Lost Girls

Brian Flynn. Ashley's father, with whom I spoke briefly at the same time I contacted McConnell, telling him how I'd like to get together at his leisure to ask a few questions. He said he'd get back to me later. And now he wants to meet this very morning. All The Murdoch Phoenix had to say about him was that he was a single father, laid off from the nickel mine several years back. He seemed to actively avoid the media throughout the investigation, regularly failing to attend press conferences during the search and, later, choosing to leave the histrionics to McConnell. So why does he want to talk to me now? Had McConnell convinced him that this would be a good opportunity to vent on the next best thing to the bad guy himself? Or was it another trap, the big man standing before the window over at Flynn's right now, poring over a leather-bound Bible, cooking up new hexes for round two? No matter what the plan is, I'm obliged to go. All for the potential benefit of my boy Thommy T.

But before I reach the door I notice something I'd already forgotten: Tripp's bloodied shirt on the floor where it was dropped the night before. The sight of it lying there next to my own dropped shirts, pants, and cotton miscellany causes me to stop, my eyes pondering its shape as though a complex piece of sculpture. But it's not. In fact there's nothing to it at all. A polyester-cotton blend nearly a decade past the fashion even if cleaned and pressed, but in its present condition nothing more than a stained and crumpled rag. If I just look at it there beside my own shirts, as a shirt among shirts, the distinction between them blurs and fades.

So what message could this particular shirt carry all on its own? That I'm now obstructing justice, that's clear. Clear, but unknown to any but myself. And as for Tripp? So little blood, really. Would it have meant all that much when the police discovered it, as they surely would have when some bright spark finally got it in his head to find out who owned the freezer and crowbar the thing open? It wouldn't mean the end of the game, but it would've been an unhelpful turn of events, to employ an understatement. Tripp would have to testify in order to explain the blood away, and even if we could devise something good on that count, God knows what further self-incriminations might escape his mouth on cross-examination. That's the real issue, or at least as real as any other.

I pick the shirt up, stick it in the plastic bag it came in along with the wrappers from yesterday's lunch, and skip downstairs. Pop open the trunk of the Lincoln and toss it in.

Here's a distinction drawn after extended time spent in the company of liars, pushers, and thieves: What's far more amazing than how easily one can come to do wrongful things is the ease with which one can then go on to forget about them.

Brian Flynn lives in the kind of house that is only nominally a house, there being no other word in English usage to describe such a structure (''shack'' or ''shed'' not being quite right either). It's the sort of lopsided affair one sees in towns like this, their occurrence tending to increase for every mile north one travels: square-faced facade with a door in the center and two small windows on either side encased in plastic to help keep out a greater portion of the winter's cold, a sparsely shingled roof supported by walls of equal parts wood and tar. A forgotten place, or a place that should have been forgotten long ago, being originally constructed as a short-term residence for contracted laborers with the view that, when the contracts expired, it would be abandoned and eventually razed. But here it is. Forty years past its due, a wavering plume of woodsmoke rising from its tin chimney and a mailbox stenciled THE FLYNNS at the gate.

I park directly out front, consider for a moment keeping the engine running in case McConnell awaits inside and I need to make a swift retreat, but decide against it. Flynn lives at the end of a street made up of ''homes'' like his own, many with motorcycles and despondent beer guts topped by vacant faces squinting out from the front stoop. In such neighborhoods leaving a rented Lincoln Continental on the street with the engine running may be unwise. So instead I pocket the keys, knock twice, and ready myself for an immediate attack. But when the door is scraped open it's not by a towering threat but by a small man with shaggy black hair and a shapeless beard beginning to yield to outcroppings of gray.

''Mr. Crane?'' he asks, his eyes closed as though unused to even the dull light of a day such as this.

''Thank you for returning my call, Mr. Flynn.''

''Wasn't going to at first, but then I thought, Why not? It's not like you're Mr. Busy these days,'' he says, throws a dry laugh out into the street. ''So I guess you might as well come in.''

