The Lost Daughter

by Lucretia Grindle

  No. The four hundred euros she’d borrowed from Mary Louise, which wouldn’t be enough anyway, was never intended for a doctor’s office. The sex shop was, of course, a possibility. But he thought it more likely that the cash was intended to pay for whatever she might otherwise have put on her cards after she left. In other words, she needed it to be sure that she couldn’t be traced exactly the way he’d traced her this afternoon—to guarantee that once she walked out of the apartment in San Frediano, she would leave no trail.

  Enzo laid out a line of almonds and ate them one by one, tossing them into his mouth like a trained seal. As he did, he wondered if Kristin had thought of that all by herself. Or if someone else—someone older and more experienced—had suggested it to her. Enzo flipped open a second file and fanned the contents on the counter.

  On top were a handful of printouts Guillermo had put together from a routine web search. Most of them concerned Kenneth Carson’s general fame as an orthopedic surgeon who had worked miracles for a number of well-known athletes. One, a profile that had appeared some four years earlier in a publication called Runner’s World, showed several pictures of him. One was with his first wife, Karen, who, it noted, had been tragically killed in a car accident, and their then seven-year-old daughter, Kristin. There was another with his second wife, Anna, a web design executive who, the caption said, had met him when he miraculously healed her knee, thus allowing her to resume her passion for the marathon. Enzo rolled his eyes. He seriously doubted anyone had a “passion” for running twenty-six point two miles, although it probably explained why she looked as good as she did. He put the pile of clippings aside and reached for an enlargement of the photograph Mary Louise Tennyson had taken with her cell phone.

  Blown up, the picture was a little muzzy, but good enough. The time and date stamp confirmed that it had been taken on Sunday, January 24, at eleven forty-six in the morning. Enzo smoothed it on the counter, reached into the refrigerator, and opened another beer.

  There was no question that the girl getting into the car was Kristin. Her head was bent, but now, in a larger format and thanks to the shadow of the building, there was no glare on the glass and her profile was visible through the windshield. Pre–Carlo Bay Diffusion, Kristin’s hair fell to her shoulders. She was wearing sunglasses, a blue jean jacket, and jeans. Entirely different from the clothes she’d purchased just a few days later.

  The car itself was a black four-door BMW that appeared to be in good condition. He’d get somebody to check, but he thought it looked new. The angle was such that Enzo couldn’t see into the backseat, or make out whether or not anything was sitting on the rear shelf. He could, however, see the roof, the hood, the blue-and-white disk of the BMW badge, and part of the front license plate. It had not been obvious on the phone’s screen, and was not crystal clear in the enlargement, but it was there—the first two letters, the three-number sequence, and possibly part of the third letter. Enzo squinted. He could make out a B or an R. The following numbers were obscure. He’d ask the photo technician to see if he could improve the resolution, but it probably wouldn’t yield much.

  Earlier in the afternoon, after finishing his tour of boutiques and hairdressers, Enzo had paid a visit to Kristin and Mary Louise’s building. Most of the block was residential, apartments or small town houses. But there was a salumerìa a few doors up. There was also a bank with an ATM around the corner. And a Laundromat two doors down on the opposite side. Noting that it was open on Sunday, he went in. Between the chipped blue letters that spelled WASH ’N DRI, Enzo had an excellent view of the window where Mary Louise had to have been standing when she took the picture. It was almost directly above the street door. Going out, he’d stood for a moment on the pavement. It was not a busy street, but it wasn’t a dead one either. On Sundays people walked dogs and, shortly before noon, came home from church and went out to lunch. January 24 had been uncharacteristically fine. It was more than possible that someone might have noticed Kristin’s suitor, and the car. A big shiny BMW might blend in on the Costa San Giorgio or up at Bellosguardo. In this part of town it would stand out like Cinderella’s coach.

  Pallioti’s officers were all busy, so Enzo had arranged to borrow two of the Angels. The sort of people they kept contact with tended to have good memories. If they got lucky and asked the right questions in the right places, they might just get another letter or digit off the license plate. It was a lot to wish for, but wishing never hurt. Enzo smoothed the enlargement with his thumb as if he could polish it, and turned his attention from the car to the man.

