Since I have a corner office, there are two windows, which, along with the skylight in the center of the ceiling, give the place lots of natural light and a feeling of cheerfulness that is sometimes at odds with the business that’s often conducted there. A light brown carpet covers the floor. A few months earlier, I’d spoken to the owner of the building about replacing the carpeting, but he’d just laughed and told me, funny, you don’t look that stupid. I guess he was expecting the yuppies, too. In fact, he was actively recruiting them, and until they arrived, he sure as hell didn’t intend to spend any money on frivolities like carpeting. Actually, I couldn’t blame the guy.
I check the office answering machine and e-mail daily, so all I had to do today was sort through the snail mail. There was the usual assortment of bills and flyers and offers of credit cards and home equity loans. The bills were mostly local. Almost everything else came from banks I’d never heard of in cities I didn’t know existed in states I’d never visited.
And there was one check, from a man who’d hired me a few weeks earlier to find his 19-year-old daughter. The girl had run away with her 26-year-old boyfriend, and her parents just wanted to be sure she was okay. It hadn’t taken me long to track the girl and her boyfriend to a small town in West Virginia. They’d been using her parents’ credit cards. I drove down there and found the boyfriend working at a little bar out in the boondocks. He told me he and the girl had had a fight, and she’d taken off, said she was gonna hitchhike home. It took me about one hour to find her, which was how long a drive it was to the county sheriff’s office. I went in and flashed my ID along with a picture of the girl. It was just a courtesy call, let the local fuzz know I was in the area and would be snooping around. The sheriff was a grizzled old coot who looked at Melissa’s picture for a long minute and then, with a gentleness that didn’t in any way match his appearance, told me one of his deputies had found the body that morning. Looked like she’d been raped and strangled. They’d just started checking out-of-state reports but guess that wouldn’t be necessary now, would it. I told him about the boyfriend, but I found out later that the guy had over a dozen witnesses who placed him at the bar at the time the medical examiner said Melissa’d been killed. I’d told the sheriff that I would notify the parents, and then I drove straight back to Pittsburgh to see them. As soon as the mother opened the door and looked at me, she knew. I stayed with them for a while, and the only other time I saw them was at the funeral. I didn’t send them a bill. I don’t think you should charge people for telling them their daughter died a horrible death on a lonely stretch of road in the hills of West Virginia.
And now I was holding a check and reading the father’s note. He said they never got my bill, so he hoped this would cover it but let him know if it didn’t and he’d send more. I sat for a few minutes and stared at the walls of my office, and then I got some stationery out of the top drawer of my desk and wrote a note to Mr. Singletary, thanking him and suggesting that he donate my fee to an organization that helps parents locate their missing children. I placed the check and the note inside an envelope, which I addressed, stamped and sealed. Turning off the lights, I left my office and began walking back home. Along the way, I dropped the envelope in a mailbox and thought about what Uncle Leo had told me the day I’d first expressed an interest in joining him in the business. The most important thing, he’d said, was learning to balance the highs and the lows, “‘cause you’re gonna have both, the good and the bad. Ya gotta learn to balance them, son, or the demons’ll be dancin’ in your head way too many nights.”
I’m still learning.
Chapter 9
I arrived at Angie and Simon’s place just a few minutes before Angie did. I have a key, but I spent the time in their backyard, playing with Pepper, which made me feel better than I had thirty minutes earlier. Pepper, I thought, as I heard Angie’s car pull into the driveway, you do good work, and, at about two Milkbones per session, your rates are exceptional.
I walked around to the front of the house and met Angie as she got out of her car. I was surprised to see that
