Only Child

Sanitation Department takes a pass. Between the scrap-metal scavengers, the flea-market restockers, and the homeless guys pushing their pirated shopping carts, nothing worth a nickel survives.

But, out there, all I could see was dregs nobody would touch, anywhere—a few empty forty-ounce malt liquors, a couple of screw-top wine bottles, a slab of tread from a truck tire, one aluminum leg from a kitchen chair, a crushed pack of Newports, strewn condoms, a torn potato-chip bag....

I knew the condoms were recent—they would have been the first thing bagged and tagged by the forensics crew if they’d been there when the body had been discovered.

It was a pretty good spot for people who were too crazy, or too smart, for the homeless shelters. Close enough to the airport to make Dumpster-diving productive, with plenty of natural cover to keep you through the weather with the help of a few artfully rigged plastic garbage bags. The cops would have scoured the area. Not just for traces of the killer’s vehicle, but for any signs of campfires, lean-tos, cans of food...anything to show people were living out there. In the jungle, the birds see everything. Getting them to sing on cue, that’s the tricky part.

Nothing in Wolfe’s paper showed they had found anyone to talk to, but that didn’t mean nobody had been around at the time the killer had dropped off his garbage. If anyone from a homeless camp had seen a body being dumped, they would have just nomaded on out of there, quick.

But if the area was inviting enough, maybe some of the old residents would have drifted back over the past few months.... At least that’s what I was hoping for.

It turned out like most of my hopes.

In books, the detective stands at the spot where the victim was killed and makes a promise to her—seems like it’s always a woman—that he’ll find the murderer.

I didn’t feel anything. And I didn’t make any promises.

“I know street kids,” I told Michelle. “I know where they go, even why they go. I can tell the weekenders from the permanents. I know where they shelter up when they have to. They’re like a...species, I guess. There’s a food chain, predators and prey. They’ve got their own look. Their own mating habits, their own survival systems. I can always find some of them, tap into their communications.”

Michelle touched one perfect cheek with a long, red-lacquered nail, saying nothing. She’d never seen her son Terry before the night I’d finessed him off a kiddie pimp in Times Square. But she’d adopted the kid in less time than it would take a sperm to merge with an egg. Terry had never seen the pimp again.

I had.

“Some things never change, girl. You drop a dope fiend into a strange city, how long’s it going to take him to find a slinger? It’s like that for me with runaways. I was one of them once. It’s easy—too fucking easy, sometimes—for me to put myself right back there, in my mind.”

“But...?”

“But there’s no street kids in that town where she came from. I mean, there’s probably the equivalent of some kind, but they’re not on the streets, see?”

“They’re all in cars?”

“No. That’s not it. Sure, out there, the cars are the drivers—everyone’s social status rolls on wheels. But that’s got nothing to do with what I mean.”

“Small towns...”

“It’s not the size, honey. I’ve been in little towns that make Vegas look like Amish country.”

“Border towns, I know. But when there’s money...”

“Not that, either. There’s lots of ways to join the street-kid army, but they’re not all draftees. Where you come from doesn’t matter so much as why you’re there...and what you’re willing to do to hold your place. Plenty of kids of rich families are eating out of garbage cans and selling their bodies.”

“My bio-parents had money,” Michelle said, saying it all.

“You see where I’m going with this, then. The kids I could connect with, they’re not still in that town. They’re here. Or out on the coast. What difference? It’s all the same place.”

“I know, baby,” she said. “You know I do.”

“But even if there’s any runaways from Vonni’s town here, I couldn’t find them,” I told her.

“Her mother, she’d know the girl’s closest friends, right?”

“Yeah, I think she would. I know when there’s secrets, and I didn’t smell any in that house. But I guess I could try just asking her, if...”

“If what?”

“If I can’t figure out a way to bring them to me.”

“Her friends?”

“Not just them, Michelle. The whole...environment.”

“The police...”

“They’ve been over the ground, sure. But they don’t know how to take soil samples the way we do.”

“You have any ideas?”

“Not yet, I don’t. I’ve been...studying them from a distance, I guess you could say. The mother gave me one place I think I could try.”

“A hangout?”

“No. A woman. Vonni used to babysit her kid.”

“What makes you think she knows anything?”

“Not her. The kid. The way I read Vonni’s mother, no way she’d let her daughter have boys over without supervision. But when the girl was babysitting...”

“Kids don’t miss much,” Michelle said, agreeing.

“Hazel said you’d be calling,” the woman said.

“Yes, ma’am. Then you know what my job is. Would you be willing to talk to me?”

“If you think it will do any good...”

“There’s no way to tell without trying,” I said. “Okay?”

The house was quite a bit downstream the status river from where Vonni had lived—a small, squarish tract house, squatting undistinguished in a tight cluster of identical boxes. The front lawn was a crabgrass-and-dandelion postage stamp. The sidewalk was cracked. A clapped-out once-blue Monte Carlo was parked out front.

The woman who opened the door was sweet-faced, with a mop of tightly curled hair the color of fresh rust, and lively blue eyes. She was about six inches shorter than me, and ten pounds heavier, wearing a bright-yellow sweatshirt and jeans.

“Hi!” she said.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. McClellan.”

“Oh, please! Call me Lottie. Everybody does,” she said, stepping aside to let me in.

“Is the kitchen all right?” she asked, seeing me hesitate.

“It’s fine,” I told her. “I just didn’t want to barge in....”

“Your mother raised you right,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, maintaining the myth.

“Lottie,” she reminded me, pointing to a kitchen table with a pink Formica top.

“Burke,” I said, offering her a hand to shake.

“Irish! I’ll bet we’re cousins, somewhere back on the Emerald Isle.”

“Scotch, actually,” I told her, straight-faced.

“Ah, well. I’m not clannish. You may be Scotch, but I’ll bet you fancy an Irish coffee now and then,” she said, the smile so at home on her face that I knew it was a permanent resident.

“I do, that’s a fact,” I lied. “But never while I’m working.”

“Well, suit yourself. And tell me how I can help you.”

“Mrs. Greene called you...?”