Forgive Me

by Daniel Palmer

“What did I find?”

  “The key, the primer. The meaning!” Bao stood up from the table.

  “If you leave now, I’m going to tackle you.”

  “No worries, bro,” Bao said to Mike as he rolled his skateboard over to the fence. “I’m gonna dish it. But it was right there where it happened.” Bao pointed through the fence to a ramp inside the skate park. “I was working on smoothing out my 360 Ollie Heelflip.” He got a little momentum going on the blacktop and somehow launched his board into the air, spun three hundred sixty degrees, and landed back on his board.

  “Bao, are we here to watch you do tricks?” Mike looked ready to make that tackle.

  “No, bro, it’s the number. Three sixty. Three. Six. Zero. I kept thinking about the number because I was pounding the trick and zero got stuck in my head. And I got thinking about the check register Angie found in the attic of her parents’ house.” Bao wheeled back over. “A gift made to that ear place on March fourth of every year.”

  Mike pretended to be awestruck. “Bao, if I had a clue what you were talking about, I would be so super impressed right now.”

  Bao looked to Angie, expecting her to put it together.

  Angie shook her head, but then her expression changed. “Zero,” she said. “Oh-three, oh-four. It’s a date!” She smiled.

  “Two dates, to be exact,” Bao said, hitting some keys on his computer to force a webpage refresh. Angie gasped. The webpage now displayed two strings of numbers: the original code written on the back of the photograph, and a second string containing some dashes and few newly placed zeros.

  12843488

  01-02-84/03-04-88

  Angie’s body hummed with an electric vibration. Her wide eyes were fixated to the screen. “Bao, you know what this means? IC. You know what it is?”

  “I’m right there with you, Ange,” Bao answered.

  Mike ran his hands through his hair. “Yeah, well, I’m a little in the dark here.”

  “IC is someone’s initials,” Angie told him.

  Bao hit the spacebar and the webpage refreshed again. The original code was up top and the modified version down below.

  IC12843488

  I.C. 01-02-84/03-04-88

  “Oh, I see,” Mike said. “Not the letters I.C., I mean. I get it now.”

  Angie took the photograph from her purse and set it face up on the table. The girl with the sad smile and deformed ear seemed to be looking right into Angie’s eyes, pleading with her for something. Justice, perhaps.

  “The girl in this photograph,” Angie said, brushing the girl’s face with the tip of her finger. “We know her initials and when she was born.”

  “And more important,” Bao added, “we know when she died.”

  Raynor Sinclair was parked in his Acura SUV some four hundred feet away from the picnic table at the skate park, listening to Angie’s conversation with the help of a twenty-four inch parabolic microphone dish. The attached shotgun microphone was a Sennheiser model. The MKH-8040 used a special capsule to minimize feedback and off-axis audio. The compact design made the microphone ideal for almost any application from music recording to eavesdropping.

  Raynor had heard enough and made a call he felt had to be made. “She knows.”

  “Knows what exactly?”

  “I.C.”

  A lengthy pause followed. “Then it’s only a matter of time.”

  “They have the dates,” Raynor said.

  “I’ll have to make some arrangements.”

  “What about me?” Raynor asked.

  “You have a new focus.”

  “And that is?”

  “Ivan Markovich made bail. I want him.”

  The call went dead. Just like that, Raynor had his new marching orders.

  CHAPTER 40

  Back in her office, Angie was reeling in more ways than one. The age-progressed image from NCMEC was meaningless now. It needed to be shredded. It was an insult to a little girl with the initials I.C., who for whatever reason never got a chance to blossom into the beautiful woman NCMEC’s computers had invented. That girl was gone. She was dead. She had died on March 4, 1988, and for whatever reason Angie’s mother had felt tremendous guilt for the tragedy.

  Why?

  Angie imagined a hit and run scenario on some rain-drenched day. Her mind’s eye, conjured an image of her mother driving home from a committee meeting, a few glasses of wine over the legal limit. She imagined the whap-whap-whap of the windshield wipers fighting a losing battle against a deluge of water.

