Isaac Asimov's Detectives by Gardner Dozois

Author:Gardner Dozois
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-10-27T03:35:00+00:00

Lisa Goldstein

' 'Rites of Spring'' was purchased by Gardner Do-zois, and appeared in the March 1994 issue of Asi-mov's, with an illustration by Steve Cavallo. Lisa Goldstein is a Bay Area writer who won the Ameri-can Book Award for her first novel, The Red Magi-cian, and who has subsequently gone on to become one of the most critically acclaimed novelists of her day with books such as Tourists, The Dream Years, A Mask for the General, Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon and Summer King, Winter Fool. Her most recent book is the novel Waking the Labyrinth.

She is less prolific at shorter lengths, although her elegant and incisive stories, many of which have ap-peared in Asimov's, and which were recently col-lected in Travellers in Magic, are well worth waiting for—as is true of the wry story that follows, in which a detective hot on the trail of a Missing Person finds that that trail leads into territory very far indeed from the kind of Urban Mean Streets that Private Eyes are accustomed to travel...

I'm sitting at my desk catching up on paperwork when there's a knock on my office door. "Come in," I say.

The door opens and a woman steps inside. "Have a seat," I say, filing one last piece of paper.

"Are you Ms. Keller?" she asks.

"Liz Keller. And you are—"

"Dora Green." Wisely, she picks the more comfortable of the two office chairs. "I want you to find my daughter."

I look across the desk at her. She has an oval face, dark gray eyes. Her hair is medium-length and black, with a little gray at the temples. She doesn't look much like a parent of a missing child. She doesn't play with the handles of her purse, or light a cigarette. I nod, encouraging her to go on.

"My daughter's name is Carolyn—Carolyn Green," Ms. Green says. "At least it was. I suppose her husband's made her change it."

I try not to frown. In most missing children cases the child is much younger. "Are you sure she wants to be found?" I ask.

"I'm certain. Her husband forced her into the marriage, you see."

"Was she pregnant?"

She doesn't flinch. "No."

I look over this possible client for a moment. She's very well dressed—she wears a soft green pullover and a skirt with a print of entwining leaves and vines and flowers. I remember that it's St. Patrick's Day today, though I would bet that she's not Irish. She smells a little like some flower too, a subtle, expensive perfume. Golden earrings dangle from her ears.

"Look," I say. "Before I can take your money I need you to be clear about some things. I can promise to do my best to find your daughter. Whether she wants to be found is up to her. I'll give her a message from you, whatever—"

"She has to get away from him."

"I can't do that. Your daughter's of legal age—She is of legal a^e, isn't she?"

"Yes."

' 'All right then. If she tells me herself that she wants to end the marriage—"

"She does—"

"Then I'll help her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.