by N. M. Brown
‘Officer Jones, how may I help you?’ The tone of voice was efficient and clipped.
‘Hi, captain, I just wanted to pass on something about this missing kid they’re talking about on the news.’
‘Tina Blanchette?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Go on.’
‘I just wanted to say that last night after I’d finished my shift, I drove home via Old Mill Way.’
‘Bit out of the way,’ Levvy said. It sounded like it might have been an accusation. Leighton was aware that Levvy knew of the time he had left the station without permission to check on Annie. In the weeks that followed that incident all of the captains in the station had viewed him with a mixture of suspicion and concern. He didn’t want her thinking he had abandoned his post again.
‘I was off duty at the time, captain.’ Leighton said to clarify his position. ‘I like the space out there – helps clear away the stresses of the day. Anyway, when I was driving through on the cut off along North Orchard Road a kid ran out in front of my car. It was a girl.’
‘And?’
‘Well, I reckon it could have been that kid.’
Leighton was almost sure he heard a sigh from the other end of the line.
‘Okay, did you get a good look at this girl?’
‘No, well not really. I slammed on the brake and she was gone.’
‘Gone where?’ the captain asked.
‘Into the fields at the edge of the road. The grass grows high up there.’
‘Was there anyone else around at the time – with you or any other vehicles on the road?’
‘No, just me.’
‘I take it you stopped. Did you get out of the vehicle?’
‘Yeah and called out to her.’
‘Did you get a response?’ Levvy asked.
‘No, she was gone in an instant.’
‘Okay, officer, you know the routine – can you give me an approximate time of this sighting?’
‘Around eighteen hundred hours.’
‘And a description of the child?’
‘Female Caucasian, approximately six or seven years of age, dressed in jean shorts and an orange or peach top. She crossed the carriageway from right to left when heading north.’
‘Okay, Officer Jones, I’ve made a note of your sighting. Thanks for letting us know. I’ll make sure that the details are passed on to the team working on the investigation.’
‘Thanks, captain.’
‘Enjoy the rest of your night.’
Having returned the phone handset to the cradle, Leighton walked back into the living area of his small home and sat down. Annie’s fairy tale book remained near him on the sofa. Leighton glanced absently at the colourful picture on the front cover. It showed a girl in a red cape stepping blissfully through a deep forest whilst a sly looking wolf watched from behind a tree.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Tina woke up in the dark. She felt confused to no longer have the dry wood of the platform beneath her. Cold ground and a gnarled tree root pressed against her body. She was curled into a foetal position, frozen and stiff, but she could see a sprinkling of bright stars above some branches. They sparkled through the ghostly outline of the branches and offered Tina a sense of comfort.
Sitting up, she peered out at her desolate location. The light was just sufficient to see the pale landscape. The colourless dry ground, which seemed to stretch all around her in every direction, looked like the surface of the moon.
As her teeth started to chatter, Tina knew that she couldn’t stay out here all night but moving forward would mean wandering into the unknown. That was when Tina formulated a plan. She decided that she should return to the barn and collect another bottle of water. She vaguely remembered that a second one had been in the plastic tub beneath the faucet. But just as importantly, she also needed a piece of material to protect herself from the sun, and to serve as a blanket at night. If she couldn’t find anything to use in the other buildings, she could perhaps use her piece of glass to cut a piece of the material in the barn.
She knew that if she made the journey at night then she wouldn’t require any more fluids during the journey, and if she drank as much as she could from the faucet before setting off again, she would be able to retain the water in the bottle. Plus, if she had the oranges, she wouldn’t be as thirsty. Her plan would allow her to travel much further, and if she had supplies, she might even make it home again.
So, having gathered up the fruit, she selected two of the softest feeling oranges and set off, limping through the starlit desert toward the barn.
Moving slowly through the warm night air, she focused on the shimmering heavens. At one point she saw a shooting star scorch the sky like a silent firework, and she made a silent wish to be back in her mother’s arms, with the stranger unable to ever pursue them again. But her attention was taken up by the flashing lights of a passenger plane droning high above as it turned in away from her and on towards some distant place. Tina paused and tilted her small face towards the fading beacon of the plane. It reminded her of the one her dad had taken to Alaska. She remembered travelling home in the car after dropping him at the airport that night. Her mom had been crying for the entire journey home but was pretending she wasn’t. She had been talking excitedly to Tina about Christmas and what kind of tree they might get, but Tina hadn’t been listening. She had been secretly waving through her window at a passing plane in case that was the one her daddy was on.
When the lights of the aircraft had faded into the black sky, Tina wiped both her eyes then carried on her lonely journey.
It took Tina less time to return to the old buildings than she thought it would. At first, she could only see the humped silhouette of the hill blotting out the stars, but as the sky began to lighten Tina could discern the irregular shapes of the buildings as she neared them.
The first thing she did was run to the faucet and drink. She then fished out the remaining bottle and filled it up. She then carried it and her two oranges back inside the barn. As she stepped inside, the sun had almost fully risen, and shafts of light sliced through the thin gaps in the wooden walls.
