style="font-size:15px;"> ‘I’ll drop this by in a little while.’
* * *
Ren pulled out the RUTH file again, the thirty-year span of sexual offences against children, all within Summit and Garfield Counties. Ren wondered what more she could get from the latest little girl than what her mother had told her the day it had happened. She had called the Glenwood RA in a state of panic that just seemed to increase as the conversation went on. Ren read back her handwritten notes – she hadn’t had time to type them up, she hadn’t even had time to write them. Her writing was legible, but still scrawled across the page – real shorthand, mixed with improvised.
The daughter was changing out of her bathing costume, her mother had turned away to attend to her young son, when a man had exposed himself to the little girl and taken pictures of her. He had hair that was neither dark nor light. He was wearing navy blue track pants, a white T-shirt and sneakers. He had a big belly. She described him as ‘old’, but everyone is old to a seven-year-old. And he was ‘missing hair on his head’. Bald, fat and old. Surprise, surprise.
Ren read through the file to see was there a similar description from any of the other girls. It looked like Ren wasn’t the only one who had to rush through an interview. The page about Ruth Sleight had no case number. Under the heading WHERE? was circles … faded … dust … funny smell … bakery? Under the heading WHO? was musk … bony hips. Under WHY? she had just written why? why? why?
Why would Jean be asking why?” Why what?
Ren looked at the child’s drawing on the page stapled to it – the collection of shapes. Underneath it was adult writing that read: Love, Ruth XX.
Ren noticed the back of the first page. There was a phone number scrawled diagonally across it. Something about it looked familiar, a sequence of digits that had once been automatic to her – her only way to reach someone – untraced, a number she associated with laughter and secrecy and risk. It was Paul Louderback’s throwaway cellphone number. The man she’d believed when he said he didn’t know Jean Transom personally.
Ren jumped when she heard her name being called. She looked up as Denis Lasco walked in the door. He handed her the photo. It was in a Ziploc bag. Ruth Sleight did not look like a well woman. She had qualities you could use to describe a corpse – a red face that was bloated to bursting point, eyes that were swollen and vacant, skin that was almost gray. Her hair was brown, flat and greasy at the roots, red, dried and permed at the ends. She was heavily overweight, dressed in a sleeveless yellow T-shirt and white shorts. She held a cigarette in her hand.
‘Yikes,’ said Ren. ‘Poor woman.’
Lasco nodded.
‘Thanks for this,’ said Ren. ‘It has solved one mystery for me. Now, if I found Jennifer Mayer, that could help.’
‘I hope she has fared better in life than this poor lady.’
Ren pulled out a list of known sex offenders from Summit County and Garfield County. One name hopped out: Malcolm Wardwell. He wasn’t bald and fat, but Jean and Amber Transom had been in his store not long before she died. Ren read back through the older files to see if Malcolm Wardwell could have been relevant to any of those descriptions. But then, she didn’t know what Malcolm Wardwell might have looked like thirty years ago.
Ren couldn’t face supper that night. By five a. m., she was starving and staring blindly into the darkness of her bedroom. Her thoughts were on a loop. Why did Jean Transom have Paul Louderback’s number? Why did he request me on the case? Did he want to steer me? Toward something? Or away from something? What does any of this have to do with Jean’s murder? Have I been manipulated for years?
The theories continued, nauseating and paralysing, until she eventually fell asleep, half an hour before her alarm woke her.
Ren sat in her room at the inn. She got up and made coffee. She sat back down. She got up and made her bed. She adjusted the blinds. She laid out files on the sofa. And ultimately, she came back to Paul Louderback’s number, scribbled in what was clearly Jean Transom’s hand-writing. Her stomach was barely able to keep the coffee down. She sat down and dialed Paul’s regular number. And stopped before she had finished. He will know. She was about to ask him something strange, but he was the only one who could answer it. But he will know why I am asking. Or maybe not. Maybe he has no idea Jean Transom had that number. Maybe he really didn’t know Jean Transom.
She dialed his number again. He answered. ‘Paul? Hi, it’s me.’
‘Let me call you back in five minutes.’
Shit. Shit. Shit. I was ready now. I won’t be ready when you call back. ‘Oh … OK. Sure.’
She could feel her momentum draining. She looked at the bright shiny icons on her cellphone screen, moving over them into the menu for Divert All Calls. Her thumb hovered over the Select button. Jesus – just take his call. She clutched the phone tight, but let her hand fall down by her side. She stood up and did a tour of the three rooms. She picked up magazines and put them down. She threw clean clothes in the laundry basket. She read the spines on the bookshelf. She squeezed hand-wash on to a paper towel and rubbed it around the sink. Jesus Christ.
When the phone rang – twenty minutes later – her heart nearly blew.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Hi.’
‘How’s it going down there?’
‘I’m just letting everything go where it takes me. I mean, so far? Finding the body hasn’t changed a whole lot. We do have a photo of Ruth Sleight – the young girl from that 1979 Mayer–Sleight case.’
‘And how do you think it ties in?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘So, that’s it?’ he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. ‘No one has “suddenly remembered” anything?’
‘In a town where Mind Erasers are the shot of choice …’
Paul laughed. ‘What’s in them again?’
‘I couldn’t tell you.’
‘I see.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So basically no one in Breck ever remembers anything?’ said Paul.
‘Well, no one under twenty-five. And one person who is thirty-six.’
Paul laughed. ‘We need to go out drinking again.’
‘Yeah, screw this whole investigation thing.’
They were silent for a few beats. ‘Poor Jean Transom,’ they both said at the same time.
‘Whoa. That was very serious,’ said Ren. ‘And simultaneous. Time to go. Too much emotion zaps my superpowers.’
‘OK.
