“You kept your cool. Didn’t volunteer anything you shouldn’t. Not easy when you’re facing a man with a rifle. Now, think you can get us back to the cabins before I bleed to death?”
“You bet I can.”
Ren smiled to himself with the pleasure that came from fair praise, and he guided them swiftly home.
32
M uddy Waters was on Main Street in downtown Marquette. It was a long, narrow room with high-backed booths like church pews along one side and tables along the other and a counter far at the back. Light came from the front window and from lamps in the ceiling, and there was a dim, intimate feel to the place. It smelled of strong brew and cigarettes.
They found the kid whose name was George but whom Charlie referred to simply as G.
“G hangs at Muddy Waters,” she’d said. “He drinks coffee, smokes, writes. He says he’s going to write a book just like some other famous guy who bummed around and wrote a book.”
“Kerouac?” Jewell had said.
The girl shrugged her shoulders. “Dunno.”
G was all arms and legs, lanky, awkward looking, sprawled on one side of a booth toward the back. He wore his hair in dreadlocks that fell like ropes over his face as he bent to scribble in a cheap wire-bound notebook. An empty cardboard coffee cup sat at his elbow. Smoke curled up from a cigarette wedged between the fingers of his left hand. He wrote with his right, using a Bic ballpoint. Jewell pegged him at seventeen, maybe eighteen years old.
“G,” Charlie said.
The kid looked up. His eyes were sharp blue, his face the color of coffee full of cream. “Charlie. Whazzup?”
“Can we sit?”
“Who’re they?”
“Like, friends.”
He took a drag off the cigarette while he considered the two women. He waved his hand toward the high- backed bench on the other side of the table. Dina and Jewell sat there. He took a stuffed backpack off the bench where he sat and dropped it at his feet to make room for Charlie. He slid his notebook aside.
“I’m Dina,” Dina said. “This is Jewell.”
“Social workers?” G asked.
Dina shook her head. “Like Charlie said, just friends.”
G put his right arm across the bench back behind Charlie and turned his blue eyes on her. “Haven’t seen you in a while. Things between you and your old man must be okay.”
“He’s dead.”
G took the news without any visible reaction. “Sorry.” He considered his cigarette. “On the other hand, maybe not. You okay?”
“Yeah. But they think I did it.”
“No shit?” His cigarette hand moved toward his mouth. “Did you?”
Charlie slugged him in the side, not hard enough to hurt. He looked at the women. “Not social workers, huh? Cops?”
“No.”
“They’re trying to help me,” Charlie explained.
“So what are you doing here?” he asked her.
“G, Sara is dead.”
That hit him hard. The diffidence he’d affected cracked and as the pieces of that facade fell away the face of a hurt child emerged. “You’re lying.”
“No. Swear.”
“Fuck.” He threw his cigarette into the empty cup. “How?”
“Somebody killed her, G.”
“Ah shit, no. Jesus.” He looked away, toward the empty wall at the end of the booth, and balled his fist as if he were going to hit something, someone. After a moment, he dropped his hand into his lap. “They know who?”
“I don’t think so,” Charlie said.
“Like they’d even care.”
Dina spoke quietly. “I’m a private investigator, G, and I do care. I’d like your help.”
He brought his wet blue eyes to bear on her. There was still anger in them. “Yeah? How?”
“When was the last time you saw Sara?”
He stared at her, maybe trying to remember, maybe trying to decide something about Dina. Jewell couldn’t tell.
“Week and a half ago,” he finally replied. “Just before she disappeared from Providence House. I should’ve known right away something was wrong.”
He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of American Spirits. He tapped a cigarette free, jammed it into the corner of his mouth, and lit it with a plastic butane lighter. He blew smoke toward the ceiling.
“Sara, she was on her way, you know? She had a compass, direction. She was going somewhere with her life. Talking with her was always trippy because she was always up. Believe me, that was something, considering all the shit before she came to Providence House.”
“She told you?” Dina asked.
“We talked a lot.”
“You’re a writer,” Jewell said, indicating the notebook. “What do you write?”
“My life. And hers.” He tipped his head toward Charlie. “And Sara, and all the rest of us, the fucked and forgotten, the trash in the gutters of America’s streets.” He sucked on his cigarette and shot smoke out his nostrils.
Dina said, “Do you always notice when one of the kids is gone?”
He gave a quick shake of his head. “They come and go. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they keep it to themselves. And I’m not there every night.”
Jewell wondered where he stayed other nights. G had money for cigarettes, for coffee. The dreads took time and care. His clothing was clean and decent. She knew that prostitution was a possibility.
“You watch,” G said. “The cops’ll make a show of trying to get to the bottom of it, but they won’t come up with anything, and after a while everyone will forget about it. Who cares about a dead cat beside the road if it’s not someone’s pet, right?”
“Do you think she went back to prostitution?” Dina asked.
“No way. She was on a ladder and she was looking up.” He took a long drag. “Damn.”
“Talking to you, did she ever mention any names, anyone she might have been seeing?”
“Like a boyfriend? No. She was focused solid, I mean like a laser, on getting her life in order. She didn’t have time for a guy right now.”
“How about adults?”
He shook his head faintly. “Maybe at school, I suppose. Or her job. Plenty of adults there. There’s the staff at Providence House. But she never said anything, and we talked about everything, I mean deep.” He seemed to be wilting. “Look, I need some time with this. Alone, you know? You mind?”
“No, that’s okay. Thanks for your help, G.”
Jewell stepped from the booth and Dina scooted out after her.
“You go on,” Charlie said. “I’ll be right there.”
They left Muddy Waters and walked into the late morning light. Down the street to the east, Lake Superior filled the gap between high buildings. Above it floated the paler ephemeral blue of the autumn sky.
