about you?”
He reached behind his back and twisted the handle on the door. The large office was empty, except for the sound of the steel wheels.
It was smartly outfitted in the finest of wood finishes. And like a fancy yacht, everything was built into the walls of the windowless car so that it would be difficult for objects or furniture to be dislodged by the motion of the rocking train. There were several desks and a row of filing cabinets. Brass fittings were mounted on every drawer, more likely to secure them in place than to protect from intruders — like the two of us.
“Snap some photos, will you, Coop?” Mike asked. “We may need to come back to this later on.”
He waited until I aimed my phone for a few shots, then pulled back the heavy arm of the car’s exit as we made our way carefully onto the next platform.
There was a single door on the right-hand side of the long car. On the wall adjacent to it, a small whiteboard was affixed, and someone had written eight names — many of them foreign-sounding — in alphabetical order. The men and women who occupied this suite were a mix of Italian and Spanish, Russian and Czech, French and Hungarian, with a couple of Americans thrown in.
Mike opened the door and we entered. Directly opposite was a small cubicle — like a tiny college dorm room with a bed, dresser, and desk — occupied by a striking, raven-haired woman dressed in a sweatsuit. I’d guess she wasn’t much older than twenty-five.
“Hey, guys. What’s up?” she asked. Her back was supported by three pillows, none of which disturbed the well-lacquered beehive updo atop her head. She was balancing a hardcover astrology book on her knees. “Who are you?”
She seemed amused and curious about our presence, not concerned.
Mike showed her his shield and identified himself.
“Awesome!”
“We’re with Missing Persons, Ms. Cooper and me. We’re looking for a young woman who went missing.”
It was a long-standing police department tactic. People were always much more willing to cooperate to find someone who may have just run away than become ensnared in an ugly murder investigation.
“You think she’s with us? No way.”
“Mind if we talk?”
“Sure. Mr. Delahawk says—”
“Yeah, we met him on the way in.”
She leaned over and patted the end of her bed, and Mike sat down, motioning me to the desk chair. “I’m Kris. Kristin Sweeney.”
Not from the long line of European circus families, I guessed, as so many of the performers with foreign names might be.
“You a Cowboys fan?” Mike asked. There was a poster over the bed of the Dallas football team, autographed by many of the players.
“Can’t grow up in Spur, Texas, and root for anyone else. I was a cheerleader for them before I took this job.”
“Awesome,” Mike said, smiling back at Kristin, and I knew he meant it sincerely. “Hard act to follow. What are you now? A lion tamer?”
She giggled, pushing the book aside and wrapping her arms around her knees. “I’m a stunt rider. Bareback, acrobatics, leap through fiery hoops. All that kind of stuff.”
“I’ll have to buy a ticket for tomorrow’s show,” Mike said. “I’ve spent most of my life trying to find a girl who can jump through fiery hoops. How long you been with the circus?”
“I joined up last fall, in Florida. Had to go to school all summer before that. Circus school.”
“Have any new girls been around lately?”
“New girls? Doing what? I mean we always bring on some locals — you know, as ushers or ticket takers. But I don’t have anything to do with any of them.”
“I wouldn’t think so, you being a pro and all.”
I might as well have been on another planet. Mike seemed totally taken with his Dallas cheerleader. Maybe it was the bareback thing.
“There must be lots of guys hanging out at the stage door for you, Kristin.”
“Yeah, if you’re into twelve-year-olds,” she said with a laugh. “Not so much as you’d think.”
“And girls, looking to hook up with guys?”
“Occasionally.”
“Anyone been coming around named Naomi since you’ve been at the Garden?”
“Nope.”
“Ursula? Or Chat — short for Chastity?”
“I’d remember that one for sure,” she said. “Are all these girls missing? That’s so weird. But then, my mother warned me that New York was like that.”
“Not usually. Not with me on the job.”
“People always joke about running away to join the circus, but that’s not how this works, Mike. There’s all kinds of training before anyone gets hired. We don’t pick up any strays along the way. We’re a family, is what we are.”
“Tell me about this family, Kris. We got a long ride ahead of us tonight.”
“You both coming to Providence?” she asked, shooting me a sidelong glance.
“Yeah. What should we know?”
Kristin Sweeney was practically gushing now. “So, think of this as an apartment building. Like, thirty-five stories tall, except it’s horizontal. The only thing we don’t have is a zip code.”
And, I guessed, a police department.
“Doesn’t look like you have any privacy,” I said. “Eight of you to a suite? No bathroom?”
“There are just a few cars like this. Works fine if you’re single, like I am.”
“Who gets to ride the train?” Mike asked.
“The artists, of course. Cooks and stagehands and prop guys. Mechanics and electricians. Elephants, horses, wild animals. The costume lady and all our glitz. Cast and crew, Detective. We’re all here.”
“Some of the rooms are larger?”
“Yeah. Some of the couples have their own little apartments. They bring their kids along, or their in-laws. Flat-screen TVs and toilets and all that. Kitchenettes, which is something I miss a lot,’cause I enjoy cooking. The rest of us eat in the Pie Car. That’s what it’s called, but it’s really a diner. Mr. Delahawk even has an electric fireplace in his suite.”
“You like this kind of life?” Mike asked.
“I like it fine, for now. Better than what was waiting for me home in Spur after my cheerleading days were over. Better than circus life used to be, moving from hotel to hotel, always packing and unpacking. I’ve made friends here. I said it’s like family, right? Well, for me it’s better than hanging with most of my family.”
“How about the guys, Kris? You know all of them?”
“I sure do. It’s not like I date any of them, if that’s where you’re going. Most of us in the troupe are pretty young. Hardly anybody over thirty-five. We work together, we live together. Spend a lot of time with each other. Some of them have grown up in this business, Mike. They’ll have kids who’ll be Ringling babies.”
Kristin Sweeney stopped talking and pointed at me. “She’s looking at me like it’s all strange, what we do. It’s not. It’s really not.”
“That’s not what I was thinking,” I said. “I apologize. Your life sounds really interesting to someone like me who sits at a desk a lot of the time.”
I was actually thinking how lucky we were to get such a cooperative talker in the first room at which we stopped. And trying to remember the last time I’d spent a full day at my desk.
“You ride this train from town to town?” Mike asked.
“All over the country.”
“Can you — do you — ever get off?” Mike asked. “Have you been into Manhattan on your own?”
“Oh, sure. They run a shuttle bus for us, almost wherever we go, so we can get around. And there’s a flatbed freight train that travels behind us. It’s got some motorcycles and cars on it. Lots of guys use those for their