  Closer inspection did nothing to change his initial impression. The guy was handsome, and knew it. His suede jacket still looked expensive. His black high-necked sweater, his sunglasses, and what Enzo could now see were driving gloves—complete with open backs and snaps at the wrists—still smacked of the self-consciously slick. The haircut looked expensive, too. It was not quite styled, but it wasn’t a barbershop chop. Square, even features topped a generous mouth. Kristin’s Dante had white teeth. And he was smiling. Definitely. In fact he was looking straight up into the camera, grinning.

  Suddenly Enzo knew why. It was not because he was about to drive off with the blond seventeen-year-old. It was because he was having his picture taken driving off with the blond seventeen-year-old.

  * * *

  On the other side of the river, Anna Carson stood in the shower of her suite’s master bedroom on the sixth floor of the Excelsior Hotel. She could hear her husband in the sitting room. He was talking to somebody in the States, giving them hell in fast, agitated clips.

  Bracing her hands against the marble wall, she let the water beat down her back. It didn’t work. She couldn’t get the policeman’s face out of her head. Policeboy, she thought. Policepunk. No, Policechild. That was even better. He was young enough to be her son, for God’s sake. She closed her eyes and made him very small and very inconsequential.

  Anna bent one knee, then the other. She stretched her calves and bounced on her toes. Her legs ached, from tension mostly. It was the only thing about hitting fifty she’d really minded. Her muscles seemed to be on some kind of vendetta. Going running this morning had probably been stupid, or at least going as fast as she had, but it was the only thing she’d been able to think of that would get her out of the hotel and allow her some time alone. She hadn’t followed the concierge’s advice. Too late, it had occurred to her that asking him at all had been a mistake. She was rusty, no question about it. Like an abandoned engine, her brain had seized up, willful neglect making sure certain parts no longer worked. She’d had the wit, at least, to stay away from the Cascine. Never do the opposite, it’s too obvious. The words came back like an unwelcome prayer.

  She’d decided on the Piazzale Michelangelo, and by the time she hit the stairs beyond San Niccolò she’d been going a good forty minutes, fast all the way, and her calves were screaming. Driving up the long flights of stone steps, she hadn’t slowed but had pushed harder, as if the pain might mean something. As if she could run away from—or at least outpace—the picture on that girl’s phone. The tiny image that had slithered in through her eyes and lodged itself inside her like an incubus.

  Slowing at the top of the steps, she found she was shaking, and actually wondered if she ought to be afraid. If her heart was out of control and her body was about to follow it. If, right there, she would start to spasm and twitch. Jig and writhe until she died like some poor medieval peasant, racked with Saint Vitus’ dance.

  Catching her breath, Anna had crossed the road beside the dumpy café, climbed the last few yards to the Piazzale Michelangelo, and seen the city laid out below her. She didn’t really know Florence all that well. She’d visited only once or twice, a long time ago, and always, it seemed, in the winter. Maybe in spring, or summer, or autumn, it was beautiful. Standing up there this morning it had looked like nothing more than a jumble of roofs with an inky green ribbon threading through it, a broken maze with no center. She’d closed her
eyes, felt herself still trembling, and wondered if she was making a wish, and if so, what it was. Then she’d unzipped the pocket of her windbreaker and pulled out her cell phone.

  * * *

  Anna turned off the shower and stepped out. Ken’s voice had stopped. She heard him rustling in the bedroom, then a whump as he threw himself down on the bed. In a matter of minutes, if not seconds, there would be snoring. She stood on the mat, digging her toes into the deep nap. Naked and dripping, steam rising from her pinked skin, she stepped across the tiled floor, sat down on the edge of the tub, and held on with both hands as if she might fall off.

  “Ciao,” Kristin’s message had said after barely one ring. “Wait for the tone,” she’d added, her voice faux sexy and terribly young. Then “Tell me everything.”

  As if she could know what that meant. Another time Anna might have laughed.

