twelve

They handed Maybeth over to her parents in a tearful scene at the airport. She and her mother were both crying and hugging everybody and her father couldn’t stop shaking Death’s hand.

“I can’t believe you found her so fast,” he said. He turned to Wren. “You know, we only called him this morning? Every other P.I. we talked to said it was almost impossible, and that, since they worked by the hour, they’d have to charge us more than we could afford. But then one of them gave us Bogart’s name. He said he was just starting out and might be willing to work with us. And he was. He agreed to work for a flat rate, and not to charge us unless he found her, so of course, we gave him the job. But I never dreamed when I hung up the phone this morning that I’d be bringing my baby home tonight!”

He already had the check made out and as soon as Death wrote him out a receipt they took their leave.

“It’s not going to be that simple, though, you know?” Wren said later, when they were sitting across from one another in a nice little Italian restaurant.

“What’s that?” Death was concentrating on the breadsticks.

“The Turners. There have to be reasons why she ran away in the first place. Unless they address those, they’re going to wind up right back where they started.”

“Yeah, but now they know how serious she was about being unhappy and she knows how bad it sucks to be homeless, so maybe that’ll give them the kick they need to get help.” He took another breadstick from the basket, tore it in half and leaned across the table to feed it to her. “We can only do what we can do.”

“You’re awfully wise all of a sudden,” she teased, when she could speak again. “Have you been reading more fortune cookies?”

“Maybe I’m just clever.”

“Well, now, I suppose that’s possible.” She grinned. “So how did you find that girl so fast?”

He grinned and blushed. “Aw, it was nothing.”

“No it wasn’t. And you’re dying to tell me.”

“Well … yeah, actually, I am.” He jumped up and gave her a peck on the cheek. “Wait here a minute. I gotta get my laptop.”

He was back in just a couple of minutes with the oldest and most battered laptop computer she’d ever seen. He sat next to her this time, crowding her into the booth and sliding her plate aside so he could set the laptop where they both could see it.

She ran one finger across a gouge in the case “What happened to this thing?”

“Bullet,” he said absently, opening it and flipping it on. He powered it up and called up a photograph. “Now, the Turners knew that Maybeth had been in the Kansas City area three weeks ago, because she posted to her Facebook page and the police were able to track the IP address of the computer she used to the Independence branch of the Kansas City Library. Police inquiries in Independence led nowhere and no one had any idea exactly where she was, until two days ago, when she texted a picture of herself to a friend, who posted it on her Facebook page. This is the picture.”

Wren studied it. It showed Maybeth, dressed like a hooker, standing on a street corner. There was a post for a street sign, but the sign itself wasn’t visible. In the background there was only the corner of a large building, made of faded red brick, a part of one curtained window visible. There was nothing identifiable that Wren could see. There was a fire hydrant, a cracked sidewalk, and a small section of cross street with one building visible. That was some kind of business, but any sign it might have had was out of the picture and its windows were obscured by a blue and white striped awning.

“Okay … ?”

“So I found her from this picture,” Death grinned, clearly pleased with himself.

“How?”

“Well, first of all, look at the building in the background. Not the one with the awning, the one right behind her What do you see?”

“Um, bricks?”

“And?”

“Uh, part of a window.”

“Good. And?”

“A curtain?”

“Right. And what kind of brick building has curtains in the window? Usually?”

Wren thought about it. “An apartment building?”

“Right! Now, this particular apartment building is pretty old. You can tell by how worn the bricks are. And it’s not in a residential area. It’s sitting right up against the sidewalk and that other building in the background is clearly some sort of business. Apartment complexes in small towns tend to be located in residential areas and they tend to be set back away from the road, with landscaping around them. So, it’s not a guarantee, but I’m betting this is more likely to be either in the city or in one of the larger towns.”

“Okay, but that still leaves a lot of room.”

“Right. So, now look at the fire hydrant.”

“It’s a fire hydrant.”

“Very good! Notice anything else?”

“… it’s weird colors?” The fire hydrant was black and yellow with a green cap.

“Exactly! Now, I don’t know if you know this or not, but there’s actually a national color scheme for fire hydrants. The color of the cap signifies the available water flow rate. Most small towns can only supply less than 999 gallons per minute, so they get red or orange caps and usually they just paint the trunks red too and are done with it. This has a green cap, so it can deliver 1,000 to 1,499 gallons per minute. That suggests a city and goes along with what we’ve already figured out by looking at the buildings in the background. But then I ask myself, why a black and yellow trunk?”

“And did yourself answer you?”

“It did. See, myself knows, because my grandfather and brother were firefighters, that there are any number of reasons why fire hydrants get painted different colors. Some towns have their own color scheme, so do some neighborhoods. On Italian Hill, in St. Louis, for example, the fire hydrants are painted the color of the Italian flag.”

“Okay, but how were you supposed to find out who had yellow and black hydrants?”

“I’m a detective. I detected.”

“Meaning?”

“One of the most common reasons fire hydrants get painted odd colors is because students from the local school paint them their school colors. I see black and yellow—black and gold—and I think Tigers. I tried Columbia first, because of the University of Missouri Tigers. They do have some black and gold hydrants, but they’re painted in tiger stripes, not just plain colors. So then I started checking smaller cities. Sedalia and Warrensburg both have high schools with tigers for mascots. I started with Warrensburg, because it was closer, took this picture up and started showing it around the fire stations. Firefighters do maintenance on fire hydrants, so I figured if it was in their area, there was a good chance one of them would recognize it. One of them did. He gave me the exact address and then I just drove around until I found her.”