Inside the house is cramped, dark (the sun unable to penetrate the rain-streaked plastic over the windows), bookless, but warm. There's also a smell of burnt coffee, canned tomato soup, and cigarettes which, taken together, isn't as unpleasant as the individual components suggest.

''I have to tell you, I was a little concerned about coming over here today,'' I say, standing on the bubbled square of linoleum that counts for the full extent of the front hall. ''I thought that Mr. McConnell may have been here with you.''

''Lloyd? Never spoken to the man in my life,'' Flynn states flatly, now standing in the middle of the living room in a plaid shirt and Montreal Canadiens pajama bottoms.

''Never?''

''Well, no, not never. Called here a couple times last year when Ashley and Krystal were hanging out a lot, saying he didn't think it was a good idea for my girl to be spending so much time with his. When I asked him why he thought so, he'd just say, 'C'mon now, Brian,' over and over, like I should know without his saying. And he was right, I guess. I did know.''

''I don't understand.''

''Because he's got money and I don't.''

Flynn's arms twitch at his sides like snakes held by their ends.

''But I thought none of that would've mattered after the girls went missing,'' he continues, ''so I left a couple of messages with him at the time. He never called back. Still, you've got to give the man the benefit of the doubt, right? Considering all he's been through.''

''Benefit of the doubt. Quite right.''

I take off my coat and hang it over my arm. Flynn doesn't move. For a moment it seems this may be it, the interview's over, he's frozen to his spot on the threadbare shag forever. But when he responds to what I say next it's with a disarming gentleness.

''Mr. Flynn, may I say at the outset how sorry I am about your daughter.''

''Oh, yeah? Well, thanks for saying so. It's funny, but not many people have. They look at you, all right, sometimes with sad faces and other times just curious. But usually they don't say anything. They've probably done all their talking to Lloyd, and they figure there's not much point in giving their sympathies twice.''

He takes the coat from my arm as he speaks and places it over the end of the room's fake leather couch with black hockey tape over the holes where the stuffing has begun to escape. When he's finished speaking he lowers himself into a brown La-Z-Boy with a foldout leg rest. To his right, a side table equipped with a giant ashtray with Pope John Paul II's face painted in its basin and the remote control to the TV, an old set with a cabinet made of molded plastic shaped like a baroque wood carving. He signals for me to sit on the couch, and I do.

''Not much, is it?'' he asks, and while I know he means the extent of his worldly possessions, I shake my head and pretend not to follow. ''My humble home. Ain't much. But it's amazing how you get by. No job for six years now. The breathing's not so good these days.'' He bangs his chest by way of illustration, and in fact it doesn't sound so good, a rattle inside him like an empty can kicked down an alley. ''God knows what sort of nastiness got in the lungs all that time underground, but they're sure as hell not good for much anymore. Then again, I don't know if I've missed much. Don't get a speck of mail but whatever the government sends me. But like I said, it's amazing how you get by.''

Flynn smiles absently, reaches into his shirt pocket, pulls out a cigarette, and lights it without looking at his hands.

''Must have been hard. Bringing up a child all on your own,'' I say, realizing I've left my bag with my notepad in it by the door, but I stay where I am.

''Well, she wasn't a child long. And she was never a problem. Never, not from day one. I can't say I was much of a father. I'm not taking any credit for myself, no sir. She was just a sweet kid somehow all on her own.''

He exhales a shaft of smoke from the hole in his mouth where his two front teeth used to be. Again without looking, digs his hand back into his shirt pocket and extends the pack to me. Under normal circumstances I'm not a smoker (not for health concerns, but a mortal fear of yellowing teeth and the acceleration of wrinkles) but I take one from Flynn now along with his lighter and give him a nod in thanks.

''You know how fathers always say their daughter's just the spitting image of their mothers?'' he asks me.