by David Bell
“What do you mean by ‘last-ditch’?”
She looked down at her hands. “Chris and I have been talking. He’s been counseling me. Ordinarily, he doesn’t encourage people to divorce-Well, I guess if we had children to consider. . But we think-I think-it would be for the best. It seems inevitable in a way. This happens to a lot of couples who lose a child.”
She looked up at me for a quick moment, her eyes full of tears. Then she stood and walked into what used to be our bedroom.
“Hold on.” I scrambled along behind her. The evidence was all over the bedroom. Two suitcases open and full of clothes. The closet door thrown wide and nearly empty.
Abby stood in the middle of the room, chewing on a fingernail.
“You’re really doing it?” I asked.
“One of us has to, Tom.”
I pointed behind me, toward the stairs and the lower level of the house. “Is there something else going on here? Is this about-?” I couldn’t say his name. It tasted like ash in my mouth. “Him?”
Abby looked at me, her eyes full of pity. “Oh, Tom. If it were only that simple.”
“If you’re fucking another man, it is simple. If you’re not the person I thought you were, the person you claim to be-”
“Don’t be crude,” she said. “Chris is helping me. There might be a job at the church, something to get me started. They have a place I can stay, in their retreat housing. It’s temporary, of course. I talked to someone at Fields, someone in the School of Ed. I think I’d like to go back to teaching. It wouldn’t take me long to get recertified here. And there are jobs. Maybe working with children again, teaching them, would fulfill me in some way my life isn’t fulfilling me right now. I wouldn’t expect you to leave this house. You’ve always liked living here, and I know you think one of us should always be here in case Caitlin. . if she ever came back.”
We were quiet then. I sat on the edge of the bed, letting my body weight sink into the mattress. Abby came over and bent down. She planted a kiss on the top of my head. I reached up and took her hand. We clasped tightly for a moment; then she slipped loose.
“I know you think this is my fault,” I said.
“It’s no one’s fault. Not really.”
“I don’t mean us,” I said. “I mean Caitlin. I know you think I let her get away with too much, that she shouldn’t have been allowed to walk the dog in the park alone. She was too young, and Frosty. . Frosty was too big. .”
“That’s all over, Tom.”
“I just wanted her to run toward life and not be afraid of it. You know, my family, growing up-it was awful, so smothering. It was like living without oxygen.”
“I know, Tom.”
But I wasn’t sure she did. Abby’s parents were frighteningly normal: upper middle class and traditional. A little repressed, a little concerned with appearances, but next to my family they looked like royalty. I don’t know if Abby ever really understood what it was like to come from a family like mine, even though she often said she did.
“I didn’t want her to be tied to us,” I said. “Like we held her back.”
“It’s late, Tom. .”
“Do you remember what it was like when Caitlin was little?” I asked. “Just the three of us in the house together. Watching TV or playing games. Hell, it didn’t matter what we were doing.”
“It was good, Tom,” she said. “Back then, it was good.”
“Back then,” I said, repeating her words, letting them hang in the air between us. “I tried to get Frosty back today. I went to the shelter and asked about him, but he was already gone.”
Abby raised her hand to her mouth. “Oh,” she said. “It happened that fast.”
I shook my head. “Not that. Somebody adopted him. Some family, I guess. They wouldn’t give me the name, even though I said I wanted to get him back.”
“He’s probably okay then. Somebody wanted him.”
“He and I could have lived here together. He was good company.”
“It’s going to take me a little while to get all my stuff out. There isn’t much room over there at the church. It’s like a dorm, I guess.”
“Hell, maybe I’ll just go get another dog.”
Abby made a noise deep in her throat. No one else would have recognized it, but I knew. She started to cry. Her tears always began that way, and then she quickly began taking deep, sobbing breaths, so it sounded like she couldn’t get enough air. Then I started crying, too, the tears stinging my cheeks and falling into my lap. I wiped my face with the back of my hand, first one side, then the other. “One dog’s pretty much the same as any other, right?”
Chapter Ten
Ryan showed up with a sketch the following week. Abby was slowly moving her things out of the house, one box at a time, so there was some disarray, which caused Ryan to raise an eyebrow. But he stepped around the mess without saying anything or making a comment. It was one of the few times he didn’t wear a tie. He wore the collar of his white shirt open, revealing a strip of T-shirt and some straggly black chest hairs.
“You’ve got it?” I asked before he took a seat.
He nodded and lowered his body into the big chair in our living room.
I couldn’t bring myself to sit. While Ryan sat calmly, patiently, almost Buddha-like in the chair, I paced back and forth among the boxes. It had taken him three days just to arrange a meeting with Tracy. First her phone was disconnected; then someone at her apartment told Ryan she was out of town. I called Liann and asked her-told her-she needed to find this girl and apply some pressure.
“We need her,” I’d said.
