FLIPKA

Chapter Fifteen

Apparently Winnie Peterson had been very busy since I’d left, filing missing person’s reports, releasing detainees, and getting her hair dyed. She’d gone from a brunette to a honey blonde. I’m no judge of feminine beauty but from the expression on Creamo’s face, it wasn’t a bad move on her part. 

“You mean Meredith just walked out of here by herself after dark?” I asked, as we gagged down reheated coffee in her office. I’d slept until almost nine, thanks to the miracle of modern medicine, awakening to a persistent rapping on the window of the limo. It was Creamo. He’d already poked around Enev, asking questions and making notes in his steno pad, and now he was ready for coffee. Luckily my morning grooming routine was brief. 

“At first we thought she left with you . . .” Ms. Peterson asserted. 

I couldn’t reply in any way that was not insulting, so I kept my mouth shut. 

She got the point. “But once we heard about your accident . . .” She paused to fluff her hair with freshly manicured fingers. “We assumed that some boy was waiting for her outside the gate and that in all the excitement that night, she managed to slip past the guard. Meredith Hyman was getting letters from several young men—did you know that?”

Was this the same Winnie Peterson that I met last week, I thought, dressed in stylish tweed trousers and tan cashmere pullover. The picture of the man in the wheelchair was missing from behind her desk; lying in its place was a set of keys on a Mercedes key chain. 

“It doesn’t surprise me that she would have a ton of boyfriends,” I admitted, “but if that was her plan, one of the other girls might know something that could help us locate her. Can we at least talk to the others?”

“You can talk to Nancy Jean—she’s still in detention. Leticia and Bonny have both been released via our early release program for first-time offenders.”

“What?”

“They were scheduled for release in the next six months, and we needed their beds. Budget cuts, you know. Leticia was released to her grandfather, and I’m sorry, but I don’t have an address for him. We referred Bonny to an independent-living-skills program down in Vegas. She was close enough to emancipation that . . .”

“She was sixteen, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah, but what were they going to do with her? A group home? How long do you think that would have lasted?”

“And the little Vietnamese girl?” 

“After Meredith left, she tried to hurt herself. We had to transfer her to White Pine Hospital down in Caliente.”

Mighty convenient, I thought to myself. Two girls released and one in a psych ward fifty miles away. The only one left, locked in detention and probably heavily sedated. I turned to Creamo, but he had no expression on his face as he jotted notes on his steno pad. I must admit, having him along made dealing with Ms. Peterson a piece of cake. Something about his aura of big-city cop so clearly trumped her tough prison matron that she was working on a whole new shtick, one designed to make her appear cooperative and reasonable. Creamo maintained a solid cool, responding not in the least when she insisted on walking us up to the cemetery in the freezing drizzle to show us that the mine shaft had been blocked by a cave-in “some years before.”

 “Looks fresh,” he whispered to me. Of course it was fresh! There hadn’t even been an attempt to cover up the deep, muddy ruts left by dump trucks! It was so obviously a lie that it made my blood boil, but instead I followed Creamo’s lead. 

After this ridiculous lie, Ms. Peterson allowed us to interview several staff members and the guard on duty, review the visitor’s log, and confiscate any of Meredith Hyman’s possessions that her mother had not taken, including letters from her many beaux. Creamo examined the girl’s various trinkets gingerly—love beads and peace symbols, postcards from friends, paperbacks, and lip glosses—as though each was a special treasure. Watching him I realized he’d probably watched her grow up and developed a familial affection for her. Or perhaps, I postulated further, he had a daughter of his own, rebellious and whimsical, who’d captivated him and then, through a marital breakup (he wore no wedding ring) had disappeared.