Where They Found Her: A Novel

by Kimberly McCreight

  By the time I’d reached campus, it had occurred to me that I would at least need some evidence the assaults happened before I started making accusations. Instead of parking and heading for LaForde’s office, I circled back toward home, taking the long way past the Essex Bridge.

  I was struck with unexpected sadness when I saw only a single police car parked along the road near where the baby had been found. As though everyone else had already given up. Forgotten. Moved on. I slowed as I rolled past, but the officer in the car didn’t look up, his eyes locked on a cell phone. When I was a few yards past him, I noticed the driveway across the street, tucked between a couple shaggy trees. It curved right, to a run-down ranch house with a clear view of the road and the near side of the creek.

  I jerked my car left and into the driveway. Surely the police had interviewed whoever lived there. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t also.

  The house was more decrepit up close, the edges of the foundation disintegrating into the lawn, a rusted gutter unhinged, a garage window cracked, a lopsided shutter. The lawn was all crabgrass and tall weeds, mostly brown from winter, with a crumbling flagstone path leading up to the front door. There was a threadbare flag beside the front door. Even the house numbers had shifted, revealing rusty shadows in their wake.

  I knocked hard, rattling the screen. I waited a minute with no response, then counted to twenty before knocking once more. There was a truck in the driveway, but that didn’t mean anyone was home. I took a couple steps to the side, thinking about heading back to my car, when suddenly the front door opened.

  “Hello?” an angry-sounding man shouted through the screen door. “Who’s out there?”

  He was big, tall and heavy if not quite overweight, with a head of straggly gray hair and a very large face. He was wearing pajama pants and a snug black T-shirt with a big Nike swoosh on the front. It hugged his big belly like a fabric sack.

  “Oh, hi,” I said, stepping forward so he could see me, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. “I’m Molly Sanderson, a reporter with the Ridgedale Reader, and—”

  “A reporter, huh?” He sounded intrigued. “What do you want?”

  Nothing, I thought of saying. So I’ll just be going now.

  “I’m working on a story about the baby they found across the street,” I began. What if he’d had something to do with it? It wouldn’t be the smartest thing in the world to dump a dead body across the street from your house. Then again, he didn’t seem like the most thoughtful fellow. “I was hoping I might talk to you for a minute.”

  He narrowed his eyes, then pushed open the door with one meaty hand. “You coming in or not?” he asked when I didn’t move forward.

  “Oh, yes, thank you,” I said, stepping inside.

  Since when was it safe for me to go into the house of a huge man I did not know, an angry, possibly unstable man who, despite his age, could have easily overpowered me? Was this really the best use of my rediscovered moxie? For all I knew, that baby belonged to some poor woman this guy kept locked in his basement.

  Fueling my fears was the overwhelming smell of rot, which smacked into me the second I stepped inside the house. Cat feces mixed with garbage, maybe? Hopefully, in fact. That was much better than the many other options that had jumped to mind, like death. I tried to breathe through my mouth so I wouldn’t gag. But the filth in the air was palpable. I could feel it gathering in a sour blanket over my tongue.

  It was dark, too. The curtains were pulled shut, the only light from a single standing lamp in the corner. Not dark enough, unfortunately, to hide the mess. There were boxes overflowing with clothes and papers and dusty Christmas decorations, and stacks and stacks of old magazines. In the open kitchen beyond, I could see dirty dishes and open food packages covering every available surface. An orange tabby cat was sitting in the center of the cluttered stove next to half a dozen industrial-size bottles of moisturizer. There were three more cats in a circle on the floor. I would have missed them if one hadn’t switched its tail. They were staring up at two parrots in a cage hanging from the ceiling, waiting for their chance at a tasty treat. When one of the parrots ruffled its feathers, all the cats sprang to life, circling below like sharks. I waited for the man to shoo them away, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Hannity starts in ten minutes,” he said, stepping around me to his recliner. “So you’ll need to make it quick.” He dropped himself down and jerked out the footrest in one practiced motion. He pointed at a couch that was either heavily patterned or very dirty or both. “Have a seat if you want.”