  On the side of the road a little girl wearing a yellow rain slicker leaps into puddles, sending geysers of spray skyward. The girl giggles while Kathleen DeRose fiddles with the wiper controls, hoping there’s an even faster setting. Her eyes leave the road for a few seconds at most. But it’s long enough. Her mother hears a loud, hollow thud and the car slips into a swerve. The girl with the deformed ear lies face up in a muddy bank. Red rivulets follow the folds of her rain jacket and drop like a crimson waterfall into the puddle where she had been playing. The girl’s parents are out of eyesight. It was back in the day when children, even those as young as I.C., could run free range.

  Torrents of rain flattens Kathleen’s hair as she crouches down to feel for a pulse. Meanwhile, her pulse hammers. Her heart lodges in her throat. The girl isn’t breathing. In contrast, Kathleen’s own breath is sweet with wine. It’s obvious the girl is gone. Panic now. Kathleen comprehends all she is about to lose. She scrambles back into her car and speeds away. A sound from the house where I.C. lives cuts through the air. A scream. The anguished cry of a mother in distress. Running down the driveway, the mother arrives in time to see Kathleen’s car racing away. The rain is falling too hard to see the make and model of the car, let alone get the license plate. The grieving mother falls to her knees, her tears swallowed by the rain as she cradles her lifeless child in her arms.

  Angie moved on to other scenarios in which her mother had borne witness to this girl’s mysterious plight, but for whatever reason was unable to take life-saving action. Had her mother watched I.C. drown, or burn up in a fire, or get snatched off the street? The list of misfortunes Angie imagined was a replay of a book she’d adored as a child, a diabolical alphabet created by Edward Gorey called The Gashlycrumb Tinies. Angie could still recall many of the maladies from memory. Amy who fell down the stairs, Basil assaulted by bears, and Clara who wasted away. What had happened to I.C. to cause Angie’s mother to seek forgiveness?

  Angie’s father didn’t know. She had called him on the way back to the office from the skate park. “Do the initials I.C. mean anything to you?”

  “No. Why?”

  There had been no hesitation on his part, no shift in his vocal inflection.

  Angie was skilled at detecting lies, and felt certain once again that her father was not the guardian of her mother’s secrets. So who was?

  I is for Ida who drowned in a lake . . .

  Or died on the side of a rain-soaked road.

  A knock on the door drew Angie out of her head and away from her dark thoughts.

  “Come in,” Angie said, rising from her chair.

  The door opened and Carolyn Jessup entered, followed closely by a beautiful teenage girl with straight brown hair and big brown eyes. The face was the same one adorning the missing persons poster Angie had seared into her memory, had stored in the same part of her brain where I.C.’s picture also resided.

  She came out from behind her desk with her face lit up and arms open wide.

  Nadine looked to her mother, but then saw the smile on Angie’s face and her fleeting moment of apprehension fell away. The two embraced, and when they finally parted, both sets of eyes had filled with tears. Carolyn’s eyes were red as well, and it was not long before all three were huddled together in a long group hug.

  In closer proximity, Angie picked up a scent on Carolyn’s breath. She wondered if the mother’s eyes were red from crying or something else. Angie wasn’t so naïve as to think
that finding Nadine had fixed all the things that made her run away in the first place.

  Nadine, as if reading Angie’s thoughts, took that moment to announce she had driven from Potomac to Arlington on her learner’s permit. The subtext was obvious. Mom’s too drunk to drive, but I got us here safely and I’ll get us back home, too.

  And there it was again, the image of Angie’s mother, impaired, driving on a rain-soaked road, heading toward a young girl in a yellow rain slicker.

  “Come, have a seat,” Angie said, pulling an extra chair over to her desk.

  The three sat a moment looking at each other, unsure where or how to begin.

  “You look so great,” Angie finally said. “Really, Nadine, I’m beyond happy you’re here. I can’t believe I finally get to set my eyes on you.”

  Nadine made a slight laugh and returned a half smile. This couldn’t be an easy meeting for her. Angie was a reminder of all she had endured.

