The Killing Circle

“Nothing. Aside from a story.”

“A newspaper kind of story, or a funny-thinghappened-the-other-day kind of story?”

“Just a girl-trouble kind of story,” I tell him, with an embarrassed shake of the head. A gesture I know Tim Earheart will understand without going into the details.

Below us, another train pumps commuters and shoppers and ballgame ticketholders into the city. Tim and I look down and try to pick out individual faces in the windows. But they’re a little too far away, moving a little too fast, to see anything but a long row of silhouettes.

“I better get back,” Tim says, starting across Front Street.

“Me too,” I say in reply, and though the question occurs to both of us—Back to what?—he’s considerate enough to keep it to himself.

The first email on the Comment board at www.patrick.rush.com is from therealsandman.

Hope you liked the gift.

To cheer things up, Detective Ramsay rings with the news that he’s discovered Evelyn has not been seen by family or friends for over four years.

“Starting to add up to a lot of missing people from that group of yours,” he says. “Does that concern you?”

Is it illegal to hang up on a homicide investigator when he’s addressing you directly? If so, Ramsay can add it to the list of charges he’s tallying against me.

The phone rings again.

“This is harassment.”

“Are you not taking your pills again?”

“Tim. Thought it was someone else.”

“More girl trouble?”

“That would be nice. But no.”

“Your heart belongs to Angela Whitmore. Is that it?”

In the background, the sound of shuffled papers.

“You’ve found her,” I say.

“Not the person. But an interesting chunk of background. For one thing, turns out you were right about Children’s Aid taking her from her birth parents. ’Acute neglect’ is how the file puts it. Malnutrition, lack of basic hygiene. ’Indications of physical and emotional abuse.’ Something beyond your standard junkie-mom scenario.”

“The mother was an addict?”

“Lots of court-ordered rehab. Surprise, surprise: none of it worked.”

“You got a name?”

“Mom is Michelle Carruthers. Which makes Whitmore either an assumed name, or maybe the name of her eventual adoptive parents.”

“What about Dad?”

“No father on the scene at all, as far as the files show.”

“And I’m guessing Michelle Carruthers is six feet under.”

“Not as of a year ago. That was when she made an application to have Angela’s adoptive parents’ identities disclosed to her. They denied her, naturally.”

“No kidding.”

“Twenty-five years later and she wakes up in a trailer park on Lake Huron and goes, ’Hey, where’d my kid go?’”

“Does your file say where Angela ended up?”

“The adoptive parents’ records are kept separate from the ones I could get my hands on. They’re very particular about it.”

“So you don’t know.”

“I still have a job, Patrick.”

“Sorry.”

“You want me to stay on this? Who knows, if I grease a few more wheels—”

“No, no. This is all I was really curious about anyway. Thanks.”

“Listen, I don’t usually put my nose into friends’ personal stuff, but, given her pedigree, I’d say this Angela of yours might not be an ideal reintroduction to romance.”

“Guess I’ve never known what’s good for me.”

“Tamara was good for you.”

“Yes, she was,” I say, the mention of my wife’s name forcing something up my throat I don’t want him to hear. “I’ll let you go now, Tim. And thanks again.”

I hang up. But before I pour myself a bourbon in a coffee mug (the glasses all look too small), before I even begin to digest the news of Angela’s fatherless past, it strikes me that if Tim Earheart is as worried about me as he sounds, I’m in worse shape than I thought.

Of course I look up Michelle Carruthers. Of course I find her after a few Google searches and process-of- elimination calls—a unit address in Hilly Haven, a “mobile home estate” on Lake Huron. And of course I make the drive to see her the same day without an idea as to what I want from her, or how it could help even if I did.

Hilly Haven isn’t hilly, and what the few spindly poplars and collapsed snow fence around its perimeter might offer haven from would be hard to guess. The whole place has the appearance of an uncorrected accident: a couple dozen mobile homes arranged in rows, some sidled close, others aloof in weedy double lots, all with their backsides facing the lake.

Michelle Carruthers’ place is the smallest. A camper trailer of the kind one used to see hitched to station wagons thirty years ago. Now, knocking on its side door and hearing the muffled greeting within (“Who the fuck?”), I wonder if Angela’s mother can be convinced to step outside. It doesn’t seem possible for there to be enough room for both of us inside.

When the door opens, however, I see that the odds of the woman hunched in its frame coming outside are slight. Her papery skin. An oxygen mask attached to her face, a tank on wheels by her side.

“Sorry to disturb you. My name is Patrick Rush,” I say, putting out my hand, which her cold fingers weigh more than shake. “I’m looking for Angela.”

“Angela?”

“Your daughter, ma’am.”

“I know who she goddamn is.”

“I was just—”

“Are you her husband or something? She run away on you?”

“I’m a friend. I think she may be in trouble. That’s why I’m here. If I can find her, there’s a chance I can help her.”

After what may be a full minute’s consideration, she pushes the trailer door open wide. Pulls the oxygen mask off and lets it necklace her throat.

“You might as well come in out of the sun,” she says.

But it’s hotter inside than out. And no larger than I’d feared. A stand-up kitchen smelling of canned spaghetti. A living room crowded by a giant TV in one corner and old combination radiorecord player in the other. And at the rear, behind a half-drawn curtain, the tousled bunk where she sleeps. The only ventilation a rotating fan sitting atop a stack of LPs, though with all the windows closed, the best it can do is whisper hot air in my face.

“Have a seat,” she says, collapsing into her recliner and leaving me to crouch on to a folding chair that, even