The Halo Effect: A Novel

by Anne D. LeClaire

  “Does she have a boyfriend?”

  “No. I mean, she has a group of friends, boys and girls, but no one special. She isn’t dating anyone.” Sophie’s voice was steady, but I heard the urgent undertone and knew she too was aware of the minutes ticking off on the wall clock.

  “What about alcohol? Drugs?”

  I stared out the far window into October darkness. “This is ridiculous.”

  “Please.” Sophie leaned in toward Gordon, her voice pleading. “You aren’t listening to us. Lucy is a good student with a group of good kids as friends. She doesn’t drink or use drugs. She’s the president of SADD, for God’s sake. And she would never just not come home. She always calls if she’s going to be late. Always. Why aren’t you out trying to find out what happened to our daughter?”

  “Mrs. Light, until there is a reason to think otherwise, we start with the premise that she left voluntarily.”

  Until there is a reason to think otherwise. The words hung in the air, stunning us with their implication.

  “What about a driver’s license? Does she have one?”

  “Christ, weren’t you paying attention? She’s fifteen. Of course she doesn’t have a license.”

  Gordon ignored the outburst. “Does Lucy have her own cell phone?”

  “Yes.” I recited the number.

  “Good. This will help. We’ll contact the service, ping her phone. If it’s turned on, we’ll get the exact location. If it’s off, we’ll get the time and location where it was last used.”

  All the times I had wanted to take the damn phone and toss it, now I was grateful Lucy had it, prayed it was on and the battery was charged.

  “Like I said, as soon as this info goes out, we’ll get a report from every hospital and police department in a fifty-mile radius.”

  Sophie rose. “I can’t,” she said to me. “I can’t do this. This can’t be happening.”

  Gordon looked up from the computer. “Please, Mrs. Light. I promise you, we’ll do everything possible to find your daughter. Believe me, I know what you must be feeling.”

  “Do you?”

  He started to say something then stopped. “Just a few more questions. Help us out here, okay.”

  Sophie sank back into her chair, the little fight she had in her gone.

  “What about a credit or debit card? Does she have one?”

  Sophie nodded. She found her purse, handed two cards to Gordon. “She’s on both of our accounts.”

  Gordon copied down the numbers. The radio on his hip squawked—the words indistinguishable—and without looking, he reached down and lowered the volume.

  “I’m almost done here. One last thing. Is there a recent photo of Lucy you could let us have?”

  Sophie left and reappeared moments later with two photos—one from Lucy’s bureau, the photo taken of the three of us in Maine, and the other her freshman class picture—and laid them on the table. Lucy smiled up at the three of us.

  “We’ll get these back to you,” Gordon said as he picked them up.

  After he left, Sophie came to me, leaned against me. “This can’t be happening,” she said again.

  By the next morning, the news had spread throughout the town. Tracking dogs were brought in by the state police, searched our grounds. Our basement. Our basement, for God’s sake. A rapid response was set in motion. Volunteers organized a search team to aid the police. By nightfall, posters of Lucy appeared tacked to telephone poles and trees around town. We grew used to the phone ringing, to police arriving and departing. We were again asked to account for our whereabouts the day Lucy disappeared. They asked if there was anyone who could verify my actions that day.

  “We have to ask these questions, you understand,” Gordon said, his voice apologetic. He was our liaison and kept us informed of every step of the investigation. He reported that Lucy’s friends, her fellow students, and faculty were being interviewed again. He reviewed with us the press release appealing for information before it was sent out. He told us that security tapes from the school had been gathered and played and that they were continuing to amass what he called “electronic and forensic footprints.” To no effect. All these efforts resulted only in dead ends. Lucy’s cell phone held no signal. There were no ATM withdrawals or charges on the credit card. No reports of accidents involving a fifteen-year-old girl matching Lucy’s description.

  That first week, friends and parents of Lucy’s classmates stopped by. They dropped off platters of food. Casseroles and cakes, roast chicken, a huge pot of chowder, the kind of things people brought after a death, something I supposed I should have felt grateful for but that only added to a sense of violation. Most of the food ended up tossed in the garbage, just like the lamb tagine I had scraped from the pot in what felt like a lifetime past. The Before life.

  Amy drove down from Maine. She helped deal with the reporters—“the cameras,” she called them—who swarmed into town, jackals on the scent of a story: Young, pretty white girl missing. Daughter of an internationally noted artist. There was speculation about kidnapping. We were walked through the procedure and told that if a kidnapper got in touch with us we were to notify them and absolutely not try to handle it on our own. News vans sprouting satellite dishes rotated from the street outside our home to the police station to the school, where they interviewed Lucy’s friends, her teachers. Each time I opened the daily paper or flicked on the television news and saw a picture of Lucy staring back at me I felt a punch in my solar plexus. They’d used the class picture Sophie had given to Gordon and another of her in shorts and tank top holding a tennis racket. Where they had gotten the last one I had no idea. One of her friends I supposed. Amy manned the phone, urged us to rest, to eat. But we slept little, subsisting on endless mugs of coffee. Sophie swung between hope and fear. Several times I found her in Lucy’s room, a rosary in her hands. The days stretched out in one long nightmare that eventually ended, only to be replaced by a far more horrific one.

