Chasing Amanda

by Melissa Foster

  “She just disappeared,” Harley began.

  Mac interrupted, “She lived right here in Boyds, by the old Wade farm.”

  “That’s right,” Joe said. “The Plummers were mighty upset,” he shook his head. “They stayed around for about five or six years, hoping she’d come back, or turn up somehow, but they just couldn’t take it, I suppose.” He swirled his coffee in the Styrofoam cup, watching it intently. “Moved away, Missouri, I think, back where the wife’s family was from.” Mac and Harley nodded in confirmation.

  Molly paced across the porch—her mind reeled. “How does that happen at such a small playground?” She turned in the direction of the preschool, envisioning the tiny playground, no bigger than a one-car garage.

  Harley filled her in. There had been a birthday party with several children playing and a few parents watching over them. “Late September, if my memory serves me correctly.”

  Mac confirmed, “Remember, they were late harvesting the corn that year because Ned broke his combine machine, and Harley here had to fill in after he finished Hannah’s fields.”

  Harley nodded in affirmation, “Yup, September,” he sipped his coffee. “Anyway, I guess the kids were playing hide and seek, and when they got in their cars to leave, they noticed she was missing.”

  “Where were her parents?” Molly asked.

  “Mrs. Plummer, Bonnie, she was ill,” Joe said. “Had the cancer, you know? She’d had it for about a year by then. They operated, did some chemo, you know, she was real sick. So Kate was taken care of by neighbors, mostly. Other moms would take her to school, take care of her after school, run her to Girl Scouts, and whatnot. They were a tight-knit group back then, the moms.”

  Molly asked about her father, and Harley told her that Paulie had worked two jobs just to make ends meet.

  “That type of thing never happened,” Harley’s voice trailed off.

  “It never happens anywhere, until it does happen,” Molly was screaming inside, incredulous on the surface.

  “Anyway,” Harley began, “they searched, but they ain’t never found no sign of her.” Harley finished his coffee and crushed the Styrofoam cup with his hand.

  Mac got off the bench and threw away his cup. He went to the end of the porch and leaned against one of the wooden columns, his back to the others.

  Joe kicked his shoes against the concrete and cleared his throat—when Harley looked over, Joe shot him a stern look. Harley shrugged.

  Molly picked up on the cues. “What?” Her eyes darted from Harley to Joe and back again.

  Harley drew in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Well,” he said, “they never found Kate, but they knew who did it.”

  After a long, uncomfortable pause, Molly prompted, “Well…who did it?”

  Mac’s words fell fast from his lips. “Pastor Lett’s damned younger brother, Rodney.”

  Molly was bewildered, “Pastor Lett has a brother? I’ve known her for years and never heard her talk about him.”

  “Had a brother. Rodney,” Mac said. “He died that year, too.”

  Molly thought about Pastor Lett, the way she’d hurried past, the look she’d given them. “What happened to him?”

  Joe suddenly became enraged, “He knew too much, Molly!” He paced across the porch, muttering under his breath, “Goddamn killer.”

  Harley explained that shortly after Kate had gone missing, Rodney had been outside on his front porch when a reporter had stopped by, looking for the pastor. As he spoke, Harley rubbed his hands on his jeans, which appeared permanently stained from that specific move. “He looked right at the reporter and just starts sayin’, ‘She’s in a dark place. She doesn’t hurt.’” Harley sat back down on the bench, as if preparing himself for a tiring story. “Everything seemed to fast forward from that point. The police arrived, reporters, angry residents.” Harley sighed. “They took Rodney to the station, and he told them that Kate was with her mommy, which you know meant that he’d killed her—that he buried her somewhere to go to heaven like her mother eventually would, Bonnie, you know?”

  “Well if he was saying all those things, then no wonder the police arrested him, but if he knew where she was, why didn’t they find her?” Molly asked.

