Chapter 1

This story takes place in October and November of 2007

I was just getting ready to go home when the intercom buzzed. I was on my feet, having just grabbed my bullrider hat from the little end table I keep in the corner behind my desk to put the hat on, and I reached out a long arm and pushed the button. "I'm headin' out, Marla," I said.

"I'm sorry, Darv. If you want I'll have him come back, but I think you'll want to talk to him."

I looked at my watch – it wasn't quite three, and though I keep my own hours and leave whenever I take the notion, it wouldn't be quite right to tell a potential client to come back because I was closing that early. I pushed the button again and said, "Okay, send him in."

I put my hat down, and took a step, and was ready to sit down when the man walked in. He was older, gray and worn, or perhaps more aged than worn, for the lines in his face didn't seem to be the result of hard work or weather. He had a noticeable spare tire, and jowls, and a dewlap, and though he was tanned it wasn't a heavy tan – more the kind you get from walking once in a while than the heavy tan of someone who's worked outside most of his life. I know about that kind of tan – mine's permanent, and doesn't fade completely even in winter when the only part of me that shows when I'm outside is my face.

I reached a hand across the desk. "I'm Darvin Carpenter," I said. "I'm on my way out the door, but my secretary tells me that I'll want to at least talk to you, though I can't promise I'll take your case."

"I'm Vern," he said, and I didn't ask for any more name, since I'd ask if I took the case, and if I didn't take it I didn't need to know.

"Have a sit," I said, gesturing to the straight-backed wooden chairs on his side of the desk. I sat down in my chair – a leather job with a high back and brass studs, a gift from Cecelia a few years back. I'd had an ordinary office chair before then, and then one day I'd walked in and found the surprise. I knew that on the wall behind me Cecelia's face looked down from a family portrait, along with me and Darlia, and there, beside the phone and the intercom, was my favorite picture of her, a gift from her just before our wedding. I gave it a glance as I sat, noting the tilted black "cat eyes," the thin lips, skin the exact color you see when you break a bar of milk chocolate, kinky hair drawn back into a severe and short ponytail at the base of her skull.

I relaxed into my luxurious chair, about the only true luxury I own. Actually that's not true anymore. We got back from our August vacation this year and I got hit over the head with a brand new study where the garage used to be, with a similar high-backed leather chair behind a desk that had to be oak or teak or ebony or some such exotic wood ... though to me anything that's not cholla wood is exotic. I've got two luxuries now, both of 'em gifts from my wife.

I looked across this desk, wooden and nice but merely functional, and with scars on the corner where I habitually rest my boots. "What can I do for you, Vern?" I liked the first name basis – I'm about as stiff and rigid as a piece of wet spaghetti.

"I'm looking for my daughter," he said.

"From your looks, I'd guess she's grown." It wasn't till it was out of my mouth that I realized I'd been sort of ambiguous. What I meant was that I imagined she was now an adult.

"Yes, she was born in 68." That was just three years after I was born. "She ran away when she was 15. I drove her away ... I don't want to get into how or why, but she ran from me. And I want to tell her I'm sorry."

"Apologizing is a good thing. I've learned that being married – I've had to apologize to my wife and my daughter umpteen times." I leaned back in my chair. "She ran in, what, 83? I was just out of high school then. Where did y'all live back then?"

"Seattle. That's where she ran from."

"Then you'd do best to start huntin' there."

"I did." He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and looked at me across the desk. "I've been looking for five years now. I started there. The trail was cold, but I – well, the detective I hired – was able to find a couple of people who remembered her. She'd become a prostitute." He looked down for a moment, shaking his head. "It's my fault..." I gave him a half minute or so to compose himself, and he did, and continued. "She'd become a prostitute, and worked there in Seattle for a while ... you know, maybe, that there's where the term 'Skid Row' comes from?"

"I hadn't known that," I said, deciding not to add that it was one of the few pieces of useless trivia that I didn't know. "About your daughter..."

"Yes, well, she worked there for a while, and then the trail led to Portland. The same PI followed the trail there, and it started getting expensive, before I decided to retain a Portland detective and cut out the middleman. She worked there for a while, and then moved on..."

"That's Portland, Oregon, right?" I didn't see how it could be the one in Maine, but I'd rather be too careful than not careful enough.

"Oregon, right. Then she went to Boise ... Idaho. Then Spokane, back in Washington, then back to Idaho, Pocatello this time. It took a long time to get there, three years, but after that either the trail wasn't as cold ... I don't see how, it was so long ago she ran..." He fell silent, still looking at the floor.

I let him sit. This couldn't have been easy for him. Whatever he'd done to drive his daughter away, the search for her had to have been expensive not just in money, but in emotional energy. And it must have been especially bad having her become a prostitute. I tried to imagine what it would do to me if Darlia, just five years from now, ran off and became a prostitute. All I could be sure of was that it would hurt terribly.

"Anyway," Vern resumed, "from there she went to Reno, and then Vegas. Then Flagstaff – that's Arizona, but you probably know that, living in Albuquerque. She was moving south and east, slowly. From Flagstaff she went to Santa Fe, and then here. And that's why I'm here. I want to find the next piece of the trail."

"And if I understand you correctly, from what you said about Portland, you're hiring local PIs in each city?"