The Angel of Knowlton Park (41 page)

At every intersection, there were inexplicable delays, as though everyone's synapses had rusted or atrophied in the thick air. By the time he pulled up in front of the community center, his impatience was back and had him moving at a brisker pace. He asked the receptionist if Andrea Dwyer had left him something.

She eyeballed him critically. "You the secret admirer?"

"Yeah."

"She's too young for you."

"Just an admirer," he said, feeling unreasonably defensive. "She's a great cop."

"All right then." The woman searched under the counter, came up empty-handed. "She had it in her hand. I could swear she left it right here, but there's nothing. She must have taken it with her." His frustration must have shown, because she made an apologetic gesture. "Sorry. If I see Andrea, I'll tell her you were looking for it."

He got back in the car, his jittery sense that the day was going wrong ratcheted up another notch. He didn't think it was just frustration from being out of the loop. It was Iris Martin's disappearance. An itchy sense that more bad things were going to happen.

After an extensive period of banging, Pap Watts finally opened the door, stared at him blankly, uttered an indifferent "Yeah?"

"Detective Burgess. Portland Police. I was wondering if Iris was here?"

"Iris don't live here," Pap said. "She's at that special school."

"She didn't come home this morning?"

The man looked back over his shoulder as though he might have missed something. "I ain't seen her," he said finally. "And I been home all day."

Burgess tried to restrain his impatience and aim his words at the level of Pap's slow mind. "She left the school early this morning without telling anyone where she was going. You have any idea where she might be?"

Watts considered the question, a process so ponderous Burgess could almost see the gray matter working beneath the small, balding skull. After a while Watts shook his head. "Nope. She usta visit my wife's asshole brother sometimes. Dunno if she still does."

"Henry Devereau?" Watts nodded. "You got a phone number?"

"Dunno the asshole's number, if he got one. Not that Iris could use it anyways." Watts turned away, signaling the conversation was over, then turned back with an ugly smile. "Maybe she got herself a boyfriend. Went to lose her cherry. Be about time."

He started to close the door. "Wait," Burgess said. "Ricky Martin. Any idea where I might find him?"

Watts shrugged. "He don't live here. He was out staying with Jason, but they had words over that bitch girlfriend of his. Last I heard he was in one of them rooming houses."

"Does he have a car?"

"Maybe. He was driving a little piece of shit Jap car. Dunno if he still is." He grinned. "Prolly not registered or nothing."

"What color?"

"Dunno. Blue, maybe? You see Iris, tell her I hope she liked it. Time that girl got a taste for cock." He shut the door, leaving Burgess standing, sickened, on the garbage-filled porch.

Chapter 31

Julie Gordon waited by his car with her boys, holding a large shoebox. She looked at him shyly and lowered her eyes. "Detective, I... I thought you might want this." She offered the box.

"What is it?" he asked.

It was the bigger boy who answered. "It's Timmy's treasure box. Where my mom kept all the stuff he gave her. He was always giving her stuff."

He took the box and tucked it under his arm. "Thanks for remembering," he said.

"That's all I think about. Timmy," she said. "Come on, boys." Shooing her boys before her, she hurried away.

He was unlocking the door when a cruiser, lights flashing, came flying down the street, and rocked to a stop beside him. Delinsky leaned out. "Got a minute, Sarge?"

Burgess didn't know if he had a minute. He had places to go, people to see. He also had things he wanted to take Delinsky to task for. Some suggestions concerning sharper observational skills, like the change of social workers. The mean stuff he was famous for. But Delinsky's lights were on. This was clearly not the time.

"What's up?"

"Kids out playing found a rolled-up carpet with what looks like bloodstains on it."

"Where?"

Delinsky told him. Burgess knew the place. They'd found a body there once, years back. Guy killed his girlfriend, ran down the alley, and shot himself. He wanted to see that carpet, but it was an official police call. It was one thing to talk to people in his free time. Another to answer a call like he was actively working the case. His own distinction. Cote wouldn't see the difference. Delinsky waited impatiently, poised to go.

"I'm on sick leave today."

Delinsky's chin jutted toward the Watts house as he struggled between sympathy and kicking a guy while he was down. Resentment won out. Burgess had worked him hard, then made him feel bad about stuff he'd missed. "Well, you've found the perfect place to recuperate." He gunned the engine and was gone.

Burgess watched him skid through the corner, remembering, with a touch of regret, how much fun it had been to drive around in a cruiser with the siren going and the lights on. The rush of excitement, the Grand Prix feeling of racing through intersections. No one ever said it, but license to drive like a madman was part of the fun of being a street cop. He had no resentment toward Delinsky. It took time to make a good cop. When you were young, the older guys rode you hard for a reason—to make you a better cop. Their riding chafed and caused resentment at times, and someday you might look back and see the good it had done.

What he did resent was his exile. He wanted to see that carpet, the color, the stain pattern. To collect fibers and see if they matched up with what they already knew. He wanted to toss ideas around with Kyle and Perry. He didn't know what was happening. They could have arrested a suspect by now, gotten a confession. Cote could be talking to the press, gloating over the fact that the case got solved while Burgess was stuck out in the cold. In the heat. In the hellish summer heat and more hellish limbo of the information void.

