Truthseeker

by C. E. Murphy

  “Of course I don’t have Stockholm syndrome. How could I, when the man who supposedly kidnapped me has been in jail for the last year?”

  Another silence, this one considering, seized the press corps for the briefest moment. Lara whipped around, her pride too great to let her actually run inside, though it was a near thing. Another barrage of questions rushed after her, and exasperation rose up a second time as she pulled the door open. “Yes,” she said over her shoulder, in response to something half-heard. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did disappear off the face of the earth. I’m sure that’ll be a very exciting mystery for you to solve. I have nothing more to say to you, not now and not ever.”

  The door closed behind her, cutting off the inquisition. Lara let out an explosive breath that loosened her anger, and Kelly applauded. “That was impressive. You told them off and you told the truth.”

  “Sometimes I amaze even myself,” Lara said without a hint of irony. She straightened her skirt—she’d gone shopping that morning, instinctively searching for a black suit skirt and a red silk blouse, and had thought nothing of it until Kelly’d looked at them and said, “Battle colors, eh?”

  Caught out, Lara had almost exchanged the blouse for a blue one, but in the end had kept the red. She was preparing for battle, after all, though of a different sort than had seen her strap on moonlit armor. Confident she was presentable, she approached the front desk, where a stout officer in an ill-fitting uniform looked her up and down. “Yeah, I know who you are. Washington’ll be out in a minute.” He went so far as to pick up the phone and send a message to make certain that would happen, and Lara, feeling somehow chastised, retreated to wait on the detective’s arrival.

  “I’ve never been in a police station before,” she whispered to Kelly. “Have you?”

  “More than I’d like to think about, the last year and a half.” Kelly leaned against her for a hug.

  Embarrassment flooded Lara’s chest. “Right.”

  “Hey, don’t worry about it. All’s well that ends well.” Kelly smiled, and Lara’s discomfort faded.

  “Miss Jansen?” A tall, good-looking man in a suit—off the rack, Lara thought, but well-cut and long enough in the arm for his height—came through a side door and extended a hand to Lara. “I’m Detective Washington. I was assigned to your case last year. Kelly,” he added. “Good to see you again. How are the wedding plans going?”

  “Better than they’ve ever been. I’ve got a maid of honor now.” Kelly, beaming, stood on her toes to kiss the detective’s cheek after he shook Lara’s hand.

  “Congratulations. I hope I’m still invited.”

  “Of course you are. We got to be friends,” Kelly said to Lara, more shyly than she’d admitted to being engaged. “Neither Dickon nor I would leave him alone. I wouldn’t give up hope and Dickon wouldn’t accept David was guilty.”

  “And you were right. You have no idea how glad we all are to see you back safely, Ms. Jansen. Can you come this way?”

  Lara looked between Washington and Kelly, her eyebrows lifting as a feeling of loss worked its way through her. A day, she thought. A day, and seventeen months. Her world had changed, even if she hadn’t. Or hadn’t much: her talent was stronger than it had been, but in comparison to the differences in Kelly’s life, that seemed like nothing. Lara murmured, “Sure,” and fell into step behind the detective.

  He led them through a labyrinth of halls whose cream-colored paint was sallowed by aging fluorescent lights. A few officers smiled as they passed by; more nodded, and one or two did a double take, clearly recognizing Lara. “I feel like an exhibit,” she breathed to Kelly, but it was Washington who answered.

  “Sorry for saying so, but in a way, you are. People don’t usually turn up after going missing for a year and a half.”

  “Not usually,” Lara echoed. “But sometimes.” She stepped through a door Washington opened for her, looking back at him for an answer.

  “Sometimes, yeah.” Washington gestured her to a desk in the midst of a dozen others, then looked apologetically at Kelly. “Sorry. I only have the one chair.”

  She grinned. “I know. I’ve been in it often enough. I’ll go grab a cup of really bad vending machine coffee. Want me to bring some back for you?”

