Little Girl Lost

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Sure did. He went up that road.” He points to the north, toward the water.

  “What’s there?”

  “Just a boatyard, but it’s closed at that hour. Deserted at this time of year. Thought it was kind of strange.”

  Barnes and Stef look at each other, and then thank the driver.

  “I get the reward, right? If you find him?”

  “Don’t worry. If we find him, we know how to find you.”

  They get back into the car.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Stef asks as he starts the engine.

  “Someone—probably his gal pal—picked him up by boat.”

  “Yep. By now he’s probably out of the country.”

  They drive up the short lane to the boatyard. It’s deserted tonight, too, the small building closed and dark. A sign on the window lists the off-season hours and a number to call for fishing charters and day trips to the North Fork, Shelter Island, and Block Island.

  “Wayland spent his childhood summers on Block Island,” Barnes says.

  “Yeah. I’ll call the number. And the precinct, too, for updates.” Stef heads over to the pay phone.

  Barnes waits in the car, his thoughts going back to his daughter, and the money, but not for long. Stef comes bounding back.

  “Tip came in from a woman out on Block Island, Barnes—right across the sound. Wayland is holed up at a cottage there with a woman.”

  Darting across the flat roof of the building next door to Bernadette DiMeo’s, Red hears sirens.

  New York City. There are always sirens.

  But this time, they’re coming for me.

  She peers over the low ledge at the street below. So far, this block of West Twenty-Ninth remains quiet. Any second, though, squad cars and rescue vehicles will show up and officers will fan out searching for the gunman.

  She goes to the back of the roof, where a second fire escape descends to a small alleyway between this building and the one behind it on West Twenty-Eighth Street. Light spills from several windows facing the steep, rickety iron staircase. Earlier, she crept up past them.

  Now there’s no time for stealth. Her feet clatter on the fire escape as she descends to the alley. Twenty-Eighth Street is business as usual at a glance—a few pedestrians and dog walkers along the sidewalks, one-way eastbound traffic crawling along toward Eleventh Avenue.

  Red runs in the opposite direction, toward the West Side Highway and a sea of northbound yellow cabs. She raises her arm, and a driver promptly pulls over in front of a fenced construction site. They’re working back there behind the plywood and chain-link fence, using noisy equipment that mingles with the approaching sirens. Red hops into the backseat as traffic whips past.

  “Where to?” the cabbie shouts above the din, turning off the dome light and setting the meter.

  Good question.

  Not home.

  Not Block Island.

  The pills that were supposed to help have left Red edgy—not in a sharp and ready for anything way but in an overly irritable, tense way.

  Breathing hard, she opens the spiral-bound album in her hands. On the first page, she sees an article dated January 1969, about an abandoned baby. Her eyes widen.

  “Lady?”

  “Ithaca.”

  “Huh?”

  “I need to go to Ithaca!”

  “I can’t take you to—”

  She lifts the gun, aims at his head, and pulls the trigger. He slumps over.

  She jumps out of the backseat and into the front. Shoving the driver out of the way, she shifts into gear and barrels north. She has no idea how to get to Ithaca. For now, she just needs to get out of New York.

  The Lincoln Tunnel is only a few blocks away.

  Ten minutes later, she’s in New Jersey. She makes a series of turns off the highway and abandons the bloody cab on the quietest side street she can find, grabbing the driver’s wallet and cash. She strides up one block and down another until she spots a shaggy-haired young man about to get into a beat-up old Volkswagen Beetle.

  “Excuse me! Can you tell me where, uh, Ithaca Street is?” she calls.

  He turns, standing beside the open car door, head tilted as he thinks about it. “Ithaca Street? Is it off the Boulevard?”

  “I’m not sure. Probably.” Still walking toward him, she scans the block. There’s no one around. It’s a clear shot from here to the corner, where a sign indicates that the highway is to the right.

  “What are you trying to find? A house?”

  “Yes.” She keeps an eye on the car keys in his hand, her own in her pocket, holding the gun. “I have an address . . . here, let me show you.”

