by Paula McLain
As soon as I introduce myself, Karen’s eyes flatten. She’s had enough of cops and reporters. Maybe I should have brought Tally with me, I think too late.
“I’m working here, all right?” she throws out.
“Just fifteen minutes for coffee?”
“I don’t have much to say.”
“That’s okay. I’ll be waiting across the street at the coffee shop. I only have a few questions.”
* * *
—
Forty-five minutes later, she finally turns up. I’ve had three cups of coffee, all watered-down diner coffee, but my palms are clammy anyway, my optimism waning.
“I have someone at eleven,” she says. “A regular client. I can’t be late.”
“Understood. I just want to get a clearer picture of your daughter if possible, Ms. Russo. What can you tell me about Shannan’s habits, before all this, I mean?”
“She was bored, in trouble a lot.”
“She was a senior in high school when she went missing, am I right?”
“She never cared about school and I gave up trying to get her there. Honestly, I gave up a lot of things. I know that sounds shitty. Shannan didn’t want a mother. She didn’t want anyone to care about her.”
Karen’s toughness may be a defense, as Tally suggested, but it’s a formidable one. “That must have been hard, her pushing you away.”
She squints, her lashes thick with inky mascara that’s so black it’s almost blue. “I had plenty of time to get used to it.”
“Tell me about the last day you saw her.” I flip through my notes. “June second. Did she go to school that day?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. She was dressed and out of bed, but she could have been going anywhere. She had lots of friends who weren’t friends, if you know what I mean.”
“Men? Are you saying your daughter was prostituting herself?”
“Maybe.” She pulls a patterned cigarette purse from the pocket of her jacket and holds her lighter to the tip of a Marlboro Light, inhaling and then waving away the smoke in a practiced gesture. “I don’t know how she made her money. I didn’t help her out, I can tell you that. I knew she’d drink whatever I gave her, or whatever else she was snorting or shooting. I stopped asking.”
“These friends. Did she ever mention anyone by name?”
“Not that I remember. At least one of them had money, though. She brought home a new Nikon camera once. And someone gave her a coat, a nice one.”
That gets my attention. “Can you describe it?”
“It was short and brown, some kind of animal fur. Maybe it wasn’t real, but it sure looked that way, and expensive. She certainly didn’t buy it from around here.”
“Was she wearing it that last day?”
“Maybe. I can’t remember.”
It’s clear I’m getting almost nowhere with Karen. Whatever the trick is to get her talking openly, I don’t seem to know it. “The psychic who called you, what did you think of her?”
“What could I think?” Karen makes a troubled face as she exhales again, smoke fanning out like a screen of poison. “Shannan always did exactly what she wanted. If someone killed her, she probably asked for it.”
The harshness of her words silences me for a long moment. I’ve known women like Karen, flinty and shut down. But I also understand that anyone with a shell like this has come by it honestly. She’s had good reasons to protect herself, and still does. “Ms. Russo, I really do want to help find Shannan, but I’m going to be honest with you. My primary case is Cameron Curtis. You’ve heard of her.”
“Sure, the movie star’s kid. I watched that show for years. Never thought I’d have something in common with Heidi Barrows.” She shakes her head.
“We have very little to go on with Cameron, but she had a lot of disruption in her childhood. Violence, too. We think that might have something to do with her being targeted.” I look at her meaningfully. “That’s why I’m here asking questions about Shannan when she was young. It could be the same guy. I’m looking for threads.”
She seems unmoved, at least on the surface. Glancing at her watch, she says, “I’ve told you what I can.”
“We’ve still got a few more minutes. Where’s Shannan’s dad? Has he ever been involved?”
“That piece of crap?” Her lip curls. “He took off when she was still in preschool. Haven’t gotten a dime from him since.”
“It’s hard to be a single parent.”
She flicks her eyes over me, seeming to wonder if I’m being straight with her, if I have some ulterior motive. “Yeah, it is.”
“Was it always just the two of you?”
