Sentinels Read online

  “Still no leads,” he said, “not even the hint of one. No ID on the McDowell girl’s boyfriend yet, either.”

  “His first name might be Rob.”

  “Oh? Where’d you pick that up?”

  “Modoc Cafe in Creekside. Waitress named Lena.”

  “I talked to her. She didn’t mention it to me.”

  I shrugged. Either she had a natural aversion to county cops or he hadn’t asked her the right questions.

  “Anyway,” Fassbinder said, “we need more than a first name and a general description to ID him. Besides, it may not mean anything when we do—in terms of the disappearance, I mean.”

  “You don’t think they disappeared in Lassen County, do you?”

  “Frankly, I don’t. It could’ve happened in a dozen others between here and the Bay Area.”

  “I know it.”

  “Pretty big haystack.”

  “And we’re just two guys with pitchforks.”

  “You said it. Two guys with pitchforks, and too damn much hay, and in my case, too many other chores to do.”

  “One of us could get lucky.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” he said.

  I ate a sandwich I didn’t really want at a deli downtown. After which I used one of the restaurant’s pay phones to make a couple of credit-card calls. The first was to my office to check in with Tamara. About the only thing of interest she had to tell me was that Barney Rivera had called again that morning.

  “He tell you what he wanted this time?”

  “Personal, the man said. Did say it has to do with a mutual friend.”

  “Mutual friend. But not which one?”

  “Nope. I asked but he wouldn’t say.”

  “So he’ll call again?”

  “Wants you to call him.”

  “Well, he can wait. What I’m doing up here is a hell of a lot more important than Barney Rivera.”

  “You have any luck in Creekside?”

  “Not much. Place turned out to be a pain in the ass—literally.”

  “Say again?”

  “Never mind. I’ll fill you in when I get back.”

  The second call was to In the Mode in Lafayette. To report my one slim piece of news—that Allison’s lover’s name might be Rob—to Helen McDowell. The name didn’t mean anything to her. She was sure, she said, that her daughter had never mentioned a Rob in connection with the university or Eugene or in any other context.

  I told her I would spend the rest of the day canvassing the area, but that if I didn’t turn up anything to keep me in the Corner, I would try another tack—drive to Eugene, see if I could ID Rob, and if I could, talk to people who knew him. I didn’t tell her I wanted to identify and find out more about the man because he might be the cause of Allison’s disappearance rather than a victim himself. But at some level she must have known it anyway; the possibility of foul play had surely occurred to her, even though we’d both been careful not to mention it during any of our conversations. It was to her credit that she didn’t question me, as some clients did. She’d hired me to do a job, and what counted for her was that I was doing it.

  From Susanville I drove another twenty miles south on 395, stopping in Janesville, Buntingville, and Milford and showing Allison’s photo to gas jockeys, waitresses, store clerks. Zero recognition. It was midafternoon when I finished in Milford. No point in continuing any farther south, not with a lot of miles left to travel that day and another long, tedious drive ahead of me the next.

  Back up 395 instead, through Susanville, through the mountains and past Creekside and on into Alturas—better than a hundred miles of high-desert and wilderness twists and turns that left me weary and rump-sprung. The only AAA-rated motels in all of Modoc County were in Alturas, testimony to how small and mountainous and sparsely settled the county is, and I was fortunate that the best of them had a vacancy. The single room I was given was palatial compared to cabin eleven at the Northern Comfort. It had central heating, a shower that worked without complaint and provided plenty of hot water, and a direct-dial phone—all the amenities of home.

  After dinner I called Kerry to let her know I was still alive and kicking. She said she was glad to hear my voice, but she sounded harried and a little on the grumpy side. “You caught me in the middle of a mess. It’s been an infuriating day.”

  “Paula hasn’t been bugging you with more of that tantra nonsense, has she?”

  “No, no, it’s not Paula. It’s a new account I got stuck with yesterday—Luau Shirts of Honolulu. The owner is driving me crazy.”