  “If I give you five bucks will you go to Starbucks instead?” Washington reached for his wallet, but Kelly waved him off.

  “My treat. Celebrating Lara’s return. You want anything, Lar?”

  “An iced tea, please?”

  “Will do. And try to remember everything you say, because I’m going to want all the details later.” Kelly winked and hurried off, leaving Lara feeling oddly fortified. She sat down, smiling, and Washington returned the smile as he pulled his own chair out.

  “That woman’s a firecracker. Never gave up on you.”

  “I hope I wouldn’t, either.” Lara held her breath a moment. “Detective, I really wasn’t kidnapped. I don’t know what the legal proceedings are to get someone who’s been wrongfully imprisoned out of jail, but I hope you’ll help me. He hasn’t actually been convicted yet, right? So maybe it’s not too hard?”

  Washington lifted an eyebrow. “Well, if you can convince me, that’ll help when we bring it to a judge. Where did you say you’d gone?”

  “I didn’t.”

  The words fell flat, Washington’s mouth thinning as it became clear that was all Lara would say. “Ms. Jansen, we scoured a tristate area. We studied every security tape, every Greyhound station, every car rental agency, every airport, and found nothing. No activity on credit cards or bank accounts, no sightings at Seven-eleven convenience stores, no hitchhiking encounters. Children disappear that way, Ms. Jansen. People with no links, no friends, no family, disappear that way. People like you don’t.”

  “All evidence to the contrary.”

  The detective beat a rhythm on his desk, then nodded. “All evidence to the contrary. You disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  Lara spread her hands, a thread of amusement working its way through her. “That’s what the media outside said, too, and I’m content to leave it at that.” She softened her tone as irritation darkened Washington’s face. “I know you want answers, Detective. I think you even deserve them, but I also know you wouldn’t like the ones I have to give. Not knowing might eat at you, but if I told you anything, you’d think I was lying, and that would only make you angrier. You won’t believe me, but you’ll be happier if you just let the whole thing go.”

  “You practice this story, you and Kirwen? He said damned near the same thing when we arrested him.”

  “I imagine detectives have to be pretty good judges of character. Either we practiced, or we’re independently telling the truth. You make the call.”

  Curiosity sparked in Washington’s eyes. “You’re not quite what I expected, Ms. Jansen. Everyone I talked to, even your mother, described you as shy. Nonassertive. Given that kind of billing, I’d say you just read me the riot act.”

  “It’s been seventeen months, Detective Washington.” Seventeen months, or one day. Lara shrugged a little. “People change.”

  “I guess so.” Washington studied her a few moments more, finally pulling a hand over his face. “I don’t know what to do with you, Ms. Jansen. Never had a kidnapping victim turn up and say no, sorry, didn’t happen. If I had, I’d expect her to have an explanation. Without one—”

  “With or without one,” Lara said steadily, “with my reappearance, you have no reason to hold David Kirwen. I’ve read news stories every once in a while about how people who were supposedly murdered have reappeared, and the person convicted of killing them has been released. How is this any different?”

  “They usually have an explanation for where they’ve been. A story that checks out.”

  “And if I don’t? Does that negate the fact that I’m here, healthy, and will swear in court that I wasn’t kidnapped?”

  Washington scowled. “No, it doesn’t, but I don’t like it, and n
either will anybody else. You’d better be damned sure about being willing to take that oath, Ms. Jansen. You’re going to have to.”

  Twenty-One

  The warning in Washington’s voice stayed with Lara, even hours later. She’d sent Kelly to work and borrowed the Nissan to drive out to the state correctional facility in Concord on her own, thoughts spinning.

  It would be easier by far to offer Washington and the press a story they could sink their teeth into. Even given her lack of talent for falsehoods, it would be easier. But she could think of nothing that would stand up to investigation short of claiming she’d gone into the wilderness, built a cabin of trees she’d felled herself, and hunted for every bit of sustenance required over the past year and a half.

