Transgressions

by Ed McBain

  Instead she wandered in one of the aisles. How like an overexposed photograph the store was. So much to see, yet you saw nothing.

  Thank God, there were no other customers at the moment.

  Saw her hand reach out for—what? A box of Kleenex.

  Pink, the color Marissa preferred.

  She went to the counter to pay. Smiled at the clerk who was smiling very nervously at her, clearly agitated by the sight of her. His always-so-friendly blond customer! Leah was going to thank him for having posted the notices, and she was going to ask him if he’d ever seen Marissa in his store alone, without her, when suddenly the man said, to her astonishment, “Mrs. Bantry, I know of your daughter and what has happened, that is so terrible. I watch all the time, to see what will come of it.” Behind the counter was a small portable TV, volume turned down. “Mrs. Bantry, I want to say, when the police came here, I was nervous and not able to remember so well, but now I do remember, I am more certain, yes I did see your daughter that day, I believe. She did come into the store. She was alone, and then there was another girl. They went out together.”

  The Indian clerk spoke in a flood of words. His eyes were repentant, pleading.

  “When? When was—”

  “That day, Mrs. Bantry. That the police have asked about. Last week.”

  “Thursday? You saw Marissa on Thursday?”

  But now he was hesitating. Leah spoke too excitedly.

  “I think so, yes. I can not be certain. That is why I did not want to tell the police, I did not want to get into trouble with them. They are impatient with me, I don’t know English so well. The questions they ask are not so easy to answer while they wait staring at you.”

  Leah didn’t doubt that the Indian clerk was uneasy with the Caucasian Skatskill police, she was uneasy with them herself.

  She said, “Marissa was with a girl, you say? What did this girl look like?”

  The Indian clerk frowned. Leah saw that he was trying to be as accurate as possible. He had probably not looked at the girls very closely, very likely he could not distinguish among most of them. He said, “She was older than your daughter, I am sure. She was not too tall, but older. Not so blond-haired.”

  “You don’t know her, do you? Her name?”

  “No. I do not know their names any of them.” He paused, frowning. His jaws tightened. “Some of them, the older ones, I think this girl is one of them, with their friends they come in here after school and take things. They steal, they break. They rip open bags, to eat. Like pigs they are. They think I can’t see them but I know what they do. Five days a week they come in here, many of them. They are daring me to shout at them, and if I would touch them—”

  His voice trailed off, tremulous.

  “This girl. What did she look like?”

  “. . . a white skin. More than yours, Mrs. Bantry. A strange color of hair like . . . a color of something red, faded.”

  He spoke with some repugnance. Clearly, the mysterious girl was not attractive in his eyes.

  Red-haired. Pale-red-haired. Who?

  Jude Trahern. The girl who’d brought the flowers. The girl who spoke of praying for Marissa’s safe return.

  Were they friends, then? Marissa had had a friend?

  Leah was feeling light-headed. The fluorescent lighting began to tilt and spin. There was something here she could not grasp. Pray with you. Next Sunday is Easter. She had more to ask of this kindly man but her mind had gone blank.

  “Thank you. I . . . have to leave now.”

  “Don’t tell them, Mrs. Bantry? The police? Please?”

  Blindly Leah pushed through the door.

  “Mrs. Bantry?” The clerk hurried after her, a bag in his hand. “You are forgetting.”

  The box of pink Kleenex.

  Flying Dutchman. Dutchwoman. She was becoming. Always in motion, terrified of stopping. Returning home to her sister.

  Any news?

  None.

  Behind the drab little mini-mall she was drifting, dazed. She would tell the Skatskill detectives what the Indian clerk had told her—she must tell them. If Marissa had been in the store on Thursday afternoon, then Marissa could not have been pulled into a minivan on 15th Street and Trinity, two blocks back toward school. Not by Mikal Zallman, or by anyone. Marissa must have continued past Trinity. After the 7-Eleven she would have circled back to 15th Street again, and walked another half block to home.

  Unless she’d been pulled into the minivan on 15th Street and Van Buren. The eyewitness had gotten the streets wrong. She’d been closer to home.

  Unless the Indian clerk was confused about days, times. Or, for what purpose Leah could not bear to consider, lying to her.

