WALKED TO THE EXIT AND STEPPED OUTSIDE. I didn’t need my coat. It was as sunny and mild as an Indian summer afternoon, even though we weren’t that far from Christmas. The temperature had yet to dip below freezing this fall, unusual for central Ohio. It felt unnatural, whether it was global warming or El Niño or an approaching asteroid. It ought to be colder this time of year.
I introduced myself to the caller and asked how I could help.
“My sister’s missing,” the man said. “I was hoping you could find her.”
“I can try. How long’s she been gone?”
“I’m not sure, exactly. A few weeks. Maybe months.”
“Months?”
“Maybe.” I heard a small boy’s voice in the background. My caller said something indistinct in response.
I said, “Have you talked to the police?”
“Last week.”
“Your sister’s been missing for months and you just now went to the police?”
“She disappears a lot.”
“Why?”
“She’s a prostitute.”
I paused. “That’s not good.”
“I know. That’s why I’m calling.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s OK.”
“Where’s she work?”
“Different places. In a motel for a while, but sometimes the streets, too. Bottoms now and then, but east side, mainly.”
“OK.” Roy’s Episcopal church was in the Bottoms, an old and struggling neighborhood west of downtown officially known as Franklinton, which may have explained how he got the call. I said, “What’s her name?”
“Jessica. Jessica Byrnes.”
“What’s yours?”
“Bill Byrnes.”
“Where do you live?”
“Whitehall. Off Yearling.”
I thought for a moment. “You around tomorrow?” At least I was free, thanks to my screw-up the previous week.
He was. We settled on early afternoon. He gave me his address.
“You think you can find her?”
“I’ll do my best. I’m sorry about what I said. The way it came out.”
“It’s OK. I know it’s not good. That’s why I called your friend. I saw him quoted in that article. I figured I should try to find her. Even though—”
I waited for him to finish the sentence, but the line went quiet again, the only noise the sound of the child in the background.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.
I hung up, pocketed Roy’s phone, and went back inside the Ohio Building.
“Doesn’t sound good,” Roy said, meeting me by the food stand. He traded me a can of Four Strings Skeleton Red Rye IPA for his phone. I nodded my thanks. You can’t always drink swill.
“I know,” I said, watching the women circle the track. They crouched as they skated, like hunters. Bonnie was having a good match so far. I was happy for her, at least.
“This guy’s sister. She’d make, what? Number six?” Roy said.
“God, I hope not,” I said. I started to head back to the bleachers when I stopped.
“Where’d Anne go?”
“She left.”
“Left?”
“Said her back hurt. And Amelia was getting cranky. And she was tired of waiting for you.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Could this day get any worse?”
“It will if you take the Lord’s name in vain. Remember, when people say ‘Jesus,’ they usually mean ‘Shit.’”
“Thanks for the sermon.”
“No need to thank me. It’s my job. What’s that sound?”
It was my phone. I hadn’t recognized my new ring tone, Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.” I pulled the cell out of my pocket and checked the number.
Crystal. My second ex-wife.
“Guess I answered my own question,” I said, turning away to take the call.
3
FIVE BODIES SO FAR. NOT SIX. FIVE THAT they’d found. The actual number? No one knew.
Well, that wasn’t strictly true.
One person did.
The first turned up nearly a year ago, on a snowless February morning so cold they canceled school anyway, the woman dumped behind a trash bin in an alley not far from the corner of Main and Champion on the east side. Melissa Loomis. Strangled. “Missy” to her friends and family, what little she had left of either. Twenty-seven. Two kids, though the county had taken them years earlier. Addicted to heroin, a habit she supported by selling the only thing she thought she had left of value, usually on the streets, sometimes, in the better months, out of a rent-by-the-hour motel room. Once upon a time she’d nearly finished a general studies associate’s degree at Columbus State, with aspirations to be a teacher. Then she slipped on ice and a friend of a friend offered a pill for the pain and the ensuing addiction ended that dream. The rest was an all too familiar story.
The next, Talanda York, the following April. Body found by a farmer in a ditch in Groveport on the southeast side. Pronounced ligature marks around her neck. Thirty-eight, black, several kids. Also a heroin addict, also a prostitute, although she’d slipped back into the life only recently after what seemed like a couple of good years. It escaped no one’s attention, especially the media’s, that two prostitutes had been murdered within a few months’ time. But the two hadn’t known each other and their bodies were miles apart. After a flurry of articles and news segments, people diverted their attention elsewhere.
Then, over the summer, two bodies discovered inside of three weeks. The first, Natasha Rumsey, nineteen, white, last seen by her boyfriend a month earlier after they’d had a fight—his story—and she’d stormed out of his apartment. Taking the missing person report, a Columbus detective needed all of five minutes to figure out that “boyfriend” was a euphemism for a freelance pimp who’d blown his stack at Natasha because he didn’t tolerate backtalk and Natasha was, by his account, one mouthy bitch. A homeless man found her in an abandoned house off