  From her purse, Nadine removed a gift-wrapped box and set it on the desk in front of Angie. “I brought this for you.” Her soft voice sounded different without a coating of fear. The timbre was sweet to the ears, rich with innocence.

  It masked horrific memories Angie wouldn’t dare ask about. Details of Nadine’s ordeal inside Markovich’s operation were for Nadine and her therapists to sort through.

  Angie smiled warmly and picked up the small package that fit into the palm of her hand. She unwrapped the shiny blue paper gently, careful not to make any tears, then lifted the lid on a cardboard box. Inside she found a second box made of wood. This box had a wind up handle. It was much smaller than her mother’s jewelry box up in the attic, the one with a hidden compartment. Right away, Angie recognized it as something from Nadine’s bedroom.

  She opened the top, knowing the mechanics for a music box would be found inside, and wound the handle. The notes of “Canon in D Major” chimed out. It was a tune as recognizable as “The Blue Danube.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Angie said.

  “It’s from my bedroom, I didn’t buy it,” Nadine said, sounding a bit embarrassed.

  “Oh, sweetheart. If it’s important to you, please I wouldn’t want to take it.”

  “I wouldn’t have been able to give it you if you didn’t find me,” Nadine said. “I wanted you to have something from me, something personal, not just something I bought.”

  Angie stood and encouraged Nadine to do the same. She embraced the girl once more.

  “You’re going to come through this just fine,” Angie whispered in Nadine’s ear. “You’re so strong and I’m so proud of you.” Angie gave Nadine a gentle kiss on the cheek and retook her seat.

  Carolyn said, “Her father sends his thanks. Well, he sent you a bonus. That’s his way.”

  Nadine shot her mother an aggrieved look. “Mom, please.”

  “Please nothing,” Carolyn said with a wave. “How many times has he seen you since you’ve been home?”

  Nadine folded her arms and looked to the ceiling. “Whatever.”

  “How are you doing?” Angie asked, directing her question to Carolyn.

  “I’m fine,” Carolyn said.

  “Good,” Angie said.

  Re-entry was a tricky process even without such massive obstacles to overcome. In most cases it was the child who had disobeyed parental rules, who had pushed boundaries and limits, who’d dealt with addiction issues. Here the roles were somewhat reversed. Nadine needed her mother sober and her father present. Those should have been the ground rules for re-entry, but it wasn’t Angie’s place to make such demands.

  “How about you, Nadine? How are you holding up?”

  Nadine looked to the floor. “Yeah, it’s not easy, you know. Like my friends are cool, well, some of them, but I dunno. I’m all right, I guess.” She blinked rapidly and her breathing turned shallow. Sharing even a little bit of her experience was difficult.

  Angie wrote something on the back of her business card and handed the card to Nadine. “I’m not sure if you still have my cell phone number, but here it is again. Call anytime. I mean it. Anytime, day or night, for any reason. Just to say hello, or talk, or vent, whatever. I’m here for you.”

  Nadine took the card and returned an appreciative nod. Her gaze went to Angie’s walls of photographs. “What’s with all the pictures?” She pointed behind Angie.

  Angie turned to look at the many smiling faces framed nicely beneath glass. “Those are the runaways I’ve helped to find and their parents and loved ones. I’m glad you asked, because I was hoping to get a picture of you and your mom for the wall.”

  Angie got out her phone that had become a replacement for her camera. Carolyn and Nadine draped their arms around each other. They didn’t have to put the defroster on high to get close. Angie took the picture and showed them the results.

  “I look old,” Carolyn said to Nadine. “You aged me.”

  Will you let up on her, Angie thought. She held back, though she planned on sharing her concerns with the NCMEC team that was facilitating Nadine’s reentry.

  Nadine, who was good at ignoring her mother’s jabs, returned her gaze to the photographs hanging on the wall behind Angie’s desk. “Who is that?” she asked, approaching for a closer look.

  Angie saw Nadine was examining one photograph in particular. “That’s my friend from college. She disappeared years ago.”

  Nadine got even closer. “She’s pretty. What’s her name?”

  “Sarah Winter.”

