by Sarah Graves
Once I’d gotten the birth records I wanted, I narrowed my search to brown-eyed mothers like Cam. I could also have sorted them by zip code, ethnicity, or a dozen or more other delimiters used mostly by public health researchers. But all I really wanted was my cousin Cam’s medical history, and finding that, too, was surprisingly easy.
I simply searched for it, and the information came scrolling up on the computer screen in front of me. From it I learned the child’s birth year, a scant nine months after we’d both been abducted, and that when she went into labor he’d brought her to the ER, signing his own name as the supposed husband of the patient and father of the child. He must have threatened her to keep her silent, I guessed, and afterward he took her and the new baby back to the Michener Street address, in a run-down part of town I’d studiously avoided all that time.
She never kept any follow-up appointments, and I could find no vaccination records for the infant. Fifteen years later at my desk in the medical records office, I gazed out the high window overlooking New Haven. From it I could see all the way across the Yale campus and in the other direction across Long Island Sound.
Out there, somewhere…The baby was a healthy girl: She’d gone home with Cam and the monster, but she hadn’t been there—she’d have been fourteen by then—when Cam and the other women were rescued.
So what had happened? Cam didn’t seem to know—pressing her for theories had resulted only in stubborn silence, at any rate—but there were two other women who might. That was why, on the Monday morning after I learned that Cam’s baby had definitely been born, I took a bus downtown to the courthouse.
Gemerle’s competency proceedings were about to begin their second day of hearings, and his other two victims would be there; I’d seen them on TV, sitting with the victim advocates.
Of course I was terrified to approach them. All I wanted, as I stepped off the bus in front of the courthouse building, was to jump right back on it again and go home, to be there with Cam.
But the girls might know something about Cam’s lost child, so I didn’t.
—
“He’s my cousin,” Peg whispered to Lizzie. “Henry Gemerle’s mother and mine were sisters.”
By now it was late morning. Smoke drifted lazily from the fire zone they’d just been in, hazing the blue sky over where they sat parked outside Lizzie’s office.
“That’s good, that’s a good start,” Lizzie said. “Now, do you want my help with any of this? Because that’s what I’m offering to you here. All you need to do is take it.”
Sniffling, Peg yanked a wad of tissues from her purse. “I swear when I get that kid back I will never let her out of my sight again.”
Lizzie ignored this. “So the cousin thing, though. You want to expand a little on that?”
Peg nodded brokenly. “Like I said, our mothers were sisters. Both dead now. We lived only a few blocks from each other in East Haven.”
“I see.” Take it slow, Lizzie reminded herself. Circle around a little. “So did Tara ever meet any of your family members?”
Peg laughed bitterly. “No, none of them. And she won’t if I have anything to do with it.”
She turned to face Lizzie. “They all thought Henry was a good guy because he was working steady. I’m the only one who thought he was weird. He gave me the creeps. I kept away as much as I could.”
“Uh-huh. The rest of the family still saw him, though? At his place, or yours?”
But Peg wasn’t listening. “I mean of the whole bunch, there’s not a one who wasn’t short a few marbles, if you know what I mean. To them, Henry was just fine. But then…”
Missy came to the office window and spotted Lizzie, nodding as if the sight of her was expected. Which reminded Lizzie: She’d promised to be here by noon to cover the phones for an hour.
“…then I started hearing about this baby Henry had somehow gotten hold of,” Peg said.
Lizzie waved at Missy to say she’d be coming in shortly, as they’d agreed.
“…said it was his girlfriend’s baby,” Peg went on, “even though nobody could remember Henry ever having a girlfriend.”
Missy turned away from the window and went back to her desk. “Peg? Let’s go inside, okay?” Lizzie interrupted reluctantly.
Once a subject started talking, you didn’t stop them if you could help it. But as it turned out Lizzie might as well have tried damming Niagara Falls.
“He really wanted to get rid of it,” Peg continued as they went in. “The baby, I mean. A baby girl. And I wanted one. My mom came home talking about it and I said I’d take it. And I did.”
“Really.” Inside, Lizzie sat at her own desk with Peg in the chair across from her. “Nobody thought that was unusual at all? No one from any health department or anything?”
Peg made a face. “Please. The last thing we wanted was to get family services involved, nosy social workers or whatever.”
She dug in her purse for a cigarette, found none. “We knew girls who’d had their kids taken away by the welfare people. So, no. No social workers, anyone like that.”
It still sounded odd, though. “What about your mother, didn’t she have something to say about it?” Because if Peg was thirty or so now—younger than Lizzie had first thought, just aged by worry—that would’ve made her, what, fifteen?
