Rust & Stardust Page 7

  “Here you go,” he said. “Now you have a good day, and maybe take a little nap. A nice cold compress on your forehead will cool you right down. Loretta swears by a bag of frozen peas.”

  The screen door slammed shut behind him, and Ella reached for the envelope on the table. The pencil marks were barely legible on the paper, as if Sally had been afraid to press too hard, to commit the words to the paper, wraithlike on the page: Mr. Warner says we’re going to Baltimore. In the left corner was an address almost too faint to see: 203 Pacific Street, Atlantic City, New Jersey.

  Mr. Warner? Who was that? She sprang from the chair, her body with a will of its own. She watched her fingers dial the numbers, heard the voice come from her mouth. “Camden Police Department, please.” And then, after she was connected: “This is Ella Horner. And my daughter … Sally … somebody’s keeping her, and it’s time for her to come home.”

  AL

  Al answered Ella’s door and led the two detectives, Burke and Morrow, inside the house. Ella had barely spoken a word since he and Susan arrived earlier. All the color gone from her face, she sat at the kitchen table staring at the clock on the wall. Susan sat across from her, holding her hand, speaking to her softly.

  “Ma,” Al said gently as he came into the kitchen, the two men in tow. “These gentlemen need to speak with you. About Sally.”

  Susan looked up, her shoulders stiffening. And slowly Ella turned away from the clock, as if waking from a dream.

  “Did you find her?” She stood up, grimacing.

  “No need to get up, ma’am,” Burke said, gesturing for her to sit back down. He was tall and thin, with glasses and a friendly face.

  “Where is Sally?” she asked, her voice cracking.

  “We’re going to try to figure that out, ma’am,” Morrow, the other detective, said. He was more severe, with sharp features and a deep cleft in his chin. “But we’re going to need your help. We have some questions for you.”

  Burke sat next to Ella, but Morrow remained standing, nodding and scratching at his pad as Ella recounted her meeting with the man, the father of one of Sally’s friends, who had taken her to the shore.

  “So you put her on the bus with this fellow, Peterson, you say? But you’d never met him before?” Burke said gently, but it still sounded like an accusation to Al.

  Ella wrung her hands and stared past him blankly. When she finally spoke, her voice was low. “He told me they’d be going to the shore, and what a delight it would be to have Sally along.” Ella shook her head, and still did not look at either the detectives or Susan. “It was a chance for Sally to have a little vacation. I couldn’t afford to give her one. She sent postcards. She even sent a box of lemon taffy. I have it here somewhere,” she said, and again started to rise. Al watched as the pain gripped her.

  “Don’t worry about it, Mama,” Susan said. “Just give them the last letter.”

  “I was going to go down there myself,” Al said to Burke. “To bring her home.” And he would have if Susan hadn’t made him wait to speak to the police. Atlantic City wasn’t far. He could have had her back home by supper. They had an address now. He wasn’t sure why Ella had called the police department instead of calling him and Susan first. Whatever this mix-up was, he didn’t think anything about it was illegal.

  “Now, let’s leave this to the professionals,” Burke said. “We already put a call into the local PD in Atlantic City. Told them the address Mrs. Horner gave us and asked them to go by and see what they can find out.”

  “Who’s this Mr. Warner?” Burke asked, peering through his glasses at the letter, at Sally’s faint handwriting. “I thought you said the man you met was named Peterson?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” Ella said, her hands curling into fists. Her knuckles were swollen, bent, crippled by her arthritis. “She ain’t with the Petersons. That Peterson girl, Vivi, didn’t know nothin’ about a vacation at the shore. It’s been over a month already. Who takes someone’s child away for a whole month? I don’t care how rich you are.”

  “Warner,” Burke said, single eyebrow lifted, nodding to Morrow, who looked up from his pad. He quickly stuffed it in his breast pocket and reached for the book he had brought in with him. He flipped through it, opened it to the first page, and set it down in front of Ella.

  “Ma’am, we’re going to need you to look at each of these photos carefully,” Burke said. “Do you recognize any of these men?”

