by AR Simmons
His admonition was ridiculous, of course. The desperate woman would clutch at anything that allowed her to continue hoping for the return of her baby.
“I knew you would,” she said. “I just knew you would. You’ll find her for me. You will.”
“Molly, I’m not a trained investigator. I—”
“You’re smart though. And you care about people. I could see that right off. You care, and that’s good enough for me. You won’t get tired of looking and just say, ‘to hell with it,’ like that Adams bastard done.”
Richard thought she had probably just summed up precisely what ‘that Adams bastard’ had done, but he wasn’t sure that he could do any better.
“I’ll do what I can,” he promised.
“Is there something I can do to help?”
He needed a starting place. As a policeman, he would begin with a rigorous interrogation of Molly herself. He couldn’t do that, of course.
“There is,” he said. “But it won’t be fun. Could you write an account of everything you remember about the day she disappeared?”
“Night,” she corrected. “They took her at night.”
“No, I want you to tell be about that whole day. Try to remember everything you did, everyone you met, what everyone said and did. Everything.”
“Even if it don’t have nothing to do with Mancie?”
“Everything, Molly. You never know when some little something will turn out to be important.”
“Are you going to start today?”
“As much as I’m able on a bum ankle,” he said, deciding not to tell her about yesterday’s encounter with Adams.
“I guess I’ll go back and get started,” she said. “My handwriting ain’t very good. Should I maybe print?”
“Just so I can read it. The main thing is to take your time and write down everything. Work hard on that.”
Molly stopped at the door. “I remember it all, Mr. Carter. It’s all I’ve thought about since it happened.”
He watched her walk briskly across the weedy yard. She suddenly had a purpose. But Adams was not out of line in suspecting Molly. Like Jill had reminded him, when something happens to a baby, the parents are always suspected.
But if she is guilty, then why does she want the investigation to continue rather than just letting it fade away? Adams probably thinks she’s acting.
By nature, cops were suspicious. He wondered what Molly had done to confirm Adams’s opinion.
•••
The James Mill News was housed in a red-brick building whose corbelled false-front parapet overhung a sloping sidewalk. Inside, a drop ceiling with fluorescent light panels clashed with dark tongue and groove flooring and tan stuccoed walls. The small room was cluttered with half a dozen computer cubicles. The young, conservatively dressed and overweight receptionist sat just inside the door. Richard leaned on his crutches as she looked up expectantly.
“May I help you?”
“I’d like to speak with the manager or editor.”
“I’m the editor and owner,” said a man sitting at a desk to his right. “We aren’t hiring, and we have all our supplies contracted, so we aren’t buying either. If you want to run an ad, Mary there can take care of you.”
“I’m not here on financial business,” said Richard. “I was hoping you would have time to talk to me about an incident that was reported in your paper a few months back. By the way, I’m Richard Carter,” he said, extending his hand while leaning on his crutches.
“Hal Dillard,” said the man, half-rising to shake hands. “You’re welcome to look in the basement. That’s where we keep back issues. Or I’ll get someone to find it for you if you know the date.”
He was obviously eager to hand Richard off.
“Actually, you could probably tell me about it, and I wouldn’t have to take up any of your employees’ time.”
Dillard seemed to like that idea. “Okay. But I don’t have much time.”
“It’s about the baby that disappeared.”
“The Allsop woman,” said the man, nodding. “Terrible thing to happen.”
“Yes. I would think that such a shocking thing would be pretty big news in a town this size.”
“Oh it was. Is,” Dillard corrected himself. “People are shocked.”
“But … there wasn’t much about it in your paper, was there?”
“We didn’t report the details because we didn’t want to hinder the investigation—you know, tip off whoever it was that took the little girl.”
“Mr. Adams asked you to play it like that?”
“He didn’t make a formal request,” said Dillard, squirming.
Then he looked around the room before turning his attention back to Richard.
“I haven’t had my breakfast, Mr. Carter,” he said, getting up abruptly. “Come across the street and we can continue our conversation over there.”
“I might take a cup of coffee,” said Richard as he followed Dillard to the door.
As they waited for traffic to clear before crossing in the middle of the block, the editor spoke, his tone exaggeratedly solicitous. “How did you hurt your leg?”
“Fell off a roof,” said Richard as they stepped from the curb.
“Do it yourself job?”
“No. I’m going to college, but kind of between things right now, so I picked up a job with a roofing crew.”
They went inside a storefront café and sat at a table in the back corner. After the waitress took their order, Dillard leaned back and sighed.
“I didn’t want to tell you in the office, but the reason there wasn’t more of a story about it was that my main writer—well, the only one I have—is, shall we say, overenthusiastic. Charles wrote local sports before I promoted him. He’s fond of exaggeration, I’d guess you’d say. That’s fine when writing about high school football, but he’s a bit over the top for straight news. I like the kid, but I didn’t trust him to handle this one with the kind of sensitivity it needed. I was going to write it myself, but other stuff came up, and we just basically rewrote the police report. Nothing else developed, so there was nothing to base follow ups on.”
