my keys.
Four.
It took some doing to convince Kendra to come with us, but when I
explained how helpful she could be, she relented. She paused on the
porch as she was pulling the front door shut behind her. 'Oh, hold on
a sec. I don't have any house keys. Mom's supposed to get a new set
made at the store tomorrow.'
I'd forgotten about that. 'Can we go by your mom's work and pick up
her keys on the way home?'
'Um, her boss gets real mad if she does personal stuff at work. I'm
not supposed to bug her or anything when she's there. The store's a
lot nicer.'
Chuck did a quick overview of the house and came up with a solution. We
placed a full cup of water on the floor a few inches in front of the
back door, and stuck several pieces of masking tape from the door to
the doorframe. We left the door unlocked and walked out of the front
door, locking it and pulling it shut behind us on the way out.
Kendra looked puzzled until Chuck explained that any unusual event at
the beginning of a break-in usually spooks the burglar enough that he
leaves. In a worst-case scenario, we'd at least know someone had been
there when we got back if the water was spilled and the tape
unsealed.
As responsible adults, we should have consulted Kendra's mother before
taking her daughter and leaving her home unlocked. But by now Chuck
and I had surmised that this was no typical mother-daughter
relationship. If it was OK by Kendra, Andrea Martin would assume it
was for the best.
When she saw the cars parked in front of her house, Kendra had a clear
preference. 'Cool car! Are we taking it?'
Her eager look up at me spoke volumes. I turned my head to smile back
at Chuck. 'I told you it was a chick car.'
'It's not a chick car. You know how much power that thing has? She
was complimenting you. Probably figured a highbrow lawyer like you
would drive something with a little more style.'
Kendra tried to hide her disappointment. 'Your car's nice too, Miss
Kincaid.'
'Thanks. And you call me Samantha, or I'm going to start calling you
Miss Martin.'
She laughed. 'OK, Samantha.'
Chuck hopped in the backseat so Kendra could ride up front. I headed
south and then west on Division, toward southeast Portland. Rockwood
was on the outskirts of Portland, straddling the east border of the
city and the west border of suburban Gresham. It marked the end of
approximately 140 consecutive blocks of east Portland, inhabited by
white welfare families who were seldom acknowledged by either the
liberal elite who occupy the central core of the city or the more
conservative soccer-mom families who make up the suburbs.
The only landmark Kendra could give me was Reed College. She
remembered seeing it while they were driving. The school was located
just a few miles southeast of downtown, on Woodstock Boulevard. It was
a fitting name for the location. The college was a bastion of leftist
politics and had proudly carried the motto atheism, communism, and free
love since the 1950s. Some student in the eighties had made a mint
selling parody T-shirts saying new reed: the moral
MAJORITY, CAPITALISM, AND SAFE SEX.
Students arrived on campus looking like regular kids who just got out
of high school, but by Thanksgiving they'd all stopped bathing and had
torn holes in the L. L. Bean and J. Crew clothing their parents had
shipped them off to Oregon with. When I was in high school, the slur
'You smell like a Reedie' was used whenever someone got a little ripe
in gym class.
Although the school was recognized nationally for its stringent
academic requirements, Kendra, like most Oregonians had described it to
me as 'that hippie school.'
Chuck was trying to help her narrow our search. 'Would you say you
stopped pretty soon after you saw the college, or did you see the
college closer to the beginning of the drive?'
'It was maybe a little bit after halfway.'
'Did they get on a freeway after you saw the college, or did they drive
on residential streets?'
'Well, after, they took the freeway out to where they left me, I guess.
But I think they were just driving on regular streets before that.'
Old Town to Reed College was about a ten-minute drive.
If they didn't get on a freeway or a major arterial, then they hadn't
driven all the way out to the far end of the city. Still, what seemed
