Here Lies Daniel Tate

by Cristin Terrill

  “No!” Lex said again.

  “Lexi, he’s got to,” Patrick said. “I’ll call in sick tomorrow. Danny, you stay home with me and we’ll prepare for your interview.”

  “What’s to prepare?” Nicholas said. He picked up his plate and dropped it in the sink on his way out of the kitchen.

  It wasn’t until much later that I realized no one had answered Mia’s question.

  • • •

  That night, after everyone had gone to bed, I went back down to the basement to watch more home movies. There were still a couple I hadn’t gotten to, and I had to learn as much as I could about Danny and his family before the FBI interview. I had scammed my fair share of law enforcement officials before, and it never used to make me nervous, but the stakes were a lot higher now. If I couldn’t be Danny Tate for them, I’d be trading this mansion for a jail cell.

  I found a DVD labeled BARBADOS 2009/AS YOU LIKE IT 2010. After that, the volume of home movies dropped off considerably. Danny had disappeared in the spring of 2010, so I was betting these were the last videos taken of him.

  The first half of the DVD was yet another family vacation to a beautiful and exotic location. This time it was New Year’s in the Caribbean, the family surrounded by white sand beaches and glassy turquoise water the likes of which I’d only ever seen as backgrounds on computer desktops.

  But this wasn’t the same family I’d watched skiing in the Swiss Alps. Robert Tate’s voice sounded strained as he narrated behind the lens of the camera. Jessica was noticeably distant and was often filmed with a cocktail in her hand. Danny and Nicholas fought constantly, and Lex had dark smudges under her eyes and was shockingly thin in her bikini. Mia wasn’t present, probably left at home with some nanny, and neither was Patrick, whose absence wasn’t commented upon. I could explain some of these things. Jessica’s first husband—Lex and Patrick’s father, Ben McConnell—had recently committed suicide, which explained Lex’s appearance. Robert Tate was probably already getting himself into the financial trouble that the SEC would nail him for in a few years’ time. Mia had been born with a congenital defect of her right leg that had probably been very stressful for her parents. It was not a good time for the Tate family, and things were about to get a lot worse.

  I was surprised at how sorry I felt for them.

  The second event on the DVD started here at the house. Robert had Nicholas, who was wearing a suit and had his hair slicked back, explain to the camera that they were going to see Lex perform in the school play. The camera panned to Danny, who was sitting on the floor playing blocks with Mia. It was the first time I’d seen a video of Mia when she was little, and I felt myself smile. She had wispy brown curls and incredibly fat cheeks and she shrieked with laughter when Danny knocked over her block tower.

  I felt a sudden, sick lurch of jealousy deep in the pit of my stomach.

  I wished that were me.

  I didn’t know if I was capable of love, but if I was, then Mia was the person I was closest to loving. I liked who I was when she was the one looking at me. I wanted her to be my sister. I wanted to be her brother, and not just because Danny came from a family that lived in a mansion and vacationed in Barbados. Not because he’d never gone to bed hungry or been slapped around or been told he was worthless, but because—

  “Danny?”

  My head snapped up as Patrick—clad in pajama bottoms, his hair rumpled—walked into the rec room.

  “Hey,” I said, reaching for the remote and pausing the video. How was I going to explain this? It must look suspicious as hell, especially given the timing.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” he asked, sitting down beside me.

  I shook my head. “Did I wake you?”

  “No, I was just getting a snack and I heard the TV.” He looked at the screen. “Which video is this?”

  He didn’t seem to think it was odd that I was watching old home movies in the middle of the night—maybe because he was too sleepy to think too much about it—so my heartbeat started to return to normal.

  “Um, Lex’s play,” I said.

