The Good Girl Page 15

  For weeks I’ve seen her face flash across the TV screen and a sketch of that man. But now there are more important things happening in the world. It’s both a blessing and a curse, I suppose. The reporters are less intrusive these days. They don’t hound me in the driveway, follow me on my errands. The harassing phone calls and interview requests are on sabbatical; I can open my curtains without seeing a flood of reporters line the sidewalk before our home. But their withdrawal worries me as well; they’ve grown apathetic to the name Mia Dennett, tired of waiting for a front-page headline that may never come: Mia Dennett Returns Home, or maybe, Dennett Girl Found Dead. It settles upon me, like dark clouds descending on a winter day, that I will never know. I think of those families who are reunited with their loved one’s remains, ten, sometimes twenty years later, and wonder if that will be me.

  When I tire of the crying, I let the fury take control, shattering imported Italian crystal goblets against the kitchen wall, and when they’re done, James’s grandmother’s dinnerware. I scream at the top of my lungs, a barbaric sound that certainly doesn’t belong to me.

  I sweep the mess before James arrives home, tucking a million pieces of shattered glass in the garbage bin beneath a dead philodendron so he won’t see.

  I spend an entire afternoon watching the robins en route to places south, Mississippi and such, for the winter. They arrive one day on our back porch, dozens of them, fat and cold, stocking up on whatever they can find for the journey ahead. It rained that day and the worms were everywhere. I watch them for hours, sad when they leave. It will be months before they return, those red bellies that beckon spring.

  Another day the ladybugs arrive. Thousands of them, soaking up the sun on the back door. It’s an Indian summer day, warm, with temperatures in the upper sixties and plentiful sun. The kind of day we long for in the fall, the colors of the trees at their peak. I try to count them all, but they scatter away, and more come, and it’s impossible to keep track. I don’t know how long I watch them. I wonder what the ladybugs will do for the winter. Will they die? And then, days later when a frost covers the earth, I think of those ladybugs and cry.

  I think of Mia when she was a child. I think of the things we did. I walk to the playground I used to take Mia to while Grace was in school for the day, and sit on the swings. I rake my hand through the sand in the sandbox and sit on a bench and stare. At the children. At the fortunate mothers who still had theirs to hold.

  But mostly I think of the things I didn’t do. I think of the time I stood idly by when James told Mia that a B wasn’t good enough in high school chem, and the time she brought home a breathtaking impressionist painting she’d spent more than a month on at school, he scoffed, “If only you’d spend that kind of time on chemistry, you might have gotten an A.” I think of myself, watching out of the corner of my eye, unable to say a thing. Unable to point out the vacant expression on our daughter’s face because I was afraid he might get mad.

  When Mia informed James that she didn’t plan to go to law school, he said she didn’t have a choice. She was seventeen, hormones raging, and she pleaded, “Mom,” desperate, just this one time, for me to step in and intervene. I’d been washing dishes, trying my hardest to evade the conversation. I remember the desperation on Mia’s face, the displeasure on James’s. I chose the lesser of two evils.

  “Mia,” I said. I’ll never forget the day. The sound of the telephone ringing in the background, though none of us paid it the time of day. The smell of something I’d burnt in the kitchen, cold spring air wafting in a window I’d opened to get rid of the smell. The sun was staying out later, something we might comment on if we weren’t so preoccupied with upsetting Mia.

  “It means so much to him,” I said. “He wants you to be like him.”

  She stormed out of the kitchen and, upstairs, she slammed a door.

  Mia dreamed of studying at the Art Institute of Chicago. She wanted to be an artist. It was all that had ever mattered to her. But James refused.

  Mia started a countdown that very day to her eighteenth birthday, and she started packing a box of things she would take with her when she left.

  The ducks and geese fly overhead. Everyone is leaving me.

  I wonder if somewhere Mia is looking toward the sky, seeing the same thing.

  Colin

  Before

  What we have is time to think. And a lot of it.

  That damn cat keeps hanging around now that the girl is sacrificing scraps of her own dinner for it. She found a moth-eaten blanket in the closet and, with an empty box from the back of my truck, created a makeshift bed for the stupid thing. She has it set up in the shed out back. Every day she takes it a few bites of food.

  She has a name for the damn thing: Canoe. Not that she bothered to tell me. But I heard her call to it this morning when it wasn’t sleeping in its bed. Now she’s worried.

  I sit by the lake and fish. I’ll eat trout every day for the rest of my God-given life if it means I don’t have to eat something that’s been freeze-dried.

  Most often I come up with northern pike. Then walleye. Sometimes trout. I can tell from the light spots on the northern, that and the fact that they’re always the first bastards to take the bait. The fish are stocked every year, mostly fry and fingerlings, sometimes yearlings. The smallmouth bass give me the most damn trouble. Until I get them on the ground, I’d bet my life they’re twice the size they turn out to be. Strong bastards.

  I spend most of my time thinking about how we’re going to pull this off. About how I’m going to pull this off. Food is running low, which means a trip to the store. I have the money. I just don’t know what it will take for someone to recognize me. And what do I do with the girl when I’m gone? The disappearance of a judge’s daughter—that’s breaking news. I’d bet my life on it. Any store clerk is going to recognize her and call the cops.