  She pulls out the gun, aims, and pulls the trigger.

  He drops to the ground.

  She plucks the keys from his hand, jumps into the car, and barrels toward the highway.

  Amelia sits cross-legged beside Jessie on the couch in the McCalls’ pretty living room. My Sister Sam is on TV. Their plates—and the wine jug—are almost empty.

  “You were right, Jessie.”

  “I’m always right.” She hiccups. “About what?”

  “You’re a great cook.”

  “I know, right? That’s Diane’s recipe, but even she says I make it better. You want some more?”

  “No, thanks. I’m full.” Of chicken marsala, and plain old marsala.

  “I hope you saved room for dessert, because it’s special.”

  “Is it chocolate ice cream from . . . what’s that place again?”

  “The Dairy Bar? No! It’s better.”

  “You said there’s nothing better.”

  “I was wrong.” She picks up both plates.

  “You said you’re always right!”

  “I was wrong about that, too!”

  That strikes Amelia as hilarious. Jessie laughs, too, and heads toward the kitchen, leaving their forks and knives behind. Amelia reaches for the silverware, starting to get up, but Jessie calls, “Don’t come in here!”

  “I was going to help. You forgot the—”

  “I’ll get it later. Just chill!”

  “All right. I’m chilling!”

  Amelia’s gaze falls on the doll sitting next to her on the couch, familiar from Saturday morning television commercials of her childhood.

  “Hey, I know who you are! Chatty Cathy, right? I wanted you so badly when I was a kid. Every little girl in the world had you, except me. Can you talk?”

  Finding a ring in the doll’s back, she pulls the cord and hears a high-pitched electronic, “May I have a cookie?”

  “Maybe, if that’s what Jessie’s bringing us for dessert.” Amelia giggles, and pulls again.

  “Nice Mommy.”

  “Yeah, Jessie has one, doesn’t she? She just doesn’t know it.”

  She sighs, sets the doll aside, and leans back against a mauve, heart-shaped cross-stitch pillow embroidered Home Is Where the Heart Is. It’s signed with the initials DM.

  She envisions Diane McCall sitting with an embroidery hoop in this cozy room, while her husband, Al—the musician in the family, according to Jessie—plays the upright piano. There’s open sheet music propped above the keyboard.

  The song is “Lean On Me.”

  It plays in her head as she allows her eyes to close.

  When you’re not strong . . .

  Right now, she feels anything but. The travel, the emotion, the wine . . .

  “Surprise!”

  She opens her eyes to see that the room has gone dark, and Jessie is back, smiling in candlelight glowing on . . .

  Is that a cake?

  “Happy birthday to you,” Jessie sings. “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Mimi . . .”

  Tears roll down Amelia’s cheeks.

  With the fuel gauge edging dangerously close to empty, Red drives the stolen VW north out of New Jersey, where all the gas stations are full service.

  For all she knows, she’s spattered in blood. Even if she’s not, she�
��s better off avoiding contact with people who might ask questions—at least until the pills wear off.

  If you take too much, you’re going to get antsy and make a reckless mistake.

  She’s made more than one. Every time she pulled that damned trigger, she increased her odds of being caught.

  Past the Delaware Water Gap and over the state line in New York, she exits the highway onto a lonely rural road. Pulling onto the shoulder not far from the ramp, she opens the door to illuminate the interior and checks her reflection in the rearview mirror. No blood from the neck up. Very little from there down, either, but there are a few spatters on her jean jacket. She takes it off, empties the pockets onto the passenger’s seat, wads the jacket into a ball, and tosses it out into the night.

  The engine is running and she’s going to run out of gas any second now, but she needs to find out whether the idea that took hold when she saw that headline could possibly be correct. Otherwise, she’s on a wild-goose chase to Ithaca.

  She flips through the yellowed newspaper clippings.

  The first is dated January 1969, when a baby girl was abandoned in Ithaca, New York.

  If she isn’t Margaret Costello’s missing child, then she’s Bernadette DiMeo’s. Either way, the girl’s father is Oran Matthews, and her half sister is Gypsy Colt.

