by Karen Ellis
“If she wants to. Why not?”
Elsa says, “She has a strong imagination,” thinking that that’s a good thing. Maybe she fought Nelson. Maybe she’s struggling, internally, to keep hold.
Becky settles her hand on a biology textbook open on the desk. “She had a test on Monday. She was up late studying the night before.”
A boy’s voice sails in from outside—“Mo-ommm!”—and Becky’s whole body reacts. She throws open Hope’s window. “What is it, Sam?”
“We didn’t know where you were.”
“I’m right here. Down in a minute, okay?” She leaves the window open onto a lush view of blue hydrangeas. “The boys go back and forth between trying to pretend nothing’s happening and worrying they’ll lose me next. Look around all you want. I’ve got to get back outside. If I see Ernie I’ll tell him you’re here.”
As soon as Becky’s gone, Elsa says to Lex, “Let’s go find him.”
He nods but continues to study the wall illustrations. “These pictures are so—” he begins but is interrupted by Elsa’s ringing phone.
She glances at the incoming number, tells Lex, “I’ll catch up with you outside.”
He leaves and she sits on the edge of Hope’s bed, her weight sinking into the soft mattress. Feeling that she shouldn’t be here, but that she can’t pull herself away.
“Agent Myers?” A young man’s voice, familiar, deep yet uncertain.
“Charlie?”
“You said to call if I thought of anything else.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s not about Ruby, though, and maybe I shouldn’t have bothered you, but I thought—”
“Just say it.”
“Mel was supposed to meet me and she never showed up. I’ve been calling her but she doesn’t answer.”
“I don’t understand—you made plans with Mel since I saw you?”
“She texted me!”
“When?”
“Right after I left the police station. She asked me to meet her on the steps of the Met. I don’t know why, but I said I’d go; I mean, I like her. Anyway, maybe she just blew me off. I wouldn’t blame her. But to be honest, I’m kind of paranoid now about not telling you everything, know what I mean?”
“Thanks, Charlie.”
“Should I call you if I hear from her?”
“Yes. Yes, please do.”
Trembling, Elsa dials Mel and leaves another message: “Mellie, will you please call me?”
Next, she tries Tara, who answers with “Did you get my message?”
“Yes, I got it. How’s Dad doing?”
“The same. Elsa, I can’t believe this, all of it, happening all at once, and I—”
Elsa blurts out, “You hit her? You actually fucking hit her!”
“I reacted. I was upset. I’m her mother and—”
“I can’t talk to you about this right now” is the best Elsa can come up with in lieu of the venom simmering on her tongue. No child deserves to be hit when it isn’t in self-defense. But this isn’t the time to explain that to her self-righteous, martyred, pampered sister. “I just wanted to make sure she’s with you.”
“She’s at the hotel.”
“You saw her there?”
“I’ve been here all day, with Dad. She stormed out of here like a, like a…well, I just assume she’s at the hotel. Where else would she be?”
“Call her. If she doesn’t answer, call the hotel. If she doesn’t answer the room phone, call the front desk and ask them to go into the room.”
“Why?”
Elsa doesn’t want to invoke Charlie’s name; there’s no time for Tara’s drama. “Just do it.”
“Fine. I’ll do it. But—”
“Call me after.” Elsa hangs up.
Flames of worry lick the edges of her determination not to worry, to keep things in perspective, on the principle that 95 percent of the time, people worry over nothing. Tara will call back and report that Mel has been stewing in the hotel room all day, maybe racking up a big bill on room service in revenge. Elsa feels satisfaction in believing that Mel won’t have taken being hit lightly. Mel will have reacted, rejected. Unlike Elsa, who quietly absorbed every assault.
She goes outside to look for Lex and is immediately drawn by the unmistakable sound of Greenberg’s voice booming across the lawn. Lex is with him.
“Yello!” Greenberg greets her. “I hear our Mr. Ishmael Locke has himself a different real name.”
“Unfortunately,” she answers, “that’s how it’s turning out.”
Lex asks Greenberg, “That him?” in continuation of a conversation Elsa missed. Greenberg nods his large bushy head.
“Yup, that’s Ernie. Known each other since we were kids. That’s how I know Sang McCracken, since you mentioned it.” Another reference to something Elsa must have missed. “Met Sang at one of Ernie’s annual Fourth of July barbecues.”
Striding across the lawn in their direction, the local detective looks like any friendly dad in baggy jeans, sneakers, and a fleece zipper-vest over a T-shirt. But when he speaks, the sharp clip of his words betrays an efficiency you learn only on the job.
“You the folks from New York City?”
Elsa introduces herself. Their hands meet, both gripping harder and a moment longer than necessary. She asks, “Anything new since we spoke?”
“Unfortunately, no. We’ve got a task force put together in town. Why don’t you folks come in with what you have; we’ll put everything on the table and see what we can make of it.”
To Lex, Elsa says, “Let’s find Joan. She’ll want to be there.”