  “Oh, okay, great,” I said, feeling my way carefully, praying I wouldn’t trip and end up facedown on the revolting carpet.

  “Sorry it’s so dark,” he said, motioning to the curtains. “Got to keep them closed. Otherwise, when the drones come, they’ll be able to take pictures of everything. A couple shots of me looking long in the tooth, and”—he snapped his fingers—“like that, they’ll convene a death panel.”

  Naturally: death panels and drones.

  “I understand,” I said. That you’re delusional. “With the curtains closed, I guess you couldn’t have seen anything related to what happened to the baby?”

  “Who said that?” He sounded defensive again. “Damn police. Because I won’t talk to those numb-nuts doesn’t mean I don’t know things. I just don’t think it’s my job to do their job by spying on people. I believe in personal liberty: every person’s right to do as they wish.”

  “Including leaving a baby out in the woods?”

  “Who the hell am I to judge?” He shrugged.

  His beliefs seemed mostly random and nonsensical, but there was a thread of extreme conservatism. I hoped if I pulled at it, something interesting might unfurl.

  “But if we don’t hold people accountable for their actions, what kind of world will we have?” I asked. “A welfare state.”

  “You got that right.” He narrowed his eyes at me. Then he nodded as though he’d come to some conclusion. “Come on, let me show you something.”

  He waved me down an even darker, more cluttered hall, where he could be planning to house me. I hesitated before following. I’d been out of shape for a long time, but I’d have to hope that I’d retained some kind of muscle memory if he charged at me.

  “Did you see what happened to the baby, Mr. . . .”

  I pulled out my phone as I walked behind him, quickly texting Justin the man’s address with no explanation. If I didn’t come home, it would at least give him a place to start. He was going to love hearing why I’d sent it, when I was forced to explain later.

  “I didn’t see what happened to the baby,” the man said, turning in to the laundry room to the left of the door out to the garage. “But I seen something.”

  Inside, there was a telescope pointed out the window. He walked right over and placed a satisfied hand on it, as though it were the answer to all my questions. I stared at it, unsure what to say. The telescope made me feel better and worse—better about the possibility of this man having seen something useful; worse about the kind of person he was.

  “What did you see?” I asked, my voice a quiet rasp.

  “You believe in ghosts?”

  No. But that wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. “Sure, I guess,” I said. “Why?”

  “Because I saw one.” He leaned over to peek through his telescope. “Late one night, couple weeks ago.”

  “What did you see?”

  He looked back at me and nodded gravely. “It looked like a girl,” he said meaningfully. “Crawling out of the creek. She was covered in something, too, like war paint. Dark, you know, like that camouflage.”

  “Camouflage?” Curious, not skeptical. Inquire, don’t challenge.

  “Yeah, all over her face.” He demonstrated how she might have applied it.

  “And you saw her climb out of the creek?”

  “I saw her twice. This time she came out of the creek and threw up. And she had the war paint. La
st time, no paint. And she was running, in a red dress.”

  “This time?” And I’d been so hoping he’d say something that would prove him less delusional than he seemed.

  “Yep, this time she climbed out and threw up.” He shrugged. “Bent over the yard down there. Drunk, maybe. Then she took off, ran that way along the trees. With the paint on her face.”

  “When was the other time?”

  “Oh, long time ago—fifteen, twenty years. Long, long time. It was the night that kid fell down and hit his head at that party.”

  “But it was the same girl?”

  “Yep.”

  Great.

  “I went outside with my camera, so I could get proof this time. You know, send it into one of those ghost-hunter shows. But by the time I got out there, she was gone. Disappeared.” He clapped his hands together. “Just like that.”

  “So you don’t have any pictures?”

