Little Girl Gone

by Alexandra Burt

  He left me no room, no place left to go. ‘Where is my daughter? Tell me where she is … please … I’m her mother. Where is she?’

  ‘Safe, bitch, she’s safe without you.’ He laughed. Contrived. Breathless. Diabolical.

  And then the Prince of Darkness pointed his gun at me. A bright light exploded. I felt so much colder than ever before. The wind wheezed through the cornstalks and then the crisp autumn night turned to ice.

  The moonlight faded and everything went dark. My last thought was that no one would ever know what happened to my daughter. No one.

  The next two sessions are eventless. I enter the elevator, I descend, but there’s nothing left. Like a dog in hot pursuit, I’d leaped through cornfields and run my pads raw, heart beating in my muzzle, branches tearing at me. The shadows got longer, the sun was about to go down, and I had pushed myself beyond all endurance.

  We sit in silence for a while. Mia is alive, somewhere. Maybe. Maybe not. The Liebermans are gone, nowhere to be found. We have come all this way, yet we still know nothing. This is it.

  I look up at him and start to cry. ‘What now?’

  Dr Ari gets up and walks around his desk. ‘We keep looking.’

  ‘Looking for what?’

  ‘We still don’t know how you ended up in the ravine. And what happened to your ear. There are still unanswered questions.’

  ‘Lieberman shot me. He shot me and pushed me into the ravine.’

  ‘The car drove into the ravine, it wasn’t pushed.’

  I look at him puzzled.

  ‘They can tell by the keys in the ignition. There were also tire marks. Not only did the car drive into the ravine, but it accelerated.’

  ‘What does it matter? The police should look for them.’

  ‘They are looking.’

  ‘Then can I go?’

  A long pause. ‘Go? Where?’

  ‘Home.’ When I say the word I pause. North Dandry? I realize I have no home.

  ‘You think this is over?’ Dr Ari covers his forehead with his hand as if to say you poor fool, what are you thinking? ‘Estelle, the police and the DA are not going to be satisfied with this conclusion.’ He pauses, folds his hands on top of the desk. ‘This is what we have: a missing baby, a mother who doesn’t report the crime, even keeps it from her husband. Yes, we have a missing construction worker and his sister, I give you that, who by the way have been vagrants on and off and the police have been unable to track their every move before they lived in Dover and before Lieberman accepted the job at North Dandry. Do you know how many people just don’t show up for work? Or move and don’t leave a forwarding address?’

  I swallow hard. ‘The blanket. Tinker Bell.’

  ‘So what? You could have found that anywhere. There’s no proof. Just two people who can’t be found and your word.’

  ‘Which doesn’t count at all.’

  ‘You remembered everything else, Estelle. The smell of the blanket, the titles of books, the flowers on a teacup. But you don’t remember how you ended up in that ravine?’

  ‘Do you even believe me?’

  ‘I am of no significance. The police and the DA need proof. The truth without proof is nothing in their legal world. We’ll continue tomorrow.’

  I get up and start to leave the room. At the door I turn around. ‘Unless a miracle occurs, I have nothing.’

  As I stab at the meatloaf and draw the prongs of my fork through the mashed potatoes, the dining room falls silent. Marge drops her spoon and then the sound of knives and forks hitting plates ceases altogether. I look up and see Marge gawking in the direction of the cafeteria entrance.

  Dr Ari rushes towards our table and I detect a slight limp I’ve never noticed before. I rest my fork on the side of my plate. Oliver too is confused, his hand suspended in midair.

  ‘Something’s up,’ he says without taking his eyes off Dr Ari. ‘I’ve never seen him in the cafeteria.’

  Dr Ari continues towards me. I push my tray towards Marge and then hope takes shape in the back of my throat. This is it. They’ve found her. They’ve found Mia. I picture Dr Ari sitting down, grabbing my hand, smiling at me, saying the words I’ve been longing to hear.

  ‘Follow me to my office,’ Dr Ari says. He doesn’t sit down, he doesn’t grab my hand. I lift my hand, command his silence. One more moment is all I want, one more moment of hope, of believing that they’ve found her but no one can misinterpret his empty facial expression as a smile.