  “Not him! Not him, too.”

  She refused to think that was a possibility. Her mind simply shut blank, in refusal.

  She was walking now slowly, hardly conscious of her surroundings. A smell of rancid food assailed her nostrils. Only a few employees’ cars were parked behind the mini-mall. The pavement was stained and littered, a single Dumpster overflowing trash. At the back of the Chinese takeout several scrawny cats were rummaging in food scraps and froze at Leah’s approach before running away in panic.

  “Kitties! I’m not going to hurt you.”

  The feral cats’ terror mocked her own. Their panic was hers, misplaced, to no purpose.

  Leah wondered: what were the things Marissa did, when Leah wasn’t with her? For years they had been inseparable: mother, daughter. When Marissa had been a very small child, even before she could walk, she’d tried to follow her mother everywhere, from room to room. Mom-my! Where Mom-my going! Now, Marissa did many things by herself. Marissa was growing up. Dropping by the 7-Eleven, with other children after school. Buying a soft drink, a bag of something crunchy, salty. It was innocent enough. No child should be punished for it. Leah gave Marissa pocket change, as she called it, for just such impromptu purchases, though she disapproved of junk food.

  Leah felt a tightening in her chest, envisioning her daughter in the 7-Eleven store the previous Thursday, buying something from the Indian clerk. Then, he had not known her name. A day or two later, everyone in Skatskill knew Marissa Bantry’s name.

  Of course it probably meant nothing. That Marissa had walked out of the store with a classmate from school. Nothing unusual about that. She could imagine with what polite stiff expressions the police would respond to such a “tip.”

  In any case, Marissa would still have returned to 15th Street on her way home. So busy, dangerous at that hour of day.

  It was there on 15th Street that the “unidentified” classmate had seen Marissa being pulled into the Honda. Leah wondered if the witness was the red-haired Jude.

  Exactly what the girl had told police officers, Leah didn’t know. The detectives exuded an air, both assuring and frustrating, of knowing more than they were releasing at the present time.

  Leah found herself at the edge of the paved area. Staring at a steep hill of uncultivated and seemingly worthless land. Strange how in the midst of an affluent suburb there yet remain these stretches of vacant land, uninhabitable. The hill rose to Highgate Avenue a half mile away, invisible from this perspective. You would not guess that “historical” old homes and mansions were located on the crest of this hill, property worth millions of dollars. The hill was profuse with crawling vines, briars, and stunted trees. The accumulation of years of windblown litter and debris made it look like an informal dump. There was a scurrying sound somewhere just inside the tangle of briars, a furry shape that appeared and disappeared so swiftly Leah scarcely saw it.

  Behind the Dumpster, hidden from her view, the colony of wild cats lived, foraged for food, fiercely interbred, and died the premature deaths of feral creatures. They would not wish to be “pets”—they had no capacity to receive the affection of humans. They were, in clinical terms, undomesticable.

  Leah was returning to her car when she heard a nasal voice in her wake:

  “Mrs. Ban-try!
H’lo.”

  Leah turned uneasily to see the frizz-haired girl who’d given her the flowers.

  Jude. Jude Trahern.

  Now it came to Leah: there was a Trahern Square in downtown Skatskill, named for a Chief Justice Trahern decades ago. One of the old Skatskill names. On Highgate, there was a Trahern estate, one of the larger houses, nearly hidden from the road.

  This strange glistening-eyed girl. There was something of the sleek white rat about her. Yet she smiled uncertainly at Leah, clumsily straddling her bicycle.

  “Are you following me?”

  “Ma’am, no. I . . . just saw you.”

  Wide-eyed the girl appeared sincere, uneasy. Yet Leah’s nerves were on edge, she spoke sharply: “What do you want?”

  The girl stared at Leah as if something very bright glared from Leah’s face that was both blinding and irresistible. She wiped nervously at her nose. “I . . . I want to say I’m sorry, for saying dumb things before. I guess I made things worse.”

  Made things worse! Leah smiled angrily, this was so absurd.

  “I mean, Denise and Anita and me, we wanted to help. We did the wrong thing, I guess. Coming to see you.”

  “Were you the ‘unidentified witness’ who saw my daughter being pulled into a minivan?”

