I got back to my office and started sifting through the information I had gathered. Kennel-Up promoted itself as a national company, yet in reality it was strictly regional, selling its products almost exclusively in North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Alison had visited each of those states several times in the months before she went missing. However, she wrote no personal checks in any of them.

One personal check, though, did catch my eye. It was made out to Bosch Publications. The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I closed my eyes and let it bounce around for a while, but nothing came of it. When I opened my eyes again, I was staring at my bookcase, specifically at the volume with the blue cover and the title Minnesota Sex Offenders on the spine. The book listed the names and offenses of nearly everyone who had been convicted of a sex crime in the state of Minnesota, along with the criminal’s current address and any other information that the author could secure. It was very popular among the “not in my neighborhood” crowd.

I went to the bookcase, slipped the volume out, opened it to the title page, and noted the publisher.

Bosch Publications, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Stephen Emerton was becoming increasingly annoyed by my presence in his life. But he did remember seeing a copy of the book I described. It was probably in one of the boxes he had stuffed with Alison’s belongings and stashed in a ministorage garage near the intersection of Highway 36 and I-694. And, yeah, he’d leave the key with his secretary if I wanted to take a look.

I did.

It turned out that Alison had a great many books. Maybe a thousand. At least it seemed like that as I rummaged through the boxes stacked inside the garage designated 54A. It took about two hours before I came up with Minnesota Sex Offenders.

I took it out of the garage into the light, leaned against my Colt, and flicked through it. The corners of seven pages were turned down. Alison had circled the name of at least one sex offender on each of them. One of the names circled belonged to Fleck, Raymond G. The copy under his name listed Raymond’s offense, how long he had spent in prison, his record there, and his current address and place of employment.

Well, well. I put the book back, locked the storage garage, and returned to my office, stopping to drop off Stephen’s key on the way. Once inside my office, I examined the canceled check, the one written to Bosch Publications. Alison had bought the book two months before she left the health-care organization to work for Kennel-Up, Raymond’s employer.

She had known about Raymond’s record before she even met him.

I smiled.

“Mistake number two, Alison,” I said aloud. “You should never have kept the book.”

I continued to search through Alison’s canceled personal checks. Three more interested me. One was written for Dog Universe magazine and a second for X-Country, a magazine for cross-country skiers. I contacted both publications and arranged to purchase their subscription lists.

The third check had been made out to a print shop a few weeks before Alison began working for Kennel-Up. I guessed it was written to pay for copies of her résumé. I guessed wrong.…

The woman behind the counter at the print shop was confused, so she called on a co-worker for assistance. He was no help, so she summoned the manager. The manager inspected my photostat and the canceled check and asked, “Why do you need this information?”

“Because it’s vital that we compare it to other information that we have.”

Sounded reasonable to him.

After about ten minutes, the manager produced an invoice with Alison’s name on it dated seven months before she disappeared. The check hadn’t paid for the printing of résumés after all.

“It was a joke,” the manager said. “I remember now. Mrs. Emerton asked us to make a plate of her birth certificate, burn off the name and date, then run off a few copies; it had something to do with her parents’ thirtieth wedding anniversary.”

I almost said it out loud: You should have paid in cash, Alison. Third mistake.

A birth certificate is the cornerstone for creating a new identity. It’s the most widely accepted form of identification in the United States. And Alison had several on which she could print any name and date she desired.

Once she fills in the blanks, she leaves them in the backyard, letting the sun age them. She mails one stating that she’s fifteen to the Social Security Administration, along with a note written in longhand on ruled paper saying, “Daddy is making me get a job.” Wham, she has a bona fide social security number.

She brings a second birth certificate stating her age at anywhere between twenty-four and thirty, along with the social security card, to the Department of Motor Vehicles, pick your own state. If anyone should ask, she explains that after living overseas for ten years with her father, who is in the U.S. Air Force, she needs a valid driver’s license. She takes a test. Bam, now she has the second most widely used form of ID, accepted by grocery store clerks and traffic cops throughout the nation.

Now she can get a passport, a bank account, credit cards, insurance; she can get a job, start her own business, borrow money. All she needs is time and patience—and Alison had both.

Perfect. Just perfect.

Spurred by yet another hunch, I fired up my PC and began conducting a credit-bureau sweep and a vital-information trace against Rosalind Colletti, Alison’s erstwhile stage name.

It was a waste of time.

“She’s good,” I decided, depressed by the realization that merely throwing my glove on the field wasn’t going to beat her, that she might actually beat me.

I’ll get her yet, my inner voice vowed. She might have genius on her side, but I had experience

Only I wasn’t encouraged. You can divide private investigators into two camps. The first will declare vehemently that the longer an individual goes missing, the harder she is to find. The second, a much smaller group, will insist that the longer an individual is missing, the easier she’ll be to find. I tend to agreed with the first group.

fifteen

Scott Dumer was a bartender. Not a bartender who was studying the law or working on a graduate thesis. Not a bartender who wanted to be an actor or a musician or a writer. He was simply a bartender. It was what he liked to do, and he was good at it. He poured a Summit Ale without my asking for it and set it in front of me. He didn’t recite the price and wait for me to pay it. He didn’t ask where I had been lately. Nor did he tell me I was a sight for sore eyes. Instead, picking up a conversation we had left off nearly a month earlier, he said, “With their piddling payroll, no free agents, bunch of minor leaguers in The Show for the first time, I figure the best the Twins can do is fourth in the Central, and that depends on what Kansas City does.”

Considering how badly they’d been crushed by Oakland before going on to lose five of seven to Seattle and California, fourth place looked good. Still, hope springs eternal.

“Second,” I told him. “The kids will come around. Besides, it’s early.”

“More pennants are lost in June than in September,” he reminded me, then moved down the stick to attend to another patron.

Hey, a good bartender is like a good mechanic: When you find him, keep him. Scott was the only reason I went into The Dusty Road. Well, that and its close proximity to my home in Roseville. It’s where I go when I grow tired of my own company and can’t find someone to impose myself upon. Like Cynthia.

The bar was about a third filled, a weeknight crowd, quiet. The most noise came from a table of expensive-looking college girls. The girls were clearly slumming. They had tried to dress poor, but, being rich, they couldn’t manage it. They generated a lot of wistful glances from us older, blue-collar guys who frequented the bar. All that young, taut, college-girl flesh—a man is never immune no matter how agreeably attached he might be to another.