“Let’s give him thirty minutes,” Keyon said. “If he hasn’t shown up, one of us should go down to the breakfast room and reconnoiter.”
“Maybe we should let the home office know there’s been a hiccup,” George said. “Keeping that plane waiting out there at the airport costs a fortune.”
“Let’s just cool it for a half-hour,” Keyon said. “If he doesn’t show up, then we switch to plan B.”
“What’s plan B?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Keyon said with a laugh. “I suppose we’ll just have to stake out the Brazos University Medical Center, where we know he will turn up, unless he’s already there, which I doubt. Of course, we can always hope he’ll use his cell and give us a location.”
40
THURSDAY, AUGUST 17, 9:05 A.M.
Noah paid his tab and stepped out into the sunshine in Brownfield, Texas. The temperature had risen considerably since he’d gone into the restaurant.
He’d slept poorly the previous night despite the two beers he’d had at the bar. The problem had been that he couldn’t stop his mind from wondering what he was going to learn that day, first at Brownfield and then at the Brazos Medical Center. His intuition was telling him it was going to be significant, and he hoped it would be in a positive way, but he worried it might not be.
By 5:30 he’d given up going back to sleep and had gotten up. Something had awakened him at about 5:00. After a shower, he’d gone out to his rent-a-car and set out for Brownfield around 6:30. Although he’d put the Kendrick Public Library in the GPS, he hadn’t needed to because the route was a straight shot southeast down Route 62 that branched off the Lubbock Ring Road, close to where his hotel was located.
Noah seldom had driven on such a straight, flat road, passing through an almost iridescent red, arid landscape. There were several small towns on the way, and Brownfield itself was smaller than he had expected. Route 62, which assumed the name of Lubbock Road and then South First Street once he was in the town, brought him right into the center. The Kendrick Library was on a cross-street.
Noah had pulled up to the library and noticed his was the only car, which he should have taken as a hint he might have been a bit early. Instead he was taken by the library’s appearance, which defied classification. It was a unique, single-story, red-brick structure with steeply gabled roofs sporting several purely decorative dormers. Getting out of the car, Noah was so taken with the building’s appearance that it wasn’t until he got all the way to the front door that he had learned the library didn’t open until 9:00 A.M.
Taking the delayed opening in stride, Noah had driven around the town, passing the high school where Ava had gone when she was presumably Gail Shafter. Nearby, he’d come across a pleasant-looking breakfast place. Having an hour and a half to kill, he had gone in for pancakes and coffee and a chance to read the local weekly newspaper, The Brownfield Gazette.
Once inside the library, Noah went directly to the circulation desk. The middle-aged woman manning the desk was the spitting image of the prim-and-proper but mildly scary woman he remembered as a young child in his own town library. Despite the similarities appearance-wise, the Brownfield librarian was inordinately friendly, directing him to the end room, which she called the “reading room,” to locate the Brownfield High School yearbooks and even offered to accompany him.
“I’m sure I’ll be able to find them,” Noah said.
In the center of the reading room was a low, two-sided bookcase containing more than fifty years of Brownfield High School yearbooks. Noah took the volume for 2000 and sat down at an oak table.
He first looked at Ava London’s photo. He was surprised because the woman in the black-and-white photo did resemble the Ava he knew, with streaked blond hair, remarkably white teeth, a small sculpted nose, and a strong chin line. She also reflected Ava’s confident stare. Beneath the photo was an impressive résumé of activities including cheerleading captain, student council, senior play, and many clubs. Below that was a short in memoriam, mentioning her death on April 14, 2000.
Noah’s eyes went back to study the photo. He again admitted to himself the individual did look surprisingly similar to his Ava, but he wasn’t sure he would have been able to pick her out if there hadn’t been a name. But he didn’t find that surprising, as it was rare in his experience for someone to resemble their high school photo.
Moving on, he looked at the photo of Gail Shafter. The general features were not too dissimilar, although Gail’s nose was larger and appeared as if it were slightly aquiline, and the hair was definitely brunette with just a few blond streaks. Of particular similarity was the way the young woman looked directly into the camera with obvious self-confidence, although with Gail it bordered on brassiness. What was obviously different about the two women was Gail’s lack of social activities.
Taking his cell phone out of his backpack, Noah replaced the battery just long enough to take a couple photos of the two women. He had wanted Roberta Hinkle to send him the photos, and now he had them. As he put the yearbook back in the bookshelf, thinking about the private investigator made him wonder what Detective Moore would say if he knew Noah was in the area. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, and as best as he could, he put it out of his mind. He didn’t want to think about Roberta Hinkle’s untimely end.
Noah returned to the circulation desk and asked the librarian where he could find back issues of The Brownfield Gazette. She directed him to return to the reading room and to look in the shelving against the near wall. She said there were bound volumes of the paper going back to the year it was founded.
It took Noah only a moment to find the correct volume that contained the April 17, 2000, and the April 24, 2000, issues. He took it back to the same seat. As far as he could tell, he was the only visitor in the library.