  The girl blinked at Leah, blank-faced. For a long moment Leah would have sworn that she was about to speak, to say something urgent. Then she ducked her head, wiped again at her nose, shrugged self-consciously and muttered what sounded like, “I guess not.”

  “All right. Good-bye. I’m leaving now.”

  Leah frowned and turned away, her heart beating hard. How badly she wanted to be alone! But the rat-girl was too obtuse to comprehend. With the dogged persistence of an overgrown child she followed Leah at an uncomfortably close distance of about three feet, pedaling her bicycle awkwardly. The bicycle was an expensive Italian make of the kind a serious adult cyclist might own.

  At last Leah paused, to turn back. “Do you have something to tell me, Jude?”

  The girl looked astonished.

  “ ‘Jude’! You remember my name?”

  Leah would recall afterward this strange moment. The exultant look in Jude Trahern’s face. Her chalky skin mottled with pleasure.

  Leah said, “Your name is unusual, I remember unusual names. If you have something to tell me about Marissa, I wish you would.”

  “Me? What would I know?”

  “You aren’t the witness from school?”

  “What witness?”

  “A classmate of Marissa’s says she saw a male driver pull Marissa into his minivan on 15th Street. But you aren’t that girl?”

  Jude shook her head vehemently. “You can’t always believe ‘eyewitnesses,” Mrs. Bantry.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s well known. It’s on TV all the time, police shows. An eyewitness swears she sees somebody, and she’s wrong. Like, with Mr. Zallman, people are all saying it’s him but, like, it might be somebody else.”

  The girl spoke rapidly, fixing Leah with her widened shining eyes.

  “Jude, what do you mean, somebody else? Who?”

  Excited by Leah’s attention, Jude lost her balance on the bicycle, and nearly stumbled. Clumsily she began walking it again. Gripping the handlebars so tightly her bony knuckles gleamed white.

  She was breathing quickly, lips parted. She spoke in a lowered conspiratorial voice.

  “See, Mrs. Bantry, Mr. Zallman is like notorious. He comes on to girls if they’re pretty-pretty like Marissa. Like some of the kids were saying on TV, he’s got these laser-eyes.” Jude shivered, thrilled.

  Leah was shocked. “If everybody knows about Zallman, why didn’t anybody tell? Before this happened? How could a man like that be allowed to teach?” She paused, anxious. Thinking Did Marissa know? Why didn’t she tell me?

  Jude giggled. “You got to wonder why any of them teach. I mean, why’d anybody want to hang out with kids! Not just some weird guy, but females, too.” She smiled, seeming not to see how Leah stared at her. “Mr. Z. is kind of fun. He’s this ‘master’—he calls himself. Online, you can click onto him he’s ‘Master of Eyes.’ Little kids, girls, he’d come onto after school, and tell them be sure not to tell anybody, see. Or they’re be ‘real sorry.’” Jude made a twisting motion with her hands as if wringing an invisible neck. “He likes girls with nice long hair he can brush.”

  “Brush?”

  “Sure. Mr. Zallman has this wire brush, like. Calls it a little-doggy-brush. He runs it through your hair for fun. I mean, it used to be fun. I hope the cops took the brush when they arrested him, like for evidence. Hell, he never came on to me, I’m not pretty-pretty.”

  Jude spoke haughtily, with satisfaction. Fixing Leah with her curious stone-colored eyes.

  Leah knew that she was expected to say, with maternal solicitude, Oh, but you are pretty, Jude! One day, you will be.

  In different circumstances she was meant to frame the rat-girl’s hot little face in her cool hands, comfort her. One day you will be loved, Jude. Don ‘tfeel bad.

  “You were saying there might be—somebody else? Not Zallman but another person?”

  Jude said, sniffing, “I wanted to tell you before, at your house, but you seemed, like, not to want to hear. And that other lady was kind of glaring at us. She didn’t want us to stay.”

  “Jude, please. Who is this person you’re talking about?”

  “Mrs. Branly, Bant-ry, like I said Marissa is a good friend of mine. She is! Some kids make fun of her, she’s a little slow they say but I don’t think Marissa is slow, not really. She tells me all kinds of secrets, see?” Jude paused, drawing a deep breath. “She said, she missed her dad.”

