Missing Girls- In Truth Is Justice

by Larry Crane

  Sid Nickerson stood in the center of the living room, face-to-face with her.

  “We’ve gotten some tips locally that haven’t panned out. Possible sightings even came in from the other parts of the country—nothing that qualifies as truly helpful,” he said. “The local searches didn’t turn up anything. But, don’t lose faith. The headquarters is definitely on the case. Since you haven’t received any telephone calls, it’s unlikely that this is a simple kidnapping. We’re watching at all the high-impact travel points: airports, bus stations, truck stops, and the like.”

  She stayed on her feet all day, moving about the house, straightening pictures, dusting, mopping, going upstairs to make beds that were un-slept in, downstairs to the basement to do a wash or to iron and fold. She imagined Hannah trussed up in a dark cave. What would she be thinking? Why can’t you come get me? Why can’t you see that I’m here? To sit down and do nothing seemed in itself a betrayal. How could any of them rest for even a second knowing that she was out there somewhere in deep, deep trouble?

  Dusting is hardly participation in the search. But with the experts on the job, what can I add to the effort of any value? Nothing. But the mere act of doing something other than standing around like a tree is a comfort. A comfort to Hannah? Not really. To me, yes definitely.

  She stood at the front window, staring out, squeezing the fingers of her left hand with the fingers of her right, breathing deep. Celia cooked stuff they had around the house—spaghetti and meatballs—and she pushed it in front of Marcella, and in front of Brett and Gavin when they came home from patrolling the cities.

  Friends offered to come over and sit by the phone so they could get some sleep, or to take a shopping list to the A&P. The women who worked with her as volunteers at the Thrift Shop came by to sit for a while and to deliver a home cooked meal—never more than just one family meal because they really believed Hannah could be showing up any time. But, every hour that passed erased more of any scent the bloodhounds might detect, dimmed more of any hope a new lead might bring, she thought. The 48-hour mark became the 168-hour mark. She was hardening into a mute block of wood.

  Our life can’t stop at the moment Hannah vanished. I get it, she thought. Appointments, deadlines—they can all be postponed for a while and they are, but this can’t go on forever. I’m the problem. They tiptoe around me. I should never have conceived that allowing Hannah to leave their thoughts for even a second was betrayal—that Hannah depended on us for her survival. Did she really? Her fate is not in our hands, or even in the hands of the experts in recovering missing children. Whose hands is it in, then?

  I was so happy when I realized I was pregnant with Hannah. Two years shy of forty. Gavin seemed pleased, well—as pleased as he ever is about anything. Brett and Celia had been pulling steadily away toward their friends. Gavin had just gone silent—obsessed with moving up at the bank—at least that’s what I thought it was. I was alone. It was quiet in the house, much too quiet. Hannah would be the one thing in all the world that would finally bring us all back together again.

  I thought I’d weathered the confession—the kissing episode with Gus Breedlove. I’d lied so flagrantly about how sudden and unexpected it was, putting it all off on Gus. I was sending signals his way for months before it happened. I could almost see the wheels turning behind Gavin’s eyes as he figured it all out. He never believed it was over.

  What I said to Gavin up in the bedroom when he was so upset after being questioned by the FBI—about what happened with Gus—all of what came out of my mouth so earnestly, flopped to the floor like a dead perch. It was his doubting eyes and expressionless face that did it. Well, it was over when I said it was. I brought it up again when I knew Hannah was coming, to be sure there was no question. But, bringing it up again wasn’t good. It was too little too late.

  ***

  She could still picture the entire little happening. It was mid-October, 1961. Gus Breedlove sat across from her at the wheel of his Buick, the street lights flashing by as they drove down a lonely tree-lined street leading away from another of the many gatherings she organized at the homes of supporters of his candidacy for the Illinois State Senate in November. That evening, in the Gregory’s living room in Hinsdale, he had stood in front of a dozen couples from the neighborhood for better than an hour, calmly laying out his reasoning behind all his ideas for the next two years if he was elected.

