Little Girl Lost

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “A lot of people have macabre interests, though,” Stef points out. “People research old crimes all the time. And serial killers have groupies. Even Ted Bundy got married in jail a few years ago.”

  “Divorced last year. Saw it on the news. Stef, you were around for the Brooklyn Butcher case. Do you remember it?”

  “Not the kind of thing you forget. It was part of the reason the brass made a big push to get the new centralized communications center up and running that summer. Even the patrol officers got portable radios, and we started using 911 for emergencies.”

  “Did you work the case?”

  “Not directly. I was Missing Persons even then, and all of those victims were accounted for, dead in their beds.”

  “Not the teenaged daughters, though. I mean, they weren’t dead. He raped them, but they lived, right?”

  “They all lived, and they were all pregnant. Boy, do I remember that. It was right around the time Judy talked me into trying for a girl. I thought it would be nice, you know, after three sons—but it didn’t happen. She thought it was my fault. Like I wasn’t trying hard enough. ‘Even the Brooklyn Butcher is four for four,’ she said one time. Nice, huh?”

  “Four for four?”

  “Four families murdered. Four teenaged girls raped. All four pregnant.”

  “I don’t think I knew that part.”

  “Not all of them admitted it in the press, but . . .” Stef shrugs. “Four for four. And there I was, shooting blanks, according to Judy.”

  “Four rapes, four pregnancies. What are the odds?”

  “Not good, statistically, but it turned out it wasn’t random luck, remember? Wait a minute, you don’t, do you? Were you even born in ’68?”

  “Yeah, I was born!” Barnes scowls. “I’m not a teenager.”

  “So what were you back then? In nursery school?”

  “Kindergarten!”

  “Oh, kindergarten. Sorry. So while I was chasing serial killers around, you were coloring with Cray-Pas.”

  “I thought you didn’t work the case.”

  “Not directly, but you’ve got a psycho working his way across the city slaughtering families in their beds, everyone’s on high alert.”

  If Barnes was in kindergarten in ’68, Wayland would have been fourteen, maybe fifteen, sequestered at a tony Connecticut boarding school.

  “Why the fascination with a twenty-year-old serial murder case? It’s not like he ever lived in Brooklyn.”

  “I think you’re reading too much into it. Maybe he wanted to read the Minnesota thing on the flip side. Maybe someone else dropped it in the car, or it was stuck to his shoe, or . . . who knows? It could have come from anywhere.”

  “You’re right, it might not mean anything. But my gut tells me it does.”

  “Mine doesn’t. Don’t fixate on a hunch. File it away for now, because you might miss something more important.”

  It’s the opposite of what Wash told him about a detective’s intuition, but worthwhile advice. For now, Barnes decides to take it.

  “This is your hood, right?” Stef asks as they exit onto East 125th Street.

  Hood. Barnes cringes.

  “You mean Harlem? Yeah, I used to live up here, and I have friends who still do.”

  “Good thing one of us knows his way around here. I don’t want to get shot up trying to find the cleaning ladies.”

  “Housekeeper and nanny.”

  “Whatever. Just tell me where to go, kid.”

  Barnes would love to tell him exactly where to go, but refrains. “It’s not that hard. Streets are a grid, just like midtown.”

  “Midtown’s different.”

  “Different how?”

  “Nicer. Cleaner. Safer. Better. No offense. That’s just the way it is.”

  “Are you talking about the socioeconomic disadvantages people have up here? Or the color of their skin?”

  “I’m talking about what I see with my own eyes. And about crime statistics. You want me to show you some? Because if you think I’m making it up, then—”

  “No, believe me, I’ve seen them.”

  “Good. Then you be sure to watch your own ass when you’re slumming up here.”

  Silence falls between them. Barnes chews his lower lip to keep further comment from spilling out, and consults the address Kirstin Wayland gave them yesterday.

  “Turn right . . .”

  Stef turns in silence.

  “Up two blocks.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then left—no, not there . . . yeah, here. . . .”

