Cemetery Girl

by David Bell

  “Well, I like to take a long view of these things,” he said. He stood with one hand in his pocket and the other rested on his belt. “I’m skeptical of stories like these-”

  “Here we go,” Liann said.

  Ryan took a deep breath and went on, ignoring her.

  “I’m skeptical of these stories that show up in the wake of an event like Caitlin’s service today. This woman says she saw the story in the paper and remembered, but it’s just as likely the story in the paper suggested something to her that wasn’t already there. It happens all the time in these cases.”

  “But she’s not talking about what’s in the paper,” I said. “She’s telling a different story, one that no one else has heard.”

  Ryan nodded. “I agree. She does tell an impressive story. It’s well detailed, convincingly so.”

  “You’re saying it’s just that, a story?” I asked.

  “I’m saying consider the length of time that passed before she came forward. Six months.”

  “She didn’t know-”

  Ryan raised his hand, cutting Liann off.

  “Six months later. And consider her profession. A dancer in a club like this.” He turned to Liann. “No doubt with a record?”

  “Criminalization of the victim,” Liann said.

  “She’s not the victim,” Ryan said. “She’s a witness.”

  “She’s been a victim in the past,” Liann said.

  “She has?” I asked.

  “Most of these girls have been.”

  “She’s a witness now,” Ryan said, “and who she is counts just as much as what she says.”

  I waved my arms, cutting them off. “So you’re just going to do nothing?” I asked.

  The door opened behind me, and we all turned. Two men in suits strolled out, and they turned and looked at us, almost coming to a stop. They didn’t say anything, and when Ryan gave them the stare down, they moved on, chuckling to themselves over our little show.

  When I spoke again, I tried to keep my voice under control. But I couldn’t keep the desperation out of it. “This is our only hope right now, Ryan. Shit, this is the only hope we’ve ever had.” I spoke through gritted teeth. “You’ve got to do something, goddamn it! Ryan-” My voice almost broke. “This is it, you know? This has to be it.”

  “She’s agreed to meet with a sketch artist from the Columbus PD,” he said. “We’ll set it up in the next day or two. We’ll get the sketch out to the media.”

  “Is that all you can do?” I asked.

  “The sketch should get us a lot of attention,” Ryan said. “We’ll hear things, but not necessarily the right things. It’s not a magic bullet. I don’t want you to think it is.”

  “You need to get behind the sketch, Ryan,” Liann said. “You need to push it to the press like you believe in it. And no mention of Tracy’s occupation or past criminal history. It’s irrelevant.”

  “Tom,” Ryan said, “I don’t want to downplay what happened here tonight. It’s a good lead, maybe the best we’ve had. We should all be glad about that, and we’ll work it as far as it will take us.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got another case we’re wrapping up, so I have to get back, but if you or Abby”-he emphasized our names, excluding Liann-“have any questions, please call. Anytime, just call.”

  I fell back onto the bench, my weight carrying me down. I let my elbows rest on the tops of my knees and watched Ryan go around and open his car door. He stopped before he climbed in.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t at the church today,” he said. “I meant to be. I try my best to attend those events, but this other case. .”

  He didn’t finish the thought. He started the engine, and the tires kicked up gravel while Liann and I watched him go.

  Chapter Nine

  A light burned in our living room when I came home, and at the end of our driveway sat two cars-Abby’s and Pastor Chris’s. He must have driven her home after the graveside service and the potluck, and he must have stayed to keep her company while waiting for me. A knot of jealousy twisted in my gut. Buster was right-there was little or nothing left between Abby and me. In fact, for the past six months, I’d been sleeping alone in the guest room. Our hand-holding at the church felt, just hours later, like a forced gesture, one given in to out of the emotion of the moment.

  I entered the kitchen through the back door. The house was quiet, the kitchen clean. The red light on the coffeemaker glowed, and the rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee hung in the air. I remembered the evenings I came home from work when Caitlin was still a toddler. The excitement I felt at just coming through the door, being with my wife and child. The comfort of having such a secure and solid home and family. I thought it would never end.

