The Best American Mystery Stories 1999

L. L. Thrasher Sacrifice from Murderous Intent

It was the hottest day of the year, middle of August, heat and humidity both in the nineties, sun a ball of relentless fire in a hard blue sky. I had just returned to my office after a 10K run that was supposed to raise money for research on heart disease. It seemed appropriate: I felt like cardiac arrest was imminent. My gym shorts and T-shirt were soaked through with sweat. My plan to take a long shower had just been thwarted by a cryptic phone call from the chief of police: “You there? Don’t leave.” Click.

When the door opened, I was untying my running shoes. I left them on, laces dangling. The office already had enough of a locker-room ambiance. My visitor was a well-mannered young lady, though, and didn’t even wrinkle her nose.

“You look like Hulk Hogan,” she said, after we exchanged hellos and she had taken a seat across the desk from me. “Well, not your face,” she added.

“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it sincerely.

“Your hair’s the wrong color, too.” There seemed to be a bit of accusation in her tone.

“I could bleach it.”

She nodded solemnly. “But your face is wrong. You wouldn’t look like him anyway.”

“True,” I said. My face had been called a lot of things over the years but never wrong.

“He said you can help me.”

“Hulk Hogan did?”

She gave me a scornful look. “That man at the police station. He said he was the chief of police, but I don’t know. He didn’t look like a chief of police. Not like on TV. On TV they wear...”

“Suits?”

“Uh-huh. He had on blue jeans.”

“Kinda hot for a suit today.”

“He looked like a cowboy. And he had freckles. More than me even.”

Her freckles were sprinkled like fairy dust across her cheeks and nose. Two dark, skinny braids hung just past her shoulders. Short curly tendrils had escaped and clung damply to her face. She missed being pretty by a nose — but she’d grow into it in a few years and then she’d be a knock-out. A faded kitten graced the front of her limp pink T-shirt. Her denim shorts had frayed hems and her canvas shoes had long since gone from white to dingy gray. She stood up suddenly, reaching into her shorts pocket and extracting two pieces of grape-flavored bubble gum. “Want one?” she asked.

“Thanks.” I took the proffered piece, which was warm from being in her pocket. We sat in companionable silence for a moment, chewing on big wads of purple gum. When mine was soft enough to talk around, I said, “What do you need help with?”

She was trying to blow a bubble; her tongue stretched a hole in the gum. “Phooey.”

I blew a bubble about the size of a softball, holding it long enough to bask in her admiration before sucking it back in.

“I can’t do it.” Her chin puckered a little bit.

“How old are you?”

“Seven.”

“I think I was eight before I could blow bubbles.”

She perked up, the future suddenly looking brighter. After chewing for a while and trying another bubble, she spoke with sudden urgency: “Jennifer’s gone.”

“I see. It’s a missing person case.”

“Uh-huh. Can you find her?”

I wanted to say yes. Instead I said, “When did you see her last?” as I flipped a steno book open and poised a pen over it.

“Yesterday. I left her in the backyard. I’m not s’pose to — Mommy told me and told me to take good care of her — but I forgot and then she wasn’t there anymore.”

“I see. What does she look like?”

She picked up the end of one of her braids, holding it delicately between her thumb and index finger, then drew it across her face, beneath her nose, like a plaited mustache. Apparently the gesture indicated she was engaged in thought. When she let go, the braid swung back into place and she spoke briskly. “Her hair’s red. Not red really, it’s more like orange but people always say red hair. That’s funny, isn’t it? It’s orange.”

“Red hair.” I wrote it down. “I guess it’s just a figure of speech. What about her eyes?”

“Blue.”

“Sounds pretty.”

“Oh, she is. She’s beautiful. Mommy’s real mad ’cause I lost her. She told me and told me I better take good care of her ’cause she cost — I don’t know how much — a whole lot.”

“Uh-huh. What was she wearing?”

“A blue dress made out of... like shiny stuff. With lace and a ribbon right here.” She touched the delicate hollow in her throat. “And white shoes but she didn’t have any socks on. Her socks got lost.”

“How long have you had her?”

“I got her for my birthday.”

“When was that?”

“July eight. I’m seven years old. I’ll be eight years old on my next birthday.”

