by Wendy Walker
Mrs. Martin could not argue with that. I think she was relieved because she didn’t want to know anything about the photos.
So everyone assumed Hunter had taken them and posted them to the Internet. Witt punched him in the face. I asked to live with my father. And my mother cut off Emma’s hair.
But it was not the events after the photos were posted that gave Mr. Martin away. It was everything that happened before.
It started the previous spring, with that evil boy from Hunter’s school that Emma had sex with. Emma did not speak to Hunter for weeks after that incident, because Hunter called her a whore and laughed at her. But this didn’t last long.
Hunter missed Emma. He missed snuggling with her on the couch watching scary movies and he missed getting high with her and he missed sneaking out with her to go to parties at the beach. He missed her smiling at him and flipping her hair and telling him things about her life. So when she came back from her summer program, Hunter made nice with her and they went back to their usual fighting but then getting high and laughing and snuggling on the couch. That didn’t last long either.
In early August, Emma started dating a new boy from our club. Hunter became insane with jealousy again. He was as cruel as he had ever been. He did lots of small, petty things like stealing all her underwear and hiding her phone so she couldn’t find it. But the worst part was how he just kept calling her a whore. Good morning, whore. How was the movie, whore? Lose your phone again, whore?
My mother did little to help. Every time she spoke to Mr. Martin about it, he got angry with her because he felt like she was criticizing his son. That’s what he said. But he was also angry with Emma for hurting his son, and for the way she made them both feel, which was wrong for both of them but especially for Mr. Martin.
One night late that summer, Emma came home from a party she’d gone to with that new boyfriend. Hunter was waiting for her. You’re such a little whore! he said. She ignored him and started to walk upstairs. Hunter followed her. Get away from me, loser! she said. But he didn’t. He followed her to the upstairs hallway and pushed her against the wall so hard that one of Mrs. Martin’s framed pictures crashed to the ground. He used his forearm to press into her chest and then stuck his hand down her pants. Is that what you let him do to you? Huh? Like this?
Emma just stared at him. I was standing in my doorway, frozen. It was such a strange and scary thing to see, but somehow Emma was not afraid. I could tell by her expression. She was defiant. He could put his hand in her pants. He could even kiss her and stick his tongue in her mouth. It wouldn’t matter. Emma had power over Hunter and she was never going to give it up by letting him have her. She was going to use it to torture him.
The next day, Emma was in her bedroom. She was getting dressed for another party and wouldn’t let me in to watch her. She said she wanted her privacy and that I was being a pest. Mr. Martin was driving her because our mother was at a charity function.
I heard Mr. Martin call her name from the bottom of the stairs. Emma did not respond. This made me curious, so I turned off my music and listened. Footsteps bounding up the stairs. Another shout for Emma from down the hall. A knock on her door. The door opening. Then silence.
Very softly, I opened my door. Mr. Martin had disappeared inside Emma’s room. It was silent in that room for a moment, and then Mr. Martin walked out, a little dazed. He looked at me standing in the hall. He looked the other way, then back at me. His phone was in his hand. Shame was on his face.
Tell your sister to hurry up.
I walked to Emma’s room and found her smiling in front of her mirror. She was wearing a sundress with spaghetti straps and Dr. Scholl’s on her feet. Her long hair was straight from her iron, and her lips were bright, bright red and shiny with gloss. Her face was flushed.
This is exactly how she looked in the pictures that got posted on the Internet—the dress, the hair, the makeup and the room. In one of the pictures, she had dropped the top part of the dress to expose her breasts. Of course, when I saw the pictures, unlike everyone else, I knew the moment they had been taken. And I knew who had taken them.
Emma never told me what happened, but I imagine it was something like this: She was mad at Hunter for putting his hand down her pants and calling her a whore all summer. She lured Mr. Martin to her room and probably asked him to take a picture of her to post on Instagram or something equally innocent. Then she dropped the dress. And Mr. Martin was tested. Finally, after all these years of watching her and envying his son for being so close to her, she was his. Just for a moment. And rather than walk away, he snapped one last picture that he would save to his phone so he could remember the moment and satisfy his urges. It’s a slippery slope, giving in to a wanting as strong as his. Even if you just give in a little.
I concluded as well that Mr. Martin would never have posted those pictures online. It served no purpose for him, and the site they went to was nothing any grown-ups had heard of.
So, I don’t know when she did it, but Emma must have told Hunter about the pictures and Mr. Martin. And Hunter retaliated by finding them and posting them online. It was all-out war, and that war would rage in our house for two more years. Until the night we disappeared.
* * *
It was on the third night of my return that Witt came to visit. I decided to stay with my father that night. I thought it would be a relief, but he was not doing very well and I felt myself being pulled into his emotional storm.
