Missing Child Read online

  ‘But to your best recollection, the last time you saw the toy was the day of the party?’

  Caitlin nodded.

  ‘We questioned Geordie’s uncle, of course. I couldn’t find any reason to pursue it. Do you know of anything we might have missed? Was there reason to suspect Dan Bergen? Has he ever behaved . . . inappropriately toward his nephew? Anything that set off alarm bells?’

  ‘No. Truthfully, no. I think I just went a little crazy when I saw Bandit. I insisted on coming into his house. When he tried to get me leave I started screaming for Geordie. As loud as I could. But there was nothing.’

  ‘Well, I think I had better pay him another visit, all the same. Just to be cautious,’ said Sam. ‘I’ll go see him today.’

  ‘Dan’s gonna be furious with me,’ said Caitlin. ‘I’m already his least favorite person in the world.’

  ‘Because of Emily’s . . . accident,’ said Sam.

  Caitlin nodded. ‘But go ahead. I don’t care what he thinks. He’s always going to hate me. They all will. Because of Emily.’

  Sam nodded. ‘Actually, Emily’s accident is what I came here about.’

  Caitlin looked at him warily. ‘Let’s have it.’

  ‘Your father’s truck,’ said Sam.

  She waited, but didn’t ask.

  ‘They’ve gone over it very carefully. There are traces of blood, but it was too deteriorated to give us DNA. All that time out in the elements . . .’

  ‘It wasn’t in the elements,’ Caitlin protested. ‘It’s been in the garage all these years.’

  ‘The garage is hardly a controlled environment. We found evidence of squirrels, raccoons, birds. A lot of rust.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’ Caitlin asked.

  ‘Well, we cross-checked your father’s truck against the forensic evidence we found on Emily’s body . . .’

  ‘And . . .’ Caitlin urged him on.

  ‘We know that the vehicle which hit her had a very similar paint job. We’re trying to see if it can be matched exactly.’

  Caitlin shook her head. ‘What do you mean, “the vehicle which hit her?” I told you who hit her. It was my brother.’

  Sam shrugged. ‘I have no reason to doubt that what you said about your brother was . . . well, the truth as you perceived it . . . I mean, there would be no reason for you to tell such a tale. It only reflected badly on you and was very destructive to your marriage. Obviously.’

  Caitlin stared at him, waiting.

  ‘There’s something odd about that truck,’ he said.

  Caitlin shook her head, as if she wasn’t able to make out his words.

  ‘Maybe I will have some coffee,’ he said. ‘Half a cup.’

  Caitlin wanted to shake him and refuse him even a sip of coffee before he explained himself, but she forced herself to remain calm. She got up, poured him the coffee and even offered cream and sugar. Then she set the mug in front of him and sat back down at the table.

  ‘The truck . . .’ she said.

  Sam blew on the coffee and then took a sip. He frowned, as if he were trying to figure something out while he was speaking. ‘I noticed this when you first showed me the truck in the garage. The guys at the lab noticed the same thing. The damage to the truck is in the center of the front bumper. I mean, it is caved in from the impact of hitting someone, or something.’

  ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ said Caitlin, waving a hand as if to flag him down. ‘Something? You act like there is some doubt about who was hit by that truck. I’m telling you, there is no doubt. When I heard about the hit-and-run on the news and confronted James, he admitted it. He described the woman. It was Emily. Hell, he was haunted by the thought of her eyes. Trust me. He didn’t take his own life because he hit a deer.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Sam.

  ‘And he was able to tell me the exact location of the accident. I’m not wrong about this, Detective.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Sam. ‘I do. But the evidence contradicts that story. Emily left Geordie asleep in his car seat and came down the drive to pick up her mail. She was hit as she was standing by her mailbox at the side of the road. We know this for a fact. The mailbox was still hanging open. The mail was scattered everywhere. That means that whoever hit her veered over to the side of the road, either because they were impaired at the time or they lost control of their vehicle. Judging from where the body came to rest, they had to have collided with her with the right-hand side of their bumper. That’s where the impact was. That’s what should be damaged on your father’s truck if that was the vehicle that hit Emily. Not the middle. The right-hand side. The passenger side.’