“Uh-huh. About how big is... uh...”

“This big.” She held her hands about a foot apart. “Her name’s... well, her real name’s Megan Ann, but I call her Jennifer.”

I nodded solemnly, as if I followed the logic of that.

“Mommy doesn’t...”

I waited expectantly.

“She doesn’t like me to use that name.”

“Megan Ann? It’s a pretty name.”

She nodded, and for just a second I thought she was going to cry, then she abruptly said, “He said people pay you money.” She made it sound as though there just might be a little larceny in my soul.

“The police chief? Well, he’s right, I usually get paid, but — do you know what a sliding scale is?”

“There’s a slide in the playground.”

“This is different. A sliding scale means I charge different people different amounts. It depends on how much they can afford to pay me.”

She considered that briefly, then stood up and dug into her shorts pocket. She put some linty coins on my desk. Two quarters, one dime, seven pennies. Sitting down again, she said, “Is that enough?”

“That should do it.”

“Are you going to find her?”

“Well, I’ll try to. I can’t make any promises.”

She looked at the coins on the desk, apparently having second thoughts.

“I tell you what — I’ll work on a contingency basis. That means you only have to pay me after I find her. If I don’t find her, you don’t owe me anything.”

Her face brightened and she quickly returned the coins to her pocket.

“I need some more information before I can start looking. First, what’s your name?”

“Kristin Michelle Baker.” She spelled all three names for me, slowly, standing up and leaning over the desk to peer at the steno pad, checking my accuracy.

“What’s your address and phone number?”

“Um... one one seven South Twenty-first Street. Apartment H. It’s right over there.” She pointed vaguely eastward. “We don’t have a telephone.”

“Okay. You had a long walk to the police station.”

“It was hot.”

Her apartment building was two blocks east of my office and half a block south, an old building that had seen better days, many years ago. Her walk downtown would have taken her straight down Main Street to Seventh, where the police station was. From my office to the center of town, Main Street is lined with businesses and traffic is fairly steady. My building is at the end of the business district, though, and once you cross Nineteenth and head east, you’re in a neighborhood that’s as close to a slum as you can get in a small town. “Is your mom at work?”

“Um... Mommy doesn’t work anywhere.”

“So she’s at home?”

“She’s taking a nap.”

“I see. Well, Kristin, I’ll get started on this right away. Why don’t I walk down to Twenty-first Street with you?”

“I know how to go.”

“I just thought I’d keep you company. Just to the corner of Twenty-first, okay? I won’t go all the way to your building.”

I retied my shoes while she considered that. When I stood up, she abruptly — and a bit belatedly, I thought — asked if my name was Mr. Smith. I assured her it was. She nodded, then stood up and walked to the door. I followed her outside and we walked down to the corner, then continued east for two blocks. At the corner of Twenty-first and Main I waved good-bye as she headed south. I could see the front of the apartment building and I waited until she ran across the weedy front yard and disappeared from sight.

During our walk, I had asked a few more questions. Kristin had moved to town at Christmas time. It was just her and her mother. Daddy “went away.” She would be in second grade in the fall and liked school, except for the boys, who were, in her words, stupid and yukky. I didn’t take offense: To her, boys and men were two entirely different species. She had asked some kids in the neighborhood about the doll — Megan Ann, mysteriously nicknamed Jennifer — but no one admitted knowing anything about it. She wasn’t able to tell me the brand name, which pretty much eliminated my plan to replace the missing doll with an identical new one, thereby attaining hero status in Kristin’s eyes, not to mention earning sixty-seven cents.

Back at my office, I got rid of the gum and brushed the sour taste from my mouth. I like my bubble gum bubble-gum-flavored. After showering quickly, I dressed in cut-off jeans and a T-shirt, then drove down to the police station where the chief of police was sitting on the steps leading to the main door, a clipboard on one knee. I sat down beside him, saying, “Air conditioning on the fritz again?”

“Yeah, at least I can pretend there’s a breeze out here. Kristin Michelle Baker get to your office all right?”

“Yeah, I walked her down to Twenty-first. You keep sending me clients like her, I’ll have to file bankruptcy. You know anything about her mother?”

