Transgressions

by Ed McBain

  It was a nightmare. All that Leah Bantry had done, what exertion of heart and soul, to enroll her daughter in a private school in which a pedophile was allowed to instruct elementary school children.

  She had met Zallman, she believed. At one of the parents’ evenings. Something seemed wrong, though: Zallman was young. You don’t expect a young man to be a pedophile. An attractive man though with a hawkish profile, and not very warm. Not with Leah. Not that she could remember.

  The detectives had shown her Zallman’s photograph. They had not allowed her to speak with Zallman. Vaguely yes she did remember. But not what he’d said to her, if he had said anything. Very likely Leah has asked him about Marissa but what he’d said she could not recall.

  And then, hadn’t Zallman slipped away from the reception, early? By chance she’d seen him, the only male faculty member not to be wearing a necktie, hair straggling over his collar, disappearing from the noisy brightly lighted room.

  He’d taken a polygraph, at his own request. The results were “inconclusive.”

  If I could speak with him. Please.

  They were telling her no, Mrs. Bantry. Not a good idea.

  This man who took Marissa if I could speak with him please.

  In her waking state she pleaded. She would beg the detectives, she would throw herself on their mercy. Her entire conscious life was now begging, pleading, and bartering. And waiting.

  Zallman is the one, isn’t he? You have him, don’t you? An eyewitness said she saw him. Saw him pull Marissa into a van with him. In broad daylight! And you found Marissa’s barrette by his parking space isn’t that proof

  To her, the desperate mother, it was certainly proof. The man had taken Marissa, he knew where Marissa was. The truth had to be wrung from him before it was too late.

  On her knees she would beg to see Zallman promising not to become emotional and they told her no, for she would only become emotional in the man’s presence. And Zallman, who had a lawyer now, would only become more adamant in his denial.

  Denial! How could he . . . deny! He had taken Marissa, he knew where Marissa was.

  She would beg him. She would show Zallman pictures of Marissa as a baby. She would plead with this man for her daughter’s life if only if only if only for God’s sake they would allow her.

  Of course, it was impossible. The suspect was being questioned following a procedure, a strategy, to which Leah Bantry had no access. The detectives were professionals, Leah Bantry was an amateur. She was only the mother, an amateur.

  The wheel, turning.

  It was a very long Friday. The longest Friday of Leah’s life.

  Then abruptly it was Friday night, and then it was Saturday morning. And Marissa was still gone.

  Zallman had been captured, yet Marissa was still gone.

  He might have been tortured, in another time. To make him confess. The vicious pedophile, whose “legal rights” had to be honored.

  Leah’s heart beat in fury. Yet she was powerless, she could not intervene.

  Saturday afternoon: approaching the time when Marissa would be missing for forty-eight hours.

  Forty-eight hours! It did not seem possible.

  She has drowned by now, Leah thought. She has suffocated for lack of oxygen.

  She is starving. She has bled to death. Wild creatures on Bear Mountain have mutilated her small body.

  She calculated: it would soon be fifty hours since Leah had last seen Marissa. Kissed her hurriedly good-bye in the car, in front of the school Thursday morning at eight. And (she forced herself to remember, she would not escape remembering) Leah hadn’t troubled to watch her daughter run up the walk, and into the school. Pale gold hair shimmering behind her and just possibly (possibly!) at the door, Marissa had turned to wave goodbye to Mommy but Leah was already driving away.

  And so, she’d had her opportunity. She would confess to her sister Avril I let Marissa slip away.

  The great wheel, turning. And the wheel was Time itself, without pity.

  She saw that now. In her state of heightened awareness bred of terror she saw. She had ceased to give a damn about “Leah Bantry” in the public eye. The distraught/negligent mother. Working mom, single mom, mom-with-a-drinking-problem. She’d been exposed as a liar. She’d been exposed as a female avid to sleep with another woman’s husband and that husband her boss. She knew, the very police who were searching for Marissa’s abductor were investigating her, too. Crude tabloids, TV journalism. Under a guise of sympathy, pity for her “plight.”

