Sisters of the Road Page 6

  But I’d gotten a little bogged down trying to remember the relative skull sizes of the toolmaking Australopithecus and the homo heidelbergensis, and eventually anthropology, like many scholastic obsessions, had died a natural death at the end of the quarter. Besides, there weren’t all that many undiscovered Polynesian islands left.

  Being on the street, however, brought back memories of Mr. Lieberman and his lectures on society as a cultural organization. “Go downtown,” he used to urge us, “and take a look around. You’ll be surprised what you see.” That was urban anthropology and nobody wanted to do it. What was Seattle compared with Samoa? But now it suddenly occurred to me that that’s exactly what I was doing—looking at this society from the outside, with an anthropologist’s eye.

  And that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  There were things here that I needed to feel as well as witness. The sexual energy, the danger, the excitement. The way the music was bringing back memories of reckless sexy new kinds of feeling. The way the cold air felt like freedom downtown at night.

  “I heard you’re looking for Trish. Who are you, anyway?”

  The voice, woolly with a cold, was harsher than its owner. She had soft, paper white skin and dyed black hair shaved closely at the sides and long on top, falling into her eyes. In spite of her motorcycle jacket and pierced nose, she was very fragile and young-looking; I could have more easily imagined her curled up by the fireplace in a fluffy bathrobe reading fairy tales than out on the street.

  “Pam Nilsen,” I said and waited.

  She looked disconcerted for a moment, then threw back, “Trish doesn’t know anyone named Pam.”

  “She does now. She stayed at my place last night.” I didn’t go into it. If she knew something she could tell me, but I was starting to realize you didn’t get anywhere if you came on too strong.

  The girl took out a cigarette and lighter from her pocket and threw a rapid glance at some of her friends across the street. They’d probably appointed her to be the one to check me out. She obviously wanted to look like she had it all under control.

  “I knew Rosalie too,” I said. “I was the one who took her to the hospital. She and Trish were together out near Sea-Tac when I picked them up.”

  “I don’t know a Rosalie,” she snapped, but she was frightened.

  “It doesn’t sound like the girl had too many pals around here. Now that she’s dead anyway. It’s a sad thing when people stop caring what happens to their friends.”

  I said it casually but I watched her reaction under the fall of dyed black hair. She sniffled and blew out smoke. “Why should I trust you?” she finally asked.

  “No reason. Just because Trish did, that doesn’t mean you have to.”

  “Look,” she said hoarsely. “There’s a million cops out tonight, poking their noses into everything, driving by every five minutes—and all because of… because of that girl getting killed. We can’t do a damn thing without them picking us up. It’s a drag, a fucking drag.”

  So much for my powers of observation. I’d been out here almost half an hour and I hadn’t noticed a single cop. It must be the plainclothes vice squad, obvious to everyone except me, who expected to see the protectors of the peace in regulation blue.

  And for the first time it struck me that I wasn’t just observing a scene here; I was being observed. The cop and detective from two nights ago had probably driven by me two or three times. And they were probably wondering what a nice girl like me was doing leaning against the wall of an abandoned downtown department store.

  I talked fast. “You don’t have to believe me, but I wish you would. Trish has been staying at my apartment because she’s pretty scared of something or someone. Late this afternoon she wrote me a note saying she’d be back in a little while. Well, she didn’t come back and I’m worried about her. I feel like she’s in trouble and I want to help her.”

  For the first time the girl seemed to listen. She cast a brief, anxious glance at her friends. “Ask Beth Linda, she knows Trish. Maybe she can help you,” she said rapidly through her stuffed-up nose.

  “Beth?” I looked helplessly over at the group. “Can you point her out? Will she talk to me?”

  “Beth’s not here. She’s a social worker. At the Rainbow Center over by the bus station, the place we go to get warm and eat and talk and stuff. They’re open late. Yeah, go see Beth. But don’t tell anyone I told you!”

