Tell Me Who I Am Read online

  “You’d better be real wary of approaching him,” she told me. “He can be a mean drunk, and he’s drunk most of the time.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t recommend you go to his cabin. Better the Desert Rat Saloon. He hangs out there.”

  “Any other family members?”

  “A sister, Ramona Pitts. Was ten when the kid disappeared. Runs that raggedy-ass gift shop down the street. She’s okay, especially if you buy something.”

  “What about friends?”

  Tricia considered. “Angie Ellis was close to the other older sister—I forget her name. She lives on Willow Way, an artist, works out of her garage.”

  I thanked her and told her I’d check in later.

  The “raggedy-ass” gift shop was closed, so I asked a passerby for directions to Willow Way. It was a dusty side street with no trees, especially not a willow, in sight. The woman who came to the door of the small stucco house wore paint-stained clothing and a discouraged look.

  “Tricia Prine called to say you might be by,” she said. “I’ve got time to talk—it’s been a bad day creatively. Time for a beer. Join me?”

  “Why not?”

  The heat in the shabby front room Angie Ellis showed me to was oppressive. She raised a pair of old-fashioned windows, went through a door, and returned with a couple of cans of Bud Light. Normally I dislike the stuff, but I happily let it slip down my parched throat.

  I showed Angie Ellis the photos of the Judsons. She didn’t recognize them.

  “Were you friends with Pamela Stanton?” I asked.

  “I was friends with her older sister, Katie. She’s dead, couple of years now. Anyway, we were out fishing…oh, hell…messing around by the river with a couple of guys from school the day the kid disappeared. The parents were gone, and old Jackson had gone off someplace, even though he was supposed to watch the kids. All hell broke loose later that night: phone calls, sheriff’s deputies. And later, reporters. I couldn’t tell them a thing. I can’t tell you a thing.”

  “Think back. Did anything unusual happen before all hell broke loose?”

  She closed her eyes for a moment. “Well, there was one…I guess you’d call it an oddity. Mr. Stanton was this big, easygoing guy. But that morning he seemed kind of nervous. He kept asking Mrs. Stanton if Pamela was ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know—ready.”

  “What did Mrs. Stanton say?”

  “Just gave him a look. The old what’s-the-matter-with-you look. And then they were off to the medical unit.”

  “Where was Pamela when they left?”

  “Around, I guess. I mean, Jackson was supposed to be watching her. Me and Katie, we took off for the river.”

  Ramona Pitts tried to sell me a dozen items—one of which, a fake handlebar mustache, I bought as a joke gift for Ted—before she would settle down and talk about the day her younger sister went missing. She didn’t recognize the photos of the Judsons and was vague on the details of the disappearance.

  “I don’t recall.”

  “I was only ten, you know.”

  “I can’t remember.”

  When she asked if there was a reward for any information, I gave up on her. She couldn’t have cared less about her sister’s fate because there was nothing in it for her.

  Jackson Stanton wasn’t at the Desert Rat Saloon, although the barkeeper informed me I could count on finding him there later. In the meantime I canvassed the business section and many of the nearby houses, showing people pictures of the Judson couple and asking if they’d ever seen them in the area. All the answers were negative. The Judsons were attractive and affluent-looking; they would have stood out in people’s minds, even after twenty years. I had to conclude they hadn’t been involved in Pamela Stanton’s disappearance.

  The Desert Rat Saloon looked like a set from Gunsmoke; I half expected to see Miss Kitty and Marshal Matt Dillon descend the stairs from the upper story. But there was no one in the saloon except for a bartender—not the one I’d spoken to earlier—in a stained apron watching a Giants game on the big-screen TV and a man in a straw hat and plaid shirt, whom the barkeep identified as Stanton.

  As I approached, he pushed a stool toward me and said in a gravelly voice, “Sit. I know who you are and why you’re here. News travels fast in a place like this. Want a drink?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  He signaled the bartender without asking me what the drink should be.

  “Let’s get this settled right away,” Jackson added. “I did not see who took my sister. I did not harm her in any way. Folks around here have whispered about me and tried to shame me ever since it happened. But all I’ve ever been guilty of is being a neglectful teenager.”

  “Your family moved away because of that kind of talk.”

  “Ran away is more like it.”

  Two Bud Lights in their bottles appeared before us.

  I sipped mine, said, “But you came back.”

  He shrugged. “The lake’s my home. Maybe by coming back I was trying to prove something. Can’t say as I have.”

  “My client thinks she may be Pamela. She’s located papers that indicate it.”

  “Papers can be bought any day of the week. Besides, why would any decent person want to latch on to a family like ours? We’re worthless: a drunk like me; another brother who was shot dead by the cops in a convenience store robbery; another who OD’d on the street in LA; another who’s been disappeared from the face of the earth for more than twenty years, probably’s been lying in a grave next to a dope farm the whole time. Then there’s Ramona with her godawful gift shop. And Katie’s dead.”

  “My client…” I described her.

  “Now I know she doesn’t want to connect with me,” he said. “Nobody like that would.”

  “Jackson, please try to remember anything unusual about that day.”

