It was no good. My mind kept wandering.
I phoned Anne again. Her cell was still off.
I phoned Tom. No word from his wife.
I phoned Anne’s brothers in Mississippi. No Anne. No call.
I forced myself back to the stack.
One article focused on Leonard Lake and Charles Ng, the California geniuses who’d built underground bunkers to house female sex slaves.
At trial, Ng’s lawyers argued that their client was a mere bystander, a dependent personality waiting to be led. According to the defense, Lake’s ex-wife was the real heavy.
Right, Charlie. You were a victim. Like poor little Karla Homolka.
In 1991, Leslie Mahaffy, fourteen, was found dismembered and encased in concrete in an Ontario lake. The following year, Kristin French, fifteen, turned up naked and dead in a ditch. Both had been brutalized, raped, and murdered.
Paul Bernardo and his wife, Karla Homolka, were subsequently arrested. Young and blond and beautiful, the press dubbed the couple the Ken and Barbie Killers.
In exchange for testimony against her ex-husband, Homolka was allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter. Bernardo was convicted of murder one, aggravated sexual assault, forcible confinement, kidnapping, and performing an indignity on a human body.
Like Lake and Ng, the Bernardos filmed their little orgies. When the tapes finally surfaced, footage showed bride and groom as equal enthusiasts in the torture and murder. But Karla had already cut her deal.
I was moving on to the next article, when my phone rang again.
“They’re gone.” Ryan sounded like he was calling from Uranus.
“Who’s gone?”
“Anique Pomerleau and Tawny McGee.”
34
“HOW CAN THEY BE GONE?”
“When the day nurse checked, their beds were empty.”
“There was no guard?”
“We told Feldman security wasn’t an issue.”
“Had they been released?”
“No.”
“Were they alone?”
“No one saw them leave.”
“Had they had visitors?” My voice was too loud. “A family member?”
“We’ve yet to locate any of Pomerleau’s relatives. McGee’s sister flew east from Alberta last night. Sandra something. She and the mother are en route from Maniwaki now.”
Adrenaline surge.
“Menard!”
“I floated his description around the floor. No one spotted anyone resembling him.”
“Tawny McGee was hysterical yesterday. These geniuses are now suggesting she and Pomerleau just pulled on their panties and waltzed out?”
“The head nurse thinks they may have split during a shift change. Or during the night.”
“They didn’t have clothes!”
“Two coats and two pair of boots are missing from the staff lounge. Along with seventeen dollars from the coffee fund.”
“Where would two disoriented, homeless women go?”
“Calm down.”
I closed my eyes and willed the adrenaline back to its myriad sources.
“They may not have gone anywhere. General’s a warren of tunnels and crannies, the basement’s some kind of medieval maze. I’m at the hospital now. If they don’t turn up inside, we’ll canvass the neighborhood.”
“And then?”
“When the McGees arrive I’ll find out if Tawny knew anyone in Montreal.”
“Jesus Christ, Ryan. That poor woman loses her child, probably gives her up for dead, then finally gets word her daughter is alive. Now we have to tell her the kid’s missing again?”
