by AR Simmons
There should have been more emotion in her voice, a pathetic tone to match the tears trickling down her cheeks instead of her flat, spiritless drone.
“I used to think that somebody took her to sell, you know, like on television? But then I read about all these … guys … And now I hope they did—sell her, I mean—because that means she’s with somebody who maybe loves her. I just want her to be okay, even if I never see her again.”
“Your little girl was taken? When?”
“Three and a half months ago—a hundred and seven days ago actually. She’ll be one in a month … if she’s …” she came to a choking halt. “She’ll be one in October.”
“You don’t think the police did a thorough investigation.”
“They never even asked me no more questions after that first time. If I’d have been somebody important, I bet they would have. It hardly even made the papers. Can you imagine that? Somebody takes a little baby out of her own house in the middle of the night, and it ain’t even important enough to put in the paper! I hope this whole town goes to Hell!”
Richard was sure that she was mistaken. Policemen were often crass in both word and manner. Joking was a way of coping. She had probably overheard some of that and misconstrued it. He had never heard a policeman joke about something happening to a kid.
“I bet you would have busted your butt trying to find Mancie if you was a policeman.”
“Maybe they just didn’t do a good job of letting you know what they were doing. Some cops are really bad about that.”
She snorted contemptuously.
“You don’t know them,” she said, holding up her glass. “Want me to take this back in the house? I got to go. I just come over to … thank you for … the other night. Tell your wife I appreciate it … and that I’m sorry to have been such a nuisance.”
“No. People are supposed to help each other. Just leave the glass there on the porch, Molly.”
Head down and eyes averted, she seemed about to say something, but then turned away. As Richard watched her walk listlessly across her unkempt lawn, he wondered what the real story was. She had to be wrong about the police—the newspaper too, for that matter. The case had probably just gone cold. What mother wouldn’t be upset when they stopped running stories about her missing baby?
“I wonder how often she’s even been sober since it happened,” he said softly as he struggled to his feet and picked up the crutches to hobble inside.
•••
Jill found him at the computer when she came inside carrying his book and the two glasses he had left on the porch.
“How is your ankle?” she asked, taking a surreptitious look at the monitor, expecting to see a game screen.
“As good as can be expected.”
“You had a visitor?”
“The woman next door came over to thank us for taking her in the house the other night. Sad case.”
“Yes. I gathered that much,” she said dourly.
“Her baby is missing, dear. She says the police haven’t found out anything.”
“Oh no! When did it happen?”
“One hundred and seven days ago. She keeps count.”
“Of course she does,” said Jill softly as she stared past him, imagining it. “They have no idea who took the child?”
“Not according to her.”
“How old is the child?”
“Mancie—I think that the little girl’s name—was around eight months old.”
“Was? You think she’s dead?”
“She could have been taken by someone desperate to have a baby, but if it was like a pedophile … those type of cases don’t turn out well.”
Jill glanced at the computer. “What do the news accounts say?”
“Apparently there aren’t many. She told me that, but I didn’t believe her. I found one in the Springfield paper, but only this in the local.”
She bent to read over his shoulder.
“Can you imagine something like this not at least making headlines in a small-town paper?” he asked.
“That can’t be more than a hundred words,” she said, carrying the glasses into the kitchen. “How awful for her. No wonder she drinks.”
He struggled onto his crutches and followed her. “You know, I don’t have anything else to do while I’m waiting for the ankle to heal. Maybe I’ll look into it.”
“You’ve probably found everything that’s online already.”
“Tomorrow I’ll go down to the police station and ask what the story is on Molly Randolph. I’ll explain that I’m her new neighbor, and she told me about her missing baby. She doesn’t have a very high opinion of the police by the way.”
“That is understandable. If I were her, I would probably be angry with the whole world.”
“She pretty much is. I imagine it’s just a case of bad public relations. Cops bust their butts when something happens to a kid.”
Jill took meat from the refrigerator and set the oven to preheat.
“I’d like to know about it too,” she said, frowning as she slit open the package, removed the meat to a broiler rack pan, and then went to the sink to wash her hands.
“Try to remain detached, Richard. I can’t imagine anything more depressing than this.”
“Something I should avoid in my delicate condition, huh? I’m not fragile, Jill.”
Of course, he was. If what had happened to him in her absence had taught her anything, it was how terribly fragile he had become.
“Don’t get too close, Richard,” she repeated.
“Don’t worry. Either she’s mistaken or … Well, I can’t think of what else it would be. It’s got to be a case of bad public relations.”
•••
September 3
The day almost got off to a terrible start when a car veered backward out of a driveway directly in front of them. Jill panic stopped, barely averting a fender bender that they could little afford.
“What in the hell are you doing?” Richard yelled as the driver sped away without a backward glance.
“He’s probably late for class,” said Jill.
“You know him?”