Tina climbed back up on to the platform, only to sense the tiny bit of comfort it afforded her the night previously. She threw her two oranges up before securing her bottle and climbing back up on the hanging canvas belt.
Once she was secure in her location, Tina scurried like a small mammal to a distant corner where she settled back and, using her dirty nails, began to peel one of her oranges. She had only really uncurled one piece of skin when she heard the crunching sound of footsteps.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The waiting area of the Mind Space therapeutic centre was a rectangular room filled with diffuse light from a large opaque glass window. A white marble floor was dotted with comfortable chairs and a low coffee table, which was spread with a selection of glossy well-being magazines. Most of them featured smiling couples and hot air balloons. Leighton didn’t touch any of them.
An hour earlier, he had kissed goodbye to Annie outside of his home as she climbed into her grandpa’s white SUV. He hugged her tightly and told her to call if she needed anything, but he suspected that she would probably be too busy baking cookies and enjoying a break from school and her child-minder. As he watched the car slowly pull away from the sidewalk, he immediately wanted to run after it and say that he had changed his mind. But, despite being comforting, that wouldn’t really help any of them. So, he had put on a brave face and smiled and waved as his daughter blew him kisses through the car window.
At the rear of the relaxing room, Leighton sat beside a glass water cooler. He stared at the small globe-shaped tropical fish tank on the opposite side of the rom. Leighton was absently watching some tiny metallic looking fish flit backwards and forwards in the illuminated water, when a door opened at the opposite room and the therapist – James Hernandez – leaned out.
‘Good morning, Leighton, would you like to come through,’
he said. It was not a question.
Leighton got reluctantly to his feet and crossed the waiting area.
The therapist held the door open for Leighton then closed it after he had entered the room.
‘Hi, Leighton, have a seat.’
‘Thanks,’ Leighton said as sat in one of two chairs angled facing each other.
‘So how have things been with you since last week’s session – any better?’ James asked.
‘Yeah, things have been good,’ Leighton said and looked at the floor.
‘Really?’ James asked.
‘No, not great,’ Leighton said with a shrug of his shoulders, ‘but I’m still moving.’
‘Not great in what way?’
‘I don’t know, I guess I sometimes feel like I’m barely holding it together. But Annie needs me so what does it matter, I should be strong.’
‘Should is a dangerous word,’ James said. ‘It gives us impossible standards to measure ourselves against. It’s only been, what, fourteen months?’
‘Fifteen.’ Leighton said.
‘So, it’s been less than a year and a half, and your job hardly provides you with much opportunity to relax, does it?’
‘I don’t need to relax,’ Leighton said, firmly, whilst fixing his eyes on the window, ‘I need to do my job and raise my kid.’
‘Okay, well, in order to do both of them well, you need to relax. Have you been listening to the cassette I gave you?’
‘Every day,’ Leighton said, ‘finding my calm place.’
‘Does that work?’ James asked.
‘A little.’
‘So how would you say you have you been, emotionally?’
There was a moment of silence, which was in itself a type of confession.
‘Good.’ Leighton said as he shifted in his seat and tried to sound upbeat. And it was true – at least in part. There were moments when he would take Annie down to the beach, and sitting in the warm fresh air he would feel almost good, almost like it had been before. But this was an occasional respite. Much of the time he felt mostly functional, and he would often remain in this mode until his kid was asleep, then he would climb into the shower cabinet and cry.
‘You need to be honest with me,’ James said. ‘The process only works if you’re willing to examine the truth.’
‘Well,’ Leighton shrugged, ‘I suppose I have good days and not so good days – like most people, I guess.’
The therapist nodded. ‘Thanks for being honest about that. It is perfectly normal to feel the way that you do. You do understand that, don’t you?’
Leighton waited for a moment but finally nodded.
‘But you should also know that some of your colleagues are concerned that you’re still struggling to work through your loss. Is that a fair statement?’
‘I suppose, but I might be working through it for the rest of my life. I don’t think you just switch these things off.’
‘No, you don’t.’ James said, softly. ‘Tell me about the kid.’
‘My daughter?’
‘No, the other girl. Apparently, you’ve been talking about some kid you sawrun in front of your car?’
‘How do you know about that?’ Leighton shifted in his seat.
‘I get a daily update from the station at the end of shift. They fax it across. It’s standard procedure in situations like this.’
‘Wow.’ Leighton rubbed at his temple in irritation. ‘I didn’t think I was such a liability.’
‘It’s not a matter of liability, Leighton; it’s about your ability to cope effectively with the inevitable demands of the job.’
‘I am able to do my job!’ Leighton held his gaze.
‘But you also reported seeing some child who may or may not be real.’
‘She was real,’ Leighton said, and looked out of the window where a couple of gulls where gliding in the blue sky.
‘You may not know this, Leighton, but a vision of a child – like the one you experienced – can often represent a desire for lost innocence. You may have seen that girl as an expression of that, or perhaps as an outward vision of your responsibilities.’
‘What does a real girl represent?’ Leighton asked, defiantly.
