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Jimmy appeared uncertain. “You’re not going to do something to him, are you? Something really bad, that is.”

  “I just want to give him his tip back,” Hesper said shortly.

  June didn’t want Hesper to go by herself, so she tagged along for the two blocks to the address. “What if he’s, like, completely John Hinckley psycho?”

  Hesper said, “He doesn’t want to hurt me.” Then she corrected herself, “Well, he doesn’t want to kill me. He just wants information that he thinks I have.”

  “You mean he thinks that you know what happened to his sister?” June asked. “Oh, for God’s sake. Let’s just file for a restraining order. He won’t be able to go in a coffee shop in the greater Portland area by the time my lawyer gets done with him.”

  “You know those doctor’s appointments I have?” Hesper said. They stood outside at a four-story Old Portland-style building. It could have been built anywhere from the early 1900s to the 1930s. On the opposite side and slightly southeast of the Pearl District, was all the Buckman neighborhood. There were many buildings such as this. Once it had been a wealthy family’s home, and in the present, it was a converted condominium.

  It was because of renovated areas such as this neighborhood, that June’s business was booming. People in the area loved their lattes, espresso, and cappuccinos by the bucketful. The plentiful people who bought into these areas could well afford their coffee habits.

  Hesper couldn’t help but wonder how a boy only a few years older than she could afford the rent on the condo. It wouldn’t be cheap, that was for sure.

  “Yeah?” June said skeptically.

  “I see a shrink,” Hesper said. “I’m sure you can figure out why. Anyway, today the doctor said I need to have goals, and I just thought of a good one. I’d like to figure out if I have a backbone.” If she had a backbone about this guy, then she knew she had a backbone about what else she had to do.

  Chapter Four

  Evil follows good, good follows evil.

  – Japanese proverb

  June waited on the sidewalk while Hesper approached the front door of the impressive house that had been turned into four condos. She steeled herself to ring the doorbell with #4 on it. Instead of dithering about, her hand jerked out, and she jabbed it with her index finger. She pressed hard, as if holding it in place would make it work better. She abruptly pulled back and took a deep breath waiting for the intercom to engage, wondering what she would do if she couldn’t get him to either let her in or come down to talk to her in person.

  Hesper waited for about thirty seconds before she jabbed the button again. This time she held it for thirty more seconds.

  She waited for a full minute before she shot a questioning glance over her shoulder at June.

  June shrugged as she crossed her arms over her chest. “Can’t catch some people at home all the time,” she said. “You want to leave a note, or better, just tuck that bill into his mailbox. He should get the message. If he comes back to Abracajava’s, I’ll straighten his ass right out. We’ll have Portland’s finest escort him down the block.”

  The vertical mailbox mounted on the wall next to the front door was right there at eye level. #4 was plainly labeled and had a convenient narrow slot for letters to be inserted. Hesper reached into her hoodie pocket and pulled out the ten-dollar bill. She asked herself two questions. Will this satisfy my goal? Will this prove my point?

  Hesper folded the bill once and then again so that it could slip easily through the slot. She hesitated as she stared at the #4 on the box. Then the front door opened. She stepped back and almost fell down the three stairs she’d mounted to get to the doorbell.

  “Whoa,” the man said, holding up both hands as if to reach out and steady her.

  It wasn’t the same man who’d ordered from Hesper at Abracajava’s. Instead, he was short, plump, and wore thick black frames. Blue eyes magnified about a hundred percent studied her as if she was an especially interesting specimen under a microscope.

  “You looking for Moss?” the man asked her. “I could hear his doorbell as I came down the stairs.”

  Hesper recovered herself and carefully backed down the stairs without looking away from the man. Bravado had come at a cost, and she was all out of the commodity. More importantly, she was all too aware that she didn’t have a weapon in her hand with which to defend herself.

