The Last Good Guy

4

Her home was a forties beach bungalow on Myers Street in Oceanside just a few blocks from the Transportation Center. The fence around it was wrought iron and the gate swung quietly. The front yard was drought-proof gravel with pots of succulents and sturdy geraniums. There was one Mexican fan palm, tall and thin and needing a haircut. The slat cottage was mint green with white trim, and the porch had an oval rug for a welcome mat.

Penelope held open the screen door and I stepped into the living room. Her eyes were swollen and bloodshot. Baggy cargo pants and a black T-shirt. Ball cap, makeup gone.

“We’re going to get her back,” I said.

“I need more than words from you.”

“Darrel Walker is a tough detective, and every agency knows what happened.”

“My sister is abducted by murderers and you tell me how tough the cops are?”

“They’ll do what they have to, and so will we.”

“Meaning what? Meaning fucking what?”

She stared up at me for a long moment, a festival of pained emotions playing across her face. She balled her fists and shut her eyes and mouthed a silent string of words that I could make no sense of. It went on for a bit. A calming mantra, maybe. Or a prayer. Or a curse.

Then she took a deep breath. Her eyes and fists opened. “I shall now control myself. Penelope is in control again. See?”

“I need to take a look at Daley’s room.”

“Then I will take you to her room. I’m sorry for my anger.”

“I feel some of that, too.”

“I’m ninety percent lover and ten percent killer,” she said.

“I’m German-English.”

She studied me through a thicket of suspicion. “You have an unusual sense of humor. Here, a list of friends, and how you can contact them.”

I pocketed the sheet of paper as she led me down a narrow hallway. Then a right turn into Daley’s room. Good light coming through the window. An unmade bed, pink everything. A plush floor rug with dalmatian puppies romping. A mirrored closet, stuffed with clothes, sliding door half open. One wall with pop-star posters taped askew — Beyoncé and Selena, Justin and Bruno. An acoustic guitar propped in a corner, a nice Gibson. Another wall had been entirely painted in the blackboard finish popular with students, and apparently Daley had taken a serious shine to it: many-colored chalk swirls, yellow creatures with compound eyes, blue ponies with flowing orange-and-red tails, armies of tiny white ants marching over black, The Scream repeated several times in varying sizes, all faithfully re-created in violet and chartreuse.

From dalmatians to Munch, I thought. Part little girl and part “easily distracted” teenager. And what else?

Penelope allowed me to search Daley’s room and her bathroom, which was just across the hall. I found no drugs, prescription or otherwise, no paraphernalia, no alcohol or tobacco. No birth control. There were more than a few energy-drink cans in the wastebaskets. She liked the same candy I do, anything with peanuts and chocolate, and plenty of it. No backpack.

On her desk were two small stacks of notebooks dedicated to different subjects from the previous school term. Her handwriting was sleek and aggressive, nothing like her sister’s. Six books, stacked on top of one another, big to small: the Bible, the Twilight saga, the diary of Anne Frank. And a bright collection of ceramic Día de los Muertos skulls and colorful folk-art crosses. The center desk drawer was a tangled wad of cords and adapters.

The shower and bathroom counter were crowded with hair and skin products. Penelope told me that in addition to clothes and a few toiletries, and her carry-on rolling luggage, Daley had taken her laptop and a Martin Backpacker guitar that Penelope had bought her for her twelfth birthday. She played and wrote songs.

“Is she on social media?” I asked.

“I don’t allow it.”

“Does she have a smartphone?”

“Of course,” said Penelope. “The child security software has never worked properly, but I examine it every night before she goes to bed. As agreed. I check it covertly, too. I prowl her friends’ sites on my phone for signs of her. She’s good to her word — no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram.”

“Telegram or Snapchat?”

“No social media. It’s a gateway technology.”

“Gateway to what?” I asked.

“The evil in the world.”

Of course evil predated social media by a few hundred thousand years, but what would have been my point?

“I learned a few things at her school that you should know about,” I said.

On my way out of the room I saw what looked like kick marks on the inside of Daley’s bedroom door. I stopped and felt the doorknob’s outside lock.

“I lock her in her room at times,” said Penelope. “Very reluctantly and very rarely. She doesn’t care for it.”