  “Nah, but I do got one thing. If I can find it.” He started yanking open the drawers in the laundry room, which hadn’t been used to launder anything in God knew how long. “It’s in here somewhere. Hold on. Ah, wait. Here it is.” He had something hidden in his fingers. I opened my palm, bracing for something damp and disgusting to be placed there. “It was hers. I found it in the street after I seen her here the first time.”

  Luckily, it was just cool and heavy. When I looked down, it was a small silver bracelet with words engraved on the inside: To J.M. Always, Tex.

  “I’m telling you. It was the same girl. A goddamn ghost.”

  RIDGEDALE READER

  ONLINE EDITION

  March 18, 2015, 10:26 a.m.

  The Legal Insufficiency of the Infanticide and Neonaticide Paradigm

  AN ESSAY BY MOLLY SANDERSON

  The body of a newborn female infant was discovered in Ridgedale less than thirty-six hours ago, near the Essex Bridge. The medical examiner has not yet released an official cause of death, and the baby remains unidentified.

  Many have concluded that the infant’s parents are responsible. Indeed, national statistics may support such assumptions. Children under the age of two are twice as likely to be murdered as they are to die in a car accident. According to recent Bureau of Justice statistics, in murders of children under the age of twelve, 57 percent of the perpetrators are the victim’s parents. Further, in those cases, women account for 55 percent of the defendants. Meanwhile, women account for only 10.5 percent of all murder defendants.

  At the same time, our understanding of maternal psychological disorders is continuing to evolve. Once thought of as a disorder that struck women only immediately after birth, postpartum depression is now known to be far more disparate. Women can suffer from birth-related mood disorders as early as their first trimester of pregnancy; likewise, symptoms can first surface long after labor and delivery. Contrary to previous assumptions, maternal depression can also manifest in a myriad of ways, many far different from what some might consider traditional depressive symptoms, including psychosis, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other anxiety disorders.

  In the tragic event that a mother does take her newborn’s life—neonaticide—maternal depression, whether pre- or postnatal, often fails to meet the strict definition of insanity required by a court of law. Thus, expert testimony regarding the mother’s mental state will often be barred. However, even if insanity is not an appropriate defense, juries and judges could still be allowed to consider evidence of a mother’s mental state as one issue of fact to be weighed. This compromise alternative remains largely unexamined by our justice system. There are few areas of criminal law as unsettled as neonaticide. Often the severity of the crime is determined purely according to prosecutorial discretion; charges ranging from murder to illegal disposal of a corpse are common. Such inconsistency only serves to further complicate already volatile legal and emotional terrain.

  There may be no crime more tragic than a mother taking her child’s life. But we cannot allow our fear about what the murder of a baby says about us as human beings to relegate it to the unexamined provenance of monsters. Because those monsters are somebody’s daughter or sister. They were once somebody’s mother.

  COMMENTS:

  JoshuaSki2

  57 min ago

  Speak for yourself, Molly Sanderson. No woman I know would ever kill her own baby. No way, no how. You know who does that? Animals. That’s who.

  SaraBethK

  55 min ago

  Why are you trying to make this kind of behavior okay? “Anyone” could kill a baby?? Really? Lots of people have unexpected pregnancies and go on to raise happy babies or they give them up for adoption or they raise them to be unhappy—but they don’t KILL THEM!!! Why are you defending this mother when you don’t even know what happened?

  MommaX

  52 min ago

  Lack of money=lack of education=fewer options and higher stress. 22% of American children live in poverty in the U.S., with the rates among minority children much higher. Maybe there are people who really are just evil. Or maybe there are people who are forced by circumstance to make awful choices.

  WyomingGirl

  50 min ago

  Did any of you hear about that case in Newark where they found a dead baby and then a long time later they found out the mother was dead? She was murdered also. For all we know they just haven’t found the mother’s body yet.

  Anniemay

  45 min ago

  Personally, I prefer to stay sold on the idea that it was some scared kids. But it would certainly be helpful if the police told us something more . . .

