by David Bell
Ashleigh pushed herself to her feet. She knew she had to get home. She knew the reporter was coming by their house, and her mother had begged her to be there for the interview. “It sends the message that we’re all united in this,” she had said.
But Ashleigh couldn’t convince herself to believe that either. It too felt like a fairy tale, a child’s myth. Her grandfather never spoke about his dead child or dead wife, and the man barely gave the time of day to Ashleigh or her mother. Ashleigh couldn’t say why, but she even felt a distance between herself and her mother. She thought about it often, searching for the source, and could only conclude that it had to do with the sadness of her mother’s life, the black cloud that seemed to hang over everything the woman did. Ashleigh knew a better daughter would have reached out to her mother, talked to her about it, and tried to be the support system she so clearly lacked. But Ashleigh couldn’t bring herself to do that. She feared the wellspring of emotion that might pour out if the two of them even tried to talk about something real. Instead, Ashleigh decided to take the indirect approach. She’d find the man from the porch, and in the process, she’d find the truth about her uncle’s death. That would help her mother. That would put everything back on track.
When she first heard the twig snap, she assumed she had made the noise. Ashleigh looked down and saw that she was standing on dirt with no twigs nearby.
The noise came again, and when Ashleigh looked up, toward the same path to the clearing she had just come down, she saw the man looking at her, his body frozen in place next to the pond. A green scum was growing across the surface of the still water.
She recognized him. Didn’t she?
He was black. His eyes were large, the lids heavy and droopy. The man looked tired. Not like someone who hadn’t slept well, but rather like someone who had been knocked around, someone whose life had encountered a series of wrong turns and dead ends. The man’s eyes widened when he saw Ashleigh. He looked guilty, as though he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing. Ashleigh didn’t think-didn’t know if-the man would even recognize her.
But she knew him. She had seen his picture in the paper that very morning.
“Hey,” she said. Her voice sounded low, tentative. She felt as if she were in a dream, the kind in which she would try to cry out but her voice wouldn’t make a sound. To prove this wasn’t a dream, she spoke again, her voice finding itself and rising louder beneath the trees. “Hey.”
The man started backing away. He held up one hand, the palm toward Ashleigh. She thought he wanted to say something but could manage only the gesture. And what did that gesture say to her?
Stay away from me.
No, that wasn’t it, Ashleigh decided. It was something else, something more benevolent.
I’m sorry. Is that what it said? I’m sorry.
The man turned away and started jogging. He didn’t move fast. Ashleigh took several steps after him but then just as quickly stopped. Why would she run after him? What would she do if she caught him?
What could she have to say to Dante Rogers, the man who’d killed her uncle?
Chapter Seven
Detective Frank Stynes brought his car to a stop, then checked his face in the rearview mirror. Sick, he thought. I look sick. The air-conditioning in his city-owned sedan was on the fritz, so he drove to the Mannings’ house with the windows down, the hot summer air swirling through the car, rearranging his remaining strands of hair into a comical mess on his head. Without fail, his allergies kicked in with the arrival of the first official day of summer. The whites of his eyes were more pink than anything else, and the tip of his nose was red from repeated blowings. A good day to meet the press and pose for photos, he thought as he climbed out.
Stynes couldn’t remember the last time he had been to the Manning place. Five years, maybe seven. Whenever Dante Rogers had been up for parole the last time, and Stynes had gone over to brief them all on what to say before the board. Whatever he told them or whatever they said worked-for a time. But after twenty-two years of being a model prisoner and repeated claims of being a born-again Christian, Dante was released back into the community. And so Stynes came to the Manning house one more time-probably the last-to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the murder of a four-year-old.