  And either way, they—Pale and White—are waiting for Red to eliminate her.

  The last article was published later that spring, with the headline “Happy Ending for Baby Doe.”

  By then, the foundling had a name.

  Jessamine McCall.

  Half an hour after getting the new tip, Barnes and Stef are shivering on a small boat that bounces across the dark water toward Block Island. The captain, Dewey, reminds Barnes of Alberto Garcia’s grandson, Tino. He, too, is dark, handsome, good-natured, and married despite being in his early twenties.

  He knew nothing about Wayland and hadn’t seen him around the boatyard. He was willing to shuttle Barnes and Stef out to the island, but warned that it wouldn’t be a pleasant ride, and he was right.

  Wayland is reportedly holed up at the Sandy Oyster, a cottage colony not far from the ferry landing. A clerk there had seen his story on the news and called the tip line to say he’d showed up a day or two ago, and is staying with a woman who’d been there all week. The clerk hadn’t checked her in or gotten a look at her, and said she didn’t want housekeeping.

  If she’s Miss White, Barnes wonders, then who’s the crazy killer with the scar on her face?

  With a storm brewing, Rhode Island law enforcement isn’t particularly concerned about a missing Manhattan millionaire being sighted on the island. They said they’ll send an officer to check it out and meet Barnes and Stef at a restaurant adjacent to the Sandy Oyster.

  The boat hits a rough patch. Stef curses, and Barnes clings to the wet rail to avoid being pitched into the sea.

  “Sorry!” Dewey shouts, gripping the wheel. “Almost there!”

  Barnes stares at the gold ring on his left hand.

  What if I married Delia?

  No. He doesn’t love her. He doesn’t even like her.

  The wedding band, though, reminds him of the tiny gold ring he keeps on his key chain as a reminder that his father is with him. He found it in March . . .

  Wait a minute. Was that the night . . .

  He thinks back. Wash in the hospital. Bub’s retirement party. Delia.

  Yes. He’d found the ring the night his daughter was conceived.

  The island looms dark in the sea, with a yellowish haze of lights clustered around the harbor and smattering of pinpricks beyond. Dewey ties up at a small marina near the ferry landing.

  “Weather’s going to turn, Detectives. How long do you think you’ll be?”

  “Could be ten minutes,” Barnes says. “Could be longer. Depends on what we find.”

  “I’ll wait around to take you back, or you’ll be stuck out here for a while.”

  “Might not be such a bad thing.” Stef eyes a couple of quaint hotels and restaurants. “Not much peace and quiet in Howard Beach these days.”

  “Well, I’ve got to get back. And I need to make a quick phone call before we leave the marina,” Barnes says, and Stef trails him toward a bank of phone kiosks at the deserted ferry parking lot.

  “I’ll call the precinct while you’re at it.”

  “And I’ll be waiting for you guys in there.” Dewey heads for a pub with a wave.

  Barnes dials Wash and is relieved when he answers. “I’ve been trying to call you for hours! I thought something happened to you! Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been trying to call you, too, Stockton. Where are you?”

  “Block Island, on the case. Why were you calling me?”

  A pause. “I’ve been at the hospital.”

  “Again? What—”

  “Something happened. Not to me.”

  Wash takes as deep a breath as is possible for a man in his condition, and Barnes braces himself for whatever is coming.

  In the mountains, Red finds a service station off the exit and shivers without the jean jacket as she pumps her own gas. Exactly five dollars’ worth, to minimize contact with the cashier in the glass booth. She hands over the bill to a young woman who doesn’t bother to look up from a People magazine article about Glenn Close and Michael Douglas.

  Black had bragged about meeting the actor, who’s working on a new film shooting in his office building. Red got the sense that he was trying to impress White, but she seemed bored by the story. Maybe she’d heard it before. More likely, she just doesn’t care about Hollywood. Maybe not about Black, either.

  They’d met at Brown University back in the early ’70s. Perry’s version of the story is that they’d fallen madly in love. White never said that.

