by Tom Saric
"Okay." Renee handed me my bourbon and Coke as she sat down at the kitchen table and directed Karen to sit across from me. Renee was nearly vibrating with giddiness, but I stayed flat, finding it impossible to stop thinking about Doug. "Karen's got news she wants to share."
Karen smiled coyly and took a deep breath.
"I'm pregnant."
Renee clapped her hands and then hugged Karen from across the table. My mind was still catching up to what Karen had said when Renee and Karen raised their glasses.
"What did you say?"
"I'm pregnant, Dad."
Renee slid my glass into my hand and raised my arm until our three glasses clinked.
"How… how far along?"
"About four months."
I squeezed my eyes tight and tried shifting my mind to the present. I feigned a smile.
"Who?"
"Is the father?" Karen said, and then crinkled her nose. "Donor."
"There's no father?"
"That's kind of how it works," Renee cut in.
Karen nodded. At age twenty-three, she decided to get donor sperm to have a child. I couldn't help but think about what sort of oedipal complex the kid would have.
"I want a child, Dad. I'm ready."
"Are you sure about this?"
"Yeah." She let out a nervous laugh.
"But you're so... How are you going to?"
"I'm glad you're so worried about me."
"Karen, how will you raise the child. How will you afford-"
"I can figure it out. I have a lot of support. Mom said-"
"You haven't finished school. You're-"
"Whose fault is that?" Karen said coldly. "I thought you'd be at least a little bit happy for me."
I reminded myself that I wanted a relationship with my daughter.
"I am. I am. It's just that I worry about you."
I thought of Doug clamping down on his daughter. I tried to let go.
"I wasn't going to tell you. I wasn't," Karen said, wiping tears from her eyes. "And then I got that last envelope from you." She smiled. "I thought we could start over."
Something broke inside me. The envelope. I wanted her to use the money. I wanted to help. She was telling me that money was what brought her back to me. She cut me out because of money, and now she was back for the same reason.
"A handout," I said.
Renee put her hand on my forearm.
"Excuse me?"
"You want your money. That's why you're here."
"No, I don't, I-"
"Over three years I don't hear from you because of money. My fault. I blame myself every day. I try to make it up. And now you're coming to get what's yours."
Tears streamed down her face, and she looked like I'd just taken the wind out of her.
"You're an asshole. No wonder Mom left."
Karen picked up her glass, put it in the sink, and left. On her way out, she tossed an envelope on the table.
Renee’s hand was pressed to her temple. She shook her head.
I downed my bourbon and leaned my head against my hands.
"Okay." Renee spoke slowly. Her lips moved but words didn't immediately form. "That was harsh. But recoverable. You guys have some talking to do."
I didn't say anything. I told myself I hadn't ruined my chance at reconciliation. She had.
"I think I can smooth things over with her. I know where she's staying."
I looked at the envelope. Was any money left inside? I reached for it, but Renee took it from me.
"You calm down, leave this for later. I'll come back in the morning."
I grabbed my keys, ran to the basement, and turned on the lights, then unlocked file cabinet after file cabinet in search of Robert Fisk's file. I knew it was there and had to consult it to refresh my memory. I rifled through the file cabinets containing my yellow notebooks. When I reached the F section, his file wasn't there.
I decided to look for his blue shadow file in the file cabinets across the basement. Eventually I found a notebook with the initials R.F. It was thin. I'd only seen him once, six years ago.
I took it upstairs and sat at the kitchen table. I read my handwritten notes from our meeting, the memory of the story he told me seeping back in.
Robert came in with the common “I'm not here for me, I'm here for a friend.” It was a common refrain I heard from young men too embarrassed to admit they had an emotional problem. The difference was that Robert truly came for advice on how to help a friend.
Robert was twenty-two when he came to see me. He presented as a confident and stable young man. He was articulate and made solid eye contact as we spoke. When he was eight, his father died of cancer. That's when his mother packed them up and bought a place in rural New Hampshire.
