Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

“Mine, too.“
    “That was a long time ago, Leon. She must have gotten her hair cut since then.”
    He scratched behind one ear, looked uncomfortable. “I tried it once.”
    “And?”
    He shook his head. I figured it must have turned out like his jacket, one side shorter than the other.
    “I think she cuts it herself.”
    “You’re not sure?”
    “I...” Leon lifted one hand, let it come to rest on top of his camera. “Sometimes there’s hair on the bathroom floor, in front of the sink.”
    “It’s not a problem, Leon. We’ll figure something out. The girl stuff, I mean. If she’s willing.”
    “You’ll play it by ear?”
    “My specialty.”
    He looked as if he wanted to go, but he didn’t.
    “Leon? Is there something you wanted to say?” I asked him.
    “About Sally?” he said, a minuscule amount of hope showing for a bare second. “Is there anything yet?”
    “I found out that she could have gotten out of the city with no money and even with Roy, but,” I sighed, “that doesn’t mean that’s what she did. It only means it’s what she might have done. I told you this would be hard, next to impossible.”
    “You did.”
    “Do you want me to continue with it? I can stop if you want me to.”
    He shook his head. “How?” he asked. “How could she have...?”
    “Hitchhiking. Not a car. The truckers in the meat market. I tried it with Dashiell. They’re so lonely, most of the drivers, they even stopped for someone with a pit bull.”
    “And then?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t have a lot to go on, Leon. She’s been gone five years,” as if I had to tell him that. “But I am trying.”
    He nodded, head down like a dog who’d just been caught in the act, as if everything was his fault, Sally’s disappearance, Bechman’s death, the horrifying decline of moral integrity in the so-called civilized world, global warming, terrorism, the whole nine yards.
    “Don’t get your hopes too high,” I said, wondering if he could even do that at this point. “But don’t give up either.” Then I felt like a complete idiot, talking to him in bumper-sticker slogans, as if anything I said would change the way he felt. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
    Leon opened his mouth, then closed it again. I closed and locked the gate and headed down the tunnel toward the sound of barking. The backpack still on her, the purse with the turtle still in her hand, Madison was running in a circle around the large oak in the middle of the garden, Dashiell at her heels, cognizant of the unwritten rules and letting her stay ahead, though since they were going in a circle, maybe it was the other way around. I’d never seen Madison do anything normal, and watching them made me smile, but then I wondered if what she was doing could be considered normal, given the fact that she was doing it while carrying a turtle in a see-through lunch box.
    “This way, gang,” I said, “there’s work to be done.”
    Dashiell got to the door first. I thought showing off might pay off big in the near future, that it might help convince this kid I had something to offer, get her to trust me a bit, so I asked Dashiell to open the door. Out of the comer of my eye, I saw Madison shoot a look at me, then quickly turn back to Dash. He took the doorknob in his mouth and twisted his head. I could hear the small click as the tongue of the unlocked door released. Then he let go of the knob, backed up one step and reared up, like a horse, hitting the door with his front paws and knocking it open. Madison was enthralled. Or at least attentive—it was hard to tell. And I began to think of the evening ahead as one long pet-therapy session. Where it would get me, I had no idea, but that seemed to be the hallmark of this case, a fact I didn’t even want to think about for now.
    I’d made up my mind that connecting with the kid might help me find the mother. In the fading light of the fall garden, it seemed a ridiculous notion, given the fact that Madison was barely seven when her mother left and given the fact that she may have even been why the mother left. But it was all I could come up with at the moment, and I was sticking to it, with, I hoped, a lot of help from Dashiell.
    Madison walked inside, looked around, wiggled out of the backpack and dropped it on one of the kitchen chairs. Then she carefully placed the purse in the center of the table, bending down and checking to make sure Emil/Emily was okay.
    I went into the kitchen,