  “Abby?”

  I moved down the hallway to the front of the house, past a wall of framed photos. Our wedding. Caitlin through the years, including the one I carried with me at all times, the one I’d shown Pete at the Fantasy Club. But I also saw the empty spaces where Abby had removed some photos of Caitlin-her kindergarten portrait, a photo of her as a newborn, a snapshot of her soccer team. Pieces of Caitlin disappeared before my eyes as I walked down the hall.

  Abby sat on the end of the couch but didn’t look up or meet my eye. Pastor Chris did. He sat legs crossed, a mug of coffee in his hand, and when he saw me he smiled, his face full of cheery judgment.

  “Evening, Tom,” he said, as though he and I were old friends getting together to shoot the breeze on a fall evening.

  “I need to talk to Abby,” I said.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Alone.”

  Abby kept her head down. She held balled-up tissues in her hand, and her cheeks looked blotchy and raw. I waited, my lips pressed tightly together.

  Pastor Chris leaned in close to Abby and whispered something I couldn’t hear, even in the small room. She nodded her head in response. The intimacy, the closeness of the gesture, carried out as it was right before my eyes made me mash my lips together even tighter.

  Pastor Chris set down his mug, uncrossed his legs, and stood up. He placed his hand on Abby’s shoulder.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Abby,” he said. He nodded at me. “Tom.”

  “You won’t see me tomorrow,” I said.

  Pastor Chris didn’t blink or appear thrown off stride. He held his smile and considered me with the perpetual placidity of the truly certain.

  “But our door is always open to you,” he said, and left the house as though he didn’t have a care in the world, leaving Abby and me alone.

  “Abby?”

  I settled into an overstuffed chair across from her.

  “Abby, I have something to tell you. Something pretty amazing.”

  “You humiliated me today, Tom.”

  Her words hung between us, a thick cloud of recrimination. I knew the way Abby acted when she was angry or hurt. She was a lot like me in that regard. She seethed, quietly.

  “I know, but-”

  “Everybody wanted to know where you were, why you weren’t there with us. What was I supposed to tell them?”

  “Tell them you lied.”

  “What?”

  “All that bullshit at church, all the stuff about heaven. Pastor Chris saying I believed Caitlin was in heaven.”

  “I don’t have control over what Chris says.”

  “Right.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay.” I didn’t want to fight; I wanted to tell Abby about Tracy, about my conversation with Ryan, about the sketch. I forced a calm into my voice that I didn’t feel. “I felt trapped there, Abby,” I said. “It felt like I was watching a play, and I was in the play but I was also watching myself. And I felt no connection to any of it. It didn’t seem like they were talking about me anymore, about my life, so I needed to leave. I should have told you. But I found something out. That’s what I came home to tell you.”

  “You left me standing alone at our daughter’s
grave.”

  “It’s not her grave. Don’t say that. It’s not her grave at all. That’s what I’m telling you. Someone saw her. Someone I met today. They saw Caitlin. Alive. She’s alive. The police came, Ryan came, and he took a statement, and they’re going to do a sketch and everything, and it means she’s alive.”

  Abby looked at me for the first time. Really looked at me. The tip of her nose was red from where she’d rubbed it with the Kleenex. Something stirred inside me for this woman. Not as simple as pity, which I might feel for a stranger. It was something more complicated, something deeper. The thick roots of love and resentment tangled together and were almost impossible to unravel. I thought I was reaching her.

  She swallowed and took a deep, phlegmy breath. She sounded mucus-choked from the tears and snot.

  “I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”

  “Someone saw Caitlin,” I said, speaking slowly, enunciating clearly. “A witness. She saw her.”

  “Who saw her?”

  “A dancer from a club in Russellville.”

  She rolled her eyes. “A stripper.”

  “Abby, don’t. Just listen.”

