Myrna wanted to be dropped off on Sunset Boulevard near our Fernwood house. ‘I’ll walk the boulevard until I drop, then take a taxi home,’ she said. We had no photographs of Kit but her unruly dark hair, stick-thin body, and huge eyes made painting her visual portrait a snap. And how many deaf children were walking around Hollywood alone at night?
I drove to the library for a second look and found them getting ready to close. The librarian knew Kit but hadn’t seen her in days. So I turned right onto Hollywood Boulevard and drove as slowly as I could get away with, my head turning from right to left as if I were watching a game of ping pong. Pedestrian traffic was light this time of night; the sidewalks would become more crowded as the evening wore on. Motorcar traffic was light as well, light enough to let me make a U-turn at Normandie and start back toward the opposite end of the boulevard; once there, another U-turn took me back to where I’d started.
Stores were closed or closing, but restaurants and clubs provided noisy oases of activity on every block as patrons surged in and out and on to the evening’s next episode, and reporters and cameramen hovered to capture any famous faces. Without the sunshine to bring up the temperature, a penetrating chill had descended on the city. I hoped Kit was wearing her jacket. For the first time in my life, the sight of uniformed cops walking the pavement did not make me twitch. I knew they were keeping eyes peeled for our missing girl. Visions of Rose Ann’s battered body on the table in the San Diego morgue tortured me. I prayed her only child would not suffer the same fate at the same hands.
Twice I left the Ford idling at the curb while I stepped inside a drug store to call Carl’s desk at headquarters, hoping for news. When there wasn’t any, I resumed my creep down the boulevard. At one point, I saw Lillian coming out of a drug store; later I caught a glimpse of Larry and Helen speaking earnestly to a street vendor. I waved and kept going.
Cutting over to Santa Monica Boulevard, I repeated the process, driving down its long stretch first east, then west, watching both sides of the street as I crawled along. As midnight approached, I gave a pass down Sunset, hoping to see Myrna to give her a ride home. I didn’t.
Back at David’s house, I made a final telephone call to the police station. There was no news. By now, there was not a fiber of optimism left in me. Kit wasn’t lost. She didn’t get lost. She’d been snatched.
‘Any word?’ called Myrna as she came in the front door.
I tried to reply but couldn’t speak. Tears burned my eyes, and I swallowed hard. Myrna put her arms around me and hugged, which only made it worse.
‘The police are still out looking,’ she said. ‘They’ll look all night. They’ll find her, I’m sure. We need to get some sleep before we fall down. First thing in the morning, we can start out fresh.’
I threw the deadbolt on the front door and trudged up the stairs, wondering if I’d had dinner that night or not. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t hungry, and I couldn’t have kept anything down anyway.
At the door to my bedroom, I stopped and gave a sharp cry, unable to trust my eyes. Someone was lying on my bed.
Kit. Sound asleep.
Coming up behind me, Myrna said, ‘What’s the matter? Oh!’
Of course, Kit couldn’t hear the noise we made. I rushed to the bed and shook her. She came awake quickly, her hair sticking up in all directions and a crease from my chenille bedspread on her cheek. Looking from my face to the clock, she snapped, ‘Where have you been? It’s after midnight!’
Myrna, moving faster than I could, threw her arms around the girl. ‘Oh, Kit, we were so worried! We thought that horrible man had kidnapped you!’
Weak with relief, I rose. ‘I’ll call Carl’s desk at once,’ I said. ‘And Helen.’
Unable to reach anyone at the Fernwood house, I left the message at the police station and trusted an officer would soon run into Helen and the other girls on the street. Mindful of the hour, I said I would bring Kit back the following morning.
‘I’ve not been able to contact Helen,’ I told Kit. ‘So I left word that you would be spending the night here. You can sleep on the sofa downstairs, and I’ll drive you home in the morning.’
Kit shook her head. ‘I’m not going back. I don’t want to live with Mrs Reynolds.’
‘Kit, you can’t go with Helen and Larry. Their lives will be very rough, almost like camping, and you won’t have another soul to talk to or even a library for books. Mrs Reynolds is your cousin, and she has a nice house full of books and friends with children your age, and she wants you very much.’
‘If you make me go, I’ll run away, like from deaf school when Ma made me go there. I don’t want Helen. I want to stay here. With you. You have room – I saw the empty bedroom. I can bring the cot Helen bought, so you don’t need to buy furniture, and I don’t eat much, so I won’t cost much.’
The idea was preposterous, but I was too tired to argue. I had been operating for the past few hours on sheer terror, and now that the crisis had passed, I felt like a deflated balloon. I thought numbly of my mother – and I know I sounded like her – when I put Kit off with that old parental favorite, ‘We’ll talk about this in the morning.’ I handed her my extra pillow and a blanket from the closet. ‘Take these downstairs and sleep on the sofa.’
Myrna’s exhausted eyes met mine, and we shook our heads.
Early the next morning, I drove Kit back to the Fernwood house and helped her persuade Helen and her mother to let her stay with Myrna and me.