  “Oh, right.” He smiled, took the remote from me, and started the video again. The screen switched from the parking lot of Calabasas High to a darkened auditorium where the only thing visible was a red curtain illuminated by footlights. Patrick fast-forwarded. “She wasn’t in the first scene. Do you remember any of this?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  He hit play when the scenery changed. Lex was standing on stage in a white dress, her hair curled around her face, softening the sharpness of her chin and cheekbones. She was still alarmingly thin, so fragile-looking it was hard to believe she could even stand, but when she smiled, it looked real. Her voice was clear and bright when she recited her lines, romping and laughing and flirting her way across the stage, a confident and sassy creature who was entirely unlike the Lex I knew.

  “She was good,” I said.

  He made a noncommittal sound.

  “Did she ever try to pursue it?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “When she was younger. She made a couple of commercials.”

  So she gave up. I wondered if that was because of Danny. Losing her father and her brother in quick succession must have been devastating for such a sensitive girl. God, how I envied Danny, being loved like that, missed like that. The air conditioner blowing cool air across my skin suddenly felt like the biting wind of a snowstorm many years before, and I shivered. No one was missing the person I had been.

  “Hey,” Patrick said softly. “You okay?”

  A lump rose in my throat. I didn’t want this all to be taken away from me. Not just because it meant I’d end up back on the street or in a group home or in prison. Not just because this life was easy or because it meant never having to be myself again. But because, improbable as it seemed, I’d actually started to give a shit about these people, and I felt like they gave a shit about me, too. I didn’t want to lose that.

  I bit my lip hard.

  “Danny?”

  Patrick put a warm hand on my shoulder, and I couldn’t hold it together anymore.

  “I’m scared,” I said softly.

  He put his arms around me, hugging me tight, and I unwound a little further.

  “I know,” he said. He rubbed his hand up and down across my back. My brother. “I know.”

  • • •

  Patrick and I sat at the dining room table for most of the next day, going over my story for the FBI. He said he didn’t want there to be any surprises. That it would be easier for me if I knew what to expect and that the clearer my story was, the more likely it was that the FBI would be able to catch the people who’d done this to me.

  “I was walking beside my bike, because the chain had come off, and I didn’t know how to fix it,” I said. “I was taking it home to my brother Patrick, because he would know. A white van—”

  “I’m going to stop you there, Danny,” Patrick said. “This sounds really similar to when you first told Lex and me what happened. I’m sure you’ve gone over those events in your head a million times and that’s why, but the FBI is going to ask you to tell your story more than once. I worry they might start going down the wrong track if you sound at all rehearsed.”

  “Right,” I said, heart jumping into my throat. Dammit. How had I not thought of that? “I, uh, I guess I use the same words because it’s easier, you know? I don’t have to think about . . . what they did to me . . . as much.”

  “I totally get it,” he hastened to reassure me.

  Patrick and I continued to work through my story, and I made an effort to switch up the way I told it from the way I’d rehearsed it in my head. Patrick offered comments and asked questions along the way, and though I was sure it wasn’t his intention, he helped me flesh out the story, find and plug the holes in it.

  Jessica emerged from her room sometime before midday. I saw her walk past the dining room on her way to the kitchen while Patrick and I were going over how the men who kidnapped m
e smuggled me and the others kids across the Canadian border. As the lies grew inside of me, they became more and more real to me. This always happened whenever I spoke a lie out loud; it gained its own life and energy. I began to feel like I was breathing in the stale air of the hidden compartment in the eighteen-wheeler, listening to the muffled whimpers of the other children packed in there with me as I tried to free my hands of their bindings and my mouth of its duct tape gag.

  But some part of me was still in the dining room, monitoring Patrick’s reactions, and that part of me noticed when Jessica appeared in the dining room doorway with a bottle of the fancy French water the Tates bought by the case. She hovered there, clutching the bottle instead of opening it. Patrick’s eyes flickered over to her once, then twice, as if he didn’t really believe she was there. Which was understandable.

  “Sorry, Danny,” he said, stopping me. “Do you need something, Mom?”

  She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

  He frowned. “Well then, maybe you should . . .”