Wren leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “You know, you’re really something. Pretty and smart too!”

He leaned his forehead against hers and sighed, oddly dejected in what should be a time of triumph. “Once upon a time I used to be strong, too.”

She rubbed his back. “You’re still strong.”

“Not strong enough. I got light-headed just from kissing you. That’s twice now I’ve let Declan Fairchild walk away.”

“Okay, first of all, he didn’t ‘walk’ away. He ran away like a scared little girl.”

“You were throwing spears at him.”

“It was just one spear, and that was just the first time. The second time he was definitely running from the wrath of you.”

“Maybe.” He sighed. “You know what happened to my family, Wren. I can’t help but be a little bit paranoid. It really bothers me to think that I might not be able to protect you if you need it.”

She had no answer to that and they sat for several long minutes in a companionable and not altogether happy silence.

“Teach me hand-to-hand combat!” she suggested suddenly.

“What?”

“Hand-to-hand combat. You’re a Marine. You know that stuff, right? So teach me. Maybe you won’t have to worry about protecting me so much if you know I know how to protect myself.”

Death thought about it. “I suppose I could do that,” he allowed. One corner of his mouth tipped up in a sly grin. “Do there have to be clothes involved?”

Wren grinned back. “Clothing,” she assured him, “is entirely optional.”

_____

They were driving south, the hour getting late, classic rock playing softly on the radio, when Wren spoke suddenly.

“I don’t want to go back to my house tonight.”

Death looked over at her. All the dash lights were on his side of the car and he could only see her shadowy outline against the lighter darkness of the side window.

“Why not?”

“Declan Fairchild. He knows where I live. I’m so tired of being afraid of him. I just want one night, just to sleep without having to worry.”

“I could take you to a hotel?” he offered.

“No,” she said instantly. “I don’t want to stay in a hotel. Could we go back to your place?” she asked, and his heart dropped, dread rising into his throat to choke him. “I could sleep on your couch. That’d be fine. You know, I don’t even know where you live.”

“Um, yeah, well … you know. That’s kind of a problem.”

Her head came up, he sensed more than saw her tipping her face in his direction. He could feel the puzzlement. She glanced into the back of the Jeep. It was too dark for her to see anything, but Death knew that she would have seen earlier what was back there, sleeping bag, air mattress, duffel bag of clothes, crate of food and toiletries. She had a sharp eye and a quick intellect. He waited for her to figure it out, for the disgust and condemnation. But, when she spoke, there was only warmth and concern in her tone.

“Death, have you been living in your car?”

“It’s not a car, it’s a Jeep,” he deflected lightly.

“So that’s a yes.” She sounded like she was going to cry.

He reached over and found her hand, gave it a reassuring squeeze. “It’s not so bad. Believe me, I’ve stayed a lot worse places.” A cellar in Afghanistan came to mind, rasping for breath, his chest on fire, trying to keep Barlow from bleeding out and wondering how the hell they were ever going to find their way home.

“We can go to my house,” she said. “It’s okay.”

“No,” he shook his head. “No, I think you had a good idea. Hang on. I’m going to show you where I’ve been staying. Fairchild will never find us tonight.”

They were still several miles out of East Bledsoe Ferry, on the west shore of Truman Lake, when Death flipped on his blinker and pulled off the highway onto a lane so overgrown it was practically invisible.

“What is this place?” Wren asked, speaking for the first time in minutes.

“Well, once upon a time this was a real road.” The Jeep jounced and bounced along deep ruts. “Never a very good road,” he admitted. “I drove it a few times with my grandpa, back when I was a little kid. It was a back road from Bristow to Grant’s Crossing. It had the worst hill you’ve ever seen—practically vertical, with a long, narrow bridge at the bottom, over the Barker arm of Tebo Creek. It was a horrible bridge, one-lane and rusting out. I swear there were holes in the driving surface and you could see the water running underneath.

“Anyway, once the lake came in they took out the bridge and the water filled up that whole valley, so now this is just an old dead-end trail.” He pulled to a stop at the brink of a hill, with trees thick around them, and the lake glinted briefly in the headlights before he switched them off and killed the engine. “Nobody comes here. It’s not a good place to fish because it’s too hard to get down to the water, and the road doesn’t go anywhere. I like it though.”

He got out and went around to open the door for her, then left her standing on the hill, looking out over the water below, while he got the air mattress and bedding out of the back.

He’d slept out under the stars here before, so there was already a place smoothed for the mattress, free of stones and other obstructions. He opened his sleeping bag and spread it on the mattress, then put a blanket over that, folding it back so it would be easy to slide under.

Wren was shivering slightly, rubbing her arms. “It is beautiful,” she said, “but didn’t you ever get cold?”

“Sometimes,” he admitted, “but only because I was alone.” He wrapped her in his arms and held her against him, then drew her toward the bed he’d prepared. “Come on, sweetheart. It’s been a long day.” They crawled under the covers and cuddled close under heavens that glistened with the light of a billion trillion stars. The ancient earth sang them the oldest love song of all, writ of crickets and tree frogs and night birds calling, of wind sighing in the leaves and water moving rhythmically against land in the darkness.

When Death awoke in the rosy dawn, Wren was curled warm beside him. Her head rested on his shoulder. Her red hair was splayed out across the pillow. Shafts of early morning sunlight lanced across the water, setting the whitecaps glittering and gilding the tops of the tallest trees.

For the first time in a long time, he felt like he was living in a state of grace.