rolls her eyes and glances at her watch. “Oh really? And who are you?”
“My name is Pamela, and what I’m about to tell you is gospel. We’re from California. Do you remember the Polly Klaas kidnapping murder?”
Linda feels a strange tingle at the back of her neck. “Yes. Her dad, Mark Klaas, started the missing child non-profit group.”
“Well, Rob and I were on the search team of volunteers looking for her and Rob helped find Polly. He got a vision. He heard Polly and led the police to where she was in a shallow grave by a freeway. And now he has information about another missing girl. He can hear her, too. He really feels strongly that he can help, but the Oregon police are much more difficult than the ones in California. Because it’s from a psychic, they won’t even return our calls. So we need help, and Rob thinks a private investigator is the way to go.”
“And what missing girl would that be?”
“Ashley Pond.”
Linda is so stunned she drops her phone.
“Hello? Hello? Are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m sorry. I’m still here. How did you get my number?”
“To be honest it was totally random, but when your husband’s a psychic, perhaps nothing is totally random.” She laughs. “He just opened up the yellow pages, ran his finger across and stopped and said, ‘This one.’ It was you.”
“What do you want an investigator to do for you?”
“Well, Rob has been drawn to a particular house in Molalla and somehow he’s made a connection from Ashley’s bus stop, where she disappeared, to this creepy old house. Rob got such a strong reading there. We want the place fully investigated. Rob is convinced that the answer to Ashley’s disappearance will be found in this strange house. It’s surrounded on all sides by twenty or thirty acres of thick woods. So we want to hire you to, well, first investigate it, then, if you find anything, get the police to follow through. Maybe they’ll listen to you. They laugh at us.”
“Okay. I think I can help you, but I need a couple of days to check you out. Give me a phone number.” Linda writes on a nearby pad. “Yes. Okay Pamela, I will call you back. Yes. Thanks.”
Later that day, Linda sits behind the customer counter in her husband’s video studio. She is minding the store for him while he is on a video shoot. She is carefully adding figures from a bank deposit with an electronic calculator when Philip enters, burdened with several large equipment cases slung over both shoulders. He greets her warmly. “Did Mrs. Porter pick up the duplicate DVDs of her daughter’s wedding?”
Linda rises and begins to assist him with untangling the straps and overlapping bags. “She did, and she is such a sweetheart. She wanted me to tell you how excited they all were at the showing. They especially loved the reception stuff. She said you got an extreme close-up of her dad crying like a baby during his toast. It broke them all up.”
“Yeah, that’s always been my motto, ‘give ‘em more than they ask for.’” He begins to dismantle his main camera. “How’s your day going? Did that scumbag Juan ever plead out on that assault?”
“Hell, he wants a trial. And he’s going to go down big time. I can’t verify one of his so-called witnesses. That case is a mess.” She hesitates nervously. “Philip, I had the strangest phone call today about Ashley.”
“Ashley? I thought you said you were stalled on ideas. Maria told me you told her to keep checking her friends. You still believe she ran away, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what to believe after this call. It was from a psychic, or at least her husband is. She swears he helped find Polly Klaas with his instincts. But it’s so bizarre she would call me out of the clear blue about Ashley.”
“They have a connection to Ashley?”
“They can’t get the cops to listen to their theories and they thought a licensed detective could serve as a go-between. Their connection is…I’m not sure. And they called me totally at random. They were just looking through the phone book and chose my name. Isn’t that the weirdest thing?”
Philip finishes with the camera and gingerly slips the parts into its case. He snaps the locks shut, approaches Linda and embraces her. “Sweetie,” he whispers tenderly, “in my opinion, getting involved with psychics would only undermine your credibility. I mean, come on! Psychics?”
“But I’m telling you, they called me. Out of fifty or a hundred detectives in the yellow pages, they called me. It gives me goose bumps. And let’s face it, I’ve got nothing whatsoever to go on in this case. Neither have the police. It’s been over three weeks, and there are no substantive clues. Would it hurt to check out what the psychic has to say, at least?”
Linda can’t get the psychic’s comments out of her mind. More time passes and there is no news. As crazy as it seems, she feels a visit to the Oregon City school bus stop to explore the psychic’s tip is warranted. So, at eleven the following Saturday morning, Linda drives along Beavercreek Road before making the left turn leading to the vast Newell Creek complex that stands below the canyon’s ridge. Linda notices a wide bus stop right at the turn and makes a U-turn, lurching her car to an abrupt halt right where the bus would stop. After turning the engine off, she sits and absorbs…what? She’s not sure of what to expect, yet this is the very spot from which the child had vanished. There must be some clue. She spends the next several minutes examining the surroundings: the busy street with cars whizzing by, the winding road that leads to the apartment complex, the small house across the way. The gray apartments down the road from a forested gully. Where children used to play there are only forgotten toys and lonely bikes. In her rearview mirror she notices a pair of teenaged girls, one model-tall and blonde, one petite and brunette, strolling up the hill from the apartments. When they get close she hails them, “How’s it going girls?”
They both smile and standing several feet away, give her eye contact. The taller one says, “Fine.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Is where I’m parked the spot where the school bus to Gardiner Middle School stops?”
“It sure is. That’s our bus. We both go to Gardiner.”
“Is that right? You don’t happen to know the little girl that disappeared do you, Ashley Pond?”
The blonde girl with a blue backpack and neon green shirt says, “Yeah. We knew her. But why do you want to know?”
“I’m a detective and I’ve been asked to find her.”
The bubbly blonde takes a few steps and leans into the driver’s window. Linda notices she’s chewing gum and wearing floral perfume. “Wow, you’re a detective, huh? I’m afraid somebody snatched her. What do you think?”
“Maybe the same thing.”
“She’s my friend. We’re in seventh grade and on the same dance team together. We were supposed to do a competition soon.” The girl looks at Linda seriously and says quietly, “Instead, I’m going to do a new routine I designed myself—for her.”