  Then I surrender and accept the end of hope.

  Dr Ari pushes his glasses way up on the bridge of his nose. He clears his throat.

  ‘I received a call earlier regarding a piece of evidence. The lab results have just become available now.’

  ‘What evidence?’

  ‘We’ll talk about that in a minute. Tell me, do you remember what they found in the car with you?’

  ‘My purse. And Jack’s gun.’

  ‘Three things. Your purse. The gun. And a piece of paper.’

  I remember now. My purse. That’s how they identified me. And the gun. Lieberman put it in my car, in the cornfield. ‘I don’t remember anything about a piece of paper.’

  ‘It was soaked in blood. They had to send it to a lab in Florida.’

  ‘I don’t remember any paper. I’m not sure they ever asked me about it.’ The air in his office is chilly and I rub my arms to keep warm.

  ‘Tell me about the gun,’ he says.

  ‘The gun they found in my car? It was the gun from Jack’s closet.’

  ‘The same gun you took to Anna’s house.’

  ‘I guess.’

  We stare at each other.

  ‘What are you saying? What’s the point of all this?’ I ask, frustrated. ‘Why don’t you ask me what I remember, not what I don’t remember?’

  ‘I’m not asking you anything. I’m telling you the gun had one bullet in the chamber when you went to Anna Lieberman’s house. When you found the gun in the closet, it had one bullet in the chamber. One bullet. And when they found the gun there wasn’t a single bullet in it. But your fingerprints all over it. No one else’s, just yours. And you had been shot.’

  ‘How is that significant?’

  ‘Just a detail I want you to keep in mind. But here’s the thing.’

  The thing. I take a deep breath and look out the window. It’s foggy and almost dark and I can’t make out as much as a tree.

  ‘We need to talk about the note.’

  ‘I thought it was a piece of paper.’

  ‘It was a piece of paper until the people at the Florida lab managed to take digital photographs after applying different kinds of light sources … anyway … I’m not familiar with forensic procedures but it turns out they were able to create a decipherable image of the note. I just received a copy an hour ago.’

  I lower my eyes. There’s a piece of paper in front of him on his desk.

  ‘Unfortunately it took the lab this long to decipher the note. This could have been a lot easier.’ He hands it to me. ‘Would you read it to me?’

  I extend my hand and hold the paper between my thumb and my index finger. The 8½ by 11 piece of paper is a copy of a torn handwritten note. It has a reddish tint to it. I skim over it. The letters seem oddly disjointed, I can’t tell where one word ends and another one starts. There are no more than twenty words on the page.

  ‘Read it out loud.’ Dr Ari’s voice is reaching me from afar.

  I recognize the handwriting as my own; rushed, hurried, yet mine.

  ‘Read it to me,’ he insists and leans back in his chair.

  I read it. Silently. And I make a mistake. I don’t enter the elevator, my place of calm reprieve, instead I go to Stone Harbor, the beach where I built sandcastles the summer before my parents died. Giant rocks above the tide line, yellow and blue-green, salmon pink and mother-of-pearl. The tide caresses the sand, then my toes, just to roll out again into the vast sea. Spitting waves, salty air and chapped lips. Pink and purple spiny s
ea urchins, tangled algae around my ankles. Barnacles and seaweed in the dead sand, so serene against the violent waves. Little water and lots of sand or you destabilize the walls and they will buckle under the weight, just like a landslide, my dad had told me as I scooped the fine grains into a pile. I tried, Lord knows I tried to build this sandcastle with the utmost care. I had used the perfect proportions of water and sand but it stood no chance. I make a fist. I can feel the coarse texture of the grains as I watch a tidal wave demolishing my castle.

  Everyone,

  I can’t go on like this.

  I am sorry for what I have done.

  I killed my baby. I’m a monster.

  I crack wide open. When I wake up I’m in a daze. Not like waking up from a deep sleep, but chemically pacified and strapped down. The nurse sitting next to me gets up and wraps a blood pressure cuff around my arm. This isn’t supposed to end this way.

  I’m sorry.