  “They didn’t have enough evidence to keep his ass in jail. I have no idea how these dumb-ass police work, but they let the son-of-a-bitch go!” Mac threw his cup into the trash and said, “They have a guy telling them that she’s in a dark goddamn place, and they let him go?”

  “But you said he died. How’d he die?” Molly asked.

  When the three men remained silent and avoided Molly’s eyes, she pressed for an answer.

  Harley lifted his eyes, met her gaze, then turned away. “He was beat to death,” he said quietly. “People don’t take too kindly around here to a little girl being killed, or stolen, or whatever.”

  Molly felt light-headed. “If she was alive, then no one could have found her anyway after Rodney was killed. Whoever beat him up should be ashamed. That poor girl never had a chance after that.” Molly’s words were angry, but the tickle down the back of her neck held the truth. There were many times, since Amanda’s death, that she wished she’d had the courage to find her killer—and the strength to do the same thing.

  Seven

  Tracey kept her arms close to her body to avoid touching the dirt walls. The confined space of the tunnel made her heart race, her breathing hindered. She knew she’d be punished for fighting back the evening before. She couldn’t stop her body from shaking or the tears from pouring silently down her cheeks. The ground was cold and wet under her bare feet. She gritted her teeth together, trying not to let her captor see her cry. Crying girls get punished. Tracey saw candles burning up ahead. Relief flooded through her as she realized that she was not headed toward the bad spot but rather toward her captor’s praying place.

  Three candles burned. She knew from the prior evening that one candle was for her captor, one was for her captor’s mother, and the last one was for her. When Mummy had told Tracey about them, she had acted nice, but when Tracey had asked where her mother was, her captor had gotten mad and yelled at her, Don’t you speak of my mother! Her eyes had burned through Tracey’s, and her face had contorted. Tracey didn’t ask any more questions.

  Tracey followed her captor’s lead and knelt on the cold earth. She held her hands together tightly to stop them from shaking. It didn’t work. She wished she were invisible.

  “That’s Mummy’s girl,” her captor said. She handed Tracey a Bible and spoke in an eerie whisper, her voice so confident and the words spoken so smoothly, Tracey felt as if she were sitting in Sunday School. “John 8:42. The Children of the Devil. Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but He sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire.’”

  Tracey felt eyes boring down on her and kept her own eyes trained on the candles. She didn’t dare look up. Daddy is not the devil! Tracey wished the woman, who was as big as any man she had ever seen, would just go away. She wanted to go home. She was so tired that it was hard to keep her eyes open, and yet she knew better than to close them. Tracey hated her captor, she hated her words, I’m your mummy now, she hated her lies, If you come see me, alone, I’ll give you back your necklace, and she hated the smell of her breath, like she’d eaten too many Slim Jims. Tracey snuck a peek in her captor’s direction.

  “He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God,” Mummy prayed.

  Tracey grew angrier as she listened to Mummy pray. In her mind she heard her mother calling her during their last game of hide and seek, “Tracey Lynn, Emma Elizabeth, where are you girls? You hide better than fish in a pond!” Tracey swallowed hard.

  Eight

  Molly felt as if she were being th
rown back in time. She could barely wrap her mind around the fact that the small town she’d chosen for its safety and charm had been home to the exact thing she thought she had escaped. Maybe Cole was right. Maybe she should close her eyes and walk away, just not think about Tracey, or Amanda. It’s not my fault. She drove by the church, vacillating between trying to go for a run and doing a little investigating, finally giving up on the idea of running on a bum ankle. She rationalized that she could keep her promise to Cole by walking instead of running. He didn’t have to know that her chosen path was because of Tracey. She headed further down the road toward the Hoyles Mill Conservation Trail.

  Molly put her cell phone in her back pocket, threw her pack over her shoulder, and faced the well-hidden trail. It struck her as odd that she’d lived in Boyds for so many years and had never before been on the Hoyles Mill Conservation Trail. She picked up a stick and made her way down the trail, refreshed by the sounds of the birds and the smell of the leaves. It crossed her mind, briefly, that she had been able to drive down White Ground Road without encountering the Knowing, and as much as she disliked the impact it had on her, she also wished for answers about Tracey. She wondered if the episode on White Ground had simply been a coincidence, and if Cole was right, that she was setting herself up for another heartache, or worse.

