Brew and Ginny are making no visible progress, and depressed about it. In need of something to do, they take a look at the route Alathea was following when she disappeared. They see that it is isolated and out of sight, a perfect place to get snatched from. It is also a perfect place to run away from, though, so they aren’t going to prove anything by it.
They find Ted back at Ginny’s office. Another great description of Ted – SRD really had a lot to work with, with this character.
Ted ... looked like he’d spent the day in a dryer at the laundromat – hot, thirsty, and about two sizes smaller. But his eyes weren’t bulging the way they did last night. They were sunken and sizzling, as if they were being cooked from inside by whatever he was thinking.
... He looked like the losing end of a cockfight, plucked half to death and still ready to peck anything in sight.
Ted got the notes from two more sets of parents, but he isn’t satisfied. He wants to find Mittie now. In the meantime, they have Detective Acton’s trail again. He bullied the parents of May-Belle Podhorentz so badly they still haven’t recovered. Ted got their note from May-Belle, but he says, “Next time, just ask me to rape the rest of their kids. It’ll be easier.”
Rape again. Defeat again.
Brew finally pries out of Ted some of what he is thinking about all this, and it isn’t reassuring. Ted especially can’t bear the probability that his little girl is earning drug money by prostitution. We know he is going to go off like a bomb sometime in the near future.
But Ginny got something valuable out of the conversation with Ted. Each of the kidnapped girls was alone, was scheduled to be alone, at the time she disappeared. Ginny is still mulling this over, but they move on to their next tasks. Brew’s is to see the parents of Marisa Lutt.
The family inside is no kind of match for their nice house.The Lutts lived in one of those newish suburbs where all the houses look nice even though they’re crammed together on lots you can hardly lie down crosswise on...
So now Brew has to conduct an interview with hostile parents in a room reeking with all the booze they are drinking. Also they want him to drink with them. It shoots Brew’s tact all to hell (to use his style of speech). Carson responds by demanding that he leave and he does, but out on the porch Brew has to sit down and decide whether to go back in and take that drink, or go back in and beat up on the dad.[Carson Lutt] looked me up and down blearily, as if I were some kind of obnoxious consequence of his drinking...
Fortunately he is joined by Marisa’s sister. This is a very interesting and heartwarming conversation, I think. The sister, Denise, doesn’t just get the now-familiar note for Brew. She knows all about Marisa’s disappearance, and their parents’ distorted reaction to it. She is obviously the only sane member of the family left, and very likable, too. She would get into serious trouble – more serious than usual – if her parents knew she had been telling family secrets to a P.I., but it’s probably the best thing that has happened to her in a long time. Brew isn’t the only one who needs to feel he can make a contribution.
Brew handled this conversation so well I was proud of him, especially the last part. Even if he did console himself, afterwards, that if he failed he could always go back to drinking.