After a pause, the therapist glanced down at his previous week’s notes.
‘How has Annie been doing over the last couple of weeks?’
‘Okay.’
‘Just okay?’
‘Good,’ Leighton corrected.
‘No more bad dreams?’
‘No,’ Leighton said, ‘that seems to have stopped.’
‘That’s good.’
‘She’s staying with Heather’s parents for a couple of nights. We agreed to do it every six or seven months. We figured that it’s a long drive down from Lancaster. So longer visits are better than more frequent ones.’
‘That sounds like a good arrangement for everyone.’
‘I just hope she sleeps okay there.’ Leighton said, quietly.
‘And what about your sleep, are you managing to get enough?’
‘Yeah, mostly I guess.’
‘But not always?’
‘Sometimes I lie there thinking about what might’ve been, but I know that just screws my head up.’
‘So how do you cope?’
‘I switch the radio on and try to focus on the music instead of my thoughts.’
‘What exactly are those thoughts?’
‘That I’m a bad person,’ Leighton said as if speaking to himself, ‘that in the end I just let people down.’
‘You can’t be responsible for other people,’ James said, softly.
‘Yeah, well that’s where we disagree,’ Leighton said. ‘I was responsible and I fucked up on my watch. And that failure hurt a whole lot of people – especially my kid, who never asked for any of this.’ Leighton’s voice cracked as he spoke. ‘She goes to bed every goddamn night without a mom to brush her hair, or sing her songs. So now I will do what I can, for her and everyone else, because that’s the least I can do.’
James glanced at his watch. ‘Well, that’s just about time up for this week. I think you’re making real progress, Leighton. These are powerful realisations you are making.’
‘All I need to hear is that I get to carry on being a cop for another week.’
‘Well, it looks like you do.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
In the small front room of his bungalow, Len Wells was sitting in his easy chair, sipping bourbon while watching TV. He could abide most shows in the afternoon. Sometimes, if he was lucky, he would accidentally come across a football game or a quiz show but generally it was a toss-up between reruns of The Waltons or some crazy cartoon shows. On that afternoon, he had turned on to regional news – Oceanside Today – just in time to catch a special report on the spreading wildfires plaguing the state. However, there were so many repetitive images of red planes and burning hillsides that eventually Len lost interest and started to drift to sleep. He found it generally easier to sleep in the afternoon, when demons could be replaced by daylight and distractions.
When he awoke, Len found that the report on the wildfires had ended, and had been replaced by a fresh-faced woman who was cheerfully providing a recap of the day’s top stories –including, of course, more about the fires. Len, who found the reporter’s voice quite relaxing, let his eyes lazily drift closed again. In the slow fog of his thoughts he imagined slowly moving fire-planes dropping endlessly moving clouds of mist. His internal movie was accompanied by the voice of the woman speaking of fires, and a burst water pipe causing traffic problems on the Boulevard, and she also spoke of a spate of attempted break-ins down at the harbour – where midsized cruisers seemed to have been targeted. But when she eventually ended the headlines with an account of a seven-year-old girl missing from Fallbrook since Monday, Len’s eyes shot open and his glass fell from his hand to smash on the tiled floor.
Chapter Thirty
As she stepped through the glass doors of Oceansi
de Police Station, holding her daughter by the hand, Jackie Bucowiz sincerely believed she was doing the right thing. She had initially considered talking it through with Angela first, but she quickly decided that the woman had enough to deal with already. Jackie approached the reception desk where a young male officer was filling in a report. He looked up and smiled cheerfully.
‘Good morning, how can I help?’ he asked.
‘I’m here about Tina Blanchette,’ Jackie said, conspiratorially, ‘I spoke to an officer called Drain on the telephone.’
‘Do you possibly mean Officer Dane – from our missing person’s team?’
‘Yeah, that’s it.’ Jackie nodded. ‘He asked me to come down in person.’
‘Okay,’ the officer said, ‘if you’d like to take a seat for a moment, I’ll see what I can do.’
Jackie led Suzy across the cool tiled floor to a row of red plastic chairs, which had been bolted to the floor in the corner of the reception area.
‘Will this take a while?’ Suzy asked as she climbed up on one of the chairs.
‘I don’t know, honey,’ Jackie whispered. ‘I hope not.’
‘I’m hungry,’ Suzy said in a tone that suggested she was possibly just bored.
Her mom unclipped her cream-coloured purse and reached inside. ‘Here, honey.’ She handed Suzy a small box of raisins.
‘Can’t we go to McDonalds?’ Suzy asked.
‘Sure, but after we speak to the police officer. This is important.’
‘Mrs Bucowiz?’
Jackie looked up to see a tall officer standing in a doorway to the left of the reception desk.
‘I’m Officer Dane, please come through.’
The woman and her daughter were led along a narrow corridor to a small room that contained a desk, four chairs and a potted plant in one corner. When all three of them were seated, Officer Dane removed a red plastic clipboard and a printed report sheet from a drawer in the desk. He pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and clicked the button on it.