  It was as if Jude had reached out to pinch her. Leah was speechless.

  “Marissa was always saying she hates it here in Skatskill. She wanted to be with her dad, she said. Some place called ‘Berkeley’—in California. She wanted to go there to live.”

  Jude spoke with the ingratiating air of one child informing on another to a parent. Her lips quivered, she was so excited.

  Still Leah was unable to respond. Trying to think what to say except her brain seemed to be partly shutting down as if she’d had a small stroke.

  Jude said innocently, “I guess you didn’t know this, Mrs. Bantry?” She bit at her thumbnail, squinting.

  “Marissa told you that? She told you—those things?”

  “Are you mad at me, Mrs. Bantry? You wanted me to tell.”

  “Marissa told you—she wanted to live with her ‘dad’? Not with her mother but with her ‘dad’?”

  Leah’s peripheral vision had narrowed. There was a shadowy funnel-shape at the center of which the girl with the chalky skin and frizzed hair squinted and grinned, in a show of repentance.

  “I just thought you would want to know, see, Mrs. Bantry? Like, maybe Marissa ran away? Nobody is saying that, everybody thinks it’s Mr. Zallman, like the cops are thinking it’s got to be him. Sure, maybe it is. But—maybe!—Marissa called her dad, and asked him to come get her? Something weird like that? And it was a secret from you? See, a lot of times Marissa would talk that way, like a little kid. Like, not thinking about her mother’s feelings. And I told her, ‘Your mom, she’s real nice, she’d be hurt real bad, Marissa, if you—’”

  Leah couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. It was as if she’d lost her daughter for the second time.

  MISTAKES

  His first was to assume that, since he knew nothing of the disappearance of Marissa Bantry, he could not be “involved” in it.

  His second was not to contact a lawyer immediately. As soon as he realized exactly why he’d been brought into police headquarters for questioning.

  His third seemed to be to have lived the wrong life.

  Pervert. Sex offender. Pedophile.

  Kidnapper/rapist I murderer.

  Mikal Zallman, thirty-one. Suspect.

  “Mother, it’s Mikal. I hope
you haven’t seen the news already, I have something very disturbing to tell you . . .”

  Nothing! He knew nothing.

  The name MARISSA BANTRY meant nothing to him.

  Well, not initially. He couldn’t be sure.

  In his agitated state, not knowing what the hell they were getting at with their questions, he couldn’t be sure.

  “Why are you asking me? Has something happened to ‘Marissa Bantry’?”

  Next, they showed him photographs of the girl.

  Yes: now he recognized her. The long blond hair, that was sometimes plaited. One of the quieter pupils. Nice girl. He recognized the picture but could not have said the girl’s name because, look: “I’m not these kids’ teacher, exactly. I’m a ‘consultant.’ I don’t have a homeroom. I don’t have regular classes with them. In the high school, one of the math instructors teaches computer science. I don’t get to know the kids by name, like their other instructors do.”

  He was speaking quickly, an edge to his voice. It was uncomfortably cold in the room, yet he was perspiring.

  As in a cartoon of police interrogation. They sweated it out of the suspect.

  Strictly speaking, it wasn’t true that Zallman didn’t know students’ names. He knew the names of many students. Certainly, he knew their faces. Especially the older students, some of whom were extremely bright, and engaging. But he had not known Marissa Bantry’s name, the shy little blond child had made so little an impression on him.

  Nor had he spoken with her personally. He was certain.

  “Why are you asking me about this girl? If she’s missing from home what is the connection with me?”

  That edge to Zallman’s voice. Not yet angry, only just impatient.

  He was willing to concede, yes: if a child has been missing for more than twenty-four hours that was serious. If eleven-year-old Marissa Bantry was missing, it was a terrible thing.

  “But it has nothing to do with me.”

  They allowed him to speak. They were tape recording his precious words. They did not appear to be passing judgment on him, he was not receiving the impression that they believed him involved with the disappearance, only just a few questions to put to him, to aid in their investigation. They explained to him that it was in his best interests to cooperate fully with them, to straighten out the misunderstanding, or whatever it was, a misidentification perhaps, before he left police headquarters.