  “You’re back to that again. .” Her voice trailed off, and full realization dawned. “You were in a strip club during our daughter’s funeral.”

  “It wasn’t a funeral.”

  Abby stood up and started to walk away. “I can’t hear this. I can’t do this again.”

  “Wait, Abby. Wait.”

  She was in the hallway, but she stopped, her back to me.

  “Listen, will you? Just listen. This witness went to Liann. She knows Liann. It wasn’t me, okay?”

  She still didn’t turn around, but she said, “Liann knows her?”

  “Yes.”

  “How does Liann know her?” Abby asked.

  “Can you at least look at me while I tell you this?” I asked. “Please?”

  She turned around, slowly, and when she faced me, she raised her eyebrows as if to say, Hurry up, let’s get on with this.

  “Do you want to sit down? It’s not all pleasant-”

  “Just tell me, Tom. How does Liann know her?”

  “I guess this girl, the one who saw Caitlin, has been in some trouble before, and Liann helped her out.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s not really relevant, is it?”

  “Okay,” Abby said. “Just tell me what she saw. I can handle it.”

  She showed no inclination to leave the hallway or return to her seat, so I plunged into the story. I didn’t tell her everything, but I told her a lot. When I reached the part about the man and the lap dance, Abby’s composure broke ever so slightly. She looked down at the floor, and the movement shook loose a strand of her hair. When she went to tuck it back behind her ear, her hand shook. I felt sick to my stomach just repeating it, so I left out the worst part. .

  Caitlin on her knees, in front of the man. .

  “You said this was about six months ago?”

  “Yeah, about that long.”

  Somewhere a clock ticked steadily, a monotonous back-and-forth sound.

  “That’s a long time, Tom,” she said.

  “Not that long.”

  “It is in this instance. The police told us-”

  “The police? You’re telling me about the police? Abby, they’re not working on the case that hard anymore. They’re on to other things.”

  “The police have told us that we have a twenty-four- to forty-eight-hour window here. After that, leads grow cold. They dry up. People forget things, or else they fabricate memories. .” Her voice sounded flat. She was repeating talking points.

  “Yeah, I get it.”

  “And this woman’s a stripper. She’s probably on drugs. Or drunk. Is that how she knows Liann? Is Liann her lawyer? I value Liann’s advice about Caitlin’s case, but if she’s bringing this girl around with some crazy story-”

  “Okay, okay, forget the witness. Forget what she said.” I moved forward and stood in front of Abby. I put my hand on her shoulder, rested it there gently, offering her support. She looked a little surprised but didn’t pull away or brush me off. “The point isn’t the witness here, okay?” I said. “What matters is that six months ago someone saw Caitlin. Our Caitlin. Alive. Not ten miles from here.”

  I knew I’d reached her. When I’d said, “Our Caitlin,” she took a little breath, a quick intake of air that told me those words still meant something to her.

  “We thought she’d be far away. . or we thought-”

  “She’d be dead.”

  “Yes. That. We thought that about our own daughter. Abby, we shouldn’t have to think that about our daughter. We shouldn’t. And now we don’t. We have hope again, Abby. Real hope. For the first time in years. .”

  She looked at me, straight into my eyes, then down at my hand, where it still rested on her shoulder. She seemed to be considering me. Not the news or the witness, but me.

  “But this is all dependent on this woman having really seen what she says she saw. She doesn’t know Caitlin. She saw a picture of when Caitlin was twelve, but she’d be so much older.”

  “But Ryan came. He talked to her. They’re going to do a sketch and send it out.”

  “Did he believe her?” she asked. “Did he say this was solid?”

  “You know how Ryan is. He’s cautious. He has other cases he’s working. He doesn’t want to give us false hope.”

  “Did he believe her?”

  I hesitated. That told her all she wanted to know. She started to pull away, but I applied pressure on her shoulder, trying to keep her from backing up.

  “Ryan wouldn’t be having the sketch done if he didn’t believe her,” I said.