He had a choice about where to go next. Check out Henry Devereau or pay a visit to Libby Insurance and look for Matt McBride. Devereau's place was a hike, so he let weariness decide. Then he checked his messages, disappointed but unsurprised to find there was nothing from Kyle or Perry. They were probably checking out the carpet. There
was
a message from the nurse at the hospital. If he still wanted to talk with Anna Pederson, she could have visitors. And Libby Insurance was on the way.

Libby Insurance had a second floor office in a building fronting on Congress Street. The door was old-fashioned, half-glass, with the company name in gold letters. He liked the sturdy, unchanged feeling of it, even though the hot corridor smelled of age and cigarettes. He walked into a carpeted area with a receptionist's desk surrounded by waved glass partitions. The woman at the desk had short hair an improbable shade of magenta and ears so full of piercings they looked tattered. She eyed him warily as she tapped on the glass-shielded desktop with a long black nail.

"Can I help you?" The words ran together in an almost unintelligible stream.

He showed his badge. "I'm looking for Matthew McBride?"

She shook her head, pleased to be unable to help. "Not in today."

"He call? Say he wasn't coming in?"

She shrugged. "Not while I was here. Maybe he told someone else?"

"Can you check please? See if he did tell someone else?"

She shrugged dismissively. "I don't know who I'd..." She'd perfected the unhelpful answer that was supposed to send him away. Burgess didn't move. "Oh. All right," she sighed. "Hold on." She picked up the phone, punched in some numbers. "Yeah, Sheila. Got a cop out here looking for Matt. Did he... Matt, I mean... tell anybody he wasn't coming in today?" She listened, cradled the phone, and fiddled with papers on her desk.

Burgess waited. The girl was no Mensa candidate. Finally he said, "So?"

"So, nothing. Sheila says Matt didn't call."

"Is he normally a good employee? Usually comes to work?"

"Oh. Yeah." She rolled her eyes. "Matt loves to work. He's one of them gook types, comes in early and leaves late." The black nails danced on the desktop. "Geek, I mean." A few more taps as her eyes widened. "Jeez. He didn't, like, get killed or anything? I never knew anybody who got killed. Personally, I mean. There was this cousin of my mother's."

"You know if he has a car?" he asked.

"Sometimes has his mom's car," she said. "Not always. It's fuckin' beige. Beige and square. He offered me a ride home once, but hey... he's just a kid and who'd wanna be seen in a car like that?"

Spoiled little bitch. In his youth, any car was a treat. You had a car, you could go parking. He thanked her for her time and left. He called dispatch and asked if they could check on vehicles registered to a Regina or Matthew McBride and gave the address. By the time he'd remembered he was on leave, it was too late. He'd already asked. Screw it. He headed toward the hospital.

He parked in his usual spot and went up to Anna Pederson's floor, sketching a wave at Charlie as he passed. The nurse behind the desk recognized him with a smile. "So you got my message. She's much better today."

Burgess followed her into a double room where a frail, white-haired woman lay surrounded by equipment. The woman looked up at him with bright blue eyes, didn't recognize him, and looked at her nurse. "Anna, this is the police officer I told you about."

"Investigating about little Timmy?" Her voice was little more than a whisper.

"Yes, ma'am," Burgess said. "Officer Delinsky, who lives in the neighborhood, says you are very observant."

"At my age there's not much to do besides sit and watch. I sit out on my porch." She paused. "Most people have been staying in, you know, because of the heat, but I enjoy it. It warms my bones." She plucked at her dry wrinkled skin. "Get more like a lizard every year."

"I'm hoping you were out there last Friday night," Burgess said.

The bright eyes shifted to the nurse. "When did they bring me here?"

"Saturday morning, Anna," the nurse said.

"So I was at home on Friday." Her thin fingers grabbed at the sheet and crumpled it between them. "I wasn't feeling very well."

"Anything you could tell us about Timmy would be helpful," he said. "Julie Gordon says he left her place around 4:00, and another neighbor saw him on Mrs. Johnston's porch around 5:30. He was wearing a backpack, and he told a woman named Valerie Lowe that he was running away from home."

"Not much of a home to run away from," Mrs. Pederson said. "This Valerie Lowe. What kind of car does she drive?"

"Small blue Dodge."

The old woman nodded, her fingers touching her forehead apologetically. "Sorry, officer. I'm afraid my mind isn't what it used to be." Her thin fingers massaged the wrinkled, papery skin as though conjuring thoughts from some deep place. "Valerie Lowe. Then that was the first blue car."

"There was a second blue car?"

"Oh, yes."

"Can you tell me anything about it? Did you know the driver? Was it a man or a woman?" He tried to hold back, but the questions came bursting out. The nurse gave him a warning look.

"It's all right," Anna Pederson said. "He wants to catch the person who did this, and so do I. It was bigger, the second blue car, a little darker and not so beaten up. And the driver was a man."

"Have you seen the car before?"

She nodded. "I believe so."

"Tell me what you saw on Friday night."

"Well, little Timmy was walking down the street—poor thing, with that great pack on he looked like he was about to fall over—and the second blue car came along. It stopped. Timmy walked over and spoke with the driver. Then he went around and got in on the passenger side and the car drove away."

"You're certain you saw him get in the car?" She nodded. "And it was a different blue car?" A nod. "Could you see whether the driver old or young?"

Anna Pederson smiled. "Officer, you look young to me."

He stifled an impulse to kiss her. "You can do better than that," he said.