“Nope. Just that she oughta not let a little girl that age wander all over town by herself. Maybe she’s not so bad though. I offered Kristin a ride home and she told me her mama told her not to get in cars with strangers. Still, those blocks past your building aren’t the kind of place I’d want Philip the Second hanging around.”

“She lives there, Phil.”

“I know that. It’s just... somebody oughta be keeping an eye on her. I’m sure her mama doesn’t have any idea she walked all the way down here.”

“I took the case. Now what am I going to do?”

“Buy her a new doll.”

“She couldn’t tell me the brand or anything.”

“Well... talk to her mama.”

“I don’t know... A strange man wanting to buy her daughter a doll? She’ll think I’m a child molester.”

“Just explain it to her. She gives you any funny looks, have her give me a call. How’d the run go?”

“I made it all the way without keeling over.” I stood up and dusted off the seat of my shorts. “Maybe I will talk to her mother.”

On the way over, I spotted Kristin in a yard around the corner from her apartment building, playing with three other little girls. When Kristin’s mother opened the door, I regretted my decision to talk to her. Kristin’s birth had undoubtedly had an impact on the teen pregnancy statistics. Her mother wasn’t more than twenty-two or — three, a short woman with small features that seemed crowded together in the center of her face. Her face was extravagantly made up, her nails blood red, her long dark hair a thick mass of tight, spiraling curls. The cost of the perm alone would have paid for basic phone service for a few months. The front door opened directly onto a sparsely furnished living room.

“Mrs. Baker? My name’s—”

“Jeri Lynn,” she said, smiling perkily and winding one long spiral of hair around her index ginger. “ ‘Mrs. Baker’ sounds so old.” She leaned against the doorjamb, hip cocked.

“Jeri Lynn. My name’s—”

“Is this about the car? Look, I mailed a money order... um... oh, gee, two days ago?”

“No, I’m a private detective and I—”

“I just forgot about it. I mean, I had the money and everything, but I — a detective?” She took a step backward and seemed poised to flee. Her voice was harsh: “You’re a cop?”

“No, a private detective. My name’s Zachariah—”

“What do you want?” She fidgeted from foot to foot, her forehead creased.

“I met Kristin today and she told me about losing Megan Ann and I wanted to ask — ”

I was talking to a door. A slammed door. I knocked on it. Nothing happened. I knocked again, got the same response. From the rear of the house I heard a shout: “Kristin Michelle! You get home right this minute!”

Apartment H was on the south end of the eight-plex. I walked around the corner of the building and stood with my back against the wall, right next to an open window. I heard an electric fan with a rattle in its motor. If I heard a slap or a cry from Kristin, I planned to kick the door in. What I heard was the back door slamming, then Jeri Lynn Baker, speaking in a hoarse voice: “We’re going on a trip, Kristin, okay? Throw your clothes in here, just whatever’s in your drawers, okay? Hurry, Kristin. We gotta go quick.”

“Where are we going, Mommy? I was playing with—”

“Get your clothes.”

After that I heard drawers slamming and sobs that weren’t coming from a seven-year-old. Kristin said, “Mommy, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, honey. Just hurry, okay? That’s enough, we don’t need everything. Wait right here, okay?”

I heard nothing for a moment, then it sounded like the front door opened and then quietly closed again. A moment later, Jeri Lynn said, “Let’s go. Hurry. You don’t need that. I’ll get you another one. Let’s go, Kristin.”

“I wanna take him with me, Mommy.”

“Oh, for — all right, bring it. Now come on.”

I ran to the back of the building and then down the length of it and down the other side, ending up at the front corner of Apartment A, where some bushes provided a little cover. I crouched behind them and watched Jeri Lynn toss a bulging canvas suitcase into the trunk of a fifteen-year-old tan Toyota. Kristin was standing by the car, one hand fiddling with a braid, the other clasping a teddy bear.

“Get in, Kristin.” Jeri Lynn opened the passenger door and gave her daughter a little shove. Kristin got in the car and her mother ran around to the driver’s side, and a moment later they were heading down the street, the tailpipe clouding the air with blue haze. I ran to my car, an old Camaro that fit right in on this street.

As I drove, I fumbled with the catch on the dashbox, finally getting it open and pulling out my cellular phone. The Toyota had turned east on Main Street. I managed to hit the right buttons on the phone and got through to the police station.

