Forgotten Witness Read online

  “Of course, Senator.” Eugene didn’t so much as blink but Josie could feel his distaste for her.

  “And we would provide him with counsel licensed to practice in the District, should he need it,” Ambrose went on.

  “Advocacy is advocacy,” Josie countered. “And it doesn’t have to be in a professional capacity.”

  “So it is. In Washington, though, that word takes on a new meaning. We must protect the government and those who make it work.”

  “My mistake, I thought government existed to protect the people by whose grace it stands,” Josie responded lightly, but there was no mistaking her meaning.

  “I love a woman with a quick mouth,” Patriota said.

  “I believe that’s quick wit, Senator,” Eugene Weller suggested.

  The senator looked Eugene up and down, seeming to lament the man’s lack of it.

  “English is my second language. I sometimes confuse words. Thank goodness Eugene is here to watch over me. And now, the time. I’m afraid Eugene was right. We will have to miss the reception.”

  He put one a hand on Eugene’s shoulder and pointed to a young woman coming down the hall with the other.

  “There is Sarah going back to the office. Sarah,” he called out. “Will you be kind enough to escort Ms. Bates to the reception? You know where it is?”

  “Yes, sir. This way.”

  Sarah waited, hand outstretched but Josie didn’t take her up on the invitation. She was looking after the senator and his chief of staff as they walked away. Finally Sarah grew impatient, so Josie relented and went with her to the reception room even though all she really wanted to do was go home. She was tired of the cold and of people who thought outside was the distasteful corridor that connected one government building with the next.

  Behind them Ambrose and Eugene walked and talked. Just before they turned a corner, Patriota looked back at Josie’s retreating figure. Eugene followed his gaze to see what had caught his boss’s interest.

  “Don’t worry, Senator. She’s scheduled for the red eye.”

  “Eugene, if I were to worry about everyone like her I would have been in my grave long ago.”

  “No. No, they aren’t taking it seriously.” – Josie

  “Do you want me to see what I can find on this guy?” – Archer

  “I’ve got a few hours before I have to be at the airport. I’ll check him out.” – Josie

  “I got a call from the trucker who saw the flyer on the kids. He says he picked Hannah and Billy up and dropped them up north near Sanger. I figure they’re headed to San Francisco. After you get home, I’ll head out that way.” – Archer

  “You should go now.”- Josie

  “Not a chance. Max and I have a homecoming planned.” – Archer

  “It will be late.”- Josie

  “But you’ll be home.” – Archer

  “Unless I find Hannah here.” – Josie

  “Up north is a better bet. I picked up your mail.” – Archer

  “Anything urgent?” – Josie

  “You got a letter from Chowchilla.” – Archer

  “Great.” – Josie

  “You want me to open it?” – Archer

  “Or burn it.” – Josie

  “How about I open it and then burn it? Just in case.” – Archer

  “Whatever. Linda and I have nothing to talk about.” – Josie

  “I’ll take care of it, babe.” – Archer

  “Thanks. See you soon.” – Josie

  “Not soon enough.” – Archer

  CHAPTER 4

  Josie lingered exactly two minutes after she hung up with Archer and then she opened the door of the reception room, walked into the hall, and out of the building. She left behind the other two witnesses, their families, Patriota’s staffers, and various hangers-on who drank cheap wine while nibbling cheese cubes and celery sticks. If any of the people in that room could have brought Hannah back home Josie would have nibbled cheese cubes until she turned orange. Since they couldn’t, she took off to find a private place to check out the one lead she had; the one she hadn’t mentioned to anyone.

  By the time she got outside the day chill had turned to night cold. She walked a few blocks with her coat collar turned up and gloved hands pushed into her deep pockets. A breeze ruffled her hair, the cold stung her nose and made her eyes tear. Despite the weather and her worry and her homesickness, Josie was not immune to the majesty of Washington D.C. One could not help but be inspired in this city of symbols and monuments to war and sacrifice, freedom, justice, and determination against all odds. From where she stood the White House looked otherworldly, lit up as it was against a blue/black sky. The Washington Monument watched over the National Mall. A wise and weary stone Lincoln sat in perpetual contemplation. The black wall of the Viet Nam Memorial glistened, the names of the fallen etched in ghostly white on Death’s marble ledger.