  The man stared at her, clearly grasping her apprehension. He appeared confused at the thought that she was threatened by him in some fashion. “Moss is down at the river,” he said carefully. He pointed toward the west. “In the afternoons, he schleps down there with his kayak or whatever and does his thing. Pretty much every day. I’ve seen him at that dock on this side of the Willamette. Around the Esplanade I think.”

  June obviously felt the need to fill in the silence and called, “Thanks.”

  The man cautiously moved past Hesper, threaded his way around June, and strolled off in the direction of the stores on the other end of the block. He didn’t even look back to see if Hesper and June went where he’d indicated.

  June moved up to Hesper’s side and asked, “In person, then?”

  Hesper nodded as she looked at the bill. She put it back into her hoodie pocket. “Leaving it in the mailbox wouldn’t work for me.”

  And maybe she wouldn’t have to go all the way to the river. Maybe she could just be within eyesight of the water while she shoved the bill in his hand and said, “Whatevs, bud. Leave me alone and darken my doorstep nevermore.”

  Hesper thought about another one of the goals that Kisho and she had come up with that very morning. Walking by the river on the lovely path that the city of Portland had built was a golden objective. Enjoying a little air by the water would be good juju for anyone with half a brain. Whoo hoo! I’m going for two goals today. I’m on a roll.

  June shrugged. “It’s only about a half mile, and if he’s kayaking, then maybe he’s still in the area. You want to go look?”

  Not really, no.

  Hesper followed June as they set off. Apparently, June was more interested in widening Hesper’s comfort zone than was Hesper.

  They went past other houses that had been transformed into condos or apartments. There were several Craftsman-style houses that had remained single-family homes and some that had been changed into businesses of varying types. The neighborhood was upscale and artsy. Colorful murals of every type dotted nearly every free wall, and parking was sparse. A dozen bicycles and a dozen people on foot passed them as they went along.

  The closer they got to the river, larger industrial buildings appeared with people on their way out and to God only knew where.

  Hesper could smell the water as they approached the Willamette, and she resisted a shudder at her proximity to the river. At least when she was crossing it on her bicycle, she was like a zooming bird shooting across with no one quick enough to catch her. However, she had no bike, no wings, and she certainly wasn’t zooming.

  June was patently unaware of Hesper’s discomfort as she started to reason out loud where they could find the man who’d written his three little words on the ten-dollar bill. “If we go straight down Ash, we run right into those docks that people walk on. I’ve seen tons of kayakers there before. It’s the closest to the condo. We can look there first, and if he’s not around, maybe closer to OMSI.”

  OMSI, pronounced ohm-see by the locals, was the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. The museum wasn’t a mile away to the south. It was on Hesper’s list of things to see, but as it sat squarely on the Willamette’s edge, it was all too close to the water for her taste.

  The more Hesper thought about it, the more she wondered if she should simply park her ass on the man’s doorstep and wait for him. No water’s edge would be lapping at her toes, and he would come back sooner or later.

  “Or maybe the Eastbank Esplanade,” June said. “That guy said something about the Esplanade. Man, I’m getting my steps in today. I like having a mission. I’m feeling good.
Are you feeling good, Hesper?”

  I don’t know what I feel like, Hesper thought. She said, “Yeah?” No, I so don’t feel good.

  By the time they’d reached the docks, Hesper could see the Steel Bridge just to the north and the Burnside Bridge just to the south. Further south was the Morrison Bridge and further north was the Broadway Bridge with its reddish girders. If she glanced over her right shoulder, she would be looking at the tops of the humungous twin glass towers that delineated the Oregon Convention Center. If she kept thinking about landmarks, she wouldn’t think of the river or specifically what lay waiting for her in the water.

  It’s just water, she told herself. And it isn’t the water. It’s what is in the water.

  Hesper touched the chain at her neck and thought about exactly what was in the water. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. It’s always been what I was going to…

  They crossed under Interstate 5 and then they went over a pedestrian bridge that crossed over railroad tracks. Finally, they descended a flight of stairs that connected to the cement riverside path.

