“Dear Mr. Blake: Thank you for getting back to me. That was foolish of me not to give you more information. I work at a Christian youth center called Second Chance in the west part of the downtown area. There’s a number there but I’m in and out all the time (one of the things I do is arrange for the meals there, so I’m out a lot getting groceries and things) but I always have my cell with me, so you can usually get me on that. Here it is.” The number followed.
I had the receiver in my hand and was dialing, looking back and forth between the screen and the phone.
“What if she’s a nut?” Kate asked as I hit the last digit. “What if it’s someone just running a scam or something? A lot of people, they’re always thinking up ways to get innocent people to fall for things.”
I knew that, in a nutshell, was Kate’s worldview, but realized it was something I had to consider. As the phone began to ring at the other end, thousands of miles away, Kate said, “If she starts asking about money, about whether there’s a reward, that’ll be your tip-off that she’s—”
I held up my hand for her to stop talking, expecting the cell to be answered at any second.
And then it was.
“Hello?”
A woman. It was only one word, but she sounded on the young side.
“Is this Yolanda Mills?”
“Is this Mr. Blake?” she asked.
“Oh God,” I said, breathing a huge sigh of relief. “We were trying to track you down using the online phone directories and Google and everything, and then you got back to me. Thank you so much. You don’t know what this means to me.”
“I just don’t know how much help I can be.” I wasn’t picking up any noticeable accent. And trying to pick up someone’s age from their voice is tricky, unless the person is very young or very old. Yolanda Mills sounded right in the middle.
“When did you see Syd?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Sydney,” I said. “I call her Syd.”
“It was two or three days ago, I think.”
“How was she? Was she okay? Did she look hurt? Was she sick?”
“She looked fine. I mean, assuming it was her. She came in a couple of times to get something to eat.”
Jesus Christ, my daughter eating in a shelter for runaways. What had brought her to this? Why was she on the other side of the country?
“Did you speak to her at all?”
“Nothing much. Just, you know, ‘How ya doin’, darlin’?’ That was about it.”
“Did she say anything?”
“She just kind of smiled.”
“Was she with anyone? Was she traveling alone?”
“As far as I could tell, she was by herself. I have to say, she looked sad.”
It was as if someone had reached into my chest and given my heart a twist.
“And you said you last saw her a couple of days ago?”
“Okay, let me think a minute,” Yolanda Mills said. “I think the first time I saw her was about four days ago, then she came in two days after that when we were serving lunch. And that was day before yesterday.”
Which meant that Syd had been in Seattle for a while. Maybe she was popping into Yolanda’s drop-in every couple of days. So if I got out there, hung around the shelter long enough, she might show up.
“Do teens, runaways, do they come to your place to eat even if they aren’t staying there?”
“Oh, sure. We only have so much space. And this isn’t meant to be someplace where you come to live permanently. It’s a stopgap measure, you know? So kids, sometimes they find a place to bunk in with a friend, or they sleep in a car, and sometimes, I hate to say it, sometimes they just find a place in the park or something for the night.”
Syd, sleeping on a bench. I tried to push the image out of my head.
“How did you find out about Syd?” I asked.
“Didn’t I tell you, in the email? Because of where I work, because I know so many of these kids are runaways and homeless, and because I know they’ve got parents who are looking for them, I Google websites where parents post pictures of their kids who’ve run away or are just missing. This is just the second time I’ve seen someone who’s actually been in our shelter.”
“Were you right the other time?”
“As a matter of fact, I was,” she said proudly. “There was a young man, his name was Trent, and he was from just outside of El Paso, and his parents were going out of their minds trying to find him. And he was actually staying at the shelter, and this time, I was sure it was him, and I thought about telling him that I knew his parents were looking for him, that he should call them, but I thought that might scare him off, so I called his folks instead and they were on the next flight up here.”
A flight. I would have to book a flight the moment I was done talking to Yolanda.
“If she comes in again, don’t tell her you’ve spoken with me,” I said. “I don’t know why she’s run off, I don’t know whether I did something, I just can’t figure it out. I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to think why she’d do something like this and—”
“That’s what a lot of the parents say, but sometimes I think they know the answer and they’re just not acknowledging it, you know what I’m saying?” Yolanda said.