  “How come?”

  “Because he’s an idiot.”

  “That bad?”

  “Worse. A monumental idiot named Arthur Dykstra.”

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  “He’s one of those people who become successful in spite of themselves,” Kerry said. “Started on a shoestring five years ago and now he’s the biggest manufacturer of men’s and women’s Hawaiian shirts in the islands. Not the cheap variety; the fancy art deco aloha type made out of silk crepe de chine that cost a hundred and fifty dollars apiece. Now he’s expanding his operations to the mainland, starting in northern California—that’s why he hired us.”

  “Sounds like a relatively easy sell to me.”

  “It would be if it weren’t for the slogan he’s come up with for his ads. I can’t talk him out of it, and if I have to use it, the whole campaign will be a failure and a joke and I’ll be the one to get the blame.”

  “What kind of slogan could be that terrible?”

  “ ‘Shirt Happens,’ ” she said.

  I burst out laughing.

  “It’s not funny. My God, can you believe the man is serious? A pun based on a scatological bumper sticker to sell fancy Hawaiian shirts to families. Dykstra thinks people will find it ‘amusing’ and ‘charming.’ I’ve told him over and over how wrong he is, Doug Bates has told him, but he just won’t listen. The man is just an idiot. . . .”

  I let her rant. She seemed to need a sympathetic ear, and I did not feel much like talking about my busted Wednesday or my experiences in Creekside the night before. And just hearing Kerry’s voice lifted my spirits—the old tonic working its usual miracle cure.

  By God, I loved that woman. I loved her more than I could ever put into words, to her or even to myself.

  I was on the road again at eight on Thursday morning. Highway 299 east from Alturas to Canby, then 139 north into Oregon—and except for an occasional logging truck and pokey camper, I had the northbound sides of both highways pretty much to myself. I stopped in Klamath Falls for gas and food and then deadheaded straight through to Eugene, a push of a little more than three hours.

  The weather up there wasn’t half as pleasant as it had been in the Corner. Oregon is a wet state—the University of Oregon’s sports teams are not known as the Ducks for frivolous reasons—and wet was what I encountered: drizzles above Roseburg, steadily increasing rain as I rolled northward. By the time I reached the city I was in the midst of a downpour.

  Like a lot of Oregon, Eugene is a green place. That’s your first impression and the one that lingers after you’ve gone away. The city lies between the foothills of the Cascade and Coast mountain ranges, and along the Willamette River—the center of a rich agricultural and lumbering region. I’d spent some time there on a case years back; it had struck me then as a nice town to live in despite the weather. Nothing about it had changed to alter that impression as I drove through it now.

  The house Allison McDowell shared with the other U of O students was on Hilyard just off 22nd, within walking distance of the campus. Neighborhood of older homes, built in the twenties and thirties, many of them now converted into off-campus student housing. Wraparound front porch on Allison’s, gingerbread still clinging tenaciously to its balustrades and dormers. There were no cars in front or in the driveway, but I parked and tried the bell anyway. Nobody home.

  It was a short drive from Hilyard to the city
center. The Unicorn Bookstore, where Allison worked part-time, was on Willamette. I had to leave my car a block and a half away and I was moist when I walked in. Big place, new and used stock of both textbooks and general trade books; packed with students and fussy-looking, untidily dressed older persons who might have been teachers or bookish retirees or, hell, homeless people seeking knowledge as well as shelter on a rainy day. The store’s manager was in his early twenties, bespectacled and so chinless, it looked as though a bite had been taken out of the lower half of his face. His name was Peverell.

  Helen McDowell had talked to him, too, on the phone, so he knew the situation. He seemed concerned and sympathetic, if a little fussy and much older than his years, like one of his senior customers in training. “I can’t understand it,” he said. “Allison is such a responsible person.”

  “I’m sure she is. When she asked for a few days off, what did she tell you?”

  “That she needed the time for a trip home to see her mother. It was short notice, but that was Easter break week and we try to be flexible.”

