Remembering Sarah

by Chris Mooney

  The man groaned. His legs, Mike noticed, were splayed at odd angles.

  Fang had done this. The dog and his hundred-plus pounds had knocked the guy flat on his ass.

  “Fang, come!”

  The dog was too busy sniffing the man. Mike scooped up a snowball, and once he had the dog’s attention, tossed it toward the main road and away from the pond. Fang tore after it, and Mike turned his attention to the man.

  “I’m sorry, he bolted off before I could grab him. Are you hurt?”

  The man waved him off. He propped himself up on his hands, his head bowed forward and his face out of view, and crawled through snow, heading in the direction of his cane and a small red plastic tube—an asthma inhaler. Mike reached down and scooped the inhaler off the snow, about to hand it over when he saw the liver-spotted hands, the spidery fingers.

  “Give it … to … me,” the man wheezed.

  The sound of that panting, wheezy voice tore through Mike’s brain like a bullet. He stood up straight, took a step back.

  Put the inhaler in his hand and walk away.

  Yes. The terms of his probation clearly stated that it was his responsibility—no, his duty—to hand over the inhaler and walk away. Put it in his hands and run back to the house and call 911 and then Merrick. It was an accident, Detective. The dog did it, I swear. I picked up the inhaler and put it in his hands and walked away and called 911. See what a good doobie I am? See how I kept my anger in check, Dr. T. Go ahead and give me that breathalyzer,Mr. Testa, I’ll pass with flying colors.

  Then Mike remembered Jonah’s slick grin of pleasure from the grocery store. I own you, that grin had said. I own your daughter, and now I own your life, and there isn’t a goddamn thing you can do about it.

  Put the inhaler in his hand and walk away.

  “What are you doing out here so early?”

  Jonah kept his head bowed, clouds of breath steaming around his face. “Sunrise. I came out here to see … a sunrise before …” Each word came out strained, as if some horrific amount of weight was piled against his chest. “My inhaler …”

  Mike knelt down, balancing his weight on the balls of his feet, and pinched the inhaler between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Look at me.”

  The former priest slowly lifted his eyes and met Mike’s gaze.

  “You’re going to tell me where Sarah is,” Mike said. “You’re going to tell me and I’m going to give you your inhaler.”

  “I can’t … breathe …”

  “Good. Now you’ve got a taste of how I’ve been feeling every day for the past five years.”

  Panic bloomed on Jonah’s face. His lungs made a sick, whistling sound that made Mike think of wet cement being poured through a pipe.

  “I … don’t—”

  “What did you do to her?”

  Jonah’s mouth kept working, trying to draw in air. Jonah’s windpipe was closing and Jonah was drowning in all this fresh air and Mike was vaguely aware that a part of himself was warming to the sight of this, the building terror in Jonah’s eyes and voice.

  Mike wiggled the inhaler in front of Jonah’s face. “One puff and you can breathe again.”

  “I … I can’t …”

  “You can and you will.”

  “Please,” Jonah begged, his eyes growing hungry and desperate.

  “You want to die out here?”

  Jonah lunged for the inhaler. Mike closed it inside his fist.

  “Nobody’s coming to help you,” Mike said as Jonah’s bony fingers worked furiously to pry open Mike’s fist. “You’re going to tell me what happened to Sarah and those two other girls, and you’re going to tell me now or you’re going to die out here.”

  Jonah wouldn’t answer. Mike pressed his thumb on the metal tube, and the inhaler made a hissing sound as it released the medicine into the air.

  “I … can’t …”

  Mike kept pressing the tube, Jonah watching, on the verge of tears.

  “Tell me,” Mike said through gritted teeth. “Tell me and I’ll let you live.”

  Jonah collapsed against the snow, his face red from the exertion. Mike straddled him, grabbed him by the front of the jacket collar.

  “You have to tell me. You were a priest, remember? You need my forgiveness.” Mike shook him. “Tell me what happened to my daughter.”

  Jonah worked his mouth but no sound came out.

