Copper River

28

Jewell drove with Dina beside her and Charlie in back. They left Bodine and took the potholed county highway toward Marquette. The road was still wet from the rain the night before. In those stretches where the old asphalt tunneled through stands of deciduous trees, russet and gold leaves spattered the road. Jewell kept her eye on Charlie in the rearview mirror. The girl hunkered down in her seat, quiet, staring out the window as sunlight and shadow exploded against her face. Occasionally she brought her hand up and idly fingered the line of rings and studs that marked the piercings of her left ear, or she scratched the stubble on her head, the emerging ghost of her lost hair.

Charlie had shaved her head over football. When classes began in September, she sought a spot on the eighth-grade flag football team. She was firmly told that football was a boys’ sport. Her response-“Bullshit. Girls can compete just as good”-had earned her a reprimand from the principal. To prove her point, she’d goaded the coach, Mr. Morrow, who also taught earth science, into pitting her against his fastest players in a forty-yard dash. She’d beaten them all by a mile, after which Mr. Morrow explained once again that the issue wasn’t her ability but her gender. If she’d had money or connections, she might have filed some kind of discrimination suit. Instead, she’d protested in her own way: sacrificing her hair. She’d done it with Ren’s help. In his defense afterward, Ren had explained to Jewell that Charlie was hell-bent on doing it anyway and more than willing to go it alone. He’d helped only because he didn’t want her to hurt herself with the razor.

Her protest got her suspended for two days. For a while the whole incident was a hot topic of conversation in Bodine. Gary Johnson had written a fine editorial supporting Charlie’s position, but it didn’t change a thing.

Although Jewell often worried about the young woman, she also knew that there was an extraordinary depth to Charlie’s strength, which was good because coming into this world she’d been given little else to help her along.

Dina Willner was busy writing in a small notepad.

“What are you doing?” Jewell asked.

“Preparing an interview, making notes on the questions I want to be sure to ask. I can fly by the seat of my pants when I have to, but I prefer to go in prepared.”

Jewell nodded, liking the way this woman operated. “How is it you know my cousin?”

Dina glanced up from the page. Jewell saw that her green eyes held a guarded look. “We worked on a case together in Minnesota.”

“The Jacoby murder, right? The one in Aurora.”

“That’s the one.”

“He trusts you.”

From the rear, Charlie said, “He likes you.”

Dina twisted around in her seat. “What?”

Charlie kept her eyes on the scenery out the window and spoke in a matter-of-fact way, as if it were something anybody could see and probably everybody had. “The way he looks at you. And the way you look at him, it’s the same. You like him back.”

“He’s married.”

“Big whoop.” The girl crossed her arms, then said more darkly, “Ren likes you, too. Must be the boobs.”

“That’s enough, Charlie,” Jewell snapped.

“I’m just trying to figure why guys like her.”

“There are lots of reasons to like people of the opposite sex besides physical attraction.”

“Yeah?” Charlie leveled her gaze on Dina, who was still turned toward her. “So what is it you like about the gimp?”

Dina replied calmly, “This is not a conversation I’m going to have with you.”

“Fine.” Under her breath, Charlie whispered, “ Bitch. ”

Jewell braked and pulled to the side of the road. “That calls for an apology. Now.”

Charlie stared out the window and offered a grumbled “Sorry.”

“If you’re going to do this with us, Charlie, you’re going to be civil, understood?” Jewell said.

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That’s better.”

The rest of the way into Marquette, Charlie didn’t say a word. They drove past Providence House and parked on a side street a block away. Jewell and Dina got out.

Charlie leaned out the window. “Why can’t I come?”

Jewell answered, “Because if anybody sees you with us they may feel compelled to report it to the police, okay?”

“They’re good people in Providence House,” the girl protested.

“They also want to preserve the good relations they have with the authorities, I’m sure. And I’d rather not put them in an awkward position. We won’t be long.” She glanced at Dina. “Ten, fifteen minutes?”

Dina nodded.

“Charlie.” Jewell reached in and put her hand over the girl’s hand. “Promise me that you’ll wait and that you’ll be here when we get back.”

“Where would I go?” she asked, surly.

“Promise me.”

Charlie tossed her head back and blew out a loud, frustrated breath. “ All right. I promise.”

As Jewell and Dina approached Providence House, a gas motor roared to life in back, out of sight. A moment later, Delmar Bell appeared pushing a power mower along the edge of the yard. The lawn still looked wet, and Jewell could see that the wheels picked up a skin of cut grass as they rolled along. She climbed the porch steps with Dina, found the front door locked, and rang the bell. While they waited, Dina stepped back and appraised the structure, the yard, and the handyman with his mower. Jewell had no idea what interested her, but Dina took her notepad from her back pocket and wrote something down.