“I need to talk to the chief. He was sitting out front a few minutes ago.”

“You know how hot it is in here, Zack? The air condi—”

“Get the chief. It’s urgent.”

“Ain’t it always? Hold on.”

The Toyota was two blocks ahead of me. Another few blocks and we’d be out of town and on a county road heading east. If she didn’t make any turns, she’d link up with Interstate 84. From there, she could head west toward Portland or she could go southeast and be in Idaho in not much more than an hour if she made good time.

Phil finally came on the line. “What’s up?”

I told him. He said, “What is it with you? Everything you do turns into some kind of major disaster. What do you want me to do? There’s no law against taking a sudden trip.”

“I don’t know, Phil. Can’t you stop her, check on the welfare of a minor, something like that?”

“You see her mistreat the kid?”

“No, but—”

“You got the license plate?”

I had committed it to memory before Jeri Lynn got in the car. I gave it to him and described the car. He said, “She’s going to be in county jurisdiction pretty quick and soon as she hits the Interstate, she’s in state trooper territory. I don’t know... I’ll see what I can do. Stick with her. I’ll call you back.”

When the phone rang again, we were on the Interstate, headed south, about a mile between us. Phil asked where I was, then said, “Okay, a state trooper’s going to pull her over on some pretext, but chances are they aren’t going to find any reason to hold her. They’re just checking to be sure the little girl’s okay. I don’t know what else I can do. She hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s got a driver’s license and a valid registration.”

Ten minutes later a state trooper streaked by in the fast lane. He changed lanes, slowed, and followed Jeri Lynn’s car for a mile or so before turning on his light bar. Both cars drifted into the breakdown lane and stopped. I drove past them. Jeri Lynn was out of the car, standing by the back bumper. The trooper was pointing at a rear tire, which did look a little underinflated. Jeri Lynn was nodding her head rapidly. I pulled onto the shoulder half a mile down the road and looked behind me. Jeri Lynn was still out of the car. The trooper was leaning inside the driver’s window, apparently talking to Kristin. A moment later, he walked back to his car. Jeri Lynn got back in hers, and soon after that, I heard them both drive past. I didn’t see them because I was looking the other way in case Jeri Lynn decided to check out the driver of the Camaro parked by the side of the road.

I’d followed the Toyota about five miles farther when the phone rang. Phil said, “The trooper says Kristin seems fine, told him all about her teddy bear and how she’s going to be in second grade next year and how her mama’s taking her to see some friends in Idaho. He didn’t see anything suspicious. Jeri Lynn was a little nervous, but getting pulled over by a cop does that to people.”

“Something’s wrong.”

“Tell me what and if it’s against the law, I’ll do something about it. You got plenty of gas?”

I did, but a trip to Idaho hadn’t been on my agenda. “Yeah, I guess I’ll stick with her. She has to stop sometime.”

“Just watch how you handle it. You don’t have any business hassling her either. Enjoy the drive.”

Jeri Lynn exited the Interstate in Baker, stopped at a gas station to have some air put in her rear tire, then pulled into the parking lot of a store across the street. Kristin got out of the car and followed her mother inside. They both looked hot and sweaty. I’d been traveling in air-conditioned comfort, but I bought a couple of sodas from a vending machine at the gas station in case I got thirsty. I was back in the car when Jeri Lynn and Kristin came out of the store, Jeri Lynn carrying a brown grocery bag and a six-pack of Pepsi.

She found the on-ramp to I-84 after a couple wrong turns. We headed southeast at a steady sixty miles per hour and before long we crossed the state line and entered Idaho.

I wondered how much money Jeri Lynn had. She’d pulled the old the-check-is-in-the-mail routine when she thought I was from the finance company, and Kristin said she didn’t have a job. Welfare payments don’t stretch too far. If she had a credit card it was probably maxed out, and a daddy who “went away” probably wasn’t paying child support. She wasn’t likely to have much cash. Unless she was dealing drugs, and that’s why she was on the run.

She had started to panic when she thought I was a cop, so she had to be up to something. Since she didn’t have any outstanding warrants, I figured it wasn’t the past she was running from, it was something in the present that she didn’t want the cops to find out about.

