Once more he’d tried to reach Cassie, but she hadn’t returned his texts or calls. So he’d decided enough was enough, that he needed to talk to her in person, to actually set eyes on her and hopefully get some answers. He’d driven to her hotel in Portland to no avail. She’d left specific instructions with the management and staff of the hotel to allow no one, not even her husband, to know her room number. No information about her was to be mentioned to anyone.
Insisting on seeing her had proved impossible and a real pisser, his arguments with the receptionist escalating to the point that he’d been threatened with being forcefully escorted by security to the street and the police contacted. Grudgingly he’d given up. He’d stood in the cold rain and stared angrily upward at the tall edifice and thought that he’d caught a glimpse of her on the balcony of a room on an upper floor. His eyes had narrowed but he’d been jostled by a threesome of teenagers half running down the sidewalk. “Hey, look out, man,” one of the boys had grumbled as they’d passed, and for a second Trent’s concentration had been broken. When he looked up again, he realized he’d been mistaken. Cassie wasn’t standing on the balcony. He’d only seen the play of light and shadow and a curtain moving inside an open sliding door. He’d conjured up her image. Of course she hadn’t been outside in the rain.
He’d left then, but hadn’t been satisfied, especially when within two days of Allie’s disappearance, amid rumors that Cassie was the last person to see her alive and was considered a person of interest in the missing person’s case, rumors had swirled that Cassie had checked herself into Mercy Hospital. He’d called, of course, and once again had run up against the wall of her privacy. She’d refused to communicate with him in any way, shape, or form.
After six or seven phone calls to various people, including the hospital administrative staff and her mother, who also hadn’t been able to get him through to Cassie, he’d once again driven to Portland. As he’d wound up the tree-lined street that led to Mercy Hospital he’d told himself this time he wasn’t going to take “no” for an answer.
So thinking, he’d determinedly walked through the front doors and asked for a visitor’s pass. The receptionist had been a stout woman whose gray roots showed in her flat, black hair and whose chin and jaw had disappeared into her neck. Seated at a desk, she’d looked over the tops of her rimless glasses when he’d stated that he was there to visit Cassie Kramer. With a frigid smile, she’d pleasantly but firmly refused him entrance. Even pulling the “I’m her husband” card hadn’t worked.
She’d made it very clear that he’d been persona non grata.
He’d then asked that someone tell Cassie he was waiting and had camped out in the waiting area of the hospital, while he had leafed distractedly through an out-of-date magazine filled with last year’s summer salad recipes and beach getaway ideas while the wintry rain sheeted down the windows.
As he’d thumbed past what had to be the fifth article on weight loss, a teenage boy with wild blond hair and bad skin had approached him.
Trent had looked up.
The kid, in khakis and a long-sleeved Yankees T-shirt, had announced, “She says, ‘Go away.’ ”
“Pardon?” Trent had dropped his magazine. “Who said, ‘Go away’?”
“You’re looking for Cassie,” the boy had said and it wasn’t a question. “She doesn’t want to talk to you and you should go away.”
“And you are?”
“Steven. Steven L. Rinko,” the kid had said. “The L stands for Leon. He was my grandpop. He’s dead now.”
“I’m sorry.”
Unblinking eyes had stared at him. “Why? Did you know him?”
“No, I’m sure I didn’t.”
“Then you couldn’t be sorry.”
“I guess not. It’s just what people say.”
“So they’re liars because they can’t be sorry.” He’d shrugged with the innocence of a child telling the simple truth.
Deciding the conversation was going nowhere, Trent had clarified, “So ‘Cassie’? Cassie Kramer? She told you to give me the message?”