  “I thought you had such a low opinion of the police.”

  “I know they haven’t always told us the truth. They never once told us they thought she was dead, did they? But you know damn well they were thinking it. They just string us along, make vague promises and offer platitudes. ‘We’re still working on things. . We still have leads. .’ They don’t care. Liann’s right. They can’t care as much as we do-that’s just a fact of something like this. The cops go home to their own wives and kids, and the parents of the victim have to keep carrying the flag. That’s why we have to keep her memory alive. That’s why Liann is so important. She cares like we do. She understands. Her daughter was-”

  I stopped myself.

  Abby didn’t say anything. Where just a few moments earlier it felt as though I had been making progress with her, slowly thawing the ice and reaching an essential part of Abby, just as quickly things turned back away. I was losing her again. I could sense a turn in the air as palpable as the arrival of a cold front.

  “What?” I asked.

  “We’ve never talked about it, Tom.”

  “About what?” I waited. “That she might be dead?”

  Abby shook her head. “That she did run away from us.”

  “No, Abby. Never.”

  She became more animated. “She was so moody and withdrawn. I never knew what she was thinking or feeling. She could have lived a whole life we didn’t know about. And those Internet searches. Seattle. . the trains. . She was taking the dog to the park. Maybe she met somebody there, somebody she was talking to. We wouldn’t know.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “And now this story about the girl in the club. If it is Caitlin, if she was doing those things. .” Abby’s lip curled as she spoke. “Maybe she wants to be gone and stay gone. Maybe. . if she was right here, so close to us and. .” She turned away, starting up the stairs to the bedrooms. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t.”

  “What?”

  She stopped near the top of the stairs and looked back. “This has been difficult, Tom.”

  “Of course. I know.”

  “No, you don’t. I’m not talking about Caitlin’s disappearance.” She sat down on the top step. Her body weight seemed to go out of her. She almost collaps
ed. “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about how difficult it’s been for me to watch you go through this over the last four years. Ryan’s going to send out this sketch, and you come home all excited. Well, Ryan doesn’t know what hope has done to this house. To this marriage. Does he?”

  “Abby-”

  “Every time a piece of news comes in about Caitlin. It could be just a scrap. A girl would get assaulted across town, and you’d want to know who did it. Or there’d be an abduction attempt an hour away, and you’d be on the phone to the police telling them to check it out. Ryan humors you, doesn’t he? He always takes your calls, right?”

  “He came out today as soon as he could.”

  “I love and miss Caitlin as much as you-”

  “No one said you didn’t.”

  “I know. And I do appreciate that.” She rubbed her palms together, as though scraping something off them. “You asked me once why the church meant so much to me. You acted confounded by the fact that I wanted to go and spend my time there, as though just nurturing my faith wasn’t reason enough. I know you think people who talk that way-who say things like ‘nurturing my faith’-are beneath you, but there’s nothing I can do about that. Is there?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “I went to the church because your unreasonable hope didn’t leave room for anything else in our life together. I was squeezed out. And while you may not have questioned my love for Caitlin, you did question how invested I was in keeping her memory alive. You thought that if I didn’t pore over every missing-persons case in the country, or if at some point I wanted to stop spending my weekends organizing search parties, that I just didn’t care enough. That I was deluded or out of touch. But that’s not the case. I just chose to go on. It’s a little selfish, I admit, but I chose to go on with my life rather than to spend all my time as the poor, unfortunate woman who lost her daughter. And the church helps me do that.”

  She paused. I still didn’t say anything. But I noticed a different kind of look on her face, a newfound relief or ease. She was unburdening herself.

  “I didn’t want you to get rid of Frosty because he bothered me. I know you think that, but it’s not the case. I wanted you to get rid of him for you. I thought maybe if you did it, you’d be able to move on. It was a last-ditch attempt, I guess. I thought it might have worked. The last few days seemed better, and this morning at the church-”