“On and off. I’ve had boyfriends over the years. Probably not the best thing to have around a kid.”
“Boyfriends in general, or these particular guys?”
She gives me a barbed look. “Meaning what? You questioning my choice in men?”
“I don’t know your life.”
She looks at the wall, a swirling pattern of gold Formica. Harvest gold, from the 1970s, when everything was either gold or avocado green. “Well, I can tell you I probably didn’t make totally great decisions all the time. I mean, who does, right?”
Unfortunately she’s right. Not for everyone, but for many of us. “Do you have a picture of Shannan?”
“Nothing recent.” She puts down her cigarette and digs through her pocketbook, fishing out one of those little photo keepers that sometimes come with a wallet. The plastic sleeve is yellowed and dog-eared but filled—all school pictures with cloudy blue backgrounds, Shannan as a gap-toothed five- or six-year-old leading the parade.
I take the book from her and flip through it feeling more and more saddened. Maybe the girl was trouble, but she didn’t start out that way. Wasn’t born trouble, but sweet, pure, original—like anyone. “She’s really pretty,” I say. “What did she want to do with her life? When she was little, I mean. Any big fantasies?”
“Does Disney princess count?” Karen’s mouth tightens, deepening the feathered creases on her upper lip. Then she says, “She did have the shiniest hair. I used to fix it for her in a fishtail braid down her back. That’s not easy to do. It takes at least an hour, but she’d sit real still and not move.”
I meet her eyes, trying not to blink or break the moment. It’s the most unguarded she’s been with me, the most human. “I’ll bet she looked really beautiful.”
“Yeah, she did. Beautiful wasn’t the problem.”
(forty-six)
Sometimes snatches of the past floated up like shredded paper and caught me off guard, things I was sure I’d forgotten. My mother sleeping on the couch, on her side with her knees curled up like a child, a crocheted afghan over part of her face. A day that seemed like a fantasy when I was six or seven and the kids were toddlers, taking turns holding someone’s pet rabbit in our laps on a patch of grass. When it was my turn, I touched the ears, which were warm, felt the rabbit’s frantic heart and tensed muscles, how it wanted to run but didn’t. A few days later, three cop cars showed up at our apartment with a warrant for my father. They took him off in handcuffs while my mother yelled at them to stop. She threw an ashtray that bounced hard off the wall. Threw a lamp to the floor so that the bulb shattered. I watched everything from the darkened hall, all the bedroom doors closed, the kids hiding in a closet where I had put them and told them to be very quiet. A charged, stifling feeling in the air around me and in my body. After that, my dad became a stranger to us. It was only a few years later that my mother would leave to borrow fifty bucks and never come back.
But there were other memories, too, softer ones, like bits of webbing. Memories of Hap and Eden and Mendocino, how when I was ten, I found I could crouch down inside the bunchgrasses on the headlands above Portuguese Beach and be grass. I could be the sun setting, smearing light like wild
honey over everything it touched. I was the Pacific with its cold blue eye, the crow in a cypress tree, flapping, talking to itself about the world. For as long as I could remember, I’d had reasons to disappear. I was an expert at making myself invisible, but this was something else. I was part of things now, knitted into the landscape. And not overlooked at all, but cared about.
* * *
—
The community center stands on the corner of School Street and Pine, next to the ball fields, now yellowed like everything this time of year. I meet Gray and his mother Di Anne there just after noon on Saturday to work on the bulletin board that should help personalize Cameron for those who don’t know her, and honor her for those who do. Will’s petition to use the space indefinitely has just been approved by the city council. A temporary sign hangs outside until a banner can be made, with Cameron Curtis Rescue Center in red block letters.
“Red is Cameron’s favorite color,” Gray explains. He and Di Anne made the sign together and have been at the center for hours, I can see. The bulletin board is already more than half filled with photos, postcards, and drawings. In one corner, Gray has pinned the album jacket for Madonna’s The Immaculate Collection, the record that’s been the soundtrack of their friendship over the past two years. He found and talked to all of Cameron’s teachers, some of whom have saved copies of papers and poems. One from fifth grade was called “Ginkgo Leaves”:
Flat balloons. Parachutes.
