BY THE TIME I returned to the kitchen, my coffee had cooled enough to drink. I took a sip and winced. It tasted burned. But I was too lazy to clean out the percolator and make myself a new cup. I had more important things to do.
I sat down at the table, and looked at the two printed black-and-white flyers. I picked up Donna Loring’s flyer first.
It was definitely professionally done. The heading— Missing!—ran like a banner across the top, followed by If You Have Seen This Girl, Call The Number Below!
The phone number, at the bottom of the page, had a South Side exchange. Next to the final digit were the words Day or Night!
The flyer had two photographs of Donna. On the upper left, what appeared to be a school photograph. It showed a very pretty girl with straight-combed hair, a blouse with something I’d heard Lacey mockingly describe as a Peter Pan collar, and a plaid jumper over it all. She had a tentative smile, as if whoever took the picture made her nervous.
The second photo, on the lower right, was a candid shot.
Donna was laughing, her head tilted back just a little, her
mouth open in an infectious grin, her eyes bright. She looked older here, but when I inspected closely, I realized the difference was the careful application of makeup. Her skin, which had a young teenager’s blotchiness in the first photo, had the smoothness that good liquid foundation created. Her hair was still smooth, but it didn’t look contrived. She wore hoop earrings, eye shadow, and lipstick, although I couldn’t see the color on any of it. Her shirt was short-sleeved and was unbuttoned far enough to show too much cleavage for a girl her age.
Next to the school photo were these facts:
Donna Elizabeth Loring
Born October 1, 1955
Brown hair (naturally kinky)
Chocolate brown eyes
Distinctive mole on her left wrist
Straight-A student
Good friend, great sister, beloved daughter
Help us find her!
A different paragraph ran below the school photograph (to the left of the candid shot)
Donna Loring disappeared from school on Tuesday, October 29, 1968. She was last seen on the school grounds at noon by several teachers, but she did not show up to her afternoon classes. Some reports state she was talking to a tall adult male just before she vanished. Any and all information welcome. Confidentiality maintained, if need be. Please call!
The placement of the photos, the design, all convinced me that the flyer wasn’t just professional printed; it had been professionally designed as well. “Confidentiality maintained” was not a term that the average family would use. That was something a member of law enforcement or someone who had been in trouble with the law would add.
There was also a hint that whoever designed the flyer thought she was dead. They added an identifying mark, something that coroners used to help ID an unrecognizable body.
Jonathan had read this, and then he had run his hand over the flyer. I had thought that perhaps he was closer to Donna Loring than he let on, but now I wasn’t so certain. What happened to her had happened to Lacey, only Lacey had Jimmy and Keith to defend her.
Jonathan wasn’t dumb; he had realized just then how lucky his sister had been.
The second printed flyer looked very similar to Donna Loring’s. It had the same heading, and had two photographs, spaced apart for balance. A phone number at the bottom, asking for calls day or night, and two informational paragraphs.
The missing girl was named Wanda Nason. She was thinner than Donna had been and she actually looked a bit scared in her school photograph. She wore a white blouse with a gigantic flower pin on one shoulder, her straightened hair pulled back on the same side with a barrette.
The candid shot showed a girl who didn’t seem to smile easily. Her head dipped away from the camera, as if she didn’t
want to be photographed, and her right hand was up, fingers splayed, as if she tried to block the camera. She wore a light-colored blouse, but I couldn’t tell if it was white, and a beaded necklace with a large cross on the end. I couldn’t tell if the necklace doubled as a rosary.
The paragraphs were similar to those on the Donna Loring flyer in structure and terminology.
The first paragraph read:
Mary Wanda Nason
Born December 11, 1955
Brown hair
Dark brown eyes
Small scar on her lower lip
Beloved only child of MaryAnn Nason Help us find her!
The second paragraph chilled me in its similarity to the paragraph about Donna’s disappearance, and in what almost happened to Lacey:
Wanda Nason disappeared from school on Tuesday, March 18, 1969. She was last seen in her morning classes, but she did not show up to her afternoon classes. Any and all information welcome. Confidentiality maintained, if need be. Please call!
I pulled out the other flyers in that pile. Most identified the date of disappearance. Some mentioned that the girl had been
in or around the school. Only a few had the day of the week— and they all had the same day:
Tuesday.
That was not a coincidence.
I turned the page on my legal pad and wrote down the dates of the disappearances. At least one per month, sometimes more, every month of the school year for 1968 and 1969. And now, 1970.
I got up and hurried toward my office. I grabbed 1969’s blotter from under a pile of papers and carried it back to the kitchen table.
I didn’t even sit down. I set the blotter next to the legal pad and compared.
Every single date was a Tuesday. In some months, girls disappeared every week. In others, only one girl disappeared.
But I knew that meant nothing. For all I knew, a girl had gone missing every single Tuesday, but only some girls were missed by family and friends, so their disappearances were noticed quickly.
I tapped the blotter, and cursed, both at it and at myself. If I hadn’t killed Voss, I would be able to get some answers.
Of course, if I hadn’t killed Voss, then he would have warned the people at the Starlite that I was onto them. He would have connected me to Lacey, and through that connection, probably found Jimmy and Keith.
I didn’t really regret killing the man. It had been the right decision, even if my finger had moved faster on the trigger
than my brain would have liked. I just wish I had asked him a few more questions before he died.
Because it was absolutely clear now that the operation at the Starlite used the school as a recruiting site. The fact that it only happened once a week perplexed me a little. Did the handlers—like Voss—go elsewhere during the week?
That didn’t jibe with Jimmy and Keith’s observations of Lacey and Voss. He had worked on her for a while, but brought her in on Tuesday.
