Fast Lane by Dave Zeltserman Read Free Book Online Page B

birth parents. She put down the plate of cookies and grasped the photo with both hands.
    “ My, what a pretty girl,” she remarked. “Mr. Minnefield and I never had children.” There was a note of regret in her voice.
    “ Could you show me where his files are?”
    I took Mary’s picture from her and helped her out of her chair. She led me toward the basement. “My nephew put them down there for me,” she said at the top of the stairs.
    I turned the light on and went down alone. The basement was unfinished, with a dirt floor. Water and heating pipes hung down low, so I had to crouch. No one had bothered to clean the place in years. It was filthy. About a third of the floor was stacked with boxes. None of them were marked and it didn’t take me long to realize there was no order as to how things were stored in them. I’d have to go through each box, checking each individual paper in it.
    Irene Minnefield came down after two hours bringing more oatmeal cookies and milk. She stood around chatting incessantly, telling me all about her late husband. After a while her voice was like a dentist drill grinding in my ear and I started to get a headache. The mustiness of the basement didn’t help.
    “ It sure seems like Mr. Minnefield saved everything,” I said.
    “ He was a very careful man,” Mrs. Minnefield said, her raisin-like eyes brightening with pride.
    With half a dozen boxes to go I found the Williams’ adoption papers. Mary was obtained from the Oklahoma City Baptist Hospital on July 30, 1977. It didn’t list her birth parents. It also didn’t list the date of her birth.
    I thanked Mrs. Minnefield for her help. She seemed disappointed I was leaving. “Would you like lunch? I could make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Or if you like, I could heat up some soup?”
    “ No thanks, ma’am. I have to get going.”
    I stacked the boxes back in place and helped Mrs. Minnefield up the stairs. At the door she told me if I needed anything else to be sure to call her.
    After stopping off at my hotel to shower and change into some clean clothes, I headed for the Baptist Hospital.
    * * * * *
    I asked the woman at the records office if she could get me the birth records from May through July 1977. She looked annoyed but she made her way over to one of the file cabinets, walking as if she had pebbles in her shoes. After a few minutes she came back with a folder and handed it to me.
    I went through the folder and started copying down names, putting asterisks next to the ones where the father’s name was blank. I had about twenty reasonable candidates. As I read over the names a funny feeling hit me in the stomach. Kind of like I’d swallowed a peach pit.
    “ Are you okay?” she asked.
    I steadied myself against her desk, not knowing what the hell had come over me. “I’ll be all right in a second,” I said.
    * * * * *
    The next two days I crossed off all but one name from my list. There were a few cases where the daughter couldn’t be accounted for, but in none of these was there any physical resemblance between Mary and the mother. The last name on my list was Rose Martinez. Something about the name troubled me, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
    I found her address in the phone book and drove out to a small clapboard shack on the outer edge of Oklahoma City. There wasn’t much to it and there was almost nothing to the little strip of land that made up her front yard. Nothing more, really, than a pile of dust with a few wild thorn bushes growing out of it. Standing in front of her house, I felt that same odd feeling in my stomach. I waited until it passed and then walked up to her door and rang the bell.
    I stood there trying to figure out what it was about that name. Rose Martinez . . . Rose Martinez. Why did it sound so damn familiar? All of a sudden I remembered. A panic overtook me as I cleared the lawn and dove headfirst over one of the thorn bushes, bouncing off my left shoulder. I felt a