  The beep had sounded. She’d taken a deep breath. She did it again now. Then she looked up into the fogged bathroom mirror and whispered the words she’d left on her stepdaughter’s voice-mail. “Sono io,” she’d said. It’s me. “Ho veduto la foto.” I’ve seen the photo.

  Thursday, February 4

  Enzo Saenz looked at his watch. Just after eight a.m. Perfect.

  Kristin and Mary Louise’s apartment was no more than a ten-minute walk from his own. He had been sorely tempted to come straight here last night, but only inexperienced burglars broke in when any thump, scrape, or flash of light was sure to be noticed. The hours when people were getting ready for work, or coming home from it, were infinitely preferable. Contrary to popular wisdom, true wickedness, Enzo thought, did not always—or even often—happen after dark.

  He could, of course, have followed normal procedure, told Pallioti about his conversation with Anna Carson, and his visit to James MacCready, and his—what? What was something that was beyond a hunch? What did you call something you absolutely knew, despite the fact that there was not one single shred of evidence to suggest that it was true? An obsession? Which policemen were absolutely not supposed to have, and which every really gifted one he’d ever known operated on.

  Whatever you want to call it, he could have told Pallioti that he was as sure as the day is long that Kristin’s stepmother knew her stepdaughter’s boyfriend, and that he needed a warrant to search the girls’ apartment without the Carsons knowing about it. All of which was certainly possible, but would take time. Enzo didn’t want to take time. And he didn’t want to go on the record. Because he might find nothing. There might be nothing here to find. The only way to know was to look. Which was what he was extremely good at, and now intended to do. Enzo Saenz had spent a decade undercover in the Angels. Apart from anything else, he preferred, if at all possible, to come and go unnoticed.

  He slipped into the building as a couple, dressed for work in almost matching suits, came out. The young woman held the door for him, smiling, somehow getting the impression that he had something to do with maintenance, or possibly one of those guys who always seemed to be reading meters.

  Actually getting into the apartment took, perhaps, another two minutes. Enzo could have been quicker, but he waited to make sure there was no one in the stairwell, then waited again outside the door. Mary Louise had left a note for Kristin, explaining what had happened and where she was. The envelope was still pinned below the tarnished brass knocker. Even so Enzo stood still as a cat on the landing, reassuring himself that Kristin had not ignored it and come home overnight, that he was not about to come face to face with her.

  He needn’t have worried. The apartment was empty. So much so that when he stepped inside he paused, reluctant to disturb the stillness. There was a confusion of smells. Dry burned dust from the heating system, the mildewed odor of stale food, and something else that made Enzo’s skin prickle.

  He circled the main room—a combination kitchen and living space—slowly, sticking to the perimeter. Two windows looked out over the back of the building. The shutters were open, revealing silver sky, part of a wall, and a cracked mosaic of roofs. To his right a corridor stretched down to another small window, the one where Mary Louise must have been standing when she took her picture. Three doors opened off it. Enzo pulled on a pair of gloves and pushed the first one.

  The room was obviously Mary Louise’s. It was little more than a white-walled box, but she had done her best to make it habitable. A pink spread was smoothed across the double bed, two matching pillows at its head. On the far wall a string of lights framed a poster of one of Duccio’s Madonnas. Enzo wondered if she had chosen it because it looked like her. Another string of lights wound around the mirror above her bureau. He flipped a switch. Tiny snowflakes glittered and winked, catching a display of jewelry—bracelets, a bowl of earrings, and a necklace—arranged next to a group of picture frames. One held a close-up of a terrier of some kind. The next showed Mary Louise standing between two people who were obviously her parents. In the third she had her arm around a girl. Wearing bikinis, they posed on a long white beach. In another she stood in a long dress that could almost be a wedding gown beside a tall boy who posed awkwardly in a tuxedo. Prom, Enzo thought. He had heard about this particular, and apparently vital, American ritual, a sort of combination of themed disco party and wedding rehearsal. Notes on heart-shaped pieces of pink paper were stuck to Mary Louise’s mirror. One read, M L, we LOVE you!!! Have-a good-a time-a in Italia! Mom and Dad. Another, written in a boy’s dark block print over a phone number said, Hey, Girl, Don’t forget this number—Kisses, B.

