The investigation remained open, though the term was misleading. In November, thanks to the department’s mishandling of the case (or so he liked to believe), Perry failed to win reelection. Whatever satisfaction Ed took from his defeat was hollow. The new sheriff, Jim Trucks, immediately cleaned house. The next week the detective called to let them know he was retiring, but that he’d briefed his replacement and made sure the files were in order. He wished he’d been able to do more for her.
“I know,” Ed said. What he should have said was “We do too.” The new man made a point of coming to the house, shaking their hands like a politician. Detective Braden was young, and short, which made him seem even younger. He’d driven a patrol car in Akron for seven years before making the grade, he said, as if to prove he was old enough. He’d been involved with several missing persons. In his experience they were all different. Once he had his office squared away, he planned to revisit the case from the beginning, with no assumptions. There was a lot of material to digest. He knew he was coming into the situation late, so he hoped they didn’t mind if he called them from time to time with questions they may have already answered. He gave them his card and shook their hands again, but after he’d left, Fran said what Ed was thinking: “It’s like we’re starting all over again.”
Ed used the opportunity to push for a new search of Wozniak’s property, and in a perfect example of how the system worked, in early December Jim Trucks went to the district judge, who happened to be an old hunting buddy, and procured a warrant.
Wozniak was back in Iraq with his unit, so they served his grandmother and occupied the farm for three days, tramping the woods and dragging the ponds, sifting the ashen bed of the fire pit. The state police assisted with their ground sonar, a black-clad team creeping through the withered orchard like minesweepers. From the house they removed sheets and pillowcases and items of women’s clothing, samples of a rug that had recently been washed and a piece of floorboard beneath it, a toolbox and assorted hand tools, a computer hard drive, two digital cameras and their memory cards, a video camera and tripod and assorted tapes, a DVD player and assorted disks, two rifles, a shotgun, two handguns, and approximately a thousand rounds of ammunition, several hunting knives, a samurai sword and ceremonial dagger, pornographic magazines, videotapes and DVDs, working handcuffs, dildos and other assorted sex toys, a large cache of fireworks, butane torches, glassine envelopes, a triple-beam scale, and approximately three thousand dollars in cash.
The TV trucks reappeared on Lakewood, reporters in overcoats and gloves doing their stand-ups from the sidewalk. To fend them off Fran took down the wreath she’d bought at church and hung a sign that said: THE LARSEN FAMILY ASKS THE MEDIA TO PLEASE RESPECT OUR PRIVACY. THANK YOU. On the news the cameras zoomed on it.
For two weeks they waited while the police went through everything. In the end the only thing the police could charge him with was possession of illegal fireworks. Ed wasn’t surprised—he’d had forever to clean the place.
There were pictures of Kim.
“You don’t want to see them,” the detective said. “They’re private.”
It was the last they spoke of it, but the idea haunted Ed. While he was proud of her beauty, from the time she started to develop, the attention men paid her worried him. As her father it was his job to protect her. He imagined the detective looking through the pictures, and Wozniak. What about her privacy? If she was gone, he thought, no one should have them.
After the search he was even more certain that Wozniak was guilty. Just the fact that he hadn’t come forward was enough. Ed was sickened that Kim would be with someone like him. It was the drugs, that had to be the answer, and blamed himself for not realizing she was in trouble.
Christmas passed, and New Year’s, like reminders. His whole focus now was on convincing Braden to bring in Wozniak for questioning, though he was overseas and protected by the whole balky bureaucracy of the Marines, so it was a surprise when the detective called him at work one snowy afternoon in late January to say there’d been a break in the case. Nothing was official yet, but he wanted to give them a heads-up. The Indiana State Police had just called. They had a suspect in custody they’d linked to at least three other murders along I-90. From what he’d told them, they were pretty sure he was their guy.
The Killer Next Door
On the way home, they were subdued. With the radio off, the only sound was the heater, and the wipers slapping away snowflakes. Outside, Kingsville slid by, drab and overcast. They’d had false alarms before, but this was different.
“What do you think?” Ed said, to break the silence.
“I don’t know,” Fran said. “He’s obviously crazy. Who knows how much of what he’s saying is made up.”
“Braden sounded pretty sure.”
“What do you think?” Fran asked.
“I think it would help if they had some evidence. I know for sure there was no gas can in the car.”
“If she ran out of gas, she would have just called someone.”
“And what happened to the car?” Ed seconded. “He doesn’t even try to explain that.”
“That’s the big thing.”
His name was James Wade. He was sixty-seven and divorced and lived in a suburb of Elkhart, Indiana, right off I-90, as if that proved anything. The police seemed to think he was serious. He’d been arrested for trying to abduct a college student. He was bipolar, and a convicted sex offender. In custody, he claimed he’d killed more than thirty women, beginning when he was a teenager. He’d drawn maps to show where he’d buried some of his victims—not Kim, of course—though so far the police had found nothing.
“I don’t know,” Ed said.
“I don’t know either.” She sounded tired, as if the news had sapped her. “I noticed Perry was there.”
