“That’s the Delyvan woman, Jay!”
“Look,” the cop says. “Officer McFee and I have no problem amending the initial report, Mr. Porter, adding in your description of the intruder and the bit about the misplaced glass.” He delivers that last part as if he were describing the plot of an Agatha Christie novel. This isn’t a murder mystery, he wants it known, just a simple case of breaking and entering, one of thirty or forty on a given night in the city of Houston, depending on the weather. “But I will also add words to support my opinion, based on ten years on the force, that I did not see evidence of an intruder in your place of business at the time my partner and I were present.”
Jay holds up a finger, not the one he wants to, mind you, but a single index finger to indicate he needs to answer this ringing telephone.
“Mrs. Delyvan,” he says, picking up the line.
“Jay, this is Arlee calling.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Jay’s office is one of the smaller rooms in the house. It sits opposite the kitchen on the other side of the house, where, at least once a week, Eddie Mae has a pot of red beans on the stove. He can smell the pork fat and brown sugar from here, the smoky scent passing through two walls and filling every inch of the room. The window behind his desk he’s propped open with an ancient text on Texas civil statutes, borrowed from his library upstairs. It’s strikingly uncluttered for a lawyer’s office. But he hasn’t carried a full caseload since his wife died; he’s been turning away all new business and clearing out the old. His entire practice has come down to a single class action suit, Pleasantville v. ProFerma Labs, a case he kept because it was local, close to home, and close to his kids; he wouldn’t have to travel, and there would be no trial, that much he was sure of. Last year, when two explosions from ProFerma’s chemical plant threatened to burn one of Houston’s most storied neighborhoods to the ground, it was Jay Porter whom the residents of Pleasantville called, what should have been a slam dunk. Half the city had watched the smoky scene on their television sets, orange embers flying into folks’ backyards, lighting up roofs and wood-frame houses, and Jay was sure the case would never see the inside of a courtroom. ProFerma had every incentive to settle the matter quickly. But a year and a half later, they’re no closer to a deal. The company has yet to make a serious offer. Arlee Delyvan was the first to sign on as a plaintiff.
She was one of “the original thirty-seven,” one of the three dozen or so families who’d settled into the first homes in Pleasantville when the neighborhood was built in ’49. Dr. Delyvan, who’d been a pediatrician, bought a four-bedroom, ranch-style home on Tilgham. It came with a his-and-hers two-car garage, with room enough for his Ford and his wife’s blue Lincoln Continental. Mrs. Delyvan, a widow, is in her late seventies and volunteers part-time at the Samuel P. Hathorne Community Center, where she’s calling from now. As Jay is ever in the business of maintaining his clients’ trust, he takes their calls, day or night, no matter the topic.
“You heard about the girl, I guess,” she says. “Alicia Nowell?”
It takes a moment for the name to land. When it does, Jay swallows a clump of dread that’s suddenly lodged itself in the back of his throat. “I heard something on the radio this morning, yes, ma’am,” he says.
“They’re saying somebody might have grabbed her out here.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Well?”
She waits for him to say more, to put two and two together, or in this case, two plus one. Alicia Nowell makes three girls now who have gone missing in and around Pleasantville. The first one in ’94, the second last year. Two girls, more than a year apart, is a mean coincidence. Three girls is officially a problem.
Jay puts his client on hold and tells Officers Young and McFee that he wants a look at the amended incident report whenever it’s ready. He has Eddie Mae see them to the door. Then, sitting down in the rolling slat-back chair behind his desk, he again picks up the line. Mrs. Delyvan sounds heated, her voice hushed, but stern. Nobody, not anyone on the radio, not the newspaper, no one has mentioned a word about the other girls, both of them local, raised in Pleasantville, their families about to pass another Christmas with no answers.