And that only earned me an extended lecture from Liann, one in which she explained to me how delicate it was to deal with women like Tracy, women who were living victimized lives. I wanted to be sympathetic, I did. But I wanted the goddamned sketch more. I didn’t have anything else to think about. Finally, Liann met Tracy at the Fantasy Club and brought her to the police station.
And so Ryan sat in front of me, holding the Rosetta stone.
“Can I see it?Please?”
“Abby isn’t home,” he said, more of a statement than a question.
“She’s. .” I pointed at the boxes. “This has been. .”
He nodded. He’d probably seen it a million times.
“Do you want me to call her?” I asked. “Get her over here? I really don’t want to wait. I want to see the sketch.”
“Tom, let’s talk first.”
“Jesus,” I said. “I don’t need another lecture.”
“I don’t lecture you.”
“Liann set me straight about this. Now you.”
Ryan raised a finger. “Liann doesn’t work for the police. She doesn’t speak for me. I appreciate what she did, getting this girl to meet with the artist, but she doesn’t speak for me. If I have something to say, it comes from me.”
Finally, I sat, hoping to speed things along.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Tell me.”
He cleared his throat. “I was there the whole time she worked with the sketch artist, and then I spoke with the artist after she left. She gave the same story and approximate description she gave to me at the strip club, and apparently the same one she gave to you.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
Ryan’s facial features grew pinched.
“It’s not good?” I asked.
“I believe she saw the man she says she saw. Her description of him is quite detailed. It led to a very good sketch, as far as those things go. In fact, it’s very possible she knows this man. Well.”
“Did you ask her about this? Did you ask his name?”
Ryan gave me a supercilious look, the kind I use on my students. It said, Do you think I don’t know how to do my job?
“Okay, so you asked her, and she stuck to the original story. But I get the feeling you’re hinting at something larger.”
He hesitated, then shook his head. He chased the thought away or held it back.
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br /> “I have some other concerns.” He reached into his interior jacket pocket and fumbled around. I thought he was going to bring out the sketch at last, but instead he pulled out a small pocket notebook, the kind he wrote in whenever he was conducting business. He reached into another pocket and brought out a pair of half-moon reading glasses and worked them into place on the tip of his nose. He leaned back in his chair and studied the notebook. “This woman, Tracy Fairlawn, has been arrested twice for drug possession, once for prostitution, and has also been investigated by the child welfare department. These things call into question, to some extent, the reliability of whatever she says.”
“No, it doesn’t. You said you believed her story-”
Ryan raised a finger of caution. “I said I believe she knows this man.”
“But you can’t throw her story out because of these arrests. That’s-”
“Criminalization of the victim,” he said. “I know. Liann’s taught you well.” He flipped the notebook shut and put it away. He took off the glasses. “I detected something both times I spoke to Miss Fairlawn about this man. There was something underneath her words, an anger or sense of grievance lurking there, something I couldn’t quite place my finger on, but it gives me reason to stop for a moment. Tom, I want to give you the choice about something. We can go ahead and distribute this sketch, or we can hold off a few days until we know more about where this information is coming from.”
“Let me just look at the thing.”
“I think if we run with it, we risk getting a lot of information that won’t be helpful because we don’t know if we’re starting from a good place or not. We risk shooting our last good bullet here-”
“Can I see it?” I asked. “Will you just hand it over so I can see it? I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I want to see it.”
Reluctantly, he started digging into his jacket pocket. He brought out a white piece of paper, folded like a letter. He shifted his bulk, leaning forward, and the paper hovered in the air between us.
But I didn’t make a quick grab for it. My hand moved slowly, as though weights were tied to it, and the farther I extended the more I felt it shake. Ryan didn’t seem to notice. He held the paper in the air until I took it.
As I unfolded it, Ryan spoke. “Take a long look. See if it jars your memory. Coworkers, service people. The guy who cuts the grass or cleans the floors at work.”
I unfolded the paper and took it in. It was a simple drawing, black on white. I saw the wide, fat nose Tracy had described. It filled the middle of the page and made the man depicted look brutish, almost simian. His brows were thick and dark, and the eyes beneath them looked small and narrow, as though the artist had depicted the man in midsquint. I scanned the other features quickly-the hard set of the jaw, the thin lips-and absorbed a sense of menace from the simple drawing.
“I don’t think I know him,” I said.
“I would like Abby to take a look at it,” Ryan said.
I continued to stare at the drawing and tried to retrofit that face to all the images of the kidnapper that continually ran through my head. A car pulling up at the park, or a man talking to Caitlin, making a grab for her arm.
The man in the strip club, in the little booth with my daughter.
“Do you think it’s him?” I asked.
“Like I was saying before. . Tom?” He wanted me to lower the sketch, so I did. Slowly. “We need to think carefully about what we do next,” he said. “It’s been a long time since Caitlin disappeared. The public has a short attention span. Over time, people understandably forget. They move on to other things, other news stories. Their memories get muddy.”
I held up the paper. “I want to run it. I don’t want to wait. I’ve been waiting four years, and this is the best lead we have. Run it.”
