A Different Blue(104)

”

[page]Detective Bowles was sitting up a little straighter. I definitely had his attention. “How

did she know that?”

“She told me that Jimmy stopped for the night at a truckstop in Reno. He sat down in a big

booth in the restaurant to have a bite to eat, and about twenty minutes into his meal a little

girl sat up across from him. She had apparently been asleep on the far side of this big round

booth, and he hadn't even seen her there. He offered the little girl his french fries. She

didn't cry, but she was hungry and ate everything he gave her. He ended up sitting there with

her, hoping someone would claim her.” I looked up at Detective Bowles whose eyes had grown

wide, jumping to the obvious conclusion.

“You would have to know Jimmy. He definitely walked to a different drum. He didn't live like

other people lived, and he definitely didn't respond they way someone else would have responded.

He was kind, but he was also reserved . . . and very . . . quiet and..and unassuming. I can just

picture him, looking around, trying to figure out what in the world to do with this child, but

not saying a word. I swear, he wouldn't have spoken up in an emergency room if he had a hatchet

in his head.”

Andy Moody nodded, listening, urging me on.

I paused, the memory poised at the edges of my mind . . . but hazy. I didn't really know if it

was an actual memory, or if I had just pictured it so many times that it felt that way.

“Anyway, eventually a woman came for the little girl. Jimmy thought maybe the little girl was

lost and had climbed into the booth on her own. But from the way the woman acted, she had laid

the little girl down in the booth on purpose, and let her sleep while she went off and played

the slots.”

Detective Bowles shook his head in disbelief. “And this little girl was you.”

“Yes,” I said frankly. I proceeded to tell him what Cheryl had told me, about Jimmy's belief

that my mother had followed him back to his trailer and about the faulty passenger side door. I

told him how I'd been found the next morning, how Jimmy had recognized me, and how he hadn't

known what to do. “A few days later, the cops showed up at the truckstop, showing a flyer with

the woman's face on it, asking about a child. The owner of the truckstop, who had purchased some

carvings from Jimmy and was fairly friendly with him, told him the woman had turned up dead at

local hotel. The cops had come around because the woman was wearing a T-shirt with the truckstop

logo on it. At that point, Jimmy moved on and took me with him.”

By this point, Detective Bowles was scribbling wildly, his eyes darting up from his paper to my

face as I spoke.

“Bottom line, my mother abandoned me at a truckstop in Reno. She turned up dead in a motel in

the area a few days later. With that information, I wondered if you could find out who she was.

”

Detective Bowles stared at me, his jaw working, blinking rapidly. He didn't have a great poker

face. “Do you know approximately when this would have been?”

“August. I always thought my birthday was August 2. But how would Jimmy have known when my

birthday was? I think he just marked my birthday by the day my mother abandoned me. I can't be

sure of that, but it's my best guess. Cheryl said she thought I was about two when this all went

down. It would have to have been 1992 or 1993. Does that help?”