  Hesper told herself they weren’t too close right up until they stepped up on the long floating dock that was part of the riverside trail. Then she was over the water and not really moving fast enough to get away from anything that happened to reach for her. Her knees trembled with the effort, but she made herself take another step and then another one.

  “Is that him?” June asked, pointing out a man carrying a small one-person kayak.

  “No, his hair is more of a medium brown,” Hesper said in a calm tone that she did not feel inside.

  They passed many groups of people and individual walkers as they went down the long dock. The afternoon was pleasant, and it was pushing the weekend, so there were those who wanted to be outside as much as they could be. It wasn’t packed like it had been when the city had fireworks on the Fourth of July. Hesper had stayed one block away, marveling at a sight she should have seen a dozen times and more by her age.

  Hesper began to relax as she stayed in the middle of the dock, and June didn’t notice that she didn’t get close to the edges. They paused by the metal walkway that exited the dock to another dock where boats were moored. Once she stepped off that dock, there weren’t any more fences between her and the water below. As she tried to conquer her fear by thinking about how irrational avoiding all water was, she also thought about how easy it would be for a long skinny arm to reach up and snatch her in, tipping her over into the blackish waters. At just the right moment, no one would see anything except Hesper falling in, and then she would be gone. They would look for her. Maybe they would use divers like they had all those years ago. Nevertheless, they wouldn’t find anything.

  That strategy had always worked best for them. Just vanishing didn’t leave anything but questions. No pesky video from an ATM machine feed or a Ring doorbell. No witnesses that said they saw some guy do it and he had a van/car/truck/something with wheels. No blood. No DNA. Not even one of her shoes would be left. Nothing but the water that washed away all the sins.

  Except the water didn’t really wash away all of the sins. Hesper knew that, no matter what the first psychiatrist had said nor any of his colleagues who’d come after him.

  Hesper came to a stop just before she stepped onto the secondary dock that led further out into the water. She could see kayakers in the water as well as a few canoes and a single windsurfer who had very little wind to work with. A tugboat was making its way down the river, and soon the Broadway Bridge would have to elevate its bascule section to let it past. Then the Steel Bridge would use counterweights to lift its two decks to a height enough for the boat to go under. Then the Burnside Bridge would use its counterweights to raise its bascule section. And then the Morrison Bridge and so on.

  She recognized her desperate chain of thoughts as a defensive maneuver to think about anything other than the water, and the technique worked for a few brief seconds. They would look for Moss Symmes for a little bit and then she could get the hell off the dock path and away from the danger the water presented.

  “That’s him, right?” June asked as she came back to stand next to Hesper.

  Hesper’s eyes skated over to the man hauling a red kayak out of the water. Yes, that’s him. He didn’t look too threatening at the moment. He looked like a young man who had just sweated hard and enjoyed the workout on the water. He dumped the kayak over onto its deck so that water from the cockpit could drain. Then he stood up straight and wrung out some of the moisture on his shirt. He wasn’t wearing a helmet or a life jacket and Hesper frowned. Doesn’t he know…no, he doesn’t know anything. No one knows anything until it’s too late.

  Very deliberately Hesper again pulled the ten-dollar bill out of her pocket. She took a deep breath. Thirty steps down to the other dock. Five steps to the man. One step to shove the bill in his chest. Thirty-six steps back to safety.

  “That’s not so bad,” Hesper whispered.

  “What?” asked June. She glanced at Hesper. “What’s wrong? You’re white as a polar bear’s ass.”

  “I don’t like water very much.” But that wasn’t exactly true. It wasn’t the water that bothered her. It was what might be in the water.

  June appeared confused. “What does water have to do with anything?” Her kindly face wrinkled. “You were found next to a river. Does that—” she cut herself off. “You want me to do it? I’ll push him in while I’m at it.”

