like a long shot when Chuck thought of it in Rockwood seemed even more
ridiculous now that we were in the car.
We needed more. 'Do you remember anything else? Any stores? Gas
stations? Strip malls?'
'I'm sorry. I wasn't looking at stuff like that. I just remember
driving in front of the college. I looked to see if maybe there were
some people walking around who might see me if I tried to get out, but
it was really dark.'
'So if you had passed an open store, do you think you would've
remembered it?'
'Um, yeah, I guess. Because I was looking for a place with a bunch of
people.'
'When they stopped, were you near houses? Or was it more industrial?'
The police report said that Kendra had described being in a parking
lot, but I hadn't formed an impression of what type of lot.
'It was a big parking lot, but there weren't, like, any other cars or
anything. And there was, like, one real big building but then nothing
else, just like a park or something. But it wasn't a park I'd ever
seen or anything.'
I was at a loss. I headed toward Reed College until I could think of a
better plan.
'Oh, wait, I remember something. After they stopped, before I tried to
run away, I remember I couldn't hear what they were saying to each
other. They were, like, having to yell to talk because a train was
going by.'
Now we were getting somewhere. Portland doesn't have much in the way
of train tracks. There's the Max, a light rail that's part of the
city's public transportation. It runs east to west across the entire
county on a single track. Then there are the rail car tracks. The
east-west tracks are close to the Max rails along Interstate 84. The
north-south tracks are roughly adjacent to Highway 99. 'Like a Max
train or a big train?'
'Louder than the Max. A big train.'
The east-west train tracks didn't seem likely. They were on the north
side of the city. I didn't think Kendra would confuse any neighborhood
along the tracks with southeast Portland. But the north-south tracks
ran right through close-in southeast Portland, just a half a mile or so
west of Reed. There were a few neighborhood parks within earshot of
the tracks.
I drove past Reed College and headed to the Rhododendron Gardens. The
front parking lot and small information booth fit Kendra's description
at least roughly. When I pulled into the lot, she said, 'No, this
isn't it. It was a bigger lot, and there wasn't a fence like this. It
just went right into the park area and then there was a bigger
building.'
Westmoreland Park had a larger parking lot without a fence, but I
didn't recall any kind of building, and sure enough there wasn't one.
'Does this even look like the same neighborhood?' I asked.
'Yeah, it does. I don't think I've ever been here or anything. But,
yeah, it was like this. Like with a lot of trees and stuff. And when
we passed houses, they were big like these.'
We were in the middle of a pocket of upscale houses in southeast
Portland. The Sellwood-Moreland neighborhood, like my own in Alameda,
was made up of turn-of-the-century homes. It was the most recent
central neighborhood to have been taken over and colonized by yuppies.
Considered a hippie enclave when I was a kid, the place was now overrun
by coffee shops, chichi bakeries, and antiques stores. Area residents
now actually golfed at Eastmoreland, a municipal course that rivals
many private country clubs.
Sometimes my disjointed pattern of thought actually pays off. It
suddenly dawned on me that the last time I went to Eastmoreland to use
its covered driving range, I sliced the hell out of a ball because a
train had come barreling by at the top of my backswing. The parking
lot is enormous and surrounded by thick hedges on two sides and the
golf course on the others.
I felt a rush, but I tried to hide my excitement. I didn't want to
coach Kendra into a specific answer. I took a few side streets through
Westmoreland and then turned into the Eastmoreland lot.
Kendra knew immediately. If her ID of Derringer had been this solid, I
could see why she'd earned Walker's and Johnson's confidence.
'Samantha, this is it. I remember, I remember! That's the big
building, and over there's the park. Are we near train tracks? This
is totally it. They drove me right over there, around the side of the
building.'
I knew that around the corner from the clubhouse, a strip of asphalt
led to the driving range. I parked there whenever I came to hit balls,
but it had never dawned on me how dangerously isolated the area would
be when the course was closed. Acres of greens surrounded the lot on
