Harvestland

NINETEEN

One Year Later

October 1, 1997

Smith's Grove, Illinois

In the back of a municipal surveillance van on the south end of town, Eliza Lehman opened the Velcro flap over the small tinted window in the back door and peered out at a row of old brownstone homes.

She had been at it since daybreak. It was almost seven in the morning now, and while the sun was up, it was shrouded by a sheet of steel gray overcast. Her van was one of a few parked vehicles on the street and at this early hour the sidewalk was void of pedestrians.

But if someone did walk by or peer out a window, they would see a remarkably nondescript white van with a fictitious hazmat company's logo emblazoned across the side.

She had several van placards for surveillance jobs like this, some of them actually legit small-time companies that didn't mind the P.R. When she started out years back, she made the mistake of using big utility or cable companies as her front. But sudden knocks on the van door by people asking why their heating bill was so high or how they could score a decent premium channel package tended to disturb her work. When it came to hazardous materials, however, people remained at a distance.

She stared through the focus on her camera to make sure she got the money shot should her girl choose to leave from the house she had eyes on.

Times like this she missed Andrew. It had been some months since she fired him, and while she had always been fine on her own, she had grown accustomed to his company, especially during stakeouts. Right about now he'd be taking a sip from a big thermos of coffee and bitching that he had to take a piss. Private Investigation 101, she'd tell him, water only, and conservative sips, anything else and make sure you bring a piss bottle. Then as he'd peer out the window with a camera, he'd sing "Private Eyes" by Hall & Oats until she threatened bodily harm.

She was sure that if he was here today she would be hearing a long soliloquy about good girls gone bad, a speech that had become such a staple of Andrew's that it was the stuff of legend. The girl Eliza had her sights on this morning was Melinda Fraser. She was seventeen, pretty, and on the honor roll. She came from a nice neighborhood and a well-off family with loving parents. Yet a few weeks ago she had run away from home, fleeing her stable parents and a doting boyfriend who mentioned in passing that he and Melinda were both virgins. Eliza had followed her trail downtown and through a few bad neighborhoods. Evidently Melinda had fallen for a drug-slinging gang-banging high school dropout who had convinced her to come away with him and live a little. And in that time Melinda had been in search of good parties and good times, club beats and college boys, liquor drunks and cocaine highs, and casual sex with different men, not to mention at least one woman.

Oh, how Andrew would have loved this. I've seen it time and time again, boss, he would say, a good girl and a bad girl are one and the same. The transition is inevitable. A good girl will stand firm in her virtue against the advances of a nice guy, but let some smooth talker with danger and charisma in? Shit. Suddenly the panties drop and all innocence is lost. Then he skips town, leaving his seed but taking her virginity. Meanwhile the nice guy marries someone else and settles down and the good-girl-turned-bad is left with bitter regret, raising a child on her own. But oftentimes it's hardly ever that easy. Usually the good girl just turns worse and keeps up the same pattern in her dates. And the nice guys, well, some do settle down, that is if they can find any good girls left. Usually not. That's when the good guys lose heart and turn bad themselves, and soon we're all damaged goods, fucking and fucking over in endless cycles of jealousy and insecurity. It's science, 'Liza. Fucking human nature.