The three investigators pile into Elsa’s rental car and head toward town along verdurous country roads. On the way, Elsa’s cell marimbas a call from Tara. Driving, she says to Lex, “Answer that and put it on speaker. It’s my sister.”
“Okay.” He fishes in her bag and finds her phone.
Tara wails, “Mel’s gone.”
“You’re sure?”
“She isn’t in our room. She never even went to the hotel. She isn’t with any of her friends and she won’t answer my calls. I don’t know what to do now.” Tara groans. “How do I find her? How did you know she wouldn’t be there, Elsa?”
“I didn’t know. I was hoping she’d be with you.”
“She isn’t. What do I do now? And don’t tell me that teenagers take off sometimes. Some do, some don’t—and Mel doesn’t.”
“I’m going to trace her cell phone,” Elsa promises. “I’ll call you as soon as I find out where she is.”
“You didn’t answer me. How did you know to ask me?”
“Talk to you later.” Elsa hangs up and catches a glimpse of her phone’s wallpaper photo before Lex drops the cell back into her bag: Mel at four, dressed all in princess pink, waving a sparkly plastic star-topped scepter that Elsa bought as a gift. Everyone starts innocent and sweet. Everyone.
“Your niece?” Joan asks from the backseat.
“Yes.”
“How old?”
“Sixteen.”
Lex asks, “When did this happen?”
“That’s why Charlie called me before. Mel asked him to meet her at the Metropolitan Museum at about one. She never showed.”
“And he actually went out of his way to let you know?” Lex says.
“Scared him before, I guess.”
Elsa and Lex and Joan lapse into silence as they near the Bennington station house. Little explosions of heat pop along Elsa’s skin as she struggles to convince herself that her niece’s absence and the girls’ abductions are completely unconnected. She steadies her breath and refuses to allow fear to overtake her, reminding herself that Mel’s silence is probably intended as punishment for betraying her trust about the drugs. The kid’s pissed; who wouldn’t be? That’s all it is. Nothing bad has happened to Mellie.
But each time one of those girls fell off the radar, wasn’t there a plausible explanation at first? She’s busy. Her phone’s bat
tery ran out. You hurt her, offended her, ignored her, and now it’s your turn to see how it feels. And then, suddenly, she isn’t ignoring you—she’s gone.
27
Mel knows that she was in a forest before and that now she’s in a cave: musty damp in her nose and on her face and seeping through her clothes.
At first, when he takes off the blindfold, she can’t see anything. The complete darkness is blacker than anything she’s ever experienced, a not-seeing that confuses her. Then, gradually, her eyes adjust, which must mean light is filtering in from somewhere.
He pushes her down so she’s sitting and she feels sharp rocks through the ass of her jeans. Her bound wrists pull tighter in this position.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“Say hello to your sisters.”
“I don’t have any sisters. I’m an only child. I’m—”
“Shut up.”
The way he says it, she does.
She starts to make out shapes in the granular light. He’s crossed the room and is hunched over something—a toolbox, she thinks, its red color shining through the dull lightlessness of the cave. Something yellow and crumpled near the red box: a nest of rough fabric. A towel, she thinks. Half off the towel, a book.
“Damn it.” He slams shut his toolbox. Lifts the towel, looking for something. The book flips over: The Invisible Man. A curl of panic as she remembers she’s supposed to read the other one, the Ralph Ellison one, this summer for next year’s English and she was actually looking forward to it, but now…
“What’s that about?” Thinking that maybe she can get his mind off whatever tool he’s found missing, if that’s what just upset him. She doesn’t like that he’s looking for tools at all, considering. “The book you’re reading. I mean, it’s so dark in here, how do you read? Unless you have a flashlight.”
“I do have a flashlight, since you asked.”
“What’s the book about?”
Hunched on bent legs, he flattens a hand on the ground to steady himself. Looks at her, his button catching stray light again so this time she can see the face of a little girl. “A scientist uses optics to alter his refractive index so that no one else can see him. That’s what he tries to do, but it doesn’t work out. This is the third time I’ve read it. Great book.”
“I like to read too. I mean, sometimes not even for school. I like to read in this one chair we have in the living room right next to the window.”
“Not me. I like privacy, quiet.”
“I like the light from the window.”
“My room was the best spot. I put a sign on my door that said Quiet Zone but they just ripped it down.”
“Who did?”
“Excuse me.” An electric undercurrent in his tone now. He stands abruptly, crouching under the cave ceiling. “I left the nails in the car.”
She makes out the whites of his eyes shifting in her direction, stopping when they land on her. He thinks a moment and then he reaches for something, a coil of rope, which he pulls out of a shadow. He ties her ankles together and says, “No funny business while I’m gone.”
“I don’t have any sisters,” she says.
He hunches across the cave quickly. She hears something rip. He returns with a piece of duct tape and presses it hard on her mouth, his large hand covering her nose, and she can’t breathe.
She can’t breathe.
Then he lets go and dank air surges into her nose.
He crosses the cave again and clicks open his toolbox and suddenly a flashlight beam emanates from his hand. He waves it around the cave, saying, “Take a look. Those are your sisters.”