  Caitlin put her elbows on the table and covered her mouth with her hands. Was it possible that she had been wrong? Had she hounded her brother to death for something he hadn’t done? She thought about it for a moment and then dismissed it. No. He admitted it to her. She didn’t put words in his mouth. He had hit a woman. Then he had driven away and left her to die in the road. It didn’t matter what Sam Mathis said about the truck. That was the truth.

  ‘In any case,’ said Sam, standing up from the table, ‘this is good news for you. As of right now, there will be no charges filed against you. The evidence doesn’t support your version of the crime.’

  Caitlin frowned at him. ‘You’re lying!’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ he said.

  After he left, she sat at the table for a long time, thinking about what Sam had said. Finally, she forced herself to get up and go down the hall to James’s room. She had never cleaned it out after he died. She didn’t have the heart. She always thought of the messy, cave-like room as his lair. A dark hole in the house that she avoided at all costs. She sat down on the edge of his bed and looked around at the rubble of his belongings on the floor, and his Gothic fantasy posters on the walls. Every one of them depicted razor-wielding creatures in black, dripping blood.

  Her job involved dealing with young people, but the young people whom she saw at the college seemed to be surrounded by light. Many had grown up in poverty, but they were earnest and hopeful and hard-working. They were envisioning a bright future and her job was to help that become a reality.

  James had never been that way. His whole world had been dark, as long as Caitlin could remember. She used to feel so sorry for her parents, trying their best to cope with a child whom they could not understand. ‘Why is he like this?’ her father had asked her once in exasperation. ‘You’ve taken all these courses on psychology. Why does he do the things he does?’

  Caitlin claimed to have no idea. But she knew that her mother’s pregnancy with James had been unplanned and unwelcome. They had never intended to raise a teenager in their late fifties. She also knew that they would never have said as much to James. Never. In the end, they loved James, just as they had always loved her. But that sense that he was unwanted may have crept into James’s psyche. There are so many ways, she thought, that those feelings could be communicated.

  Oh, James, she thought. I couldn’t bear to find out now that you had admitted a crime you didn’t commit. She began to look, in a desultory fashion, through his belongings. His school papers were still there in folders. Unlike her, he had never been the brightest student, and the teachers hectoring comments, the underlined red Ds and Fs on the papers, were a reminder of what a torture school had become for him. She opened the drawer in his bedside table and there, on a pile of opened letters, was a school photo of Karla. Love you, she wrote across it, with a heart-shaped kiss. Caitlin picked up the letters and looked. They were all from Karla, sent from the rehab center where she had been confined, Caitlin riffled through a few of the pages. The content was stupefyingly banal, like most people’s letters, Caitlin reminded herself. But to James, obviously, they had been important. He had kept them, and her picture right there beside him.

  And, Caitlin thought, he had told Karla about the accident. She recalled now that something in Karla’s recounting of it had struck her as odd, but she cou
ldn’t remember what. Too much else was happening that day. She wondered if she could call Karla now and ask her about it again. Maybe that would be useful. She felt ghoulish, rummaging in the pile of clothing on the floor, but she had not taken Karla’s information when she was here. At that time she was hoping to never have to set eyes on her again. But now . . . James’s phone was still in the pocket of his jeans. Caitlin pulled it out. The battery was dead. She would have to recharge the phone to find Karla’s number. She put it into the charger on his bureau and, to her relief, the phone immediately blinked that it was charging.

  ‘Caitlin?’

  She jumped and cried out. She heard footsteps coming through the house. She put a hand to her thudding heart in relief as Noah appeared in the doorway to James’s room.

  He looked at her face and grimaced. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you.’

  Caitlin was not going to deny that she was scared. She also was not going to let Noah look around James’s room. James was still her brother. She felt some primitive urge to protect his privacy.

  She left the room, pulling the door shut behind her.