  She quickly came upon a little bridge that crossed a stream. She tossed a stone in just to hear it land and savored the light plink! Molly told herself that she wasn’t really looking for clues about Tracey, but just taking a walk to replace the run she’d skipped. If she could convince herself of that, than surely she could convince Cole. The foliage increased, and the path became harder to follow as she pushed through vines and made her way deeper into the woods. An hour of walking caused her ankle to ache, and Molly found the absence of the Knowing strangely and painfully disappointing.

  Eventually, she came to a clearing, a large meadow that eased up a hill and edged a cornfield. Great, she thought, now I’m lost at someone’s farm. Exasperated, she made her way up the small hill, angry with herself for wasting her morning. At the crest of the hill, the rear of Kerr Hall came into view. The small, concrete building used for the preschool was situated directly behind the Boyds Presbyterian Church. The playground where Kate must have disappeared stood bare, the swings swaying in the gentle breeze. Molly swore under her breath, realizing she’d gone in the wrong direction when she had lost sight of the path. Or did I, whispered through her head. She sighed and began the trek down the hill, through the cornfield, toward the church. A noise startled her. She froze, listening. The sound pierced the air again, growing into what sounded like a child crying. Molly yelled out, “Tracey! Is that you?” Her heartbeat quickened, pounding through her with hope. There was no response. She ran toward the sound, “Tracey? Is that you? Tracey!” Still no response. She heard rustling, like a small child running through the cornstalks. Molly was shorter than the stalks and couldn’t tell which direction to search. “Hey!” she yelled. “Wait, I can help you!” In her haste, she stepped in a ditch and fell to the ground. She tried to stand, but was incapacitated by the throbbing pain in her ankle. “Shit!” she yelled. “Shit, shit, shit!” She remained on the ground to ease the pain and reached for her cell phone, flipping it open as fast as she was able. She held it up—no bars, no service! “Goddamn it! Piece of shit!” she yelled. “Tracey!” She looked to the sky and screamed out of sheer frustration.

  The crying had stopped, the rustling had stopped, and the area around Molly was silent. Her ankle throbbed. She pushed herself up to her feet and yelled, “Tracey? Tracey Porter?” There was no response. Adrenaline pumped through her, enabling Molly to hobble toward the church, flinching with each step. Painfully making her way out of the cornfield, she reached the parking lot just as Nelly, a teacher for the pre-school, came out of Kerr Hall.

  “Nelly,” Molly yelled, waving her arms. Nelly looked in her direction, squinted, then walked towards Molly.

  “Molly,” she looked her up and down, “what on Earth happened to you?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me,” she said. “I heard a crying sound in the cornfield. Can you call the police to come check it out?” her words rushed out of her. “Maybe they can bring dogs or something. Maybe it’s the little girl, Tracey Porter,” she tried to catch her breath.

  “Oh my! Let me go call.” She turned to go, then turned back toward Molly. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Molly waved her on. “Of course! Go! Hurry!” She turned back toward the silent cornfield, praying that Tracey was in it, safe, unharmed. Molly limped to the red painted picnic table, its wood etched with children’s names from years past. She laid her pack on the worn bench and suddenly realized how much her life had changed over the past twenty-four hours. She pulled out her cell phone, hoping to have service, and dialed Cole’s number, cursing that her phone had not connected when she had desperately needed it. She filled him in on what had transpired, gracefully accepting his initial chastising, “Geez, Mol. I told you to stay out of the woods!” After a pause of silence, he added, distractedly, “Maybe they’ll find her. Are you okay?”

  Molly rubbed her ankle. “I guess, yeah. I hope they find her, Cole. You know, the longer it is with no clues, the harder it gets, until…” She found it too difficult to think about what came next.