  His cool gray eyes focused on mine. He might’ve been a drunk, but the alcohol abuse hadn’t destroyed his intelligence.

  “Okay,” he said, “there were a couple of things. For one, Pammie was dressed up that morning. Little flowered…what did they call ’em? Pinafores. One I’d never seen before. Better than the usual stuff Ma bought for us at Kmart too. Why would a kid be dressed up when it’s just supposed to be an ordinary day going into town?”

  “And?”

  “And?” He looked at me blankly.

  “What’s the other thing you remember?”

  “Oh, right. For a while afterwards we seemed to have more money than usual. More food. Sure, friends brought casseroles and cakes and stuff after Pammie went missing, but we went out for pizza a lot and Ma had some new dresses. Then the money wasn’t there. Dad spent a lot of time in the bars drinking money up when we had any.”

  “Are you sure Pamela didn’t go with your parents to…where were they headed for?”

  “Colusa. One of those medical health trailers was supposed to be there. Ma needed regular checks on her thyroid.”

  We talked a bit more, but there wasn’t anything else he could tell me. After a while his attention wandered to the Giants game, and I left.

  Ramona Pitts had given me a list of addresses where she thought other members of her family could be found, but they were all at a distance, and it was getting on toward midafternoon. So I went back to the airport, got the overnight kit I always carry in the plane’s baggage compartment, and checked into the tidy-looking Shady Grove motel. I updated my office on my whereabouts by e-mail, then lay back on the bed to think over the bits and pieces I’d gleaned about Pamela Stanton’s disappearance.

  Mr. Stanton was this big, easygoing guy. But that morning he seemed kind of nervous.

  He kept asking Mrs. Stanton if Pamela was ready.

  Why would a kid be dressed up when it’s just supposed to be an ordinary day playing around the house?

  …mobile-health unit for tests on her thyroid…

&nb
sp; I got up and went to my laptop. Googled hospitals and found the number of the Colusa Regional Medical Center. The switchboard directed my inquiry to a Mr. Henry in administration. He was friendly and helpful, saying, “Let me see if I can access the information you need. Thanks to a generous benefactor, we have a new automated system, and our volunteers have put records on it that go back many years.” Tippety-tapping of a keyboard.

  “Yes, here it is,” Mr. Henry said. “We still use the same mobile-health testing company as we did in the period you’re asking about.”

  He read off the phone number and gave me a contact name, Felicia Parr.

  The mobile-health firm put me through to Ms. Parr with a minimum of delay.

  God, I thought, how pleasant it is to be operating in this kind of environment instead of the urban areas, where every request is met with suspicion!

  Felicia Parr also had a fully automated system. There had been no mobile unit testing for the thyroid in Colusa on the date I asked her about.

  I lay back on the bed again.

  The Stantons—father and mother—had gone somewhere on the day their daughter Pamela vanished. But not their stated destination.

  …dressed up…

  For a while afterwards we seemed to have more money than usual…

  I reached for my folder on the case, turned to the newspaper clippings with the two-year-old’s photo. She had been an exceptionally pretty child. The word “marketable” came to mind.

  Back to the laptop. For a few minutes I couldn’t come up with an appropriate term for what I was looking for. “Adoption.” No, I needed to refine it. “Adoption agencies.” Too broad a category, and there were thousands of them.

  What about private adoption? That was what mine had been. It was a perfectly legal method of placing an unwanted infant or even an older child in the home of a family who did want her or him. Or an infant such as I had been, whose mother couldn’t care for her and relinquished her to distant relatives who could.

  But the case of Pamela Stanton didn’t have the feel of either category.

  An illegal adoption? What else did they call that?

  Black-market adoption.

  My fingers were flying over the keyboard now.

  Such adoptions violated state and federal law. Usually large sums of money were involved. They were often arranged by an attorney, an adoption agency, something termed an “adoption facilitator,” or another intermediary. There was another name for such facilitators or intermediaries.

  Baby brokers.

  This was getting too complicated for me. I called the agency. Fortunately Mick had not left yet, and when I told him what I was looking for he said he’d get right on it.

  I was down the street in a diner having a burger when he called back. I took my phone outside and listened to his findings.

  “Sometimes they call them ‘baby mills’—like puppy mills, you know. There’re thousands of them; the demand for kids is high, since a lot of people today are all wound up in their careers and wait too long to be able to produce their own families. Most provide full documentation of the baby’s birth, but in the name of the adoptive parents. Legitimate adoption procedures are discouraged.”

  “Was that true twenty years ago, about the documentation, I mean?”

  “Not like it is now.”

  “So the family Pamela Stanton was sold to might’ve needed a birth certificate and used that old dodge of requesting one of a child who had died from the state.”

  “Right. But here’s an interesting fact: you said the child was two?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then the crime wasn’t baby brokering. She was too old. It was human trafficking.”

  “What’s the penalty for that?”

  “In California, it varies. And our laws are designed for cases where the victims are sold into slavery—particularly sexual slavery. Your investigation takes us into murky territory. I put a call in to Hank and Anne-Marie”—the agency’s affiliated attorneys—“but I haven’t heard back yet.”

