Cemetery Girl

by David Bell

  But the police jumped on two items from the list-Seattle and Amtrak-and decided there was a decent chance that Caitlin had run away. They questioned us about it, placing special emphasis on whether or not there were difficulties in the home. They asked her friends, her teachers, our neighbors, and many of them said that, while they didn’t believe anything was wrong, they did think Caitlin was something of a distant child, one who kept to herself, one who really didn’t allow others to know what she was thinking. All true, and all things Abby and I had told the police from the very beginning. We didn’t always know what Caitlin was thinking, but what parents of a twelve-year-old do?

  From that point on, a slight rift grew between the police and us. They slowly drew down their resources-the SBI removed their consulting agent from the case, the New Cambridge PD cut back to one detective-and we sensed, both Abby and I, that the authorities were no longer taking us seriously, that we were being moved to the back burner as long as no new information came forward to propel the case along.

  Did I really believe that Caitlin had run away? I like to tell myself I never did. But I have to admit there were nights-lying in bed, staring at the ceiling-when the results of those Internet searches cycled through my brain like trains themselves. And I had to ask myself, there in the dark: What was Caitlin really thinking or doing? Did anybody-even me-really know?

  Chapter Five

  The Fantasy Club was removed from all the respectable businesses, a small, sturdily built structure with a gravel parking lot and a blinking sign that promised ADULT ENTERTAINMENT-COUPLES WELCOME.

  The lot was almost empty when I parked, my tires crunching over the gravel and kicking up a puff of white dust. The lack of windows made the place look a little like a fortress, a distant entertainment outpost. When I walked in, my eyes struggled to adjust to the gloom; no one tended the door or asked me to pay a cover charge. The stage was empty, the music off. The lone bartender and his only customer stood watch over a newspaper and a TV playing a daytime talk show. The bartender managed to pry his eyes away from the paper.

  “Help you?”

  My head was still buzzing a little from the beer I’d drunk with Buster, so I ordered a club soda. The corner of the bartender’s mouth curled a little.

  “You want a lime with that? I’m all out of limes.”

  “No lime.”

  He sprayed the soda into a plastic cup and placed it on the bar. “We’re between shows,” he said, “so I won’t charge you for the drink.”

  “That’s fine.” I dug around in my pocket and found a dollar bill, which I placed on the counter as a tip and a peace offering.

  The bartender raised his eyebrows but didn’t pick it up. “Thanks,” he said.

  I took a seat at the end of the bar. I drummed my fingers on the bar top and swallowed the club soda in less than a minute. I jabbed at the ice with my little red cocktail straw, tried to focus on the argument raging on the TV, then asked for a refill. The bartender provided it without looking up from his paper.

  “Tonight we’re having a lingerie show,” he said. “You ought to stick around.”

  “I have to face my wife at some point today.”

  The bartender looked up and winked at me. “Hell, bring her. Didn’t you see the sign? Couples welcome.”

  “You haven’t met my wife.”

  The bartender and his customer both laughed at my joke, and for a moment I entered their masculine circle.

  “Can I ask you guys a question?” I asked.

  Their laughter broke off. The sound of the TV filled the space, the tinny voice of an acne-faced kid who stood accused of fathering two children by two different high school girls. He was protesting to the host, his voice rising like a siren.

  I reached into my wallet and brought out the picture of Caitlin I always carried with me. Her last school portrait, the one the police circulated to the media in the wake of her disappearance. I held it up in the space between me and the two men. I tried to make my voice casual.

  “Have you ever seen this girl in here?” I asked.

  The customer, an older man with a deeply lined, sagging face, looked away, deferring responsibility for dealing with me to the bartender.

  “You a cop?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Private investigator?”

  “I’m her father.”

  A hint of sympathy flickered across the bartender’s eyes. He leaned in a couple of inches and looked at the photo, his brow furrowing.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen her,” he said. He flipped the newspaper closed and tapped his index finger against the front page. It was the New Cambridge Herald. “Right here.” It wasn’t above-the-fold news, but it had made the front near the bottom, tucked next to the weather forecast. A picture of Caitlin along with the story-the same photo I held in my hand. “But I haven’t seen her in here. We don’t allow underage kids in. No, sir.”