  A few minutes later, they’re knocking on the door of a decrepit three-story brownstone. Graffiti-covered rolling aluminum gates cover the adjoining storefronts. Jaunty Latin music plays inside, two different songs on two different speakers coming from two different parts of the house. Voices chatter above the music, and a baby wails. The door opens, and a delicious, savory aroma tumbles out, mingling with the carbon tinge of burnt toast.

  Barnes and Stef flash their badges at the middle-aged man who answers.

  He doesn’t smile. “Por qué estás aquí?”

  “Dónde están Maria y Milagros Ruiz?” Barnes asks, and the man shakes his head.

  “Nunca he escuchado de ellos.”

  “What’s he saying?” Stef asks.

  “He’s never heard of them.”

  “That’s bullshit. Tell him—”

  “I’ve got this, Stef. Okay?”

  “Papi!” A little girl too old to be wearing a diaper—especially only a diaper—darts into the hall and wraps her arms around the older man’s legs, peering out at Barnes and Stef with enormous dark eyes.

  Barnes crouches and leans toward her. “Hola! Dónde están María y Milagros?”

  She turns and shouts into the house, “Millie! Millie!”

  The man shushes her, and she scoots away. Behind the man, a tiny, dark-haired woman pokes her head through a doorway. Seeing Barnes and Stef, her eyes widen in fear.

  “It’s okay,” Barnes tells her quickly, and repeats in Spanish, “Está bien.”

  He confirms that she’s Millie, and asks whether Maria is here. Told she isn’t, he asks if they can come in and speak for a few minutes.

  Millie nods, but the man holds up a hand to stop them. “Mantenerse fuera!”

  “Yes, we’ll stay outside. That’s fine,” Barnes says.

  Millie steps out, closing the door behind her. She’s wearing only a thin polyester blouse patterned in green and orange palm trees. A brisk wind kicks a smattering of dry leaves along the cracked concrete, and she hugs herself.

  “Tell her to go get a sweater or something,” Stef tells Barnes.

  He translates the command to a polite question, and she shakes her head.

  “Are you sure? It’s freezing out here.”

  “I don’t have sweater,” she says in broken, but precise English.

  “Where is your sister?” Barnes asks. “Or is she your cousin?”

  “Maria? She is tia—aunt. I am older. She is at her Saturday job. You are here about Señor Wayland?”

  Stef looks surprised. “So you know . . .”

  “Si. I know. I am not stupid.”

  “Who said you are?” It’s a rhetorical question on his partner’s part, Barnes knows, but the young woman answers it.

  “Señora Wayland thinks we are stupid.” She peers at them. “She told you that?”

  “Nah, she thinks we’re stupid, too,” Barnes tells her with a smile, and sees it reflected in her dark eyes. “What do you know about Señor Wayland?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “Miss Ruiz, if you know something, you need to tell us,” Stef says.

  “Mrs.”

  “Mrs. Wayland told you something?”

  “No . . .” She glances at Barnes in confusion. “No soy señorita.”

  “Ah, Señora Ruiz?”

  “Si.”

  Smiling faintly, he turns to Stef. “She’s married. She wants you to
call her Mrs. Ruiz. Not Miss.”

  “Where’s your husband?”

  “He is home in Fajardo, with my daughter.”

  “That must be tough,” Barnes comments. “Taking care of someone else’s little girls when you have one of your own.”

  “It is . . .” She seems to search for the word, but settles on pressing a fist to her heart, tight-lipped.

  “What about Perry Wayland?” Stef prods. “What do you know about him?”

  “He is gone.” Her gaze is as shuttered as the check-cashing place next door.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because he is not there.”

  Barnes speaks up before Stef can blurt something sarcastic. “What does Señora Wayland say about it?”

  “To me, she says nothing. But she is angry.”

  “Angry?” Barnes echoes. “Not sad, or worried?”

  Stef adds, “Angry means—”

  “Angry! I know angry!” She gives an exaggerated scowl and wags her index finger in mock ire.