  “Who are they?” Ella asked, shaking her head, confused.

  “We just need to know if you recognize any of them. Do any of these men resemble the man you met at the bus station? The one who claimed to be this Mr. Peterson?”

  Ella studied the photos before her. She shook her head as she carefully turned page after page after page.

  “I really don’t understand,” she said.

  Al moved to look over Ella’s shoulder at the book. The photos, Al realized, were mug shots, a rogues’ gallery of criminals. Carefully written notes about each felon were etched beneath: descriptions of their persons, their aliases, and their crimes. Criminal after criminal; he felt sick. Was it possible that Sally was with one of these degenerates?

  Ella looked up at Al, scared.

  “Go slowly, Ma,” he said softly, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Are any of them the man you met?”

  She shook her head, turned the page. Then suddenly, she stopped. Her eyes widened, and she pointed at a photo. “That’s him,” she said.

  Both detectives leaned over to study the photograph.

  “Are you sure?” Burke, asked. “Frank La Salle?”

  “He was very charming,” Ella said, her jaw set defensively. “And courteous.”

  “I’m certain he was,” Burke said sympathetically. Morrow scooped the book up.

  “Who is he?” Susan asked.

  “I should have listened to my heart,” Ella said, to no one in particular, shaking her head. “I felt uneasy letting her go with that man.”

  “No one’s blaming you, ma’am,” Burke offered, patting her shoulder.

  “You’re positive…,” Morrow said impatiently, holding the book up now, open to the photo of the hawkish man. “That this is the man who kidnapped your daughter?”

  “Kidnapped?” Susan cried out, and stood up.

  Kidnapped? Al thought. Al went to her and put his arm around her, her shoulders shaking, her body trembling.

  “Al, what do they mean?” Susan asked, looking up at him, terror in her eyes. He worried about her getting so worked up; it couldn’t be good for the baby. “Sit down,” he said, and ushered her back down into her chair.

  “That’s him. The one that took Sally on the bus.” Ella nodded. “I remember the scar on his face.”

  “Do you need some water, Sue?” Al whispered, but she shook her head.

  “Well, who is he?” Ella said. “And what does he want with Sally? We don’t have no money to give him for … what’s that called? Al? Like the Lindbergh baby?”

  “Ransom?” The idea was ludicrous. All of this, insane.

  “Can I speak to you?” Burke said, motioning for Al to follow him out into the foyer.

  “I’ll be right back,” Al said to Susan, and she sat down again.

  In the dimly lit hallway, the man took a deep breath and opened the book to the photo. “This man. His name is La Salle. Frank La Salle. Also goes by Patterson, O’Keefe. Warner.”

  “Who is he?”

  Burke leaned toward the kitchen, as if to see if either Susan or Ella were within earshot. “This is just between us for now, okay? No need to get the women all riled up till we know for sure.”

  Al felt his stomach pitch as he nodded.

  “He’s an ex-con, just out of state prison in Trenton since January. We were worried it might be him. He’s got a history.”

  “Of?”

  “Of,” the detective said, his freckled cheeks turning red. “Sex crimes. Against young girls.”

  SALLY

>   They were leaving soon. Going to Baltimore like Mr. Warner said.

  But for now, Mr. Warner sat at the table by the window and played solitaire with a battered deck of cards, drinking straight from the bottle labeled CRACKER JACK STRAIGHT APPLE BRANDY. It made her think of the boxes of Cracker Jack caramel popcorn Susan used to get at the movies. Sally picked out the peanuts, but Susan always offered her the toy or riddle inside.

  What is it that no man ever yet did see, which never was, but always is to be? She’d read the riddle aloud as they waited for the movie to begin.

  “I don’t know, Sally,” Susan said, shrugging.

  “I know! It’s tomorrow!” Al said, slapping his hand on his knee. Al could always figure out the riddles.

  Three days had passed since Mr. Warner pulled the gun out and scared her, since she sent the letter home telling her mother that he was taking her to Baltimore. It was dark now, and it made her think of that diving bell at the edge of the pier. The room transformed into a watery tomb.

