Girl Gone Missing Read online

  In the hallway, Cash said, “Are you out of your mind? That guy’s a total creep.”

  “No, he’s not. He’s hot.”

  “Drop it, Sharon.”

  “I’m going to see what kind of ‘extra credit’ he offers.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Come on, don’t be such a fuddy duddy.” Sharon was almost skipping down the flight of stairs that would take them out of the building. “I’m in looooove!”

  “You already have a boyfriend. Don’t be stupid. He’s old enough to be your dad.”

  “He is not!”

  Cash pushed open the door to outside. “He’s a creep.”

  “Renee! Renee!” A male voice called out behind them as they reached the bottom step outside the science building. Sharon turned around, almost tripping. She whispered, “He’s calling you!”

  “Huh?”

  “Renee.”

  Mr. Danielson was standing right behind them. He held her notebook in his hand. “You left this on the desk. You might need your notes for the quiz tomorrow. If you wanted to stop by the office sometime…even A students can use extra credit. Gotta get back to the classroom.” He sprinted back up the stairs. “See you later this afternoon, Sharon,” he called back.

  Cash looked at Sharon and said firmly, “He is a creep. Stay away from him and his stupid extra credit.” Sharon pouted until they parted company midway across campus.

  Cash went to judo. Self-defense was a priority after she had been grabbed twice earlier in the fall. The first time was by the Day Dodge kids up on the Red Lake Reservation where she had gone to help after their dad was murdered and their mom died. The second was when the guys who had killed their dad had nabbed her off the main street of Halstad and threatened to kill her. Though Cash traveled with a .22 rifle, she felt she needed some maneuvering skills. Both times she’d been nabbed, her rifle was tucked behind the seat of her Ranchero.

  After judo class, she grabbed a tuna sandwich at the Silver Cup and then headed north out of town to spend anther night driving beet truck.

  The evening was dull until Jim Jenson climbed into the cab of her truck while she was waiting to dump a load of beets. Jim was wearing a plaid wool shirt, his thermal undershirt visible at the neck, and the standard farmer blue jeans. Grinning, he slid across the cracked leather seat of the International Harvester truck and nuzzled her neck. “Where you been, Cash? I need me some Cash.” The hair on the nape of her neck tickled.

  “Ahh, get away,” she said, pushing against his skinny chest. “Stop—that gives me the shivers.”

  “Where you been? You’re never at the Casbah anymore. And your door has been locked every time I’ve come up to your place. You never used to lock me out. What’s going on?”

  “I gotta get up and get to school.” She tapped the book on the seat between them. “Drive truck half the night, sleep a bit, and then I gotta get to school.”

  Jim kept his arm across her shoulders, pulling her into him. “Haven’t seen you since we lost that pool tournament at the Flame. You still mad at me about that?”

  “We? Don’t count me in on that. You lost that one all yourself.”

  “Come on, Cash, don’t be so hard on me. I miss you.”

  His hand slid up her leg.

  “Go on.” She pushed away again. “I have to study. I got a quiz tomorrow in science I gotta study for.”

  Jim backed off and slid over to the passenger side of the truck. His grin was gone. He gazed out the truck window then back to Cash. “You gonna come to the Casbah this weekend?”

  Cash looked at him. She and Jim were pool partners. Had been “sleep together” partners until a month ago, when he had lost a pool tournament that cost her her rent money. Cash had been pretty drunk and had gotten 86’d from the Flame when she had upturned a couple of tables on her way out of the bar. She’d also cleared a few with her other arm, busting glass all over. All because the barmaid had accused her of hiding beer in her purse at closing time.

  Cash had never carried a purse. She had tucked two bottles in the back of her jeans, but that wasn’t a purse. Cash looked at Jim. He was built thin, hair slicked back, his farmer tan from the summer fading. His Scandinavian whiteness would be fully back by Thanksgiving. He was looking at her with a hopeful grin. “Why’d you go crazy that night anyways? Not the first time we lost.”