  ‘I probably shouldn’t have just come over here,’ said Noah.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Caitlin. ‘Anything . . .?’ They stood awkwardly, facing each other in the narrow hallway.

  Noah ran a hand through his shaggy, unwashed hair. His face had become positively gaunt in the last week. ‘Sam Mathis told me that Bandit was in Dan’s car. That you found him there. He was heading off to talk to him again.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Caitlin. ‘I went there to apologize . . . about Emily.’

  ‘I know,’ said Noah. ‘I’m just . . . having trouble with this. I mean, I know Dan would never . . . It’s . . . unthinkable. But Bandit . . .?’

  He looked at her so helplessly that her heart ached at the sight of his face. She knew that he was picturing Geordie, Bandit tucked protectively under his arm, no matter how many times kids made fun of him for it.

  ‘Come here,’ she said. She thought of taking his hand but then she didn’t. She gestured for him to follow her. She went down the hall to the guest room and turned on the bedside lamp. Then she stepped back and indicated the stuffed animal on the pillow.

  Noah walked over to the bed and lifted Bandit off the pillow. He frowned at her. ‘How did you get him out of Dan’s car?’

  Caitlin hesitated, and then told him about her call to Triple A.

  ‘You’re a born outlaw,’ he said.

  Caitlin didn’t know if he meant it as an insult. She didn’t think so. ‘I sewed his ear back on last night,’ she pointed out.

  Noah nodded, wiping his eyes. ‘He was about to lose it.’

  ‘I couldn’t let that happen,’ said Caitlin. ‘I promised Geordie. I wanted it to be done, for when he comes home.’

  Noah sighed and shook his head. ‘It’s like the earth has swallowed him up. He’s just vanished.’

  He looked across at her, his capable, discerning glance now veiled in tears and fearful as a child. And he was turning to her for encouragement. She felt suddenly calm. ‘He’s gonna come home. We have to just keep on believing that.’

  Noah hesitated. ‘I was wrong to accuse you,’ he said. ‘I know you would never do anything to hurt him.’

  Caitlin felt as if he had lifted a weight off of her chest. ‘No. Never,’ she said.

  NINETEEN

  ‘Maybe you should take Bandit home,’ she said. ‘We want him right there and waiting when the time comes . . .’ She offered him the stuffed animal, even though it pained her to do so. Noah was surrounded by Geordie’s belongings, with all their attendant comfort and pain. She had only Bandit.

  ‘No, you keep him. For the time being.’

  ‘It’s so hard to go through this alone,’ she blurted out.

  Noah nodded absently, as if he did not understand what she was saying, and got into his car. She watched him pull out of the driveway, and the rest of the day seemed to crash on top of her. She thought about calling the college and telling them she would come back to work, just so she wouldn’t have to face the long, empty hours, but then she thought better of it. She couldn’t imagine putting on her work clothes, answering people’s questions and listening to their problems while her heart was crying out, ‘My child is missing.’ She was not ready for that.

  Searching her mind for a task other than housework, she thought of James’s phone. Maybe it was charged enough by now. She went back down to his room, found and pressed the buttons to reveal the last calls he made. Sure enough, the number for the reformatory was there. But not Karla’s home number. She tried scrolling back all the way on his phone, but the saved numbers were only for fifty calls.

  Caitlin tried to think. What was Karla’s last name anyway? She checked the return address on her letters, but it was just initials. Caitlin could picture Karla’s house. She had driven James over there when she home on a visit, before her parents moved to South Jersey. Karla’s family lived in a dilapidated ranch house on a weedy patch of woods outside of Coatesville. She could find the place with no problem but she couldn’t, for the life of her, remember their name.

  Caitlin looked at the clock. It was a two-hour drive. She wouldn’t get back here till dark. So what? she thought miserably. You have no one waiting for you. Nowhere to be. And Karla might know something important.

  She hesitated for a moment, and then made up her mind. She put Bandit back on her pillow. ‘I’ll be back,’ she whispered, as if the pup were alive.