  Gracie55

  37 min ago

  This whole thing sounds like a witch hunt to me. Why don’t we just round up everyone in Ridgedale who makes less than a certain dollar amount because unwanted pregnancies are more common in that group. Just because something is effective doesn’t make it right.

  ariel.c

  28 min ago

  I’ve been biting my tongue here, but if no one else is going to say it I will. Absentee parenting. None of this ever would have happened if teenagers weren’t left unsupervised. I’m not saying it needs to be the mom. But it needs to be SOMEONE for God’s sake.

  tds@kidsrus

  25 min ago

  Ariel, are you seriously blaming this baby’s death on working parents? We don’t even know who the baby belongs to! Grr.

  HeatherSAHM

  21 min ago

  Okay, maybe Ariel could have said it better, but I get her point. The parents who abandon babies are usually young. And only a parent who is really out of touch—or simply out of the house—would not notice that their own child was pregnant.

  246Barry

  11 min ago

  HE IS STILL OUT THERE. FIND HIM.

  Barbara

  “Should we stop and get some ice cream, Cole?” Barbara called brightly as Steve drove them home. But she hardly felt lighthearted. Ever since she’d seen Cole’s terribly violent drawing—all the blood and that missing arm—Barbara had been frantic. Quietly, though. She’d been doing her very best to keep her worry to herself, or at least away from her son.

  Cole’s appointment with Dr. Kellerman, a slight man with unnecessarily unkempt hair and saggy brown eyes, had been a real disappointment. It wasn’t much more than a glorified playdate. And it had been so traumatic being in that little observation room, watching Cole through the one-way glass as if he were some kind of animal. Barbara had kept promising herself that she wouldn’t get wound up afterward. But that was easier said than done.

  “At this point, it doesn’t make sense to press Cole on exactly why he did the drawing,” Dr. Kellerman had said after his forty-five minutes of games and puzzles (and hardly any talking to Cole) were finished. “It’s unlikely that he even knows.”

  “How can you possibly be sure?” Barbara had all but shouted. Unwise, obviously, unless she wanted to be blamed for everything. She couldn’t help herself though. “You barely asked Cole anything.”
r />   “Trying to compel Cole to explain himself at this juncture would be both ineffective and counterproductive.” Dr. Kellerman’s voice had stayed calm, soothing, as if Barbara were the patient. “It would likely only add to his anxiety.”

  “So that’s it?” Barbara asked.

  “At this immediate moment, what triggered Cole to do that particular drawing isn’t nearly as important as managing his anxiety. That’s what’s behind both his acting out in school and the drawing.” The doctor went on, “With some careful assessment, we may find that his anxiety has been going on for quite some time, and these incidents represent some kind of peak. Sometimes it’s possible to notice certain sensitivities only in retrospect.”

  “Cole isn’t sensitive,” Barbara had snapped. And that was that. She wasn’t listening to Dr. Kellerman anymore, and she didn’t care if he knew it. “He never has been.”

  Besides, Barbara already knew exactly what was going on. Cole had heard something he shouldn’t have or seen some kind of violent video game or some bit of a terrible R-rated slasher movie, and it was haunting him. And there was only one place that could have happened: Stella’s house. It was that older son of hers, probably, or maybe some fly-by-night boyfriend of Stella’s. That was the best-case scenario: a movie, a game, something two-dimensional and not real-life.

  Because Barbara had seen enough of Stella to know that there might be no end to the inappropriate nonsense that went on in her home.

  “Honey, did you hear me about the ice cream?” Barbara called again.

  When Cole still didn’t answer, she craned around, bracing herself to see him sitting there in his car seat, staring out the window in that awful zombified way. Mercifully, his head was tipped forward in his sleep. He looked so peaceful and perfect like that. The way he’d always been. It made Barbara want to cry. How could he have fallen apart so quickly and so completely?