Richard thought of several questions, but before he could ask, Dillard had one of his own.
“Just what is your interest in this?” he asked. “Are you a relative or a friend of the mother?”
“I’m just curious, and until the ankle heals I’ve got time on my hands.”
“And you’re a friend of hers?”Dillard repeated.
“I guess you could say that. I’m concerned about what happened to the baby.”
“Of course. We all are,” said Dillard as his breakfast arrived.
The editor began an elaborate preparation ritual before eating. First, he buttered his toast, making sure to spread the butter to the edges of each wedge, and then he repeated the process with packets of grape jelly. After dicing his eggs, both horizontally and vertically, he gathered the butter and jelly packets onto a saucer, wiped his hands fastidiously, and then placed the napkin atop. On cue, the waitress took the refuse away and refilled his cup.
“You know,” he said, pausing before beginning his repast. “We buy most of our stories—and all our editorials. Local sports, area news, and obituaries are about all that we actually produce ourselves. I’m not much of a writer myself, but I can spot bad copy. That was probably my father’s biggest disappointment. I can turn a profit with the paper though, and I run it to make money, Mr. Carter. That’s about all there is to it. I’m sorry we didn’t do a better job of covering the story, but that’s just the way it turned out.”
“You didn’t think of doing follow ups to let your readers know how the investigation was developing?”
“Moot. Nothing developed. Besides, there was a real touchy political story about that time. Charles was covering that thing about the school superintendent. I had to ride herd on him. A lot of charges were being thrown around. School board meetings became a real rodeo. Number one rule of
small-town journalism: boost, don’t tear down.”
“So how did that push the abduction off the front page?”
“It didn’t. A doctor died under suspicious circumstances. Dr. Wilson. Burned up in a house fire. The fire marshal thought it might be arson, which, of course, would make his death a homicide, but they couldn’t find any evidence of a … fire starting chemical—you know like gasoline or kerosene.”
“An accelerant,” said Richard, supplying the word and getting a nod in return.
“That got everyone’s attention for a while, and then, like I said, there wasn’t any news to report about the baby except for the disappearance itself. Since everybody already knew about that, I couldn’t see any reason to rehash it.”
•••
On the way home, Richard thought about Dillard killing a story because it was bad copy, or because it might “tear down” rather than “boost” the community. It was possible. People could be quirky, and none were more likely to be than big fish in small ponds. Perhaps a fussy editor with a bean counter mentality would kill a story with such obvious interest because he thought prospective ad clients might find the story depressing.
“I wonder why the guy made time for me instead of just blowing me off?” he asked himself as he stopped at the curb in front of the house.
As he hobbled up the walk, Molly came across the lawn. “I wrote everything I could remember,” she said, waving a yellow legal pad.
“Let’s go inside and get started then,” he said.
They sat at the kitchen table as Richard read quickly through Molly’s account of the day preceding her daughter’s disappearance.
“Okay, Molly,” he said, laying it aside.
“You write that you left Mancie with this Katie Nash. Was she Mancie’s regular sitter?”
“Since February. When Pat and me was still married, I took her to Little Tots’ Daycare, but I couldn’t afford that when he left me. Katie was real good. She never got upset or nothing if I didn’t get home when I said I would. And she always took real good care of Mancie.”
“And how old is Katie?”
“Maybe twenty-five. Why? Do you think Katie had something to do with it?”
“No. I just need to know as much as possible about everyone who might be involved. Other than you, she was last person known to be with your daughter. So tell me about her.”
“Like I said, she was a good babysitter. She also does housework and sits for shut-ins sometimes. She lives in a little house over on Vine. Her folks bought it for her. They live out in the country.”
“She’s not married?”
“She ain’t got no husband or boyfriend. Katie’s so shy with men that I don’t know if she ever will have. Oh yeah. She always wanted her pay in cash so that she wouldn’t have to report it and get her check took away.”
“Social security disability?”
“Yeah. There’s something the matter with her hip that makes her limp pretty bad when she gets tired. I know what that’s like. I almost quit one of my jobs on account of hip pain. Of course if Pat would have paid his child support like he was supposed to, then I could have got by with just one job.”
“You worked two jobs?”
“Waitress and barmaid,” she said. “That finally stopped the welfare check, but we come out better on it. ‘Course we couldn’t have without Katie.”
“So you were working two jobs when Mancie disappeared?”
She looked dismal.
“There’s something I didn’t put in there,” she said, motioning toward the legal pad. “I got off a little after midnight—that’s what I didn’t put in there—but I didn’t get home until around two. There was this guy, Kirk—I wrote about talking to him in the bar. I went over to his place after I got off … And then I didn’t get home when I was supposed to.”
Richard was suddenly filled with misgivings. He had just started, and already she had almost withheld something from him—something important. For a moment he was tempted to tell her that he was through trying to help her. Instead, he flipped back the pad to her account of the night.
