Girl Missing by Tess Gerritsen Page A

think it ever worked,” she muttered, noting the faded OUT OF ORDER sign. “It’s four flights up. We’ll have to walk.”
    They went up the stairs, stepping over broken toys and cigarette butts. The handrail, once smoothly burnished, was now scarred by a series of initials carved in the wood. Noises filtered out from the various apartments: crying babies, blaring TV sets and radios, a woman yelling at her kids. Floating above it all were the pure and crystalline tones of a girl singing “Amazing Grace.” The sound soared like a cathedral above the ruins. As they ascended the stairs to the fifth floor, the girl’s voice grew louder, until they knew it was coming from behind the very door where they stopped.
    Kat knocked.
    The singing stopped. Footsteps approached, and the door opened a crack. A girl with a silky face the color of mocha gazed out over the security chain with doe eyes.
    “Bella?” said Kat.
    The smile that appeared on the girl’s face was like a brilliant wash of sunshine. “Kat!” she cried, unlatching the door chain. She turned and called out: “Papa Earl! It’s Kat!”
    “Don’t rush me,” grumbled a voice from the next room. “I don’t go runnin’ for no one.”
    Bella gave Kat an embarrassed look as they stepped into the apartment. “Those bones of his,” she murmured. “Ache him real bad in this weather. He’s in a foul mood …”
    “ Who’s in a foul mood?” snapped Papa Earl, shuffling into the room. He moved slowly, his head tipped forward, his once jet-black hair now a grizzled white. How old he had gotten, thought Kat sadly. Somehow, she had never thought this man would be touched by the years.
    Kat went forward to give him a hug. It was almost like hugging a stranger; he seemed so small, so frail, shrunken by time. “Hi, Papa Earl,” she said.
    “You got your nerve, girl,” he grumbled. “Go two years, three, not even droppin’ by.”
    “Papa Earl!” Bella said. “She’s here now, isn’t she?”
    “Yeah, got good ’n’ guilty, did she?”
    Kat laughed and took his hand. It felt likebones wrapped in parchment. “How you been, Papa Earl? Did you get the coat I sent?”
    “What coat?”
    “You know,” Bella said, sighing. “The down jacket, Papa Earl. You wore it all winter.”
    “Oh. That coat.”
    Bella gave Kat a weary you know how he is look and said, “He loves that coat.”
    “Papa Earl,” said Kat. “I brought someone with me.”
    “Who?”
    “His name is Adam. He’s standing right over here.”
    Gently she turned the old man to face Adam. Papa Earl extended his arm, held it out in midair for the expected handshake. Only then, as the two men faced each other, could Adam see the snowy cataracts clouding the old man’s eyes.
    Adam took the offered hand and grasped it firmly. “Hello … Papa Earl,” he said.
    Papa Earl let out a hoot. “Makes you feel dumb, don’t it? Big fella like you callin’ a shrimp like me Papa.”
    “Not at all, sir.”
    “So what you got going with our Katrina here?”
    “He’s just a friend, Papa Earl,” said Kat.
    There was a pause. “Oh,” the old man said. “It’s like that.”
    “I wanted you to meet him, talk to him. See, he’s looking for someone. A woman.”
    Papa Earl’s grizzled head lifted with sudden interest. The blind eyes seemed to focus on her.
    “What do I know?”
    “You know everything that goes on in the Projects.”
    “Let’s sit down,” the old man said. “My bones are killing me.”
    They went into the kitchen. Like the rest of the apartment, the room was on the far side of used. Linoleum tiles had worked loose below the sink. The Formica counters were chipped. The stove and refrigerator were straight from the Leave It to Beaver era. Papa Earl’s other grandchild, Anthony, sat hunched at the table, shoveling spaghetti hoops into his mouth. He scarcely looked up as the others came in.
    “Hey, Anthony!” barked Papa Earl. “Ain’t you gonna say hello to your old