The Rivers Run Dry

by Sibella Giorello

  A different state trooper guarded the front door now, and several Bureau figures had changed inside the house too. The atmosphere had downshifted slightly, a barely detectable emotional pullback from the earlier urgency. It had been six hours since the note with the finger had been discovered at the gate by the assistant named Sequoia. No further instructions had been given, and McLeod, I was told by another agent, had returned to the office, probably to brief the suits upstairs. Detective Markel had left to get a handwriting sample from Suggs.

  The dark-haired assistant named Sequoia moved about the living room, pointing her severe gaze at various pieces of surveillance equipment, then barking her requests at the agents. As I stepped outside to phone McLeod, there was still no sign of Jack Stephanson. The wind was pulsing, lapping the lake water against the rocky bank. My hair blew across my face, and I pressed my free hand against my ear in order to hear McLeod’s responses. I told him that Questioned Documents had examined the note. He interrupted me twice.

  Then I said, “The mother’s DNA matches the fingertip. But the father’s DNA is completely different.”

  “What?” he said.

  “Martin VanAlstyne is not the birth father.”

  “Then why’d he let us take his DNA?”

  I let the question hang in the air, where the wind whirl-pooled fallen leaves at the edge of the driveway.

  “Oh, great,” he said. “Another temple in a teapot. Let Lutini handle that information, Harmon. She’s heading back there for the night, to stay with them. You focus on getting this girl back.”

  “Yes, sir. But I’d like to broach the subject with the mother. I’d like to observe her reaction, without Lutini there to comfort her.”

  He mumbled something incomprehensible.

  I pressed my hand against my ear. “Pardon?”

  “You’re right, you’re right. Go ahead. I was thinking about keeping the peace instead of solving the case. Too much time upstairs.” He sighed. “Besides, if you make them mad, what do we lose? They already don’t like you.”

  I closed the phone and walked back to the front door.

  “She’s upstairs,” the trooper said. The nameplate on his shirt said Officer Dirk Duncan.

  “Do you know where Mr. VanAlstyne is?”

  “Downstairs, in the gym.”

  “Thank you, officer.”

  I walked to the curving iron staircase, the rail’s cold, hammered metal against the palm of my hand. On the second floor, I knocked on the closed doors, waiting a moment before turning each knob. The rooms were empty and the furniture had a showroom quality, as though I could reach under any of the silk lampshades and find a price tag that would knock the air out of my lungs.

  When I got back to the stairs, I looked down at the pink marble foyer, then up. The stairs made one last small pirouette. I followed it to a crow’s nest resting above the mansion’s main roof. An upholstered chaise longue the color of cinnabar stretched under the rectangular windows and outside, a falling dusk made the lake look like slate. The crown of her platinum hair was visible above the chaise’s back.

  “Mrs. VanAlstyne?” I walked around the side of the chair.

  For a moment, I wondered if she were sleeping, she was so still. But her eyes were open, fixed on the water, her irises mirroring the flat color of the lake.

  I waited several moments. “We have the results back from the lab. The DNA.”

  She turned her head slowly, rolling it against the chaise’s back, as though realizing my presence for the first time. “He doesn’t know,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “He loves her so much.”

  “I’m certain that’s true.”

  She didn’t try to blink away the tears that rose in her eyes. The tears hovered, pooling against her strangely colored eyes. “How do I tell him? What do I say?”

  I had no answer. Only more questions. “Ma’am, who is the birth father?”

  She pressed her long white fingers flat against her eyelids, as though pushing the tears back from where they came. “Tell me, Agent Harmon. Does DNA carry a gene for gambling?”

  “Ma’am?”

  She lifted her thin legs, setting her black ballet flats on the carpeting. When she stood, one pale hand grabbed the window-sill. Her body swayed. When I took her elbow, it felt as delicate as a bird’s wing.

  “I’m feeling light-headed,” she said.

  “That’s understandable.”