I know Dr. Winter spoke to him about how to speak to me. She told him not to be overly emotional when he asked me questions about my time on the island, not to sound judgmental. My father had a lot of trouble with this. I know he tried. I could see the strain in his entire body as he held back his questions, held in his agony for his daughters. The veins that ran down the sides of his forehead, and his neck, and up his forearms were popping out from beneath his skin as we sat at the dining room table eating takeout.
“You must have missed Chinese food. It was always your favorite.”
I told him that I had missed it very much.
“What about television? Did you get to watch any of your favorite shows? Did you see any movies?”
I told him some of the movies and things we watched. We had a satellite dish, and it seemed like it was not legal, because it didn’t work all the time. I asked him if he had seen the same shows or movies.
Something about this made my father cry and leave the room. Actually, he asked me if I minded if he left the room because he had to cry. He said he would go and get us some ice cream. I thought that was considerate. But at the same time, I was mad at him. I wanted him to be stronger.
I could see Witt was barely tolerating him, the way he always did. His lack of respect for him would never go away, and I thought it was odd that this bothered my father less than Mrs. Martin choosing Mr. Martin and leaving him. But I suppose it all goes back to one of Mrs. Martin’s lessons about how everyone wants what they can’t have. I never want to want anything after seeing the damage wanting brings.
Well, maybe that’s not true. I would never stop wanting to find my sister.
Our father had always been this way. We had to see his feelings and, to a large extent, feel them as well, because that’s what normal people do, especially when they are very young and are learning how to be empathetic. He was always sorry for being weak. From crying in front of us to settling the custody case to sleeping with our mother and breaking up his family with his first wife and Witt. But I was tired of sorry. From him. From the millions of people who were watching my story and making their dumb comments on TV. From everyone who said, “I’m so sorry.” Sorry happens after something bad has happened, after people have let it happen. It had become contemptuous to me, all these I’m-so-sorries.
Being alone with Witt nearly destroyed me, pieces of me crumbling, falling to the floor, and I had no idea how to piece me back together. That sounds bad, but it was the opposite of bad. When my father left, when I heard th
e door close, I fell into Witt’s arms all at once and sobbed. He had heard my stories from the island and he didn’t ask me any questions at all. Not one. He told me everything was all right and that he would make sure it stayed that way. Witt said I could come and live with him and his wife. We talked of logistics and strategies to get through this time of finding Emma—and we would find her!—and then of the future, when the media trucks were gone and my fifteen minutes of fame were over. He was going to get me tutoring so I could take the GED and get my high school diploma. And then I would go to college if it was the last thing he did. He said these things very fast into my ears as he held me while I cried. I nodded and said okay over and over so he knew that I heard him and that I believed him. But I did not believe him. Not completely, the way I pretended to.
“What’s happened, Cass? Are you worried we’ll never find her?” Witt pulled away and looked me in the eye.
“Yes,” I said.
“Why? Has something gone wrong with the Bureau or that doctor?…”
That’s when I told him about the conversation I had overheard between my mother and Mr. Martin when they were behind the closed door of their bedroom:
Jonathan, she’s out of her mind. Did you hear what she’s saying? Talking about these people and Emma’s baby … it’s crazy talk!
So what? Don’t you see? They have to realize it on their own. You can’t be the one to tell them she’s crazy. Let them find out through their investigation. They’ll find the island, and that boatman.
What if she’s not?
Not what?
Not crazy. What if I’m the one who’s crazy?
I am not having this fucking conversation one more time! I swear to Christ, Judy … sometimes you can be so fucking stupid—
Don’t be angry with me. I’m scared. The things she’s saying—
Cass is not right in her head. End of story.
They went on to discuss all the ways I seemed “off.” I sounded paranoid. If they told Dr. Winter or Agent Strauss that I did not seem myself, the search for Emma could be diverted to a search for my sanity. This was another reason I asked to sleep at my father’s house. I needed to see myself through Witt’s eyes so I would know for sure that the Martins were wrong about me. And that even if they were right, if I had lost my mind, that no one would believe them and they would keep looking for my sister.
Witt laughed a little bit. It was not because he was happy or found any of this funny. It was the laugh people have when they are thinking about vengeance.
“Good. Let them think you’re crazy! Let them fight about it and worry about it. My God, you and Emma did plenty of that when you were kids. Look—this is easy. You’ll pass the psychological examination tomorrow, and that will be the end of it.”
“And they can keep searching for Emma at all cost.”
“Yes. They will keep searching for Emma. And they will talk to the counselor at the school. And one way or another, Emma will be found.”
I asked him then what he thought when he heard my story and when he looked at me. Did he think I was crazy? Mrs. Martin had a way of making people forget what’s real. Maybe she had done that to me.
“No!” He said it emphatically.
Too emphatically. But I did not ask again.
He put his arms around me. “No, Cass, no! I promise you.”