Stynes’s right hip creaked as he climbed out of the car. He needed to have it replaced-so his doctor told him-and he planned to have it done as soon as he retired. He’d do that in two years, when he turned fifty-seven. He’d opted to stay in for the full thirty. He told himself because he wanted the full pension and then some, but he knew the truth. Some people looked forward to traveling after retirement. Others to gardening or time with the wife and kids. Stynes had been a widower for four years, no kids. He hated to travel and paid a neighborhood teenager to cut his grass and pull weeds out of the cracks in the sidewalk. As far as he could tell, all he had to look forward to in retirement was a new hip.
The Mannings lived in a decent middle-class neighborhood in Dove Point, one planned and built in the sixties that had always housed schoolteachers and bank managers and salespeople. Kids ran or rode their bikes through the streets, and everyone spent their weekends grilling burgers or washing their cars. Janet Manning told Stynes she had moved back in because her father was contemplating early retirement. Stynes read between the lines of what she said, and he understood. Her dad-a guy a few years older than Stynes-had been laid off and didn’t think he could find another gig. At least you have that going for you, Stynes, he said to himself. Bad hip or not, no one is forcing you out.
Stynes climbed the steps to the porch, and just a few seconds after he’d hit the bell, Janet Manning opened the door.
“Hello, Detective,” she said, stepping back so he could enter. The living room caught a lot of light through the open curtains, and the place looked clean and orderly. Stynes assumed the woman’s touch-either Janet or her daughter or a combination of both-kept the house looking in good shape, but then stopped himself for being sexist. Maybe her dad liked to keep a neat house? Maybe he spent his enforced retirement vacuuming and dusting? The thought depressed Stynes more than he could have anticipated. He caught a quick flash of himself tending to his own little house-cooking meals on one burner, washing one dish and one cup in the sink…
Maybe he could land a private security job or do some consulting once the hip was fixed…
“So,” he said, “you’re back in the old homestead.”
“The house you grow up in always seems like home, doesn’t it?” Janet said. She looked trim and fit in her work clothes, and despite the grim news they discussed, her voice and movements possessed a lively energy. “And with me working so much, and Ashleigh in her teenage years, I thought it would be good to have another parental influence around.”
Stynes nodded, but he could tell Janet wasn’t fully convinced by what she was saying. He’d always liked Janet Manning. Even as a kid, in the swirl of her brother’s disappearance, she seemed pretty tough. As a seven-year-old, she didn’t cry or act scared when they interviewed her in the wake of the disappearance. Over the years, she always put on her best face and marched to the parole hearings without hesitation. Stynes knew her mother had died about seven years after her brother, and somewhere along the way Janet ended up pregnant and raising a kid by herself. He never knew-and never asked-who the father was. But she worked and supported herself, and Stynes sensed a measure of ambivalence about moving back into her childhood home. No independent person wanted to move back in with Dad. They did it, but they didn’t like it. Stynes concluded that if he’d had a daughter, he’d want her to be like Janet Manning.
Janet pointed to an overstuffed couch, so he sat. The TV played a political show with the sound down, the screen dominated by a wildly gesticulating host in a tricornered colonial-style hat. “Dad watches that junk,” she said, turning the TV off. She sat in a love seat perpendicular to the couch.
“You’ve done all this before,” Stynes sa
id, “so I don’t see that I have to give you any pointers.”
“About that,” Janet said. She scooted to the edge of her seat. She rubbed her hands over the tops of her knees as though trying to generate heat. “Do you think-I mean, why am I doing this? Rogers is out now, and everything is over. Do I really have to do more interviews?”
“You don’t have to do it,” he said. “No one can make you.” She nodded a little, so Stynes went on. “People in Dove Point remember the story. We haven’t had many murders here since I was on the force. Certainly none involving children. I encouraged you to do this when the reporter called because I think it’s important we remind people of what has happened and what can happen, even here. To be honest, this is twenty-five years. It’s probably the last time you’ll have to do this.”
Janet still looked distracted. She nodded, as though she understood everything Stynes said and as though it made sense to her, but something told him it wasn’t all getting through. He watched her and realized how young she really was despite all she’d lived through. She was only in her early thirties, a young woman from where Stynes sat, staring down the barrel of retirement.
