I was racing to the hospital to visit my poor, sick mother?”

“I’ll need to see your driver’s license, sir.”

“How ’bout if I told you I was eleven and a half years on the job in St. Paul?”

“Driver’s license.”

I reached toward the opening of my bomber jacket with my right hand. Mallinger stepped backward, her hand moving to her holster. I stopped and said, “My wallet is in my inside jacket pocket.”

I unzipped the jacket with my left hand and held it open for her to see. With my right I carefully removed the wallet. I found my license. Mallinger took the plastic card in her gloved hand.

“Wait here,” she said and retreated to her cruiser.

I watched Mallinger’s reflection in my mirror while I waited, watched her work her onboard computer. She was not only pretty, she was smart. Most of the women and all of the guys I knew probably thought Bauhaus was a bull. A few moments later, she returned.

“Mr. McKenzie . . .”

Here it comes.

“You have two speeding tickets over the past four months, but nothing previous. Why is that?”

Because the two tickets notwithstanding, most cops will give a retired police officer a break,
I thought, but didn’t say.

“It’s a new car,” I told her.

“Let me guess. It’s fast.”

“It has a top speed of 130. More if I fiddle with the electronics.”

“You’re a little young to be having a midlife crisis, aren’t you?” I didn’t answer and she said, “If I give you a citation the state’ll probably revoke your driving privileges. I wouldn’t want that to happen seeing how you were once on the job, so I’m going to let you off with a warning. ’Course, you’ve had warnings before, haven’t you.”

“One or two.”

“Uh-huh. Where are you heading?”

“Victoria.”

“That’s my town,” Mallinger confirmed. “I catch you speeding here again, I’ll hammer you like a nail in soft wood.”

Nice metaphor,
I told myself.

“I’ll be on my best behavior,” I promised.

“Either grow up or get rid of the car.”

Neither one us had anything to say after that and Mallinger returned to her cruiser. I waited until she was safely in her car before pulling off the shoulder and accelerating—slowly—to thirty-five.

“D. Mallinger,” I said aloud as I watched her image recede in my mirror. “I wonder what the D stands for.”

I don’t know what I expected from Victoria. A quaint hamlet draped in sheets of pristine snow like something pictured on a postcard, I suppose. Instead, I found a tired, diminutive Twin Cities. A slaughterhouse and a lawn mower company were pumping enough money into the town to support a small hospital, a library, two elementary schools, a high school, city hall, fire station, and a law enforcement center, but none of them were new. There was a Wal-Mart, of course. A few fast-food joints, bars, convenience stores, and a tiny barn that sold Computers-Crafts-Miniature Golf lined Victoria’s main drag. Christmas decorations still hung from stoplights and street lamps, but there was no joy in them. The evergreen boughs, gold garlands, and red ribbons appeared as gray and exhaust-stained as the drifts plowed along the boulevards.

Yet there was another side to the city as well—snow-covered baseball and soccer fields, several parks, three lakes with beaches closed for the winter, and the Des Moines River. A few blocks off Main Street I discovered a charming network of tree-lined streets, large and venerable houses with sprawling porches and tire swings in the front yard, rolling hills marked with the tracks of sleds, toboggans, and skis, as well as something I hadn’t prepared for. How big the sky seemed. It stretched from the white water tower way up north to the grain elevators way down south with only the dome of the courthouse and a few church steeples for competition.

Now this is what a small town should look like.

Much of what I knew about Victoria I had learned from a city map I bought at the gas station where I stopped to fill my Audi. I had considered lunch; it was fast approaching noon. But first things first. Using the map, I navigated the streets until I found 347 Second Avenue and rolled into the parking lot. It was a small business. The large, illuminated sign above the door and windows read:
FIT TO PRINT
. The smaller sign in the corner of the window listed services: Black/White & Color
Copies • Print From Disk/Color Laser Prints • Manuals, Reports & Newsletters • Flyers, Brochures & Transparencies • Binding, Laminating & Custom Tabs • Instant Posters, Banners & Exhibits • Business Cards & Letterhead • Invitations & Specialty Papers • High Speed Internet Access • PC & Mac Rental Stations.

I knew I was screwed before I even left my car.

The kid behind the counter looked like he was about sixteen. He smiled as if he meant it when he said, “Good afternoon, sir, how may I help you?” He was Hispanic, with dark hair, dark eyes, and a name tag that identified him as Rufugio Tapia. His accent was faint—you had to listen hard to hear it, but it was there. To the right of him there were eight copiers of various size and function; a woman was working one of them, copying what looked like newspaper clippings. To the left was an equal number of PCs and Apples separated from each other by soft privacy walls. Behind the counter I could see several large printers and a couple of machines I couldn’t identify.

“You provide Internet access,” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you keep track of who uses your machines and when?”

“Sir?”

“Is it possible to learn who used your computers at any given time?”

The smile disappeared and his face closed down.

“No,” he said.

“So, if I were to log onto one of your machines . . .”

“Sir, may I ask your name?”

“McKenzie. Now if I were . . .”

“Why are you asking these questions?”

Tapia wasn’t angry, but he was getting to it.

“Perhaps you should let me speak to your supervisor,” I said.

“I am the supervisor.”