  She’d been transfixed as usual, sitting in the back of the room after introducing him to the gathering. He was extraordinary. Not just his brain. He towered over everyone else in every room. He had a full head of light brown hair and straight, white teeth. When he spoke to you, it was just you two, no one else. Come November, the verdict of the voters would be in. He was weary. She had worked tirelessly for him for months. The session had ended and he got trapped in a long conversation with a young, studious constituent and had looked over at her—somehow indicating that he needed to be rescued although she couldn’t remember how he’d conveyed it. They had a way of communicating that went beyond words. She had succeeded in pulling him away. It was ten o’clock at night. Now, he was dropping her off before he continued on home.

  Just short of her house, he pulled over to the curb between streetlights. It was dark in the car. He cut the engine and slid over to her side of the front seat. He pulled her in close him, looked into her eyes, and kissed her full on the lips. It was a surprise. It was happening before she knew it. She turned her head, but then turned back, taking in a deep breath. He kissed her again, and this time she closed her eyes and relaxed her lips, and kissed him. She felt his hand slide into her coat and caress her breast. That was all it was.

  He backed away from her abruptly and started the engine again and drove on to the curb in front of the house without speaking. She faced the side window, her cheeks burning with embarrassment.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re so much help to me. I wouldn’t be able to bring this whole thing off without you. You’re a dynamo. You’re beautiful. I’ve dreamt of doing that. I let my heart overrule my brain. I’m ashamed. I’m sorry.”

  She turned to look into his eyes again. “I’m as guilty as you are. I’ve been like a smitten schoolgirl around you. I’ve led you on.”

  Gavin was in the kitchen with some of her rice pudding. “Late meeting,” he said.

  She knew her face was bright red. She could feel it. “Something happen?” he asked.

  “He kissed me, and I kissed him,” she confessed. Her heart was quavering. She sat and stared into her hands clenched in her lap.

  Gavin hadn’t asked anything about it, not if he touched her, not if she touched him. Nothing. Instead, he got up from the table, went upstairs and went to bed. When she got in beside him, he turned over. The tension that had control of her from the moment she walked in the door and into the kitchen was still there lodged in her chest. She lay on her back with her hands cupped over her mouth, staring up at the ceiling, her breath coming in shallow gasps.

  It’s over, she thought. The embarrassment and shame will still be there in the morning. The family will wake up when the alarm goes off. I will make coffee and eggs for breakfast. Gavin, Celia, and Brett will come down. It will be quiet at the table, but it’s always quiet in the morning. Gavin will get into his suit jacket and overcoat. I will kiss him at the door.

  I could have just talked and talked in bed, even with his back to me. I could have forced him to listen as I explained myself—if there was any excuse that made sense, that is. But it was flagrant. It was bald-faced and physical. In truth, I wanted it. I pictured it exactly the way it happened lots of times, and each time it was a clear betrayal of Gavin’s trust. Then it actually happened, and I felt intoxicated to be desired like that—glorious in a way I had felt with Gavin so very long before then it seemed, but not anymore. I could have talked, but I couldn’t really say all of this to him. It would hurt him too much.

  Chapter 5

  She and Gavin forced the kids b
ack to school. Actually, Gavin did. She thought it probably was the right thing to do, the understandable thing, but Gavin was really the one who insisted. He insisted that they keep doing all the things they would normally do. Normally? Nothing was normal anymore. How was it possible to compartmentalize everything as normal or not? This goes here, that goes there, and we don’t mix the two?

  She wanted the family to close in around each other now more than ever. Of course, Celia came home from high school every day. Brett tried for as many weekends as he could. Almost like a force of nature, like a sunrise, the part of their lives that had to continue on, apart from the grief over Hannah, forced its way in. There was Celia’s term paper, and Brett’s big year-end colloquium in his major, computer applications and information systems. The world kept turning, of course, but she wanted it to stop, at least until Hannah came back.

