And Baby Will Fall by Michael Z. Lewin

Author:Michael Z. Lewin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504024914
Publisher: Open Road Media

NINETEEN

Proffitt was waiting in his car outside Nora Harrington’s house when Adele arrived at one-ten. He looked at his watch as he reached across the front seat to open the door for her.

Seeing him check the time reminded her that he had annoyed her earlier. “I operate punctually, Proffitt,” she said crisply. “If I’m late there’s always a good reason for it.”

“I was late myself, ma’am,” he said. “So what’s been happening to you?” His friendly smile suddenly made it easy for her again.

So she told him about her visit with Karen the cat lady.

He listened attentively and nodded. Then told her the result of his telephone call to a prominent opinion research company.

“You’re satisfied in your own mind that the polling company is bogus, then?” Adele said.

“Yes,” Proffitt said.

They looked at each other. The shared question: Why make up a polling company?

“My first thought,” Proffitt said, “was that taking polls was a device to get into premises with a view to burglary. But I checked the scatter charts and talked to the burglary people in this Quadrant, and there’s just no supporting evidence.”

“I don’t think it has to with burglaries, either,” Adele said.

“Do you have any idea, ma’am?”

“The guy ended up with Donna. So I would assume that he got what he went for.”

“He went there to ‘get’ Donna East?”

“Maybe not Donna specifically. Maybe he was looking for someone like her.”

“In what sense?”

“A woman alone. A woman without much going for her. No connections. Not much savvy. I don’t know. You’re a man. What would you want with Donna? That you couldn’t get by leaving her where she was.”

Proffitt considered.

Adele said, “‘Clint’—Jesus picking a fake name like that tells you something about him, doesn’t it?”

Proffitt said, “This Karen said Donna told her explicitly that the guy didn’t come on to her?”

“Yes. But Donna stopped talking to Karen after a few days.”

Proffitt shrugged. “And Donna wouldn’t have minded anyway.”

“That’s what Karen says,” Adele said. “Maybe it was sex. Think of that closet with the kids’ beds in it,” Adele said. “And the bolt on the outside. No need for a bolt unless things were going on that shouldn’t be interrupted.”

Proffitt nodded slowly. Then he said, “I had an idea about the other kids.”

“What’s that?”

“I wondered if maybe they died.”

They looked at each other, sharing a moment thinking about the poverty, the dependence, the confined nature of Donna East’s life. Had there been more?

“I’ll check when I get back to the office,” he said. He gave his head a shake. “Maybe we got something on our hands here, ma’am.”

Adele looked at his hands.

“Meanwhile, before we go talk to this Nora Harrington, let me call in that license plate number your cat lady wrote down.” He looked at it. “Not from Indianapolis,” he said.

“How do you know that?”

“It begins ‘eighteen.’ The first numbers code locations. I think that’s Muncie. But we’ll see what they can get for us by the time we get out of here.”

Nora Harrington was an organized, capable young woman who tried to insist that having a physical disability was only incidental to her life.

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