"The time between the girls disappearing for the night. I never saw them leave or come back. They would all just be back in the morning looking cleaner, happier, lesshomeless."
"Less homeless?" I think aloud. "Strange. But they all came back? You'recertain?"
"Yep. I kept track in my notebook. I had nicknames for each of them so I could keep count ofthem."
I sit back and look at Clark. He's wearing the same level of confusion that I'mfeeling.
I turn back to Olson. "Well, fuck, that's about the most useless bunch of information ever. Two months?" I askagain.
Olson shrugs. "Let's see if you can do better, bigshot."
"Yeah. Let's just see." I look at Clark for one lastconfirmation.
"It's against my better judgment but let's tryit."
"You'd better get in there quick then." Olson looks at his notebook and counts a series of tally marks. It's three weeks thisSaturday."
"Which gives me four days out on the streets to figure out this Cherry Colaclue."
"And convince the park inhabitants that you're not some undercover plant," Olsonadds.
"For starters," I say. "I'm going to skip thecoat."
"Yeah?" Olson smiles. He seems pleased with what he's about to say. "You'll be sorry. You won't be sleeping in your comfy bed, Ten. You'll be outside, and the elements don't care if you're undercover or the realthing."
"I'm not a cream puff. I grew up with three brothers and a dad who believed the only good vacation was when you hiked ten miles to a remote location with a forty pound backpack on your shoulders. I'll be justfine."
Clark's phone rings. He answers it. "Clark here." His face hardens and his brows crunch together. He pulls free a file folder from the pile of paperwork on his desk. He opens it. It's the faces and names of the missing girl cases. His wide finger moves down the list. "Yeah, Rachel Booker? I've got her." He pauses and listens. For some reason his gaze now flicks my direction. He nods. "Right. Thanks for letting me know." He hangs up and looks at the faces on the page again before closing up thefile.
"What's up, Cap'n?" Olsonasks.
"One of the girls has been found." Clark looks at me. "Her body was in a dumpster in an alley. Slit throat and multiple bruises. Coroner's looking at her rightnow."
"More reason to send me in," I say quickly. "Let's stop this guy before more girls show updead."
Clark shakes his head. "I fucking hope I don't regretthis."
8
Angie
Yoli,short for Yolanda, I assume, lifts the end of the heavy green tarp and I scoot under it for relief from the rain. I'd spent a good three hours deciding what to wear to make me blend in with some of the other park inhabitants, while at the same time making sure I didn't catch pneumonia on my first night out. Fortunately for me, I never threw stuff away, and the back of my closet was a treasure trove of worn out clothes from my teenage years. I still fit in most of them except a few of the skinny jeans that had gone way past my level of skinny. My favorite Levis, the pair that I had lovingly worn so often and on so many adventures that I'd created a series of holes all the way down from the thighs to the knees, still fit perfectly. I'd found them balled up under the aviator jacket I scored at a garage sale. The jacket had corny orange patches on the shoulders and the fleece lining looked less like fleece and more like sad cotton, but I concluded it would protect me from any night air chill. What I hadn't considered was that the jacket was too threadbare to protect me from rain. Aside from wearing the appropriate clothes, I'd needed to wipe several years off my appearance. I decided Tawny Smith, my new persona, was going to be nineteen. It was one of those rare occasions when my freckles came in handy. I had braided my dark red hair into two braids and topped the look off with a floppy brimmed felt hat that reminded me of something worn atWoodstock.
Yoli and Becky, the other girl huddling under the tarp with us, both nibble on half a sandwich someone left on the park bench. Apparently workers from nearby offices and buildings occasionally lunch in the park and leave their leftovers for the park's inhabitants. I am still working up the courage to eat someone else's leftovers. It's only my second day in the park, but I figure by nightfall, my stomach will be chewing itself if I don't put something init.
Yoli, a petite seventeen-year-old, is always smiling. Even now, sitting on the curb around the slide and swings, huddling under a tarp and eating a stranger's leftovers, she's grinning. She told me life in her home was unbearable because of her stepfather and she has no intention of ever going back. The other girl, Becky, has curly brown hair and a tattoo of roses that crawl up her arm and around her neck. Apparently, her boyfriend was a tattoo artist and a successful one at that. The quality of the tattoo on her neck seems to confirm it. But it seems Chaz, as she calls him, was into some illegal shit along with the ink business. The cops yanked him out of his bed one morning and dragged him off, leaving Becky alone andpenniless.
Besides the hours I spent perfecting my street kid wardrobe, I spent a good hour concocting a believable backstory, complete with an abusive mother and grandmother who had no interest in raising me. But I quickly discovered it didn't matter. Everyone out at the park was more concerned about their next meal and staying safe and warm and dry than the woes and tragedies faced by their fellow parkmates.
What I did discover early on is that the park gives them all a sense of community. They have little but they share what they have. No one questioned me or my motives or my past. It seemed they had no option but to trust everyone. Paranoia and suspicion were only going to work against you when you were out alone on thestreets.
Yoli offers me one last chance at the sandwich. "Are you sure, Tawny? With this rain, there won't be many more people eating lunch at the parktoday."
I feel guilty taking the last bite from her, but I decide since she's been living at the park for six months, she knows what she's talking about. I close my eyes and push the bite into my mouth. It's mostly bread crust and mustard, but it tastesgood.
"Where did you find this tarp?" I ask. "It sure is keeping the rain out." I decided long before I arrived at the park not to bring up Cherry Cola with the hopes that one of them would bring it up first. Then I could innocently ask them aboutit.
"Oh jeez, that's it," Becky says as she pulls her old army jacket tighter around her. "You have asked the goldenquestion."