  A pink flush came to her cheeks. She walked down one flight of stairs, moving like a person in a somnambulant daze. On the second floor, she turned down the hall, her steps dirgelike to the third door. She opened it, walking inside, closing the door behind us.

  The room had a peppery scent, like fading carnations, and the pink walls held black-and-white photographs, each identically framed in silver. They seemed familiar somehow. And then I recognized them. The same photos I’d seen in the condominium that Courtney shared with Stacee Warner. The same stunning symmetry. Six-sided, perfect crystals. I couldn’t help myself.

  “Microscopic images of crystals?” I asked.

  “Snowflakes,” she said. “They’re photographs of snowflakes. Courtney takes them all the time.”

  The facet of each flake was visible, down to the beveled edge on every termination. Not one flake was the same.

  “You’d think they would melt, wouldn’t you?” she said in her dull husky voice. “But her father invented a camera that keeps the flakes frozen under the magnifying lens . . .” Her voice trailed off. She set herself down on the edge of the large bed. “Her father,” she whispered.

  “Mr. VanAlstyne is still her father.”

  She looked at me for a moment. “I made a mistake. A horrible mistake. I’ve spent the last twenty years hoping nobody would find out. When Courtney disappeared, I knew it was my fault. I was being punished. My reprieve was over.”

  “Does the birth father know?”

  “About Courtney?”

  I nodded.

  She placed her hands on the bed, bracing her thin body. She nodded.

  “At the time, I was lonely,” she said. “Martin and I had been married five years. It was difficult, it wasn’t the marriage I thought it would be. Martin worked eighty, ninety hours a week. He didn’t have time for me. I tried to cheer myself up by remodeling the house. The builder, he was here every day.” She looked at me. “Have you ever wanted a man to pay attention to you? Just pay attention, listen. That’s all I wanted.”

  I did not attempt to comfort her; that was Lutini’s job. And as she wept, a quiet polite sobbing, I stared at the snowflakes that Courtney VanAlstyne had captured. She had managed to transfer the sensation of cold into the photographs, making them look as though a glacial blue existed between black and white.

  When Mrs. VanAlstyne dropped her hands into her lap, she spoke staring at the floor.

  “I love my husband. I’ve always loved him. And I didn’t want to lose him. But I didn’t break off the affair until Courtney was almost nine. I . . . I realize now I was getting back at Martin. I can see that now. He loved his work so much, and I loved him. I was jealous of his inventions.” She threw a hand toward the photos. “I was even jealous of those cameras. Pathetic, isn’t it?”

  I gave a condoling smile.

  “Then, suddenly, Martin suffered a health scare. They found prostate cancer. They removed it, but it scared him. He decided to retire, decided it was time to savor life. We began spending time together, as a family. And he took such a deep interest in Courtney, a real interest. Finally, we were what we should have been all along. Except, of course, we weren’t. I knew the truth. And Courtney knew the truth.”

  “You told her?”

  “Children have a way of knowing. The builder was here so much when she was young. And they developed a relationship.”

  “Did she ever say anything to you, to Mr. VanAlstyne?”

  She shook her head. “She loves Martin. She would never want to injure him in any
way.”

  “And the birth father?”

  She chewed her lower lip. Then, realizing what she was doing, ran an index finger over the spot, as though searching for any injury. “My daughter is a genius with numbers. I don’t know if anybody’s told you.”

  “Yes, they’ve mentioned it.”

  “Everybody assumes she got her brains from Martin.” She laughed mirthlessly. “And I can’t correct them.”

  She stood, steadier, and crossed the room to throw open the double doors to the closet.

  It was larger than my bedroom, and the clothing, just like the clothes at the condominium, was regimented by color and function. All the slacks in one section, then all blue jeans, all the white blouses, yellow dresses, green skirts. With a ferocity that stunned me, Mrs. VanAlstyne reached into the section of shirts and shoved the entire raft down the wooden rod, the hangers screeching.