Ryan rubbed his hand over his cheek as though he were tired.
“It’s my choice ultimately,” he said. “If I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the case to run it, I won’t.”
“How could this not be in the best interests of the case?” I asked.
“It is, of course,” he said. “What I said the other night is true-this is the best lead we’ve had in four years. But I’m thinking of you and Abby as well as the case.”
“What about us?” I asked.
“How well do you know your daughter, Tom?”
And there it was, just as Liann had predicted. Just as I’d suspected all along. Ryan believed his own counternarrative of Caitlin’s disappearance, and he intended to share it.
“I guess it’s hard for me to answer that since I haven’t seen her in four years.”
“Before that. Before she disappeared.”
“I knew her very well then.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. We were happy.”
Ryan raised his eyebrows. He glanced around the room at the boxes. “Were you?”
“What are you saying, Ryan? I’m not following you.”
“We don’t always know people the way we think we know them, do we? People change. Our lives change.”
“Therefore. .?”
“You believe this was your daughter who was seen in this club, right?”
“I do.”
He nodded. “Did the behavior described match what you think you know of Caitlin?”
“She was twelve when she disappeared. Twelve. And that man”-I tapped the paper-“this man has her. He has her against her will. Which is it, Ryan? Either you believe Tracy’s story and you think this is Caitlin, or you don’t. And if you don’t, why are we having this conversation?”
Ryan took a deep breath. “Four years have passed, Tom.”
“I know that.”
“Leaving aside the very remote chance that this is going to lead to anything positive-”
“Ryan-”
“Now, hold on,” he said. “Let’s play a little of the believing game here. Say this sketch does lead to something good. Let’s say this story is true and somehow, someway, we do find Caitlin and bring her home to you. Those four years, the time you lost with her-would you be prepared for what that would be like, Tom?”
“Will this be in the news tomorrow?” I asked, holding out the sketch.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said.
“Ryan, will this run tomorrow?”
He looked around at the boxes again. “Tom, have you and Abby been seeking counseling of some kind? Help? It’s none of my business, of course, but this sort of thing places an enormous strain on a marriage. And on an individual. If you wanted, I could refer you to some of the resources we have available through the department.”
“You offered me that four years ago,” I said. “And every year since. And I appreciate it greatly, but I’m not interested.”
“We have a program-it’s funded by the state-where volunteers, private citizens, meet with and assist families affected by tragedy. Did I mention this to you? It’s relatively new, and it’s called Volunteer Victim Services. These people are trained, of course, but some feel it’s less pressurized than conventional therapy. It’s not as structured and it’s even more comforting in a way. Professionals sometimes get constricted by their roles.”
“Ryan-”
“You could certainly choose to seek help through more conventional channels,” he said. “There are a number of good therapists and counselors in New Cambridge. Even at the university-”
“There’s only one thing I want and need. And you know what it is.” I held the paper out in front of me. “Will this be in the paper tomorrow?”
“It will,” he said. “We’ll go public with it tomorrow. I’ll call you and let you know the details.”
Chapter Eleven
Something woke me that night, thumping. I fell asleep in the guest room earlier than usual, after flipping on the porch light and making sure the house key still remained in its hiding spot. After hearing Tracy’s story and seeing the sketch, the ritual seemed more urgent, more essential
.
But Abby’s words had struck a nerve: If Caitlin were living so close to us. .? I knew what she meant, what completed the thought: Why didn’t she just come home?
Abby was gone already, sleeping at the church. Whenever she came to the house to collect more belongings, we were cordially, distantly polite to each other, and I didn’t allow the sight of her to make me think she might have reconsidered her decision to leave.
I came awake disoriented. I checked the clock on the bedside table: 10:01. Not that late. My heart rate was up, my shirt a little damp. I’d been dreaming. Not a coherent narrative, but a series of disjointed and haunting images, a parade of all my fears. Caitlin calling my name in the park. . The man from the sketch reaching for her, taking her away. .
I heard the thumping again.
I lowered my feet to the cold floor. My mind started to catch up, shaking off the dream images and focusing on the real. Someone was in the house. Downstairs.
Caitlin?
I jumped up, started out of the room. I made no effort to soften my steps. Whoever-whatever-was downstairs would hear me coming and know I knew they were there. I didn’t care. I bounded down the stairs, wearing only a T-shirt and boxer shorts. At the bottom I called out into the house:
“Caitlin? Is that you?”
Light came from both the kitchen and the living room. I turned left, toward the front of the house.
“Caitlin?”
I entered the room. Someone was sitting on the couch. She didn’t look up when I came in, but kept her eyes fixed on the paper in her hand.
Abby.
Some of the boxes were moved. More were packed.
And she held the sketch.
She stared at it, oblivious to my appearance. I didn’t speak, even though I wanted to ask why she was showing up so late. Did she want to scare the crap out of me? But I left her alone to absorb the face on the paper.