“No, but I’ve seen several boys come out of there. See how many cars are there. I think they’re students sharing a house.”
The trip to the campus was devoid of further adventure. They agreed on a time for him to pick her up, and he took the car for the day. City Hall was a red brick building two blocks from the courthouse. All street parking adjacent to it was reserved or already taken, forcing Richard to park two blocks away and hobble uphill to the police station. The interior looked like a nineteenth century newspaper office.
“Excuse me ma’am,” he said to the woman at the front desk. “Do you think someone could talk to me about a woman whose baby disappeared—Molly Randolph?”
“You mean Molly Allsop,” said a man in civilian clothes.
The man stood behind an untidy desk at the back of the small room sorting a handful of papers and envelopes. His suit may have fit twenty years and forty pounds ago. A carelessly knotted tie draped over his bulging abdomen. His rumpled trousers and long-sleeved shirt retained the traces of numerous wrinkles in the process of obliteration via stretching. His florid face was undergoing the same process, but less effectively.
“Yeah,” said Richard. “She mentioned that as the name of her ex. Can you tell me what the story is on her?”
“She’s a lowlife loser. What’s your interest?”
With that, everything Molly had told him seemed feasible.
“Next-door neighbor,” he replied. “We just moved in, and I was talking to her. She said something about her baby being missing.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So what’s the story? The baby is still missing, right?”
“Well, the kid ain’t with her anymore.”
Richard waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. “Well, do you know where she is?”
“The kid? Probably with her d
ad or somebody else who can take better care of her than her so-called mom, which would be like almost anybody.”
“Her dad? You suspect a parent abduction?”
Richard wondered why he hadn’t thought of that immediately. It had to be the most common cause of child abduction.
“Could be,” said the man. “He doesn’t live around here anymore, so it’s hard to check out. Go on home and forget about it.”
Richard was getting angrier by the minute. “Just tell me if you actually know something about the baby, and maybe I will.”
“I don’t have to tell you nothing,” said the man blandly.
“Oh really,” said Richard. “I see that … what does that little sign say? Lieutenant Reese Adams? I assume that’s you. I want to get that straight.”
“What?”
“I like to correctly identify the people I quote when I write up a story. The title should read, ‘The Missing Child No One Seems to Care About.’”
“Now wait a minute,” said Adams. “There’s been a misunderstanding here. I busted my butt looking for the kid. The bottom line is: no one saw anything; there ain’t been nothing else like this happen around here; and no body of a baby has turned up. The case is still open. We just ran out of leads.”
“You checked out the father?”
“Of course. He denies it, but I think he may have his kid,” said Adams frowning in concern. “You got a recorder running?”
“No. I got a good memory for words,” said Richard. “Why don’t you go find out if the father has the child?”
“He’s way over in Butler County. Ain’t in my jurisdiction. Besides, if he does, the kid’s probably better off.”
“You’re content to leave it at that even though you have no idea where the child is?”
“Look. I went over to talk to him, but I couldn’t stay there long because the department doesn’t have the money for that. I talked to both the patrol and the sheriff’s office over there. It’s their business now—investigating him and getting the kid back, that is if he’s got it.”
“But there’s no urgency as far as you’re concerned?”
“I didn’t say that. Are you sure you’re not recording this?”
“I’m not recording anything,” said Richard. “But another thing I’m curious about is why the disappearance didn’t make it into the local paper?”
“Of course it did.”
“Fifty words on page three! I would have thought that something like that would make headlines in a town this size.”
“You’ll have to ask them down at the paper office about that. For the record, I’m still following up on it.”
“Following up on what?”
“On anything having to do with the case.”
“When was the last time anything came up concerning it?”
“It hasn’t. I interviewed her friends, the people she worked with, the babysitter. No one could tell me anything, even her. By the way, she tested way drunk on the Breathalyzer that night. And she had a controlled substance in her blood. She was out of it. Couldn’t even tell us when the kid went missing. I wouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t the one who did it.”
“Did what?”
“Maybe there was an accident, or maybe some boyfriend did something. This disappearance thing could be a cover up.”
•••
When Jill finally came down the steps at campus, it was four-fifteen instead of three-thirty. Richard just leaned over to open the door for her instead of asking what the holdup had been. Her expression and pace betrayed irritation with the petty tyranny of academe. As a graduate assistant, she was learning the truth of the adage that responsibility flows to the competent until they drown.
“How’s the overworked and underpaid?” he asked as she got in.
“Let’s not talk about it. How was your day?”
“Interesting,” he said, figuring the question was only pro forma.
“So, what did the police say?”
“They don’t put much stock in what Molly told them.”
“They think she’s lying?”
“The ‘police’ is one guy, and I don’t think he’s too good at his job. Molly may be right. I think he’s kind of lazy. He came up blank initially and jumped to alternate conclusions. Now the strategy seems to be, ‘Just waiting for something to turn up.’”