  Enzo saw himself smile in the glass. He made a quick survey of the desk on the far side of the bed, then switched off the snowflakes and closed the door.

  The bathroom was next. He lingered there long enough to examine the cupboards, the shower, and the space under the sink. None held what he was looking for. He hadn’t expected them to. He stepped back out into the corridor. He had known somehow that the third door, the one at the end of the hall, would be Kristin’s, and found himself surprised that the knob turned easily under his hand. For some reason he’d assumed he’d have to pick it. He waited for a second before he stepped inside.

  The air in the room felt thick and slightly chilly. A stale scent of flowery perfume mingled with something that might have been hairspray. Dull gray light fell from the small window on the far wall. The bed was a double, the spread rumpled and pulled haphazardly over two pillows.

  Enzo turned on the light. A couple of books were piled on the top of the bureau. There were no notes on heart-shaped paper stuck to the mirror, or anywhere else. No posters. No snowflakes. The only thing that suggested the room might be inhabited by anyone with any character at all was a small moth-eaten white bear that sat on a pillow at the head of the bed. Its chest had been rubbed bald from years of being held. The red ribbon tied around its neck was frayed. Enzo leaned down and picked it up. The stitching on the bear’s nose was coming loose. The brass Steiff button in its ear was dull. Glass eyes winked up at him from a face so serious it appeared to be frowning. Enzo heard Pallioti’s voice—She’s only a little girl. Really not more than a child.—and felt a wave of sadness.

  For the next ten minutes, he went through the room. With quick, delicate hands he examined the contents of the bureau and bedside drawers, the papers piled on the desk, the pockets of the jackets and pants that were hung in the wardrobe and strewn over and around the straight-backed chair in the corner. He unfolded the glossy, stiff shopping bags that had been shoved in the back of the wardrobe and shook them out. He reached inside the scuffed cowboy boots and looked under the bed, then went carefully through the wastebasket. After that he stopped and stood, trying to think like a seventeen-year-old in love.

  Further exploration yielded nothing inside the pillowcases, no slits in the mattress, and nothing underneath it. Enzo circled the room, aware of the bear’s eyes following him. He slid the bureau out, then tested the wardrobe ceiling for loose tiles. Then he looked again at the room. The few pieces of furniture were arranged ex
actly the same way as Mary Louise’s. With one exception. The desk. Where Mary Louise’s desk was in the obvious place, under the small window that looked out onto the wall of the neighboring building, Kristin’s was pushed hard into the corner so the window was to her left and she was staring at the wall. Enzo stepped across the room, slid it sideways, and saw the heating duct.

  Bending, he saw that the slats of the grate were rimed with dust, but not the edges of the frame. Scratch marks laced the screws that held it in place.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later Enzo Saenz turned off the Borgo San Frediano and headed for the river with a spring in his step. Being a policeman in no way diminished his pleasure in being right. Within seconds of removing the grate and reaching into the heating duct in Kristin Carson’s bedroom he had felt what could only be a shoe box.

  It was heavier than it should have been, so much so that it had briefly occurred to Enzo that perhaps he shouldn’t take the lid off without the assistance of a bomb disposal unit. Then he’d told himself not to be melodramatic. The chances that Kristin Carson was secreting supplies of plastique in her bedroom were minimal. Still, he’d held his breath. Then smiled in satisfaction. The box revealed a dried red rose, several paper cocktail napkins, and a brand-new Toshiba netbook.

  The rose and the cocktail napkins he’d set carefully aside. The netbook he’d opened and switched on. Enzo got the password—Amore—on the second try. A quick look suggested that virtually all the files were emails. If they turned out to be evidence—of anything other than seventeen-year-old passion and adult sleaziness—well, he knew where to find them officially when he had a warrant. Right now all he wanted to do was read them and find Kristin Carson. Reaching into his pocket, he’d pulled out a memory stick. It took only a minute to copy the entire hard drive.