by AR Simmons
When they pulled into a short drive beside a house with neither garage nor carport, he took a calculated risk, and pulled to the curb in front of the house. The man frowned questioningly in Richard’s direction as he exited the car, his look matching the challenging tone he remembered from the phone call.
“Excuse me,” said Richard, trying to get near enough for a look at the baby. “I’ve been driving around the neighborhood trying to remember the address a friend of mine gave me. My wife told me I should write it down. I guess she was right. His name is Howard Pinkston. You wouldn’t happen to know where he lives, would you?”
“I don’t know anyone with that name,” said the man curtly.
“We just moved in a few months ago,” offered the woman as she closed the back door of the car. She straightened, clutching the baby close against the cold.
“He drives a kind of funky looking car,” Richard improvised. “It’s a … I guess you would say a metallic or metal-flake green thing. Looks like a June bug.”
“I haven’t seen a car like that,” said the man, obviously eager to end the encounter.
Richard smiled at the woman.
“My wife and I are expecting our first,” he said. “How old is your little one?”
“She’s going on seven months,” she said with a proud smile as she turned her face down to the child in her arms. “Aren’t you, Marcy?”
The proud mother came around the rear of the car and turned her child to face Richard as if introducing him.
“See the nice man, Marcy. If he’s lucky, he’ll have a little girl just like you.”
Wide black eyes peered inquisitively at him, their size and sparkling intelligence enhanced by pronounced epicanthic folds.
“She’s beautiful,” said Richard.
Shell stepped protectively to his wife’s side.
“I don’t remember seeing the car either,” said Momma. “Sorry we can’t help you find your friend.”
“No,” said Richard. “I’m the one that needs to apologize for intruding on you like this. Thanks anyway. I guess I should have listened to my wife and written down the address.”
•••
Richard pulled the envelop from the printer tray, stuffed the promotional letter inside, sealed it, and affixed a stamp.
“What’s that?” asked Jill as she read the address.
“The conclusion of a misadventure,” he said. “For a while this afternoon I actually thought I had tracked down Molly’s baby.”
He explained how he had gone to the post office to stake out the box, and how he had felt when he saw the couple had a baby with them.
“I knew from what Molly told me, that they didn’t have children, and if the lady had been that far along in pregnancy, she would have mentioned it. So I followed them home and worked an excuse to get close enough to see the child.”
“You could have scared those poor people to death if they knew you were following them.”
“I was careful. Anyway, the woman wasn’t the least bit reluctant to let me see the kid, which should have told me there was nothing fishy going on. And there wasn’t. They’ve adopted. You should see her. She’s the most beautiful little girl, an Asian baby. I think that explains them moving so soon after Mancie disappeared.”
“Of course,” said Jill. “No mother would want to live near where a child had disappeared.”
“To say nothing of the meth house, if they knew what was going on here.”
“So now you’re through?”
“Of course. There’s no need to bother them at all.”
“There never was,” said Jill. “Adoptions are a matter of public record. So are births. You didn’t need to bother them at all. A simple trip to the court house would have sufficed.”
He hadn’t thought of that.
“I would have still had to check out an adoption. People who sell babies probably know how to fake up the paperwork. As far as that goes, they both work in a hospital, I think. They might have even been able to falsify a birth certificate. I don’t know how difficult that would be. Probably not very if you had the complicity of an obstetrician.”
Jill shook her head.
“What?” he asked.
“Statistical possibility isn’t actual possibility.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Sure it does. If one drops a handful of straight pins on the carpet, there is a chance that any one of them will land so that it sticks and stands upright. The same goes for each of the others, which means that there is a chance that they will all stick in the carpet and remain upright. It just won’t ever happen.”
“You just said it could happen. Besides, what I’m talking about is a lot more likely than your pin thing.”
“No. It’s like Ockham’s razor. Don’t construct needlessly complicated solutions when a simpler one satisfies all the data. Like the pins. If you found a hundred pins stuck in the carpet and standing upright, would you think that someone dropped them, and they ended up like that?”
“I had a professor who told us that. Okay, you made your point—a hundred actually.”
Jill put a hand on his arm the way she always did when trying to soften the blow of something he didn’t want to hear.
“I’m not just talking about what you did today,” she said. “It’s this whole thing. Molly was there when whatever happened to her baby occurred. The simple explanation is that either she, or the babysitter, or someone whom one of them let into the house did something to the baby. All these wild ideas are just that. As horrible as it is to think about, it is extremely unlikely that the child is still alive. No one took her because they wanted a baby of their own. If this ever ends, it will not end well. Richard, this is not something you can change or fix.”
“I can’t abandon her, Jill.”
“She has no right to do this to you—to place this burden on you.”
“She isn’t doing anything to me. Sometimes a situation just comes up, and responsibility is just … It just happens. You have to do something because there’s no one else to do it.”
“This responsibility belongs to Mr. Adams. He gets paid for it, and he knows what he’s doing.”
