Missing Girls- In Truth Is Justice

by Larry Crane

  “I wrote a whole book about it.”

  “I want more than your book.”

  “You have it all. All of it is not just what happened out there. It’s who I was and who I am now and who I want to be.”

  “No, it isn’t. Calissi was right. You’re the same person you’ve always been, just as we all are. You’re without conscience. Victoria couldn’t live without acceptance. I find myself in small rooms with scumbag men. No, it’s not who you want to be. It’s what happens and it’s what happened, Edgar—in the twenty minutes between when you picked her up and when you stared down into Victoria’s eyes that one last time.”

  He grabbed her upper arm suddenly, holding her on the couch. “The priest. What did the little prick tell you? What did he say?”

  “Let go of me.” She managed to pry his fingers loose.

  “I’ve moved a thousand miles beyond that sandpit, and you know it.”

  “Keep your hands off me.”

  “Take your foot off my neck. You’re no better than I am. You’ve lied to me from the start. You’ve plotted to get me here where you can get your fucking revenge. We’re swine, you and I, Marcella. Together, here in our pen. Investigating each other. Do you think I skipped right over all the newspaper accounts of the marvelous Marcella and her search for truth? Do you think I’ve found out nothing about you? Do you think I don’t know that in your mucked-up brain you’ve put me in the place of whoever snatched Hannah? Pin Vickie on me, and you will have justice for Hannah. Is that it? Brilliant. Bullshit! Let’s talk truth. The truth is you’ve folded. You’ve put in your time mourning. Your two puny years. Now, you’re tired of it, tired of her. You want your life back. You just want Hannah to shut up and go away. And how much different does that make you from me?”

  Smith grabbed her arm again and dragged her to the couch. He overpowered her, kissed her face and mouth. She struggled and escaped to the other end of the couch. He grasped her leg and nipped at her ankle. She slapped him full in the face. He let go long enough for her to rise, but he slapped back. She tumbled across the coffee table with the gun in a heap on the floor. She rose to her knees and pointed the gun.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  She couldn’t shoot him. She pitched the gun across the floor. He reached in his pocket and emptied the bullets onto the floor in front of her.

  “I knew you’d never want to hurt me,” he said.

  She slid backward, away from him, but he swung at her again and slapped her viciously backward to the floor. She began to crawl away, and he held her foot and began to nip at the back of her knee again. She twisted and pushed him away with her other foot.

  “Get away!”

  “Bitch! You knew what I wanted from you from the start! I never bought any of your shit.”

  He took another lunge at her, grabbed her leg as she scrambled away, but she twisted loose once more and scuttled backward as he sprawled on the floor facedown, convulsed in laughter. She found the ashtray on the floor. She struggled to her feet, with it in her hands. He rolled to his back on the floor and reached to grab her ankle again. She raised the ashtray above her head. He flinched and ducked, instinctively bringing his hand up to protect himself. His eyes were frozen open. He opened his mouth but no words came out. She closed her eyes and smashed the ashtray down toward his face.

  She missed all altogether, but the ashtray exploded into pieces against the hardwood floor beside his head. The shards made a bloody mess of his ear and his scalp. He raised his hand to the wound and then down. He stared at the blood in disbelief, then looked up into Marcella’s eyes as she backed away and crashed against the couch.

  “You! Oh, Jesus Christ! You bitch! You crazy fucking bitch! You tried to kill me! You tried to fucking kill me.”

  He scuttled pitifully on his butt across the floor with his hand to his ear, attempting to stanch the blood streaming from his scalp—got to his knees and then his feet. He lurched to the door and pulled it open. He sprawled to his back in the hall. Marcella ran to the chair and grabbed his suit jacket and overcoat. She rolled them together in a ball and pitched them in the direction of the door. She snatched up his shoes. She ran to the door and saw him bent at the waist and staggering down the hall toward the elevator, his overcoat dragging behind. She chucked his shoes after him. She slammed the door, sunk to her knees and sobbed with relief. She crawled away behind the couch and imagined him returning. She crouched and cowered, and heard nothing. She waited, panting, her face awash in tears.

