Then they stopped, somewhere around the end of high school—no more awards, no more recognition for excellent short stories or essays, at least no more here in this bedroom. She’d gone to Georgetown University, majored in English. Again, no more sign that she’d ever written another word or won another prize.
“Quinlan, for God’s sake, what are you doing? Is she in there or not?”
He was shaking his head when he rejoined Dillon. He said, “Sally isn’t here. Sure, she was here, but she’s long gone. Somehow she knew we were close. How, I don’t know, but she knew. Let’s go, Dillon.”
“You don’t think her mother would have any idea, do you?”
“Get real.” But they asked Mrs. St. John anyway. She gave them a blank smile and sent them on their way.
“What now, Quinlan?”
“Let me think.” Quinlan hunched over the steering wheel, wishing he had a cup of coffee, not good coffee, but the rotgut stuff at the bureau. He drove to FBI headquarters at Tenth and Pennsylvania, the ugliest building ever constructed in the nation’s capital.
Ten minutes later, he was sipping on the stuff that could be used to plug a hole in a dike. He took Dillon a cup and set it near the mouse pad at his right hand.
“Okay, she’s got the Oldsmobile.”
“No APB, Dillon.”
Dillon swiveled around in his chair, the computer screen glowing behind his head. “You can’t just keep this a two-man hunt, Quinlan. We lost her. You and I, my friend, lost a rank amateur. Don’t you think it’s time to spread the net?”
“Not yet. She’s also got my wallet. See what you can do with that.”
“If she keeps purchases below fifty dollars, chances are no one will check. Still, if someone does check, we’ll have her almost instantly. Hold on a minute and let me set that up.”
Dillon Savich had big hands and large, blunt fingers. Quinlan watched those unlikely fingers race over the computer keys. Dillon hit a final key and nodded in satisfaction. “There’s just something about computers,” he said over his shoulder to Quinlan. “They never give you shit, they never contradict you. You tell ’em what to do in simple language and they do it.”
“They don’t love you, either.”
“In their way they do. They’re so clean, Quinlan. Now, if she uses one of your credit cards and there’s no check, then I’ve got her within eighteen hours. It’s not the best, but it’ll have to do.”
“She might have to use a credit card, but she’ll keep it below fifty dollars. She’s not stupid. Did you know she won a statewide contest for a paper she wrote about how much credit card crooks cost the American public? You’d better believe she knows she’s bought eighteen hours, and she might figure that’s just enough, thank you.”
“How do you know that? Surely you had other things to talk about with her? Jesus, you had two murders in that damned little picturesque town, and the two of you found both bodies. Surely that’s enough fodder for conversation for at least three hours.”
“When I was in her bedroom I saw that the walls are loaded with awards for papers, short stories, essays, all sorts of stuff that she wrote. That credit card essay was one of them. She must have been all of sixteen when she wrote it.”
“So she’s a good writer, even a talented writer. She’s still a rank amateur. She’s scared. She doesn’t know what to do. Everyone is after her, and we’re probably the best-meaning of the lot, but it didn’t matter to her. She still poked your own gun in your belly.”
“Don’t whine. She has around three hundred dollars in cash. That’s not going to take her far. On the other hand, she got all the way across the country on next to no money at all riding a Greyhound bus.”
“You don’t keep your PIN number in your wallet, do you?”
“No.”
“Good. Then she can’t get out any more cash in your name.”
Quinlan sat down in a swivel chair beside Dillon’s. He steepled his fingers and tapped the fingertips together rhythmically. “There’s something she said, Dillon, something that nearly tore my guts apart, something about no one she’d been around cared about anybody but himself. I think she trusted me so quickly because something inside her desperately needs to be reaffirmed.”
“You’re sounding like a shrink.”
“No, listen. She’s scared just like you said, but she needs someone to believe her and care about what happens to her, someone to accept that she isn’t crazy, someone simply to believe her, without reservation, without hesitation.