  It was October. Thanksgiving would come too soon and Christmas on the heels of that. Time was running away with her and even the inspiration to courage and wisdom that this city offered could not erase the emptiness she felt. Josie would never despair of finding Hannah, but she was sad that the future wasn’t clearer. Archer admitted that the trail he followed was sometimes more intuition than anything else and that Hannah was proving more resourceful than he expected. He conceded that they might have to wait for the girl to come home in her own good time. Josie had been ready to accept that until now.

  She wiped at her eyes, shook off her self-pity, and let her melancholy go on the fog of her breath. Longing for something was never productive. If it were, her mother would have come back long ago.

  Josie walked until government buildings gave way to restaurants and stores. Those melted into brownstone neighborhoods and then apartments. Soon she would be out of the mainstream altogether. She paused to look at a menu posted in a restaurant window but the place was too lively for her to concentrate properly. She had already checked out of her hotel, but her bag was still there. She could work in the lobby while she waited for the shuttle, yet for some reason she didn’t want to be predictable. Josie settled on the familiar and walked into the first Starbucks she came upon. Grateful for the blast of warmth, she peeled off her gloves, unbuttoned her coat, and waited in line.

  “Coffee,” she ordered when she reached the counter.

  “Just coffee?” The barista seemed disappointed.

  Moments later, Josie’s coat was draped over a chair at a table in the back corner of the L-shaped room. The coffee was good, her phone was charged. She took a drink and then Googled Ian Frances.

  The first page listings brought up a racehorse’s website, a few guys who had written novels, an artist in Australia, and a reference asking her if she meant Francis of Assisi. She cleared the phone and typed again: Ian Francis.

  More authors.

  She typed Ian Francis, Canada. She got a haberdasher and a mathematician.

  The next time she tried Ian Francis, A&M University and found what she was looking for. Ian Francis was a professor of forensic neurology and imbedded in the article Josie found was a formal headshot showing a much younger and very much healthier man. He was intelligently posed, his gaze honest, and his demeanor temperate. The accompanying article was dated 1981 and entitled Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Neural Functioning. She found references to his published writings in 1978, 1983, 1989, and 1994. That didn’t mean other information didn’t exist, it only meant she was eager to get on with the real task at hand. Josie took the thing Ian Francis had thrust into her hands out of her pocket before it burned a hole through it.

  It was a piece of white plastic, cylindrically rolled and secured with a thick blue rubber band. It was no bigger than a stogie and wrapped with origami precision. She ran her fingers up and down the length. She couldn’t feel anything inside; there were no wires along the skin and there was no discernible smell. She peeled off the rubber band. The plastic was so tightly wrapped that it didn’t immediately come
apart. She picked at the triangular end with her nail, unrolled it, paused to pull out the folded ends, and rolled again.

  When she was done, Josie was staring at a cheap plastic bag measuring five-by-eight and heat-stamped with the crude image of a tall building of no particular architecture. There were no words, numbers, or symbols on the outside but she could clearly see that there were things inside so she opened the bag. It yielded a very small clear plastic bag of white powder with a numeric code written on it, a lock of hair wrapped round with yellowing scotch tape, and a little torpedo of rolled paper.

  As much as Josie would have liked to think the lock of hair was at least proof of Hannah, she knew it was not. Hannah had shaved her head before she spirited Billy out of the hospital. This hair was smooth and chestnut colored, not black and curled and kinked like Hannah’s. This was something a mother kept of a child or a man kept of his lover. These things made no sense and yet the man’s voice rang clearly in her head. He was so sure; so specific.

  I know where she is.

  He had forced this package into her hands with purpose.

  I know where she is.