  Cash started to laugh in spite of herself. “I don’t know. She just pissed me off. Only white girls carry purses. Maybe if she’d just accused me of taking the beers, I woulda put them on the table. But it was the purse that got me.”

  Cash laughed harder.

  “You’re crazy.”

  Cash looked at him. He was smiling. That smile reminded her that earlier in the day of the lost pool tournament she had seen Jim and his wife and kids at a restaurant in the new mall west of town. The smile he had now was the same happy smile he had had that day eating with his family. Cash quickly looked away.

  “What?”

  “Nothin.”

  “Criminy, one minute you’re laughing like crazy and the next you’re looking at me like you want to kill me.”

  Cash took a drink of lukewarm coffee from her Thermos. “I’m just tired, Jim. School. Work. I’m just getting used to school.”

  “Let me come over after we’re done with the shift here. I’ll just stay for a minute.”

  “That wouldn’t be much fun.” Cash laughed again.

  The truck ahead of them was moving forward. Jim opened the passenger door. As he hopped down he said, “Leave the door open, okay?”

  “Okay, for a minute.” Cash laughed.

  Cash watched him in the side mirror as he walked back to his truck. He told her he was married before they ever slept together. Mostly he would come to her apartment after a night of drinking and shooting pool together. They would have sex and he would leave. The wife and kids he told her about weren’t real to her until that afternoon when Cash saw them at the mall eating dinner as a family.

  Cash finished her shift, retrieved her Ranchero and drove back into Fargo. Out of habit, she drove by the Casbah even though it was a couple of hours past closing time. The bar was dark except for the neon light of the Hamm’s Beer sign, which hung above the bar inside, shining through the window. Back at her apartment, she took a quick bath, grabbed a Bud from the fridge and crawled into bed. Halfway through the bottle, Jim arrived, stayed a bit longer than a minute, and then headed northwest out of town to his wife and kids. Cash was asleep before he pulled the door shut and locked it after himself.

  Cash pulled herself up and out of her bedroom window. Fear propelled her, running barefoot, across the damp ground, listening to heavy breathing gaining on her. She ran toward the plowed field ahead, heading to town. Her foot sank into the cold dirt of the furrowed field. When she tried to pull her foot up, her front leg sank farther into the dirt. She threw herself forward, clawing with bare hands, her waist length dark brown hair caught in her hurried grasps. She could still hear the heavy, labored breathing of the person chasing her. Fear forced her from her body so she was soon flying above herself. Looking down she saw herself stretched out in the mud below, buried to her knees, arms flailing. Cash circled in the air above like a bird of prey looking down at a mouse in the field. She tried to see who was chasing her but the face was obscured in the darkness. Below, her own body changed to a paler, longer-legged, long-haired blonde. The young woman looked up at Cash and screamed, “Help me!”

  Cash sat straight up in bed, then thudded back onto her pillow. Her heart was racing. The same dream, two nights in a row. Damn. She glanced over at the clock sitting on the dresser; the hands read 3:40. Cash reached over and flipped on the lamp sitting on the dresser, swung her legs over the edge of the bed and reached around until she found the half-finished bottle of Bud on the floor. She killed it, lay back down without turning off the light, flipped over the pillow and fluffed it up under her head.

  She ran the dream back through her mind. She remembe
red, in foster homes, having that dream as a recurring nightmare.

  Always before in the dream, when she flew out of her body and looked back at who was chasing her, it was a foster parent. In those dreams, when she got stuck in the mud of the field and took off, up and out of her body and started flying, she eventually looked down. When she saw herself, she reached down and pulled herself up, out of the field and into the sky. But in this dream, when she looked down she saw another body there instead of hers. It creeped her out. She flipped the pillow again and this time folded it in half with her head stuck inside.

  She needed to sleep. She planned to go ask the chair of science about testing out of biology and, if she was lucky, Professor LeRoy from the English Department would let her take that test tomorrow. She started counting backwards from ten. Ten-nine-eight and on to one. Then she started counting forward. She almost always fell back asleep before she reached fifty and tonight was no different.