  The door bulged from someone pounding against it. She cowered lower to the floor behind the couch. The door burst open. Gavin piled in, clutching his wrecked shoulder.

  “Marce! Marce!” He didn’t see her. “Oh Jesus, God. MARCE!” He ran to the bedroom door, turned around, and saw her. He went to kneel beside her and held her. Are you all right? I saw him run out. Saw you dead in here. Blood and guts. Marce, you’re all right?”

  “Yes. All right,” she said.

  He pulled her to her feet, and they stumbled to sit on the couch together. They stayed intertwined while the adrenalin surge began to wear off, and their breathing finally settled down. He inspected her face and hair and all over for blood and found none. They stayed like that on the couch, clumped as one, crying quietly together.

  “I’m still alive. It’s a miracle,” she said.

  “You must have fought like a tiger. I should never have left you here alone. But, you’re alive.”

  “Just stay here with me now,” she said.

  The yelping sound of a police cruiser they expected to hear never came. There was no telephone call from the apartment superintendent, no commotion in the hall from other tenants. The room was without sound. Their eyes roamed over the furniture, the upended lamp, the spray of bullets and the silver pistol on the floor. Marcella looked at her hands for blood and found none, but she saw smears along the wall across the room and on the door.

  “We need to clean up,” she said. “It’s a crime scene in here.”

  “There’s no crime without a complaint from somebody,” Gavin said.

  Gavin stood and went to the door. He searched down the hall to the elevator for blood stains—came back and fetched a towel from the bathroom. He soaked the towel in the kitchen sink, then worked his way down the hall, wiping up a trail of blood spots, and smears on the buttons of the elevator and inside the car. Back inside the room, he soaked another towel and wiped down the wall and door where Edgar Smith’s blood remained. He scrutinized the carpet and the hardwood floor for blood and found very little.

  “Did you turn on the recorder?” he said.

  “I did, but I have no idea if it worked,” she said.

  Gavin retrieved the recorder from the vase on the side table. At first they heard the warbling sound of the rewind, then:

  “…bitch! You crazy fucking bitch! You tried to kill me! You tried to fucking kill me.”

  “You won,” Gavin said.

  “I saw something in his eyes,” she said. “He felt fear before—every time they announced when they would take him to the electric chair. But I think he never knew this before—something like what I imagine terror is. If my aim had been better, I could be charged with murder. I put all my strength into it. In the heat of the moment. Second degree. He brought it on. He was grabbing at me and biting and groping. I just went for something to fight back with and scooped up the ashtray. I raised it all the way over my head with intent to kill. So, how much different was I from him when he stood over Vickie in the sandpit? Panic had us both by the throat. We’re pretty much the same, he and I.”

  “Hardly, Marce. You defended yourself. All by yourself,” Gavin said.

  “We can’t stay here tonight.”

  “Let’s just go home,” he said.

  “Are we fleeing the scene of a crime? If we are, I don’t want to do it.”

  “There is no crime. It was a fight. A scary fight,” he said.

  “I’m so tired. I could go to sleep right n
ow. We have to pack up. I never want to come back,” Marcella said.

  “No one else would have faced him alone like you did. You weren’t afraid to fight him to the death if need be. You were a tiger.”

  “He thought we were alone in here—that no one could ever prove what he said happened.”

  “Silly boy,” Gavin said. “He didn’t know who he was up against.”

  They sank together into the cushions of the couch again and hung on to each other. They surveyed the wreckage—the lamp upended on the floor, the shards of shattered ashtray scattered around, the bullets and wet towels flung to the carpet. Where had the pistol wound up, anyway? And the glasses, where were they? The bottles? Probably under the couch or in some corner of the room.

  “If only I was the tiger you say I am,” she said. “The intrepid newspaper wonder woman trading barbs with a psychopath. And for what? To be doing something, anything’s better than wallowing in self-pity. Tough? Me? It’s not true.”