  Mike placed Jonah’s body back against the snow and then leaned his ear close to Jonah’s mouth, Mike close enough to smell the sour bile and funk baked in Jonah’s breath. It was the smell of rot. Death.

  “Our Father, who … art in heaven …”

  Mike whipped his head around. Jonah stared up at the sky, his lips bloodless and dotted with spittle, wheezing through phlegm and whatever fluid was clogging his windpipe.

  “… hallowed be … thy name …”

  Mike shook him again. “You need me to forgive you.”

  “… thy kingdom come …”

  “Make it right. I’m giving you a chance to make it right, now tell me, you son of a bitch.”

  “… earth as it is in heaven …”

  Mike rattled him. “Goddamnit, tell me. TELL ME!”

  Jonah’s eyes had a dreamy, faraway look. The mist had started to clear, and on the periphery of his vision, Mike could see Fang across the road, sniffing along the edge of the pond. Twirly-birdy! Sarah had said as she pointed to the TV where this peanut of a girl skated across the ice and then jumped in the air, twirling around before landing back on the ice. I want to learn the twirly-birdy,Daddy. And he had taken her to this pond, had put on her skates and laced them up and stacked two milk crates, putting her small hands on top of them, telling her how to push off, how to keep her balance, Sarah going along with it but wanting to know when he was going to show her the twirly-birdy jump and it was possible she had grown up and leaned how to do that, oh yes, it was possible, anything was possible as long as you had faith, as long as you believed and kept believing and were good and said your prayers and God would protect you because God is love is faith and light and—

  “TELL ME.”

  The puffs of steam forming around Jonah’s mouth had almost disappeared.

  He’s dying.

  Let him die. I don’t care.

  If he dies out here, he takes his secrets with him.

  Mike stuck the inhaler in Jonah’s mouth and pressed down on the aerosol container. Medicine hissed out of the tube. Two, three, four more blasts and Jonah’s mouth came alive, greedily sucking on the plastic nozzle like a hungry newborn.

  A moment later, Jonah’s eyes refocused.

  Mike stood up, panting. For several minutes, they stared at each other, the last two men to have touched Sarah.

  “Tell me if she’s alive,” Mike said. “At least give me that.”

  It took another minute for Jonah to regain his breath.

  “Only God knows what is true.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Mike saw the cane. His eyes shifted to Jonah’s knee, saw the cane coming down on it, shattering bone.

  Mike dropped the inhaler and stumbled away. He thought he heard Jonah weeping and forced himself to keep walking.

  CHAPTER 21

  Later that day, Sunday, Bill threw a barbecue. Mike stopped by early in the morning and helped Bill set up. He didn’t tell Bill about his encounter with Jonah.

  Two kegs were set up on the corner of the sprawling deck, and music from the Rock of Boston, WBCN, pumped over the deck’s wall speakers. Mike drank ice-cold cans of Coke and forced himself to smile and act gracious, tried like hell to lose himself in the conversations as he mingled through the crowds of friends and Bill’s neighbors while, in the back of his mind, he heard Jonah crying.

  Maybe Jonah’s near-death experience from this morning had forced him to confront the fact that his demise was days, possibly even hours away. Maybe getting his life back, whatever was left of it, maybe it had forced him to dip into whatever small
chunk of humanity he had left.

  I shouldn’t have turned around, Mike thought. I should have waited longer. He would have told me something, and I blew it.

  A few more minutes wouldn’t have mattered.

  I should have tried.

  And when he didn’t give you what you wanted, then what would you have done? Tried using the cane on his kneecaps?

  Mike didn’t know what terrified him the more: the calm willingness he had felt at watching Jonah struggle for air, or the almost yawning ease in which he had slipped back into the shadow of his former self, the one he was convinced, at least until this morning, could only be accessed by booze. The rage was always there, he realized, on the skin instead of being buried underneath it, the booze the lame excuse he used to ignite it.

  He looked at his watch. It was after three. Maybe Merrick knew something.

  Mike took out his cell phone,moved to a quiet corner of the backyard and dialed Merrick’s direct number at the station.