  She caught a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror, heart-shaped face and soft hair, and huffed disbelievingly. Anyone who would accept that story probably deserved to be lied to. In desperate circumstances, maybe she could survive in a remote cabin. In desperate circumstances and armed with enough library books, almost certainly. But she didn’t look like a desperate woman, and she doubted anyone would accept such a tall tale. For that matter, some intrepid reporter would probably search for the hand-hewn cabin, and make a story of failing to find it. Saying nothing remained the most practical option, for all that it wasn’t a comfortable one.

  She showed identification at the prison gates—her driver’s license had expired, but Kelly had kept her passport—and was relieved that the guard took no particular interest in her name. Maybe Concord was far enough out of Boston that neither she nor Dafydd were quite local celebrities, or perhaps the job inured one to oddities. Even so, it took a long time to get out of the car after she parked: not so much a fear of being recognized as painfully aware of being a stranger in a strange land.

  As if she could belong at the doors of a human prison any less than she could belong in the fairyland called Annwn. The Barrow-lands, though, had beauty on their side, making them enticing, which no correctional facility could be. But she wanted Dafydd to know she’d returned before he got a call from his lawyer, and so, nervous or not, Lara climbed out of the car.

  The blocky prison doors opened as she did so. A uniformed police officer escorted a young man through, the youth’s expression torn between relief and nervousness at his parole. Lara sympathized: freedom was as frightening as captivity, in its own way. She had had careful constraints on her own life, intended to measure and control her exposure to the lies of well-meaning strangers, and Dafydd had torn those constraints apart. She had never imagined herself a prisoner, but watching the youth’s gaze flicker from the sky to the horizon, watching it linger on her in one part desire and one part apology, she thought she wasn’t so different from him.

  “Lara Jansen,” the officer beside him said, incredulously, and Lara’s attention flinched to him.

  Two days: it had been little more than two days, and well over a year, since she’d seen him. It still took a moment to fumble his name to her lips, surprise working against her more than the passage of time: “Officer Cooper. What are you doing here?”

  “What am I—!” Cooper actually released his prisoner and stepped forward to seize Lara’s shoulders before remembering his duty. He retreated again, still incredulous. “I’m collecting my parolee. What are you doing here? God damn, Miss Jansen, but I was damned near the last upright citizen who saw you. I got interrogated inside-out over you.”

  “I’m sorry.” Lara knotted her hands in front of her stomach, partially in self-defense and partially to prevent herself from blurting offense at his phrase. The twelve-step group members deserved better than relegation to second-class citizenship, though from her previous encounter with this man she doubted an argument would do any good. “Of course you did. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. I’m back now. I just had to … go away for a while.” Had to carried too much weight, jangling her already-stretched nerves, and Cooper seized on the words, though for a different reason.

  “Had to? It wasn’t family getting sick, it wasn’t you getting sick, what kind of ‘had to’ makes you disappear entirely?”

  “I’m sorry, Officer Cooper.” Lara struggled for an explanation, then sighed and gave up with a shrug. “It’s nothing I can talk about.”

  That, astonishingly, worked where a flatter refusal to explain hadn’t. Curiosity flashed through Cooper’s expression: curiosity, then answers he supplied himself. Lara, following flights of fancy, imagined stories ranging from terrible brutality to government operations, and bit back laughter. She ought to have tried that tactic with Detective Washington, rather than insisting he wouldn’t accept the truth. At least now she knew it was a truthful way through the questions and could use it in the future.

  “Sure,” Cooper said awkwardly, then shouldered his charge toward a nearby police car. “I’ll see you, Miss Jansen.”

  “Officer Cooper,” Lara murmured, and watched them go before drawing herself up and entering the prison.

  Dafydd ap Caerwyn, immortal prince of the Seelie court, looked awful. The jewelry he had chosen to wear in the outside world had all been silver and gold, Lara recalled, not iron: not the heavy-looking stuff that weighed him down now. She wondered if it damaged him, though surely the glamour he wore must offer some protection against mortal metals.