  None of this mattered, now. What the jackals said of her, and would say. She was bartering her life for Marissa’s. Appealing to God in whom she was trying in desperation to believe. If You would. Let Marissa be alive. Return Marissa to me. If You would hear my plea. So there was no room to give a damn about herself, she had no scruples now, no shame. Yes she would consent to be interviewed on the crudest and crudest of the New York City TV stations if that might help Marissa, somehow. Blinking into the blinding TV lights, baring her teeth in a ghastly nervous smile.

  Never would she care again for the pieties of ordinary life. When on the phone her own mother began crying, asking why, why on earth had Leah left Marissa alone for so many hours, Leah had interrupted the older woman coldly, “That doesn’t matter now, Mother. Good-bye.”

  Neither of the elder Bantrys was in good health, they would not fly east to share their daughter’s vigil. But Leah’s older sister Avril flew up immediately from Washington to stay with her.

  For years the sisters had not been close. There was a subtle rivalry between them, in which Leah had always felt belittled.

  Avril, an investment attorney, was brisk and efficient answering the telephone, screening all e-mail. Avril checked the Marissa Web site constantly. Avril was on frank terms with the senior Skatskill detective working the case, who spoke circumspectly and with great awkwardness to Leah.

  Avril called Leah to come listen to a voice-mail message that had come in while they’d been at police headquarters. Leah had told Avril about Davitt Stoop, to a degree.

  It was Davitt, finally calling Leah. In a slow stilted voice that was not the warm intimate voice Leah knew he was saying A terrible thing . . . This is a . . . terrible thing, Leah. We can only pray this madman is caught and that . . . A long pause. You would have thought that Dr. Stoop had hung up but then he continued, more forcibly, I’m sorry for this terrible thing but Leah please don’t try to contact me again. Giving my name to the police! The past twenty-four hours have been devastating for me. Our relationship was a mistake and it can’t be continued, I am sure you understand. As for your position at the clinic I am sure you understand the awkwardness among all the staff if . . .

  Leah’s heart beat in fury, she punched erase to extinguish the man’s voice. Grateful that Avril, who’d tactfully left the room, could be relied upon not to ask about Davitt Stoop, nor even to offer sisterly solicitude.

  Take everything from me. If You will leave me Marissa, the way we were.

  EMISSARIES

  “Mommy!”

  It was Marissa’s voice, but muffled, at a distance.

  Marissa was trapped on the far side of a barrier of thick glass, Leah heard her desperate cries only faintly. Marissa was pounding the glass with her fists, smearing her damp face against it. But the glass was too thick to be broken. “Mommy! Help me, Mommy . . .” And Leah could not move to help the child, Leah was paralyzed. Something gripped her legs, quicksand, tangled ropes. If she could break free . . .

  Avril woke her, abruptly. There was someone to see her, friends of Marissa’s they said they were.

  “H-Hello, Mrs. Branty . . . Bantry. My name is . . .”

  Three girls. Three girls from Skatskill Day. One of them, with faded-rust-red hair and glistening stone-colored eyes, was holding out to Leah an astonishing large bouquet of dazzling white flowers: long-stemmed roses, carnations, paperwhites, mums. The sharp astringent fragrance of the paperwhites prevailed.

&nbs
p; The bouquet must have been expensive, Leah thought. She took it from the girl and tried to smile. “Why, thank you.”

  It was Sunday, midday. She’d sunk into a stupor after twenty hours of wakefulness. Seeing it was a warm, incongruously brightly sunny April day beyond the partly-drawn blinds on the apartment windows.

  She would have to focus on these girls. She’d been expecting, from what Avril had said, younger children, Marissa’s age. But these were adolescents. Thirteen, fourteen. In eighth grade, they’d said. Friends of Marissa’s?

  The visit would not last long. Avril, disapproving, hovered near.

  Possibly Leah had invited them, the girls were seated in her living room. They were clearly excited, edgy. They glanced about like nervous birds. Leah supposed she should offer them Cokes but something in her resisted. Hurriedly she’d washed her face, dragged a comb through her snarled hair that no longer looked blond, but dust-colored. How were these girls Marissa’s friends? Leah had never seen them before in her life.

