Vortex

Chapter Twenty-one Sandra and Bose

Ariel Mather paced the floor of her motel room, shaking with anxiety. At first she had insisted on going out to look for Orrin (“right now! ”), but Bose had convinced her to stay in the room at least long enough to explain what had happened. Sandra sat on the unmade bed, listening carefully and not saying much, letting the crisis unspool around her.

“You went to lunch,” Bose prompted.

“Yeah, over to the coffee shop. We had hamburgers. Does that information help you in some way?”

“How was Orrin feeling this morning?”

“Pretty good, I spose, considering he was drugged last night.”

“Okay, he was in a good mood. What did you talk about?”

“Mostly about what happened since he left Raleigh. How he came to Houston and got hired by that man Findley. I asked him why he wanted to leave home in the first place—was it something I did wrong, was he unhappy there? He said no and he was sorry I worried so much about him. He said he just felt like there was business in Houston he had to take care of.”

“What business?”

“I asked him that but he was cagy. And I didn’t push, because I figured it was all over with now. We were going home—so I thought.”

“What else did you talk about?”

“The weather. This damn heat. It gets hot in Raleigh, but Texas! I don’t know why anybody lives here, honestly. Nothing much else than that. While we ate Orrin kept his notebooks in his lap, you know, those ratty notebooks of his, the ones you gave him back yesterday.”

“Did he say anything about them?”

“He showed me a couple of pages this morning, but he was real shy about it. There are words in there I didn’t think he knew… words I don’t know. I asked him, did he write this? Sort of, he says. I asked him how you can ‘sort of’ write something—was he holding the pen that made these words or was he not? He was, he says. Somebody with him at the time? No, he says. Then you wrote them, I said. Whatever they mean. He said it was just a story. But I don’t know about that, the way he clings to those pages. Why? Does that have something to do with him running off?”

“I don’t know,” Bose said. “What happened after lunch?”

“He asked me for some walking-around money.”

“Walking around?”

“That’s what we called it back in Raleigh. He worked odd jobs to help with the rent but he didn’t usually have any money of his own, so I used to give him a little cash on Saturdays so he could walk down to the store and buy something, or maybe go to the municipal pool or get himself lunch at McDonald’s. He didn’t like to be away from home without money in his pocket.” Ariel stopped pacing and shook her head. “I gave him forty dollars to keep him happy. I didn’t think he’d take it and run. What’s forty dollars in a city like this? After lunch we went back to the room to wait for you two. Then he says, Ariel, I’m going to the lobby and get change for the Coke machine. I said I would give him coins. He said no, I already gave him money, he wanted to change a bill. Twenty minutes and he’s not back, so I went to look for him. He wasn’t down at the soda machine and when I went to the lobby he wasn’t there, either. The clerk told me he saw Orrin waiting for a city bus at the highway stop.”

“Going which direction?” Bose asked.

“You’ll have to ask the clerk.”

“Was Orrin alone or was he with somebody?”

“Clerk didn’t say anything about anybody else.”

Sandra waited until Bose had wrung out of Ariel all the information she was capable of giving. Then she said, “I have a couple of questions, if it’s all right.”

Bose seemed surprised. Ariel sighed impatiently but nodded.

“Last time we talked you said Orrin was gentle, that he would never hurt anyone. Do you remember that?”

Ariel’s lips went taut. “Of course I remember.”

“But when he tried to leave State he fought with the orderly who tried to restrain him.”

“That’s a lie.”

“It may be, but the orderly was wearing a bandage the next day. He claims Orrin bit him.”

“I wouldn’t take anything those people say seriously. I thought you mentioned you quit that job?”

“I did. I don’t work there anymore. I just want to get clear on this.”

Ariel paced a few moments more. Then she said, “Nobody’s perfect, Dr. Cole. I told you Orrin’s gentle, and that’s the truth. Maybe I exaggerated last time we talked, but you were working for the people who locked him up—I didn’t want to say anything to make it worse.”

“Exaggerated how?”

“Orrin had a few encounters when he was growing up. He’s slow to anger, Dr. Cole, and he hates fights, but that doesn’t mean he never got in one. The neighbor children used to bother him. Called him names and all that. Mostly Orrin would run away, but every once in a while he’d lose his patience.”

Sandra and Bose exchanged glances. Bose said, “How often did this happen, Ariel?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe once or twice a year when he was younger.”

“Was it ever serious? Did he get hurt, did he hurt anyone else?”

“No…”

“Whatever you can tell us might help us find him.”

“I don’t see how.” Pause. “Well. Once he hit the Lewisson boy hard enough he had to get stitches over his eye. Other times it was just scuffles. Maybe a black eye or two. Sometimes Orrin got the worst of it. Sometimes not.” She added, “He always felt bad about it afterward.”

“Okay, thank you,” Bose said. “Anything else Orrin talked about this morning that you can recall? Anything at all, even if it seems unimportant.”

“No. Just the weather, like I said. He was interested in the weather report coming over the radio in the coffee shop. They’re calling for heavy rain tonight. That excited him. ‘I guess it’s tonight,’ he said. ‘Tonight’s the night.’”

“Any idea what he meant by that?”

“Well, he always did like storms. You know. The thunder and all.”

Bose convinced Ariel to stay in her room, “otherwise I’ll end up looking for the both of you.” And Ariel had calmed down enough to see the sense in it.

“You’ll call me, though, right? Soon as you know anything?”

“I’ll call you whether we know anything or not.”

Back in the motel lobby, Bose talked to the desk clerk for a few minutes. Orrin had been waiting for the downtown bus, the clerk said. No, he hadn’t actually seen Orrin get on. Just noticed him waiting out there. Skinny guy in torn jeans and a yellow T-shirt standing in the sun by the side of the road. “Begging for heat stroke in this weather, if you ask me. Those buses only come along every forty-five minutes.”

“So what do we do?” Sandra asked when Bose had finished.

“Depends. Maybe you want to stay here with Ariel?”

“Or maybe I don’t.”

“I can think of a couple of places we might look.”

“You’re saying you know where he went?”

“I have an idea or two,” Bose said.