Their property backed onto a creek, and he would go out fishing on his own. He was quite the angler too. He described that he held the state record for brook trout, coming in at just a hair over nine pounds. In late summer, the creek would dry out, and as the water levels fell, he would venture further downstream looking for deeper pools to fish. One day, about three miles away, he saw a girl around his age, alone and barefoot, on the other side. The second she spotted him she ran away, off into the woods.
After that, every summer, once or twice, he would have a sighting of the blonde girl. One time, he tried to speak to her. She froze up, turned, and ran back into the forest, but she came back the next week. They initially spoke a few words, and eventually, she told him her name.
Madeline.
Robert described her as childlike, behaving much younger than her age. She was homeschooled and had no friends, although she talked about a cousin visiting her occasionally. As time passed, she began asking him more questions about his life. It became apparent to Robert that she lived a very sheltered existence.
As he became a teenager, his feelings of intrigue developed into romantic feelings for Madeline. Gradually, they had longer visits at the creek, but she would never cross over to his side or let him wade over to hers. He found this odd, but was also excited by the idea of a forbidden love.
One day, Robert was able to convince her to come over to his side of the creek. He described her as stiff and shaking as she crossed, terrified by the idea. She spent all of ten seconds on his side of the creek before scurrying back over. She cried hysterically that her parents would see that her dress was wet at the bottom and that she had walked off their property. She ran into the woods and he didn't see her again for an entire year.
Robert kept walking up the creek at least once per day, hoping to see Madeline again.
And he did. One evening during spring, when the water was high, he saw a figure pop up from the creek, gasping for air. He ran over, jumped in, and pulled Madeline from the current. She was unconscious but began coughing up water as they reached the creek's edge. They lay on the grass together.
Robert began asking her how she fell into the water and she confided in him that she was trying to kill herself. As he probed further, she described in horrifying detail the abuse she suffered from her parents. She was never allowed off the property. Her father noticed the day she got her dress wet, so she was shackled to a floor anchor in her room for three months. Once the snow fell, she was unchained, but her parents took away her shoes, as they figured she wouldn't be able to run away barefoot. When her father learned that she had been talking to a boy over the creek, he beat her with a tire iron until she was unconscious. If she ever questioned her parents' decisions, she was promptly given sedatives and restricted from eating for days to ensure her submission.
I listened as Robert listed abuse after abuse that Madeline had suffered over years. He had begged her to go to the police, to run away with him, but she firmly refused. And he was reluctant to do so without her agreement.
By the time he finished, we were already an hour over time. He wanted advice on what to do to help Madeline out of such a horrific situation.
She was effectively trapped by fear—fe
ar of retribution if she were to leave them, and fear of the scary unknown world that her parents created for her. And over time, she would be trained to sympathize with her parents. She would think that they were only doing their best. That their treatment of her was reasonable because she was “bad.” That the world was against them and they were in it together. It was Stockholm syndrome, a spell she was under that gave all power to her abusers and left her utterly powerless, so much so that she wasn't even able to end her own life. She was left completely alone.
And that spell would last until someone like Robert came along to pop it.
In effect, Robert wanted to kidnap her. But the reality was, abusers who exerted this level of control over people wouldn't stop under any circumstances.
I had contemplated reporting the situation to the police myself, but that was complicated by a few factors. First, Madeline was over eighteen. While I could call authorities, the courts had ruled that mandatory reporting of abuse was limited to children. Second, I didn't know her full name. I thought that the best course of action would be to discuss the situation further with Robert at our next session, but he never showed up. And when I tried to call him, I realized he had given me a fake number. I ultimately decided not to pursue it further and keep Robert's dilemma to myself.
I put down the notebook. If Madeline was, in fact, Maddie, Doug's daughter, then Doug and I had a connection that was beyond coincidence.
