“My father's body was found three years after he disappeared. I don't know if you knew that. I was told by my social worker, and I don't know what happened on your end of things . . . what exactly the police did, if anything. I'm guessing it was documented and the case was closed at some point?” I didn't know if I was using the correct terminology. Like most people, I had watched a few cop shows. I felt a little silly trying to sound like I had any clue what I was talking about.
“I did know, actually. I'm sorry for your loss.” Detective Bowles tipped his head, knowing there was more to come.
“My . . . aunt . . .” My voice trailed off. She wasn't my aunt, but for the sake of the story I needed to keep it simple but honest. I adjusted slightly. “Uh . . . the woman who took me in told me something at that time that I don't think the police ever knew. I didn't know . . . you see.” I wasn't making any sense.
Detective Bowles just waited.
“I don't want to get her in trouble. She should have spoken up . . . but she had her reasons, I guess.”
“Do you want a lawyer?” Detective Bowles asked softly. I looked at him in confusion.
“No . . . I don't think so. I didn't commit a crime. I was a kid. It never even occurred to me that I could go to the police with what she told me. And I'm hoping that this won't be about Cheryl Sheevers or anybody else. This is about me. I'm trying to find out who my mother was.”
“If I remember right, nobody seemed to know who your mother was, correct?”
I nodded. “But after Jimmy Echohawk's body was found, Cheryl told me that he wasn't my father.”
Detective Bowles was sitting up a little straighter. I definitely had his attention. “How did she know that?”
“She told me that Jimmy stopped for the night at a truckstop in Reno. He sat down in a big booth in the restaurant to have a bite to eat, and about twenty minutes into his meal a little girl sat up across from him. She had apparently been asleep on the far side of this big round booth, and he hadn't even seen her there. He offered the little girl his french fries. She didn't cry, but she was hungry and ate everything he gave her. He ended up sitting there with her, hoping someone would claim her.” I looked up at Detective Bowles whose eyes had grown wide, jumping to the obvious conclusion.
“You would have to know Jimmy. He definitely walked to a different drum. He didn't live like other people lived, and he definitely didn't respond they way someone else would have responded. He was kind, but he was also reserved . . . and very . . . quiet and..and unassuming. I can just picture him, looking around, trying to figure out what in the world to do with this child, but not saying a word. I swear, he wouldn't have spoken up in an emergency room if he had a hatchet in his head.”
Andy Moody nodded, listening, urging me on.
I paused, the memory poised at the edges of my mind . . . but hazy. I didn't really know if it was an actual memory, or if I had just pictured it so many times that it felt that way. “Anyway, eventually a woman came for the little girl. Jimmy thought maybe the little girl was lost and had climbed into the booth on her own. But from the way the woman acted, she had laid the little girl down in the booth on purpose, and let her sleep while she went off and played the slots.”
Detective Bowles shook his head in disbelief. “And this little girl was you.”
“Yes,” I said frankly. I proceeded to tell him what Cheryl had told me, about Jimmy's belief that my mother had followed him back to his trailer and about the faulty passenger side door. I told him how I'd been found the next morning, how Jimmy had recognized me, and how he hadn't known what to do. “A few days later, the cops showed up at the truckstop, showing a flyer with the woman's face on it, asking about a child. The owner of the truckstop, who had purchased some carvings from Jimmy and was fairly friendly with him, told him the woman had turned up dead at local hotel. The cops had come around because the woman was wearing a T-shirt with the truckstop logo on it. At that point, Jimmy moved on and took me with him.”
By this point, Detective Bowles was scribbling wildly, his eyes darting up from his paper to my face as I spoke.
“Bottom line, my mother abandoned me at a truckstop in Reno. She turned up dead in a motel in the area a few days later. With that information, I wondered if you could find out who she was.”
Detective Bowles stared at me, his jaw working, blinking rapidly. He didn't have a great poker face. “Do you know approximately when this would have been?”
“August. I always thought my birthday was August 2. But how would Jimmy have known when my birthday was? I think he just marked my birthday by the day my mother abandoned me. I can't be sure of that, but it's my best guess. Cheryl said she thought I was about two when this all went down. It would have to have been 1992 or 1993. Does that help?”