  Ring.

  Jonah’s going to die.

  Ring.

  You can’t change it.

  Ring.

  But you’re going to have to face it.

  Merrick’s voice mail clicked on. Mike left a message, asking him to call immediately, and snapped his cell phone shut. His heart was beating faster than it should, his face shiny with perspiration.

  That last morning, he had walked into Sarah’s bedroom and kissed her on the head, the same ritual he performed every morning, and it always amazed him how this small person who was a part of him and yet not a part of him or like anyone else in the world could, just by the very sight of her, fill him up with equal amounts of love and fear. And it never went away. You didn’t know that kind of love until you had a child, until you changed diapers and walked around with them during the night and lay next to them when they were sick—until they looked into your eyes for the first time and smiled, you couldn’t understand how rare that kind of love was, how it changed you. That morning he had looked at her sleeping and knew that this was enough. If this was all he had in life, then he would be happy. And he had meant it.

  That life is gone. You can’t have it back.

  She was born premature and had survived all the odds and had grown into this wonderfully, beautifully stubborn little girl who—

  You’ve got to let her go. You’ve got to grieve and move on.

  Move on to what?

  You’ll figure it out.

  I don’t want to figure it out. I want my daughter back.

  That life is gone.

  And it had been gone for a long time, hadn’t it? And the life he was leading in the interim was coming to an end too. And Jonah was going to die today, tomorrow—it didn’t matter because Mike knew Jonah was going to take his secrets to the grave, and he’d be left with Jonah’s voice, and it would live forever in his mind, forced to share the same rooms with his daughter.

  Mike went to take a drink and found his cup bone dry.

  He navigated his way through the backyard and deck and to the kitchen island table where the bottles of soda were set up along with the bottles of Jack Daniel’s, Absolut and Captain Morgan.

  He was alone in the kitchen.

  He was eyeing the bottle of Jack when his cell phone vibrated against his hip.

  Not Merrick. It was Sam.

  “Good, Sully, you’re there. I just left a message for you at home.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I asked the private investigator we use to do a little digging and, well, I’ve managed to get a copy of the lab report on your daughter’s jacket. I know it’s short notice, but can you come into town in the next hour?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Sam wasn’t kidding about the long hours. A gorgeous Sunday afternoon and the law firm was humming with activity. It wasn’t as packed as it had been the other day—people weren’t running around with that same end-of-the-world urgency, for one—but the hallways and offices were bustling with a good number of people moving around with a wired, under-the-gun energy. And Sam’s desk was in the same state of disarray as the other day, her wastebasket full of paper bags of takeout food. Mike wondered if she spent most of her nights here too.

  Seated at the head of Sam’s conference table was a pleasant-looking woman with short, messy blond hair wearing a gray zippered Black Dog sweatshirt. She blew out a long, pink bubble and popped it as she stood up.

  Sam said, “ Mike, this is Nancy Childs.”

  “Howareya,” Nancy said. All one word. Probably still used words like wicked cool and pissa, Mike thought as he shook her hand. For a secretary, her handshake packed a lot of punch.

  “The private investigator on his way?” he asked Sam.

  Nancy said, “ You’re looking at her, big guy.”

  For some reason, when Sam had mentioned the words “private investigator,” his mind had formed an image of a guy in his late fifties, an ex-cop or ex-FBI agent with a bad comb-over who wore suits from Sears—maybe even a Robert Urich type like in Spenser for Hire, but definitely not a gum-smacking middle-aged graduate from the Revere Secretarial School.

  “Let me guess,” Nancy said with a grin. “You thought I was the secretary.”

  “Sorry. I guess I didn’t know what to expect.”

  “Don’t worry. Happens all the time. Sam and I are used to it, only Sam gets it less ’cause she speaks and dresses better than I do. You’re right, Sam, I’ve gotta stop chomping on the gum and wear a big gun on my hip.”