“Yeah, well,” Peg replied with a shrug. “My mom didn’t have too much input into my decisions. She had a big pill habit to take care of.”
“Sorry. That must’ve been rough. But…come on, Peg, even you didn’t think it was strange? A weird cousin with a girlfriend no one ever saw, and then a baby?”
Peg sighed. “Maybe if I’d thought about it I would’ve. But I was just a kid myself. I had this fantasy of being some kind of a storybook heroine, saving a baby from the kind of life I had.”
She shook her head ruefully. “I had no idea how hard it would be. Or that…”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Or that he’d come back.”
Now they were getting to it. “But you were afraid he would?”
Peg nodded, her eyes downcast. “A few months later I saw him downtown. He looked…I don’t know. Wrong, somehow. Like he was plotting something. He didn’t see me or Tara, though, and I was glad. He scared me.”
She looked up. “That’s when I decided that I didn’t want him around her ever again.”
She broke off suddenly, her desolate gaze looking past Lizzie out into the winter day. “I should be out with the fire crews, you know. I’m a volunteer myself, I should be there with my crew.”
Lizzie recalled the boots and hard hat in Peg’s kitchen, the radio on the counter. “I think under the circumstances they’d cut you some slack.”
She leaned back in her chair, trying to make sense of what Peg had said. The likeliest explanation for what they’d found on the ridge was that Gemerle had moved Tara. Maybe he’d worried that her cries for help might be heard by the fire volunteers.
Which if it was true meant at least that she was alive, or had been when he did it. But why he was keeping her that way—why he was doing any of this at all—Lizzie still had no idea.
Turning, she was about to say so, to offer at least as much reassurance as she could. Instead, a stray gleam of sunlight from the office’s big front window hit Peg’s eyes at an angle, revealing the faint line of something curved on the left one, a pale iridescent blue against the white part of Peg’s eye, just the narrowest edge. But it was enough, and from it suddenly Lizzie knew two things:
Just as she’d thought, Peg Wylie had indeed been lying about everything, all along.
And she was lying now.
—
It had been dark in that cellar of his, and it was years ago. So going into the courtroom that day, I felt sure that neither of the girls I’d left down there would recognize me.
The metal detector and security screening held no terrors for me, either. The guards in their navy-blue uniforms seemed to sense this, already looking p
ast me as I approached. Once cleared to go in, I moved along with dozens of others down the linoleum-tiled corridor to the door where a clerk was handing out paper tickets with numbers on them.
The hall was jam-packed; it seemed half the world wanted an in-person look at the awful criminal they’d seen on TV, and I had a moment of panic when I thought I might not get admitted. But in the end I was issued one of the last passes being given out that morning, and with it I made my way into the rear of the chamber.
The room was warm, smelling of dusty radiators, damp coats, and the pungent hair pomade of one of the courtroom clerks. As the judge entered we all stood, then sat and waited some more while up front the attorneys put their heads together and argued over some procedural business.
At last all the rustling and murmuring went silent. In the upstairs gallery the news cameras stood like three-legged aliens, each aimed at the bench where the judge glanced once more at the bailiff, then looked out over the spectators.
His gaze lingered a moment on me, I don’t know why, and the sudden notice, so much the opposite of what I’d been expecting, brought my heart up into my throat. And then, before I’d even had a chance to recover, he came in.
Henry Gemerle, the monster of Michener Street…At the sight of him my whole body went rigid with fright, my gut rolling over as if getting ready to turn itself inside out. Then I caught sight of the girls. They sat nearer the rear of the courtroom today and the cameras were all aimed at Gemerle, so I felt safe.
Getting up, I moved toward the girls. Neither of them looked anything like I remembered from the brief glimpse I’d had of them, which renewed my confidence that they wouldn’t know me, either. Reaching the bench where they sat—the victim advocates weren’t present today—I slid in beside them and whispered:
“Hello. You don’t know me, but I’m taking care of Cam.”
Slowly the young woman nearest me turned her head.
“Cam Petry?” I said. “You remember her, don’t you? And I want to ask you about—”
She just stared. It was Nancy Shields; I’d learned her name back when they were all first let out of the cellar.
“—about Cam’s baby,” I said. But then before I could go on I felt Henry Gemerle’s eyes on me, his lip curled in obvious fury at the sight of the one who got away.
Me. Hastily I turned away from Nancy Shields and scrambled backward.
But it was already too late. Gemerle’s clear interest in me and my frightened reaction made people wonder about me. Many of the observers in the courtroom turned curiously, a low murmur spreading around me. Even the judge glanced up, and everyone stared: the lawyers and court employees, onlookers on benches, and psychiatrists in suits, all slicked up and ready to give their expert testimony about Henry Gemerle.