  Part Four

  Chapter 23

  ‘I want you to call the police,’ I demand two days later when we resume our sessions. Dr Ari and I have been going at this for almost an hour. I’ve come to accept the truth. All the stories I’ve been telling, of Tinker Bell and blankets in attics, nothing but my brain attempting to conceal the truth. The truth is that I am a monster. The second I allowed myself this directness, I felt helpless terror. But there’s no sense in fighting it. ‘I’ll plead guilty. Let’s just end it now.’

  ‘I will do no such thing at this point,’ Dr Ari says and leans forward. ‘Once you confess there’s nothing else I can do for you. Everything will end up in discovery and used against you in court.’

  ‘I wrote a note saying I killed my daughter. All this here, what we’re doing every day, is just a farce. Call the police.’

  ‘But her body, where is her body? What happened and how and when? There are too many questions that haven’t been answered yet. I won’t allow you to give up.’ He raises his hands. ‘This isn’t helping. Let’s stay focused and talk about the note for now.’

  ‘It’s not a note, it’s a confession.’

  ‘Do you remember writing it?’

  ‘Do I remember writing it?’ This is getting funnier by the minute. ‘I’m done with this. I want you to call the police so I can turn myself in. All this doesn’t make any sense. It is what it is and you need to accept, it’s over.’

  ‘Do you remember writing it?’ he repeats.

  ‘No, I don’t remember writing it but it is my handwriting. It looks rushed in a way, but I wrote it.’

  ‘I want to show you something.’

  ‘There’s more? God help me, what’s next? A map with a cross where I buried her? Maybe I carved my initials into her skin?’

  Dr Ari hands me another piece of paper. ‘There’s something else, something I’ve neglected to tell you.’

  There’s no such thing as Dr Ari neglecting to do anything. Everything he does, he does with a purpose. I grab the piece of paper.

  ‘It’s the same note, I don’t understand.’

  ‘Flip it over,’ he says.

  On the back of the paper there’s no writing, just random bloody smudges.

  ‘Is this a joke?’ I ask.

  ‘Look closer.’

  I squint my eyes. There’s the faintest outline of printed words. I can’t make them out.

  ‘I can’t make out the words, but there are some numbers. A phone number maybe? I don’t get it.’ I flip the note over and over again. ‘I really don’t get it.’

  ‘It’s a receipt from Diane’s Diner, a place off 434. A receipt for two cups of coffee and two pieces of pecan pie.’

  ‘I had coffee and pie and then jotted down a confession.’ I shake my head in disbelief. ‘That’s quite a story.’

  I try to make sense of the receipt, but it doesn’t add up. I don’t like pecan pie, the nuts stick to my teeth and the hint of maple is just not my thing. ‘I don’t even like pecan pie,’ I say.

  ‘Thanks to Google I’m a step ahead. I took the liberty to print out a photograph of the place.’ Dr Ari opens the manila folder and pulls out a photograph.

  Enter the elevator.

  I study the photo. Diane’s Diner is a brick building, one story, a neon sign, a jukebox visible through the front door. I hear a melody from deep within. Strained tunes. Refrains. It tugs at me, gently at first, then it pulls me towards the building’s front door. Images rush at me, like a crowd of children, waiting to be acknowledged, one by one. Infantile, incomplete. But then they mature, fill out.

  A man on the ground. Face down.

  A fork scratching against a white china plate.

  Pecans shaped like miniature brains.

  ‘A song,’ I say, ‘I remember a song.’

  I need to go back, back to when I saw the flash, when the gun went off. I remember the sound of the gunshot and how loud it was.

  Deeper. Go deeper.

  Loose rubble under my knees. Rasping breathing. Legs like lead, heavy. My pounding heart, throbbing pain in my legs.

  Deeper.

  Blue. Indigo. Or periwinkle. Persian? Royal blue? Navy blue. A tarp. A navy-blue tarp.

  I sit up straight and uncross my arms.

  Deeper.

  I consider making the buttons disappear. Whatever I find at this diner, maybe I won’t want to return to reality.

  Lieberman stood in front of me, legs parted, his heels digging into the gravel. He pulled the gun out of his boot shaft and pointed it at me.