  “They’ll find her, Mol, don’t worry. It’s a small town, someone probably saw something.”

  The way his voice trailed off, Molly knew that he’d realized what he’d said, and what it meant to her. He was trying to remain hopeful about Tracey, she knew, but this wasn’t about hope. She’d seen something. She’d failed Amanda, and they both knew it. Her inability to let go of that guilt lay between them like a great chasm.

  Within fifteen minutes of Nelly’s emergency call, the fields were swarming with police officers. They weaved in and out of the fields, walking in neat rows so as not to miss the smallest hint of a child. They filtered into the woods in groups of three, some called out Tracey’s name. Others just yelled out, “Hello!”

  Suddenly, the officers converged on the lower field, less than fifty feet from where Molly had fallen. “Get back!” Molly heard someone yell. “Give us some room!” This was followed by loud gasps and murmurs.

  Molly felt supremely frustrated—watching from afar and longing to run into the field. She tried to stand, but her ankle sent a sharp pain shooting up her calf. Nelly ran out of Kerr Hall, where she had been tending to the children, and said, “What happened? I heard yelling.”

  “Over there,” Molly pointed to the area where the search party had gathered. “They found something. Oh God, Nelly, I hope it’s Tracey! Go see, please!” Molly watched her run toward the commotion. She hadn’t made her way halfway through the field when the crowd began to disperse. Nelly stopped to talk to a middle-aged police officer. Molly watched as Nelly’s shoulders dropped. She feared the worst. Nelly ran back to her and sat down on the picnic bench, out of breath.

  “They found…” she paused as she caught her breath, and Molly held hers.

  “What? What is it? Did they find her?” she asked. Nelly’s face was drawn, as if she carried horrific news.

  “They found a family of foxes.” She put her hand on Molly’s knee. “I’m so sorry.”

  Molly exhaled, confused. She looked toward the field and could feel her entire body deflate. Her renewed hope dwindled. Tears rolled down her cheeks, leaving thin wet streaks. “What…” she whispered, “what about the crying?”

  “The mother fox is injured. It looks like she has a broken leg, and when she heard you coming she must have been trying to get her cubs to safety. The crying must have been her screaming in pain as she moved them along.”

  The enormity of the disappointment devoured Molly. She could barely focus on what Nelly was telling her.

  “They said they’ll probably have to put her down. I don’t know about the pups, though.” Nelly stood up, “I’m going to get you some juice. I’ll be r
ight back.” She started toward Kerr Hall, paused, and turned back to Molly. “The oddest thing, though, one of the baby foxes had one of those Airhead candies in its mouth. When they approached the pup, he dropped it and curled up around it.” She looked toward the field. “Weird, huh?”

  Molly reached for the picnic table as the world around her began to spin. The taste of apple candy pooled in her mouth.

  Molly was sitting at her computer, her leg elevated, and a bag of frozen peas perched atop the swollen protrusion that was her ankle when she heard Cole enter the den. She didn’t look at him, for fear of hearing those dreaded words, “I told you so.” She feared she’d cry, the devastation of the foxes still rode the surface of her emotions.

  He walked behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders, kissing the top of her head. “Hi,” he said sweetly.

  She craned her neck back and looked up at him.

  “I brought you something,” he said, handing her a plastic bag.

  Molly loved presents, even the smallest of gifts—a card, a token from an airport—she was appreciative of the thought behind them, and Cole always seemed to give her a little something at just the right time.

  She grabbed the bag and reached her hand inside, curiously. “What is it?” She grasped the gift, recognized the feel of it, and said, “Oh no! You have to stop doing this.” She pulled the sack of Hershey’s Gold miniature candy bars from the bag, “I didn’t even get to run today. I’ll be as big as a cow soon!”

  “I figured you could use a pick-me-up,” he said, and started toward the family room. “Besides,” he called over his shoulder, “you can put them away and eat just one each day.”