  Marcella stood and circled the couch. She sat on the arm then stood again and drifted into the kitchen. If there was ever a time for real truth, this is it, she thought. Not the cheap imitation variety truth where I tell just enough to get by and leave all the details unspoken. I’ve run the string out as far as it’ll go just to confirm what I already knew, that Smith’s a liar. I’d be a liar too if that’s what it took to survive—a small price to pay for that thing Vickie doesn’t have any more, that Hannah may not have, a beating heart.

  She continued: “I’ve been worrying that I’d lost you for sure, along with Hannah and the kids. I got this whole business with Edgar Smith stuck in my head, and had to carry through with it no matter how stupid and irrational it was, out of stubbornness, even if it meant that I would drive you away from me for good.

  “You’d never tell me how close we’ve come to going our separate ways after all the years and all the good times—there have been good times too, lots of them. You keep that a secret. And through it all, we still don’t have Hannah back and never will. I’ve been certifiable and miserable. I took myself over the edge as some kind of crazy payback for everything, Hannah, and Gus Breedlove, even Yasmina.

  “I don’t really know for sure what the story is with her, but I’ve fantasized about her just as I’m sure you’ve hallucinated and made yourself wretched over Gus. I pictured you lying in bed with her here while we talked on the telephone. Tell me, Gavin. Tell me your secrets and I’ll tell you mine. It’s the least we can do to make something good come out of this catastrophe. Beat me over the head with all the gory details. I can take it. I deserve the welts. And then I’ll beat you up.”

  Gavin swept into the kitchen and stood at the opposite end of the counter. She thought she knew everything—the same way he knew that Breedlove went far beyond a kiss.

  “I started cheating with her in Chicago,” he said. “Lunches. Dinners after work that were supposed to be business meetings. Then, I prevailed on her to come east with me when I took the job with Citizens First. I put her up here for a while, and in another apartment in the Village until she could handle the payments herself. I jeopardized my position at Citizens First. They had to suspect what was going on."

  He went to the cupboard and took the half-empty bottle of Dewar’s down off the upper shelf and poured Marcella and himself a finger or two.

  “We made love… no, had sex. Crazy wild sex. That’s what it was. Here and there, until we both admitted it was only payment for me subsidizing her. Then it was over, and has been for three or four months. I’m sorry. I have no excuse. It was complete selfishness. If you want to leave me over it, I would understand. But I don’t want that. I want us to go back to where we used to be a long time ago, before we let our ambitions or whatever they were build distance between us. Please, forgive me, and come home with me.”

  “I behaved like a common slut with Gus Breedlove,” Marcella said, then fought against the wave of sadness that broke over her. “I ran to a motel whenever he called, dressed like a whore. Over a period of months. In the shower together, mindless of the noise we were making. We believed we were above the bounds of decency. I have no idea how many people knew of us, the motel manager, his wife, and all the others they would tell. We didn’t care. We didn’t care what the consequences were. It did end before Hannah. He got tired of me. I’m sorry. I put everything we had built together second to arrogance. I want to lock the door on all of this and go home, Gavin. Please.”

  They stood at the opposite ends of the kitchen counter until Gavin slid around and held her in his arms. Oh god, she thought. What did this stupid confession of mine accomplish? If I thought spilling all of that would restore the trust I hacked out of the marriage with my idiotic affair, I’d better rethink it. Gavin ditched the screen he’d covered his fling with, but it didn’t quench my jealousy one little bit. It inflamed it. Lunches and dinners in Chicago? Crazy wild sex? Where was I? All of this, long after Gus and I were done and I was so thoroughly chastened—so much smarter, so faithful? So trusting. Before, I was just fantasizing. Now, I know. Only it’s worse. A whole lot worse.

  They drifted around the apartment wordlessly, picking up the pieces.

  Chapter 48

  Marcella in the Audi followed the taillights of the white Plymouth Valiant Gavin drove. They turned off Wyckoff Avenue onto Fardale. The houses all along the road to Chapel were dark. In the high beams she could see trees along the way bending in the wind. A street lamp illuminated the intersection. They turned left into what used to be the sandpit and then turned right almost immediately into their driveway. She pulled in behind Gavin and left her headlights on while she waited. He ducked out of the Plymouth and plodded up to the front door. The porch light went on. She cut her lights and followed him in.