  “You do know angry. Did you hear them arguing, then, before he disappeared?”

  “No, I sleep here, at my room.” She gestures at the upstairs windows behind her. “When I get to their home in the morning, he is gone to work.”

  “Every morning?”

  “Si.”

  “But you see him sometimes? And you’ve heard them arguing lately?”

  “Si.”

  “About what?”

  She shrugs.

  “Why do you think he left?”

  She throws up her hands. “How can I know?”

  “Did he have a gun?” Barnes asks. “Do you think he hurt himself?”

  “No. No cojones. He is . . . how do you say in English? Chickenshit.”

  Barnes bites back a smile. “So he’d be afraid to jump off a bridge, then, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Si. He make me kill spider in bathroom. Afraid of this, afraid of that. And the señora . . .”

  “She’s chickenshit, too?”

  She laughs. “No! He is afraid of her, too! That is why I think he just . . . go away.”

  “Do you think he had someplace in mind, señora?” Barnes asks. “Someone to go with? Or to?”

  She frowns, as if she doesn’t understand—or doesn’t want to say.

  Stef gets right to the point. “Did he have a girlfriend?”

  Millie looks down.

  “Miss—Mrs. Ruiz? Did you ever hear of a Miss White? Señorita White?”

  “No.”

  “It’s important that you tell us everything you know.”

  “I don’t know Señorita White.”

  “What do you know?”

  “One night, I stay because the baby, she is sick, and Señora Wayland needs sleep. I hear señor on the phone, very late.”

  “What was he saying?”

  “He say, ‘I will see you when it’s time, but not yet . . .’ You know. Things like that.”

  “Who was he talking to?”

  She shrugs.

  “By any chance do you remember when this was?”

  “Si. My birthday. My uncle, he makes a cake, and I miss the party.”

  “I’m sorry. When is your birthday?”

  “On 10 de octubre.”

  “About two weeks ago.” Barnes looks at Stef.

  Two weeks ago, Wayland was missing an old female friend and saying he couldn’t see her.

  Apparently, he’d since changed his mind . . . right around the same time he foretold the stock market crash.

  Amelia stares at Jessamine McCall.

  Foundling?

  Last night on TV, Silas Moss had mentioned that the young girl who moved in next door to him years ago had inspired his interest in DNA research.

  “You were abandoned, too? When?” Jessie asks.

  “1968. I was a baby, a few weeks old. That’s what they told me, anyway.”

  “Who?”

  “My par—the people who found me. Or so they say.”

  Never have Bettina and Calvin seemed further from being her parents. Mouth too dry to form words, she reaches a trembling hand toward her glass and sips the cider.

  “Amelia’s story is a little different than yours,” Silas tells Jessie. “She doesn’t have anything more to go on than her adoptive parents’ word. It wasn’t made public.”

  “So your life wasn’t blasted all over the news? Want to trade places?”

  “I . . .”

  “Don’t mind Jessie, Amelia. She’s a little bitter.” Silas says it with a smile, but gives the girl a stern side glance as he sets her sandwich and a glass of cider on the table.

  Jessie plunks herself down. “Who wouldn’t be bitter, having to grow up with the whole world knowing you were the baby nobody wanted?”

  “That must have been hard. It wasn’t much fun for me, either, finding out at my age, which . . . I mean, I don’t even know how old I am. All my life, I’ve thought my birthday was May 12.”

  May, when the air is soft with the promise of summer, fragrant with lilacs blooming in the vacant lot. May. Mother’s Day.

  She swallows hard. “But that’s just the day they found me. No wonder I never had a birthday cake. It shouldn’t matter so much, right? But to me, it’s just one more thing I lost. My real birthday. It’s not just that I’m older than I always thought I was—maybe a lot older, or maybe just a few weeks, and I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal, but . . .”

  In the grand scheme of things, a cake and a day on the calendar mean so little—and so much. She studies her sandwich.

  Jessie touches her hand. “Hey, it’s a big deal. Stuff like that is a really big deal. Other people take birthdays for granted, you know? They just don’t get us.”

