I said, pausing at the word, which didn’t fit the girl or the situation she was in.
“Lisa had something. Something somebody wanted.”
“Something like what?”
“Don’t know. It’s just what I heard.”
“Jessica knew about it?”
“I know Jessica went looking for her, after she disappeared. I know Lisa was scared and then Jessica was scared. And that’s all I know. You got another twenty?”
“For more information?”
“For business. We can go in your van. She can wait outside.” She sniffed at Theresa.
Theresa said, “How about your friend?” She gestured at the girl next to her, who had yet to speak. She was young, short, stocky, wearing yoga pants and a faded Ohio State sweatshirt. Her matted hair looked as if someone had died midway through an attempt at cornrows. She seemed like a person who’d started with a hard life and gone downhill from there. “You know where Bronte is?”
The girl stared through Theresa. Her friend shrugged. “She doesn’t talk much. Why I like her around.”
I showed the girl the photograph of Jessica. “Do you know her?” I said.
She shook her head and flipped me off.
“OK,” I said. I turned to the first woman. “What’s your name?”
“Why?”
“In case I need to find you again.”
“Why would you need to do that?”
“I don’t know. For business. How about that?”
“That’s more like it. Darla. Satisfied?”
“That your real name?” Theresa said.
“Right, bitch.”
I said. “You want another twenty?”
“Sure.”
I handed her my card. “You see Jessica, positive I.D., call me. I find her, it’s all yours.”
The card didn’t disappear as quickly as the twenty. But at least she hung onto it. We crossed back over. I heard my name called. I turned around. She shouted out the name of a suburb.
“What about it?”
“Where I’m from. Satisfied?”
The small burg she’d named was a destination bedroom community just outside of Columbus. An All-American city. One of those places with good schools and green lawns and subdivisions with no sidewalks and no visible streetwalkers.
I nodded and waved. I got back in my van.
I wasn’t satisfied.
11
“THEY CLAMMED UP FAST ABOUT BRONTE,” I said, a few blocks east.
“Course they did. They don’t want to get out of pocket.”
“Meaning?”
“Sideways with their daddy. Their pimp. He catches them looking at another pimp, or not crossing the street when one comes by, they’re in trouble.”
“How’d you know about her name?”
“Nobody uses their real name out here.”
“Why not?”
“Same reason you stay high as much as possible. So you can stand the taste of dick.”
I grimaced. I was starting to realize how little I knew about what Theresa had gone through in her days on the streets.
“What was yours?”
“My what?”
“Your name.”
She hesitated. “Patty.”
“Why Patty?”
“Just because.” She turned and looked out the window. I didn’t press.
We kept it up another hour, driving up and down side streets, pausing at street corners, looking down alleys. I showed the picture and handed out my card at least five more times. A couple other girls knew Jessica; like Darla, no one had seen her in a while. I was getting close to calling it a night as we approached the line dividing Columbus and Bexley, the closest east-side suburb. Above us loomed a complex of abandoned grain silos on the south side of the street. Vandals and the elements had chipped large holes in the base of several silos over the years, and a chain-link fence ran around the perimeter to keep people out. It was the kind of place that might come up in conversations about prostitutes, serial killers, and the quandary of modern urban decay. Right about there I looked in my rearview mirror and saw headlights and thought I’d picked up a tail. I slowed and a minute later lost them as they turned left, just catching a glimpse of a white guy’s face I didn’t know. It wasn’t Bronte, anyway.
I kept a close eye on my mirrors while we drove through downtown Bexley, but the coast was clear. The suburb’s sidewalks were empty except for a few Capital University students, a lone jogger, and some late-night dog walkers. Thanks to oddly drawn municipal lines we re-entered Columbus a couple of miles east, just past Johnson’s ice cream shop, but we didn’t see any other women. It was starting to mist, and even the street corners in that part of Columbus were empty. I figured one more stop would be enough. A couple of minutes later I pulled into the parking lot of the Rest EZ motel.
The one-story L-shaped building fronted Main and a side street, rows of tiny rooms with red doors running along each wing. Its cracked asphalt parking lot was half full. A sign boasted a $39.99 special. It didn’t specify daily or hourly. I wondered if the price included clean sheets. Inside a cramped office at the Main Street end of the far unit, a man sat watching a cricket match on a laptop next to a houseplant that looked like it had been left in the microwave too long. The name on his badge was Mr. Patel.
“One night?” he said, without glancing up.
“Is that an ashtray or a fern?” I said.
He looked at me. I explained who I was, placed my card on the counter and the Reardoor.com photo of Jessica next to it, and pushed both toward him. “Have you seen this woman?”
Reluctantly, he pulled himself away from the match. He picked up my card with care, as if he’d seen me fish it out of a diaper bin, examined my information, looked at me, and set it back down. He glanced for a second or two at the photo.
“I do not recognize her.”
“She stayed here from time to time.”
“Many people stay here.”
“Many people dressed like that?”
“How people dress in my rooms is none of my business.”
“How about how they undress?” Theresa said.
He frowned. “Was there anything else?”
I said, “It’s important that I find her. She’s gone missing. Her brother’s worried about her because of everything that’s going on. All the women who died.”
“And as I told you, I have not encountered her.”
I pulled my card toward me, turned it over, and wrote down Jessica’s name. I pushed it toward Mr. Patel.
I said, “If you see her, I’d appreciate it if you’d call me.”
He looked down at the card, and then at his cricket match. A man dressed all in white, like a yacht captain, or a morgue orderly, hurled a ball down a flawless green pitch. Mr. Patel turned away from the match and reached down and picked up the card again. He said, “This is her name? Jessica Byrnes?”
“That’s