  Opening night of the senior play was scheduled for the end of March and Celia was the lead. She tried to go on with it, but her lines would not come, her cues. She told the director, Miss Harris, she had to quit. She quit her SAT prep sessions, and canceled the dates she’d made for campus visits to Knox and Beloit and Carleton. She still brought home a ton of homework, and she put in the hours at night, but her grades inevitably slipped along with her plans for college in the fall, along with her ranking as the obvious choice as senior class valedictorian.

  It’s all fitting and proper, Marcella thought. All the sacrifice, all the postponing. Because my baby girl is missing for god’s sake, that’s why! It is as it should be.

  The urgency of the police response at first seemed to have promise—people came forward, but then the leads all seemed to go to ground and peter out. Chief Nickerson said they had to keep the faith—the FBI and the State police were doing everything they could. Marcella fidgeted as if she expected the authorities to come up with some new piece of the puzzle minute to minute. But that could not and did not happen. She insisted they needed to call in help. Even if it cost a fortune. Money was no issue.

  “I’m so glad that you’re so decisive or whatever you want to call it,” Gavin said, dripping with sarcasm. “Like, okay, you guys obviously can’t make things happen, so you’re out. We’re hiring our own investigator. Sorry Chief, but we can’t just wait around. You’re fired. We’re going for the best private eye there is. Okay? We’ll do it now. Like, right away.”

  Two weeks to the day after Hannah’s disappearance, Gavin and Marcella met with Gilbert Rathskeller, a private investigator from LaGrange. He suggested they meet in his office, a large, open room on the second floor of the square brick building across the street from the railroad station. Gold lettering on the heavy door glass read: G.B. Rathskeller Inquiries. His desk was covered with short stacks of paper.

  He invited the two of them to sit in the bare wooden chairs in front of his desk. They faced a huge arched window. He crossed in back of the two of them and settled into his leather swivel chair, took off his glasses with his right hand and with his left pinched the bridge of his nose as if to ward off some deep weariness. He was a short man of about sixty. His face was a third again as long as it was wide and dominated by the deep dark bags under his eyes.

  “Most of my work involves short-term investigations of a fairly routine nature. Fraud, infidelity, investigations in connection with defense attorneys in civil and criminal court cases, that sort of thing,” he said. “How can I help you?”

  “Our child has been missing for a couple of weeks. We’re very concerned as you might imagine,” Gavin said, reaching to take Marcella’s hand.

  “You’d like me to look into it,” Rathskeller said.

  “Is that something you do?” Marcella asked.

  “Occasionally, I’m called in to supplement the efforts of the authorities in missing person cases. How old is your child?”

  “She’s just nine. She’s blonde. Brown eyes. She went missing on the way to school. You may already have heard about it,” Gavin said.

  “I’m sorry, I haven’t. I’m pretty much underwater with my current caseload, and can’t even get to the newspapers and TV. You haven’t asked me anything about my qualifications. I’ve prepared a resumé,” Rathskeller said.

  He opened the top drawer of his desk and withdrew a stapled sheaf of papers which he held out to them. “Nine out of ten cases of this nature that I get involved in are resolved in less than a month, with the missing youngster having run away for one reason or another. You might want to wait a little while.”

  “We can’t wait,” Marcella blurted out. “Every minute that goes by is crucial.”

  “I’m expensive,” Rathskeller said, his eyes moving back and forth between them. “There are no guarantees. I’m thorough and discreet. I almost always know within a couple of weeks if my efforts are likely to bear fruit.”

  “Start right away,” Marcella said.

  “I’m going to ask you a million questions. You’re going to go home. I’ll be back to you within two weeks. I require an up-front payment of 50 percent of my fee to begin work.”

  Gavin wrote out a check for $7,500 and handed it to Rathskeller across the desk.

  “I’ll give it my best shot. Would you like a cup of coffee? We’ll be here for a while as I gather your information.”