  “No, I’ll do it.”

  Hesper took a breath. She took another breath. She told herself that if she could do this, she could do anything. Her feet didn’t believe her. Her limbs felt like antique rubber ready to break at the slightest amount of pressure.

  All of a sudden everything snapped into place like a final piece into a complicated puzzle. Hesper moved. One foot went forward. She stepped onto a dock that didn’t have a fence. The water was only five feet away from her. She took another step and then it was as if she couldn’t stop.

  Hesper was halfway down the dock before Moss Symmes looked up and saw her. She focused on his face as her target. She was going to have a good time telling the doctor about it even if he didn’t quite understand why she was so deathly afraid of water.

  Moss. What a wretched name. Moss and Olivia. What had their parents been thinking? He studied her in turn, and she tried to define his expression. He saw a small black-haired woman who didn’t trip triple digits on a scale. She probably didn’t look like much. People had called her fragile as if a strong wind could push her over. Her skin was pale because she liked to wear hoodies and shirts with long sleeves. Her eyes were a muddied shade of green that people liked to call hazel. Men liked to flirt with her at the coffee shop, so she had an idea that she wasn’t ugly, but standards of beauty were beyond her comprehension. After all, what is looking at a supermodel’s face compared to the next breath of freedom?

  Moss looked at her like he thought she was contemptible. She understood that. She was a victim who’d had the audacity, the sheer impudence, to survive when their kin and loved ones hadn’t. Worse was that she didn’t remember what had happened or that she refused to remember, which implied in their minds that she was complicit in the crimes that made the others vanish.

  She’d seen that idea reflected in a dozen cops’ faces. It had been reflected in just as many prosecutors’ faces as well as in the five people’s faces who represented the families of the missing and had come knocking on her door. There had been others, as well, from states where children had gone missing who thought their cases might be related to Thomas Madrid. They all had questions for her.

  Hesper didn’t have answers, and she didn’t have answers for Moss.

  She stopped in front of him, aware that two other men watched from where they dangled their feet in the Willamette.

  “Hey, baby,” one of them said. “If Moss doesn’t do it for you, then I love me a little emo/drama action.”

  “Dude, is she even over eighteen?” asked the
other one. “Jail bait ain’t the thing.”

  Moss stared down at Hesper, and his expression didn’t change. Disdain and contempt warred with curiosity.

  Hesper felt something else. It roared to life within her stomach and barreled up into her chest, threatening to explode out of her. She’d thought she wasn’t capable of it anymore, but there it was all the same.

  Hesper was angry. She shoved the bill at the direct center of his broad chest, hitting it solidly with her fingers pressing and holding it in place. Without hesitation, he grasped it awkwardly with his right hand, glancing down with a little bit of surprise.

  That’s stupid. He shouldn’t have been surprised.

  Hesper stepped back, all too close to the side of the dock, still brimming with fury. She was aware of her nearness, but her anger outweighed the perception of danger. “How dare you?” she asked. “How the fuck dare you?”

  Moss looked at the bill and unfolded it. She could see his words written on the front, so he was looking at the back where she’d written hers. The Sharpie had bled through the bill so that she could see bits of the oversized “Fuck you!!!” in backwards letters.

  “Do you think you own me?” she went on without waiting for him to say anything. “Do you think that I’m just open for your idiotic questions any time you get an itch? Do you think that I wouldn’t have helped if I could have helped?” The words began to tumble out of Hesper’s mouth as if she couldn’t help them. They poured out like the water from a breached dike, and there simply weren’t enough Dutch boys in the world with fingers that could plug up all the holes. “You have the nerve to follow me here just to pry into my brain and dig up whatever you think will help you. At any cost, with never a single thought of what you’re doing to me! In some ways you’re worse than the ones who are responsible for missing children! They’re monsters, but your shit is twisted inside so much that you’ll never get free!”

  Hesper stepped back again and took a deep breath.