  12

  THE RAINBOW CENTER WAS full of the same sort of kids I’d seen out on the street; some long-haired druggies and some punks with shaved heads and torn T-shirts. There were a lot of gay boys, some of them incredibly femme with red lipstick and bouffant hair. The main room of the converted office building was thick with cigarette smoke and rang with the sound of laughter and shouting; in one corner a video game pinged relentlessly.

  I felt my age immediately.

  “Hi,” said a woman in jeans and a sweater, coming up to me. “Need some help?”

  “Does Beth Linda work here?”

  “I’ll go get her.”

  After a few minutes a tall woman with solid fat packed around her big frame came into the room and asked what she could do for me. About thirty-seven or eight, she had short strawberry blond hair that dipped into her forthright green eyes. Freckles saved her from looking like she’d seen a little more of life than she wanted to.

  “My name’s Pam Nilsen. I’m looking for a girl named Trish. I’m… I’m worried about her.”

  She nodded. “C’mon in back. Coffee or tea?”

  She took me to a small office with a couple of ratty armchairs, bulging file cabinets and a desk that looked more like it was used for piling papers on than for working. Over the desk was a poster of a cat lolling on its back that said, “Take It Easy.” The walls didn’t keep out the sound of the kids.

  I had tea. She took her coffee strong and black, and with one of those papery excuses for a cigarette, a Carlton. She was wearing an oversize pink sweater with a cowl collar that came up to her double chin, polyester pants and fluffy pink bedroom slippers.

  “My feet swell at the end of the day,” she smiled, when she saw me looking at them. She leaned back in her chair.

  “Well, I’m not going to let you explain why you’re looking for her, and then give you the runaround. I’ll tell you right now that I don’t know where she is… I haven’t seen her for a few months. But I’d still like to know what she’s up to. I like the girl.”

  I told Beth the story, from picking Trish and Rosalie up to Trish’s note. I had to talk loudly to make myself heard above the uproar in the front room.

  Her freckled face was somber. “I can see why you’re worried. Especially with Rosalie dying, and all that stuff about the Green River killer. I didn’t know her unfortunately, but it’s scary. It could have happened to any of the kids.”

  Beth lit another cigarette. “All I can tell you is what I know about Trish. She dropped in here on and off for three months or so, last summer and fall. You know, we offer counseling and dinners and some medical and educational services, but it’s mainly just a place for kids to feel safe. Trish had had a drug problem and she’d been in a treatment program. She was off drugs when I met her and she was in a group for ex-druggies here. The hard thing about these kids is getting them to attend anything on a regular basis—their sense of time, day to day, week to week, is so erratic. And then we had her in a prostitute’s group for a while, that’s a weekly rap group, and she seemed to be getting a lot out of it. But like I say, it was a problem getting her to come regularly, and a few months ago she dropped out. It’s not like we have any hold on her. We couldn’t make her come.”

  “Who has legal responsibility for her? Her parents?”

  “No. She was made a ward of the court the third time she was arrested. She’s been in foster homes and group homes, she was institutionalized once. It doesn’t matter, she just runs. Until the next time she’s picked up and put somewhere. Her parents gave her up
as ‘incorrigible.’ The real name for kids like her isn’t runaways, it’s throwaways.”

  “What’s her background? What are her parents like?”

  Beth put her feet up on the desk. They sat there like huge pink bunnies amidst the thicket of papers. “She’s got a mother in Seattle who remarried a few years ago. I gather that was the start of the trouble. A twelve-year-old with all the problems that age has anyway—she had the feeling she lost her mother to this guy. I’ve met both of them. The mother is one of those sweet, helpless women who can be pushed around so easily—and the stepfather is just the guy to do it. Authoritarian, short-sighted, a little stupid. He wanted Trish out of the house and he’s not going to take her back. And then there’s the stepbrother.”

  Beth lit another Carlton and dragged at it futilely, trying to get enough tobacco in her lungs to make it worthwhile. The noise outside her office seemed to increase. I heard pushing and shoving and then an adult male voice, “Knock it off. Right now.”

