Snake Skin (11 page)

Guardino let her go, but not without a
knowing look. "You sure as hell didn't see the bus number from in
here. You went outside, followed Ashley. Why?"

Whoa. How'd he miss that? The clerk looked
to him for sympathy, but he gave her nothing.

Then she cocked her head to one side, trying
to challenge Guardino with a tight-lidded gaze and failing. Her
eyes slunk away in defeat, coming to rest on a iPod sitting beside
the stack of lottery tickets. It was one of the expensive ones, a
mandatory accessory for any well-dressed suburban kid.

"The place was empty so I went out to have a
smoke. That's how I saw the bus number."

"And?" Guardino prodded.

Jalonna's chest heaved with a sigh that made
her double-E's bounce like basketballs. "And she left this on the
bench." She handed Guardino the iPod. "If she's saying I stole it
or something, the bitch is a liar. I kept it safe right back here
in the," she hesitated then brightened, "in our lost and
found."

Guardino took the iPod. Most of the kids
Burroughs knew, including his own, lived with the thing plugged
into their ears, wore it like jewelry. "Kind of a hard thing to
lose."

"Yeah, it was weird. Kid saw the bus coming,
took the earbuds out and set it down on the bench. Like she planned
to leave it behind. So y'all can't blame me for picking it up."

"No problem, Jalonna. Thanks for your help."
Guardino shoved the iPod into her bag and followed Burroughs
outside.

"Why on earth would a kid leave their music
behind?" Burroughs asked, pausing in the shade of the awning. He
couldn't believe he'd almost let that clerk off the hook—that's
what he got for trying to play Mr. Niceguy. "Her age, music is a
kid's life."

The theme song from the Mickey Mouse Club
sang out from Guardino's purse. Burroughs watched as she grabbed
two phones from the bag. One was labeled in pink: Kate, the other
in bright blue: Joey. She flipped open the pink one and shoved the
second phone back. Edging away from him, her face blanked for a
moment before she spoke.

"This is Ruby." She listened for a moment.
"You want to change the time to tomorrow morning? Oh no, I don't
think so, me and Katie have church. She has the cutest little
outfit to wear: all pink with white ribbons, oh and these adorable
panties with lace ruffles. What?"

His fist closed around the car keys as he
realized what he was witnessing. Guardino honestly looked as open
and friendly as her tone of voice. Burroughs doubted he could ever
be that good of an actor.

"No, no I don't think that's a good idea.
How about if I just send you some more pictures if you want. Why
not? Because this is happening real fast, ya know what I mean? I
mean, how do I know you're not some cop or something. All this
wanting to meet, I'm just not sure about that. Anyway, I wouldn't
have any time free until after church tomorrow."

He marveled as she dangled the bait. No fear
of entrapment here, the perv on the other end of the line was
obviously working hard to convince her. She tapped her fingers on
the Impala's roof, caught his stare and rolled her eyes.

"Well....maybe I could bring Katie to meet
you all. But I'd have to be there the whole time, watching out for
her. Yeah, I guess that's okay. No, no, I'm not promising any more
until we check you out. And we're not going out our front door
until the money's there. You said two thousand? Yeah, that will be
all right, but you'll need to buy us breakfast too. Some place
nice, no drive-thru garbage. Okay then, see you tomorrow."

She flipped the phone shut and her face lost
its animation once more. For a fleeting moment she looked
disoriented, as if trying to find her balance. Then she took a deep
breath. "Sorry about that. While we're here, might as well check
out Ashley's locker."

He drove them over to Gateway. "That was
some show you put on back there. Does that happen a lot?"

"More than you want to know. We've been
working overtime these past two weeks, did a sting this morning, in
fact."

"You can't be sending them porn, that would
be entrapment." Not to mention against the law.

"No, we set up a child-actor website. The
kids are fictional and fully dressed. When someone nibbles,
requesting more info on the kids' availability, we check them out
and then pose as a parent, and usually it's way too easy to go from
there."

"So that guy," he nodded to the phone in her
purse, "and his buddies think you're going to just hand your
daughter over to them? How stupid are they?"