Richard bridled at the remark. Jill was right. He had no experience to speak of, but he had will, something Adams seemed to lack. Fighting his irritation with her for ratcheting up her insistence that he quit on Molly, he attempted to put her off with a watered-down variation of the truth.
“It’s about wrapped up anyway,” he said, “I’ve talked to everyone I can think of. There’s not much more that I can do.”
“I hope you can leave all this sadness behind.”
“Don’t say anything to Molly. Let me tell her.”
Jill held him with her eyes the way she did when about to reveal how much he had hurt her. He already felt guilty. “Just don’t lie to me anymore,” she said.
“What do you mean?” he asked, convinced that she already knew that he had no intention of really cutting loose from Molly just yet.
“You told me you were going to look for a job when you were really going to see those people today. You could have just told me.”
“I should have.”
He was lying again. Not with words, but by trying to make her think he was sorry. It angered him that she was insisting that he give up something he had to do. Although he understood her feelings, even knew that they were justified, he still felt that she was being unreasonable. He had taken on a responsibility, and she had no right to make him abdicate it.
Yet he owed her everything. She was his life. He had no idea how to reconcile the conflicting imperatives. He could no more betray Molly than he could betray Jill. He had given his word to both women, and now they were each insisting that he keep it. He had completely misjudged both. Jill was not as tough as he imagined, nor Molly as weak.
•••
October 20
After work the next day, he got a ride home. Molly came out before he could get
inside. He wasn’t up to her importunity, but she was his duty. As he watched her plow across the yard, coatless, head down, and hugging herself against the cool, he considered the possibility that Jill was right in thinking that Molly had manipulated him into the role he now filled so inadequately.
“Did you talk to the Shells?” she asked.
“Yesterday,” he said as they both arrived at the porch. “They’ve adopted this beautiful little oriental baby. I found that out by pretending to be someone I’m not. So I couldn’t ask them if they remember anything about that night. I kind of screwed up there.”
Molly opened the storm door so that he could unlock the house. She seemed as comfortable coming to the house as if she lived there. He didn’t want her to come inside and didn’t want to go to her house, but it was too cool to stay out on the porch. He let her in, hoping to get rid of her before Jill came home.
“You got to ask them about the car,” she said.
“Maybe I can get Adams to do it.”
“Better have a plan B.” Molly continued to hold her arms folded tightly to her breasts as if still cold.
“I’ve been thinking, Mr. Carter,” she began tentatively, avoiding his eyes.
“About what?”
“About the Valium they found in my blood that night. I never took any. I swear. Well, I did but I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“You mean that you remember that now?”
The bottom fell out of his stomach. Molly was changing her story to fit the facts.
“I don’t remember doing it. I’m not stupid. I know you’re not supposed to take tranquilizers and alcohol together. I wouldn’t have done it before she disappeared. Later maybe, because after Mancie was gone and they wouldn’t do nothing, I just kind of stopped caring.”
“But you think you might have taken it by accident?” he asked skeptically.
“No. Somebody must have slipped it to me. That’s got to be what happened because not even Adams would make that up. So it’s got to have been part of the plan to take Mancie.”
“So who do you think did it?”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
Richard wondered what kind of crazy game she was playing. For the first time, he considered the possibility that Molly was mentally ill.
“Here,” she said, thrusting him a crumpled piece of paper she had clutched in her fist.
“That’s a list of the ones that could have put it into something I drank or ate that afternoon or that night. It’s got to be one of them.”
Richard looked at her neatly printed list. Molly had listed them alphabetically.
“And you’re not telling me which one you think it is because—?”
“I don’t want to influence you. You got to keep an open mind, Mr. Carter.”
Jill was due home at any time, and Richard wanted Molly gone before she arrived.
“I’ll tell you what I want you to do for me, Molly. Go home and see if you can make a list of everything you ate and drank that day. Include where you were and who you were with at the time if you can. Be as detailed as you can.”
Before Molly could answer, the front door opened.
“Oh, hi, Molly,” said Jill. “How are you today?”
“I’m fine, Mrs. Carter. How are you?”
“Tired. It’s what happens when you work all day. Remember?”
Jill’s uncharacteristic rudeness stunned him. Molly reddened.
“Yes, ma’am. I do,” she said, recovering after a moment. “I’m … uh … I’m sorry … for everything. I’ll go make that list, Mr. Carter,” she said, hurrying past Jill toward the door.
The kitchen was dead quiet for a long moment.
“I never knew you could be so … so mean,” said Richard. “What’s going on?”
“Not mean, Richard. Blunt. Someone has to be blunt. Obviously, it’s beyond your capabilities. If you can’t find a way to end this—”
Until she stopped in mid-sentence, Richard didn’t realize that he was shaking his head.
“Why am I even talking to you?” she asked sharply. “You don’t want to end it. You like wallowing in all this sadness. Why, Richard? Why? Hasn’t there already been enough sadness in your life?”