“If you want,” Stynes said, “you can beg off. I’ll deal with the reporter.”
“I don’t want to inconvenience anyone.”
“Is something wrong?” Stynes asked. “You really seem to be struggling with this.”
“Do you think-?” She stopped. She stared at a fixed point somewhere in the space between her and Stynes. “I guess that article about Dante Rogers got me thinking.”
“About what?” Stynes waited. Janet didn’t answer. “Are you afraid? Do you think he’s going to hurt you or your family?”
“No, not that,” she said. “He looks so pathetic in the picture.”
“That’s what twenty-two years of being in prison for killing a child will do to you.”
Stynes hoped that he could turn the conversation in a different direction, move the focus to the punishment of Rogers rather than Janet’s doubts or anxieties about the past or the present. But who was he to think he could play psychological mind games with the family member of a crime victim? Stynes was who he was-an aging detective in a midsized Midwestern town, a guy who had investigated three murders in almost thirty years as a cop. He too had seen the pathetic picture of a doughy, paunchy Dante Rogers in the morning paper, and like Janet Manning he even felt the questions rise in his own mind: had this guy really lured a little kid away from a playground and killed him? Unlike Janet Manning, Stynes was supposed to know better. Regular-looking people committed awful crimes every day. Appearances didn’t tell the whole story. They never did. Circumstantial or not, Dante Rogers was guilty. He had served his time.
But Stynes held his own doubts, had held them for the past twenty-five years. Sure, they’d done everything right while they investigated the crime, and the case-circumstantial though it was-held enough water to put Rogers away. Stynes fell back on an old trick, one that had served him well ever since the jury returned with a conviction against Dante Rogers: he told himself to forget about it, to not dwell on things from the past that didn’t need to change. It was over, long over. More important, it was time for everyone to move on.
“Maybe if you think of this as the last time you have to answer these questions, it will make it easier,” Stynes said.
Janet nodded but didn’t seem convinced.
“You know, Janet-” Stynes began. He shifted forward on the couch. He’d always wanted to say something to her but never felt the time or moment was right, even when she was a kid. He decided to take his chance. “No one blames you for what happened. It wasn’t your fault.”
Janet looked surprised by what he said. Her eyes widened a bit, and Stynes worried he’d overstepped his bounds and said the wrong thing.
“Thank you, Detective,” she said.
“I hope you don’t mind me saying so,” he said. “I’ve worried sometimes-”
Janet shook her head and smiled, and Stynes saw the smile contained a hint of bitterness.
“I’m not worried about that at all, Detective,” she said. “In fact, these days, that’s the least of my concerns.”
Chapter Eight
Janet let the reporter in and wondered if some kind of mistake had been made. The girl-woman? — looked too young to be a newspaper reporter unless it was for her high school paper. The only difference between the whip-thin blond girl entering her living room and Ashleigh’s friends from Dove Point High was her clothes, which looked impeccably professional. Knee-length skirt, white top, black pumps, and a leather bag to match. The girl-woman-introduced herself as Kate Grossman of the Dove Point Ledger, and she apologized for being late, even though she wasn’t.
Stynes stood and shook hands with Kate, and they all settled into their seats. Kate sat on the opposite end of the couch from Stynes, and Janet noticed the detective take a quick, admiring peek at the reporter’s backside before she sat down. Janet looked at the reporter and then at Stynes. The contrast was striking. The reporter looked to be fresh out of college. Her hair was long and yellow and shined with such good health that Janet involuntarily raised a hand to her own hair and touched her split ends. Detective Stynes looked older than Janet knew him to be. His hair was thin and wiry, and his small physique and below-average height-Janet guessed he was about five feet seven-made him seem more like a high school math teacher than a police detective. He walked with his shoulders slumped a little, as if some unseen weight rested there, pushing down ever so slightly. But she liked him. He tried to reassure her. He just didn’t understand-or know-everything she knew.