  Her body stiffened when she heard him slam down the empty bottle on the table. The room smelled sweet, sickening.

  “You awake?” he said.

  Sally held her breath.

  “I said, are you awake?”

  His words blurred together. This was the way her stepfather sounded when he came home from Daly’s. Now, she pretended she was asleep, pressed her hand against her chest, feeling her heart beating against her ribs. She heard him moving around the room, the scraping of his chair leg against the floor, though she could only make out his dark silhouette. She held her breath and gripped the blanket in her fists.

  Then.

  “Get undressed,” he said, his voice made not of water but of sand. He was standing on the other side of the curtain, which he’d hung back up.

  She froze. “What?” She closed her eyes and conjured the diving bell, that subaqueous crypt.

  “I said, take your blouse off. Your skirt.”

  She hadn’t changed into her nightclothes yet.

  “I been real patient with you, Sally,” he said, and then he yanked the sheet dividing their beds down again, and she gasped. He loomed over her, swaying. Waiting. But without the sheet, she wasn’t sure where she was supposed to change.

  “I been treating you real nice, haven’t I?” he asked, his face close to hers.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

  “Most girls would consider themselves lucky to be treated so nice. I ain’t been nothing but a perfect gentleman.” He wagged his bony finger near her face, and tears fell hot down her cheeks.

  “You’ve been real good to me, sir.”

  “Here,” he said. “I’ll help you.” And he began to unbutton her blouse, his fumbling fingers poking at her. Frustrated, he yanked at her clothes. A button flew off, landing on the floor.

  “No, no, no,” she pleaded, her words made of water. Spilling, spreading, seeping. A salty sting, and she wondered if the little round windows of the diving bell had burst (an explosion of glass and the cold saltwater rushing in). She clung to the edge of the mattress so she wouldn’t drown, the weight of him, the weight of the entire ocean on her chest, compressing her ribs, her lungs filling with the sea.

  The room was so still, like it must feel like to be deep underwater.

  Time stilled. Stopped.

  What are you doing? she wanted to scream. Mama! But there was no air left in her lungs. And he pressed his hand against her mouth.

  And then there was nothing but pain. She shook her head, felt herself plummeting. Sinking. She was drowning.

  But then, just when she was certain she had hit the bottom, the ocean floor, the weight suddenly lifted from her chest, and she was light, ascending, dizzy and disoriented. The sky of water becoming a sky of stars. She was suspended, floating. But was she above the pain, or below it?

  Mr. Warner stumbled off her, and she surfaced. He backed up, zipping his trousers.

  She felt her pulse between her legs. In her temples. Moving only her aching head, she peered out the window, where the defunct lighthouse stood, dark. She felt a sob trying to escape her lips. Mr. Warner was right. The lighthouse was dormant, casting nothing but long shadows during the day. No beacon of hope, no signal guiding lost sailors home.

  “Why?” she asked, the word bubbling to the surface. Irrepressible. “Why are you doing this to me? My mama, she’ll send someone looking for me. My sister. Her husband.” She sobbed.

  He laughed, his voice full of grit. “Then I’ll arrest her, too, for being an accomplice. Lock you both up and throw away the key.”

  When I turn around once. What is out will not get in. When I turn around again. What is in will not get out. What might I be?

  A key, she thought. A key. She needed to find the key that would set her free. When she turned her aching head, she thought about the letter. Please, let them find me, she thought. Before it’s too late.

  SUSAN

  When Susan answered the knock at her mother’s door that early August morning, she knew they’d come with bad news. The two detectives stood on the porch, holding Sally’s little red suitcase. But no Sally. Cleopatra, the neighborhood stray, wound herself between his legs, purring.

  “Mama!” Susan hollered into the house, and Ella came to the door.

  “Where is she?” Ella sobbed, clutching her chest as if to contain her heart. When the detectives didn’t answer, she turned to Susan. “Where is your sister?”