  Which makes me wonder: have the cops figured out I was with her the night she disappeared? Is my face, like hers, all over the fucking TV? Maybe that’s a good thing, I tell myself. Not for me; not if it means I get caught. But if Valerie sees my face on the TV, sees that I’m a person of interest in the disappearance of a Chicago woman, then she’ll know what to do. She’ll know I’m not there to make sure there’s food on the table and the doors are shut. She’ll know what needs to be done.

  When the girl isn’t paying attention, I pull a photo from my wallet. It’s worn with time, shriveled around the edges from all the times I’ve pulled it from my wallet and forced it back in. I wonder if and when the money arrived, the money I swiped from the truck stop in Eau Claire. I wonder if she knew it was from me. She would have known I was in trouble when the money arrived, five hundred dollars or more crammed in an envelope with no return address.

  I’m not one to be sentimental. I just need to know that she’s okay.

  It’s not like she’s alone. At least that’s what I tell myself. The neighbor comes by once a week, gets the mail and checks on her. They’ll see the money. When Sunday comes and goes and I don’t show, they’ll know. If they haven’t already seen my face on the TV. If Valerie hasn’t already seen my face on TV and gone to check on her, to make sure she’s okay. I try and convince myself: Valerie is there. Everything is okay.

  I almost believe it.

  Later that night, we’re outside. I’m attempting to grill fish for dinner. Except there’s no charcoal so I’m seeing what else I can burn to start a fire. The girl’s sitting on the porch, wrapped in a blanket that she snagged from inside. Her eyes scan the land below. She’s wondering where the damn cat is. She hasn’t seen it in two days and she’s worried. It’s getting colder out all the time. Sooner or later, the thing won’t survive.

  “I take it you’re not a bank teller,” she says.

  “What do you think?” I ask.

  She takes it as a no.

 
“What do you do then?” she asks. “Do you work?”

  “I work.”

  “Anything legal?”

  “I do what I need to do to survive. Just like you.”

  “I don’t think so,” she says.

  “And why’s that?”

  “I earn an honest living. I pay taxes.”

  “How do you know I don’t pay taxes?”

  “Do you pay taxes?” she asks.

  “I work,” I say. “I earn an honest living. I pay taxes. I’ve mopped the floors of the john at some Realtor’s office. Washed dishes. Loaded crates into a truck. You know what they pay these days? Minimum wage. Do you have a fucking clue what it’s like to survive on minimum wage? I work two jobs at a time, thirteen or fourteen hours a day. That pays the rent, buys some food. Someone like you works—what? Eight hours a day plus summer vacation.”

  “I teach summer school,” she says. It’s a stupid thing to say. She knows it’s a stupid thing to say before I give her the look.

  She doesn’t know what it’s like. She can’t even imagine.

  I look up at the sky, at the dark clouds that threaten us. Not rain, but snow. It will be here soon. She pulls the blanket tighter around herself. She shudders from the cold.

  She knows that I would never let her leave. I have more to lose than she does.

  “You’ve done this kind of thing before,” she says.

  “Done what?”

  “Kidnapping. Holding a gun to someone’s head.” It isn’t a question.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “You didn’t snatch me with the hands of a virgin.”

  I’ve started a fire. I drop the fish on the grill pan and they begin to sear.

  “I’ve never bothered someone who didn’t need to be bothered.”

  But even I know that isn’t true.

  I flip the fish. They’re cooking faster than I want. I move them to the edge of the grill so they won’t burn.

  “It could be worse,” I assure her. “It could be much worse.”

  We eat outside. She sits on the floor, her back pressed to the wooden planks of the deck rail. I offer her a chair. She says no thanks. She spreads her legs out before herself and crosses them at the ankles.

  The wind blows through the trees. We both turn to watch the leaves lose their hold on the branches and fall to the ground.

  And that’s when we hear it: footsteps on the shriveled leaves that cover the earth. It’s the cat, I think, at first, but then know that the footsteps are too heavy for the scrawny little cat, too deliberate. The girl and I exchange a look, and I put a finger to my lips and whisper, “Shhh.” And then I rise to my feet and feel the seat of my pants for a gun that isn’t there.

  Gabe

  Before

  I was waiting to talk to the Dennetts until I had some hard facts, but it doesn’t work out that way. I’m chomping down a greasy Italian beef sandwich at my desk when Eve Dennett comes into the station and asks the receptionist if she can speak to me. I’m still wiping the au jus from my face with a stack of napkins when she approaches my desk.

  This is the first time she’s ever been down to the station, and boy does she look out of place here. Much different than the drunken losers we usually have walking around.

  I smell her perfume before she ever arrives at my desk. She walks demurely as every sick bastard eyes her from across the room, jealous when her high heels come to a stop before me. Every cop knows I’m working the Dennett case and they have an ongoing bet as to if and when I screw the whole thing up. I even saw the sergeant putting money on it; he said he’d need the pot when he and I both found ourselves out of a job.

  “Hello, Detective.”

  “Mrs. Dennett.”

  “I haven’t heard from you in a few days,” she says. “I was just wondering if there’s any...news.”