The light lands on the back of a girl lying on her side, brown hair pooled at her neck, the long gentle slope from her shoulder to her waist, her legs ranged long across the rocky dirt floor, cinched at the ankles by filthy rope. Mel watches the back of the girl’s ribs, waiting to see them move, looking for even the tiniest evidence of breathing.
The beam jerks to a part of the cave she didn’t notice before. In the near-total darkness, the flashlight illuminates another girl. Frazzled blond hair, tattoos up one side of her neck. Bound and connected to some kind of noose that forces her to pitch forward. The rope around her wrists is entwined with several bracelets: the rubber kind they give out at school events, this one yellow, a charm bracelet, and some metal ones, the kind that jangle. Her wide eyes stare fiercely at Mel. When she realizes that Mel sees her, she blinks. Mel blinks in response.
“Chill, girls.” He moves toward the mouth of the tunnel until it swallows him and he’s all but gone except for his voice, trailing. “When I get back, we are gonna have some fun.”
Near the tunnel’s entry sits a stack of wood planks—is that what he needs the nails for? Is he planning to seal them in? Only when she can’t hear him anymore does her brain stop spinning, and then a different, more frantic kind of panic twitches through her. She breathes as loudly as she can through her nose, in and out and in and out, trying to communicate with the other girl. The one who’s still alive. When the girl reciprocates in kind, Mel’s eyes flood and she drops her head forward and forces herself to stop crying. If her nose gets stuffed she won’t be able to breathe, and she won’t make it through the next ten minutes.
28
The pillared limestone building in the center of town temporarily housing the local task force reminds Elsa of an old country bank: ornate ceilings and tall windows opening onto a pastoral view. And the windows are clean, sparkling with sunlight. It’s nice here, really nice, and yet the realization that she’s more at home in the cramped-space, grimy-windowed fogginess of the city makes her feel urban, ruined, and separate. She can’t stop thinking about what she did to herself this morning, cutting her leg. A scab is starting to form—she feels the tight pull across her skin—but nonetheless, beneath the film of healing, the voracious jaws are already opening.
Bennett is talking, catching them up, and Elsa forces herself to pay attention. But she thinks and thinks and thinks about Mel. Who hasn’t called anyone back. Whose cell signal has still not been triangulated with enough precision to pin down a location. All they’ve been able to ascertain so far is that the phone is still somewhere on the East Coast.
No, Elsa assures herself, nothing has happened to Mel; she’s just headstrong, flipping her mother the bird. She doesn’t realize how worried they are about her; if she knew, she’d get in touch.
“We know that right after Hope dropped the chalk,” Bennett says, standing at an easel, peeling to a blank page, starting a new list, “she turned toward the woods. Seems we can all agree that that edge of the woods is too densely traversed to pick out individual footprints, but given that the first ring, the copper one, was dropped five hundred yards in, when two sets of tracks are consistent, we know that he led her from the road into the woods. Deeper in, we find the second ring, the glass one.” Purple, which according to Becky is often worn on Hope’s right forefinger. “So we’re guessing he’s got her cuffed, and she’s dropping rings because she can.”
Holding the scrap of blue chalk in the palm of her hand, Elsa wonders how the girl managed to reach into her pocket to get it. But of course, that’s assuming she had it in her pocket to begin with, or that she even had a pocket; maybe she was holding it in her hand when he took her. Elsa can see it: The animated Hope who has come alive in her mind—part herself, part Ruby, part Mel, a girl built of impressions—moving languidly toward school, in no hurry, having missed the bus anyway. An idea enters her thoughts. About to draw, she digs into her pocket for the chalk and then …what? Sammy Nelson, aka Ishmael Locke, appears in front of her. How does he do it? Does he ask for directions? Or does he come from behind and surprise her? If he surprises her, she drops the chalk before she manages to slip off the first ring. She’s smart and intuitive enough to already be thinking about dropping clues. She’s right about him. But why doesn’t she run? Or does she try?
Without thinking, Elsa reaches down to scratch her le
g, and then she corrects the impulse by folding her hands together on the table. She looks at her phone, faceup beside her. It doesn’t ring.
“There are caves in these woods,” Bennett finishes, “and we think there’s a good chance he’s got her—or them—in one of them. So that’s where we are.” He turns to the New York contingent, seated together across the table.
Elsa takes the lead, fast-forwarding through Ruby’s disappearance and its connection to Sammy Nelson, who he is, what he’s done in the past, and her theory as to his modus operandi. Bennett’s people pay close attention, taking in the seriousness of how the two cases appear to be converging. And then the ruminative silence is interrupted by an old-fashioned ringtone that spills from Bennett’s cell phone.
He listens, nods, hangs up. Announces: “Someone’s turned up at the house with another piece of Hope’s jewelry.”
A rush to the door as they all hurry back to their cars.
Elsa’s nearly at her Beetle, its top bright in the blazing sun, when her cell rings—a caller with an upstate area code. She answers immediately, “Special Agent Myers,” hoping it’s Mel, or about Mel, or at least about the whereabouts of her phone.