We sat at a small oak table in the dining area. From there I could see the living room, separated from the kitchen by a half-wall, and some of the front yard through the screen door. I watched the bikers and skateboarders and runners, and the steady parade of drivers heading home from their late-summer day at the beach.

“What can you tell me about Alchemy 101?” I asked.

“An Oceanside teen club. Daley likes it there.”

“Do you like her there?”

“So long as I know where she is. I’ve been to it. The security is adequate.”

“Do you know how she gets there?”

She gave me a skeptical look. “What do you mean?”

I told her what Alanis and Carrie had said about Connor and Eric, the silver SUV, and the rides to Alchemy 101 after school. How they just dropped the girls off and let them find their own ways home. How the men loosely fit an eyewitness description of Daley’s escorts, who arrived and departed Nick Moreno’s house in a silver Expedition.

“No. No, I don’t know of these men.” I saw the shame cross her face.

“People lie to me all the time,” I said. “Even when I want to believe them.”

“You seem too cynical for that.”

“It’s a weakness in my line of work, hoping that people are telling the truth. It usually doesn’t last long.”

While those maybe cynical words hung in the air I studied the small house, the worn hardwood floors and beach-rental furniture. Bare white walls. Tattered, poorly fitted blinds. An orange-and-red plaid couch, a cheap wooden side table, and a knockoff Tiffany lamp. A flimsy-looking wicker stand loaded with photos. Two blue director’s chairs. A boom box on a sideways orange crate on the living room floor, some paperbacks and CDs propped inside.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

“A year. We rarely stay in one place for long.”

“Because Richard is a Marine pilot?”

“Yes, as I told you,” she said. “So Miramar for now. A Second Marine Aircraft Wing instructor. The Top Gun days are over at Miramar, but don’t tell Richard that.”

“I was One MEF,” I said. Which is the First Marine Expeditionary Force that led the charge in Fallujah. We were aided by the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, which was headquartered at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, then and now.

“Oh?” she asked. “MEF? I’m sorry but I can’t keep up with Marine Corps acronyms.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. But it did. “Is he in town now, your husband?”

“He’s out at Fallon for a few days. Nevada.”

“How is his relationship with Daley?”

A cool drift into her eyes. “Excellent. She has only a few memories of Dad. Richard is her father figure. There are uncles on both Mom’s and Dad’s sides, but, well, we moved around a fair amount. The three of us.”

She retrieved a small brass picture frame from atop the kitchen refrigerator, handed it to me. Penelope, Daley, and a Marine pilot in his flight suit, all standing in front of an F-16. Smiles, wind in their hair, all three wearing aviator sunglasses. A happy moment.

“When did you and Richard marry?”

“November sixth, 2011. It was the happiest day of my life. When your husband is career, you go where they throw you.”

I nodded, setting the picture on the table between us. My father had been career and we had gone where they threw us for years. Then he retired, but came back to consult for three times the salary and none of the deployments, transfers, and reassignments.

“How is your relationship with Richard?”

“Very good, thank you. Why do you ask?”

“To understand the forces in Daley’s life.”

“The strongest force in Daley’s life is Daley.”

“You described her as precocious but capable of making bad choices,” I said.

“A textbook fourteen-year-old, I would say.”

I wasn’t sure there was such a thing. “The precocious part worries Chancellor Stahl,” I said. “She says that Daley has had three ‘interactions’ with much older boys in the two years she’s been at Monarch.”

“She’s still a virgin,” said Penelope. “I spend tremendous amounts of psychic and physical energy making sure of that. I always have very pointed discussions with Daley’s male friends. I scare them. Maybe because my ten percent killer shows through. I know I can’t keep her protected forever. I’m doomed to fail, but I think Daley is worth the fight. Fourteen is too young. When I was that age I was happy. I loved horses and my girlfriends. I was still innocent.”

I nodded but wondered if innocence had already passed Daley Rideout by. Nick Moreno had died and Daley had left with the men who killed him. Without apparent struggle or coercion. The girl and the men looked okay with each other.

Penelope stood quickly when her phone rang, took it from a rear pocket, and looked down at the screen. “Richard,” she said. “I need to take this.”