“The owner then.”

“I am the owner.”

“You’re kidding?”

He crossed his arms over his chest, a classic defensive posture.

“It is not possible for a Mexican American to own a business?” he said.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“When I was twenty-three I owned a Dave Winfield autographed baseball glove, some hockey equipment, and a 1974 Chevy Impala. I was thinking of your age when I said, ‘You’re kidding.’ ”

“Oh. Yes. I understand.”

“Listen,” I said. “Here’s my problem. An e-mail was sent from one of your machines Friday. I’m trying to figure out who sent it?”

“Why?”

“It wasn’t a very nice e-mail.”

Tapia inhaled through his teeth and exhaled slowly.

“All of our machines are self-service,” he said. “Each comes with a self-service card reader. You access them by using a credit card or by buying one of our cards.”

“How does that work?”

Tapia led me to a kiosk next to the PCs. The front of it had simple instructions printed in large type—plus illustrations—explaining how to slide ones, fives, tens, and twenties into one slot, press the appropriate buttons on a touch screen, and receive a coded self-service card from another slot good for photocopies and Internet access. You insert the card—or any of a half dozen major credit cards—into the card reader, click a few icons with the mouse, and you have access, $6.39 for fifteen minutes, $25.56 for an hour.

“I never know who is on-line and I never know where they go while they’re on-line,” Tapia said. “I prefer it that way.”

“There’s no log, no . . . ?”

“Nothing like that, Mr. McKenzie.”

“You have no way of knowing who uses your computers?”

“None. I suppose you could contact the credit card company.”

“Which one?”

Tapia shrugged.

“Do you remember anything that was unusual Friday?” I asked. “A customer who acted odd? I’m talking early evening. Around seven.”

“If it was a regular day, maybe I could tell you. But Friday we celebrated our first anniversary. I had an open house all day long. Prizes. Discounts on printing and copies . . .”

“Internet access?”

“That, too.”

“Swell.”

“People were coming and going all day. At five, I shut down my presses. I had cake and drinks for all of my employees, my business clients, my regulars. At one time there might have been as many as a hundred people in here. Any one of them could have used a PC or Apple and I would not have known it. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. And, hey, congratulations on your year.”

The smile Tapia had shown me when I had first arrived had returned.

“Gracias,”
he said.

The Rainbow Cafe had a worn linoleum floor, Formica tables, and metal chairs. The half-dozen booths arranged against the walls were upholstered in hot pink synthetic leather that was worn at the edges. A dozen stainless metal stools with seats covered in the same material were fixed to the floor along a lunch counter that stretched nearly the entire length of the building. There was a window cut in the wall between the dining area and the kitchen. Two waitresses wearing pink-and-white uniforms pinned their orders to a metal wheel fixed to the top of the window frame, shouted out a number, and spun the wheel toward the cook. When the order was ready, the cook slapped the plates on the windowsill, rang a squat metal bell, and repeated the number. In the corner,
a jukebox was spinning Conway Twitty’s “It’s Only Make Believe.” I felt I had stepped into 1958.

I found an empty slot at the counter and read the place mat while I waited to be served. The mat presented horoscopes based on the signs of the zodiac. It said the stars were aligned against me. “A difficult year both professionally and romantically can be expected.” As if things weren’t bad enough.

The waitress saw me frown as I studied the chart.

“The Mexican across the street is supposed to be delivering the new place mats later this week,” she said while setting water and a menu in front of me.

It was only then that I noticed the horoscope was for last year. I was relieved by the news although when I thought about it, things professional and romantic couldn’t have been much better last year. So much for astrology.

When the waitress asked, “What’ll ya have?” I answered, “What’s good?” She said, “Try the cheeseburger. We make it with blue cheese.” So I did. It turned out to be one of the best burgers I had ever had—plump, juicy, the cheese melted just so, the onions grilled to perfection. To be honest, I wasn’t all that surprised. The small, out-of-the-way joints have always been my favorite restaurants; their food is so much tastier than the chains.

While I ate, I plotted strategy. It didn’t amount to much. I knew that the e-mail had originated in Victoria. That meant the governor’s enemy was in Victoria. And, of course, Elizabeth Rogers had been killed in Victoria. The riddle was here. I decided that if I hung around long enough, asked enough questions, I might learn the answer to it—to all of it. Something else, probably more likely: If I couldn’t find out who sent the e-mail, maybe if I made a big enough pest of myself, the e-mailer would find me.

It was awfully thin, I knew. But it wasn’t like I had anything better to do. It’s not like I actually worked for a living.

I turned my attention to the discussion going on in the corner. Over a dozen people, mostly old, mostly men, occupied a couple of booths and two tables. A man approaching fifty and wearing a jacket that read A-1 Auto on the back was talking loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Ten years ago you’d only see the Mexicans, the Hispanics, in the summer. Working on farms. Now”—he shook his head sadly—“fifteen percent, that’s what they say. Immigrants—the Hispanics and the Somalis—ten years ago they were one percent of the population and now it’s fifteen percent. That’s why we’re doing the Nicholas County Coalition for Immigration Reduction. That’s why we’re askin’ you to join. We can’t just let ’em invade our country like this, take our jobs.