  Nancy shot Sam one of those men-are-such-dopes glances before she sat down. Sam sat on the opposite end of the table, and Mike took the chair next to Nancy. The overhead canister lights in her office were dimmed, and soft jazz music played on the bookshelf speakers.

  “Sam said you managed to get a copy of the state lab report,” Mike said.

  “Sure did. I had to call in some major favors to get it.”

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

  “Reason I bring up the favor thing,” Nancy said, “is to impress upon you the importance of keeping this information to yourself.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you really?”

  “Do I really what?”

  “Understand. Word is you’re a hothead. My experience with hotheads is not only do they lack impulse control, they always end up ramming you straight up the old glory hole.”

  Mike sat there, his mind busy trying to untangle himself from her words. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sam shift in her chair.

  Nancy said, “Sorry for being blunt, but I’m not good with small talk, and I’m not good with B.S. A lot of men have a hard time with that, which may explain why I’m still single. Another thing Sam and I have in common, you know, besides the chick thing.” Nancy smiled but she wasn’t joking.

  “Any particular reason you’re busting my balls?”

  “Last time somebody helped you, you turned around and used Jonah as a punching bag. Sorry, but I don’t need that kind of publicity.”

  Her whole Bill O’Reilly attitude should have bothered him and might have too if he hadn’t been numbed by his weekly verbal wrestling session with the queen of the ball breakers, Dr. T. Nancy Childs just another part of the same cold machinery that employed Dr. T and Testa and Merrick, Nancy with her gum-snapping brutal-honesty spiel and I-Can-Piss-Like-A-Man chip on her shoulder just itching for him to flash a little anger or throw a fit so she could pack up her files and march out the door, sorry Sam, but I don’t do business with hotheads and boozehounds.

  “I ran into Francis Jonah this morning,” Mike said.

  Nancy chewed her gum, waiting for the rest of it or not really caring, he didn’t know which.

  “My dog ran into him and knocked him flat on his ass—that’s the honest-to-God-truth,” Mike said. “There was Jonah, lying in the snow and gasping for breath, I mean really struggling. He dropped his inhaler and he needs it to breathe, and the inhal
er’s right next to me. I pick it up and then the idea hits me: trade the inhaler for information on my daughter. He’ll tell me what happened to Sarah, and I’ll give him the inhaler so he can breathe. Now tell me, Nancy, what would you have done in that situation?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “Go ahead, think about it,” Mike said. “I’d love to get your take on it.”

  Nancy clicked her nails against the table.

  Mike shook his head. “See, that’s what I don’t understand. Everyone tells me what I should have done—you know, play Monday-morning quarterback and judge me after the fact. But when I ask them to put themselves in my situation, they shrug or, like you, they clam up. So I guess what I’m trying to say, Nancy, is that you have a problem with what I did out of the love of my daughter, please, by all means, take the lab report, wrap it around your attitude, and feel free to ram it straight up your glory hole because frankly—and I say this in the spirit of total honesty here—frankly, I’m sick and tired of explaining myself to people who are clueless.”

  Several seconds passed. No one spoke.

  Nancy reached down and grabbed a leather satchel resting against her chair leg. Go ahead and leave. Fuck it. He was tired of begging.

  She didn’t leave. She removed a blue file folder, placed it on the table in front of him and flipped it open.

  An 8x10 color photograph of Sarah’s jacket. A ruler had been placed next to the jacket for measurement purposes, and the hood was open.

  “What’s that?” Mike said, pointing to the three quarter-sized black smudges on the left side of the hood.

  “Those are bloodstains.”

  Mike felt like his heart had been dunked in ice water.

  “They ran the DNA test on the blood and matched it to the sample they had on file—the hair they took from Sarah’s brush when she went missing,” Nancy said. “Both samples match.”

  He didn’t remember seeing blood that night on the Hill.

  You couldn’t see them. The detective folded back the hood, remember?

  Yes. The detective with the Red Sox baseball hat had folded back the hood—on purpose. Merrick didn’t want him to see the blood and hadn’t mentioned it because if Mike had known about the blood, there was no way he would have—