kid thing was another situation entirely, not one to put away yet. At least four local high-school kids had disappeared from the area during the last few months. There were some signs that their disappearances were connected—they had vanished during the same period of two months, a couple of the kids had known each other slightly at school—but this was speculative. Wild Bill had run a File 6 check on NYSPIN, the New York State Police Information Network, and had met with an interagency task force, but nobody had gotten anywhere. Wild Bill's idea, which the Westchester district attorney's office shared, was that the whole business was probably nothing more than an epidemic of running away from home among the well-off but rebellious upper-Westchester County teenagers. For Bill it had been a good excuse not to push the case.
Wild Bill's theory appeared to have been borne out by recent developments. Originally, they'd thought five teenagers were missing, but in a lucky coup for his first week on the job Mo had located one of the kids. By talking to friends and girlfriends, Mo had figured out enough of the family dynamic operating in this case to make a few deductions. It was typical divorce stuff, which Wild Bill should have known—the kid had turned up at a relative's house in Pennsylvania. The case was now what it should have been from the start: just another ugly custody battle, pricey gladiators battling in a walnut-paneled arena, making everybody's life hell.
But that still left four kids. All were between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, and all had disappeared within a seven-week period during August and September. It was the times of their various disappearances that interested Mo most.
For two of the kids, pinning down the exact date of disappearance had proven impossible. It had to do with family structure and the values prevalent in Westchester County, New York, USA, in the late twentieth century.
One kid, Mike Walinski, came from a very well-off family in which the parents didn't keep track of their son's comings and goings. The kid had his own car, his own apartment above the garage; the parents had a busy social calendar, traveled a lot, spent nights away, left the kid on his own. In general, Mo had decided, they pursued their careers and their various indulgences with more diligence than they applied to their parenting. When Wild Bill tried to establish exactly when Mike had gone missing, the parents admitted that there were problems in the family, they hadn't seen much of Mike lately. They justified their inattention by claiming a great respect for the kid's need for indepen- dence. They had returned late at night from three days on the West Coast, hadn't seen Mike that night, although his car was in the garage. It was only after two more days that they got concerned enough to call the police. As a result, nobody could pin down exactly when Mike disappeared. At eighteen, Mike was the oldest of the missing teenagers. He was an only child, just graduated from JFK High School.
The second kid's background was very different, but the end result was oddly similar. Steve Rubio was fifteen and lived alone with his father, an alcoholic who held temporary landscaping and repair jobs and barely scraped by. Strange, Mo thought, how the family structure of both rich and poor, highly educated and uneducated, could end up being so similar. Mo wouldn't be surprised to find that these kids had run away, and he couldn't blame them either.
But the other two kids' parents had called the same days their kids had gone out and not come back, so it was easy to ascertain when they had last been seen. Essie Howrigan was sixteen, a pretty girl according to the class photo Bill had procured for her file. Her parents had last seen her on the evening of August 6, when they went out with some friends to a movie. The boy was Dub Gilmore, real name Allen Jr., who was also sixteen and had just completed his sophomore year at the high
Wild Bill's theory appeared to have been borne out by recent developments. Originally, they'd thought five teenagers were missing, but in a lucky coup for his first week on the job Mo had located one of the kids. By talking to friends and girlfriends, Mo had figured out enough of the family dynamic operating in this case to make a few deductions. It was typical divorce stuff, which Wild Bill should have known—the kid had turned up at a relative's house in Pennsylvania. The case was now what it should have been from the start: just another ugly custody battle, pricey gladiators battling in a walnut-paneled arena, making everybody's life hell.
But that still left four kids. All were between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, and all had disappeared within a seven-week period during August and September. It was the times of their various disappearances that interested Mo most.
For two of the kids, pinning down the exact date of disappearance had proven impossible. It had to do with family structure and the values prevalent in Westchester County, New York, USA, in the late twentieth century.
One kid, Mike Walinski, came from a very well-off family in which the parents didn't keep track of their son's comings and goings. The kid had his own car, his own apartment above the garage; the parents had a busy social calendar, traveled a lot, spent nights away, left the kid on his own. In general, Mo had decided, they pursued their careers and their various indulgences with more diligence than they applied to their parenting. When Wild Bill tried to establish exactly when Mike had gone missing, the parents admitted that there were problems in the family, they hadn't seen much of Mike lately. They justified their inattention by claiming a great respect for the kid's need for indepen- dence. They had returned late at night from three days on the West Coast, hadn't seen Mike that night, although his car was in the garage. It was only after two more days that they got concerned enough to call the police. As a result, nobody could pin down exactly when Mike disappeared. At eighteen, Mike was the oldest of the missing teenagers. He was an only child, just graduated from JFK High School.
The second kid's background was very different, but the end result was oddly similar. Steve Rubio was fifteen and lived alone with his father, an alcoholic who held temporary landscaping and repair jobs and barely scraped by. Strange, Mo thought, how the family structure of both rich and poor, highly educated and uneducated, could end up being so similar. Mo wouldn't be surprised to find that these kids had run away, and he couldn't blame them either.
But the other two kids' parents had called the same days their kids had gone out and not come back, so it was easy to ascertain when they had last been seen. Essie Howrigan was sixteen, a pretty girl according to the class photo Bill had procured for her file. Her parents had last seen her on the evening of August 6, when they went out with some friends to a movie. The boy was Dub Gilmore, real name Allen Jr., who was also sixteen and had just completed his sophomore year at the high
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