  She woke again at seven when the alarm went off. She brushed her hair, quickly braided it into one braid down the center of her back, washed her face while her coffee was brewing. She rinsed out her Thermos before filling it with hot coffee, made a fried egg sandwich, grabbed her book and notebooks off the kitchen table and headed to school.

  The first place she stopped was LeRoy’s office.

  “Oh,” he said, leaning back in his chair as she entered. “I looked up your grades. Not bad. You did all right in high school too, I see.”

  Cash stood waiting.

  “So…you still want to test out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alright… if you’re sure. Come back here, not here, but to Room 103 in this building at two. Can you come at two?”

  Cash nodded her head yes.

  “Alright. Come back at two, Room 103, and we’ll see how you do. Bring a couple of pencils, sharpened, to write with. Most of it is multiple choice, but you’ll also have to write an essay.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Is an essay going to be too hard?”

  Cash shook her head and turned to leave.

  “It’s early enough in the quarter, if you pass, you could register for the next level English,” LeRoy said to her back.

  Cash hadn’t thought about that. Wasn’t ready to think about that. “I’ll think about that,” she said as she left. She pulled the heavy door shut behind her.

  Maybe she could do this school thing without taking any classes, she thought as she walked through the English building, her footsteps along with the voices of other students echoing off the hardwood floor.

  After she sat through what she hoped was her last boring English 101 class, she stepped out into the fall air and fought the urge to keep walking right to her Ranchero, to drive north along the river…or go to the Casbah…or go eat. To do anything but go to science class and take that stupid test. Instead, she walked across the Commons and entered the science building, trudged up the stairs to the second floor.

  Sharon was already there, sitting front and center, wearing a different miniskirt than she had worn the day before. This one had fake fringe leather on the hem. Sharon leered at Mr. Danielson’s back as he wrote notes on the blackboard.

  Cash took her usual spot at the back of the room. She was done with the test way before most of the other students. Mr. Danielson had said they could leave once they were finished. But, rather than call attention to herself by being the first one up, Cash pretended to keep working while looking around the room at the other students. Her mind drifted to her dream of the blonde screaming for help, the blonde who just a week ago sat at the front of the room where Sharon now sat. Thinking about the dream raised the hair on the back of her neck.

  Cash caught Mr. Danielson staring at her. She ducked her head and pretended to write more on the test. Finally two guys got up and turned their tests in. Thank god. A few seconds later, Cash gathered her books and papers from under the desk, dropped her test on Danielson’s desk and walked out of the room, down the stairs into the fresh air. She shivered, and not from the cold. Danielson gave her the creeps.

  She remembered she was going to ask Chairman Olsen of the Science Department about testing out too. She went back in the building, found his door and walked through the same conversation she’d had earlier with the chair of the English Department. The Science chair was less verbal. He looked at her through horn-rimmed glasses. He had a pencil stuck behind his left ear. He mumbled, “Sure, come in on Friday at noon.”

  Cash nodded and got the heck out of his room. It reeked of formaldehyde.

  She was halfway across the Commons on her way to the rec room when Sharon caught up with her. She babbled on for the next hour, over the sound of pool balls dropping, about how groovy Mr. Danielson was. After forty minutes, Cash cleared the table one last time, and told Sharon to “get over it.”

  At the end of the hour she went to her psych class. The information in this class was new to her. She found the reading and homework easy, but she didn’t think it would make sense to try to test out of it.

  After psych, she went to judo in the school gym. She threw and got thrown for an hour. At the end, she was breathing hard, exhausted. She was going to have to start exercising like she used to in high school. Without working in the fields full time, she could tell she was losing muscle.

  Right at two, Cash returned to Room 103 in the English building. The class was in progress, but when LeRoy saw her looking in the door window, he motioned for her to come in. He handed her some standardized test pages and a few pages of lined blank paper. “Your essay should be a comparative essay on Shakespeare and a twentieth-century poet or writer. There’s a desk at the back you can sit at. Just bring it all up here when you’re finished.”