"They're not stupid. Just thinking with the
wrong set of brains. They want—no, they
need
—to believe me
when I offer them a dream come true. Of course I make them work for
it."

"Yeah, so I saw. And their dream come true
is?"

"Is a four year old girl dressed up for
Sunday school." She shook her head. "Hey, we don't have time for
this. Especially since these bozos are gonna take up some of my
time tomorrow."

They exited the car and walked toward the
yellow brick single story school. The football team was hard at
work on the practice field as were the cheerleaders. The marching
band drilled in the parking lot, a tinny rendition of
Ghostbusters
mixing in with the whistles of coaches. A
typical September weekend in western Pennsylvania.

"Gateway Gators, they have a chance this
year?" she surprised him by asking as they entered the school.

"If they can beat Latrobe. Man, those guys
looked great last season."

A smiled crossed her lips. "The
Wildcats."

"You talk like you're from around here."

"Grew up in Latrobe. My mom worked at the
Rolling Rock plant until they moved it to New Jersey."

"And your dad?"

"Died when I was a kid." She pushed open the
door to the principal's office.

"So coming back here is like homecoming?
Local girl makes good, that kind of thing?"

A brief frown clouded her face. "Yeah,
people love hearing about the FBI part. Just not the rest of my
job."

She shivered in the air conditioning. Damn,
he did admire the way that top fit her. She had to be at least in
her late thirties, but with her long dark hair and smooth,
unwrinkled face, she could pass for a decade younger.

Guardino leaned over the receptionist's
desk. "Hello? Anyone home?"

A harried looking black man with wire-rim
glasses emerged from one of the offices. "I'm sorry, we're in the
middle of a crisis here—" He stopped when he saw Guardino's
credentials. "Oh. Well. Now. I've just got off the phone with our
attorney and he said to let you see Ashley's locker and belongings.
Right this way."

Burroughs trailed after Guardino. The view
from the rear was a nice distraction, made him forget where he was
for a moment. He hated schools—the budding sociopaths, the cliques,
the hierarchy that forced a kid to accept whichever hole his peers
pigeoned him into.

The vice-principal was prattling on about
the disruption the police had made in the school's routine,
removing his glasses to wipe them three times during the
twenty-foot march down the hall to Ashley's locker.

"Well, now here you are." He fumbled with
the master key. Guardino didn't rush him, didn't get in his space
or take the key away like Burroughs itched to. Instead, she used
the opportunity to pump the guy for info.

Not that the guy had anything helpful to
offer, but it was pretty slick to see her milk him dry in seconds
flat. She seemed to have a gift of finding her subject's weak spot
and using it to get them to spill everything. Handy talent for a
cop, especially one with her job.

Finally, the door sprang open. The
vice-principal jumped back as if he were about to bolt, but
Guardino restrained him with a gracious hand on his arm as
Burroughs plunged into the teenager's treasure trove.

No help here—just textbooks and a binder.
Other than her gym clothes, Ashley had left nothing personal
behind. Still, Guardino acted like it was the motherlode, flipping
through every page in the looseleaf binder, examining the bored
doodling of a seventh grader.

"Think we could see any of her artwork?" she
asked the vice-principal who hovered as if uncertain that they
weren't there to arrest him.

"According to her schedule, she's in Mrs.
Dunkin's art class. She's also Ashley's faculty advisor. I saw her
here a while ago—something about firing some pots the students
made."

Guardino smiled at the man and gestured.
"Let's go meet Mrs. Dunkin."

Burroughs felt exceedingly small walking the
tile-walled corridors. Trapped. Back to being thirteen again. The
rows upon rows of steel lockers, the shiny linoleum, the noise
bouncing from one wall to the next, the teachers making you feel
stupid just 'cause you didn't talk so hot. Not to mention the
humiliation of leaving class for speech therapy, constantly being
labeled a dummy or retard.

A sheen of sweat broke out over him as their
footsteps echoed down the empty hallway. He caught Guardino looking
at him and shoved his hands into his pockets before she could see
his clenched fists. As long as he didn't open his mouth, make a
fool of himself, it would be all right.

