“Does it look like The Piper?”
He shrugs, holds up one hand. “Who knows? Not really. More facial hair than our guy. Kind of fogs up the features.” He sighs. “Second thing – and you could get this on your own, so I’m just saving you some time here – Sandling’s maiden name is Whalen.”
“You think that’s the name she’s using?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Shoffler says, flashing me a grin. “I was constrained from pursuing the matter.”
He drops me off near the White House. “Take the MARC Train from Union Station,” he advises. “New Carrollton stop. A cab’ll take you the rest of the way. Cost you ten bucks, max.”
When I open the door the next morning to go out for the paper, there’s a manilla interoffice envelope inside the screen door. I’m not expecting much, but I’m still disappointed when I see the sketch.
The face is expressionless, as real faces never are. The lack of expression somehow robs the features of coherence and makes the image ambiguous. Even mug shots have some animation – that supplied by life itself, I guess. I take the sketch to my study and line it up with the sketches Marijke made, one from my glimpse of The Piper, the others produced by sessions with other eyewitnesses. There’s something about the eyes, maybe, that looks the same from sketch to sketch. Apart from that, it’s different men with facial hair. The faces gaze down on me, inscrutable, almost mocking: you don’t know who I am.
Mary McCafferty taps one pink fingernail on her desk and looks at me with her large brown eyes. “Finding her shouldn’t be a problem,” she says. “She may not have had an address, living in a park – but she had a car, which means a driver’s license, insurance. She apparently had a library card, and I’ll bet she had a doctor for those kids. There will be school records, maybe traffic and parking tickets, grocery shopper cards. Believe me, unless you really work at it, you’re in a thousand databases these days. And what are the chances she severed every connection to her past?” McCafferty shakes her head.
“Really.”
“She may be using a different name – but you say it’s her maiden name, so chances are she kept her social, and then… well, then it’s a piece of cake. I might have something by tomorrow. E-mail okay? Or should I fax you?”
“E-mail’s fine.”
“We’re all set,” she says, getting to her feet. She hesitates, shakes her head. “But mine’s the easy part. You still have to get her to talk to you.”
“I know.”
“My guess is this woman’s pretty quick to call the cavalry,” she says. “Don’t get arrested.”
CHAPTER 17
McCafferty comes through. Emma Sandling, neé Whalen, lives in Florida. The next morning, at seven A.M., I’m on a Delta flight to Daytona Beach.
The drive into town from the airport takes me past the enormous Daytona International Speedway. Then I’m coasting along Highway A-1-A, a sun-bleached strip flanked on both sides by an unending succession of fast-food outlets, motels, miniature golf courses, and bowling alleys. Everything’s paved. The only flora, apart from the landscaped oases in the elaborate mini-golf parks, is the occasional wind-lashed palm. Every once in a while, between the giant hotels and condos on the oceanside, I catch a glimpse of why all this exists: white sand and the hard glitter of the Atlantic.
After several miles, I spot the landmark I’ve been looking for, the huge sprawl of the Adam’s Mark Hotel. My room at the Drop Anchor Inn is a block away on the other, less desirable, side of the road. Its giant anchor-shaped sign advertises VACANCY SPECIAL WKLY RATES AARP AAA STUDENTS SENIORS.
According to the Weather Channel, the difference in temperature and humidity between Washington and Daytona Beach is incremental, but that’s not the way it feels when I step out of my rented Hyundai Sonata. Heat radiates from the pavement, so dense and humid and hot, it’s like an assault. A stiff offshore breeze is no cooling zephyr, either. It’s like a blast from a giant hair dryer.
The room is what you’d expect for thirty-two bucks a day: the dark stripes of cigarette burns mar several surfaces, television and lamps are bolted to their tables, and I had to put down a twenty-dollar deposit for the remote. Stale cigarette smoke suffuses every fabric behind an olfactory haze of air freshener. But the room is big, with an air-conditioning unit that seems to be up to the task. And it has a telephone, so I can plug in my laptop.
Emma Sandling, now Susie Whalen, works near here, right on the famous beach itself. She operates a concession stand called the Beach Bunny, a couple hundred yards from the Adam’s Mark. She’s also a part-time student at the Daytona Beach Community College, halfway through a program in “respiratory therapy.” Her boys currently attend the fifth in a string of free vacation Bible schools, this one sponsored by the Word of God church in Ormond Beach. Whalen drives a red ’84 Subaru wagon with Save-the-Manatee plates. She and the boys live in a tiny rental apartment in Port Orange, where she gets a break on the rent in return for janitorial work, which includes mopping down the halls and stairs and keeping the laundry room and storage area clean. All per an e-mail from McCafferty, who billed me for just two hours. “Glories of the information age,” she noted.
I sit on the bed and after a minute, stretch out and stare up at the textured ceiling. Ever since I received McCafferty’s e-mail, I’ve been trying to figure out how I’m going to get close to Emma Sandling.
My plan is to go to the Beach Bunny, rent a chair and umbrella, buy a tube of sunscreen, and chat her up. I’m good at this kind of thing; most reporters are.
I pay for a day ticket, put the receipt on the dash, and turn my car onto the beach, falling in line behind a black Explorer. We roll along the sand at the posted ten-miles-per-hour pace. To my right, an endless parade of buildings and parked cars, the sparkle of hotel and condo swimming pools. To my left the white beach, the forest of umbrellas, towels and beach blankets and people, the expanse of ocean and sky.
I spot the van where Emma Sandling works, which is easy enough. It’s under a huge inflated rabbit – dressed in a bikini. The thing bobs and snaps against its guy wires in the stiff breeze. A short line of customers stretches out from the service window, skinny teenaged boys in board shorts, bulky retirees. A deeply tanned girl peels away from the window with a paper basket of fries.
And then I’m past the van, my first glimpse of Emma Sandling that of a figure inside the service window, counting out change. I exit next to the Adam’s Mark and make my way up A-1-A to the entrance ramp for a second pass. This time, Sandling is outside the van, clipboard in hand, talking to a couple of boys holding lime green boogie boards. She’s a small woman with coppery hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. She wears pink shorts and a white halter top and flip-flops. A flash of a smile, an impression of freckles, and I’ve cruised past again.
The guy at the entry point recognizes me this time and waves me through. About a hundred yards from the Beach Bunny, I nose the Sonata into a space between a white pickup and a rusting Blazer.
“Help you?” She has an engaging smile. Dimples.
“Just a bottle of water.”
“Sure thing. The small one or the one-liter size?”
“I’ll take the liter.”
“That’s good,” she says, pulling a bottle of Dasani from the cooler behind her. “It’s hot out here. You want to stay hydrated.”
She puts the change on the counter, looking past me to the woman next in line, but I hesitate, immobilized by her nonchalance and vulnerability. “Somethin’ else, sir?” she asks with a little frown.