Together Alone (15 page)

Digging into his pocket, he pulled out a handful of quarters. “Let’s give it another shot, toots. One good one. That’s all Grammie wants. You, me, and my neat tie. She’ll be thrilled.” He slid into the booth. “No, no, baby, don’t stiffen up. Just take it easy, take it easy while I get these things in.” He fiddled with the quarters, but Julia was arching her back and twisting, and just when he finally managed to get the first quarter into the slot, a loud buzzer sounded outside the booth.

Julia broke into a wail to rival the buzzer, which went on and on and on.

Brian ducked out of the booth. Muffling her cries against his shirt, he unsnapped the service revolver holstered under his jacket, and stole around the back of the aisle for a view of the cash register.

Harold was there, calmly talking with a teenaged boy. The buzzer stilled. Harold’s wife, Mary Elizabeth, joined them. Neither Harold nor Mary Elizabeth seemed threatened.

Straightening, Brian relaxed his hold of Julia, whose cries subsided into sniffles. Snapping his revolver back into place, he approached the front of the store.

The boy looked to be seventeen or eighteen and, judging from his clothes, well-off. He wore tan bucks, designer jeans and shirt, and a jacket whose butter-soft leather oozed style. His backpack was high-end L.L. Bean. It lay open on the counter, having disgorged the large bottle of vitamin C that had set off the alarm. Harold held it now, along with two candy bars.

“I must have dropped it in there when I went for my money,” the boy was saying, sounding neither apologetic nor embarrassed.

Harold spoke quietly. “Do you want to buy it?”

The boy dug into his pocket and pulled out a twenty.

“Everything all right here?” Brian asked.

Harold shot him a quick look as he rang in the sale. “Just fine. No problem.”

Brian wasn’t sure he believed that and glanced around, wondering if the boy had accomplices, if a greater threat lay beyond the immediate action. He didn’t see anything more suspicious than a shiny new sports car waiting at the curb.

When the boy pocketed his change and headed for it, Brian put the zinc ointment and a five in Mary Elizabeth’s waiting hand. “Was it an accident?” he asked Harold, who shrugged. “Has it happened before?”

This time the shrug was more a quirk of the brows. “He isn’t a bad boy.”

“What’s his name?”

“Richie Berlo.”

“Berlo, as in the walled-in mansion on the corner of Sycamore and LaGrange?” Brian passed the place every day on his way into town. Sam had given him a rundown on the money behind it, which would easily explain the car and the twenty.

“The same.”

“Does the father know the boy has a problem?”

“It isn’t really a problem.”

True, the boy didn’t have a rap sheet. Brian would have noticed if there had been a file among those in the car. Still. “Shoplifting is against the law. Why else do you have this alarm system?”

“Look, Detective,” Harold said lightly, “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right, the alarm’s there to catch thieves, but Richie Berlo is the son of Grannick’s biggest donor. Nestor Berlo has built us a library and a senior citizens’ center, and he’s a major donor to the college, and the college means business for us.” He chuckled. “It was only a bottle of vitamin C, and the boy did pay for it. I’m only sorry the alarm upset your daughter.”

Brian took the tube of zinc ointment and his change. He wasn’t worried about Julia, who had quieted nicely. “You may not be doing that boy a favor by looking the other way. It’s sending him a bad message.”

Harold only smiled and shooed him out the door.

Brian might have stayed to argue if he had more time, but he had already spent longer at the drugstore than he intended, and by the time he left Julia at Janice’s, picked up coffee at Nell’s, and drove to the police station, his mind had moved on.

The department had two computers. He had hoped to use one to type up the notes he had made after reading the juvenile records, since John wouldn’t ever be able to decipher his scribbles. But both computers were in use when he arrived, so he picked up the report from the night before.

There had been one drunk driving arrest, one suspected prowler, one heart attack, and one stolen car—a tame night, by Brian’s standards, a typical one by Grannick’s.

Setting the report aside, he checked the computers again. When he found them still in use, he went to John’s office. “Got a minute?” he asked from the door.

John waved him in.

He wandered along the side of the room with his hands in his pockets. “I reread the file on Daniel Arkin. I take it you weren’t in charge of the case at the time.” He wanted to know how freely he could speak without insulting John.

