“He came to Bisbee looking for another girl.” Her mind was moving now, all self-consciousness forgotten. “But what happened to her?”
Ramsey’s body flinched, and he rolled his head on the backrest of his chair. “A few things, I imagine. He kidnapped her and killed her. He took her and kept her with him. Or he never got to her.”
“There are no missing children that I’m aware of.”
“Then he probably never met up with her.”
Why? she wondered. What stopped him?
Jay Ramsey said, “I have a question for you.”
“Okay.”
“What was it like when you found me?”
She stared at him. “I’m sorry?”
“What happened before and after you found me?”
Laura didn’t like the question. It took her right back to that time, and she didn’t like to think about the past. She shrugged. “It happened so fast.”
“What did I look like?”
“You were unconscious.”
“But what did I look like?”
She wanted to tell him this was a pointless conversation, but already felt she owed him. He had given her real insights into the Internet connection. She had to find Jessica’s killer, and he might be the one to help her do it. Keep your eye on the ball.
You were …” She wondered if he really wanted to hear this. “You were lying in the bedclothes, part of your upper body off the bed. I didn’t see blood on you, but I saw it on the carpet. I think you were naked.”
“Naked.”
“I think so. You were partially under the covers.”
“You didn’t touch me. What made you not touch me?”
“I wanted to—“ She stopped. Not touching him had saved his life. The doctors said that moving him might have increased the swelling in the area where the spine had been nicked. She started again. “I was afraid to,” she said.
He smiled. “An honest answer. I appreciate that, Laura.”
“I don’t know why you asked.”
“It was the seminal moment in my life. I wanted to see what it looked like from the outside. I was out of it. I don’t even remember them coming to shoot me.”
Laura knew that kind of amnesia was common.
“You know what happened, don’t you?” Jay said. “I wasn’t a bad kid, but I was heavily into cocaine. Kind of guys I was dealing with, you don’t want to fool around. I thought I knew what I was doing.” He sighed. “When I screwed up, they decided to make an example of me—if it could happen to a rich kid, it could happen to anyone.”
He paused. Waiting for her to comment?
“You want to talk about your case, though.” He returned his focus to the computer screen and said briskly, “This is all we have to start with? CRZYGRL12?”
“Yes. Is it impossible?”
He smiled. “Nothing is impossible. It will take a little time, though. Tell you what. I’m meeting with some people this afternoon and I want to have a rest. Why don’t you come back this evening? In the meantime, I’ll see what I can do with CRZYGRL12.”
Laura felt a strange letdown. “All right.” She was aware of Freddy standing at her elbow. He escorted her out—wham bam thank you ma’am.
At the door, Freddy said, “He’s very excited to be working with you on this. But he had a long night. Give me your phone number and I’ll call you and let you know if it will work out tonight.”
Then she found herself outside, feeling, illogically, that Jay Ramsey had taken something from her. Which was ridiculous. She understood why he’d want to know what happened. It was probably the thing that made him agree to see her at all.
If it would help catch Jessica Parris’s killer, she’d be happy to tell him anything he wanted to hear.
Laura stopped the car on the lane near the ruined stables, letting the engine idle.
She’d campaigned Calliope for three years, winning several working hunter classes in Tucson and Phoenix, placing first in a couple of the big shows. All that time, she thought she owned Calliope. Betsy had “given” her the horse, even providing her with the mare’s Jockey Club papers.
One day Betsy Ramsey told her she wanted Calliope back.
Laura’s parents explained to her that they could hire a lawyer, but ultimately they would lose. The Ramsey family was wealthy, the Cardinal family—a school principal and a fifth-grade teacher—were not. And Betsy Ramsey had donated money to build a new wing on the elementary school where Alice Cardinal taught.
It was Laura’s first lesson in pragmaticism.
Laura remembered how it felt, taking the Jockey Club papers back to Mrs. Ramsey. She’d loved that mare. Calliope had been her best friend. She’d spent hours with her, riding her, grooming her, grazing her along irrigation ditches that were now as dry and dusty as her memories.
Mrs. Ramsey rode Calliope to Reserve Champion in working hunter in the Desert Classic in California that year.
The day Laura left Alamo Farm, she never went back, not until today. She couldn’t even bring herself to say goodbye to her mare. Somewhere along the line she had gotten the notion that clean breaks were best. Laura didn’t remember getting this idea from her parents or peers. But she knew instinctively that prolonging the association, that holding out hope, would only hurt her more in the end.
Maybe there had been a ticking clock inside that warned her she’d need that coping mechanism later on. Something primitive, hinting she’d have to face finality early in life? So when her parents died, she’d know how to accept it.
The moment the gate rolled back, Laura felt a deep sense of relief.
She put on her left turn signal and waited for the traffic on Fort Lowell to clear.
“You should have looked at the fine print.”
The voice came from inside the car. Frank Entwistle’s bulk filled the passenger seat, dressed in a cheap polyester suit jacket and slacks, a brown shirt, and an unfashionably wide tie. He held a breakfast sandwich in one hand. The smell of grease permeated the car.
“You’re not real.”
“So you say.” He leaned over and hit the turn signal lever, switching it from left to right.
“What’d you do that for?” she asked, although she knew.
“Aren’t you going go by your old house?”
“No.”
“Why not? You’re right here in the neighborhood.” He glanced over at her, shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
“Thanks.” Laura switched on her left turn signal and pulled out, going east on Ft. Lowell Road, watching her old mentor out of the corner of her eye. He’d never learned to chew with his mouth closed and apparently being dead didn’t change anything. “I didn’t know ghosts could eat.”
“I’m not a ghost.”
“What are you? A figment of my imagination?”
“That’s as good an explanation as any.” He reached over and aimed the air conditioning vent toward his face. “Hot in here. Slow down, will you?”
Laura had to slow down anyway. They were approaching the tight curve that bordered the Mexican cemetery.
Frank draped his arm across the seat back. “You ever go in there?”
“No. Why would I?”
“You were a kid back then. You know how kids are, always pushing the envelope, trying to figure it out—about death, you know? When your schoolmate got taken, it would be natural to go there. I know I won’t ever forget the first kid in my class to die.”
“Who’s to say Julie died in the cemetery?”
“Not died. Taken. Why don’t you pull over?”
Although her first impulse was to resist, Laura turned onto the verge at the last minute, tires bumping on the hard dirt, white dust billowing up behind them. “There was nothing in the paper about exactly where she was taken.”
Frank Entwistle crumpled up the grease-spotted paper from the sandwich and shot it at the dashboard. “Then how come you dream about it?”
Laura looked past him at the graveyard. The greasewood and mesquite trees, greener and fuller after the summer rains, mingled with plaster angels, crosses, and graves of heaped dirt and piled rocks. A profusion of flowers—both real and fake—rested on the graves, garish in the unrelenting sun. Laura was parked under a mesquite tree, facing the wrong way to traffic. In the spot where, in her dreams, the orange and white car cruised to a stop, the mesquite tree’s sketchy shade scrolling over the blocky white hood. The girl, hands clasped around the straps of her backpack, leaning down to talk to the man inside.