“Alternate conclusions?”
“Either the baby was killed, and Molly had something to do with it, or the kid was kidnapped by her father—which, by the way, seems to be just fine with him.”
“Those aren’t illogical hypotheses,” said Jill, irritating him. “The family is always suspect at first, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, but this guy isn’t doing anything.”
“At least he talked to you.”
“Only because he thinks I’m a reporter.”
“What made him think that?”
“I kind of … misled him. He was being real obnoxious so I asked him his full name so that I could get it right when I quoted him in a story about a missing baby no one seemed to care about.”
“You lied to him? Can’t you get in trouble for that?”
Richard laughed. “For impersonating a journalist? They’d have to arrest everyone on talk radio.”
“You shouldn’t have lied to him.”
“Yeah, well, he shouldn’t be sitting on his butt when there’s a missing baby to find.”
•••
Jill vetoed eating out. Instead, she made a delicious dinner from almost nothing. She turned leftover tortillas into Romano cheese-covered appetizers to go with a soup comprised of only milk, potatoes, onions, and cracked white pepper. Afterward they huddled on the couch and watched sitcoms. At ten, Richard crawled gingerly into bed, having tweaked his ankle when he slipped in the shower.
“I can’t understand why the disappearance didn’t make a bigger splash in the local paper,” he said.
Jill snuggled into his arms without responding.
“How does that happen, Jill? That’s got to be a big story.”
“Conspiracies happen only in movies, dear.”
“No. Something’s going on,” he said. “And I’m going to find out what it is.”
•••
September 4
Jill was encouraged that Richard had found the energy to fix breakfast while she was in the shower. She sat, allowing him to hobble over and serve her from the sizzling frying pan while she resisted the urge to rearrange the misplaced flatware.
“I’m going to the newspaper office this morning,” he announced.
“Why?”
“Maybe someone down there can explain why they gave such short shrift to the story. I still can’t imagine people not getting more worked up about a missing baby.”
“Try not to anger anyone,” she said as she trimmed the crisp from her fried eggs. “And don’t lie anymore.”
“Adams just jumped to a wrong conclusion. I think he’s got a habit of doing that.”
“When he discovers that you are not a reporter, he will be quite angry, I think.”
“He won’t find out,” he said blandly. “That guy couldn’t find his own butt if he used both hands.”
•••
After he dropped Jill at the campus, he returned to clean the kitchen and kill time until the newspaper office opened. He had just pulled the stopper on the sink when there was a knock at the back door. Bracing himself on the counter top, he hopped over to look through the curtain. Molly Randolph stood outside in her signature pose, listlessly at attention with her arms folded and no hint of animation in her face. He unlatched the door and opened it.
“Can I come in for a minute?” she asked.
“That’s why I opened the door,” he said with a smile. “Do me a favor and get me my crutches. They’re right over there.”
“We drank the last of the coffee,” he said when she brought them over. “I can make more if you want.”
“No.” she se
emed distracted. “I hate to keep bothering you. It’s just that … you’re the only one that seems to even care.”
“I’ll bet your friends and family are more concerned than you think.”
“What friends? And my family thinks worse stuff about me than that friggin’ cop.”
“What do you mean?”
“That I done something to Mancie,” she said, her face threatening to collapse.
She blinked away tears and composed herself. “Here,” she said, thrusting a picture at him. “This is my daughter.”
It was a professional photo, the sort mass-marketed in discount stores, a semi-glossy wallet-sized print of an overdressed baby sitting in front of an ornate pull-down background. The almost hairless little girl clutched a teddy bear and smiled at someone, probably Mama, above and to the right of the camera. Mancie Allsop was a beautiful child. Something came immediately to Richard’s mind, something he couldn’t share with the distraught mother.
What could be a more perfect career for a pedophile than being a photographer specialized in child portraits? You’ve got the pictures to stimulate your fantasies, and addresses for your potential victims. You could also learn about single-parent families. Predators of all types become adept at spotting weakness and opportunity.
“She’s beautiful,” he said, handing her back the photo.
“Yeah, she’s the only thing I ever done right.”
She sniffed noisily and cleared her throat. “I’ve been thinking, Mr. Carter. You know about police work and stuff. I don’t have no money now, but if you could maybe try to find out what really happened, I could pay you. I know it’s a lot to ask but …”
“Molly, I can’t do that. You need a licensed investigator. It may not even be legal for me to—”
“It cain’t be against the law to ask questions and try to find out stuff, can it?”
“Look, Molly,” he began tentatively.
“Please? I’ve got to know something. No one cares. Just help me find out what happened.”
I’m already doing that, he rationalized. What could it hurt?
“I’ll see what I can find out,” he said, “But you can’t pay me. Molly, don’t get your hopes up too much. I probably won’t be able to find out any more than the police have.”