  For one brief moment there had been a spark of relief in his eyes. That was why she believed in him. She believed because he had worked so hard to get to her. She believed in Ian Francis because he was all she had.

  Josie picked up the cigarette roll of paper.

  There was a fringe of chads on one side as if it had been torn from the spirals of small notebook. A rubber band was wrapped around this, too, but it was delicate, fraying in places, and wound like a Cat’s Cradle. The minute she touched it the thing disintegrated. It was a little bit like her hopes that Hannah would be found.

  ***

  Ian Francis walked down the street, his arms ridged by his side, palms flat against his thighs, his steps minced, and his gaze fixed. His thoughts were surprisingly clear: he was angry with himself for being clumsy. He had frightened that woman. That was the last thing he wanted and the last thing he remembered.

  Ian stopped, his interest suddenly caught by the reflection of a man in a window. Two times he did this and the second time he touched the glass. When he understood that this was his own reflection, his chest grabbed and his heart hurt. How had he come to this? He was pathetic. He paused a third time at a boarded up store and this time he peered through wooden slats covering dirty glass to see if he was any better. He wasn’t. Ian clenched his jaw tight to keep from crying out in shame.

  He moved on again and then Ian stopped for a final time. In this window he looked past his reflection at the mannequins dressed in cheap and unattractive clothes. A tear came to his eye. He shuffled forward by an inch and another and put his nose against the cold glass. He forgot everything as he looked at the dark haired woman made of plaster. Her face was turned upward. He could see the joint where her head was attached to her neck. One arm dangled longer than the other. She had no shoes. Her feet had no toes.

  “My girl,” he whispered.

  Ian took one step back, put his hands up, and cupped them over his mouth and nose. He breathed out, warming the space he had made. He spoke words inside that space and they echoed back at him. Words would keep him in the light as he walked. He didn’t want to leave her in that window with no toes and her arm hanging loose but he must. And why was she looking for him in the heavens when he was right there on earth? Since he didn’t know the answer to that, he talked to himself about the things he knew.

  “There is a connection between the cerebral and the…the… Keep an imprint of recently acquired memories. It is known to…”

  The knowledge that had once belonged to him was broken into shards as his brain misfired.

  “There is a connection…”

  It was too hard.

  “The cerebral…”

  It was impossible.

  “My girl is broken…”

  He began to tremble. The train of his thoughts derailed in favor of memories of her: dark haired, dark haired, dark haired.

  What else?

  Please, what else?

  The trembling reached his hands and then his fingertips. Ian Francis dropped them away from his face. He turned one click. He stared at the street. This was so different than the place he shared with his girl.

  His chin lowered.

  His lips went slack.

  He was listing.

  He was forgetting.

  Then he did not tremble. He did not cry. He did not think.

  Ian Francis was gone, so Ian Francis’ body moved on.

  ***

  The paper was so old and rolled so tightly the sheets seemed laminated. When Josie finally managed to flatten it, the paper simply rolled back in on itself. With nothing to weight it, Josie reversed the roll on the edge of the table. Finally, she spread it in front of her and what was on it was splendid to look at.

  The pages were filled with exquisite, near-microscopic letters so uniformly formed that they appeared to be typeset. The space between each letter was the width of an eyelash, between words maybe two. The writing stretched from edge to edge, top to bottom. There was no hint that the author had penciled in guidelines to help his hand stay straight on the once-blank paper and yet every line was arrow straight. Josie knew only two sorts of people wrote this way: convicts because resources were precious and mental patients because they herded their words together so they wouldn’t fly away. Ian Francis, she assumed, learned his craft in the mad house.

  She squinted at the writing. It was English but that was about as close as she could come to making sense of it. The neatly printed words were a jumble leading nowhere and numbers adding up to nothing.

  Rememberrememberemembermk

  Poor thingpoorgirl isamarigold.

  Ultraartichokechatter!Marigold.

  194519531976SWGBS1986EB.