  “Did she tell you about him? This Wayne?”

  “Wayne! But she said he was her boyfriend, not her stepbrother. She said they were in love.”

  “Yeah, I know that’s what she’d like to believe. I never met him, only heard about him, but he sounds like he’s really something: good-looking, very controlling, possessive, one of those guys.”

  She didn’t say the word with disgust, more with a bitter self-knowledge of the attraction of such men. It sounded like a past attraction.

  “I might have had more luck with Trish if it hadn’t been for him. A lot of the girls on the street aren’t really into prostitution in a big way. They come downtown, running from their parents, looking for drugs and company—and after a few days, when they’re hungry and cold and out of cash, one of their new friends tells them where it’s at, how easy it is to get into the car with one of the men cruising by. You suck or jerk him off while he drives around the block and there’s your twenty bucks. No big deal. It’s not usually until the girl’s first arrest that she takes on the whore label and starts feeling like that’s what she is. And a lot of the girls we can still help at that point, if they get out of the scene in time.

  “But someone like Trish, who was turned out by her stepbrother and really had to work the streets, well, the chances are slim she’s going to leave the life on her own. It’s become too much of what she is, and too easy to go back.”

  “Then Wayne is her pimp?” June was right.

  “Oh, he’d be the last one to call himself a pimp. All the same, that’s what he is. And not just with Trish. My suspicion is that Rosalie and a couple of other girls are—were—working for him too.”

  “But doesn’t her mother know, doesn’t she care?”

  “She might, if she weren’t married to such a jerk. I tried a couple of family counseling sessions. They were a disaster. The stepfather interrupted the mom every time she opened her mouth. And Trish didn’t say a word.”

  “I’d like to talk to the parents if I could.”

  “Sure… but don’t expect much.” Beth flipped through a Rolodex file and carefully wrote out their address. It was in Lake City, near Carole’s. About as far away from Broadmoor as you could get.

  “How come you haven’t asked me why I’m doing all this, why I’m looking for Trish?”

  If I had to ask you that I wouldn’t be here. I understand about wanting to help…” She paused and lit another Carlton. “I had some… trouble too… when I was younger. And I guess, if somebody had come looking for me when I was fifteen… somebody who seemed like she cared… my life might have been a little different. I don’t know, but I wish you luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  We shook hands and she held mine for a minute longer. “Just one thing. You’re taking on a lot if you get involved with Trish and her family. You can’t just walk into a person like Trish’s life and walk out again. Too many people have done that already. Once she trusts you, if she ever does, you’ve got a responsibility.”

  “I’ll try to remember that,” I said. But I don’t think I really understood what she was saying—then.

  13

  IT WASN’T EASY, BUT I managed to convince June that the circumstances warranted me taking the next afternoon off from work.

  “I just can’t believe she left my apartment of her own free will. Her note said she’d see me later.”

  “That’s as good as good-bye to some people. Can’t you just accept that the girl’s flown the coop—what do you want to get involved with her parents for anyways? Okay, okay,” she said, giving in. “It’s fine with me. I’ll tell Carole you took sick—if she ever comes back from lunch.”

  “Thanks, June… just one more thing?”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “What’s that?”

  “Can I use your car?”

  “Only if you promise to bring it back without blood all over the seat. I have enough trouble keeping it clean with just the girls and their little candy wrappers.”

  Before I drove out to Lake City I took the precaution of going home and changing into some other clothes. A clean pair of jeans, a Shetland sweater, a tweed jacket and hoop earrings, all of which I’d inherited from Penny when she went punk. I put some papers in a briefcase and, on impulse, Jane Eyre. I also discovered a clipboard in a desk drawer and scribbled a few things on it.

  You look like a social worker, I told the mirror, but that was okay—I was hoping to pass myself off as a government researcher. It was the best way I could think of to ask some questions.

  Assuming they were the kind of people who would answer them.