  Inside, they showed her and her mother the photograph they’d found in the empty boardinghouse room. In the photo, Sally was wearing an unfamiliar dress with white lace and ruffles. Like a child bride. She was sitting on a swing, her hands clutching the ropes on either side. There was a painted window behind her, a window box filled with flowers. “Is this your daughter?” they asked Ella. “Is this Sally?”

  Susan felt like her world was turned inside out. She had to sit with her head between her knees, breathing into a paper bag, for nearly ten minutes before she could compose herself enough to speak to the man from the county who showed up at the house a few minutes later and said he’d be taking over from here.

  “Who is he? This man Frank La Salle?” Susan asked the county man, Detective Vail. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  When she’d asked Al what the Camden detectives had told him, he said not to worry. That they would find her. She suspected now that Al had been keeping information from her. Protecting her. Now Al paced back and forth across the kitchen floor, and her mother sat, once again, expressionless at the kitchen table as Vail explained that Frank La Salle had, indeed, kidnapped her sister.

  “He’s got about five different aliases he’s been using. He’s been going by Warner since he took your daughter. The owner of the rooming house where they were staying said he registered under Warner. He said he was her father.”

  “She has no father,” Ella said. It was the first time she’d spoken since they arrived.

  Susan could only breathe shallow breaths, and she didn’t know if it was the position the baby was in or something else. It felt like her lungs had shrunk in size, like she was a swimmer coming up for air that wasn’t there.

  “So he’s not associated in any way with one of Sally’s friends?” Susan said, knowing even as she asked how ludicrous this question was. Something about all of this had seemed fishy to her from the start. She tried to understand how it was that her mother had handed her own child off to this criminal. She’d walked her to the bus depot, delivered her to him like a gift. She couldn’t understand how Ella had been so gullible, so stupid. But the even greater mystery, she thought, was Sally herself. What on earth would have made her agree to go with him, this fiend?

  When her mother got up to use the powder room, Vail took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and spoke softly to Al and Susan. “I’m not sure what they told you about La Salle, but you should know that just eight months ago he was locked up in Trenton. He’d just gotten out and wa
s staying at the YMCA downtown. Looks like they kicked him out right around the time he met up with Sally.”

  “What was he in jail for?” Al asked.

  Vail looked at Susan apologetically, and grimaced a little. “Statutory rape. Five little girls, all of them between twelve and fourteen years old. Sally’s age. Before that he was wanted for the kidnapping of another girl, a teenager named Dorothy Dare. He wound up marrying the Dare girl, though, made it legal. They even had a baby. But she kicked him out, and he was right back to his old ways.”

  Susan’s vision blurred. La Salle wasn’t just a grifter, a con man, but a monster. And now Sally was with him, who knew where. The letter had said they were going to Baltimore, but if that was true, would he really allow her to send it? Had he forced her to write this, as he clearly had forced her to write the others? A pile of unsent postcards the police had found in the room sat in front of them on the table covered in fabrications: Dear Mama, Today we went to the beach. I am getting freckles on my nose from all this sunshine. Dear Mama, You would love it here. I miss you, but I am having so much fun. Dear Mama, I … This one illegible, the words run together. Something had spilled. A glass of water? Dear God, poor Sally’s tears?

  Ella returned to the kitchen, and Susan couldn’t bring herself to look at her.

  “What do we do now?” Susan asked, as it appeared her mother had all but slipped away, sitting silently again, wringing her knotty hands.

  “We’ve got a warrant out for his arrest. Because we believe he’s taken her over state lines, the FBI will be in charge of the manhunt.” Hunted. Like an animal.

  “What do you think he plans to do with to her?” Susan asked, and immediately wished she hadn’t.

  The county man rubbed his face with his hands, his mouth twitching as he shot a glance at Ella, who was staring blankly at the door again, as if Sally might just walk right back through it.

  “Let’s try not to worry about that. For now, we’re going to focus on getting your sister home,” he said. But when he smiled, his eyes betrayed both his doubt and the truth that whatever Frank La Salle planned to do to Sally, he’d likely already done.