  “Did you really take a look at the picture?” I asked.

  He sighed a little, then looked again. He studied the picture longer than before, even going so far as to tilt his head back and to the side to get a better angle.

  “No,” he said. “She’s just a little girl. I’ve never seen her.”

  “She’d be sixteen now.”

  “Sixteen? How old is she in the picture?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Do you know how much a kid changes between twelve and sixteen?”

  I put the photo back in my wallet.

  “I wish I did,” I said. “I really wish I did.”

  Chapter Six

  The woman with Liann looked young, college-age young, and she wore a T-shirt, short cutoff denim shorts, and flip-flops. She carried a blue and red gym bag, and when they came abreast of the bar, the bartender, the same one who’d served me, grunted.

  “You’re late, Tracy.”

  “Did someone die and put you in charge, Pete?” she asked.

  Liann looked as out of place in the Fantasy Club as I felt. She wore a no-nonsense brown business suit, and her brown hair was pulled back in a short ponytail. Liann was older than me-she was approaching fifty-but she maintained a rail-thin figure through a combination of jogging and biking. She looked strong and determined as she brought the young woman toward me, a motherly hand resting on the girl’s arm. Her presence comforted me as it had ever since she’d shown at our house the day after Caitlin disappeared.

  I stood up as they approached my table-one in the corner and out of the way-and I shook the woman’s hand as Liann introduced us.

  Up close, in the glow from the stage lights and neon beer signs on the wall, I saw that while my initial assessment was correct-the girl named Tracy was only about twenty years old-the years didn’t look like easy ones. Her hair looked thin and brittle from repeated bleachings, and lines were already forming at the corners of her mouth and eyes. She was thin but not in a healthy, youthful way. Instead she appeared tired and worn, like someone who didn’t sleep or eat right.

  I offered to get everyone a drink, but Liann shook her head. They both sat down.

  “We should get started,” Liann said. “Tracy has to work.”

  I took my seat, my hands folded on the table.

  “Okay, Tracy,” Liann said. “Go ahead.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “How do you two know each other?”

  Tracy looked down at the tabletop. Liann turned to me and said, “We’re short on time here, Tom.”

  “I understand that,” I said. “But I want to know where this information is coming from. Liann, you work with women and families who have been affected by violent crime. And you’re a lawyer. I want to know which role you met Tracy in.”

  “Tom, Tracy has had some issues-”

  “I got busted, okay?” Tracy said, raising her head to look at me. “I got busted for drugs, and Liann was my lawyer. She kept me out of jail.”

  I nodded. “Okay, I get it.”

  “It’s not really relevant,” Liann said. “Tell
him what you saw, Tracy.”

  Tracy took her time getting started. She reached into the gym bag and brought out a pack of cigarettes-Marlboro Lights-and a lighter. Once the cigarette was burning, she let a stream of smoke go up toward the ceiling, then waved her hand around out of consideration for Liann and me. The ceremony completed, Tracy fixed on me with a level gaze.

  “I’ve seen you before,” she said. “I used to dance at the Love Shack, and you would come in there showing that picture of your little girl around. You showed it to me one night.” She took another drag, exhaled. “I have a little girl, too. She’s almost five. Cassie. She stays with my aunt while I work, but I see her sometimes.”

  She wanted a response, so I provided one. “That must be tough,” I said.

  Tracy nodded as though my words carried some eternal truth. “It is. It sure as hell is.”

  Most of the twenty-year-olds I interacted with at the university came from privileged backgrounds and were often more worldly and widely traveled than I was. Tracy didn’t have that life. She didn’t spend her winters in Vail or her summers in Can-cun. More likely, she spent her whole life in the counties surrounding New Cambridge, and she’d carry the rough features and country accent common among locals with her the rest of her life, markers of who she was.

