“It's nice of you to help me with this. We aren't really employed by anyone. This is just an issue about Annie's safety.”
“I'm not doing this for Annie's safety. This is about your safety. We need to get Abruzzi locked up. He's playing with you right now. When he stops enjoying the play he's going to get serious. If the police can't tie him to Soder, Annie might be able to tie him to something. Multiple murders, maybe, if the drawings are from life.”
“If we bring Annie in, can we keep her safe?”
“I can keep her safe until Abruzzi is sentenced. Keeping you safe is more difficult. As long as Abruzzi is at large, nothing short of locking you in the Bat Cave for the rest of your life will keep you safe.”
Hmm. The Bat Cave for the rest of my life. “You said the Bat Cave has television, right?”
Ranger slid a sideways look my way. “Eat your fries.”
BARBARA ANN GUZMAN was first on the list. She lived in a tract house in East Brunswick, in a pleasant neighborhood filled with middle-income families. Kathy Snyder, also on the list, lived two doors down. Both houses had attached garages. Neither of the garages had windows.
Ranger parked in front of the Guzman house. “Both women should be at work.”
“Are we breaking in?”
“No, we're knocking on the door, hoping we hear kids inside.”
We knocked twice, and we didn't hear kids. I squeezed behind an azalea and peeked in Barbara Ann's front window. Lights off, television off, no little shoes laying discarded on the floor.
We walked two houses down to Kathy Snyder. We rang the bell, and an older woman answered.
“I'm looking for Kathy,” I said to the woman.
“She's at work,” the woman said. “I'm her mother. Can I help you?”
Ranger passed the woman a stack of photos. “Have you seen any of these people?”
“This is Dotty,” the woman said. “And her friend. They spent the night with Barbara Ann. Do you know Barbara Ann?”
“Barbara Ann Guzman,” Ranger said.
“Yes. Not last night. They were here the night before. A real full house for Barbara Ann.”
“Do you know where they are now?”
She looked at the photo and shook her head. “No. Kathy might know. I just saw them because I was walking. I walk around the block every night for a little exercise, and I saw them drive up.”
“D
o you remember the car?” Ranger asked.
“It was just a regular car. Blue, I think.” She looked from Ranger to me. “Is something wrong?”
“The one woman, Dotty's friend, has had some bad luck, and we're trying to help her straighten things out,” I said.
The third woman lived in an apartment building in New Brunswick. We drove through the underground garage, methodically going up and down rows, looking for Dotty's blue Honda or Evelyn's gray Sentra. We scored a goose egg on that, so we parked and took the elevator to the sixth floor. We knocked on Pauline Wood's door and got no answer. We tried neighboring apartments, but no one responded. Ranger knocked one last time on Pauline's door and then let himself in. I stayed outside doing lookout. Five minutes later, Ranger was back in the hall, Pauline's door locked behind him.
“The apartment was clean,” he said. “Nothing to indicate Dotty was there. No forwarding address for her displayed in a prominent place.”
We left the parking garage and drove through town on our way to Highland Park. New Brunswick is a college town with Rutgers at the one end and Douglass College at the other. I graduated from Douglass without distinction. I was in the top ninety-eight percent of my class and damn glad to be there. I slept in the library and daydreamed my way through history lecture. I failed math twice, never fully grasping probability theory. I mean, first off, who cares if you pick a black ball or a white ball out of the bag? And second, if you're bent over about the color, don't leave it to chance. Look in the damn bag and pick the color you want.
By the time I reached college age, I'd given up all hope of flying like Superman, but I was never able to develop a burning desire for an alternative occupation. When I was a kid I read Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics. Uncle Scrooge was always going off to exotic places in search of gold. After Scrooge got the gold, he'd take it back to his money bin and push his loose change around with a bulldozer. Now this was my idea of a good job. Go on an adventure. Bring back gold. Push it around with a bulldozer. How fun is this? So you can possibly see the reason for my lack of motivation to get grades. I mean, do you really need good grades to drive a bulldozer?
“I went to college here,” I said to Ranger. “It's been a bunch of years, but I still feel like a student when I ride through town.”
“Were you a good student?”