  First a flash, then an explosion ripped through my eardrums. My ears went deaf for a few seconds, followed by a loud ringing tone. I closed my eyes, waiting for the darkness to spread. I waited for the pain, the burn, yet nothing happened.

  Lieberman’s body jolted towards me as if someone had shoved him in my direction. He fell on the ground, face first. He lay motionless, as if struck by lightning. I watched a dark spot on his back expanding into a large crimson sphere.

  I stared into the direction of the sound, the same direction of the flash. A shadow emerged from behind the car. The figure took shape, like a specter gaining strength and coming into focus. A woman. Gun in hand.

  ‘Goddamn bastard,’ Anna Lieberman said. ‘Never does what he’s told.’ She stared at his bloody back as if David meant nothing, her face is void of any emotion as if she just shot a rabid animal. After she shakes her head as if that’s all it takes to get rid of his image altogether, she disappeared into the dark of the night and I was left to stare at Lieberman’s body. The crimson not only covered his entire back but had pooled by the side of his body.

  I didn’t have the strength to get up but I managed to shift my weight away from my knees. Seconds later the Caprice’s headlights moved towards me. Anna stopped next to Lieberman’s lifeless body.

  ‘Can you get up?’ Anna asked and got out of her car.

  I shook my head. ‘I can’t feel my legs.’

  ‘Try.’ She grabbed my elbow and pulled me to my feet, reaching around me, cutting the plastic zip ties. She pulled a blue tarp from the trunk. Anna shrouded her brother’s body with the tarp, tucked it underneath him on the side, and then rolled him on top of it like a nurse changing the sheets of an immobile patient.

  Then I followed her commands. We pulled Lieberman about fifty feet until we ended up by the booth entrance of the corn maze. We pulled him inside the structure, dropped the front panel and closed the side door.

  In the car she sat only inches away from the steering wheel. She squinted her eyes as she drove through the night, southbound on 434. She made a turn into a Chevron station and parked by the side door.

  Get key from management, a sign said.

  ‘Listen closely, Estelle Paradise. We don’t need anyone else to get involved, okay? Do I have your word?’

  I nodded. I felt hope. For the first time in days I felt something resembling hope.

  ‘I’ll get the key.’ She got out of the car and locked the doors. ‘Wait right here.’

  There’d b
e concessions, there’d be promises not to call the police. I’d assure her I’d never ever tell anyone. David Lieberman was dead and I’d promise to take these days of horrors to the grave with me. I was prepared to give her everything I owned, I’d promise her anything, I’d do anything for Mia. Anything.

  Anna returned with a key. ‘Go clean yourself up,’ she said and handed me a plastic bag. ‘There’s some wipes in here. Put on the clean clothes, and don’t leave your bloody clothes in the bathroom. Throw them in the Dumpster over there,’ she said and nodded towards the side of the building. ‘They didn’t have any shoes, so clean yours best you can. Hurry up, we don’t have all night.’

  Getting out of the car I could barely straighten my legs and all but hobbled to the bathroom. I unlocked the door. Inside, I turned on the water and washed the filth off my hands.

  I sat my muddy shoes in the sink and watched the dirt trail down the drain. I put on the gray hoodie and the white T-shirt and a few minutes later I walked out with the bag of bloody clothes in hand. I tossed them in the green Dumpster by the side of the building.

  We left the gas station parking lot and less than five minutes later Anna pulled by the side of a building with large letters on a neon sign illuminated in a timed sequence. Diane’s Diner.

  She motioned me to get out of the car.

  ‘No funny business. Not a word, or you’ll regret it.’ She stood merely inches from my face, reached behind her and pulled the gun from her waistband and pushed its barrel into my stomach. ‘I think we just established that I don’t warn people before I shoot.’

  ‘I knew you’d do the right thing,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said and pulled a rubber band out of her hair. She gathered her hair, smoothing the sides with the palms of her hands.

  ‘Why are we here?’ I asked.

  ‘To eat,’ she said and pointed at the front door of the diner.

  I had hope. I still had hope.

  Diane’s Diner was all stainless steel and red and white checkered vinyl booths. There was a wall-mounted all-day breakfast menu above the counter and specials written on a chalkboard. The diner was empty but for a man in a blue uniform reading the jukebox selection.