look like he had the ambition to commit a crime, but I wasn’t too sure about his conduct toward the neighborhood pets.
“So you told Kirby to get lost?” I asked.
“I told him to fuck off, pardon my French. And he got pissed off, pardon it again, and left.”
“He say why Adrian owed him money?”
“Nah. Who knows? Probably for a drug buy. Kids today.”
“Did Adrian do drugs?”
“They all do.”
“But did you ever know
“Didn’t have to. They all do.” He looked accusingly at me. From his fifty-something perspective, I probably was young enough to be classified as one on today’s youthful degenerates.
I shifted to a more comfortable position, propping my hip against the counter. Waterson scanned the monitors again, then looked back at me.
“Let me ask you this,” I said. “How well did you know Kirby Dalson?”
His eyes narrowed. “What the hell’s that suppose to mean?”
I hadn’t thought it was a particularly tricky question. “How well did you know him?” I repeated. “What kind of kid was he?”
“Oh. Just a kid. A weasel-faced punk. I had a daughter, I wouldn’t let him near her.”
“You mentioned drugs. Was Kirby dealing?”
“Probably.”
“Why do you say that?”
He rolled his eyes. “I told you -kids today.” Then, unselfconsciously, he started to pick his nose.
I didn’t need any more of this, so I headed downstairs to Sue Hartford’s office at Left Coast Casuals.
Hartford was a sleek blonde around my age, in her late twenties. One of those women who is moving up in the business world in spite of a limited education, relying on her toughness and brains. On Monday, she’d told me she started in an after school job like Adrian’s at the Redwood City branch of the clothing chain and had managed two of their other stores before being selected for the plum position at the then-new plaza. When she saw me standing in the office door, Hanford motioned for me to come in and sit down. She continued working at her computer for a minute. Then she swiveled toward me, face arranged in formally solemn lines.
“I read in the paper about the Conway girl’s boyfriend,” she said. “So awful. So young.”
I told her about Adrian’s backpack being found in the house, and she made perfunctorily horrified noises.
“This doesn’t mean Adrian killed Kirby, does it?” she asked.
“Doubtful. It looked as if the pack’s been there since right after she disappeared.”
For a moment her features went very still. “Then Kirby might have killed…”
“Yes.”
“But where is the…?”
“Body? Well, not at the house, I’m sure the cops would have found it by now.”
“Or else she…”
“She what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she ran away. Maybe frightened her somehow.”
Interesting assumption. “Are you saying Adrian was afraid of Kirby?”
Quickly she shook her head. “No. Well, maybe. It was more like…he dominated her. One look from him was all she needed, and she’d do whatever he wanted her to.”
“Give me an example.”
“Well, one time I saw them at a table near the food concessions in the middle of the mall. He had a burger, she was spooning up her yogurt. All of a sudden, Kirby pointed at his burger, then jerked his chin at the condiment counter. Adrian got up and scurried over there and brought him back some catsup.”
“So he pretty much controlled her?”
“I’d say so.”
“What else?”
She shrugged. “That’s about the best example I can give you. I didn’t really see that much of them together. We try to discourage our girls from having their friends come into the store during working hours.”
“When I spoke with you earlier this week, you said you doubted Adrian was a drug user. Are you sure of that?”
“Reasonably sure. I observe our girls very carefully. I can’t have anything like that going on, especially not on store premises. It would reflect badly on my abilities as a manager.” Her eyes lost focus suddenly. “God, what if something has happened to Adrian? I mean, something like what happened to Kirby? That would reflect badly, too. The damage control I’d need to do…”
I said wryly, “I don’t think that as store manager you can be held responsible for what happens to your employees off-hours.”
“You don’t understand, it would reflect badly on my abilities to size up a prospective employee.” Her eyes refocused on my face. “I can see you think I’m uncaring. Maybe to some degree I am. But I’m running a business here. I’m building a career, and I have to be strong. I have a small daughter to raise, and I’m fiercely protective of her chances to have a good life. I’m sorry Kirby Dalson’s dead. If Adrian’s also been killed, than I’m sorry about that, too. But, really, neither of them has anything to do with me, with my life.”
That’s the trouble, I thought. The poet, whoever he was, said no man is an island, but nowadays
V
I wanted to drive by the house on Naples Street, just to see what it looked like in the daylight. The rain had stopped, but it was still a soppy, gray morning. The house looked shabby and sodden. There was a yellow plastic police line strip across the driveway, and a man in a tan raincoat stood on the front steps, hands in his pockets, staring at nothing in particular.
He didn’t look like a cop. He was middle-aged, middle height, a little gray, a little bald. His glasses and the cut of his coat were the kind you used to associate with the movers and shakers of the 1980’s financial world, but the coat was rumpled and had a grease stain near its hem, and as I got out of the Wreck and went closer, I saw that one hinge of the glasses frame was wired together. His face pulled down in disappointed lines that looked permanent. Welcome to the nineties, I thought.
The man’s eyes focused dully on me. “If you’re a reporter,” he said, “you’d better speak with the officers in charge of the case.” He spoke with a kind of diluted authority, his words turning up in a question, as if he wasn’t quite sure who or what he was any longer.
“I’m not a reporter.” I took out my i.d. and explained my connection to the case.
The man looked at the i.d., nodded, and shrugged. Then he sighed. “Hell of a thing, isn’t it? I wish I’d never rented to them.”
“This is your house?”
“My mother’s. She’s in a nursing home. I can’t sell it-she still thinks she’s coming back someday. That’s all that’s keeping her alive. I can’t fix it up, either.” He motioned at the peeling facade. “My business has been in a flat-out slump for a couple of years now, and the nursing home’s expensive. I rented to the first couple who answered my ad. Bad judgment on my part. They were too young, and into God-knows-what.” He laughed mirthlessly, then added, “Sorry, I didn’t introduce myself. Ron Owens.”
I’d inched up the steps toward the open front door until I was standing next to him. I shook his outstretched hand and repeated my name for him.
Owens sighed again and stared glumly at the wet street. “It’s a hell of a world.” He said. “A hell of a thing when a kid dies like that. Kids are supposed to grow up, have a life. At least outlive their parents.” Then he looked