“Yeah, nice, right? Thanks for showing up.”
At least Braden had held off telling the media, for now. There were no TV trucks lurking outside the house.
“Nice and quiet,” Ed said.
“That won’t last.”
“We’ll have to say something.”
“I’ll have to say something. You’ll just stand there.”
“We need to tell Lindsay.”
“You need to tell your mother.”
“Fuck,” Fran said, closing her eyes. “I was having a really good day at work.”
Inside, Cooper pranced at her feet, asking to be let out. “Mr. Frantic,” she said.
She hoped Ed would stick close, but he retreated to his office. She listened to him clacking at his keyboard. She couldn’t help but feel skeptical about the news, partly because it was all happening at a distance, and partly because it was unimaginable. After not knowing for so long, she couldn’t believe the answer was so simple, and so remote, as if it had nothing to do with them. She hoped James Wade was lying, yet at the same time she was impatient for their waiting to be over, one way or another. She wanted to go and make Wade tell them where Kim was—by torture, if necessary.
Even now it was hard to admit she was dead. Wade said he’d forced her into his car and drove her to a deserted self-storage place. Telling it, Braden had edited himself, and now each time her mind called up the scene, Fran shied back from picturing Kim in his car, let alone Wade raping and murdering her, though these were details—unlike the gas can, or the car—that she couldn’t factually refute. It was like a blind spot right in front of her face.
As always, she had to come up with a statement. She cannibalized one from last month, cutting and pasting. She’d grown so lazy. In the beginning, she’d been if not hopeful at least conscientious, as if Kim’s return depended on her. At some point she’d stopped believing that, though she still prayed every day.
She was mulling what she should put on the website, cleaning up some old fundraising stuff, when Ed came in for a cup of coffee.
“They’re starting to roll in,” he said.
“How many?”
“Just one.�
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“Looking for a scoop.”
“You’re not going to give it to them.”
“Hell no.”
School was letting out. She called Lindsay to warn her, but got her voicemail.
“Uh-oh,” Ed said, peeking through the drapes. “We’ve got Cleveland.”
She tried Lindsay again, and again a couple minutes later. “I’m not getting through,” she told Ed. “You better keep an eye out for her.”
He dug in the front hall closet and found the sign asking the media to respect their privacy. When he opened the door, one reporter waved as if Ed might join him for a friendly chat on the sidewalk. Ed waved and closed the door.
“You know what,” Fran said, and jabbed at the calendar on the fridge. “She’s working today.”
“Good. Let her work.”
But already she was calling.
“No,” Fran told her, “you can stay there. I just wanted to let you know what’s going on. And be careful when you come home. You might want to park at the Hedricks’.”
Ed was surprised. He’d been ready to take Lindsay’s side.
“There’s no point in her being here,” Fran explained. “You agree?”
“Yes.”
“They can call me a crappy mother. I’m going to work tomorrow.”
“No one’s going to call you a crappy mother.”
“Ed,” she said, “I’m not stupid.”
“You’re a good mother.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I know what I am. I’m tired of this shit.”
“We all are,” he said, though he didn’t really see an alternative.
At the press conference they learned that a former babysitter for the Wades had come forward and said he’d molested her. They tried not to show surprise, knowing the cameras were rolling. “We’ve been asked not to comment on the investigation,” Fran said. “That’s all we can say right now.”
“Jesus,” she said when they were back inside, “it would have been nice to know that.”
Braden apologized. He was out of the loop on that one too. Indiana had released the information without telling them.
“Why did I think he’d be different?” Fran said when they got off.
“Are we still going to work tomorrow?”
“I don’t know.”
They watched the news together. In the video, Wade was balding and dull-eyed, slumped over a sack of a gut. He shuffled in his jumpsuit as if drugged, and maybe he was. To Fran he seemed sloppy, not dangerous, but she knew it was impossible to tell. Anyone could be a monster.
The coverage wasn’t about Kim or any of his other supposed victims, but an amazed appreciation of his double life, as if he were fiendishly clever, duping his family and coworkers (he had no friends, Ed noted). So far there was no proof, but the botched kidnapping may have been intentional, one expert said. Wade was suffering from stomach cancer. Worried about his own mortality, he wanted credit for his life’s work.
There was nothing they could do. It felt like they were back at the beginning, at the mercy of the same dizzying possibilities, except she no longer had the strength for it. They’d been through enough.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she said, and wept while Ed held her.
They both stayed up until Lindsay came home.
“How are you doing?” Fran asked.
“Okay,” Lindsay said, as if nothing had happened.
“It’s up to you if you want to go to school tomorrow.”
“I have to. I’ve got a test in AP Bio.”
“That’s fine. Your father and I may be staying home, we’re not sure. Everything’s kind of up in the air.”
It seemed like her mother wanted an answer to this, so Lindsay said, “I can make it up if I have to.”
“No, that’s fine. We just wanted to give you the option.”
“Thanks.”
