The department was so swamped with clients Rose began feeling like an assembly-line worker. Recent layoffs at Boeing and Microsoft, an outbreak of salmonella and spinal meningitis in the schools, and the usual abuse, both sexual and violent, kept Rose filling out forms and talking to a steady line of people. She was seriously drooping by the time she heard Hager in the open office behind her desk, saying, "Attention everybody! This is our division head, Mr. Hopkins, and he has come to watch us work today. I trust you will all be on your best behavior."
Rose didn't even look around. She was too busy trying not to throw up at Hager's kindergarten-schoolteacher manner and too sleepy to pretend to be alert for the benefit of the division head, who was one of the idiots responsible for the new "policies" that put children like Polly Reynaud and the Bjornsen kids in jeopardy. She did her job and ignored him, and barely noticed, later, the triumphant expression on Hager's perfectly powdered face.
Her thoughts were a jumbled kaleidoscope of images from the night—Fred stroking her cheek, the cat interrogating the toad, the gunshots, the cat's tail disappearing behind a building, the shelter, Fred at the computer. the frog-man in Harborview, well, toad-man actually. These impressions intruded on her consciousness so that she lost her ability to track her thoughts through the labyrinth of all the routine things she had to say and questions she had to ask, and she suspected she was making no sense. By the time she was finally able to break for lunch, she scarcely could pair a face with each form she had filled out that morning.
In the back of her mind, she had been wondering if and how she ought to explain to Fred that she knew where he should start looking for Sno. Somehow, she couldn't see even that unusually cooperative cop being really understanding when she told him her tip came from a toad. Maybe that was why she didn't give it the priority it deserved. But during her lunch break she called the King County Police and asked for him.
"Hi, Fred. It's Rose. Look, about Sno . . ."
"Rosie! Hi! You sound as tired as I am."
"I didn't get any sleep last night," she said.
"Me neither, and I've got a coffee buzz you wouldn't believe. It's been pretty crazy around here, but I was just about to call you with an update about Sno's case. We got a court order and sent someone over to photograph the man at Harborview early this morning and faxed it to area police. They took the photo and a description of the guy's wound around to hospitals and clinics up and down the corridor from the border to Portland. One of the emergency room nurses at a clinic in Bellingham gave us a positive ID on the photograph of our frog-man as being the same guy she treated the night Sno Quantrill disappeared."
Rose took a deep breath, then suggested, without explaining the source of her hunch, "Gee, it would have been real easy for him to take her into the woods then, up by the mountains, where nobody could see them."
"Could be. We find a lot of bodies in the woods. We're checking closer to the highways meanwhile, though."
"If it's in the woods, you'll organize a search party, won't you?"
"Not me, no. Though I'll probably be coordinating with whoever does organize the search. It won't be King County, though, if the perp was last seen in Bellingham. From the information we have now, we know he took her from her school at four P.M. to someplace in Whatcom County and turned up eight hours later at an emergency room, alone, with a knife wound in his side. The poor girl's probably bought it, but we've got to proceed as if we can save her."
"Maybe the fact that he's injured means she got away from him, Fred."
"Maybe. But if so, why hasn't she showed up?"
"I don't know, but maybe she got lost and is waiting for someone to come and find her. I've just got this feeling she's still alive, Fred."
"Funny you should say that, because, all evidence to the contrary, I've got the same feeling. If only we could narrow down the search area so we knew where to start."
* * *
Gerardine's own search had been satisfactory. She'd seen the little bitch, sitting on a riverbank looking like a girlish version of Huckleberry Finn instead of the conniving little whore she was, but Gerardine knew how to take care of her.
Really, she shouldn't have bothered with Svenny and his incompetent hired help to begin with. She was plenty smart enough to commit the perfect crime herself. Dusting dope with strychnine didn't exactly take a degree in chemistry, and Gerardine actually had had some chemistry classes—she took them in conjunction with her cosmetology courses. What with all her modeling, she was great at disguising her looks too. It was easy in this case, since she wanted to appear to be a back-country hippie hiker lost in the woods. She simply washed off the makeup no one, not even Raydir, ever saw her without. The change was incredible.