The door opened and the same woman with whom Jewell had spoken the previous day appeared and eyed them warily. “Yes?” A light came into her eyes. “You were here yesterday. Looking for Charlene Miller.”

Jewell said, “May we come in?”

“I can’t tell you any more about Charlene than I did yesterday.”

“We’re not here about Charlene,” Dina said. “We’d like to ask you about another client. Sara Wolf.”

At the name, the woman’s face went ashen. “I can’t talk about her.”

Dina held out her hand and magically a business card appeared. “My name is Dina Willner. I’m a private investigator from Chicago, and I’m looking into the disappearance of Charlene Miller and the death of Sara Wolf.”

“You know about Sara?” the woman asked.

“Yes, we know.”

She studied the card, then the faces of her visitors. “Come in,” she said at last, and turned back toward the dark inside the house.

She led them to a sitting room full of worn-probably donated-furniture.

“Please sit down.”

She took one of the shabby stuffed chairs. Dina and Jewell sat on the old sofa. The angle of the sun kept any direct light from entering the windows, and the room felt gloomy. From outside came the drone of the mower, growing louder whenever Bell approached the house and fading as he moved away. The woman still held Dina’s card in her hand.

“You’re a private investigator?”

“Yes. And you are?”

“Mary Hilfiker. I’m the director of Providence House. Who hired you?”

“I did,” Jewell leaped in. It was close to the truth.

“To look for Charlene?”

“Yes,” Jewell said.

“What does Charlene have to do with Sara?”

“If we tell you the whole story, we need to have your promise that you’ll keep it to yourself.”

Mary Hilfiker weighed her choices and finally replied, “You have it.”

“The police have been here?” Dina asked.

She nodded. “An investigator. He left a little while ago.”

“That’s the first you knew of Sara’s death?”

“Yes. What about this story?”

Dina told her about the body in the Copper River, about the kids seeing it, about the search at midnight and the mysterious boat, about Charlie and the attack on her father, and finally about the car that had hit Stuart.

“We think the body the kids saw was Sara. It was carried down the river to the lake, and the storm that night brought it ashore in Bodine.”

“How would her body have ended up in the river?”

“We’re wondering the same thing. That’s why we’re here. When was the last time you saw Sara?”

“A week ago last Friday. She left the shelter in the morning to go to school and her job and never came back.”

“She was in school and had a job?”

“You’re wondering why she’d be in a shelter for homeless youth.”

“Frankly, yes.”

“A lot of good people have an idea about homeless kids, or the homeless in general, for that matter. That chemical dependency or disability or some inherent weakness in them is responsible for their situation. The truth is, I see mostly kids with great potential struggling against staggering odds. Abuse, broken homes, every kind of family dysfunction imaginable. Sure, some of them are users. And some are chronic liars. And some are schemers. All of these are coping mechanisms to deal with a life they didn’t ask for. Removing themselves from that life is often both the best thing they can do-and the scariest. The system fails them, a system overwhelmed and under-funded, and they end up on the street.

“We have programs for those who find their way to Providence House. One of these programs helps kids finish school and get a job. It takes a lot of guts, believe me. They live here on an extended basis, some for as long as two years. So long as they stay in school and show up for work, we give them a bed and food.

“Sara had been with us nearly a year. She’d had a hell of a life, but there was something in her that refused to be beaten down. There was a fire in the way she talked about her future, a very real dedication to change and growth. She had hope. God, hope just flowed right out of her.”

“And then she suddenly vanished?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t that seem unusual?”

“For many of the kids who come here, this is just a momentary refuge. They stay briefly and are gone-back to their old lives or on to something different. Something better is always my hope. They show up one night, they’re gone the next.”

“That happens a lot?”

“Yes. I’d love to have the wherewithal to find them, bring them back, keep them on track, but we barely make it as it is. Three-quarters of a million children go missing every year.”

“They don’t all stay lost?”

“No, but many thousands do, and in my thinking even one is too many.”

“You said Sara was in a special long-term program.”

“That’s no guarantee of anything. We’ve had kids here I thought would make it, and despite our best efforts, they still end up back on the street.”

“So you did nothing when she disappeared?”

“I called the police, which is something I seldom do, but in this case I was concerned.”

“Does she have family in the area?”

“She was originally from a reservation in Wisconsin, but she’d been living with an aunt in Clovis. That’s a little town south of here. It wasn’t a good situation. Her uncle not only abused her, he pimped her. That’s why she came here.”

“She was Indian?”

“Yes. I don’t know what tribal affiliation.”

“Any idea where she hung out when she wasn’t at Providence House?”

