by Nancy Rue
“So you just let her,” Nick said. “A sixteen-year-old girl—”
“Nick.” Ed shifted on the corner of the table. “Let’s hear the rest.”
“That’s basically it,” Ricky said. “It was late that night, so we only went as far as Baltimore. I got us a motel room.”
“My daughter slept in the same room with you?”
“Same room? Same bed.”
I didn’t understand what Nick said next. It was more a primal animal cry than words as he hurled himself at Ricky and grabbed the front of his T-shirt, strangling Darth Vader with his fingers. By the time Ed got his arms around Nick’s shoulders to pull him off, Nick had Ricky up and off his feet, flailing like a hooked fish.
“Get off him!” Ed said as he spun Nick away.
Ricky backed up against the wall and smoothed his hand down the front of his shirt. His face was pinched and white.
Ricky Zabriski was rude and sullen, but he wasn’t capable of the crimes we’d attributed to him.
In that moment, I knew he didn’t have Tristan.
Once Ricky was hustled out of the room and Nick calmed down enough to listen, Ed told us we could press charges against the kid but he didn’t think they could make it stick. With his eyes riveted to Nick, he said they would check out the motel where Ricky said he’d last seen Tristan and check out his alibi for the time since then. If nothing stacked up against him, they’d have to let him go. Nick stormed out of the station.
I started to follow, but Ed said my name. His voice returned to the quiet level I could rest against and get my bearings.
“You okay?” he said.
“No,” I said, “but at least I know he didn’t hurt her.”
He let himself smile. “Mother’s intuition?”
“Maybe.”
“Actually I think you’re right. But as long as she’s out there alone, there’s still the potential for danger.”
“We have to find her.”
“We’re going to keep doing all we can,” Ed said. “I’ll call you as soon as we learn anything from the motel.”
As I walked toward the car where Nick was waiting in the first anxious light of morning, I felt that something had shifted. Maybe the earth, maybe the tide. Maybe me. Whatever it was, I had to go with it.
Nick didn’t speak as we drove the few blocks to the house. He went straight upstairs to shower and left for work with only three words for me.
“This isn’t over.”
To his retreating back, I whispered, “It won’t be until I find her.”
Hazel hailed me in the parking lot at Lord Baltimore, and I invited her over for coffee. I was in the middle of telling her and Aunt Pete about our meeting with Ricky when Ed called. His voice was so calm I knew he didn’t have encouraging news.
“I talked to the manager at the North Avenue Motel,” he said. “Couldn’t get much out of him, but he said two kids registered there August 3 as Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”
“And he didn’t think—”
“Said he knew they were fake names, but what did he care. The girl had cash.”
“The girl paid?” I said. My fingers tightened on the phone until they hurt.
“Yeah, this kid’s a loser. Anyway, he said the boy checked out about noon the next day, but he didn’t see the girl.” Ed gave a soft grunt. “I’m sure he didn’t watch over them from the window.”
“How do we know it was Tristan and Ricky?” I said. And then I winced. It was the first time I’d used their names together. I hated the sound.
“I faxed them the flier and a photo of Zabriski,” Ed said, almost reluctantly I thought. “He identified them.”
Neither of us said anything for a moment. All I could do was ache.
“I wish I had more to tell you,” Ed said finally. “Thing is, Zabriski’s story checks out, including his claim that he was with a relative in West Virginia until she kicked him out. There’s no evidence that he wasn’t just going back to his mother because he was out of money.”
“You have to let him go,” I said.
When I hung up, I had a clear picture of Sarah Zabriski finally getting her child back. I wanted to be her.
“Not good, huh?” Between the early hour and Aunt Pete’s brew, Hazel’s voice was doubly gravelly.
“Not totally bad, either,” I said. “She was there, at that motel, but the manager didn’t see Ricky leave with her.”
“What was the name of the place?” Hazel said.
I had to think. “North Avenue Motel.”
She left the kitchen, and I sat back down at the table across from Aunt Pete.
“What are you gonna do now?” she said.
I stared miserably into my mug, watching the cream do its sickening swirl. “What can I do?”
“Well, you can’t just sit here with your teeth in your mouth and one leg as long as the other.” Aunt Pete’s voice shook, and her eyes grew stormy, probably, I thought, at her failure to keep voice, tears, and my life under control.
“Believe me,” I said, “if there was anything I could do, I’d be doing it. It’s driving me crazy. She’s alone.”
“From what you’ve said about this kid, she’s probably just as well off.”
I pushed the mug away. “She even paid for their motel room.”
“That’s cause enough to put him behind bars if you ask me,” Hazel growled from the doorway. She crossed to the table and put a map in front of me, printed out on the computer. She poked at a highlighted spot.
“What?” I said.
“North Avenue Motel. Not in the best part of Baltimore, but it shouldn’t be that hard to find.” Hazel produced another sheet of paper. “I printed out written directions too. I don’t know which one’s easier for you to follow.”
I stared at the tangled maze of lines on the map and then at her. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying what you’re thinking.” Hazel leaned on the table, bracelets clanking, talons tapping. “You want to go to this place and find out for yourself. There might be somebody else there who remembers Tristan.”