  “Can I get you another?”

  The bartender’s voice pulled me back. “What?”

  She nodded toward my glass. “Another?”

  I needed to get out of there. Without a word, I tossed a twenty on the bar and headed for home.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Rain wished she was at home, wanted only to be left alone, but it was crystal this was so not going to happen.

  “How could you forget?” Her mother, as usual, was on a rant. “I told you and told you what time we needed to leave, and you said you’d be ready. Now look at us. We’re already fifteen minutes late.”

  Fifteen minutes late because earlier they’d fought about what she was wearing. She’d put on her favorite pair of cutoffs, the ones long enough to cover her scars, but her mother had said they were inappropriate and had told her to go put on a dress. A dress. Like that was going to happen. She compromised by putting on a denim skirt.

  “It’s bad form to be late for an appointment,” her mother said in her scolding voice. Her furious voice.

  Bad form? Really? “My B.”

  “And drop the attitude, Rain. It’s not productive.”

  Seriously? Seriously? What was so totally not productive was wasting a Friday afternoon. Right now Christy and Jeannie were at the mall scoping the stores for sales, Jeannie probably looking for something to lift from Macy’s or CVS. They had started stealing a couple of months back, and Rain could not believe how easy it was. Like the stores were asking for it.

  Her mother slowed the car to check a road sign. “Cedar Street. This is it. Now look for the third house on the right.” They passed a brick ranch. “That’s one,” her mother counted.

  Rain dropped her hand to her upper thigh and pressed her fingers against the cut she’d made earlier that morning.

  “That’s two. And here it is. Three.” Her mother swung the car into a gravel drive and switched off the ignition. Hands locked on the steering wheel, she twisted her shoulders so that she could face Rain. “Listen to me, young
lady. I want you to give this a chance.”

  Rain stared straight ahead through the windshield and eyed a two-story Cape with clapboards painted white and green shutters framing the windows. She had expected an office building or something in the new medical center out by the highway. “This is it? The shrink’s office is in her house? What kind of shrink has her office in her house?”

  “Doctor,” her mother said automatically, completely missing the point as usual.

  “Whatev.”

  “And yes. Dr. Mallory sees patients in her home. Which is so much nicer. More relaxing, don’t you think?”

  If her mother had a clue what she was thinking, she’d probably have her shipped off and locked up in some hospital for loonies, which was exactly what Sally Sampson’s parents had done to her last year. A major freak-out over drugs or something. Now Sally was at some lame school for troubled girls. Just shoot me now.

  “When I spoke with Dr. Mallory, she said we were to use the side entrance. She said she’d be waiting for us.”

  We? Us? No way Rain was going in there with her mother. “I’m going in alone.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m not a baby.”

  “I know that. I just thought you’d feel better if I came with you.”

  Like she was going to let that happen. She darted an over my cold corpse look at her mother.

  “Okay, then, if you’re absolutely sure.” Her mother released one hand from the wheel and lifted her hair off her neck, flipping it to one side. She looked tired. Rain could almost pity her. Last summer, when she’d been looking for a bracelet she wanted to borrow, she’d come across a book in her mother’s top bureau drawer, stashed beneath a pile of scarves like it was some kind of porn. How to Look Ten Years Younger. Well, whatever advice the author gave, it wasn’t working. Her mother looked like hell. It had to suck to be old and getting older.

  “I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “I’ll walk home,” she said, like that was even a possibility. She knew her mother would be waiting when she came out.

  “Please, Rain. Try. Okay? Give this a chance.” Her mother’s voice had morphed from tight impatience to that pleading, weak note that Rain hated. She reached over and rested her hand on Rain’s arm. Rain remained completely still—frozen—and finally her mother withdrew her hand.

  “Yeah. Okay,” she said, her tone sullen. She unlatched the door and escaped before her mother could kiss her or give her one of her pep talks. Or worse, cry. Her mother meant well. In her most generous mood, Rain allowed her that, but she was missing some essential gene in the mothering department. I’ve tried with her, Rain once heard her say to her friend Joyce. It isn’t as if I haven’t tried. As if mothering were like baking a cake using the recipe in some old grease-stained cookbook, but in spite of following all directions, Rain had still come out of the oven lumpy and half-cooked because there was some essential ingredient that was missing from the mix. So Rain’s fault, not her mother’s. When she was younger, Rain used to study the other mothers she saw around town and try to imagine each of them as her own mother, as if they were auditioning for the part. A mother who wouldn’t criticize and who always thought to bring extra boxes of juice to the playground. A mother who would get the recipe right.

  A narrow brick walk rimmed by forsythias past bloom curved to the side door. She could feel her mother’s eyes on her back as she headed toward the house. Like what? She was going to run off and the ditch the appointment? Not that the idea hadn’t occurred to her. It would serve her mother right if she did run away, take off for some city and live on the streets. It drove her bug-fuck nuts the way her mother was always lecturing her. As long as you live in this house, young lady, you will do as you’re told. In spite of the antiperspirant she’d applied that morning, a trickle of sweat dampened her underarms. Just as she reached the door, it swung open. A child stood there. A child with gray hair.