“School and work mostly.”

“Where did she go to school?”

“ALC. The Area Learning Center. It’s a special program the school district runs for at-risk youth. It’s on Baraga.”

“And work?”

“Spike’s Pizza on Washington Avenue, just a few blocks away. She put in four hours there three afternoons a week.”

“How’d she get to school and work?”

“She walked or took a bus.”

“Can you think of any reason she would have been in the Bodine area?”

“I can’t. But the police…” The last words had a bitter edge.

“Go on.”

“The police believe she may have gone back to prostitution.”

“Why? Once a prostitute, always a prostitute?”

“That’s not what they said, but I’m sure that’s what they’re thinking.”

“What do you think?”

“I’ve been wrong sometimes about kids. I believe they’re going to make it and then they just fall apart. But Sara? I was so sure. She was so full of hope. If she was having sex, it wasn’t for money.”

“Did she have a boyfriend?”

“Not that I knew of.”

“Was there anybody Sara was especially close to here at Providence House?”

“All the kids liked her. She was our poster child for self-improvement.”

“The uncle who abused her, did he know she was here?”

“No. Absolutely not. We guard the kids’ privacy fiercely, and there’s no way Sara would have told him. As far as I know, she’d had no contact since she left them. But it’s my understanding the police are checking out that possibility right now.”

“If she wasn’t at school or work, was there anyplace special where she might have hung out?”

“Yes. Muddy Waters. It’s a coffeehouse a few blocks from here. Downtown on Main Street. She liked to study there.”

“So no reason you can think of for her to be in Bodine?”

“None.”

Dina looked at Jewell. “Anything you’d like to ask?”

“How old was she?”

“Just shy of fifteen,” Mary Hilfiker replied. “She hadn’t even started menstruating.”

“Just a kid. My God.”

“You think someone killed her and put her body in the Copper River?” the woman asked.

“That’s what I think,” Dina replied.

“And these same people killed Charlene’s father?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to tell the police?”

“Eventually. Right now it’s all pure speculation. As soon as we have something solid, we’ll go to the authorities.”

“I’m guessing you found Charlie. Or she found you. How is she?”

“Safe,” Jewell said.

“Keep her that way.”

Outside, Delmar Bell was still mowing the lawn. He glanced their way as they descended the steps, and he killed the engine. In the quiet that followed, he sauntered toward them, his shadow sliding before him like a black snake over the cut grass.

“Morning, Jewell.”

“Del.”

“Any luck finding Charlie, eh?”

“No.”

“She’ll turn up. Always does.”

“It’s different this time, Del. Her father’s dead.”

“You work here?” Dina said.

He looked her up and down. Then up again. His eyes hung too long on the curve of her breasts. He wiped his hands on his oil-stained T-shirt. “Who’s asking?”

“My name’s Willner. I’m a private investigator.”

“A PI? For real?”

“For real.”

“You’re a lot better looking than Rockford, eh.”

“Thanks. You’re in charge of maintenance here?”

“In charge?” He smiled, his teeth long in need of a good cleaning. “I like the way you put that. Yeah, I’m in charge.”

“You get to know the kids pretty well?”

“Not really.”

“You know Sara Wolf?”

“Sure. She was around for quite a while.”

“But not anymore.”

“Haven’t seen her for a week, maybe two.” He squinted, lines at the corners of his eyes like the tines of a rake. “That what you’re doing here? Looking for Sara?”

“If I were, would you be able to help?”

He shook his head. “Like I said, I don’t really know any of the kids.”

“Not even the ones who are around for quite a while?”

“They pretty much keep to themselves. Look, I got work to do, eh,” he said. “Jewell, always good to see you.”

He headed back toward the mower.

“You know him,” Dina said.

“He’s from Bodine. Graduated same year as me, same year as Charlie’s father. They were drinking buddies. In fact, he’s the one who told Charlie about Providence House and suggested she think about using it when she needed to get away from her father. It was a good suggestion.”

“Does he live here?”

“In back. An old carriage house.”

Bell yanked the cord, and the mower engine sputtered and shot out a cloud of oil smoke.

“He didn’t touch me with anything except his eyes,” Dina said. “But I still feel like I need a bath.” She started toward the side street where Jewell had parked the Blazer, writing a note in her pad as she walked.

“What now?” Jewell said.

“We find more people, ask more questions.”

In the Blazer, Charlie was napping in the backseat, curled in a blanket of sunlight.

“She looks peaceful,” Dina said. “She looks like the kid she really is.”

“She’s had to grow up fast. I’d love to believe the worst is behind her now.”

Dina studied Charlie with a soft gaze. “Let’s do our best to see that it is.”