He looked doubtful. “You don’t have to talk to Jayme first, like you said?”
“When we tell her you needed it to pay the electric bill, she’ll understand. We’ll give her a call and explain,” I said.
The boy grabbed the money in his dirty little hands and held it before him as if I’d handed over a fortune. “Thanks,” he said.
We turned to leave and were nearly back to the Pathfinder when he shouted at us to stop. “Lady, tell Jayme something for me, okay?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Tell her that Samuel wants her to come home. I miss her. We needs her here.”
“We will, Samuel,” Hannah said. She turned and we started off, but then she stopped again. The boy lingered at the door. “Samuel, if you need anything, if you need help, you know where the shelter is in town?”
“Where I comed with Jayme and saw you?” The harvesters drew closer, and I saw a woman splinter off and stride toward us. In a few minutes, she’d be upon us.
“Yes,” Hannah said.
“Yup,” he said. “I got good direction sense. Momma always says that. I can find anything.”
Hannah laughed, as I urged her to move. She started walking, but she called back over her shoulder, “Samuel, if you need anything, you come see me. Don’t forget.”
Worried, I motioned for Hannah to hurry. The woman from the field stormed toward us. Moments later, we passed the house in the Pathfinder. I saw Samuel run to the woman, holding my twenty-dollar bills and grinning as wide as I’d ever seen a child smile. The woman took the money and dropped to her knees, my guess to question the boy.
As the house disappeared behind us, I handed Hannah my cell phone. “You know the place? Where Jayme is supposed to be?”
“No, but there can’t be more than one Salt Lake Youth Crisis Center.”
“Get someone on the phone,” I said. “Let’s give this a shot.”
A brief web search yielded the organization’s phone number. Hannah clicked onto it, it rang, and a woman answered. “Salt Lake Youth Crisis Center. May I help you?”
Hannah handed the phone back to me.
“I’m Detective Clara Jefferies. I need to talk to your director.”
“He’s not here right now.”
“Is this a shelter? Do young people live there?”
“We place homeless youth,” the woman explained. “We find temporary housing with foster homes and shelters. Help them find jobs.”
“We’re looking for a young woman. We need to verify that she’s used your services. Who would you suggest we talk to?”
“I’ll get Samantha for you,” the woman said. “She’s our program admittance officer. She should be able to help.”
As we drove down the road, I noticed the workers had expanded their reach into the field. More corn had been harvested and mowed down. The crew had turned the corner and headed back, spreading out to tackle the next row. Down the road, Jim Daniels pulled the tractor out in front of us, filled with the bags bulging with corn cobs.
“Where is he taking it?” I asked Hannah.
“The park across from the Meeting Place. Or I guess I should call it the diner now,” she explained. “They divide it up and parcel it out. Last year each family living in the trailer park got one bag per person. They expanded the field and planted more this year. I heard they were hoping for a bag and a quarter.”
As Hannah predicted, across from Danny’s Diner, the tractor pulled off the road into the old city park. It stopped in the shade of three aged oaks. There, families gathered with hand trucks and children’s wagons. Someone had a gator—an ATV with a cart on the back. It looked like they used anything they had with wheels to haul home their shares of corn. Once there, they’d dry it and grind it into cornmeal, or cook and can it.
My phone was silent, and I assumed the receptionist hadn’t yet found the admissions officer.
Something needled at me. “You know it’s odd,” I said to Hannah.
“What?”
“All three of the homes with missing girls—my family’s, the Heatons’ and Coombs’ houses—all back up to the cornfield.”
Hannah appeared to consider that for a moment. “I hadn’t thought about that. It is odd.”
I thought again about my brother-in-law, Jim Daniels, the man who managed the cornfield.
On the phone, someone said, “Samantha here.”
“Hi, Samantha,” I said, putting her on the car’s speaker system. “I’m Detective Clara Jefferies. I’m looking into the cases of some missing girls in a small town called Alber.”
“I’ve heard of that place,” she said. “We get kids from there. Mostly boys, though.”
“Well, I’m hoping you can help me. Jayme Coombs’ mother says that her daughter is at your center. Can you tell me if Jayme is there? If she was there? If she’s left, where you referred her? This is a welfare check.”
“Sure,” Samantha said. “Describe her. It’ll make it easier.”
I whispered to Hannah. “Tell her what Jayme looks like.”
“Jayme is about five foot two, long dark-blond hair, kind of wide blue-gray eyes. Slight build.”
“How old?”
“Sixteen,” Hannah said.
“Okay. I’ll ask around, get back with you,” Samantha said. “It may take a while. I need to check with the shelters.”
“Don’t you have a list you can check?” I asked. “Just run the name through the computer?”
Samantha chuckled. “The kids from those mountain towns rush through here like flash floods. They’re here one minute, on their way somewhere else the next. We try, but we can’t stay on top of record-keeping. Our staff is small.”
“How are you going to look for her?” I asked.
“We’ve got other kids from Alber in the program. We’ll ask around. Some of them live at the shelters.