Her lips were a quarter of an inch thinner, she had no lashes or brows, and without her contouring brushes her face simply looked long and flat, the cheekbones not so pronounced or interesting. Dark circles stood out under her eyes and an unattractive mottling of reddish veins flecked her cheeks and nose.
She was seldom seen without one of her outlandish wigs, but chopping bangs in her own white-blonde hair and bundling the rest up in a bandanna covered by a stocking cap provided good cover. Then, with a turtleneck up under her chin and her lithe body wrapped in layers of patched down and flannel, she ducked out the back way. She had already ordered a trail bike to be readied for her use, and this she loaded in the back of Raydir's van. Thus equipped, she headed for the Mount Baker Highway.
* * *
Without any expenditure of magic at all, Felicity could smell other magicks, particularly what Dame Erzuli La-Chance, the Haitian godmother, referred to as "bad juju." Yes, it was about time for Sno's stepmother to make her second murder attempt, right on schedule. In this life, in this version of the story, the stepmother apparently once more had some sort of magical powers—from the strong but ill-defined scent of them, probably they currently took the form of an underdeveloped psychic ability, and that was what Felicity scented. More to the point, however, the stepmother undoubtedly had a working vehicle, which was more than Felicity could say. She could scalp that young scamp, Ding, she thought in a flash of unprofessional irritation.
Fortunately, her name wasn't Fortune for nothing. She had the best luck of any hitchhiker in the history of Puget Sound. When she caught the first whiff of Gerardine's powerful negative force, a smell which quickly faded to the north, she stuck Bobby in her pocket, walked down the stairs, and stepped out into the lobby and the entranceway in time to see a cavalcade of motorcycles pull up. After lengthy good-byes, most of them roared away, but one man with a gray-black bushy beard and long hair had paused a bit longer.
"Excuse me, but are you by any chance going north?" she asked. Then she looked again. She hadn't exactly cheated. She hadn't meant to magically call up another of her former charges. Not when the telephone was so cheap, especially local calls. But she saw past the beard now, looking into the man's eyes, and he gave a start of recognition as he saw her too.
"Godmother! Where you goin', babe? I'll take you anywhere."
"Hello, Haisley. I'm delighted to see you. North will do nicely for now. Toward Bellingham, I should think."
"I was just headed up there to pick up my rig and join the 4X4 search and rescue team. Got a kid missing in the forest, and it's going to take a massive search."
"You sound thrilled."
"I love doing this stuff. It's like maybe a way to pay you back for what you did for me when I was a kid. You don't look a day older, by the way."
"You are a very nice boy, Haisley. Have you got an extra helmet?"
* * *
A telephone was ringing somewhere in the house. Hank knew they weren't supposed to answer it, but it kept ringing and ringing and ringing. Finally, he thought maybe the man wouldn't mind if he just went to find it and hung it up. That should be okay, as long as he didn't answer.
But then, maybe he should answer. Maybe it was the police, or even Mama.
Gigi was watching TV. The man had a big TV and lots of tapes, but right now she wasn't watching tapes. His VCR setup was a little complicated for her, though Hank thought that as soon as he dealt with the darn phone he'd be able to figure it out.
No, she was watching a talk program. The Susan Buchanan Show.
"Today Susan will be talking with the mothers and teachers of children who died from abuse inflicted by child molesters. In some cases the molester was a friend or relative. In that case, why didn't the parents, teachers, or neighbors see the warning signs? Speaking of which, just what are those warning signs? If the children were harmed by strangers, why weren't they taught to avoid dangerous situations? And, most importantly at this time, how can you and your children avoid becoming victims? We'll have questions from our studio audience who will share their opinions and experience with us. But first a word from our sponsor."
The words went right by Hank as boring adult stuff. "What are you watching that trash for?" he asked as he passed by the room. "Cartoons are on."
"Susan's dress is pretty," Gigi said. "'S pink."
Girls!
The phone was silent for a time and then began ringing—this time Hank could tell it wasn't just one phone but several. The sound seemed to be coming from underneath the floor.
