In the meantime, however, there was a brief window of opportunity for me to get to her before somebody else did. And it should be easy, because I knew her very well, knew her in ways that even her mother did not, and also because I am very, very clever and I almost always figure out these little puzzles.
So where would she go? And just as important, why would she go now? She had grumbled about hating her family and wanting to run away, but all kids did that, and I’d never taken her seriously. Astor was too bright to throw herself out the door and into random chance, or to think she could instantly find a place where her True Greatness and Beauty were recognized and rewarded. And she had taken along her Special Dress. So if she went, it would be to someplace specific, and someplace she was sure would be better.
But what could be better than having three square meals, plus snacks, and new shoes now and then? And all this with a family who actually liked her for some reason, paid all her bills, put up with her unpleasant and furious snits-and more, a semifather who knew and understood what she was really like in the dark and damaged interior of her twisted self?
On top of everything else, she was about to move into a new house, with her very own room and a swimming pool. She had been very excited about her new house, carefully painting her room and planning where her desk and bed would go, and what she would wear to her first pool party-could she really find something better than that to run away to, something that was right here, right now, immediate and within reach?
There was a snuffling noise from the doorway, and Rita’s plaintive voice called, “… Dexter …?” and I blinked myself back to awareness. As sometimes happens when I am concentrating on some complex problem, I found that I had been staring fixedly straight ahead, without actually seeing anything. But as Rita’s interruption brought me back to the here and now, I saw that I was staring straight at Astor’s wall of photos.
“Dexter?” she whined again. “Have you … found anything?”
I opened my mouth to answer her, but the words that came out surprised me; they were not at all the words I had thought I was going to say. “Yes,” I said. “I know where she went.” And even stranger, I did know.
“Oh!” Rita said. “Oh, thank God!”
I barely managed to stand up and then she was on me, sobbing and yodeling into my shirtfront and leaving me coated with damp unpleasant things. I pried her back from my chest and she looked up at me with a wet, red, puffy face. “Where is she?” she said, unsuccessfully trying to sniffle some goo off her lip and back into her nose. “Where did she go? We have to- Dexter, for God’s sake, we have to right now- Oh, why are you standing around here like this- Dexter, come on!”
“I’ll get her,” I said. “I want you to stay here.”
“Stay here?! But that’s- No, Dexter, I can’t just- What are you talking about, stay here? That’s completely- Why would I stay here?”
The real answer to why was that I did not want her with me, not where I was going. But because there was no way to say that without causing a full-scale nuclear war, I gave her the first thing that popped into my head: “She might come home,” I said. “Somebody should be here, just in case.” I put a hand on her shoulder and frowned with great seriousness. “And that somebody ought to be her mother.”
I don’t really know why this should be, but I have found that words like “ought” and “should” have a very special magical power, something that reaches down into a soft and gooey spot in the human heart that I do not have, thank goodness. Because aiming these words at someone who does have it-someone like Rita, for example-almost always makes them take a deep breath, straighten their shoulders, and do things they really don’t want to do.
Rita did not disappoint; as if she was following a printed instruction sheet, she opened her mouth to object-and then closed it, took a deep breath, and straightened her shoulders. “All right,” she said. “That’s probably- I mean, of course I want to go, but-if she came back? I couldn’t- I’ll stay here.”
“Good,” I said, and I clapped her on the shoulder as if she had just agreed to parachute behind enemy lines and blow up a bridge. “I’ll call you as soon as I find her,” I said.
“Yes, that’s- And if she comes here, I’ll- But Dexter, where is she?”
I gave her a brave smile. “Someplace better,” I said, and before Rita could sputter too many new objections, I was into the hall, out the front door, and driving away.
The traffic had gotten a little thicker in the last forty minutes, but most of it was going in the other direction, away from work in the city, toward home in the suburbs, and there were no serious delays all the way up Dixie Highway and back onto I-95.
I showed my credentials to a very alert-looking cop, and he waved me toward the far end of the parking lot. I parked the car there and looked around as I got out. I could see a lot more cops, all looking just as alert, wandering around the set as well as posted at the perimeter. They seemed to be taking the security thing very seriously-whether because Captain Matthews had ordered it, or because they liked the thought of keeping ordinary people away from the really cool movie action, I couldn’t say. But I didn’t see how Astor could have snuck onto the set without being seen, so I walked back to the cop who had scanned my credentials.
“I’m looking for a girl,” I said.
“Ain’t we all,” he told me deadpan, looking away into the distance.
“This one is eleven years old,” I said. “Blond hair, maybe a backpack?”
The cop focused on me. “Runaway?” he said.
I smiled reassuringly; I didn’t want a huge and official fuss about this, not just yet. “Not yet,” I said. “She wants to be a movie star, so …”
He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “My kid, ten years old. He wants to be a relief pitcher. So he turns up in Fort Myers, at Red Sox spring training.” He snorted. “Fucking Red Sox?!”
“Could have been worse,” I said. “Might have been the Mets.”
“Got that right,” he said. “Lemme call around the perimeter.”
The cop turned his back and took a step away while he spoke into his radio, and a few seconds later he turned back to me and nodded. “Got her,” he said. “Few hours ago. Alvarez says she came right up and asked for Robert Chase, the actor guy?”
I nodded; I was pretty sure I knew who Robert Chase was.
“So naturally, Alvarez says, ‘No way, I can’t do that, and why aren’t you in school?’ And she says she’s his niece, and Chase is expecting her.” He shrugged. “So, this is Miami. Weirder shit happens every day, right? Alvarez sends the word, and like two seconds later, here comes Chase on the run. And he leads her away by the hand.”
It made sense: However angelic she might look, Astor was a predator, in her own way. She would naturally make a beeline for Robert; he had shown her weakness, and even though his first impulse would be to call me, or Deborah, Astor would not let him. I could almost hear her wheedling and bullying and lying her little tail off-and poor Robert, who thought he liked kids but had never had to deal with one, especially one like this, would have no defense at all. He would cave in to her, helpless, telling himself that he would call in just a little while, and anyway, she was safe here on the set, and where was the harm?
“Where’d they go?” I asked the cop.
He jerked his head at the row of actors’ trailers. “Over to his trailer,” he said. I thanked him, and I headed over there, too.