“Maids,” Aunt Pete put in. “Maintenance people.”
“You think I should drive to Baltimore?”
“Don’t you?” Hazel said.
I found myself nodding. “You’ll go with me, won’t you?” I said.
“Who’s gonna pick the kids up from school?” Aunt Pete said. “If you get a lead, you might not make it back in time.”
“I’ll take care of the kids,” Hazel said with a final glissando of her fingernails on the table. “You just go and don’t think about anything else. Focus on Tristan.”
I looked at the map again. Interstate signs and thick highway lines seemed raised like friezes. I never drove out of Sussex County if I could help it. Not alone. Not in traffic that made me feel as if I was suffocating.
“If you can make a cold call on Sarah Zabriski,” Hazel said, “you can do this.”
“I’ll pack you some sandwiches,” Aunt Pete said.
I had no choice. Not because they were ready to load me bodily into the car and follow me to the state line if necessary. Because my daughter’s voice was on pieces of paper folded and tucked into my pockets. Because I could hear her whispering in my ear, Come after me. No matter what it takes, come after me.
I looked at Aunt Pete, who was piling salami onto kaiser rolls.
“If Nick calls—” I said.
“I’ll tell him not to worry about you because God’s bridging the gap.”
I hugged her, and I took my sandwiches and my map, and with terror already pricking beads of sweat from the lines of my hands, I headed for Baltimore.
Chapter Fifteen
All the way there I shook every time I had to take the speedometer over forty-five and cringed when eighteen-wheelers sandwiched me between them. Only Hazel’s map and Aunt Pete’s prayer and Tristan’s calling in my head got me to the North Avenue Motel without falling apart. But when I pulled into the parking lot, I almo
st did.
The motel was situated perpendicular to North Avenue, as if it were ashamed to face the street with its two double-story rows of beige dinginess. A dribble of cars between the buildings and a failing neon sign on an opaquely filthy office window were the only signs of life. Tristan would never have stayed in a place like this.
I could barely bring myself to get out of the car and push open the smeared glass door. The odor of cigarette smoke nearly knocked me backward. As I crossed to the counter, I saw the telltale gray curl rising in the air before I spotted the bald head of a man watching a black-and-white TV.
He punched it off when I said, “Excuse me,” and turned to squint at me through the cloud he’d created.
“You want a room?” he said.
Are you kidding? I wanted to say to him.
“How many people?”
“None,” I said.
He adjusted a murky pair of glasses to peer at me. His fingers were nicotine yellow to match the whites of his eyes.
“So?” he said.
“So.” I fumbled in my purse and withdrew one of the fliers Hazel had made. “Have you seen this girl?”
He looked from me to the flier twice and then pawed through a pile of papers on the desk behind the counter. He pulled out a curled-up black-and-white version of the flier and flattened it onto the counter. There was a brown splash-shaped stain right next to Tristan’s picture. I wanted to snatch it from him and clean it with my mother-saliva.
“She’s the one the cop called about this morning,” the man said. “She your kid?”
My eyes filled.
“I already told that cop everything I know. Came in here with some guy, registered as …”
I listened again to the story, straining to hear something, anything, that he hadn’t told Ed. It was almost word for word what Ed had reported to me.
When he was finished, he retrieved the cigarette he’d left burning in an ashtray near the TV and stuck it in his mouth, complete with an inch of ash.
“Are you sure you didn’t see her when he checked out?” I said.
He pulled the cigarette out and turned his head to exhale. A small fan on the desk blew it back at me.
“I never saw her after that night when she came down here asking for directions.”
I gripped the counter with both hands. “Directions? To where?”
“I don’t know.” He looked at me as if I’d asked him to name the Supreme Court justices.
“Was it a store? A restaurant?”
“It was just an address.” He took another pull on the cigarette and dropped it into a plastic foam cup on the counter. It sizzled in something. “Like I’m gonna remember.”
“Please,” I said. My voice broke, dropping my words helplessly onto the counter. “I have to find my daughter.”
“So what do you want me to do, go under hypnosis? I’m telling you, I don’t remember.”
I watched the smoke from a new cigarette shoot out of his nose. Tristan must have come away from him with eyes stinging from the refuse of both his habit and his rudeness. To my knowledge, no one had ever spoken to my precious daughter this way.
“Thank you for your time,” I said. I reached out to pick up the Tristan flier, which was lying next to the faxed one, her picture vibrant with color in contrast to the blurry black-and-white that matched everything in this place. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been the girl in the color photo. What about now? Had breathing smoke and suffering the contempt of people like this man faded her to gray?
I picked up the faxed copy and crumpled it in my hand.
“Will you please post this?” I said, nodding at the color one. “And put my phone number on it.”
I recited my cell and our home phone numbers slowly while he wrote them down. He reached out and punched the paper into the wall by the counter with a thumbtack, clearly ready to be done with the conversation.
“Thank you,” I said.
I pushed open the door, ready to take a gulp of fresh air, when he said, “Hey.”
I turned.