Oh. Then the man had taken the phones to the basement, where he didn't want them to go. What could he have down there that was so dangerous if he didn't even lock the door? Was it really dangerous or was it some big surprise—maybe like Christmas presents?
* * *
Fred Moran was still wearing his detective hat, covering cases he had become involved with as a patrolman. He had been delighted when the department made the radical switch in operating procedure. A couple of years ago, the guy in the uniform had been the low man on the totem pole and it took years of street work to be "elevated" to detective. The detectives talked on the phones a lot and saw little of the street once they made the grade. The flaws of this system made up for the flaws of the previous system, in which a cop worked the same neighborhood from the time he was a patrolman on up the ladder, and maybe got to know everyone in the neighborhood, including the criminal element, a little too intimately.
If patrolmen never did any detective work in the neighborhoods they patrolled, obviously they could be more objective as detectives. Just as obviously, however, they lost track of who the people they were protecting were, how various segments of society and various subcultures and communities throughout their jurisdiction functioned. People felt better if they were dealing with someone they knew.
So the new theory held that the cop on the street was not just the foot soldier, but the primary link with the community, the one who knew the ropes. Initially, talented patrolmen trained in detective procedures as crime scene investigators, or CSIs, but as they gained knowledge and experience, the boundaries of that role expanded to include the sort of investigations Fred was conducting now.
"I'm sorry, Mr.—"
"Bjornsen. Harry Bjornsen. It's on those three hundred forms I've spent the whole goddamn week filling out. Now you tell me something. Where's my family? Can't a man go out to earn an honest living without coming home to find his family is lost and no so-called cop in the whole damn city can find them?"
"Mr. Bjornsen, we're doing our best. Your wife's sister says your wife left town. She doesn't know where, but she's assuming the children went with her."
"Christ!" Bjornsen said.
"Mr. Bjornsen, I hate to make this any harder on you, but how was your marriage going before you left for Alaska?"
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It means, sir, that it is not unheard of for a disgruntled spouse to snatch the children and take them to another state."
"You think that's what she's done?" he asked, dismayed. Then he dismissed the idea. "Nah, she wouldn't do that. We weren't getting along, but we were still trying to work it out when I left. She knew I was pissed but she also knew I left because I had work and would be bringing home a paycheck. We all needed this check." He waved the check in question in the air for emphasis. "That's what started the trouble in the first place. Everything was fine before I lost my job. Then we had to give up our house and come over here to live with her sister. Her sister ain't the best influence, if you want to know the truth. She works at a topless joint, and my wife used to too. She got it in her head that she had to go back to it."
"So the children might have been left unsupervised with you away and both the mother and the aunt working, may-be?" the cop asked.
"Could be, I guess. Hank's only seven but he's a good boy, looks after his little sister. This has been pretty hard on them, I guess. We've all been on edge."
"Mr. Bjornsen, are you aware that your wife took your children to the University Mall and left them there?"
"She wouldn't do something like that!" he said.
"I'm sorry, but she did. I brought Hank and Gigi home myself when I was patrolling the University District. A mall security guard called me. DFS had a difficult time locating your wife, but she claimed the children had run away from her and she had no idea where they were."
"Why didn't you do something about it?"
"What would you suggest? DFS has been backed up trying to cover cases where the children are being physically and sexually abused to the point that their lives are threatened. Your children appeared to be healthy and reasonably well cared for. If we'd arrested their mother, then who would have cared for them? The aunt?"
Bjornsen snorted. "Not Bambi-baby. She let us know all the time what a drag it was to have us around, especially Hank and Gigi." He rubbed his eyes wearily and also, Fred suspected, to rid them of any subversive moisture that might be gathering to betray him.
"So where do you think your wife might have gone, Mr. Bjornsen?"
"Do you think I haven't called all those places?" he asked. "Bambi wouldn't tell me. If she'd gone to her folks, Bambi would have said so. She's taken off with some guy."
"Do you have a picture of her and the kids, Mr. Bjornsen?"