Upstairs, safely in bed, Lindsay listened to Cooper breathing fitfully. For more than a year, while she’d lived with the probability that Kim was dead, she’d also cultivated a fantasy in which she’d run away and was living anonymously in some city, working during the day and going out at night with friends, reading in her warm apartment—the life Lindsay herself had begun to dream of, away from Kingsville and the shadow of Kim. Now she hated herself for ever being so stupid. To rid herself of it, she pictured Kim under the snow and the dead leaves and the dirt where James Wade had buried her. She thought she should be able to hear her thoughts, as if they shared a telepathy just because they were sisters, except they never had before, and all she could think of was the snow and the darkness.
Ed, likewise, in the long, empty moments before sleep, decided that James Wade had killed her. Only Fran refused to accept it, out of reflex more than any honest consideration. She needed Kim’s death to mean something, and Wade was a total unknown. There was no way she could have foreseen him. It was easier to believe that Wozniak had killed her. Once again, she felt cheated by the world’s incoherence.
In the morning, the TV trucks dieseled in the dark, and Ed had to escort Lindsay out the back and across the frozen yard to her car. Wade was on the front page, along with a tiny picture of Kim, the same photo they’d used for the poster. Even if they wanted to go in to work, they couldn’t. For the time being, the world was closed to them.
Braden had news. Unable to corroborate Wade’s stories, Indiana pressed him for exact locations of the bodies. The state assumed he was using them as leverage, as if Wade had designed every step of his end-game. To show good faith, his lawyer had gotten him to comply in the most recent case. Armed with his directions, search teams were combing a county park outside of Valparaiso.
Ed wanted Wade dead, if it was true, but wanted Kim home more.
Braden asked Fran if she could describe Kim’s jewelry.
“Why?” she asked, giving Ed a look. “You already have all that.”
“Would you have any pictures of it?”
“We’ve been through this.” She didn’t have any of the cameo ring or the friendship bracelet Nina had given Kim, but she’d been wearing the butterfly in her prom picture.
“You’d tell us if they found her,” she asked.
“They haven’t found her,” Braden said. “They’re for the FBI. They want everything. Can you e-mail it to me?”
Minutes after Fran sent the picture, Braden called back with the reason they needed it. He apologized—he’d just gotten the news himself. Around noon the FBI would be making an official statement. This morning they’d opened two safety deposit boxes Wade kept under an alias in Michigan. They were full of jewelry.
“I don’t like it,” she said when they’d hung up. “Everything’s going too fast.”
“We’ve never had the FBI working for us.”
“Obviously we should have.”
Ed didn’t say it, but if this was the end, he wanted it to be quick, and then, an hour later, when the phone rang again, rescinded his wish.
Neither of them moved to get it. Fran pointed to him.
“You get the next one,” he said.
He reached for the receiver, feeling lightheaded. He thought, ridiculously, that it might be a wrong number, or Connie.
It was Braden, and Ed turned to Fran.
“I’m telling you this unofficially,” the detective said, “so I have to ask you not to talk to the media. Mr. Larsen?”
“Yes.” He beckoned her with his free hand.
“They found the woman in the park.”
“They found the woman,” he told Fran, at his side now, stock-still. “What does that mean to us?”
“It’s not a hopeful sign. I’m sorry.”
Ed meant to thank him for letting them know, but Braden was gone.
He set the phone in its cradle and Fran held him. His instinct was to make a saving joke—he wished they’d gone in to work. He vetoed it, angry with himself, and wondered why he’d even thought of that. Was he really such a shallow person? He wanted to think h
e was just overwhelmed. They both were. And yet, rubbing her back, he felt hollow and heartless.
“I need to lie down,” Fran said.
He went up with her to their bedroom. They took off their shoes and spooned on top of the covers, Fran dabbing her eyes with a ragged tissue. The room was too bright to sleep, yet they did easily, deeply, as if, after so many months of hoping, they could finally rest.
The phone in his pocket woke him. The room was gray and his mouth was dry.
“Who is it?” Fran asked, still facing away.
It was Braden. Ed thought that he’d talked with him enough for one day.
“Mr. Larsen, I’m so sorry. I’ve got some bad news.”
Ed sat up, steeling himself to hear that they knew where Kim was. He needed to be there to take her home, so did Fran. Maybe then this endless waiting would be over.
“They just found Wade in his cell. I’m sorry. He killed himself.”
Article L02-37
Fran identified the butterfly from a digital picture the FBI sent. It was a formality—the agent had told them the pendant was among the effects—yet it was a shock to see it isolated like a specimen with a ruler below to show the scale. She was hoping they’d made a mistake, and even then her mind seized on the possibility that it might be some other girl’s. Penney’s probably sold thousands of them every year.
There was no trace of Grace’s cameo ring or Nina’s bracelet. The page they sent her showed fifteen different gold chains, none of which was the box weave, and she imagined the other mothers clicking on the windows and leaning into the screen. She was supposed to sign an affidavit stating that the pendant was Kim’s, have it notarized and include any documentation of ownership, then wait until they were finished with their testing. After the first month she realized it might be a while.
Songs for the Missing Page 28