“I was assigned to Emily and Doug. Chief called the shots. Say what you want.”

Brian accepted the invitation. “The investigation left some holes. There were people in the post office at the time of the abduction who were never questioned.”

John wasn’t fazed. “They were inside the whole time. They said they didn’t see anything. Chief didn’t see the point in pursuing them as witnesses.”

“Sometimes people see things without knowing it. One of them might have gone out for a smoke, or seen something out of the ordinary inside but thought nothing of it. There were also people in the stores across the street who weren’t questioned. The owners were, but not their customers.”

“Chief felt that in a town like Grannick, if any of those had seen something, they’d have come forward on their own. He didn’t want to badger.”

Brian stopped at the desk. “Christ, John, a little boy disappeared. It might have been worth the badgering.”

John held up a hand. “I’m just telling you Chief’s rationale. Most everyone knew Emily. Most everyone liked her. Chief assumed that for her sake alone, anyone who knew anything would have come forward.”

Brian sighed. “Well, that sounds good, but you and I both know it doesn’t always work that way. What if someone saw another person, a friend, or the friend of a friend, doing something suspicious, and didn’t want to implicate that person?”

“Emily talked with some of those others who were in the stores. She was asking questions long after we stopped. She couldn’t let it go. Not that she was loud about it. She just kept after us in her own quiet way. I did some extra questioning on my own. Once I got to know her, I had a personal stake in it. But there was only so much I could do then, once Chief said enough, and now, well, a lot of them are gone, moved on to other places.”

“Why didn’t Emily?” Brian asked. “You’d have thought she would want to go someplace where there wasn’t a painful memory around every corner.”

“She can’t leave. This was the only home Daniel knew. As long as the case is unsolved, she’ll stay here.”

Brian felt the pain of it. “She’s a prisoner, then. That’s doubly why I should question whoever I can find.”

John remained skeptical. “Memory fades, after all this time.”

Brian disagreed. “It’s not like we’re asking about a random day on the calendar. Everyone who was living in town at that time knew when Daniel Arkin disappeared. My guess is that anyone who had a potential lead hasn’t forgotten a thing.”

“Do you think the boy might still be alive?”

Brian dropped into the chair. “No. But I don’t see the harm in questioning the people we missed the first time around. I’d also do a computer enhancement of Daniel’s picture, to come up with something of what he might look like today, and I’d do a fingerprint match.”

“Huh. Where you gonna get a fingerprint.” It wasn’t a question.

“From one of the little boy’s picture books. They’re still in his room. Fingerprints spread as they get larger, but the points and loops stay the same. I’d also do a computer cross-check on kidnappers who were at it when Daniel was taken. And I’d work through a list of Grannick’s sex offenders.”

John drew back.

“Doesn’t it make sense?” Brian asked.

“We weren’t thinking that way in the seventies.”

“There were sex offenders then.”

“Sure. But we didn’t blame them for every crime, and we didn’t put their names on a list. Not in Grannick. Not until two years ago.”

Brian was astounded. “Why not?”

“Because these are our people. We don’t like compromising them. If one of our own does something wrong and serves his time, we feel he has a right to come back here and start over with a clean slate.”

“So why’d you start doing it two years ago?”

“Had to. The college appointed a professor who had served time for rape, the locals learned about it, and made a stink. Personally, I had no problem with him. He’d been five years at another school before coming here, and his record was spotless. Stayed spotless, too. But a lot of people were nervous. So the right to public protection took precedence over the right to privacy.”

“I take it your list is confidential.”

“Sure.”

“So the right to privacy is respected, too.”

“Except if guys like you want to dig up the list and start questioning the people on it.”

Brian couldn’t
not
look at that list. “If someone abducts a little boy and never sends a ransom note, you rule out greed as a motive, right? So what’s left?” He thought of Emily’s dream. “It’d be real nice if it turns out that someone just wanted a baby to raise, but the chances of that are slim. The truth is that among kids abducted by strangers, the majority are sexually violated.”

“He was just a baby.”

“No matter, to a crazy.”

John was scowling. “Have you mentioned this to Emily?”

“Christ, no.”

“Don’t. It’ll make her sick.”