  Jessica just stood there, unmoving, and Patrick finally turned back to me.

  “Okay, Danny,” he said. “Then what happened?”

  “We drove for a long time,” I said. “It was hard to tell inside the compartment, but I think it was at least a day.”

  “They kept you in there the whole time?” Patrick asked. “What about food or water?”

  I shook my head. “They didn’t give us any food. Didn’t even take our gags off. I got so nauseous from fear and hunger and the bumping in the compartment that I threw up, but I had to just swallow it back down again.”

  Jessica abruptly turned and walked out of the room. A moment later, we heard the front door close behind her.

  “I didn’t want her to hear any of this,” Patrick said. “It’s too hard for her. She thinks it’s her fault.”

  “What? Why?” I asked. I’d researched Danny’s disappearance. There had been surprisingly little news coverage outside of the immediate area—the effect of the Hidden Hills bubble, I’d guessed, although it seemed pretty strange—but the story was clear. It had just been one of those freak things, the kind of random tragedy that fueled suburban nightmares and the Lifetime original movies Lex liked to watch.

  Patrick shrugged. “For not being a better mother. For drinking too much and letting you ride your bike in the neighborhood. For not noticing you were gone sooner. Anything and everything a person could blame themselves for.”

  “It wasn’t her fault,” I said.

  He looked down at his watch, twisting it around his wrist so that he could check the time. “No. It wasn’t.”

  When he didn’t look back up, I said, “Patrick?”

  He said, “What happened next?”

  • • •

  We spent the rest of the day going over my story. Whatever Patrick felt at what he heard, much of which I’d never told him before, he hid it behind his lawyer’s mask. It was a good mask. Almost as good as mine.

  Lex was less adept at hiding her feelings. Although she avoided the dining room, she was agitated all day, constantly keeping herself busy and snapping at everyone over tiny things. When we were set to leave the next morning, she was pale and her hands were visibly trembling.

  “It’s so unfair you have to go through this,” she said as she forced me to take another pancake from the mountain she’d made before I came down to breakfast. “Being interrogated, like you’re some kind of criminal.”

  “They just want my help,” I said. I was more anxious than I’d ever been in my life, but I was Zen compared to her.

  “Danny’s right,” Patrick said. “Maybe you should stay here. You don’t look too good.”

  “No way,” she said. “I’m going.”

  Patrick gave her a look, and they engaged in the kind of wordless conversation I’d seen pass between them a hundred times. Whatever was said, Lex came out the victor.

  Out in the foyer, the front door opened.

  “Mom?” Lex called.

  Jessica appeared in the kitchen. She was wearing shapeless clothing and no makeup, which made her look like a ghost of herself.

  “Why aren’t you ready?” Lex asked. “We’re leaving soon.”

  “I’m not going,” Jessica said in a voice so subdued it sounded like she barely had the energy to get the words out. “You don’t need me there, do you, Patrick?”

  Patrick turned his head toward her, but not enough to actually look at her. “No. The power of attorney you signed is still in effect, so we’re good.”

  “Mom,” Lex said. “I really think Danny could use your support—”

  Jessica suddenly came alive, like she’d grabbed a live wire.

  “I won’t play this game with you, Alexis!” she snapped.

  Lex looked stricken, like she’d been slapped. Patrick jumped to his feet.

  “That’s fine, Mom,” he said. “We’re okay. How about you go on upstairs?”

  Jessica walked away, and Lex turned to the sink and started vigorously washing the dishes inside. I looked at Patrick.

  “Want another pancake?” he asked.

  Ten minutes later the three of us were walking out to Patrick’s car. On the way we passed Jessica’s rental, which was parked haphazardly in the driveway as usual. It was covered with a thin film of orange dust up to the windows, and I wondered where she’d been.

  My interview was set to take place at the FBI’s Los Angeles field office. The building seemed to loom over me, taller than the buildings I was used to, and I wondered if it had been designed to be intimidating. My pulse kicked up, and I tried to tell myself that it was just a bigger version of the Collingwood Police Station. I’d been scamming cops for years now. Nothing to it.