  Nadine kept her gaze locked on Sarah’s picture. “Sarah Winter,” she repeated. “What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know,” Angie said. “She went missing my senior year of college. I’m keeping her picture up on the wall until I find her. She’ll be the only picture I’ll ever take down.”

  “I’m glad I’m going to be on the wall now,” Nadine said.

  Angie took hold of Nadine’s hand. “So am I, Nadine. So am I.”

  CHAPTER 41

  It was a four-hour drive from Alexandria to Basking Ridge, New Jersey where Sarah Winter once lived with her mother, Jean. Madeline Hartsock did most of the driving. Her SUV was roomy, and it allowed Angie to spread out and do her work.

  The work involved searching (or at least trying to search) social security records for people with the initials I.C. who had been born on January 2, 1984 and who’d died on March 4, 1988. The database Angie used for her search, a product called ConnectXP, was the best on the market for locating people and researching connections.

  It was an expensive tool, but one Angie had used countless times for her business. She was hoping it would solve a mystery that had begun some thirty-two years before the advent of electronic records. She wasn’t having much luck. Her 4G LTE adapter gave Angie access to ConnectXP’s online database, but the result set returned was too broad for the search function. It would obviously help if she had a first and last name. She had checked with Bao, but there were too many combinations for him to sift through programmatically. Angie needed more information, and was deeply frustrated by her lack of progress.

  Maddy, hidden beneath her oversized sunglasses and looking cute in a scoop neck T-shirt and jeans, tried to lift Angie from her sullen mood. “How about some music?” she suggested, turning on the radio to let a pop tune blare out from the car speakers.

  Angie gave a stern look. Off went the music.

  “Aaaand we’ll just cruise along in silence,” Madeline said.

  “Thank you,” Angie said.

  “What is the issue, if I may ask?”

  Angie explained all her roadblocks.

  “What about looking up I.C.’s birth certificate?”

  “I looked into that,” Angie said. “In New York, the physical archives start before 1910. For anything after that, I need more information—a first and last name, specifically.”

  “So I’m guessing Ancestary.com is out.”

  “Yeah,” Angie said, feeling her frustration bubble once more.

  “How abo
ut we let it go for now,” Maddy said. “Let’s focus on Jean. We’re here for her and Sarah.”

  Angie agreed in principle, but she couldn’t let it go.

  The front door opened almost the same instant Madeline pulled into the driveway. Jean was waiting for the girls to show up, as she had waited for them once a year for thirteen years. Her ranch-style home was lovely, nothing too fancy, just right for a single woman who had divorced when Sarah was in high school and never remarried. For all Angie knew, Jean had never dated, either. She was very private. Happy to discuss most any topic so long as it didn’t pertain to her personal life.

  The home had a living room instead of a family room, a kitchen with hardwood floors instead of tile, a cat instead of a dog. Nothing about Sarah Winter’s childhood home was notable, except for the absence of Sarah.

  Jean had short dark hair and a kind, round face. She looked marvelous for a woman of any age, let alone someone in her late sixties. The wrinkles were there, along with other pesky signs of aging, but a Zen quality and a peacefulness from a deeper place radiated from her, making those years seem less taxing.

  The women played catch up as drinks were made—vodka tonics, as was the tradition. It was also tradition for Madeline and Angie to spend the night. Jean had two guest rooms now. The room where Sarah Winter once slept wasn’t a shrine to a missing daughter anymore. Sarah’s belongings had been boxed up and stowed away long ago.

  In some ways—many ways, perhaps—dead was easier. At least it came with closure.

  Conversation turned to talk of Angie’s mother. Jean apologized for not being at the service. She’d had a funeral for a relative that unfortunately fell on the same day.

  “It must have been very well attended,” Jean said. “Your mother was so involved with her community.”

  The three women were seated in the living room, snacking on spinach and artichoke dip and White Trash Puff Balls, as Jean called them—pepperoni and cream cheese wrapped up by a Pillsbury crescent dinner roll. Years ago, Angie had been too skeptical to try it. One bite, and any apprehension fell away. There was a time for healthy eating, and it wasn’t when she visited Jean Winter.