'This is not official business,' she told him.
'That's cool,' he said.
'I just need to find her.'
'Like I said, why?'
'Frankly, I don't have the authority to go into that. I can only say that she may have seen something with a direct bearing on an ongoing investigation.'
Without answering her, he picked up his coat, hat, gloves, and scarf and took them through a doorway. She heard a mild clatter of clothes hangers, and he came back, running both hands through his hair.
'You want some tea? Or there's instant coffee,' he offered.
'Um, sure, thanks. Instant's fine.'
He went back through the door. This time, she heard water running into a pot and the click of a switch turning on, and then he was back again.
'You know,' he said, 'if you're going to ask deceitful questions, you really ought to wear glasses or a fake mustache or something. Your face has been on the news.'
'As I said, this is not an official inquiry.'
'I'm a law student, and I can guess how close to illegality you're walking.'
Kate stepped back and looked at him, and rapidly shoveled her original impressions of him out into the melting snow. She smiled wryly and held out her hand.
'Kate Martinelli.'
'Peter Franklin,' he said, and shook her hand. 'What is it you're after?'
'A girl on your bus. She was taking pictures of the other passengers; there's a tiny chance she may have caught someone in the background.'
'The Strangler himself? Lavalle?'
'He's denying any connection with Jules Cameron's disappearance,' Kate said, which was the truth, although not in the way Franklin would hear it. 'I want to pick up evidence while it's still fresh. If you're a law student, you're probably aware of how fast memories fade, how easy it is for evidence to become compromised.'
The mild flattery got through. He nodded, started to speak, and was cut off by the whistle of the kettle in the next room, building to a shriek.
He chipped some coffee out of an encrusted jar, dropped a piece into a mug, and poured on the hot water. Milk was added to hers, honey to his straw-colored herbal tea, and Kate resumed.
'I could get a warrant if you think it's necessary,' she said, feigning assurance.
'I don't know if it would help,' Franklin said, blowing across the top of his steaming cup. 'We don't really keep passenger lists.'
'Oh Christ.' Kate set the cup down so hard, the foul ersatz coffee slopped onto the counter. 'Why didn't you just tell me that to begin with?'
'Whoa, lady. Would you rather I just said, Sorry I can't help you. Piss off?'
'Isn't that what you're saying?'
'No.'
'Do you have a passenger list?'
'Not a passenger list. We keep records of the reservations made, but those are all along the line of 'Pick up Joe and Suzanne at the truck stop.''
'No names or phone numbers?'
'It's not an airline.'
'This doesn't sound very hopeful,' she said aloud.
'Look, do you want to find your girl with the camera or not?'
'That's why I came here, but you just said —'
'Christ on a cross,' he said to himself, turning away to a filing cabinet. 'No wonder crimes never get solved.'
Kate became belatedly aware that this was probably the most incompetent interview she had ever conducted. Franklin pulled a file from the drawer, pulled up the one in front to mark its place, and came over to her, laying it on the counter and opening it.
'Now, what was the date?'
'The twentieth. What is that?'
'The list of drivers.'
'You think the driver might remember one girl?' Kate said dubiously.
'Our trips aren't like Greyhound. We have two drivers on all the time, and even on the straight-through trips there's a lot of interaction. We arrange a picnic, stop at a hot springs, that kind of thing - it can be more a brief impromptu tour than just a form of transportation, and the driver is a part of it. Portland, you say. Going which way?'
'Northbound.'
He reached under the counter and came out with a piece of scratch paper, a recycled flyer of some sort torn neatly in quarters. He wrote a name and a seven-digit phone number on it, turned a few pages in the file, and wrote another name and number, this one with a 312 area code.
'That close to Christmas, we run four buses instead of two up and down, but there's only one that might've been there on the twentieth. That was Sally's bus. These are the drivers' numbers - No, wait a minute. Was that when B.J. had the brake problem?' He read on, then nodded. 'Right, we had a delay and therefore a bit of an overlap. I'll give you their numbers, too.' He wrote down a pair of names and numbers, one local and the other in the 714 area. Then he closed the file and went over to put it back in its drawer.
'One of these numbers is in L.A.,' Kate noted. 'Where is this other one?'
'Chicago. He just came out to drive the Christmas season. The local ones are between here and Tacoma.' These were for Steven Salazar - Sally - and B.J.'s partner.
God, thought Kate in despair, if I can't do this over the phone, the airfares are going to kill me.
She pushed the thought from her mind and gave Franklin a look that was confident and grateful. She held out her hand.
'Thank you.'
'I hope it helps,' he said, his casual attire clashing strangely with the taut look on his face. 'It's cases like these that make me question my opposition to the death penalty.'
TWENTY-ONE
Four phone calls, four blanks drawn: All the drivers were out, presumably driving; two of them were expected back either tonight or tomorrow; another tomorrow night; the third, nobody knew where he was, hadn't seen him in a couple of weeks. Out again with the photographs, to soup kitchens and emergency shelters. She avoided the police, which would have involved uncomfortable explanations, telling herself that the police had already conducted their search for Jules Cameron.
Back to the hotel for phone calls to two drivers, one partner, and a lover. One driver had yet to surface and the other would be home at midnight Chicago time, but Kate was told that she'd damn well better not call then, because after a week on the road, the driver would have better things to do than talk on the phone. Al sounded as he had on Saturday, holding on by a mere thread; she told him nothing of what she was doing. Lee was patient and the conversation was short.
Tuesday morning, she caught the Chicago driver at home, but no, he had not pulled into that particular rest stop south of Portland a few days before Christmas.
Tuesday afternoon, three more people told Kate that the girl in her photograph looked familiar, but one was so stoned, Kate didn't think his eyes actually came to a focus, and the other two were helpful and vague and suggestable.
Tuesday evening, she reached the driver Sally. He agreed with his co-driver in Chicago that they had gone through the Portland area at roughly that time, but they had not shepherded their charges to the rest stop near the river.
This left the driver nobody could locate, and B.J. Montero, in the Anaheim area of the Los Angeles sprawl. B.J. was a woman, and her boyfriend worked a graveyard shift and had not been pleased at Kate's initial phone call.