"Yeah, in my wallet," he said and pulled out a miniature of a family portrait. "The kids look different now—hell, they probably look different than they did when I left, but my wife hasn't changed much—well, not at home. At work she wears a lot of makeup and fixes her hair up puffy, but that's her."
The woman in the picture looked pretty similar to the one who had answered the door the morning Fred had returned the children. "May we borrow this?"
"Sure."
"We'll take it around to the malls and see if anyone remembers seeing any of them during the weekend. If she dropped them at a mall once, she might have done it again. The people at one of the fast-food joints might remember seeing your kids. Hank and Gigi really love their Big Macs, don't they?"
"Oh, yeah. They both love McDonald's, and Gigi—my little girl—Gigi loves Chucky Chees—" His voice broke and he looked down for a moment, then back up again. Now he looked belligerent and angry, though not particularly at Fred. "You find them, Moran. You find my kids and get them back to me."
* * *
Candy Bjornsen had another nightmare. In it the phone rang constantly, even though she and Harry had taken the kids camping in the woods. She couldn't find the phone, but when she got up to go looking for it, she noticed the kids were gone. Then, over the shrilling of the phone, she heard Gigi crying and screaming and when she went looking for her, a tree fell on top of her. Pinned under the tree, she saw Gigi come running while a big bear who looked strangely familiar chased her. Hank ran behind the bear, trying to hit the bear with a stick. Harry was no place around.
Candy opened her eyes and she could still hear the bear growling. The side of her face was sore and tender to the touch and one of her teeth felt sharp.
Something heavy was weighing her down.
Not a bear paw. She was in a bed, in a room with a carpet and walls. There was blood on the pillow, though, she saw that right away, and then she saw the arm across her middle. And then she remembered.
"Oh, shit," she moaned, and tried to slide out from under the arm without waking Shane, her new boyfriend, her supplier, the one who liked partying and didn't like kids. The one who had given her the pink ice tennis bracelet and the swollen jaw last night. She was still wearing the bracelet, but was otherwise nude. There were other tender places on her body.
The beating he'd given her was no more than she deserved, she knew that, but not for the reason he thought. He was pissed because when they'd made love after he gave her the bracelet, she accidentally called him Harry. What did he expect? She'd been married to the same man for ten years. It was a habit.
But she hadn't resisted or cried out when Shane walloped her, because she knew she'd earned every blow and then some. The drugs had run out for the time being, and she remembered leaving the kids—remembered the other times she had left the kids, and she wanted more than anything to be away from this man and back home, not at Bambi's, but in Forks, with the kids and Harry, the way it used to be.
She slid to the floor and froze until she heard Shane grunt softly in his sleep behind her. Then she pulled on his suit jacket—it was cold in the apartment—and padded out into the front room to use the phone. It rang and rang and rang but Bambi didn't answer. She must have turned it off, and even if the kids had made it home, they were forbidden to use the phone. There was one other option. She dialed 911.
* * *
"Puyallup Center? That's Pierce County." Fred gave a low whistle. "Long way from downtown."
"That's what the lady said," the communications supervisor said. "Puyallup Center. She was wondering if two little kids who answered to the names of Hank and Gigi Bjornsen had been picked up from there and if so, had they gone home. Johansen went with Bowersox to question the merchants at the mall. Good thing we've started photographing kids when they're found wandering around like that. Saves time when they 'disappear' again, don't it?"
"That's a fact. Where was she calling from?"
The communications supervisor handed a card over to Moran. "Uh—yeah. Here's the number. It's registered to a Shane R. Triplehorn. Queen Anne Hill address."
"Did the caller identify herself?"
"Negative."
"Might be our runaway mama. I'd better take more backup on this one than a teddy bear."
"Hold on there, buddy. You may not remember, but there's quite a few of us in this room and gee, you got to share some of the crime with us or we're gonna feel left out. You got a previous engagement, remember? Smitty and I will go find mama. So you go liaise with SAR in Bellingham about the Quantrill girl. Poor guy. All that fresh air and stuff prob'ly going to rot your lungs."
"I'll try to be brave," Fred promised. "But, please, Chuck, if you find those kids, call up the SAR office, will you?"
"No problemo."