  As we walked inside, Patrick filled the air between us with last minute reminders and assurances.

  “Just tell the same story you told me,” he said, “and if you start to feel uncomfortable, let me know and we’ll put a stop to it.”

  “It’s going to be fine,” I said.

  “Of course it is,” he said. “Morales will try to put you on the defensive, make you feel like you’ve done something wrong. Don’t let that fluster you. It’s just her strategy for getting the most information.”

  “I hate that bitch,” Lex said.

  I’d done my research on Agent Morales, the FBI’s lead investigator on the case from the beginning. She never gave anything but the most perfunctory statements to the press, so it was hard to judge her personality, but she was always insistent that the investigation was active and ongoing, even years after the fact. She’d been interviewed in the wake of the LA Magazine article—which mentioned rumors of tension between her and the Tates, including one that they’d tried to have her removed from the case—and had intimated that there was a recent development in the investigation, although she’d declined to elaborate. Was that true or just something to cover her ass since she still hadn’t solved the case six years later? It made my feet itch to run thinking that the FBI might have some mystery piece of evidence I couldn’t be prepared for.

  When Agent Morales came to meet us in the waiting room, I was surprised by her appearance. The picture I’d built in my head was of an older woman with a severe haircut and ill-fitting clothes. In reality, she was young, maybe thirty-five, and pretty. She had curly, dark hair that she wore in a half ponytail and full, pink lips with a shine of gloss on them, just like Lex. But she had a slightly masculine way of walking, probably the result of time spent in the military, and an air of seriousness that was more what I expected from a Fed.

  “Mr. McConnell,” she said, shaking Patrick’s hand. There was something in her expression I couldn’t quite read, a tightening at the corner of her eyes so subtle it was hardly noticeable. She nodded at Lex. “Ms. McConnell. Thank you for coming in.”

  Lex’s smile was more like bared teeth. “It seems we didn’t have much of a choice.”

  Morales stood with her hands clasped lightly behind her back. Def
initely a military background.

  “And you must be Danny,” she said. “It’s good to meet you after all these years.”

  She reached out to shake my hand as well, but I shied a little closer to Lex. I’d let the traumatized routine lapse in the past few weeks, and I needed to bring it back now. Danny wouldn’t be eager to touch strangers after what he’d been through, and this bit of acting now would reinforce my story later.

  Morales withdrew her hand. “How about we head back?”

  She led us into the building, past cubicles and offices, like any insurance or accounting company in the world. As we walked, Patrick exchanged a small nod with a young man bent over a computer screen behind Morales’s back. I curled my hands into the sleeves of my hoodie. This was part of the traumatized act too, with the added bonus that it would keep me from accidentally touching anything.

  “There’s no need to be nervous, Danny,” she said with that overly gentle tone that people use with small children or the mentally disabled. “We just want to hear your story to help us as we look for the people who did this to you, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Here’s the interview room we’ll be using,” she said as we approached an office with closed blinds over the windows. Interview room, not interrogation room. She opened the door to reveal someone already inside, a man with a weak chin and premature bald spot that contrasted oddly with the thick arms and chest visible under his button-down. A bullied loser who’d decided to get tough and go into the FBI so he could finally be the one in control. He was fiddling with an electronic recorder. “This is my partner, Timothy Lynch. I don’t think you’ve met before.”

  Lynch shook everyone’s hand and offered us coffee and soda, which we declined. Everyone was smiling, and I wasn’t sure if the undercurrent of tension in the room was real or just the product of my own nerves.

  “Okay,” Morales said, clapping her hands together. “We’ll make you two comfortable outside while we have a chat with Danny.”

  Any pretense of friendliness evaporated.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Lex said.

  Patrick gave her a warning touch on the wrist. “I’ll be staying with my brother, Agent.”