to it, especially in the walls of missing children, that none of the other departments had, not even homicide. It wasn’t that homicide was lacking the desperation, but it was filled with other things, too. Anger, betrayal, passion. Missing Persons was bleak.
I stood in the doorway and realized that I could feel that desolation far more deeply than I ever had before. This was a good place for the new me to go if I ever decided I needed just a little push over the edge toward suicide.
“You coming or going, Joanne? Either way, make up your mind. You’re letting a draft in.” The woman who appeared from around the corner was dark-haired and attractive in a no-nonsense way.
“Hi, Jen. I was looking for you.”
“You’re not supposed to be here.” She came forward to shake my hand. Jennifer Gonzalez always shook hands when someone came into a room. For the first time I wondered if it gave her a sense about the person she couldn’t get from just looking at him.
“You psychic, Jen?” I asked. Her eyebrows rose.
“Don’t have to be psychic to know you got suspended. It’s all anybody’s been talking about since yesterday morning.”
“Well, it’s good to know I don’t even have to be here to destroy productivity. Morrison must be so pleased.”
“Morrison’s pretty shook up, especially with the high school yesterday. Give him a break, maybe.” Jen hitched one hip up onto a desk. “Whatcha got for me?”
“A semi-missing person.” I hesitated. “My life’s gotten a little weird this week, Jen…”
She pointed two fingers at my right cheek. “So I’ve heard. They’re taking bets on whether you’ve been assigned to visit the shrink yet.”
“Heh. Not yet.”
“Good, that’s where I put my money. All right, so who’s missing? I’ll trust it’s not you, missing your mind.” Jen’s eyes sparkled, just a hint of laughter. I smiled lopsidedly.
“I’m pretty sure I am, but I’m not looking for it right now.” I unfolded the enlargement I’d made of the missing Rider and handed it to her.
“This is a painting, Joanne.”
“That stunning grasp of the obvious is why they pay you the big bucks, right?” I leaned against another desk. “The kid on the gold horse is the one who’s missing.” I held my breath for a few seconds. “The problem is, I’m not sure if he’s real.”
“Well, he’s a she. Not that it’ll help if she isn’t real, but at least you’ll be looking in the right half of the population.” Jen handed the printout back to me, her eyebrows lifted in amused challenge.
I stared at her, then took the paper to stare at it. “How can you tell it’s a she?”
“Why do you think it’s a he? Look.” Jen leaned over the page and traced the line of the kid’s shoulders, then a fold in the fabric of his shirt. “It’s a teenager. The collarbone and shoulder are awfully delicate, even for a skinny boy. And her biceps are pressed in to make the line of the chest smooth on the outside, but the fabric’s filled out and wrinkles here like there’s flesh there. A boy skinny enough for that shoulder breadth almost certainly wouldn’t have anything like enough muscle mass to fill out the shirt that way, even if there wasn’t enough shadow below to indicate breasts. It’s an androgynous kid, but it’s a girl. When was this painted?”
I gaped at her and the painting, back and forth. Now that she’d pointed out the error of my ways, I could see the feminine traits, but left to my own devices, I’d have been looking for a boy until doomsday. “Uh.” I lifted my eyebrows, trying to remember. “I think it had a copyright date of last year.”
“All right. Assuming this is based on a real person, which, frankly, is a hell of an assumption, Joanne-”
“I know,” I interrupted. “But it’s all I’ve got to go on.”
Jen nodded. “Taking that assumption as writ, you’re looking for a girl somewhere between twelve and fifteen, maybe slightly older, probably not much younger. Now, also assuming she has a real life from which she is missing, when would she have gone missing?”
I shook my head. “I’m guessing any time from around the solstice up till…today. I don’t know.”
Jen studied me. “You’re not making this easy, Joanne. Can you tell me why you’re not sure this girl is even real?”
I wrinkled up my face, then dropped my chin to my chest. It took more than a minute to nerve myself up to talking again. “The other visible riders in the painting are real. Based on real people, I mean. But they’re not…” The only person I’d said this to so far, at least in a straight-forward fashion, was Billy. I’d snapped at Morrison, but I never expected him to believe me. I discovered that I desperately wanted Jen to believe me, but I knew in her position I never would have. “They’re not human,” I said very quietly.
Jen was silent. I stuck my jaw out, setting my teeth together, then forced myself to look up at her. She had an expression of sympathy that was worse than outright mockery. “Look, I’m really not crazy-”
She held up a hand, then took the paper back. “I’ll put out a bulletin to see if anyone matching the description has gone missing in the past two weeks. Are the eye and hair color accurate?”
I took a breath. “The coloring for other people in the painting is dead on, so I think hers is, too. So yeah.”
“Okay.” Jen glanced at the clock. “It’ll probably be ten or so before I get anything back, maybe even later. Want to meet me for coffee around then?”
I managed a weak smile. “Thus getting me out of here before Morrison sees me? Yeah. Around the corner?”
Jen nodded. “Yeah. Make it ten-thirty. Do you have a cell phone?”
I shook my head. “I’ll call around ten-fifteen to make sure we’re still on.”
“Okay. See you in a couple of hours.” Jen picked up a sketchpad from a desk and went back around the corner. I stood where I was for a minute, pressing my lips together. I wanted to ask why she believed me, but I was afraid she’d say she didn’t. I decided I’d rather not know I was being humored, and edged to the door, cautiously tugging it open. Would skulking around draw attention, or should I brazen it out and try to slip past Morrison that way?
Having worked myself up into a fine dither, I opened the door farther and peeked out.
“You’re causing a draft!” Jen shouted a few seconds later. Guilty, I slipped into the hall and closed the door behind me.
Rather anticlimactically, I made it all the way to the garage entrance-the back way in-without encountering the Dread Morrison, whom I’d worked up as being nearly as bad as Cernunnos, by now. Nearly. Despite not knowing anything about cars, Morrison had never stuffed a sword into my ribs, and that had to count for something.
“Here, hey, can I help you?” A blond guy a couple years older than I was stood up from behind a car, a tire iron held behind his shoulders like Bo’s baseball bat. I froze, then scowled.
“Did they hire you about three months ago?”
“Sure did. If you’re here about the computer loan, I swear the check’s in the mail.”
I looked down at myself. I never thought I looked like a bill collector before. Did bill collectors wear jeans and sweaters on the job? Maybe they did. “Actually,” I said to my feet, and looked up again, “I’m a mechanic.”
There was a phone in the garage I worked at in college that whoever was closest was supposed to answer. Whenever I did, the person on the other end would always ask to speak to a mechanic. Whenever I said I was one, there was always a long deadly silence, no matter if the caller was male or female. The blond guy produced the same kind of long deadly silence. I se riously considered kicking him. “No,” I said, “really. They gave you my job.”
His eyes widened. “You’re Joanie?”
Wasn’t that nice? They talked about me enough for him to know my name. “I’m Joanie,” I agreed. “You’re…?”
“Incompetent, compared to you, I guess. Do me a favor, won’t you, and walk on water. The guys’ve been swearing you can do it.”
Somehow, I didn’t think I had a new friend here. “Only at Easter. Sorry if they’ve been giving you a rough time.”
He gave me an unfriendly look. “It got worse a couple days ago. When you got back.”