Each leaf like something burning.
A dream taking flight. I stand
Under the yellow tree and think
about yesterday. Does yesterday
think about me?
I read the lines feeling my throat grow tight. It’s more than good writing; it shows a vulnerability I wouldn’t have dreamed of revealing when I was her age, particularly about the past. I wasn’t that brave then. I still might not be, not in that way.
“She’s special, right?” Gray says from behind me.
“Yeah, she’s special.”
With Gray and Di Anne’s help, I work in the things I’ve brought with Emily’s permission, the crayoned drawing of the chameleon—Dear Mom, I have been missing you!—the Malibu beach picture with the pearly pink seashell, and several more, including one of Cameron and Caitlyn Muncy, each wearing a single roller skate, their hair done up in tight high ponytails that tipped to different sides, as if they completed each other.
“Gosh, they’re sweet,” Di Anne says as she pins up the picture. “I don’t remember Cam at that age.”
Cam.
“I talked to Caitlyn Muncy like you asked,” Gray says. “She wasn’t a bitch at all. She cried.”
“Cameron must mean a lot to her, too,” I tell him.
“She gave me this.” Gray holds up a VHS tape. “Is there a way to play it?”
We dig around in the back room and find a cache of AV equipment, slide-wheel projectors, an old reel-to-reel, a Betamax player, and then bingo. A VCR.
Plugging it in, the three of us gather to watch on an old Magnavox in the tiny kitchen. Nearby, along the windowsill under skewed venetian blinds, there are grayish drifts of dead moth husks. A dry sink is filled with cracked pieces of Fiestaware. Then the TV set hums to life, and none of it matters. The room disappears.
Cameron and Caitlyn are singing “Under the Sea” from The Little Mermaid into Mr. Microphones, giving it all they have. The ponytails are in full force, Cameron’s nearly to her butt. They have the half-formed look of preteens, not yet grown into their faces. They have pimples, braces. They’re radiant.
“This is perfect,” I tell Gray, feeling emotional and overwhelmed.
“I don’t know if she’d want us to play it for a bunch of people.”
“Why not?”
“That was a long time ago. And I don’t know, she seems so innocent in the tape.”
“Innocence is a gift, Gray,” I say, hearing my voice dip emotionally. “Look how beautiful she is. Whatever pain she felt, however she’d been hurt, she doesn’t show it here. She let it go, even for a minute. Kids can be so resilient. I never stop being amazed.”
“I haven’t thought about it like that.”
As the tape ends, the machine crackles, then whirs. Gray hits rewind and then Di Anne puts her arm around him, pulling him close, and we watch it again. Sunlight pierces the venetian blinds, throws a single slash of light over the wall just above the Magnavox. Then the singing: Just look at the world around you / Right here on the ocean floor / Such wonderful things surround you / What more is you lookin’ for?
(forty-seven)
Will and I have arranged to meet at six-fifteen that night to go over his speech, but by then people have already begun to arrive. Someone has set up a long table under the far wall, and it’s loaded with food. Potluck dishes, a crockpot full of barbecued meatballs, cheese and crackers and piles of rolls, plastic cutlery, paper napkins, pink lemonade, and a tower of Styrofoam cups. For a moment I’m thrown, but then I remember how it is in small towns, where any public gathering means food. Plus eating always brings people together, gives them something to do with their hands.
Soon, the chairs begin to fill. Wanda has been passing out flyers and has done her job well. The village has shown up, finally, each person here because the time has come for this, for arriving and surrendering, for saying yes to the truth and just going there, to that place, where we already are.