The phone rang thirty minutes later. “Where are you?” Phil asked.

“Approaching Boise.”

“I talked to her landlady. She’s lived there eight months, doesn’t always pay the rent on time but that’s the only problem. Strictly off the record, I checked out the apartment. She doesn’t have much and none of it’s illegal. What’d you say to her exactly?”

“Not much. She kept jumping to conclusions and interrupting me. First she thought I was there to repo the car, then I told her I’m a PI and she thought I was a cop and started getting fidgety and I told her I’m a private detective and tried to explain about the doll and she slammed the door in my face and five minutes later she was packed and running.”

“Doesn’t make any sense. Maybe she was already planning to leave before you got there.”

“No way. She was yelling at Kristin to get her clothes and throw them in the suitcase and she was crying, too.”

“Still doesn’t make any sense. You must’ve said something to set her off.”

“Honest, Phil, nothing. She barely let me get a word in edgewise anyway. I didn’t even have a chance to tell her why I was there before she shut the door. Any chance of finding out if she’s got family in Idaho?”

“I’ll give it a try. Talk to you later.”

When we reached Boise, she left the Interstate to fill up the tank, but instead of stopping at the first station, she drove around, checking prices I assumed, since she finally stopped at a no-frills gas station with prices a few cents lower than the others. I drove past and pulled into a full-service island at another station. While a kid in greasy coveralls topped off my tank and checked under the hood, I kept an eye on Jeri Lynn’s car at the station a block away. Jeri Lynn and Kristin had walked around the side of the building to the restroom.

When she finally left the station, she headed toward downtown instead of back to the Interstate. I’d second-guessed wrong and had to make an illegal U-turn in heavy traffic to follow her. Ten minutes later we were lost in downtown Boise. Jeri Lynn must have been confused when she left the gas station. Eventually she found the street we’d come in on and headed back toward the Interstate.

I was one car behind her when we stopped at a traffic signal near the gas stations we’d stopped at earlier. The driver of the blue pickup between us suddenly jerked his wheel hard to the right and drove into the parking lot of a hardware store. I swore under my breath. Behind me, the driver of a delivery truck tapped his horn, wanting me to move forward and fill up the gap left by the pickup. I saw Jeri Lynn’s head tilt up as she checked her rearview mirror. I bent my head down, hoping she couldn’t see me clearly. Behind me, the delivery truck’s horn blasted, loud and long. I sighed and drove forward. Jeri Lynn was looking into the mirror again. Just as the light turned green, she turned around in her seat to get a better look at me. We were close enough for me to see the shock in her eyes, the fear on her face. The driver behind me laid on his horn again. Jeri Lynn turned around and drove off.

During the mile-long drive back to the highway on-ramp we passed dozens of open businesses, several pay phones, a cop directing traffic around a fender-bender, and a patrol car parked in front of a donut shop. Help was all around, there for the asking, but Jeri Lynn wasn’t asking. She knew I was behind her, knew I had been following her for a couple hundred miles, but she wasn’t scared enough to get help. Or maybe she was too scared of what the cops might find out if she complained about a private eye following her across the country.

Thirty minutes later, the phone rang. “Where are you?” Phil asked, his voice fading in and out.

“Idaho.”

“You want to narrow it down a little?”

“I would if I could. She left 1-84 at Mountain Home. We’re on a two-lane blacktop heading north. I haven’t seen a road sign since we left Route 20 ten or fifteen miles back.”

“You’re heading up toward the Sawtooth Mountains?”

“Yeah. She knows I’m here, Phil.” I told him how Jeri Lynn had spotted me in Boise and chose to drive into the boonies with me on her tail rather than go to the cops.

“Interesting,” Phil said. “I haven’t come up with any relatives in Idaho. No one seems to know much about her. Look, you must have said something that scared her. Give it some thought. Talk to you later.”

I’d already given it plenty of thought but I went over my conversation with Jeri Lynn one more time. She thought I was there about the car, I told her I was a private detective; she got nervous, thinking I was a cop; I cleared that up; she didn’t seem particularly reassured; she asked me what I wanted; I started to explain about the doll; she slammed the door. When I heard her shouting for Kristin to come home, I’d assumed she was mad at the little girl for talking to me. But she hadn’t seemed mad at Kristin, she was just suddenly in a real big hurry to get away. Why? What did I say that set her off?

