What Lena relished most was working up in the loftiest reaches to a red oak. A mid-April morning such as this one made it glorious. She was almost there, too. A winter spent working with weights had strengthened her upper body to facilitate tree-scaling. In a crotch of the trunk, she paused to catch her breath. An antsy hand patted down pockets. Her cigarettes were in the plaid shirt pocket.
The unknown fate of the little girl missing since ‘93 tore at your heart. How did it happen? I sighed to recount her strange, sad story. She and two pals had played hiding-go-seek one mid-July evening in her parent’s front yard. While one six-year-old, eyes shut, counted to twenty, her two giddy playmates fanned out to disappear. Trouble was the little girl, Nancy Henshaw, hid too well—she’d yet to been found. So, on the search went for Nancy from Quarry, Indiana.
I was only the latest in a string trying to pick up her cold trail.
Two PI Frank Johnson novels will be released in 2005: The Blue Cheer (PointBlank Press) and The Dirt-Brown Derby (Mundania Press).