“Here. You go on and put it all in there,” he said, looking up at the clock. “I’ve got to go pick up Jill. Just let yourself out when you finish. Let’s talk about this again tomorrow.”
She stared at the pad. “Your wife don’t like this none, does she?” she asked without looking up.
“She’s okay with me trying to help you.”
“Don’t tell her what I write in there,” she said. “Okay?”
He almost promised.
“Look, Molly. I won’t just tell her everything you tell me in confidence, but Jill and I don’t have any secrets. If she asks me something straight out, I’m not going to lie to her.”
“I don’t guess it matters none. She don’t think much of me no how.”
“She doesn’t think badly of you. It’s the situation she doesn’t like, and that has more to do with me than with you.”
“Tell her I’m sorry about all this.”
•••
On the way back from campus, Richard related Dillard’s account of the newspaper’s skimpy coverage of the disappearance.
“It sounds a bit implausible,” she said. “Do you believe him?”
“As strange as it sounds, I think he may be telling the truth. One thing I learned from being in the service is that a lot of stuff happens, or fails to happen, because people kind of drift through things a lot of the time.”
“They didn’t report it because they were lazy?” she asked skeptically.
“More like they didn’t know exactly how to do it, so they put it off, and it ended up not getting done at all.”
“At least that’s more believable than a conspiracy theory involving the police and the newspaper,” she said. “There have actually been very few conspiracies, you know—historically speaking, that is.”
“How about Lincoln’s assassination, Hitler’s, or Julius Caesar’s?”
“War and politics don’t count. I mean things like media or business conspiracies, that sort of thing. Can you think of any possible reason for the police and the newspaper conspiring to suppress the story of a kidnapped baby?”
“No. Maybe Adams didn’t find much and just gave up, while the newspaper staff was just incompetent and maybe lazy. Molly says she hopes they all go to Hell—the whole town for that matter. Life wasn’t exactly great for her even before all this. I think she felt betrayed by their inaction. It was like Mancie wasn’t worth worrying about for them.”
Jill looked out the window and frowned.
“Richard,” she began tentatively. “Are you sure that you’re not offering her false hope?”
“I’m not promising her anything. She just wants to know what happened. If the baby is dead, she needs to know that as soon as possible. But it’s possible that someone just wanted a child to raise. If that’s the case, then maybe she can get Mancie back.”
“Just don’t encourage her to believe that it is going to turn out like that.”
“I’m not.”
As he turned onto the block where they lived, he said, “She doesn’t think you approve of her.”
“I don’t. I sympathize with her, but her lifestyle is irresponsible, and she may have put her child at risk by exposing her to the wrong kind of people.”
“That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?”
“No one can save us from ourselves, Richard. And when we have children, it’s time to grow up and begin being responsible adults.”
“Not everyone was raised like you.”
“There may be reasons for irresponsible behavior, but there are no excuses. When given a child, one must provide for it first rather than gratifying self.”
Jill’s uncharitable appraisal surprised him.
“Did you know that after her husband abandoned her, Molly had to work two jobs?” he asked.
“Maybe if she had stopped spending her money on cigarettes and alcohol, she could ha
ve worked only one job and been more of a mother to her baby.”
Richard had thought at first that Jill’s dislike of Molly stemmed from her own abandonment as a child. Now he realized that there was more to it than that.
“You really dislike her, don’t you?”
“I don’t really know her, Richard, but what I do know, I don’t like.”
“Are you telling me not to help her?”
“I can’t demand that. I wish this whole … situation had not occurred, but it has, and now you are involved. You’ve assumed a responsibility. You should see it through, whether I like it or not.”
•••
After a lunch of soup and sandwiches in the kitchen, Jill took the car back to campus to research for an eventual doctoral thesis. Richard sat at the table and began reading through Molly’s amended notes, marking names and jotting down questions he needed to ask. Then he constructed a computer database to plot the time of events for the day that Mancie had been taken. The obvious starting place for his investigation was the crime scene, not that there would be any evidence left there after three months. He wanted to get the layout and have Molly explain what she remembered of the night, perhaps walk him through it. Then he would start interviewing people. Of course, none of them would have to talk to him. He would start with Katie Nash and Kirk Tinsley, the man to whose apartment she had gone before going home.
He found a Catherine Nash in the phone book and jotted down the number and address. No Kirk Tinsley was listed. So he got his crutches and went across the back lawn. His knock at the backdoor went unanswered. Hearing a noise, he turned to see Jill’s car pulling in. He went across to see what was wrong.
“You’re home early,” he called out.
“I couldn’t concentrate,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to be with you instead of there.”
“That’s flattering,” he joked. “Didn’t know I could make such an impression.”
She didn’t smile. “We need to talk,” she said. “But let’s go inside first.”
Bewildered, he followed her up the stairs.
“Richard, I’ve decided that I don’t want you to do this,” she said when they were inside.