I suddenly remembered that I had used the doll’s name, thinking it would lend some credibility to my story. Megan Ann. But Kristin called her Jennifer because her mother didn’t like the other name. Didn’t like it? Was that what Kristin had said? No, her mother didn’t like her using the name. When I mentioned Megan Ann, I got a door slammed in my face. I thought that over for a few minutes, then I called Phil again. The transmission was weak, his voice faint and echoing so that his words seemed at times to overlap mine.

“Where did she live before? Did you find out?”

“Vacaville, California, but only for a couple months. San Jose before that.”

“How about seeing what you can find out from Vacaville.”

“Like what specifically? She doesn’t have a record and there aren’t any warrants out on her.”

“Find out how many children she had then.”

“How many children?”

“I used the doll’s name, Phil. Megan Ann, only Kristin calls her Jennifer because her mother doesn’t like her using Megan Ann. What if it was the name that upset her? I said something about knowing Megan Ann was gone.”

There was a moment of silence, then Phil said, “I’ll call Vacaville.”

He didn’t call back for almost an hour.

“Where are you now?”

“Still Idaho. We’re in the Sawtooth Mountains and she isn’t going anywhere in particular. She stays on Highway 75 for a while, then takes a side road that loops around and puts us back on 75 and then she takes another side road and does the same thing again. She’s just driving. She’ll be out of gas before long.”

“Okay. Here’s the bad news: The Vacaville cops checked with her landlord there. She had a husband and two kids — two little girls. He didn’t know their names. The other one was two or three years younger than Kristin, which means she’d be about four now. I talked to the landlady here again and to some of the neighbors. She never mentioned another kid to any of them. Looks like she misplaced her somewhere. You ready for the rest of the bad news?”

I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. The confirmation of my worst fears tends to do that to me. “Go ahead.”

“Vacaville’s got a file on an unidentified white female, age somewhere between three and four years, left in a nurse’s car in the parking lot of a hospital not too far from where Jeri Lynn lived. The body was found eight months ago. Just before Jeri Lynn showed up in Oregon. Cause of death was a bullet in the face.”

I told Phil I’d call him back as soon as I figured out where I was. I put the phone on the seat beside me and wiped my sweaty hand on my shorts, thinking of the fear on Jeri Lynn’s face when she spotted me. I must have been her worst nightmare come true, the past come back to haunt her, following her cross country, hot on her trail, breathing down her neck. Well, she deserved it, didn’t she? Possibly it was her husband who pulled the trigger, but what kind of mother would keep quiet about it and agree to leave her child’s body in a stranger’s car in a parking lot? I wondered if Kristin knew what happened to the real Megan Ann. Had she witnessed it? I hoped not.

The road we were on was narrow and winding with long switchbacks. A dense forest of pines climbed the hill to the right of the car; to the left was a steep drop-off. The Toyota was a hundred feet ahead of me, moving slowly, the brake lights constantly flashing as Jeri Lynn negotiated the sharp turns. Except for an occasional car passing by, we had the road to ourselves.

The Toyota’s brake lights suddenly lit up and the car stopped abruptly in the traffic lane. The passenger door opened and Kristin got out. Her mother leaned over and jerked the door closed, then hit the gas, the tires spewing up dust and gravel. Kristin turned away, covering her face for a moment against the cloud of dust, then she started plodding toward my car, head bowed, braids swaying by her chin, teddy bear dangling from one hand. When I rolled to a stop beside her, she simply opened the door and got in, not saying anything, just leaning her head back against the seat and closing her eyes. I fastened her seat belt, then drove off after the Toyota.

“What did your mother say?” I asked.

“She said you’re going to take me home.”

“Okay. Kristin, what happened to Megan Ann?”

“...Her name’s Jennifer.”

“I don’t mean the doll.”

Kristin didn’t answer. She chewed thoughtfully on a braid while I drove. I’d sped up a bit and the Toyota was only a couple car lengths ahead of me now. I called Phil again and told him I had Kristin. He asked if I’d spotted a helicopter yet. “The Idaho state police are looking for you. Might take them a while since I could only give them a rough idea where you are. Stick with her, okay?”

