Burning Time

12

It took Detective Woo three days to find Connie Shagan at a friend of a friend’s house in Florida. It wasn’t easy to locate her with no one in the dorm or the administration office to give her names and numbers. She didn’t work the case on Monday. This week Monday was her day off. She spent it studying for a psych test that evening. She had to take the subway both ways from Queens, since she was without a car, but she thought she did all right on the test.

On Tuesday April had a chance to go back to the dorm and get into the girls’ room. She took Ellen’s photograph with her and held it in her hand as she looked around. She had done this with another missing girl two years before. Lily Dong was twelve, and disappeared from her kitchen in Chinatown when she was home from school having lunch. The whole precinct looked for her. It was the kind of thing that got in the newspapers. A kidnapper called once. Then when he didn’t call again, the family called the police. Three days after the child disappeared, April found a pile of junk in a courtyard across the street. Underneath was a dirty sleeping bag. April hated thinking about unzipping that bag, and seeing the sneakers. She didn’t have to see anything else but the two sneakers to know. The girl was wearing them when she disappeared and was wearing them when she was found. She had been strangled in a panic. It took April a long time to look at any kind of sneakers without feeling terrible about Lily Dong. Very rare for an Asian to kill someone. It was the guy across the hall, Burmese.

Ellen Roane’s dorm room was small, just big enough for two twin beds with plastic cartons between them, two small wooden desks, two chairs, two reading lights, two chests of drawers. The bathroom was shared with the room on the other side. The girls seemed to have made an effort to leave the place neat when they left. Or maybe they were just like that. There were no piles of little things—hair things, makeup, trinkets—either on the surfaces or in the drawers. No nail polish, lipsticks. The drawers were stuffed with clothes. Much of it seemed to be blue jeans and sweaters. Must be very serious girls. April’s own room was messier. She liked small colorful things, had a lot of cosmetics.

She found Connie’s home address and telephone number in a small book in the girl’s desk. Then she turned her attention to Ellen’s side of the room. Ellen Roane had a CD player and many discs. She had put her name on it with one of those plastic guns that shoots out letters. She also had a computer to write her papers on, and many books. All the books she seemed to be working in were in neat stacks on the floor by her desk, and on her bed. Both beds had the same comforters on them. April wondered if the university gave out flower-printed comforters, or if the girls had bought them together. Probably bought them so the room would look coordinated. There was also a small rug of a matching color in the middle of the floor.

April tried to imagine what it might be like to have such expensive toys at seventeen, and no responsibilities but to read the books and know what was in them. She couldn’t resist sitting down at Ellen’s tiny school-issue desk with the computer on it and turning it on. A list of files popped on the screen. French, Biology, Psychology. Hah, something familiar. April was taking psychology. She punched Psychology and a list of papers came up.

April didn’t see anything she recognized. At John Jay they taught her class psychology along with history. So she got the Napoleon complex in conjunction with the conquest of Russia. She didn’t know too much about Freud, but she knew Napoleon was exiled to Elba in 1814 and came back to Paris to rule a hundred days before his final defeat at Waterloo in 1815. And she had a pretty good idea what the complex was all about.

There were no short stories or diary notes in the computer, and there was absolutely no indication that the girl didn’t plan to come back. It looked like she left her best stuff.

When April got back to the precinct, she called Connie’s parents. They knew where their daughter was. It took three calls to Florida to get Connie on the phone.

“No, I don’t know where Ellie went. Is something wrong?” a very young-sounding voice said when April identified herself.

“We’re just trying to locate her,” April said vaguely.

“I don’t know where Ellie went,” the girl repeated solemnly. “She said she wanted to go someplace warm.”

“Florida?” April asked. “I get the feeling she’s running away from family troubles. Is she with you?”

“No. We asked her but she didn’t want to come,” the girl said quickly.

“You could get in trouble if you’re not telling the truth,” April pressed. “You don’t want to hamper an investigation, do you?”

There was a pause. “She’s not that good a friend.”

“Oh.” April waited for more. She glanced down at the picture on her desk. The parents had given her several. The one on her desk was a color photo of a girl in shorts with a tennis racket in both hands. Ellen Roane was a pretty girl. Lot of hair, like her mother. Only hers was much lighter. Blue eyes, big smile that showed nice even white teeth.

“Why not?” April asked after a minute.

“I don’t know. She’s nice …” The voice trailed off.

The girl couldn’t say why they weren’t good friends. Fair enough.

“What about a boyfriend?” April asked. “Did she have a boyfriend she might have gone away with?”

“She had one for a while, but he dumped her.”

“Recently?”

“Yeah, Ellie was pretty upset. That’s why she didn’t want to go with anybody. She wanted to be alone.”

“When did you see her last?”

“I saw her when she left for the airport.”

“The airport. Which airport?”

“I don’t know. LaGuardia, I think. I don’t remember which airline.”

“What time was it?”

“It was afternoon.”

Connie told April what Ellen was wearing when she left, and they hung up. Someplace warm. That left a lot of places. Mexico, the Caribbean, Florida. California. She checked the flights going out of LaGuardia to sunny places on Thursday afternoon a week before. There were a lot of them. The airlines didn’t keep passenger lists for this long. And if Ellen were running away, she might not have used her own name anyway. Checking airlines was not a useful path to pursue. It was exactly a week since Ellen had left the city. She was due back in school the following Monday. April was quite certain she would be there.

She handed in her report. This was more detailed than the initial one. Now she knew what Ellen had been wearing, and the fact that she had most probably left the city of her own volition, probably by air, during a school vacation. The assignment notebook and calendar on her desk had corresponding stars in red ink to show when papers were due and test dates. Ellen was a conscientious and methodical student. The following Thursday was starred for a test with a note to “Study hard for this one.” Nothing about her room indicated a girl who didn’t intend to come back.

The case was not closed, however. Sergeant Joyce had received several calls from the parents—both parents, at different times—demanding a stepped-up investigation. Joyce assured the Roanes they were doing everything they could to locate the girl and told April to stay with it.

April called Jennifer Roane with another approach. “Does Ellen have a credit card?” she asked.

“Why? Has it turned up?” Jennifer started to cry.

“No. But if she used it, it’s a way of finding where she went. Her roommate says she left last Thursday for the airport.”

“What?” Jennifer said, appalled. “You mean, she went somewhere?”

“It looks like it. Do you have the credit card number?”

“Just a minute.”

Jennifer Roane was away for several minutes. Finally she came back with the credit card number. It was a MasterCard.

“Anybody else use this card?”

“Uh, her father. I have my own.”

“Thanks.”

April called MasterCard. “This is Detective Woo, NYPD. I need some information on recent charges to card number 956-1900-9424-1992.”

“You’ll have to talk to my supervisor.”

“That’s fine. What’s your supervisor’s name?”

After a brief discussion with the supervisor, April faxed an official Police Department request for information to the MasterCard office. An hour later, she received a printout of charges to the account for the last month. Among them was a charge to American Airlines on the date Ellen left her dorm. And a number of charges to a restaurant and shops in—bingo: San Diego.