  The glamour, though, seemed shabby. It would never fool her eyes again, but watching him shuffle wearily into the visitor’s room, Lara wondered how it could fool anyone. His hair, cropped short now, did nothing to disguise the upswept tips of his ears, and she couldn’t trust her shimmering vision to tell her whether the glamour truly disguised them to human eyes. More than that, though, he simply looked fragile: his color was bad, and made worse by his orange jumpsuit, and his skin looked parched and thin, like it might break with a touch. His slender fingers were sticklike, and he’d lost muscle from his slim form. Even by Seelie standards he seemed delicate, and by human expectations, he looked so weak it was a wonder he’d managed to survive within the penal system. He shuffled to the glass phone boxes and sat without looking up, motions awkward as he lifted the phone with cuffed hands.

  “Hey,” Lara whispered into the phone, and pressed her palm against the glass that separated them.

  Dafydd’s head jerked up, sudden life flooding him. The glamour strengthened, making Lara dizzy, but the astonished brightness in his eyes was worth the oncoming headache. “You look awful,” she whispered through a damp smile. “Orange isn’t your color.”

  “Truer words were never spoken.” Relieved laughter marked lines in Dafydd’s face as Lara crinkled her nose. “Very well,” he whispered back. “No doubt many things far truer have been said. But orange isn’t my color, and—How did you come here? You’re here, you’re alive, Lara, I’ve been so afraid. It’s been so long.” His voice broke and he kept it low with obvious effort, bringing his hand up to match Lara’s through the glass. “Did my father send you back?”

  “No, I … brought myself home. How did you get here?”

  “You—!” Dafydd curled his fingers into a fist against the glass, slow motion filled with uncertainty. “How?”

  Lara glanced toward the security cameras, shaking her head. “I don’t think this is the time to explain. I’m sorry, Dafydd. I’m sorry about how much time passed. I’m sorry you’re in here. I’ve gone to the police already—”

  “Already? How long have you been back?” His face set like he awaited injury, and mild insult washed through Lara.

  “Barely a day. I had to see my mother, and I went to the police this morning, then came out here. I haven’t been ignoring you for weeks.”

  Embarrassment replaced subtle injury and he flattened his hand against the glass again. “I’m sorry. How long …” His gaze went to the cameras, too, then came back to Lara. “How long were you gone?”

  “I came back a few hours after you did, Dafydd. I don’t know why it was so long here. I thought the …” She didn’t want to say magic or spell under the ca
meras or on the phone, uncertain of whether their conversation was being recorded. “I thought it was supposed to keep time the same.”

  “It was, but you were never meant to come back by yourself,” Dafydd said just as circumspectly, and for a delirious moment Lara felt badly for anyone trying to interpret their cryptic discussion. Dafydd met her eyes, intent with apology. “That could have changed things. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s Aerin’s fault, I don’t know what happened, she lost her mind and threw you to the Unsee—to the enemy. I had her arrested.”

  “What!” Dafydd blurted, then cut himself off with a strangled sound. “Lara, it was the compulsion. The one that made me—” He broke off again, glared at the cameras, then looked back at Lara, clearly hoping she followed his thoughts.

  “The one that got you in trouble with Merrick.”

  “Yes.” Dafydd pressed his eyes shut, then leaned in to the glass, fingertips colorless against it. “She wasn’t throwing me to the hordes, Lara, she was acting under my orders. All I wanted was to be at your side, and I couldn’t control my actions. I was afraid what would happen if I reached you.”

  Cold slithered inside Lara’s chest and thrummed out to her fingers, rendering the glass warm beneath them. “Oh.” Silence drew out before she added, “I suppose I shouldn’t have broken her nose, then.”

  Dafydd, astonishingly, laughed aloud. It restored vivaciousness to him, making his skin look less like aged parchment and brightening his eyes. “No, nor arrested her, but I find I can’t hold it against you, when you were acting in my best interests. Thank you. I think.”