  “You must be Rain. I’m Dr. Mallory.”

  This was a huge mistake. Colossal.

  “Please, come in.” Dr. Mallory beckoned her into a narrow hall. Rain glimpsed a padded bench along one wall and a carpet on the floor that she bet was one of those cheap knockoff Orientals. A single door in the center of the wall to her left was open, revealing an office. The place smelled weird. Doggy. Her stomach began to ache. The trickle of sweat had turned into a river. She pressed her palm hard against her thigh and followed, her gaze now fastened on the shrink’s shoes, black with flat, squished heels like someone’s great-aunt from the last century. Or one of the old Italian grandmothers at Mass.

  Dr. Mallory stepped aside and motioned for her to enter the office. The dog smell was stronger here. There were two upholstered chairs, a moss-green crocheted throw folded over the back of one. A table placed between the chairs held a square glass vase filled with white tulips and a copper bowl filled with cellophane-wrapped butterscotch candies, the kind her granddad always brought when he used to visit. On the opposite wall there was a bookcase with four shelves, each one crammed with books. An old analog clock and a framed photo of a full moon rising over the Port Fortune harbor rested on the top. A small desk was placed at an angle in one corner. And in another corner, she saw a pile of cushions and a wicker basket containing children’s toys. Rain’s skin tightened.

  “Where would you like to sit?”

  Anywhere but in this stupid room. She plopped down on the chair without the crocheted throw. She expected Dr. Mallory to claim the chair at the desk, but instead she took the other chair, slipping off her ugly shoes and tucking her legs beneath her, like a child would. A bubble of laughter caught in Rain’s throat. This was a shrink who had shrunk.

  Dr. Mallory picked up the copper bowl and held it toward Rain. “Would you like a candy?”

  “No.” The cut on Rain’s thigh began to sting, and she pressed her fingers against it. She looked around, avoiding the shrink’s gaze.

  “Maybe later.” Dr. Mallory placed the bowl back on the table.

  “Do you have a dog?”

  Dr. Mallory smiled. “I do. Are you allergic?”

  “No. It just smells really doggy in here.”

  “Does it bother you? If it does, I can put him in another room.”

  “It’s in here?”

  “Yes.” As if called, a small dog crawled out from behind the desk and regarded Rain with huge brown eyes.

  “His name’s Walker.” At the sound of his name, the dog padded across the room, bounced really, long ears swinging with each step. “Short for his AKC name. Golden Prince Johnny Walker.”

  “Like the booze?” Back before he switched to beer, her father swilled the stuff.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s lame.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Who names their dog after booze?”

  “What do you think would be a good name for him?”

  “I dunno.” Really? Really? Were they going to spend the whole session talking about this ratty animal? Not that Rain gave a shit if they did, but her mother would go into orbit if she learned this was what she was spending money for. Good money, as she had reminded her about every two minutes. Not that Rain had any intention of sharing anything that went on here with anyone, especially not her parents.

  “Tell me about your name. I’ve never met anyone named Rain before.”

  “Whatev.” The dog stared at her, creeping her out. The whole place was creepy. She hated it. Hated everything about the room and everything about being here. This totally blew.

  “Is this a name your parents gave you when you were born, or is it one you chose for yourself?”

  As if her parents would allow her to change her name. She could just imagine the freak-out if she even suggested it. “My parents gave it to me.” Rain knew the whole pathetically stupid story about how she was named, about how on one anniversary her parents had taken a trip to Nantucket and how it had stormed the entire weekend and how they’d spent almost every minute in their room
at the inn (a very romantic inn, her mother always said when she told the story in case Rain missed the point), and how that was where she had been conceived and so they’d named her Rain. As if she wanted to know that kind of creepy detail about her parents. She hated that story. Hated imagining her parents in the inn on Nantucket. The whole thing was too gross for words. Major gross-out. Colossal.

  “How old are you, Rain?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Any brothers or sisters?”

  “One brother.”

  “And how old is he?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Is his name Thunder?”

  “What?”

  “I meant it to be funny. Rain. Thunder.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I get it.” A joke. Epically stupid and not the least bit funny. The spiky hand inched along the face of the clock atop the bookcase. Rain pressed harder against her thigh.

  “What is his name?”

  “My brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Duane.” Duane the Lame.

  Dr. Mallory observed her for a moment. “I know it’s your parents’ idea for you to see me.”

  Not her parents. Her mother.

  “How do you feel about that?”

  Rain picked at her thumbnail. She thought it was colossally idiotic. “I dunno.” She darted another glance around the room, noticed a basket of magazines next to the shrink’s desk, a copy of Psychology Today on top.

  “How do you think I may be able to help you?”

  Rain shrugged.

  “Did your mother tell you anything about me?”

  She slouched down in the chair. “She said you were a shrink and I had to come here.” Jesus, it must bite big-time to be an adult in such a small body.