When I put the phone down, Kristin said, “She cried all the time. It gave Mommy a sick headache.”

“That must’ve made your mother mad. Megan Ann crying all the time.”

“It made her head hurt. Megan Ann wouldn’t stop crying. I told her and told her to stop but she wouldn’t.” She pressed the teddy bear against her face for a moment, hugging it tight.

At the crest of the hill, Jeri Lynn suddenly stuck her left hand out the window and let something drop on the road. A brown purse. Before I could decide whether to stop and pick it up, the Toyota’s left turn signal began to blink. There was nothing to the left. I watched, knuckles turning white on the steering wheel. The Toyota’s speed suddenly increased, the car moving quickly away from me on the downgrade, which ran straight for half a mile or so before veering off to the right. Jeri Lynn Baker was doing at least eighty when she made her left turn off the side of the mountain. I glanced at Kristin. She was resting her cheek on her teddy bear’s head, her face turned away from me.

I braked the Camaro a minute later, pulling as far to the right as I could, tree branches almost brushing the passenger side. “Stay in the car,” I said to Kristin. I ran across the street. The drop was steep enough that the upside-down Toyota looked like a discarded toy. As I watched, flames licked across the bottom of the car. I went back to my car and leaned in the window.

Kristin was staring straight ahead, a single tear trailing slowly down her cheek. I didn’t know if she’d seen her mother’s car go over the edge and I didn’t ask. I heard a distant flutter which quickly grew louder, turning into the brisk chopping sound of helicopter blades. The chopper came into sight ahead of us and swooped down into the canyon.

“She said... she said you’ll take me home, but... there’s nobody there. Daddy went away and Megan Ann got hurt bad and Mommy took her to the hospital...”

“Someone will take care of you, I promise. Wait here a minute, I’ll be right back.”

I jogged down the road and picked up the purse. Sticking out of it was a cylinder of stiff brown paper, part of the grocery bag. I unrolled it and smoothed it out as I walked back to the car. Jeri Lynn had written the note while she was driving, the words scrawled unevenly across the paper. I shot my daughter Megan Ann by accident and left her at a hospital in Vacaville in December. Kristin doesn’t know anything about it. She wasn’t there when it happened. She had signed her name and written the date beneath it.

The helicopter suddenly rose from the canyon and shot away. As the sound faded, I heard a siren, coming steadily closer. I went back to the car and slid behind the wheel. Kristin was hugging her teddy bear, staring at the sky where the helicopter had been. An Idaho state police car pulled up behind the Camaro. The trooper came to the driver’s side window and leaned down. I talked to him briefly, keeping my voice low, and gave him Jeri Lynn’s purse and the torn piece of grocery bag. When he headed to his car to use the radio, I turned to Kristin.

“We can find your father. Grownups have to work and pay taxes and things like that. We can find him. Did he... Did you get along with him okay?”

She nodded. “But he was mad at Mommy.”

“Because of what happened to Megan Ann?”

She nodded again, another tear rolling down her cheek. “He said Mommy had to tell, but she wouldn’t, so he went away. Mommy was mad at him. She said it was all his fault ’cause she told him and told him she didn’t want that gun in the house.”

I turned my head, looking away from Kristin Michelle Baker with her freckles and skinny braids and tear-stained cheeks. Gray smoke drifted lazily upward from the canyon where Jeri Lynn Baker’s car was burning. Driven to her death. The phrase repeated itself in my mind several times. The smoke formed a slender spiral, the top blowing off to the west and disappearing.

“I was just... I told Megan Ann she had to stop crying ’cause Mommy had a sick headache, but she wouldn’t stop. I was showing her some stuff, the stuff in Daddy’s drawer, so she’d stop crying.” I turned to look at her. “Is Mommy coming back?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.” After a moment, I added, “Sometimes... sometimes people have to go away even if they don’t want to.”

Kristin’s chin quivered. “It’s okay. Megan Ann got hurt bad and had to go to the hospital. She can’t come home yet. Mommy said she has to go take care of her.” She sighed and added, “She told me and told me not to play with that gun.”