What bothered me was that Doug said Robert killed his daughter. I began regretting my decision to not pursue Robert and Madeline. I wasn't sure I could bear another patient killing someone on my watch.
I went upstairs and opened my laptop to search for Robert's name. Unsurprisingly, no Robert Fisks around his age in New Hampshire, Vermont, or New York readily came up. He had likely given me a fake name.
I tried numerous variations of his name, checked school graduations, but I was unable to find a lead. After forty-five minutes of searching, I was ready to give up.
I scanned my notes again, hoping for some sort of clue. I looked at the wood stove and then my fly rod leaning against the wall. I stared at the rod, my eyes running from the thin tip down to the cork handle as though I was searching for something. I finally realized why.
"Fishing."
I ran up to my laptop and Googled "New Hampshire record brook trout." After a few pages of searching I found the name of the person who currently held the record: Robert Di Santis.
I kept on my search and typed in “Robert Di Santis New Hampshire.”
The second entry from the top was an obituary.
The picture was Robert. I scanned through the obituary quickly. It said that fourteen months ago he had died "after a prolonged illness." Doug had mentioned that Madeline had gone missing years earlier. If Robert had killed her, there would have been an investigation.
I looked up Madeline's name along with the last name Steele, New Hampshire, missing.
Did you mean Madeline Boone New Hampshire
I clicked on the link and it refreshed the search. There were two pages of articles on Madeline Boone. I clicked on the first. "Father not giving up search for Madeline Boone." The photo was of Doug—real name Kurt Steele—discussing how his daughter had disappeared years earlier and he had been searching for her ever since.
"For years, we met there by the creek. I was her only contact to the outside world. She was so naïve. You kept her that way."
Robert pointed to the mug with a straw on the table next to him. Kurt hesitated and then lifted the mug to Robert's mouth, waiting as he took a labored sip. Kurt pictured smashing the mug on Robert's face, moaning as blood splattered across the bed. That would have to wait. He needed information first.
"As we talked, she got more and more depressed. Just sad. She heard about my life, my mom, and what being loved was like. And you'd just about destroyed all the life inside of her."
"Where did you take her?"
"She begged me, she begged me to let her go. She was afraid to run away because of what you would do to her if you found her. But she couldn't stand being there anymore. Maybe I shouldn't have told her about what normal parents were like. Kept her ignorant."
"Where is Maddie?" Kurt said, his voice shaking. He breathed heavily through his nose. He needed to see her again.
"She wanted it. Because she wasn't living. And she was afraid to leave. She was stuck and there was no way out. And there wasn't."
Robert's mouth opened and closed, as though the words couldn't come out.
"I even asked a shrink. He said the same thing. You'd never stop." Robert pressed his tongue against the inside of his teeth and shrugged. "I had to."
"Had to what?"
"She wanted to die, Mr. Boone."
Kurt rubbed his hands together, not fully comprehending.
"I told her I'd give her a kiss. And when she came close, I put my hands around her and..." Robert nodded.
"You killed my Maddie?"
Robert turned slowly, looked Kurt in the eye, and smiled. "After that, I rowed out to the middle of the lake with her body and left her there."
Kurt stood up and grabbed the gun from his belt. He pushed it against Robert's temple. "You piece of shit, how could you kill an innocent girl?"
"You made me do it."
21
In the basement I took my Remington 7600 pump action out of the safe along with eight rounds and put it in my sheepskin zipper case. It was light and my most reliable gun. I grabbed my tool bag and threw in a flashlight, headlamp, pry bar, adjustable screwdriver, hammer, and a handful of wrenches.
I went to my truck, threw the tools and my rifle in the back seat, then drove in the dark toward Doug's trailer. I took an old road that hugged the Persey River. The rapids were loud with the recent rainfall rushing downhill. The currents ate away at the river bank.