  Us.

  Amelia looks up with a grateful smile.

  “So you never knew your parents weren’t your parents until . . .”

  “March,” she tells Jessie. “I found out by accident. At my mother’s deathbed.”

  “She died?”

  “Yeah.”

  No polite sympathy from Jessie. “That sucks. She was going to go to her grave without bothering to tell you the truth?”

  “She did. She never knew I’d found out. How about you? You always knew?”

  “Oh, yeah. Diane and Al are big believers in brutal honesty. Like, before they left this morning, Diane told me that she wishes I hadn’t gotten my new wave haircut before I had my senior portrait taken, because she thinks I should have a more classic, timeless look. Do you believe that bullshit?”

  “You call your parents by their first names?”

  “Adoptive parents. Not to their faces, or when they can hear me, but they’re up in New England looking at colleges with my brother. He’s a senior, like me. They’re seeing Harvard today, Yale tomorrow.”

  “Other way around,” Silas tells her. “Your mom gave me the itinerary and phone numbers of where they’ll be. She was disappointed you wouldn’t go with them, by the way. Thought you might change your mind at the last minute.”

  “Why? Michael’s a freaking genius. The colleges he wants to see are so far out of my reach that they might as well be on Beta Pictoris.”

  “On . . . what?”

  “Star in Pictor,” she explains—sort of—around a mouthful of sandwich.

  “Pictor is a constellation,” Silas tells Amelia, “and Michael isn’t the only genius in the McCall family.”

  “Yeah, my sister, Michelle, is even smarter. She’s a senior at Dartmouth.”

  “You seem pretty smart, too.”

  “My grades are in the toilet,” she informs Amelia cheerfully, “except for the stuff I like. I have straight As in science. Too bad it’s not on the SATs. I’ll be lucky if I can get into community college with my scores.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with community college.”

  “There is if your parents are Ivy League professors. Oh, wait. They’re not my parents.”

  The brand of sarcasm is
familiar, though Amelia tends to keep her own snide commentary to herself. Marceline is her only confidante these days, and irony isn’t her strong suit.

  “What are you, a freshman?” Jessie asks.

  “Sophomore.”

  “Cornell?”

  “No, I go to college back home in New York. I’ve never even been to Ithaca until today.”

  Jessie turns to Silas. “You didn’t tell me she was just visiting! I thought she was one of your students.”

  “Is that why you’re being so prickly?”

  “You mean jealous? Sorry, Amelia. I can be a little competitive.” Deep, adorable dimples appear on either side of her broad grin. “But I’m a real sweetheart when you get to know me. Aren’t I, Si?”

  “When you want to be.”

  Amelia can’t decide whether to like Jessie, or not. One moment, she has an edge, the next, she seems vulnerable. Still . . .

  If anyone’s going to give her a pass, it should be me.

  For the first time since she found out the truth, her foundling secret isn’t isolating her; rather, the opposite. Sitting at Silas Moss’s kitchen table, she feels as though she’s stumbled into an exclusive club meeting and been welcomed with open arms.

  “Can you help me?” she asks the professor. “If I give you my DNA, I mean?”

  “I can take your sample and enter it into my database. If your birth parents, or even a close blood relative, are in the system, then we might get a match for you.”

  “Do you think there’s a good chance you will?”

  “A good chance? The database is growing larger every day. But it’s nowhere near encompassing a wide swath of the local population, let alone New York City, where you were found.”

  Jessie adds, “And someone would have to be looking for you in order for you to find them.”

  Amelia’s heart sinks, though it isn’t really news to her. Deep down she knew, before she even came here, that the professor wasn’t going to wave a magic wand and produce her birth mother waiting to embrace her.

  A mother never forgets.

  She so wanted to believe that it could happen, wanted to believe . . .

  In magic.

  If you believe in science . . .

  She thinks of Bettina’s doctor, who’d convinced her that modern medicine would cure her. Amelia herself had read through the medical paperwork, yet she, too, had been optimistic.