“I’m so glad you took the time to talk to me, Mrs. Manning,” Kate said. Her eyes widened when she spoke, as though every word lifted her to a new level of excitement.
“Miss Manning,” Janet said. “Or Ms. Just not Mrs.-I’ve never been married.”
“Right. Of course.” Kate placed a handheld tape recorder on the table.
“Excuse me,” Stynes said. “It was Richie LaRosa who covered this story the last time there was a parole hearing.”
“Mr. LaRosa?” Kate said. She put on an exaggerated frown. “He’s taking an early retirement, even though he’s only in his forties. A lot of the more experienced reporters at the paper are.”
“Oh,” Stynes said.
Kate shrugged. “I begged my editor to let me cover this for the paper. It’s my first big story. Shall we begin?”
Kate’s sorority-girl good cheer had already irritated Janet. Shall we begin? Let’s sing a song! Let’s talk about your awful personal tragedy!
“Miss Manning-”
“Janet’s fine.”
“Great,” Kate said. They were old friends already. “Okay. Janet, is your dad, Bill Manning, is he going to talk to us today?”
“I don’t think so.”
The young woman frowned a little. “Is it too hard for him to talk about it?” she asked.
“Something like that.”
Not only would Dad not talk, but Michael wouldn’t either. Janet checked her watch. Just after two. He could still show, she told herself, but even as she had the thought she doubted it.
Stynes stepped in. “I’ve found over the years that Janet is an excellent advocate for her family. She was always very eloquent before the parole board.”
“Well, Janet.” Kate leaned forward a little. “Can you talk a little about what it’s been like to live without your brother all these years?”
Janet took a deep breath. What had it been like? She’d managed to control-most of the time-the fantasies she used to indulge in, the ones in which she imagined Justin hadn’t died and had instead spent the last twenty-five years growing up, maturing, becoming the young man-and brother-Janet wanted him to be. A college graduate, a businessman, a husband, a father…
“I think about it every day,” Janet said. “I guess I feel like I’ve been cheated out of something.”
“All those years?”
�
��Yes. My whole family. I have a daughter who will never know her uncle. I wanted her to know him.” Janet cleared her throat. “She said she’d be here today…She must be running late.”
“Are your memories clear of what happened the day Justin disappeared?” Kate asked.
What happened that day, Janet? Michael had asked. She wanted to say she was surprised he didn’t show up for the interview, but she wasn’t. Reliability and predictability had never been his strong suits. Janet learned that early on, during childhood. Why would anything change now, all these years later?
But why show up at her job, asking that question?
What do you remember from that day, Janet?
“I can’t forget,” Janet said. “It’s something I’ll never forget. My mom sent us to the park to play, just the two of us.”
“Was that unusual?” Kate asked.
“Yes, it was,” she said. Then she added, “That was the first time that ever happened.”
“Why do you think she did that?” Kate asked.
Janet had been wondering the same thing for twenty-five years. And she had never asked her mother. “Maybe she just needed some time alone. She thought we were old enough to go to the park alone and give her a little break. There were a lot of people there.”
Kate nodded. Go on.
“We played,” she said. “We ran around. We went on the slides. We went on the swings. There were other kids there, and a lot of parents. We weren’t alone. And Michael showed up, and we all played together.”
“This is Michael Bower?” Kate asked.
“He was my best friend.” Janet decided not to mention having just seen Michael and asked him to come to the interview. “His parents and my parents were friends, so we played together a lot.”
“Now, at some point, you saw Dante Rogers there, right?”
“Yes,” Janet said. She didn’t think about her answer. She had said the same thing so many times over the years-to the police, to the prosecutor, to other reporters and the parole board-that she didn’t even have to think about it. She just said it-yes. But had she really? Did she know anymore that she had seen Dante Rogers in the park?