Flowering Judas(103)

“Like what?”

“Well, the guy had left all his stuff behind. Didn’t you say something about a black truck? He’d left the black truck behind. His mother had it in her garage. The cops said the mother didn’t think he’d leave without it. He loved it like a wife. He didn’t take anything else, either, except a bright yellow L.L. Bean backpack that he carried his books around in. He was in college.”

“So somebody checked it out?” Gregor said.

“Sure, as far as we were able without anything much to go on. The cops said the guy had a thing about the West—Wyoming, Montana, like that, so we did a little looking. We never found anything.”

“Did you check Las Vegas?”

“Absolutely,” Rhonda Alvarez said. “I wasn’t working on this then, but I’d be willing to bet whoever was checked Vegas first. Mothers always think of their children as absolute little angels who just want to commune with nature and the good clean air, but around here we tend to think most people who disappear like to commune with casinos.”

“There was no luck in Vegas, I take it.”

“No,” Rhonda Alvarez said, “but you know, Mr. Demarkian, we wouldn’t have been doing a full-charge check. It wasn’t our case, and from the way these notes read, we didn’t think it was ever going to be our case. We didn’t have any reason to suspect a murder, or a kidnapping, not the way things were then.”

“And they changed?”

“Well, there was all that stuff he left behind,” Rhonda Alvarez said. “When the guys from the television program kept stressing that, it got people around here thinking. So we decided to give it a good go. You know how these things work. If the police had been more insistent at the time, or if the family had been bugging us—but it wasn’t like that, so we didn’t really start looking into it until about two months ago.”

“And did you find anything?”

“No,” Rhonda Alvarez said. “Not a thing. ‘Somewhere out in the West’ is not exactly the best tip we ever got on anybody.”

“Well, I’ve got a better one. Try Atlantic City, New Jersey.”

“Really? Why?”

“Let’s call it a hunch, for a moment. I’m going to have the registration number and the engine number for a big black truck in a few minutes. It’s in a ditch without plates. But I’m pretty sure the plates that were on it were Jersey plates, and if we can find the name of the person who registered that truck, we’ll know what name Chester Morton has been using for the past twelve years.”

“But I don’t get it,” Rhonda Alvarez said. “I’ve got a note here that says he didn’t take the truck. His mother was keeping it for him. In her garage.”

“I know,” Gregor said. “Don’t worry about it. Could you check Atlantic City for me, and call me back sometime this evening? Am I ruining your schedule? It’s just that I might not be in a position to talk until around seven.”

“I don’t go home before seven,” Rhonda Alvarez said. “Atlantic City, New Jersey.”

“If I were you, I’d check the gambling addiction groups, although I think you’re going to come up blank. And check the casinos for people they have recently, anytime in the last year, say, barred from play.”

“You’ve practically got to murder your mother on the craps table to get barred from play.”

“I know. But check it anyway. Something must have happened in the last few months to shake this all loose. I’ve got some pretty decent guesses as to what it was, but I’d like to know for sure.”

“Right,” Rhonda Alvarez said. “I’ll get on it. If he did something bad enough to get barred from a casino, it shouldn’t be hard to find.”

3

By the time Gregor got back to the crime scene, there was a small, thin, frail young girl there, shaking as if she were about to freeze to death. Somebody had thrown a windbreaker over her shoulders, but it was a thin nylon thing. It wasn’t going to keep her warm. Howard Androcoelho was towering over her, looking like a fat dragon menacing a damsel in distress.

“You shouldn’t have come out here,” he was saying. “And they shouldn’t have let you come over here. There’s a reason we don’t let relatives wander around crime scenes. I didn’t even have to go to the law enforcement seminar to know that one.”

The girl didn’t seem to be listening to him. She was staring straight ahead and still shaking. A little ways off, a boy was getting sick in the grass.

Howard Androcoelho looked up as Gregor crossed to the yellow tape. “Mr. Demarkian,” he said. “I’m glad you’re back. This is Haydee Michaelman.”