  Several dry cleaning bags hung at the back of the closet, their soft clear plastic shimmering with the sudden movement.

  “They’re all his,” she said.

  “Whose?”

  “The birth father, those are his shirts,” she said. “He used to wear them working around the house. If he took one off, Courtney stole it. When I realized what was happening, I worried she was planning to blackmail me. But then one day, years after I broke off the affair, I walked into her bedroom and found her sitting on the bed, wearing one of his shirts. She was sniffing at the fabric. When she moved into the condo in Kirkland she didn’t take them with her and I had them all dry-cleaned. If I got rid of his smell, maybe she would throw them out.”

  But she hadn’t thrown them out.

  The mother continued talking about the connection between her daughter and the man who was her birth father, and I stepped forward, lifting the plastic bags. The shirts were identical weaves of wool, all various plaids. Lumberjack shirts. And they were enormous. The tag in the collar read, “Pendleton, XXL.”

  “He’s a big man,” she said, reading my thoughts. “Tall. Courtney gets her height from both of us. That’s the one thing nobody attributes to Martin.”

  “Did it end badly?”

  “Of course. I led him on for ten years, gave birth to his child, then threw him away when my husband decided to take an inter-est in me. Even worse, my husband claimed his daughter.”

  I turned, watching her closely. “How much did you have to pay him?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “Five hundred thousand dollars.”

  I tried not to react. “How long ago was that?”

  “Nine years ago.”

  “You had the money?”

  “My husband keeps a safe in the basement,” she said. “There’s always $500,000 in there. It’s a compulsion of sorts.”

  “Mr. VanAlstyne didn’t notice the money was missing?”

  She lifted her right hand. Her middle finger held a diamond and emerald ring. My estimate was eight carats for the emeralds circling the ten-carat diamond.

  “The best synthetic money can buy,” she said. “I sold the real jewels to replace the cash in the safe. I flew to New York, worried one of the local jewelers would tell Martin.” She sighed. “Now you have all my secrets.”

  Almost, I thought.

  “After you paid him, did he ever contact you or Courtney?” I asked.

  “He sent her birthday cards until she was fourteen. I always intercepted them. Once or twice, he tried to call. But that was years ago.”

  “Do you suspect he had anything to do with your daughter’s disappearance?”

  “It occurred to me, yes.”

  “You don’t sound certain.”

  “I can’t see him hurting her, not like this,” she said. “He and Courtney had a close relationship. They bonded. He . . . he loves her.”

  “Were they in contact that you know of?”

  She laughed, again without joy. “Welcome to the World Wide Web. I finally realized why he stopped sending cards. They were e-mailing each other. Precocious doesn’t begin to describe my daughter. And I was left to hope she would come to see that Martin VanAlstyne was a better man, a better father.” She brushed her hand toward the snowflake portraits. “What man invents a camera for his daughter?”

  I turned back to the shirts. I counted nine. And ten hangers.

  “Did she take one of the shirts?” I said, pointing to the empty hanger.

  “I didn’t see her take it.” She stepped closer. “And it’s been years since she even touched these things. She had him—she didn’t need his shirts anymore.”

  There was a knock at the bedroom door; Mrs. VanAlstyne froze. I watched her face compose itself as she stepped from the closet, closing the door behind her, leaving me inside with Courtney’s sentimental favorites.

  I heard her say, “Yes, Sequoia?”

  Then a mumble of words, followed by a response from Mrs. VanAlstyne.

  “I’ll be down shortly,” she said. “Thank you for telling me.”

  When she opened the closet door, Sequoia was gone, the door to the hallway was closed, and her mask had returned. The dead pale mask that was her normal appearance.

  “I have some things to attend to,” she said. “Your coworker just arrived. Ms. Lutini. Do you need anything else from me?”

  “The name of the birth father.”

  “Bill Johansen,” she said. “He’s a gambling addict.”