  Stars and flowers punctuated the missive at intervals, tiny little fairy drawings, delicately adorned the narrow edges at the top of each page.

  Josie turned the first page over only to find more of the same on the back. She would Xerox this, magnify the pages, and analyze them properly with Archer when she got home.

  She turned the second page front to back and then the third. There was no writing on the back of the third page, only a drawing of a woman in a chair obscured by a pattern that could have been bricks or bars. Josie squinted but couldn’t make out who the woman might be. She looked even closer and saw the intricately drawn picture was actually made up of pinhead printing even more amazing than the notes. The woman looked like a prisoner. Her arms were bound.

  Sitting up slightly, Josie dropped her forehead onto her upturned palm. The bottom of the paper curled up but didn’t completely obscure the picture. If the situation hadn’t been so weird, Josie would have laughed at herself. The bag was new and maybe even the small bag with the white powder in it, but this paper, the tape around the lock of hair, and the rubber bands were old and fragile as if they’d been stuck away in a drawer for years. The person in the drawing, the person whose curl of hair had been so neatly kept was probably real but none of it had to do with Hannah. More than likely, whoever this woman was, she was real only to Ian Francis.

  Suddenly, the paper rolled up and spun off the table. Josie lunged for it but succeeded only in knocking everything else to the floor. Heads turned and a guy in a well-worn khaki jacket and jeans got up to help.

  “Hang on. I got it.” He plucked the little roll of paper from under his table. Josie picked up the plastic bag.

  “Thanks,” she said as she put the paper in her bag.

  “No problem,” he answered.

  When he didn’t move she gave him what he wanted: her attention.

  “You okay?” His brow furrowed making him only slightly more handsome than any twenty-something kid should be.

  “I’m good,” she answered.

  “I mean, you really okay? ’Cause if you’re staying there you must have some heavy shit weighing on you. I’ve got a pad. You can come with me
. My friend won’t mind. It would be better than going there.”

  “How do you know where I’m staying?” Josie asked.

  He pointed at the plastic bag. “The Robert Lee, man. Bad news. Looks good on the website, but it’s a dump. I’ve seen hostels in Russia better than that place. You really shouldn’t stay there. I don’t think it’s safe.”

  Josie looked at the plastic bag and the picture stamped on it. It was a hotel that didn’t meet the standards of a kid who stayed in hostels.

  “I’m not staying there. I’m just looking for someone who is.” Josie folded the bag into a packet and put it in her pocket as she asked, “Is it close?”

  “Five blocks maybe. City blocks, though. You’ve got heels.” His smile brightened. “I could go with you just to make sure you’re okay. There’s a party later. It would be cool if you want to go.”

  “Thanks for the invitation, but I’m leaving on the red eye.”

  She stood up. He stepped back to really get a good look at her. She shrugged into her coat and tried not to laugh. It had been a long time since someone tried to pick her up. She would tell Archer about this kid, Archer would kiss her and say ‘the man obviously has good taste’ and then they would make love.

  “Yeah, well. See ya.”

  The guy gave up graciously and went back to his table. He kept his eyes on the very tall woman, with the very short hair until the door of the coffee shop closed. He went back to his iPad, and Josie went on to find The Robert Lee Hotel.

  ***

  Across the street and down about thirty yards Morgan sat in his car watching Ian Francis. It had been a long time since he had a call from on high giving him marching orders, but when it came Morgan didn’t ask questions. He knew exactly what was going on. Weller was interested in this schlub for some reason so he had thrown his weight around. That was cool even though this kind of surveillance was a little beneath Morgan’s pay grade. Still, no skin off his nose. It was kind of nice to get out of the office for a change. Besides, following the guy was a piece of cake. Ian Francis wasn’t exactly a sprinter. Even if Morgan ran over his feet the guy probably wouldn’t notice. The only problem was that the cop found it painful to watch him. It would have been so much easier to just pick him up and drive him where he was going because that was all the information his supervisor wanted – that and who the man might meet up with once he got there.