  “She didn’t give any particular reason for the trip?”

  “No,” Peverell said. “But it seemed important to her. She was . . . excited about it.”

  “Did you have any idea she was making the trip with a male friend?”

  “Not until her mother told me.”

  “His name may be Rob.”

  “Rob. Well.”

  “Know anybody by that name?”

  “I don’t think so. No, I’m sure I don’t.”

  “Did Allison mention a new man in her life? Any reference along those lines?”

  “No, she didn’t. She isn’t one to talk about personal things.”

  “Do you know any of her male friends?”

  “Well . . . just Gary Oster.”

  “And he is?”

  Peverell shrugged. “A fellow she was seeing.”

  “Recently?”

  “Yes.”

  “Casual or serious?”

  “Casual, for Allison. I don’t know about him.”

  “Did she tell you it was casual?”

  “No. I assumed it was from the way she acted when she was with him. He used to meet her after work sometimes.”

  “When did she stop seeing him?”

  “I’m not sure. He hadn’t been around in a while and I asked her about him and she said he was history.”

  “That was when?”

  “A week or so before Easter break.”

  “She give you any reason for the bust-up?”

  “No. It wasn’t any of my business.”

  “Is Oster a student at the university?”

  “Yes.”

  “Live on campus or off?”

  “I can’t tell you that. I barely know him.”

  “Can you point me to anybody who does know him?”

  “One of Allison’s roommates, perhaps. Otherwise . . . no.”

  Down the block from the Unicorn was a coffee shop that had a public telephone back by the rest rooms. I looked up Gary Oster’s name in the directory: no listing. I considered calling Helen McDowell, since it was nearly five o’clock, but I had nothing to tell her yet. Wait until after I’d talked to one or more of Allison’s roommates, and maybe Oster, if I could find him. It would be easier on both of us if I had at least a few scraps of information to give her.

  To kill some time I sat at the counter and drank two cups of coffee and paged through today’s issue of the Eugene Register-Guard. There was nothing in the paper to hold my interest for more than thirty seconds. At five-fifteen I loaded myself into the car again and drove back through the steady rain to Hilyard. Still nobody home. So I murdered another half hour by driving over to Eugene’s east-side neighbor, Springfield, and returning by way of an aimless circuit through the university campus. And this time, when I turned onto Hilyard, a car was parked in the driveway alongside the big old house—a lemon-yellow Volkswagen bug with a cluster of stickers plastered to its rear end: Free Tibet; No Newts, Celebrate Diversity; Pro Family, Pro Child, Pro Choice.

  I parked and went up and rang the bell.

  Chapter Eight

  The young woman who opened the door (but not until I’d identified myself and held the photostat of my investigator’s license up to the peephole) had plain features and a short, compact body encased in Levi’s jeans and a bulky knit sweater. But she had beautiful hair: hip-length, a glossy seal-brown, parted in the center and flowing down around her face and over her shoulders. It rippled and glistened when she moved. She wouldn’t lack for male attention, I thought, despite her plainness. That hair would make young fingers itch to caress it. It even gave my horny old fingers a couple of longing twinges.

  Her name was Karyn Standish—“Karyn with a ‘y,’ ” she informed me solemnly as we went into an old-fashioned front parlor stuffed with mismatched and mostly bargain-basement furniture. A CD player was giving out with fifties-style rock music by George Thoroughgood and the Destroyers. So Ms. Standish also saw fit to inform me before, mercifully, she went and lowered the volume so we could talk without half shouting at each other.

  She sat in a loose-hipped sprawl in one of several chairs; I picked another, larger one that looked as though it would accommodate my weight, and did without squeezing what Kerry sometimes refers to as my “ample duff.” At the end of a long, heavy sigh Ms. Standish said, “It’s really weird, you know? I mean, you read about things like this, people just disappearing all of a sudden, but when it happens to one of your friends . . . wow. Weird and scary.”