  “Do you love him?” Red asked her last summer. They were alone together, just like the old days back in Rockland, in their shared bedroom in the foster home.

  White laughed. “I think you’re jealous.”

  “Do you love him?” Red persisted.

  “I love you. Why do you think I found you after all these years?”

  Because you loved me?

  Because I’m chosen?

  Because you knew what I did to my mother?

  And you knew I’d do anything for you?

  One thing is certain. White needs Black. His money, anyway. None of this would be possible without it.

  Yet he’s rubbed Red the wrong way, from the moment they met last summer. Aware that Red had just gotten the tattoo, he bragged that he’s had his for years. But then White gave him a look, and he shifted gears, like he did in the cottage, offering the handshake and gratitude and cash. The first time, it had been fake concern for any physical discomfort the tattoo might have caused.

  “I know how much it hurts,” he said. “I remember the pain. It was excruciating.”

  “Not at all,” Red said. Nothing hurt as badly as the hot iron Mother pressed to her cheek that awful night, or what the so-called doctor did to her behind closed doors in his examining room in the worst part of town.

  White also has a horse tattooed over her heart.

  “Does Oran have one, too?” Red asked.

  “Yes. His was there long before he went to prison. But you need to call him Pale, remember? No real names.”

  “Except mine,” Red agreed, though it’s just a nickname.

  The other kids called her Red at school—cruelly, because of the angry scar on her face. She came home crying to her mother, who in a lucid moment took her to a so-called doctor to see if he could do anything about it. As if he were a plastic surgeon, and not just some quack who’d lost his license, a convicted pedophile in another state.

  “Come on, now, be a big girl.”

  “Please stay with me, Mommy. Please!”

  “The doctor wants me in the waiting room. Go on, now. Go!”

  “Don’t worry, little lady. This won’t hurt a bit . . .”

 
The scar on Red’s face was nothing compared to the new, invisible ones. But he convinced Mother that it had faded due to his “treatment,” and that she had to return, again and again . . .

  Didn’t Mother know there was something wrong with him? She may have. But you don’t bring a battered child to the most upstanding pediatrician in town. Even back then, doctors were on the lookout for child abuse.

  For a long time, Red had told herself that Mother didn’t mean to hurt her. She was just so sad, and so angry, about George . . .

  Red’s father had been killed in Saigon in November 1965, when the wall calendar froze. If that hadn’t happened, none of the rest would have, either. If he had lived, her mother would have, too. There would have been no scar. No doctor.

  Red wouldn’t have had to kill anyone.

  But this girl, Margaret’s daughter . . . she’ll be the last one. When she’s gone, Red will finally be free.

  She gets into the car, pops another pill, and speeds on toward Ithaca. Salvation is so close she can taste it, sweet as an apple.

  Hanging up the phone, Barnes turns to find Stef waiting for him.

  “Looks like we’ve got an ID on the woman with the scar, but she’s—hey, is everything okay? I’d say you’re white as a ghost, but . . .” Stef grins.

  Barnes bows his head and swipes a hand at his eyes.

  “Are you crying? Just because I made a little joke? Sorry, kid, but . . . you’d better grow a thick skin, or—”

  “I have a thick skin! Thick, and black! And I’m not crying over some idiot remark you made. I just lost a friend, okay?”

  Stef’s eyes widen. “I’m sorry. Geez. I’m so sorry. I am. What happened?”

  “He was . . .” He stops, clears his throat. Tries again. “He was shot resisting a holdup.”

  “Where?”

  “His family’s store. In my old neighborhood.” Just minutes before Wash broke the news, Barnes had been thinking about Tino Garcia. And now . . .

  “It’s dangerous up there.”

  “It’s dangerous everywhere, Stef. Everywhere.”

  A pause.

  “Listen, I just found out that Bernadette DiMeo . . . she’s been killed. The suspect slipped past the guards. She’s like Catwoman or something. Stealthy. But there’s a good lead from a patrol officer who saw her get out of a cab this morning and go into a coffee shop in Hell’s Kitchen. The waitress there says she’s a regular and hasn’t missed a day.”