“There’s been plenty of sadness in my life. You know that. But what you don’t understand is—”
“I understand that you—” she interrupted.
“Just listen for once and let me explain,” he said, raising his voice to override her interruption.
“Don’t yell at me,” she said.
“I’m not. What I’m going to do is finally be honest with you. I don’t intend to quit on Molly until I’m sure that I’ve done all I can to help her find out what happened to Mancie. I’ve taken on a responsibility, and I’m not walking away from it. I know you don’t like that, and I don’t like it that you are so dead set against it. It’s tearing me apart, Jill. I’m scared to death that you’re going to make me choose between her and you.”
She stared at him coolly.
“It’s not about her, Jill. It’s about helping her. Can’t you see that?”
“What would you do if I told you to choose?” she asked.
“I’d quit on her, walk away, feel miserable, and resent you for making me do it.”
She stared at him, blinked as if considering and rejecting words of reply. Then she closed her eyes.
“That’s it then.”
It sounded like a death sentence. “Are you going to leave me, Jill?” he asked, barely getting the words out.
“No,” she said with a sniff as she turned away. “I took a vow. Remember?”
“So it’s just duty then?” he asked following her into the kitchen.
“It must be a good word. You seem to place such high value on it.”
“That’s right. I do. It’s why I’m trying to help Molly Randolph. My problem is that I don’t understand why you’re forcing me to choose between the woman I love and need, and the human being who needs my help.”
Jill turned to face him. He started to draw her close, but she put her hands on his chest and gently disengaged.
“I won’t make you choose, Richard. And I won’t leave you. Go do what you have to do. Just don’t bother me with it anymore.”
“Honey, I—”
“And please keep that woman out of my house.”
•••
October 21
Jill’s unreasonableness and his cloying irrational guilt robbed him of the night. He yawned and fidgeted through work until noon. Now, trudging to City Hall, he took another try at dismissing the guilt. Getting Molly out of his life would satisfy Jill, but the only way he could do it would be to discover what happened to her baby.
He took Molly’s list from his pocket and read through it again: three people who might have drugged her. Of course, the theory that she had been incapacitated so that Mancie could be taken could be fanciful or even an outright lie. Was it only the hopeful delusion of a mother desperate to get her child back? Adams saw it as Molly’s attempt to divert suspicion from herself after she had committed or was complicit in infanticide. Richard didn’t want to believe that, but he couldn’t dismiss it out of hand. Mothers weren’t supposed to do such things, but some mothers obviously did, and of all crimes, domestic violence was the most senseless.
Adams looked up sourly as Richard approached his disorganized desk.
“What now?” he asked irritably.
“I just came to ask if you had talked to the Shells,” Richard replied.
“Who?”
“The Shells. They lived next door to Molly, on the side opposite from me over where Coomer saw the car parked. By the way, you ought to see if Coomer saw one or two cars there that night.”
“Since you’re being so generous with your advice, why don’t you tell me why you think these … Shells, or whatever their names are, took the kid?”
“I don’t think they did. They just adopted a little girl about Mancie’s age, but it’s no
t her. It’s of Asian descent I think.”
Adams turned over a form he was filing and wrote “shell” on the back.
“You came here to kind of prod me into action. Is that it?”
“No. I’m here because you warned me not to withhold information.”
“Commendable,” said Adams sarcastically.
“And I wanted to ask for a favor.”
“Sure,” said Adams, folding his arms across his chest in the classic closed gesture. “You’re my partner, aren’t you? Or do you prefer the term ‘consultant?’”
“Call me an ‘informant.’ Can you tell me how much Valium and alcohol Molly tested for when you picked her up?”
“She was totally whacked.”
“Can you give me the numbers?”
Adams snorted. “You want a copy of the tox screen? You gotta be kidding.”
“You can tell me the blood-alcohol content and the level of Valium in her blood. What could it hurt?”
Adams was mercurial, at one moment an ill-tempered grump, the next an oversized gnome with Irish-like humor. Something presently tipped his scales toward the sunny side, although his emotional skies were never entirely free of clouds.
“Okay, trusty consultant,” he said. “I’ll give you the numbers, and maybe you can confront your little friend and find out what kind of doped-up frenzy she was in when she wasted her kid. Oh, and if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, get her to tell you where the body is.”
Richard had only a layman’s knowledge of drugs, but he doubted that combining depressants could produce any kind of frenzy other than snoring. He covered the two miles from City Hall to home in less than half an hour, shortcut the lawn, and jumped onto the porch without using the steps as he fished out his keys. He had a call to make before Jill came home. The one positive thing coming from his sleepless night was a resolve to compartmentalize his efforts on Molly’s behalf, compartmentalize himself actually. Henceforth, Jill would see and hear nothing to remind her of Molly. His time with Jill was Jill’s. His time away would be Molly’s.