  Nor did their names mean anything to her. “Jude Trahern,” “Denise . . .” The third name she’d failed to catch.

  The girls were moist-eyed with emotion. So many neighbors had dropped by to express their concern, Leah supposed she had to endure it. The girl who’d given Leah the bouquet, Jude, was saying in a faltering nasal voice how sorry they were for what had happened to Marissa and how much they liked Marissa who was just about the nicest girl at Skatskill Day. If something like this had to happen too bad it couldn’t happen to—well, somebody else.

  The other girls giggled, startled at their friend’s vehemence.

  “But Marissa is so nice, and so sweet. Ma’am, we are praying for her safe return, every minute.”

  Leah stared at the girl. She had no idea how to reply.

  Confused, she lifted the bouquet to her face. Inhaled the almost too rich paperwhite smell. As if the purpose of this visit was to bring Leah . . . What?

  The girls were staring at her almost rudely. Of course, they were young, they knew no better. Their leader, Jude, seemed to be a girl with some confidence, though she wasn’t the eldest or the tallest or the most attractive of the three.

  Not attractive at all. Her face was fiercely plain as if she’d scrubbed it with steel wool. Her skin was chalky, mottled. You could sense the energy thrumming through her like an electric current, she was wound up so tightly.

  The other girls were more ordinary. One was softly plump with a fattish pug face, almost pretty except for something smirky, insolent in her manner. The other girl had a sallow blemished skin, limp grease-colored hair and oddly quivering, parted lips. All three girls wore grubby blue jeans, boys’ shirts, and ugly square-toed boots.

  “. . . so we were wondering, Mrs. Bran-, Bantry, if you would like us to, like, pray with you? Like, now? It’s Palm Sunday. Next Sunday is Easter.”

  “What? Pray? Thank you but . . .”

  “Because Denise and Anita and me, we have a feeling, we have a really strong feeling, Mrs. Bantry, that Marissa is alive. And Marissa is depending on us. So, if—”

  Avril came forward quickly, saying the visit was ended.

  “My sister has been under a strain, girls. I’ll see you to the door.”

  The flowers slipped through Leah’s fingers. She caught at some of them, clumsily. The others fell to the floor at her feet.

  Two of the girls hurried to the door, held open by Avril, with frightened expressions. Jude, pausing, continued to smile in her earnest, pinched way. She’d taken a small black object out of her pocket. “May I take a picture, Mrs. Bantry?”

  Before Leah could protest, she raised the camera and clicked the shutter. Leah’s hand had flown up to shield her face, instinctively.

  Avril said sharply, “Please. The visit is over, girls.”

  Jude murmured, on her way out, “We will pray for you anyway, Mrs. Bantry. ‘Bye!”

  The other girls chimed in Bye! bye! Avril shut the door behind them.

  ______

  Leah threw the flowers away in the trash. White flowers!

  At least, they hadn’t brought her calla lilies.

  DUTCHWOMAN

  . . . in motion. Tracing and retracing The Route. Sometimes on foot, sometimes in her car. Sometimes with Avril but more often alone. “I need to get out! I can’t breathe in here! I need to see what Marissa saw.”

  These days were very long days. And yet, in all of the hours of these days, nothing happened.

  Marissa was still gone, still gone.

  Like a clock’s ticking: still, still gone. Each time you checked, still gone.

  She had her cell phone of course. If there was news.

  She walked to the Skatskill Day School and positioned herself at the front door of the elementary grades wing, which was the door Marissa would have used, would have left by on Thursday afternoon. From this position she began The Route.

  To the front sidewalk and east along Pinewood. Across Pinewood to Mahopac Avenue and continue east past 12th Street, 13th Street, 14th Street, 15th Street. At 15th and Trinity, the witness had claimed to see Mikal Zallman pull Marissa Bantry into his Honda CR-V van, and drive away.

  Either it had happened that way, or it had not.

  There was only the single witness, a Skatskill Day student whom police would not identify.

  Leah believed that Zallman was the man and yet: there was something missing. Like a jigsaw puzzle piece. A very small piece, yet crucial.