  She carries an umbrella, which drips water on the linoleum floor. Her hair is matted down and windblown from the fury outside. It’s a horrible day, windy and cold. Not a day to be outside. “You could have called,” I say.

  “I was out, running errands,” she says, but I know she’s lying. No one would be out today if they didn’t have to be. It’s just one of those days, a day to lie around in pajamas and watch TV.

  I lead her to an interrogation room and ask her to have a seat. It’s a dingy room, poorly lit, with a big table in the middle and a couple of folding chairs. She lays the umbrella on the ground, but clutches her purse. I offer to take her coat; she says no thanks. It’s cold in here, one of those damp colds that chills you straight to the bone.

  I sit down across from her and lay the Dennett file on the table. I see her eye the manila folder.

  I look at her, at her delicate blue eyes. They’ve already begun to swell with tears. As the days pass by, all I can think is, what if I never find Mia? It’s apparent that Mrs. Dennett breaks a little more with each passing hour. Her eyes are heavy and bloated, as if she no longer sleeps. I can’t imagine what would become of her if Mia never came home. I think about Mrs. Dennett at all hours of the day and night; I imagine her lost and alone inside that mansion of a home, dreaming up all the horrific things that might have happened to her child. I feel this consummate need to protect her, to answer those burning questions that keep her awake at night: who and where and why?

  “I was going to call you,” I say quietly. “I was just waiting for some good news.”

  “Something has happened,” Mrs. Dennett says. It isn’t a question. It’s as if she knew all along that something had happened and that’s what brought her down to the station today. “Something bad.” She lays her purse on the table and digs inside for a tissue.

  “There’s news. But that’s all right now. I haven’t quite figured out what it all means.” If Judge Dennett was here he would rip me a new one for not having all the answers. “We think we know who Mia was with before she disappeared,” I say. “Someone identified the photo that’s been on the news, and when we went to his apartment, we found some of Mia’s belongings—her purse and a coat.” I open the file and lay some photos across the table, ones taken of the apartment by the rookie who accompanied me the other day. Mrs. Dennett picks up the photo of the purse, one of those messenger-bag types that you sling across your body. The bag is laying on the floor, a pair of sunglasses and a green wallet falling out onto the parquet floor. Mrs. Dennett brings a tissue to her eyes.

  “You recognize something?” I ask.

  “I picked it out, that bag. I bought that for her. Who is he?” she asks, not pausing between thoughts. She glances at the other photos, one at a time, then sets them down in a row. She folds her hands on the table.

  “Colin Thatcher,” I say. We ran the fingerprints we pulled from the apartment building in Uptown and came up with the man’s true identity, every other name in the apartment—on the mail, the cell phone, etc.—a pseudonym, a charade. We pulled mug shots from previous arrests and compared with the forensic sketch. Bingo.

  I watch how Mrs. Dennett’s hands shake before me and how she tries, and fails, to control the trembling. It’s without thought that I feel my own hand reach out and find hers, ice-cold hands that melt in mine. I do it before she can hide them in her lap, hoping to disguise the terror she feels inside.

  “There’s some footage from the security cameras. Colin and Mia entering the apartment, around eleven o’clock at night, then again later leaving the building.”

  “I want to see it,” she says to my surprise. Her response is definite, not the kind of indecision I’m used to from her.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say. The last thing Eve needs to see right now is the way Colin Thatcher hurled her daughter out of the building and the distress in the girl’s eyes.

  “It’s bad,” she concludes.

 
“It’s inconclusive,” I lie. “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression.” But there’s nothing mistakable about the vigilant way the man hurries from the elevator, making certain no one sees, or the fear in the girl’s eyes. She’s crying. He mouths something that I’m certain contains the f-word. Something happened inside that apartment. The earlier footage couldn’t be any different. Two lovebirds heading up for a quickie.

  “But she was alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who is he?” she asks. “This Colin...”

  “Colin Thatcher.” I release Mrs. Dennett’s hand and reach inside the manila folder. I pull out the man’s rap sheet. “He’s been arrested for a number of misdemeanors—petty theft, trespassing, possession of marijuana. He served time for selling and is wanted for questioning in an ongoing racketeering case. According to his last probation officer, he went MIA a few years back and is essentially a wanted man.”

  I couldn’t begin to explain the horror in the woman’s blue eyes. As a detective I’m used to words like trespassing and racketeering and probation officer. But Mrs. Dennett has only heard these words on reruns of Law & Order. She couldn’t begin to understand what it all means; the words themselves are elusive and hard to grasp. She’s terrified that a man like this has her daughter.

  “What would he want with Mia?” Mrs. Dennett asks. I’ve asked myself this very question a thousand times. Random crime is relatively rare. Most victims know their assailant.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I have no idea, but I promise you I’m going to find out.”

  Colin

  Before

  The girl sets her plate on the wooden deck beside her. And then she rises beside me and we both stare, over the wooden railing, into the dense forest as a woman emerges. A fiftysomething woman with short brunette, hair in jeans and a flannel shirt, pudgy hiking boots, and she’s waving to us, like she knows us, and a new thought crosses my mind: it’s a trap.