  Lake City Way is a long ugly street that could have come out of a kit labeled “Anywhere, U.S.A.” Block after block of car dealerships, gas stations and fast food restaurants: Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, McDonald’s—they were all here, in duplicate and triplicate. No wonder Trish didn’t like vegetables. If she’d grown up around here she’d probably never even seen one. I turned off at a street above 135th and found the house easily. Nothing special—a low, yellow three-bedroom set back among firs and with a border of clipped rose bushes along the driveway. I parked and went cautiously up the walk, noticing house plants and lace curtains in the windows.

  I expected to find Trish’s mother, Melanie Hemmings, at home, but it was a man who finally came to the door. He was short with a powerfully built torso and a spreading belly, a beer belly to judge from the Bud in his hand. Not bad looking, in spite of his receding hairline and blond-red beard stubble, but with a hard, unsatisfied look around his mouth. He must be Rob Hemmings, the stepfather.

  He didn’t say anything, so I started right in, trying to sound as detached and professional as possible.

  “I’m looking for Mrs. Hemmings. The Rainbow Center gave me her name and address for a study I’m conducting. Nancy Todd here. National Institute for Research on Delinquent Youth. Is she in?”

  “Work,” he said briefly and stared at me. I was regretting wearing levis. Brown polyester pants would have been much better. I smiled brightly and waved my clipboard.

  “Perhaps you would be able to answer a few questions?”

  “National Institute for—yeah, come on in. I got nothing better to do this afternoon. It’s about Patti, am I right?”

  “Ah, Patricia Hemmings, yes, that’s who I’m interested in. Sometimes goes by the name Trish?”

  “Maybe she does,” he said, allowing me to step past him into the hall. “Wouldn’t know. Hemmings isn’t her last name though. She kept her father’s, Margolin.”

  I pretended to consult my clipboard. “Yes, that’s right. You’re Robert Hemmings? The girl’s stepfather?”

  “Rob,” he said. “Take your jacket?”

  “Thanks but no, this should be brief.” I followed him into the living room, where male and female elements warred. On the sofa back and arms, crocheted doilies; over the fireplace a pair of moose antlers; in the magazine rack, Good Housekeeping and Sports Illustrated. On the teak coffee table, cute li
ttle coasters, and next to them, making rings on the wood, beer cans. The television was turned up loudly on a soap. “No, Billy, I won’t let you take the blame. I’ll tell you the name of the child’s real father!” Duh-dum sounded the music, piano and a somber violin. Rob turned it off.

  “Construction’s a little slow this time of year,” he said.

  “You’re a carpenter?”

  “Welder. Worked on some of those big buildings down in Seattle.” He said it as if it were another city. “Got a back problem right now,” he added, easing himself slowly into a vinyl recliner. “Like a beer?”

  “Ah, no thanks.” Now what? He didn’t seem like such a bad guy. I felt a little guilty.

  He took a gulp from his can. “Good thing Melanie kept her job at the Bon. Course I’ve got disability and workman’s comp, but it doesn’t go very far.”

  I murmured something sympathetic and wrote down, “Bon Marché Dept. Store” on my clipboard.

  “So it’s about Patti, is it? Well, I’ll tell you, we don’t have much to do with her now, haven’t for a long time.”

  “How long has she been away from home?”

  “She’s always been a troublemaker,” snorted Rob. “Said to her mother when we first got together, that girl is going to cause you a mess of problems if you don’t watch out. But Melanie wouldn’t listen. She’d been raising the girl alone, couldn’t see the girl’s attitude.”

  I pretended to write something down. “Stubborn?” I suggested.

  The girl needed straightening out and fast. I tried, but I was too late. Girl should have been straightened out a long time ago. She got in with a bad group of kids, hell, you’re studying juvenile delinquents—some of them was real delinquents. Drinking, motorcycles, cutting school….”

  “She must have been pretty young, twelve or thirteen, when she started to get influenced…?”