  Cash was done with the multiple-choice test a few minutes shy of fifteen. She sat and stared out the classroom window for another ten. There was a maple tree, its leaves brilliant fall red. A small bird, a wren, hopped from branch to branch. Cash thought about the line from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar—“Et tu, Brute?”—and how many times she had been betrayed, or felt betrayed, by families who swore to the social workers’ faces, faces that were either lined with worry or a churchy cheerfulness, that they would care for her. She thought about Langston Hughes’ poem, Dream Variations. Before she gave up hope, she had dreamed of a day when she could whirl and dance in the sun. She was startled out of her reverie by LeRoy blocking out the window.

  “You going to be able to finish?”

  “Of course,” answered Cash. She grabbed up her pencil. For the next twenty-five minutes, she wrote without stopping. When the bell rang, she put a period on the last sentence and wrote her name at the top of each page. She handed them to LeRoy and walked out of the room, making a beeline for the door. Outside she gulped fresh air and looked to the red maple where the wren continued its hopping.

  Mission accomplished.

  Cash drove through the town of Moorhead. Lawns were turning brown. Orange and yellow leaves were falling from the trees. It wasn’t winter cold yet, but the fall chill was in the air. She stopped at the red light on Main and lit up a Marlboro waiting for the light to change. Station wagons passed by, driven by farm wives in town for doctor’s appointments or grocery shopping. Ford pickup trucks pulling broken farm equipment dropped chunks of field dirt on the pavement on their way to the implement shop. On the radio, Merle Haggard turned twenty-one in prison while his mama cried. For a fleeting second, Cash wondered about her own mom, but she quickly shut that door in her mind. She took another drag of her cigarette and turned up the volume on the radio.

  Back at her apartment, she put the tuna sandwich she had gotten at the Silver Cup in her lunch box with a full Thermos of coffee. She changed into work clothes and headed north along the river.

  As she neared Perley, she could see Wheaton’s cruiser sitting in the graveled parking lot of the town’s grain elevators. As she got closer, Wheaton flashed his headlights at her. She pulled in alongside his car, driver window to driver window.


  “How’s school?”

  “Okay.”

  “Passing?”

  “Of course.” Smoke from her cigarette filled the air between them.

  “Have you heard anything more about the Tweed girl?”

  “Nah. Nothing more than last time we talked. Folks just speculating on where she is, who she might have run off with.”

  “Her folks are mighty concerned. Say she never would have just run off.”

  Wheaton’s big hands twisted nervously around the cruiser’s steering wheel. “I know you’re busy with school and all and driving beet truck, but I was wondering if you’d have a couple minutes to run up to their farm in Shelly with me and see if you can pick up anything that might be useful. Mind you, I wouldn’t want you to say anything to her folks, just go up there with me, get a sense of them.”

  He watched a car on the highway speed past. They tapped on the brakes when the driver saw Wheaton’s car. Wheaton flipped on the police flashers. The car on the highway slowed even more. “Maybe they’ll think twice next time.”

  Cash flipped her cigarette out onto the gravel. Help me, echoed in her mind from her dream. “Okay,” she answered. “Follow me to Wang’s so I can leave my truck there and ride with you. You can drop me back at startin’ time?”

  Wheaton turned on his car. “See you there.”

  As he started to roll up his window, a little black dog popped its head up in the back seat.

  “What is that?”

  “Oh, him,” said Wheaton.

  “I didn’t know you had a dog.”

  “I didn’t. But I was out driving the other evening by the old Johannsson farm. I was just driving, you know, and I saw this gunny sack moving down the road.”

  “Gunny sack?”

  “Gunny sack. First I thought the wind was blowing it. But there wasn’t any wind, the sack was moving itself down the road. I pulled over and walked up to it, I could hear this pitiful whining. It was tied shut with twine. I thought maybe it was a bag of kittens that someone was trying to get rid of, but when I untied the bag this little guy was in there. Scrawny, must have been the runt of the litter that someone threw out and left for dead. Now he won’t leave my side.”