I turned north and followed the road that circumvented the town, past the saw mill and boat storage yard. The moon was hidden by clouds and the sky was totally black. I left my headlights off. I worried that as a possible suspect in the murders, the sheriff's department could be trailing me. Staying inconspicuous on the roads was critical.
I could picture Doug killing Ned, holding the muzzle inches from Ned's head, squeezing the trigger, and walking off like nothing happened. Debbie said I was the last person on camera, so I wondered how Doug managed to get inside Ned's house without being seen.
I thought about Doug's daughter. It wasn't uncommon for children in these situations to identify with their parents and see them as only wanting the best for their children. Or seeing their parents as victims against the dangerous wider world. I'd worked with a sixteen-year-old victim of incest who insisted for two years that it was her fault for what she viewed as tempting her father. Only when in a group therapy session another teenager called her dad “a messed-up psycho” did something click and she realize her innocence.
I drove past Doug's trailer without slowing down, but I was able to see that no car was parked out front. I drove a quarter mile further and parked my truck off the road under a dripping pine tree. I grabbed my tool bag and rifle and walked into the woods between my truck and Doug's trailer, which appeared empty. Doug had walked home from my cabin, and there was a real possibility he was passed out in a ditch somewhere, so I figured I had a solid head start on him. It would give me time to get inside the trailer, look around, and leave before he arrived.
The trailer and its surroundings were completely dark. Part of the trailer’s vinyl siding had slipped out and was bouncing in the breeze. I walked up the steps and unscrewed the light bulb over the door, then knocked. After a few seconds I tried twisting the door knob, and when that didn't work, I hit my shoulder against the door. The dead bolt refused to budge.
I'd lived in one of these trailers when I first moved to Bridgetown and was having my place built. On more than one occasion I had locked myself out.
I walked to the back of the trailer and found a seven-gallon pail full of rainw
ater. I dumped it out and then stood underneath the bathroom window, leaning my shotgun against the wall and dropping my tool bag on the grass. I switched on the headlamp, grabbed the pry bar from the tool bag, and stood on top of the pail, then shoved the end of the pry bar between the frame and window. I rocked it back and forth, gradually increasing pressure until the interior plastic latch snapped off and I was able to slide the window open.
I pulled myself up onto my elbows and slid through the narrow window, tipping head first into an empty bathtub. I knelt, peeled the slimy shower curtain off my face, and stepped out of the tub.
A razor, deodorant, and Calvin Klein cologne were on the sink ledge. I opened the medicine cabinet but found it empty. I left the bathroom and moved into a narrow hallway, flicking on my headlamp. I turned right, into the bedroom. A mattress without a bed frame lay directly on the floor with a mess of blankets on top. Cigarettes were piled in an ashtray on the nightstand.
I opened each dresser drawer and swept through T-shirts, socks, and underwear. Besides learning that Doug was a Hanes man, I found nothing of importance.
I left the bedroom and moved through the hallway into the kitchen. Pots, plates, glasses, old pop bottles, and pizza boxes littered the countertop. The stove was covered in grease and the garbage bin was overstuffed. I opened cutlery drawers, cabinets, and rummaged through random jars of keys and coins.
I came across a locked drawer. I gave it a few good jerks, but it wouldn't budge. I tried several keys from the jar, but none of them fit. I'd found nothing in the trailer that would link Doug to Ned, or even Robert.
I walked into the bathroom and picked up the pry bar from the bottom of the tub. I then moved back to the kitchen, placed the end of the pry bar into the gap between the drawer face and cabinet, and rocked it until the drawer front cracked and splintered. I wiggled the drawer off and placed it on the floor.
Inside I found an open box of photographs and an eleven-by-fourteen hardcover scrapbook.
I picked up the photographs and leafed through them, looking at Doug and who I assumed was his daughter at various ages: Doug holding her as an infant in the hospital, pushing her on a swing, eating birthday cake. I took the photo of her as a teenager standing on the shores of a lake and stuffed it into my pocket.