  “What’s your little girl like?” Tracy asked.

  “Tracy-”

  “I want to know, Liann, that’s all. I’m curious.”

  “It’s okay,” I said to Liann. “I don’t mind.”

  But then I felt stuck. Four years of interviews with cops and reporters, four years of encapsulating Caitlin for flyers and Web sites. I never felt able to adequately sum her up so someone who didn’t know my daughter would recognize her. And I couldn’t help but wonder: would the picture I created of the twelve-year-old who walked out the door that day bear any resemblance to the sixteen-year-old young woman I hoped she lived to become?

  “She’s smart,” I said. “Really smart.”

  “You’re a professor at the college, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Figures she’d be smart then.”

  “She’s kind of quiet, too. She kept to herself a lot.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “Yes. She has blond hair, very blond. And her eyes were-are-blue. Bluer than yours even.”

  Tracy smiled, and I couldn’t help but think I was looking into the face of some older version of Caitlin, the one who never came home.

  The bartender, Pete, came by carrying two cases of beer. His biceps pressed against his shirt like cannonballs.

  “You’re almost on shift, Tracy.”

  “Fuck off, Pete.”

  Pete sighed and kept walking.

  Tracy waited until he was gone, then leaned in and stubbed out her cigarette.

  “I saw your little girl once. At the Love Shack.”

  Despite the club soda, my mouth felt dry. I didn’t say anything; I didn’t move, not wanting to create a vibration that might prevent her from telling me what I needed to know. Instead, I sat perfectly still while an icy sensation grew beneath my shirt collar and spread down my back. I waited.

  Tracy dug into her pack and lit another cigarette.

  “This was about six months ago, about six months after you came in there showing that picture around. Do you still have that picture with you?”

  “Tracy, tell him the story, just like you told me,” Liann said.

  Tracy glanced at Liann and nodded, looking a little like a chastened teenager. She flicked her ash onto the floor.

  “It was a regular night, just any old night. I don’t remember what day of the week it was. Probably not a weekend since we weren’t that crowded. This guy came up to me and said he wanted to buy a lap dance. I told him, ‘Twenty dollars,’ and he said, ‘Sure,’ like it was no problem with the price. Some of them come in there and try to get the price down, or else they’re real careful how they ask because they’re hoping they’re going to get something more than a lap dance. They say, ‘Twenty dollars to go back there with you,’ you know, because they’re thinking if they don’t specify we might go back there and do something besides the lap dance. Something extra.” She shook her head. “They didn’t let us do that at the Love Shack. No way.

  “At the Love Shack they have little rooms off to the side, three of them. That’s where we went for the lap dances. They weren’t much bigger than closets really, but there were those vinyl bench seats built into the wall, and usually another chair just sitting there in the room. Sometimes we got guys who came in who were shy, and they’d sit in the chair for a while, waiting. We’d let them do that for a little bit, but not too long. If they didn’t hurry up, they needed to go. There was money to be made.”

  Tracy stared at the table and picked at a chip in the Formica. “Anyway, I went behind the curtain and into room number three to wait for the guy. I got kind of a bad vibe from him, just the way he talked and handed over the money.”

  “What kind of bad vibe?” I asked.

  She looked away. “I don’t know. Some guys I can tell are just going to be relaxed and easygoing. Regular guys who are just doing this for fun.” She kind of smiled, as though thinking of a distant but pleasant memory. But the smile passed quickly, and she looked back at me. “But there are other types. I know all about them. They have something else on their mind. Do you know what that is?”

  She seemed to be waiting for an answer, so I provided one.

  “Sex?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I wish.” She shook her head again. “No, these guys want to hurt somebody. Girls, mainly. They want to control a girl or clamp down on her. They want to use her for something, overpower them.”

  “Did this man hurt you?” I asked.