  They had all their stuff from the Weehawken apartment in the two cars. It was well past midnight when they arrived. They didn’t attempt to carry it all in. They would do it tomorrow.

  As she padded down the stairs in the morning, she heard Gavin on the phone with Leland, the superintendent of Ticknor Apartments. He danced around the subject, but found out that no one in the building had complained last night or in the morning. No one heard anything out of the ordinary.

  “By the way, Leland,” Gavin said on the phone, “we’ve more or less moved completely out of the apartment and have no plans to move back in. I know we signed up for several more months of occupancy, but if you could attract a new tenant, you might be able to get more money from it than we pay. Anyway, we’ll honor our commitment. You can count on that. We’d appreciate it if you could sign up somebody new, and let us off the hook, though.”

  Marcella didn’t make a big show of listening in, but she heard it all. She watched him from across the room. She pictured him and Yasmina, sitting side-by-side on the couch in Weehawken. She remembered well how she had barged into the apartment, happy just to have a place to lie down, ignorant of all the uses Gavin had put it to. He’d surely had to scramble to let Yasmina know she’d moved in. Wouldn’t do to have her show up at the door or call on the phone, would it? When they moved out just now, Marcella had pointedly looked for the pearl earring she had left sitting in the soap dish. It wasn’t there. What had he done with it? He had to know she’d seen it and had chosen not to say anything. Is that the way things were going to be? Don’t say any more than you absolutely must? Maybe he assumed she had not seen the earring all this time? Oh, come now. But since she hadn’t said anything about it, could he be thinking it would just be blended into the rest of his confession, and didn’t call for elaboration. Jeez. Now what? Would he return it to Yasmina? Was it hers or somebody else’s? Was it better to know or not? How does everyone else in the world handle this? Can anything just be left unsaid?

  If Smith had killed her or she killed him, there would have been a definitive storybook ending to her affair with him if that’s the appropriate word for all the visits, all the drama that had gone down. If she wanted to do more with the story, she would
have to settle for the notes she had taken, the letters she had written to Hannah and saved, her memories of what it had looked and felt like in her jail cell meetings with Edgar. Well, there was the cassette recording and it was good, but it didn’t supply anything absolute as to Edgar’s guilt or innocence, or did it? It joined the rest of the words that came out of his mouth about the case through the years, tantalizingly close to what everyone wanted to hear, but no cigar. Not really. But they had recreated the car ride to the sandpit, spoke words close enough to the actual words he and Vickie had used that night. And then he’d started in with the groping which led to a physical, lethal fight, exactly like the… Wasn’t all that more damning than all the fumbling evasions he offered during the police questioning?

  Surely, the blowout with Edgar would bring their life to a long pause while they laid back and caught their breath and deliberated what to do to keep the heat on the search for Hannah. But the calendar was full up—Gavin was scheduled for a business trip.

  He was traveling for Citizens First now, just as he used to travel for Northern Trust. There were the regular visits he made to the CFOs of all Citizen’s major clients as an emissary of sorts, checking in to make sure that the relationship was on a firm footing, and that there weren’t any festering sores or complaints that cast even the slightest cloud over the rosy picture the bank wanted to pop up in their minds every time they thought of Citizens. Most of these visits were his introduction to the client CFO, but some of them were faces he knew from somewhere in his tenure in the same role at Northern Trust.

  Why has it always been second nature to him to see the need to come face-to-face with trouble as it affected bank clients no matter how serious it might be, but so alien to him to confront the fears that hid inside himself?

  He hadn’t included her in his trips for quite a while now, years and years in fact, but there were good reasons. Celia and Brett had a full calendar and couldn’t babysit, and so, well, it was because they would have had to foist Hannah off on a friend until they returned for one thing, and his schedule usually brimmed with cancellations and adjustments that would have been even more chaotic if he had to keep her abreast of them. Was that Gavin’s explanation or hers? Actually, it was hers. And actually, all of it was bogus. When they were first married they could unfailingly find all sorts of ways to extend their hours together—welcoming every chance to give up their seats on an overbooked plane flight just so they could linger on together wherever they happened to be.