  The town of Coatesville had once been known at the Pittsburgh of the East when Lukens Steel was headquartered there. Along with the American steel industry, Coatesville had fallen on hard times. Valiant efforts were being made by preservationists to revive shuttered businesses and boarded-up buildings, but the town had an air of fatigue, as if it were all too much to ask.

  Caitlin’s father had worked his whole life in Coatesville in the Public Works department. When his time for retirement came, despite a lifetime spent in this town, he seemed to have no desire to stay. He and Caitlin’s mother were solitary types, not joiners, and though Caitlin had a strong sense of the area where she grew up, she did not feel connected to the people there. Her parents kept to themselves and neither one had much family to speak of. A million memories assailed her as she drove through the environs of the town, but she tried not to get lost in nostalgia. She was here for a purpose.

  It took her several tries to find the road which led to Karla’s house. She finally found it and wended her way through scruffy woods until she came to a house she recognized.

  It was a graceless ranch house, low to the ground and covered in moldy, beige vinyl siding, with a few tiny windows. There were plastic barrels along the side of the house and a clothesline hung with clothes in the front yard. A blue and orange plastic slide and picnic table rested on an incline not far from the drying clothes. A couple of plastic pots of dead mums sat on the cement slab in front of the door.

  There were children playing in the woods. Caitlin could hear their shouts as she got out of the car. Karla’s car, the one she had driven to their house, was parked in the dirt driveway. Caitlin exhaled with relief. It would have been a long trip to make only to learn that Karla had decamped for another place.

  She walked up to the door and knocked. There were net curtains over the window but she could hear movement inside. The door opened and Karla looked out at her in surprise. She was barefoot, wearing a baggy black T-shirt over pink leggings, and still had a cross hanging prominently around her neck. Her hair was a lifeless fluff.

  ‘Caitlin,’ she exclaimed. ‘I can’t believe it. What brings you here?’

  ‘I came to see you, Karla,’ she said.

  ‘Awesome. Hold on a minute. I’m watching the kids while my mom’s on her shift. I have to holler at them.’

  ‘OK,’ said Caitlin.

  Karla stepped out onto the cement and screeched in the voice of a fishmonger, ‘Cliffie,
Brianna, Ardella. Answer me.’

  The shrieking in the woods stopped for a moment, and then an angry boy’s voice called out, ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t see you. Come back in the yard where I can see you.’

  A boy’s defiant voice yelled, ‘Why da we haf to?’

  ‘Mom told me to watch you,’ Karla cried out. ‘Now come back in the yard.’

  There was a rustling of leaves and then a pint-sized, skinny kid with baggy clothes and a swagger appeared in the clearing. Two little girls in pink and purple jackets gamboled along behind him. He gestured at his narrow chest with his thumbs. ‘Here I am. Ya see me?’ he defied her.

  Karla nodded. ‘Stay where I can see ya,’ she said.

  ‘Who’s that?’ the boy asked, nodding in Caitlin’s direction.

  ‘This is James’s sister. Remember James?’ Karla asked.

  ‘Your druggie boyfriend?’ Cliffie sneered.

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ Karla said to Caitlin. ‘Stay put,’ she shot back at the boy as she opened the door to the house. ‘Come on in.’

  The inside of the house defied Caitlin’s expectations somewhat. Everything was tidy and, though worn, looked comfortable. She glanced in the living room. The grayish brown sectional sofa almost disappeared against the fake paneling on the walls, and it faced an enormous flat-screen TV. There were knitted throws on the arms of every piece of the sectional. The walls were hung with religious images. On the formica kitchen table was an open Bible as well as some school books.

  ‘Caught me studying,’ said Karla apologetically. ‘Can I get you anything? A soda?’

  ‘Yeah, a soda would be great,’ said Caitlin. She sat down at the table. ‘What are you working on?’

  ‘Well, my Bible study, of course. Plus, I have to take the GED exam next week.’ Karla opened the small refrigerator, pulled out a can of Wink and opened it, pouring it into a plastic cup. She handed it to Caitlin.