As the hour draws closer, I see Steve Gonzales arrive with a short, pretty woman who must be his wife. He has a hand on her shoulder, nodding at me and then heading off to sit near a group of young people who are obviously from the high school. A few minutes later, Clay LaForge comes in with Lenore, both of them a little shy, or seeming so as they slide into a row at the back. Lydia Hague arrives and subtly waves hello. Then I notice a tall, striking woman come in, with a dramatic line of silver through wavy black hair. She has a boy and a girl with her, one at each side. I watch as Will reacts. This is his family; this is Beth with his children.
“Go over,” I tell him.
“I will in a bit.”
My guess about their split might be right, I realize, and feel terribly sad for all of them. Will’s daughter with her bleached jeans, ripped at the knee, his son with his same thick auburn hair, the same strong chin and gray eyes. And his wife, whom I don’t know, but feel close to anyway. In a time like this, they need to be together. People in crises always do.
* * *
—
When it’s time for Will to speak, only two reporters have shown up, and neither of them has brought a camera crew. Will guessed right to think every news station from here to San Francisco would be covering Winona Ryder’s visit to Petaluma instead of us. A rumor had flown through Will’s office all day about the actress going out into the fields with a search party, calling Polly’s name with a megaphone for hours.
But I’m not going to let myself feel disappointed. Whatever is happening down there for Polly, something else is happening right here, right now. The town has shown up. Twice as many bodies as I had let myself hope for. Tally is here, and beside her sitting in a motorized wheelchair is a dark-skinned man I don’t recognize. Patterson’s has closed and all the employees have come, many still in uniform. Clerks I see all the time from Mendosa’s Market, the guy who pumps my gas at the station in Little River, the woman who runs the post office and has for twenty-five years. And Cherilynn Leavitt, who answers the phones in the sheriff’s office, with her shaggy musician boyfriend, Stewart, who plays folk sets at a few of the better hotels. And Gray and his mom, and Caitlyn Muncy and her father, Bill, who runs the Beacon, and even Caleb, I see, and almost want to cry, because I know how much it has cost him, what memories might be dredged up, already too close to the surface.
* * *
—
When the room is quiet, Will moves in
front of Cameron’s bulletin board where the microphone is waiting and holds up the new missing poster with the word FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED blazing out in red like a slap.
“I know most of you,” he says, “and I know what you’re capable of. Where your hearts are. On September twenty-first, Cameron Curtis went missing from her home in the middle of the night. We have reason to believe she was coerced to do so. Two other girls have been reported missing since then, as you no doubt have heard, both within a hundred miles of us. There’s no way of knowing if Cameron’s disappearance has anything to do with them, but I’ll tell you this. All of these girls need us now. Everybody in this room and all over the county, up and down the coast. I’m asking you to sign on to help with the search. You’re working. I get that. You have lives, but maybe you go out one afternoon a week with an organized search party. Maybe you send out flyers from your kitchen table. You answer phones, you go door-to-door, you spread the word.
“Some of you know Cameron, but many of you don’t. Her mom and dad are private people, and they’ve kept to themselves. But even if you’re just seeing Cameron for the first time on these posters, I want you to take a good look.” He turns to the bulletin board. “Someone’s hurt this girl. We don’t know who, but it’s our problem now. She’s a kid and she deserves better. Let’s make sure she gets that, okay? Let’s bring her home.”
In the charged applause that follows, Troy Curtis stands up and comes to the front of the room. I barely recognize him. He looks ten years older than when I last saw him, ashen and wooden as he reaches for the microphone. For the first time, I don’t note any arrogance in him.
“Cameron is a special person,” he says, clearly working to keep his voice steady. “She came to us that way when she was four years old. It seems impossible that anyone could ever want to hurt her. Any crime like this against a child is an outrage. Any child. She’s an innocent girl. Please help me find her.” His voice cracks with strain. “I know she’s got to be alive somewhere. I can feel it.” Overcome with emotion, Troy passes the mic to Will and returns to his chair as hands begin to go up, and the questions start coming. I scan the faces nearby for Emily, but she isn’t here with her husband. She’s not ready after all.
