Milk and Honey

Now all he needed to do was convince her to move back and pick up where they had left off.

Two days to go.

Decker stared out the window. Marge had turned left, cutting northeast. They passed a pit of huge boulders and sand deposits—rocks stripped of ore, leaving only dusty wasteland. A half-mile north was the Manfred development, two square miles of land cut from mountainside. Fifty yards down, workers were framing a convenience center. Marge parked the car on the first street, and they both got out.

“This is really the boonies, isn’t it?” Marge said.

Decker said, “The land won’t be empty forever. Much to the conservationists’ displeasure.”

“Well, I’ve got to agree with them on one account. These houses certainly don’t blend in with the landscape. Kind of reminds me of the lost colony of Roanoke.”

Decker smiled and said, “How do you want to divide up?”

Marge said, “Maple runs down the middle. I’ll take the houses north of it between Louisiana and Washington.”

“Roger,” Decker said. “Keep a look out for unusual tire marks or tiny footprints. Maybe we can trace little Sally’s late-night trek through the neighborhood.”

“Ground’s dry,” Marge said kicking up dust.

“In the early morning, the air was full of dew. You never can tell.”

“All right,” Marge said. “Here’s one of the sexy Polaroids I took this morning.”

The snapshot showed the blond, curly-haired toddler grinning, her nose wrinkling.

“What a little doll,” Decker said.

“Yeah,” Marge agreed. “Meet you back here … when?”

“Two hours from now?”

“Two hours sounds about right.”

“Good.”

They split up.

Nada.

Two and a quarter hours of searching, and nothing but a pair of sore dogs. Decker radioed to Marge.

“The hour’s getting late,” he said. “How many houses do you have left?”

“About twenty,” she said. “Why don’t we call it quits? I’ll get the ones I missed and pick up the ones that weren’t home tomorrow or the next day.”

“Meet you at the car,” Decker said.

He walked back nursing a giant headache. Maybe it was the lack of food and sleep, but some of it was caused by a sinking feeling that there was a corpse out there collecting flies.

He leaned against the Plymouth, waved to Marge as she approached.

“You’ve got a knowing gleam in your eye,” Decker told her. “What did you find out?”

“That a lady on Pennsylvania is boffing a repairman from ABC Refrigeration.” Marge consulted her notes. “There was this one woman, a Mrs. Patty Bingham on 1605 Oak Street. She denied ever seeing Sally, had no idea who she was, etc., etc. But something about her didn’t feel right. Nothing I can put my finger on, but I suspect she’s holding back.”

Decker asked, “Why wouldn’t she want to help identify a little kid?”

“It might implicate her in something nasty,” Marge said.

Decker nodded. “I don’t know about you, but whatever the story is with Sally, I don’t think the kid lived in this development.”

“I’ll agree with you there,” Marge said. “Too many people denied knowing her. And in a place with this many children, where the kids all play together, some of the neighborhood mothers would have recognized her … unless her parents kept her locked up and segregated.”

“I don’t think so,” Decker said. “Sally’s a sweet little girl—relates well to people, talks a little, smiles a lot. She doesn’t seem like a socially isolated kid to me. Plus, in my interviewing, none of the moms I’d talked to mentioned a weird family on such-and-such street.”

“Yeah,” Marge said. “In a small neighborhood like this, a weird family would stick out.” She furrowed her brow. “So that brings us back to the crucial question. Where the hell did Sally come from?”

“Sophi Rawlings made an interesting point. Maybe she was a pawn in a custody dispute. Maybe Dad kidnapped her, then discovered how much work she was and dropped her off here to be found.”

“Here?”

“A nice family neighborhood,” Decker said. “Someone was bound to notice her.”

“Except no one did,” Marge said.

“I did.”

“But you weren’t from the neighborhood,” Marge answered. “And what about the blood?”

Decker shrugged.

Marge said, “How about this: Dad and Mom live close by. Dad whacks Mom in an argument, panics, and drops the kid here.”

Decker said. “But where do Dad and Mom live if they don’t live here?”

Marge said, “There’re a few isolated ranches around here.” She looked toward the mountains. “Probably more squatters than we’d care to admit in those hills.”

Decker nodded and said, “In the meantime, start up a Missing Person file on Sally. I’ll go to meet my buddy—”

“The rapist.”

“Alleged rapist,” Decker said. “You punch Sally’s description and prints into the computer. Also, contact Barry Delferno.”

Marge stuck out her tongue.

Decker said, “Want me to call him?”

“No, no, no,” Marge insisted. “My past experience with the sleaze shall have no bearing on my professional duties.”