I kept crying, right into his chest, my tears soaking into his shirt. I wanted to go back in time, even to the bad times, when Witt and Emma and I were together in this house. Maybe my father was right. Maybe it was dangerous to have things like that because when they’re gone, it breaks you into pieces.
Witt didn’t know what to make of me then. But I could see everything wash away except his love for me.
“Come home with me now. Right now! You’ve done everything you can do to find Emma. You’ve been through too much, Cass.”
Our father returned with ice cream then. I stopped crying and Witt stopped telling me to go home with him. We ate the ice cream with our father at the kitchen table.
I thought about what Witt said as I calmed myself down. I thought about getting in his car and never coming back. Relief washed over me and it felt like nothing I have ever felt before, like someone had just injected me with a powerful drug that takes away all your pain. I needed the pain to stop.
But I could not get in my brother’s car and drive away to a new life. Not now. Not yet.
I was not finished with Mrs. Martin.
FOURTEEN
Dr. Winter—Day Four of Cass Tanner’s Return
On day four of Cass Tanner’s return, they sat in the parking lot of Danbury High School talking about the boatman, who had just been identified as Richard Foley. The ID had come in that morning, and everything else was now on hold. It was their best lead. If they found the boatman, they would find the island, and—they all hoped—Emma and her baby.
“Are they sure?” Abby asked.
“How many gang rapes of government officials from the Department of Fish and Game do you think there are in Alaska?”
Field agents in Alaska had found an article in the Ketchikan Daily News from seven years back about a fisherman’s account of the rape.
“They talked to the reporter. Foley refused to disclose the name of the woman, and without corroboration, the paper couldn’t print the names of the men involved.”
Abby considered this. Seven years was a long time. But small towns had long memories.
“So, listen to this. The reporter said Foley lived in Ketchikan for about three years. Cycled on and off the boats. He left after the incident, according to his own account, and returned seven years later to make amends for his silence.”
“Too late to prosecute?”
“The DA said they couldn’t do a damned thing without the woman’s cooperation. Everyone knew who she was. It’s a small town. But she wanted no part of the story after all that time. Said she’d moved on. The article was tucked away in the back pages, and nothing ever came of it.”
“And Foley?” Abby asked.
“Came and went in a day. Guess he wasn’t in the mood to catch up with his old fishing buddies.”
“Whereabouts?”
“They’re looking. Asking around town if anyone remembered him, remembered him talking about where he was from or where he was going. They got his social from the employer up there. Got his old local address, too. They’ll canvass the landlord if they can find her. She sold the building not long after he left.”
“But nothing from the social?”
“No. He was only eighteen. This was his first W-2 job. And apparently his last.”
Abby could feel Leo’s eyes on her. He had been doing a lot of that—studying her when she was looking away, when he thought she wouldn’t notice.
“You sleep?” he asked.
She nodded yes. And then shook her head. “A little,” she answered finally.
“This is a tough one,” Leo said, looking at the picture of Foley.
“Why do you say that? We have the boatman.” Abby looked at him, puzzled. He had been the one telling her that they would find the island, that they would find Emma. They had Cass, they had an actual person who knew what had happened. And now they had Richard Foley. Abby had finally started to believe him.
“We have the boatman’s name. Not his location. Big difference, kiddo,” Leo answered.
Richard Foley’s family had not seen or heard from their son since he left for Alaska after turning eighteen. He had been a difficult teenager, and they were relieved to see him go out into the world. They had envisioned him working hard, finding purpose, and perhaps gaining an appreciation for what it was like to be a responsible adult. They always thought he would come home to Portland, where the family had lived for three generations.
Abby was not there when the family was interviewed. His mother, father and two older sisters had been shocked to learn that Rick was involved in the case of the Tanner sisters, the story that had been all over the n
ews for days. They had provided names of friends, other relatives, dental and medical records—anything and everything that was asked of them. To their thinking, he had helped the younger sister escape and could now be on the run or in grave danger from the kidnappers who lived on that island.
Danbury High School was an hour north of the Soundview Academy, where the Tanner sisters had attended school. Abby had been through her notes from the interview with the school counselor, Lisa Jennings. The woman claimed she didn’t know Emma well and had never met with her alone. Agents in New Haven had run her name and found nothing of concern. But Cass insisted that the woman had counseled Emma, that they had grown close. She seemed preoccupied with this lead. There had to be a reason.
“Catch me up,” Leo said.
Abby pulled some notes from a bag. She didn’t need them to recite the brief history, but she read from them anyway. “Worked as a counselor at Soundview for six years. Left at the end of the school year following the girls’ disappearance. Thirty-four years old. Unmarried. Has a degree in social work from University of Phoenix.”
“And the original interview?”
Abby shrugged. “She had a lot of opinions about the girls, but she also said she only knew them peripherally, seeing them in the halls, faculty room gossip. It was helpful three years ago to get a picture of who they were, but nothing there helps us even guess who the father might be, or who might have helped Emma run away.”