So maybe other places had other days of the week, or maybe the operation could only handle one new girl at a time. After all, it would be a bit work-intensive to break a girl and hold her hostage, even a young girl.
Then I rubbed my fingers over my forehead. My back cracked in protest. Which was just fine with me. Because I didn’t want my thoughts to continue along this line.
When I thought too deeply about what could happen, all I saw was Lacey, and then I got furious.
I rapped my knuckles on the table, trying to do something with the anger. Fury did me no good. I needed to remain calm.
I walked around the living room, forcing myself to focus on the facts. That was all I could do.
Fact: the Starlite ran a by-the-hour operation that either trained hookers or it fueled some kind of human trafficking operation, sending young girls elsewhere. (I voted for sending the girls elsewhere, since these girls were not seen again.) There would be no real payoff in intentionally killing the girls,
so I had a hunch that, for a while at least, most of them lived past the date of their disappearance.
Fact: The girls were all thirteen at the time of their abduction. Lacey had been the oldest, five months from her fourteenth birthday, followed by Wanda, at nine months from her birthday. Donna was the youngest. She had just turned thirteen. But she had cleavage and didn’t mind showing it off, judging from that candid photograph. Wanda didn’t seem to have as much, although her demeanor might have made her seem older. Lacey had been risqué and flirty and trying hard to look older than her age.
I personally thought no one could take her for an adult, and I was beginning to think that didn’t matter. There were men in the market for younger girls, although I had always thought they wanted unspoiled girls. Voss’s actions had proven that this operation wasn’t looking for girls like that.
Fact: The girls all appear to have been targeted. Had Lacey come to Voss’s attention because she had spoken to Karen Frazier? Or had Voss found her some other way?
Figuring out how Voss found the girls might not be that important now that he was dead, but it might also be part of the pattern, a pattern that suggested more than one man’s system. Because…
Fact: The girls disappeared on a Tuesday, and from what I could tell, only one girl at a time vanished. That spoke to an organization ready to take in a new candidate at a certain time and in a certain place.
It also suggested some cunning. If three or four or five girls vanished every Tuesday, even Decker would have noticed and
done something about it. One girl per week out of an economically and educationally challenged school might have been expected, particularly if a good portion of those girls did not have a parent who looked out for them and who would contact the school when the girl did not come home.
I wondered: If I dug deeper into each girl’s background, would I find a pattern of skipping class, of smoking outside of school, of being tardy or vanishing from school for weeks at a time?
I ripped out another piece of paper. I had questions for Lacey, even though I didn’t exactly know how to ask them. I needed her to be honest with me about her contacts with some of the girls on my lists, and I also needed to know how much (or little) she attended school.
If she did skip classes, why had no one called Althea? Lacey had the benefit of an active, involved, stay-at-home mom, something very rare in the Black Belt, not because of culture, but because of economics.
If Lacey had skipped class and no one had noticed or contacted Althea, then we had a greater problem here. Then this particular school was easy pickings for predators like Voss.
I stopped for a moment, set down the pen, and took a deep breath. Then I grabbed the percolator. I needed to do something else for a moment.
I needed to think.
Lists of lost girls were more than I could handle on my own, particularly given my financial situation. I wouldn’t get
paid for this job. Even if I wanted to get paid, I didn’t know who to ask. It felt tacky to charge the distraught parents, particularly if the girl had been missing for a long period of time.
In my entire career, I had never been the kind of investigator who preyed on other people’s pain. I wasn’t about to start doing that now.
But all of this had come to my attention, and I did want to find out what happened. I could work these cases slowly and figure out what happened to the girls.
Of course, if I went after the organization itself, even in a small way, I might find out a great deal more.
I poured out some of the coffee and dumped the grounds into the garbage under the sink. Then I carefully scoured the percolator, careful not to use any soap at all. I probably scrubbed harder than I needed to, but the physical action felt good.
I finished, dried off the percolator, and set it down. I had planned to make another cup of coffee, but I didn’t want one.
Instead, I went back to the table.
To the list of questions I made for Lacey, I added one more. I needed to find out what I could about Karen Frazier. Friends, family, anything that might help me figure out exactly what was going on.
I moved that page aside and went back to my fact page.
When Lacey told me about Karen Frazier, she said that her first encounter with Voss had happened before Christmas.
Then she had seen him over the holidays. Had she meant between the holidays? Or before school let out?
He took her out to lunch then, and had bought her “stuff,” whatever that meant. I needed to find that out as well. I added that to my Lacey list.
By the time school started for the semester, he was taking her out for lunch regularly. She had waited for him the day before, so they had clearly set that up.
Had he taken her into the Starlite’s restaurant to parade her in front of someone as possible merchandise? Or had he done that earlier?
I leaned back.
The Starlite. It was the center of this particular operation. The restaurant, that hotel room where Jimmy had rescued Lacey, the hookers, the fact that no one wanted to sell the building.
Was the operation only recruiting through that particular school? There were no other junior highs nearby, but the high school that Jonathan went to was only a few blocks away.
I sighed, not liking how my brain worked.
I placed my hand on the flyers. I didn’t need to find more victims, at least, not yet. I had enough, and they probably had enough points of intersection to give me a clear picture of what was happening. More victims would distract me.
I needed to focus on the missing junior high school girls, the Starlite, and the operation there.
With that in mind, I slid the two professionally done flyers in front of me. I didn’t see any information about where the printing and design had been done. But I did notice something I had missed before.
The contact phone number at the bottom of both flyers was the same. Not only had Wanda Nason’s family used the same printer, whoever had contacted the print shop had a phone number that united both girls.
In what way, I couldn’t tell.
But it was one more mystery to solve on the way to figuring this all out.