“I think it was on North Howard. Near the hospital.”
Then he turned away. I heard the television as I hurried to the car.
I locked myself inside the Blazer and blasted the air conditioner until I felt as if I could breathe again. The map shook in my hands as I searched for North Howard Street.
Maybe I should call Nicky. Soltani Casters was on the outskirts of Baltimore, only thirty minutes away.
Or maybe Ed. He needed to know what Mr. Chain Smoker had told me.
Some place on North Howard. Near some hospital. I didn’t even know what to look for.
But I was going to look for it, whatever it was. I blinked my eyes clear and trailed my finger across the map until I found North Howard Street. It actually wasn’t far and involved only one turn.
I looked once more at the shabby motel where my daughter’s journey had begun.
“I hope it got better than this, Tristan,” I whispered.
Come after me, she whispered back.
When Hazel had said I wasn’t going to be in the best part of town, she wasn’t exaggerating. I decided even she would double-check the locks as she passed what I was seeing now. Besides the greasy delis and grills and the offices that claimed to provide advances on paychecks weeks before payday, the street was lined with row houses. Most were boarded up, though some struggled bravely to be homes. The only building that didn’t make me shiver was the sedate Seventh Baptist Church, which seemed to sigh sadly over the neighborhood, its sacred dignity still intact.
“God, this is heinous,” I said to Him.
When I turned onto North Howard Street, I entered a world that made North Avenue look like suburban America. My faith in the locks on my car doors drained as I crawled past one abandoned storefront after another. Mr. Chain Smoker had been right about the hospital. Maryland General had made a valiant attempt at gentrification, but half a block down was an empty store with demonic images spray-painted over it with alarming precision. Beyond that was a shop possibly still in business with large ceramic masks in the window wearing vacant yet somehow disturbing expressions. Every building had bars on its windows and formidable locks halfway up its doors.
A horn blasted, and I jerked to attention. I pulled over to the curb to let a taxicab pass. The driver shouted something, but I turned my head.
He could insult me all he wanted. All I could hear were caustic voices cutting into my daughter as she walked down this street, clutching Mr. Chain Smoker’s directions.
But what could she have been looking for? What could have been worth the risk that some creature would emerge from an alley—
Even as I cut off an image that threatened to undo me, a figure appeared in my rearview mirror and loped toward me wearing a ski cap and sunglasses. I squealed the car back onto the street and took off before he could get to me.
I only hoped Tristan had been able to do the same.
I cried all the way home as a new fear took hold. What if Tristan had left Ricky at the motel that morning to look for whatever it was she was searching for and someone had abducted her?
My only relief from that was Tristan’s phone message. I went over and over it in my head. She hadn’t sounded hysterical, had she? There was no reason to believe that somebody was holding her captive, was there?
I planned to go straight to the answering machine and play the tape again the minute I got home. But Nick met me in the driveway.
He opened the Blazer door and got a firm grip on my arm. The only thing that kept me from pulling away was the confusion in his eyes. His facial muscles were taut, his mouth line rigid, but his eyes didn’t seem to know where to settle.
“I went to Baltimore,” I said.
“I got that part, but for the love of Mike, Serena. You can barely cross the bridge without—”
“I went where Tristan went. The North Avenue Motel. I wanted to see for myself—”
“Oh, that’
s great. That’s exquisite.” Nick scoured the back of his head with his hand. “Do you know how many stabbings and shootings they have around there a week? You don’t just go walking around in places like that.”
“Tristan did,” I said.
As I told him the motel manager’s story and described my ride along Howard Street, I watched his face wrestle with the disbelief and the fear and the frustration I was stirring up in him.
“You can’t do this,” he said. “I can’t lose you too.”
“Tristan’s calling to me, Nick,” I said.
“I don’t want to hear any more about those blasted poems!”
“It’s not just the poems. It’s like I can hear her in my head, begging me to come after her.”
Nick let out a sigh that seemed to come from the pit of his soul.
“I’ve thought I heard her voice a hundred times since that night,” he said. “I keep expecting her to poke her head in the library and say, ‘Good night, Daddy.’ ” Nick shook his head. “I want to hear it so bad, my mind plays tricks on me.”
“No. It’s different. She’s calling me, and I have to listen.”
“Serena, this is crazy.” He took me by both shoulders. “You have to promise me that you will stop. Now.”
The rules that had shaped my marriage shouted their orders:
Wife, defer to your husband’s wisdom.
He is the spiritual head of the household.
He has the last word, this man who loves you.
Do anything for him.
They were the words I’d lived by for twenty years. They were the things I taught my daughter’s. So well.
Serve the coffee. Calm the girls.
Bite your tongue and keep his world
Bob your head. Don’t rock the boat.
Say his words you’ve learned by rote.
I stepped back, out of his grasp.
“No, Nicky,” I said, “I can’t make that promise.”
I called Ed Malone the next morning and told him what I’d gleaned from the motel manager. If Nick had already given him the information, Ed didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.
“I’ll get a list of the businesses that are still operating around the hospital,” Ed said. “Let me get back to you.”