  I walked downstairs and outside, the shirts over my forearm, and found Lucia Lutini stepping from her gold Camry, crossing the driveway. As I loaded the shirts into the Barney Mobile, my cell phone rang. I pulled it off my belt clip.

  “Harmon,” I said.

  “Are you familiar with ESDA?” asked Mary Worobec, calling from the documents department at the state lab.

  I wedged the phone between my ear and shoulder, securing the shirts to the hook above the car’s backseat. I knotted the bottom of the plastic, so the particulate stench in my car wouldn’t contaminate the material. “Yes, I’m familiar with ESDA.”

  In an ESDA test, the document in question is placed inside a sheet of clear Mylar, set on a Plexiglas plate, and electrostatic toner is sprayed over the plastic. The toner settled into any indentations on the paper, any divots left behind from the page that once rested on top of the questioned document. In the old days, detectives would run a soft pencil over the page, holding the pencil at a particular slant to create lettering in white relief. But that ruined the document itself.

  “What amazes me is how many times people will write ransom notes on whatever paper’s hanging around,” she said. “But here’s another reason I suspect we’re looking for a man. A woman would buy a new pad of paper. Something fresh, something special for the brutal occasion. She would want the paper pristine.”

  “That’s a good theory.”

  “I think so,” she said. “And when the ESDA revealed this word, I first thought of the location. I picked up the phone to call you. And . . . your name.”

  “My name?”

  “Raleigh. That’s your name.”

  I froze. “Yes?”

  “And that’s what the ESDA revealed. ‘Raleigh.’ Somebody wrote the word ‘Raleigh’ on the page directly above this ransom note. Now it could still mean the city in North Carolina, there’s always the possibility. But what if it means you?”

  chapter twenty-two

  I drove to the Seattle crime lab and waited at the evidence control desk inside, until the metal gate lifted and a young man with a blond goatee handed me a manila envelope from Questioned Documents. Another envelope contained pictures of the brutalized finger.

  I took the envelope back to my car, cracked the windows even farther, turned on the dome light, and read the copy of the ESDA, along with Mary Worobec’s notes from the examination. My name, written in the same block lettering as the kidnapping note, traveled across the page at an upward angle. Two parallel lines ran beneath it, for emphasis. Like a note. A reminder?

  I climbed out of the car and found Tom O’Brien as
he was leaving the Trace Evidence lab for the day. I asked to use one of the lab’s computers.

  “Does this involve forensics?” he asked.

  “Not really,” I admitted. “I need some background searches for this kidnapping case. It would save time if I could run the search here, instead of the FBI office.” I also wanted to run a search on Jack Stephanson and didn’t want a record of it on my computer. “I’ll need access to the state and national records. Do you have those?”

  His office was yet another compact room with another white board, this one full of case notes and dates, and at the very bottom right corner, a set of words written so long ago the ink was deteriorating. The handwriting looked childish. It said, “I love you, Daddy.”

  O’Brien logged into the system and picked up his briefcase. “When you’re done, double-check you’re logged off. And lock the door. I don’t have to tell you, I know, except the cleaning staff comes in at 11:00 p.m. and the defense attorneys are hovering over us like vultures. If I didn’t tell you, some lawyer would smell blood.”

  In a city where Scandinavians and Norwegians pervaded the deepest foundations, the name Jack Stephanson didn’t bring up much. And when it came to Special Agent Jack Stephanson, there was even less, except laudatory articles in the local press about his work on Violent Crimes.

  Similarly, a name like William Johansen was too easy a reach in the Northwest. Several dozen possibilities for Courtney’s father popped up in the crime system and it wasn’t until I began narrowing the search with certain key words—gambling, construction—that I found three potential William Johansens. One was dead from a defective pneumatic gun that drove a three-penny nail into his brain. The second Bill Johansen also worked as a contractor, but was much too young to have fathered a nineteen-year-old daughter.

  The third William Johansen sent me directly back to my car, and then a drive to Queen Anne Hill.