  “He came into room three,” she said, “where I was waiting. He was older, in his fifties probably. His hair was kind of long and greasy, and it was going gray. He was ugly. His nose was wide and fat, his skin was kind of puffy. He looked right at me and came over to the bench, and I almost just gave him his money back right there and told him to forget it. We have bouncers and everything. They listen for trouble, and they’re good, but being in the room with that guy made my skin crawl.” She shivered just thinking about it, and I assumed her feeling was a cousin to the icy sensation that still possessed my body. “Then I saw the girl behind him.”

  “Caitlin?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  Liann reached over and placed her hand on top of mine. She didn’t say anything, and while her touch felt warm, it brought no real comfort.

  “I’ve danced for couples before,” Tracy said. “Plenty of times. It wasn’t that weird. But I’d never danced for a couple like that. At first I thought maybe they were father and daughter. Hell, maybe he was her grandfather. But then he reached out and took her hand and pulled her close, and I got it. I understood what was going on between them two. They were a couple.”

  “Tom?” Liann asked. “Are you okay? Are you going to be sick?”

  I didn’t know. I didn’t answer. But I did feel like I was coming down with something. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep everything down, if the beer and greasy food was going to come pouring back out of me in a hot, messy rush.

  Liann was up and almost immediately came back with another cup of club soda. The sickness eased; my temperature regulated.

  “Do you want to stop, Tom?” Liann asked. “We can do this another day.”

  I shook my head.

  “I know it’s hard to hear,” Tracy said, although she didn’t sound all that sympathetic.

  “Why didn’t you tell this to the police back then?” I asked. “Why are you telling us this now?”

  Liann stepped in. “Tracy didn’t make the connection until she saw the stories and the picture in the paper this week, the stories about Caitlin’s service. When she saw them, she called me. Like Tracy said, I’ve helped her out before when she’s had a little trouble. And some other membe
rs of her family as well. It was no big deal, just kid stuff. She’s over that now, though.” Liann reached out and placed that comforting, motherly hand on Tracy’s arm again. “She trusts me.”

  “You remembered Caitlin all that time later?” I asked Tracy. “You recognized her picture in the paper?”

  “I’d seen you before,” she said. “And then. .” Her voice trailed off.

  I looked from her to Liann, waiting for the rest. “And?” I asked.

  “Go on, Tracy,” Liann said. “Tell him.”

  I wanted to tell her to stop. I wanted to say, No more. It felt like the muscle fiber in my heart was rending, tearing apart.

  But I couldn’t stop listening.

  “He went and sat down, the guy. And the girl-” She paused. “Your daughter sat in the chair across from him. You know what a lap dance is, right?”

  I’d been to enough bachelor parties to get the picture, and Liann nodded, too. “They make us do it reverse cowgirl style,” Tracy said. “They want us to face away from the guy, so only our butt touches his lap. And we’re dressed, of course. That’s the law. And with us facing away, I guess they figure it’s less likely the guy’s going to get all handsy or something. I don’t know why they think that. If a guy’s going to get handsy, he’ll do it no matter what, right? But when this guy asked me to face him, I felt nervous. I mean, he was already creeping me out and everything, and then he brought the girl with him, your girl, and I just didn’t feel right.” She sighed. “But I didn’t feel like I could say no to him. We’re not supposed to say no unless we really feel like we’re in danger, and I couldn’t say I felt in danger. And I needed the money and the job. So I went along. And everything went fine. He didn’t lay a hand on me.”

  She paused and lit another cigarette.

  “But?” I asked.

  “He didn’t even look at me,” Tracy said. She might have tried, but she couldn’t hide the trace of disappointment in her voice. “He looked right past me at the-your daughter. He kept his eyes locked on her the whole time I danced in his lap. She’s younger than me, I guess.” Tracy shrugged. “We only do it for one song. When the song ends, we get up. I turned around and saw the girl. She wore this blank look on her face, no emotion. Nothing. She looked kind of dead. But she was staring right at him. Her eyes were locked on his, like she was under hypnosis or something and couldn’t move without him saying so. It gave me the creeps even more, even worse than if he’d hit her or something.”