They turned the corner and entered a
brightly lit room festooned with colorful paintings, textiles and
paper maiche sculptures. A petite woman knelt before a kiln,
adjusting something.

"Mrs. Dunkin? These are the police. They're
trying to find Ashley Yeager and have some questions for you." With
that the assistant principal left them.

"I was so sorry to hear about Ashley," Mrs.
Dunkin said, turning to face them. She wore frayed jeans and a Pitt
T-shirt smeared with paint. If more of his teachers looked like her
when he was a kid, school might not have been so bad. "She's a
promising artist. Transferred here from Plum to take advantage of
our art program."

"We'd love to see her work," Guardino said
when Burroughs didn't respond. She gave him a look like he was
acting like a fool, tongue-tied and gawking. He balanced Ashley's
binder under his arm, took out his notebook and pretended to be
busy taking notes.

Dunkin brushed clay dust from her hands on
the back of her jeans. She laid out several cardboard canvasses of
Ashley's work. Seeing it, Burroughs had the feeling he wasn't the
only one with bad feelings when it came to school.

"Her work is quite advanced from a stylistic
view point," Dunkin said. "But very primal in its energy."

Primal. That was a tame word for it.

Terrified, a child trying to claw her way
out of a dungeon, desperate and despairing would be a better
description. Each canvas revealed an amorphously feminine shadow
dwarfed by one nightmare image after another.

In one, the girl—for all its womanly curves,
the figure felt immature, very young—was about to be stamped on by
a giant boot. It was impossible to tell if the black Doc Maarten
was a man's or woman's.

In the next, she ran, looking over her
shoulder at dark shadows, not realizing that she was trapped in a
labyrinth formed by the coils of a monstrous serpent. It waited
ahead of her, mouth open in anticipation.

And so on. Darkness, shadows, fear,
helplessness, bleak despair. No hope, no light, no escape.

"Were her grades dropping?" Guardino
asked.

"Yes, last year she went from a B student to
C's and D's," Dunkin said. "I tried to arrange a meeting with the
parents, but," she shrugged, "they were too busy."

"Did Ashley talk with you at all, give you
any idea what was going on?"

"I tried to get her to open up, but she only
spoke through her art. These were from the end of last year. This
year, I hoped things were looking up." Dunkin reached into a
vertical cabinet and pulled out a heavy sheet of watercolor paper.
"She left the acrylics and her dark palette behind. Started this
two weeks ago."

Burroughs wouldn't have recognized the
watercolor as being the work of the same artist. Here there were
two forms, drawn proportionately, one male, one female. They were
silhouetted by either a sunset or sunrise, features hidden, but
their posture was one of purpose. Most telling of all, they held
hands. Partners. Traveling into an unknown, unseen future. But
together.

"It's a bit precious, but I encourage
experimentation."

Guardino turned the paper so he could read
the scrawled words at the bottom corner. Ashley had titled her
painting: The Escape.

The art teacher hadn't been able to give them
any more helpful information, but she did let Lucy take Ashley's
most recent work. They had just gotten back on Route 22, were
planning to stop for lunch, when Lucy's cell rang. "Guardino
here."

"Hey, LT. I got something. That camera you
found in the vic's room—"

"The victim has a name, Taylor."

"Yeah, right. The camera you found in
Ashley's
room belongs to her father, not Tardiff."

"Is he still at the house?"

"Hang on, I'll check." She filled in
Burroughs while she waited. Taylor returned. "No. The dad's back at
his home." He rattled off an address and Burroughs nodded, making
an illegal u-turn and ignoring the honking of disgruntled
drivers.

"Do we have a warrant for his place?"

"Yep. I can meet you there, go over his
electronics." Taylor was eager, ready to take credit for cracking
the case.

She hated to remind him that no one would
care about the credit unless they found Ashley alive. If the father
was involved with her disappearance, the odds of that just took a
drastic plunge.

"Sounds like a plan." She hung up and stared
at Burroughs as he finessed the car through the weekend traffic on
the Parkway. "What's your beef with schools?"

He yanked the wheel, cutting off a semi as
he changed lanes. "Huh?"