  Later, the echo of their footsteps on the steep metal stairs leading to the exit door magnified the overwhelming feeling of hopelessness she felt pushing against the crown of her head. It was cold and hostile in the stairwell. They stepped out onto the sidewalk and shambled toward the car, hand-in-hand.

  He’s not a physically imposing man, Rathskeller, she thought. I expected him be in the mold of Fred MacMurray or somebody like that in Double Indemnity. He was more like Edward G. Robinson, the weasel-like one in the movie.

  “He’s the coldest fish I’ve ever seen,” she said. “It’s a complete waste of time and money. He’s not going to find her.”

  “Talk about shitty bedside manner. He tops ‘em all,” Gavin replied. He broke away and slid around the front bumper and slumped in behind the steering wheel as Marcella ducked in on the passenger side. “But, we’re not paying for personality. He’s seen it all. It’s what we need. Cut the bull and get on with it. I’m actually a little hopeful.”

  “God, I hope you’re right,” she said.

  Gavin got into a scuffle with a camera crew from WGN TV. The crew hung around the house all day, waiting to catch one of the family coming out. A reporter would shove the microphone in their face and ask them something stupid like how it felt to have all this time go by with no firm information about what had become of Hannah. He’d marched out the front door and got in a shoving match with the audio man, and caught his foot on the curb and fell awkwardly to the street, wrenching his shoulder. His right cheek was covered with blood when he came back in the house, from a nasty cut over his eye. All of it was caught on tape for the evening news, along with a storm of shouting back and forth. The pundits had more ammunition to add to the picture of him they seemed intent to paint—that of a hot-headed tyrant.

  In their favor, Northern Trust had been overly accommodating. Gavin’s boss added a week to the family emergency provision for time off, and assured him that there was no push to get back. But, Gavin was something of a big cheese at the bank. It was never mentioned anywhere, but he could not let the notion that he needed more time become the basis for a decision to push him off to the side in favor of someone else to take over for him. After three weeks away from the office, he had to go back to work, full time, and full speed ahead. He reported back with his arm in a sling, an ugly yellowish-blue bruise surrounding his eye, and a bandage for the gash.

  Brett graduated from Northwestern in mid-May. As the date approached they vetoed his thoughts about skipping the graduation exercises. Gavin, Celia, and Marcella were in the third row, center. On stage, Brett grasped his diploma and shook President J. Roscoe Miller’s hand. Brett turned to look for them in the audience and nodded. The ceremony ended and the crowd di
spersed. They found Brett gathered with his girlfriend Lisa’s family. They put on a good face, smiling and chatting, and lavishing the graduates with praise. Gavin took pictures of Brett and Lisa, Brett took pictures of the two families together, and Celia took pictures of Gavin and her with Lisa and her parents. They managed to gracefully refuse an invitation to dinner, and no one insisted they come. No one mentioned Hannah, but her face overlaid the face of all of them.

  Of all her volunteer activities, Marcella tried to keep up only with the Thrift Shop. The others, the political activism, the Food Pantry, everything else, she dropped. Her friends in the shop avoided any sort of conversation that could be connected to Hannah. At first Marcella was not aware of it, but she finally saw that she was whiling away her hours there sitting idly, talking to no one, staring down into her hands.

  “I’m going to stop coming in,” she said, barely audibly.

  “Please don’t stop coming. It’s good for you to be with us here. There’s no pressure. No pressure.”

  “I’m no good to anybody like this.”

  “This is an ideal place for you right now, Marcella. We need you. We want you to be here with us.”

  She quietly suppressed the flood of emotion she felt, stood up, and removed her smock and hung it in the closet. She padded to the door—threading through a clutch of shop friends and climbed the steps to the street level without another word. Steady heat rose from the sidewalk along Ridgewood Avenue, and pushed against her face. The sun was high in the sky, and reflected in the display windows as piercing brightness. She wiped at the perspiration on her forehead with her bare hand, bent forward, and hurried home.