“You think she hasn’t imagined it?” When John didn’t answer, he said, “You can be sure she’s following every missing child case that gets coverage, and what she doesn’t imagine on her own, the media paints in living color.”

John was quiet.

“Let me give it a try,” Brian urged. “I’ll be subtle. There doesn’t have to be a formal reactivation of the case.”

“Start questioning people,” John warned, “and word will spread. It always does, in Grannick.”

“I’ll say we’re cleaning up loose ends, tidying up the files, and in a sense that’s all we are doing. I’ll say I’m new here, that the case fascinates me, and I thought this would give me a chance to meet some of the townsfolk. They’ll buy it.”

“What about Emily?”

“Not a word. She accepts that he’s dead. I can’t raise her hopes, what with the odds against us after all this time.”

John looked torn. Finally, he grumbled, “Keep it quiet and unoffensive. If word gets back to me that you’re antagonizing people, I’ll call it off. Hell, it’s not like something new just came up. It’s not like we suddenly have a concrete lead. It’s just you, falling hard for Emily Arkin.”

Brian held up a hand. “Hold on. The lady’s married.”

“Try to remember it, huh?”

It was one thing to remember that Emily was married, and another to stop thinking about her. Brian liked her a lot. Something about her made him feel calm, even now, when he knew that her life was as unsettled as his. When he saw her, or thought about her, he felt a deep, curling warmth.

It wasn’t sexual. At least, he didn’t think it was. He doubted he could be thinking about sex, with Gayle barely cold in her grave and Julia a full-time occupation on top of the other.

If he was ready to be interested in sex, he could be interested in Emily. But he wasn’t ready for that. Just for friendship. And as Emily’s friend, he was worried.

That was why, with Julia happily chasing dandelion fluff beside the white picket fence, he rapped on the kitchen door on his way home from work that night. Oh, yeah, a deep, curling warmth. There it was, when she opened the door.

“Hi,” she said softly.

He studied her face. “You look better. I wanted to make sure.”

“I went back to bed after you left.”

“And slept?”

“And slept,” she acknowledged.

Her smile lingered, toying with the corners of her mouth in a way that heightened the deep curling warmth he felt, and at that moment it struck him that the attraction was sexual after all—unless he was misinterpreting what he was feeling down low, the pooling that came from her smile, or from her petiteness, or from the hint of breasts under her sweater, or from the memory of their feel against him night before.

“So.” He cleared his throat. “What did you do, today?”

“This and that. Lazy things mostly. I talked with Jill. She sounded good. That always gives me a lift.”

“When will I meet her?”

“Two and a half weeks and counting.”

Julia ran over, holding up a partly denuded dandelion.

“Ohhhh, pretty,” Emily said, going down the steps, dropping to her haunches, and drawing her close. “Did you blow?” She gave a noisy demonstration, then moved the flower close to Julia’s mouth. “You try. Blow. No? Okay. How about we shake it?” She gave the flower a sharp shake. When the fluff flew in all directions, Julia squealed in delight, reaching, jumping, squatting. Emily laughed at her, then gave the flower another shake, setting Julia off again. When the flower was nothing but a stem, Julia ran off for more.

Brian was smiling when Emily stood. “It’s good to hear her laugh. Good to hear you laugh, too. Are you meeting your friends tonight?” It was Monday, after all.

“Uh-huh.”

“Will you talk with them?” He meant, about the weekend, about Doug.

The waning of her smile said she understood. “I think so.”

“It helps to share,” he said, and because she was a friend and he felt the need, he drew her into a quick, close, bolstering hug, before returning to Julia.

• • •

Myra saw the hug from her dining room window and couldn’t have been more pleased. She didn’t for a minute think that Emily was doing anything improper—not Emily—but the closer she and the detective grew, the better.

He was the key. Myra just knew it. She could feel it in her bones, along with the arthritis that kept reminding her of her age and frightened her no end, given all there was still to do.

Back in the kitchen, the table was set, the ham ready. She cut a neat slice for herself and two for Frank, and arranged them on plates, put a small potato on her own and a large one on Frank’s, then added green beans and a dribble of raisin sauce. Pleased with the pretty picture, she put the plates on the table.