  “Yes, it is. I understand Allison told you and your other roommates she was driving home during Easter break, but that she didn’t give you any reason.”

  “Just that she had a surprise for her mom. I asked her what it was but she smiled like it was a big secret and said she’d tell us all about it later.”

  “So as far as you knew, she was going alone?”

  “Well, she didn’t say one way or the other. But that’s what we assumed.”

  “And none of you knew about her new boyfriend.”

  “No. Al never said a word.”

  “Close-mouthed about things like that, even with her roommates?”

  “Well, she talks about her love life sometimes, when she’s in the right mood. Who doesn’t?”

  I don’t, I thought. I said, “His name may be Rob.”

  “Her new lover? Really? Rob what?”

  “No last name yet. I was hoping you might be able to supply one.”

  “Rob, Rob . . . You sure that’s his name?”

  “Not positive, but it seems probable.”

  “I know a couple of Bobs,” Ms. Standish said. Absently she lifted both hands, splay-fingered, through her hair and then let it fall slowly—a gesture, conscious or unconscious, that was both sensuous and seductive. Light from a nearby floor lamp made it glisten with bronze highlights. “Al knows them too. But they . . . uh-uh, it couldn’t be either of them. I mean, they’re just not her type.”

  “What is her type?”

  “Oh, you know, brainy like her. Cute and brainy.”

  “Gary Oster fit into that category?”

  “Gary? Sure. Definitely.”

  “Allison dated him for a while, I understand.”

  “Two or three months.”

  “What happened?”

  She shrugged. “They broke up.”

  “When, exactly?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Five or six weeks ago.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “Al wouldn’t say. But I think she blew him off.”

  “Because she’d met Rob, maybe.”

  Ms. Standish repeated the lifting gesture with her hair. “Well, it must be,” she said. “Al’s been going out a lot the past month or so. We all thought it was casual—you know, to get over Gary—but it could’ve been one guy. Somebody special.”

  “So special she wasn’t ready to share him yet.”

  “Right. Keep him all to he
rself for a while.” Two-beat, then she said as if she’d just had a tremendous insight, “I’ll bet he was the surprise she had for her mom.”

  “Probably. How well do you know Gary Oster?”

  The question prompted her to show me small, sharp teeth in a smile that was half ingenuous and half wicked. “Not as well as I’d like to. He’s a hunk. I’m not the only one who thought Al was nuts for blowing him off.”

  “How did he take the breakup?”

  “Pretty hard. He seemed real bitter.”

  “Bitter enough to hold a grudge, do something foolish?”

  “. . . You mean to Al?”

  “Or to Rob. Or to both of them.”

  “Uh-uh, no way. Not Gary.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s not like that. Not aggressive, you know?”

  What I knew was that aggressions can be masked and hidden, even the most deadly kind. I asked, “Did he bother Allison in any way after the breakup?”

  “What do you mean, bother her?”

  “Keep calling her, keep hanging around.”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Would she’ve told you if he was giving her a hard time?”

  “Me or Chris or Jan. Anyhow, we’d have known if he was. There’s only one phone here, and one of us would’ve seen him if he’d been hanging outside.”

  “Where does Oster live, can you tell me?”

  “One of the frat houses, I think. Or did he move off campus? I’m not sure.”

  “Does he have a job?”

  “I don’t think so. His dad’s a doctor. He’s not pre-med, though. Business major.”

  “Is there anyplace I might find him, somewhere he goes regularly in the evening?”

  “Well, there’s Porky’s.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Pizza parlor over on Pearl. It’s a Ducks hangout . . . you know, U of O students. I don’t go much myself—I can’t do pizza and beer very often with my figure—but when I do, Gary’s usually there sipping suds.”

  Porky’s was big, noisy, garishly lit, and packed. Half the customers looked to be college kids; the other half, at this hour, was a mix of adults and preteens, most of whom seemed to be regulars who were trying their damnedest to live up to the name of the place. There was enough excess body tallow distributed throughout to start a candle factory.