  Since the girls’ visit. Since the bouquet of dazzling white flowers. That small twitchy smile Leah did not wish to interpret as taunting, of the girl named Jude.

  We will pray for you anyway, Mrs. Bantry. Bye!

  Important for Leah to walk briskly. To keep in motion.

  There is a deep-sea creature, perhaps a shark, that must keep in motion constantly, otherwise it will die. Leah was becoming this creature, on land. She believed that news of Marissa’s death would come to her only if she, the mother, were still; there was a kind of deadness in being still; but if she was in motion, tracing and retracting Marissa’s route . . . “It’s like Marissa is with me. Is me.”

  She knew that people along The Route were watching her. Everyone in Skatskill knew her face, her name. Everyone knew why she was out on the street, tracing and retracing The Route. A slender woman in shirt, slacks, dark glasses. A woman who had made a merely perfunctory attempt to disguise herself, dusty-blond hair partly hidden beneath a cap.

  She knew the observers were pitying her. And blaming her.

  Still, when individuals spoke to her, as a few did each time she traced The Route, they were invariably warm, sympathetic. Some of them, both men and women, appeared to be deeply sympathetic. Tears welled in their eyes. That bastard they spoke of Zallman. Has he confessed yet?

  In Skatskill the name Zallman was known now, notorious. That the man was—had been—a member of the faculty at the Skatskill Day School had become a local scandal.

  The rumor was, Zallman had a record of prior arrests and convictions as a sexual predator. He’d been fired from previous teaching positions but had somehow managed to be hired at the prestigious Skatskill School. The school’s beleaguered principal had given newspaper and TV interviews vigorously denying this rumor, yet it prevailed.

  Bantry, Zallman. The names now luridly linked. In the tabloids photos of the missing girl and “suspect” were printed side by side. Several times, Leah’s photograph was included as well.

  In her distraught state yet Leah was able to perceive the irony of such a grouping: a mock family.

  Leah had given up hoping to speak with Zallman. She supposed it was a ridiculous request. If he’d taken Marissa he was a psychopath and you don’t expect a psychopath to tell the truth. If he had not taken Marissa . . .

  “If it’s someone else. They will never find him.”

  The Skatskill police had not yet arrested Zallman. Temporarily, Zallman had been released. His lawyer had made a terse public statement that he was “fully co
operating” with the police investigation. But what he had told them, what could possibly be of worth that he had told them, Leah didn’t know.

  Along The Route, Leah saw with Marissa’s eyes. The facades of houses. On 15th Street, storefronts. No one had corroborated the eyewitness’s testimony about seeing Marissa pulled into a van in full daylight on busy 15th Street. Wouldn’t anyone else have seen? And who had the eyewitness been? Since the three girls had dropped by to see her, Leah was left with a new sensation of unease.

  Not Marissa’s friends. Not those girls.

  She crossed Trinity and continued. This was a slight extension of Marissa’s route home from school. It was possible, Marissa dropped by the 7-Eleven to buy a snack on Tuesdays/Thursdays when Leah returned home late.

  Taped to the front plate-glass door of the 7-Eleven was

  HAVE YOU SEEN ME?

  MARISSA BANTRY, 11

  MISSING SINCE APRIL 10

  Marissa’s smiling eyes met hers as Leah pushed the door open.

  Inside, trembling, Leah removed her dark glasses. She was feeling dazed. Wasn’t certain if this was full wakefulness or a fugue state. She was trying to orient herself. Staring at a stack of thick Sunday New York Times. The front page headlines were of U.S.-Iraq issues and for a confused moment Leah thought Maybe none of it has happened yet.

  Maybe Marissa was outside, waiting in the car.

  The gentlemanly Indian clerk stood behind the counter in his usual reserved, yet attentive posture. He was staring at her strangely, Leah saw, as he would never have done in the past.

  Of course, he recognized her now. Knew her name. All about her. She would never be an anonymous customer again. Leah saw, with difficulty, for her eyes were watering, a second HAVE YOU SEEN ME? taped conspicuously to the front of the cash register.

  Wanting to embrace the man, wordless. Wanted to press herself into his arms and burst into tears.