  I thanked him and asked him to call me when one of them got in touch. Then went back inside to my cold burger and thought of the day Pamela Stanton had disappeared into that murky territory. Wherever her parents had taken her, they’d been back home in time to prepare dinner. It hadn’t been a long trip.

  Someplace in the county?

  Well, the Yellow Pages weren’t going to help me. There wouldn’t be listings for “baby brokers” or “human traffickers.” I needed an inside source, someone who would know about illegal activities and—more important—would talk about them. My mind sifted through the people I’d met here and kept coming back to the newspaper owner, Tricia Prine.

  Prine was still in her office when I arrived. “I’ve been having a lot of trouble with a story I’m working on,” she told me.

  When I finished telling her what’d found out, she said, “Interesting, the difference between baby broker and human trafficker. I wasn’t aware of that.”

  “I guess few people are. Do you recall anyone in the county, particularly in Colusa, who might match either description?”

  Prine was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Two. An attorney named Jerome Page and an orphanage called Home Sweet Home. The orphanage is long gone, but Page is still practicing in Colusa.” She read off the phone number, home, and office addresses.

  Okay, Mr. Page, Esquire.

  Jerome Page’s office was in a faux adobe building near the Colusa city hall. When I arrived at nine the next morning, a slender woman in a black business suit and high stiletto heels was unlocking its door. She showed me in, told me Mr. Page usually appeared between then and nine thirty, and began making coffee; the cup she brought me was very good—some sort of vanilla bean blend.

  Page arrived at nine twenty. A short man, somewhat heavy, with a clipped mustache and receding brown hair. When I mentioned the Pamela Stanton case, he turned away from me. “Give me a few minutes to get organized,” he told the secretary.

  When she showed me into his office some ten minutes later, Page was seated behind a light-oak desk, shuffling some papers. He didn’t rise or offer his hand, nor did he invite me to sit down. I sat anyway and slid my card over to him. A faint flush colored his cheeks as he looked at it.

  He pushed it aside.

  “Now what’s this about, Ms. McCone?” he asked.

  “As I said before, the Pamela Stanton case.”

  “Little girl who disappeared some twenty years ago? It was big news here for a while, but I can’t say as I recall much about it.”

  “Let me refresh your memory.” I went over the details.

  “But what does all that have to do with me?”

  “At that time, according to local sources who prefer to remain anonymous, you fulfilled the role of an adoption facilitator.”

  He swallowed, picked up a pencil that was lying on his desk blotter, and began turning it between his thick fingers. “I admit I may have placed one or two unwanted babies with adoptive parents, but such procedures are perfectly legal under state law.”

  “You may have?”

  “…I did.”

  “How many was it—one or two?”

  “Um…two.”

  “I suppose you have records of those proceedings?”

  “In storage, yes.”

  “I’d like to see them.”

  “They’re strictly confidential. And would take days, even weeks, to find.”

  I studied him. Beads of sweat were beginning to appear on his high forehead, although it was cool here in his office.

  I took out my notebook—a little leather one I seldom use for anything more than grocery lists—and flipped through it.

  “Does the name Judson have any meaning for you? In particular Dennis and Marla Judson?” I showed him the photos; he barely glanced at them.

  “No.” He replied too quickly and a nervous tic appeared at the corner of his mouth.

  “Not names that might appear in those old c
onfidential files?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Aren’t you curious about why I’m asking you about them?”

  “Not especially. But who are they and what do they want from me?”

  “They don’t want a thing from you, Mr. Page. They’re both dead.”

  “Then why…?”

  “Their daughter, Debra Judson, is my client. And she has evidence that suggests she is—or formerly was—Pamela Stanton.”

  “Impossible!”

  “Why?”

  “Pamela Stanton was a child who wandered off into the woods. Her body was never found.”

  I looked at my notebook again. The page I’d turned it to read “orange juice, salmon, dishwasher soap.”

  “My client has documents that indicate otherwise.” When Page flushed again I added, “Memories too.”

  “She couldn’t possibly remember anything, she was only two—”

  “Some children—especially exceptional ones—retain memories from early childhood.”

  “What does she remember?”

  I shook my head. “What do you remember, Mr. Page?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing!” He stood. “And now, Ms. McCone, I want you to leave my offices—at once.”

  The man, I decided, wouldn’t be budged from his story. Not by me. But my client’s history of growing up in Michigan was another thing entirely: interstate human trafficking is under the jurisdiction of the FBI. I was quite certain that Page wouldn’t be able to stonewall them. I called Craig and asked him to hand over the case to his contacts there. Then I went to collect Jackson Stanton from the bar.

  Jackson was horrified when I explained how his parents had sold his little sister. “How could they’ve done that?” he asked. “She was such a little sweetheart.”

  I just shook my head.

  “But you say she had a good life with these Judson people?”

  “Yes, but they’re both gone, and now she’s searching for family. Would you like to fly back to San Francisco with me and meet her?”

  Jackson hesitated, then studied his image in the mirror on the backbar. “Would she want to see me like this, an old hairy drunk in ratty clothes?”