No, I thought desperately, this isn’t what I wanted.
Gazing around wildly I searched for a rescuer, someone to save me. But there was no one, only a chunky blond woman wearing a blue sweatshirt staring down at me from the gallery, looking as if she might have wanted to help. But she couldn’t.
So I did the only thing I could do. I ran.
—
By the time I got home that Monday noon, Cam was throwing things into a duffel bag any which way.
Luckily only Gemerle had recognized me; I’d given only a single interview right after Cam and I moved in together.
A feel-good human-interest story, the pesky writer from New Haven’s alt weekly newspaper the Advocate had said it would be, a heart-warmer about cousins reuniting after a tragedy. I’d been reluctant; the flurry of interest surrounding the girls hadn’t yet died down, and the last thing I wanted was any publicity.
But if we were boring enough—I refused photos, and didn’t let the reporter come to our apartment—the rest might leave us alone, I’d figured, and in fact that was what happened. I’d played dumb and Cam had been legitimately stupefied, both from shock at her experiences and from the pills I’d already begun feeding her.
But what had happened in the courtroom was still bad enough. Cam had despised the idea of my talking to the alt-weekly reporter. Being stared at and questioned was torture for her, even in the hospital when it was only for her benefit. Now I’d risked drawing attention to her again.
Or at least I thought that was the reason for her anger. “Cam,” I begged once I got into the apartment. “Please listen.”
But she didn’t look at me, just kept throwing things into her bag.
“Cam, I never meant to—”
She whirled on me. “ ‘I never meant to,’ ” she mimicked cruelly. “I didn’t know, oh, I’m so innocent, please feel sorry for me.”
She threw the duffel into the hall. “Funny thing about you. You never mean any harm, but somehow you always do it anyway.”
She’d swept her dresser top clean of her hairbrush, a tray of pill bottles, and an envelope containing her medical history.
But she’d left a picture frame with a snapshot of the two of us.
“I just wanted…” I began. The snapshot was like a window into a happy world; here in this one, Cam’s energy frightened me.
“Right, you just wanted,” she snapped back at me. “Can I ask you something, though?”
She turned to face me. “Have you ever thought for a minute about what I might want? I mean, how exactly did you think this thing you did today was going to turn out?”
I took a deep breath. “I was just trying to help.”
She smiled nastily. “Yeah, right.” Brushing past me to the hall, she went on waspishly.
“You’re a fool, Jane. You think that being dull and stupid hides your bad side, but you’re wrong. It just makes you even less attractive, if that’s possible.”
Behind her the neat, spare room with its white curtains and narrow bed looked suddenly as if no one had ever slept in it. She pulled on her coat; I stopped myself from helping her with it.
“Cam, please. You can’t just leave me like this. After all I’ve done…”
My voice trailed off; I could see her thinking of something else she wanted to say and deciding not to.
“Look,” she began finally. “Maybe you really didn’t mean any harm.”
The words burst out of me. “When have I meant you harm? I’ve done everything and never wanted anything in return because I—”
But then I stopped. She was looking at me with an odd expression. Or…not at me. Past me, at her bedside table where dozens of Valium tablets were piled in a little heap.
I used to crush them but after a while I’d stopped bothering; she’d always swallowed what I gave her without question. But now I saw that she must’ve hidden them, then spit them out.
That she’d been doing it all along. “I went to the court hearing because I thought,” I said through the sudden tightness in my throat, “that I could find out about your baby.”
She stared incredulously. “Where it was sent to,” I went on, “and who has it. Her, I mean,” I added desperately.
Cam was eyeing me as if I were some strange zoo animal. “And if we found her, then we could bring her home,” I rushed on. “We could be a…”
“A family,” she finished for me, and it was her tone that did me in, finally: incredulous, like everything I’d said just made it all worse.
“You left me with him. Left me for dead,” Cam said icily. “You were so fucking scared somebody would find out what happened to you, you forgot about what was happening to me.”
“Cam…”
“Or no. You didn’t forget. You didn’t care. I should have been the one who had a life, you know, I’d have known what to do with it. Not sitting all alone in a dinky house, dumb job, no friends, not even a man to keep you company…you didn’t even need Henry Gemerle to make you a prisoner,” she ranted viciously. “You did it to yourself!”
“Cam,” I tried again hopelessly, and then I saw my laptop sitting open in the living room with an email on the screen. To Finny Brill; a sent email.
&nbs
p; Horror pierced me. “Cam, what’ve you done?” I rushed to the device, but of course there was no way to take it back.
Since the delays surrounding Cam’s surgery, Finny had been getting increasingly impatient to move forward with what he called “our creative project.” Now…
Finny, the email read. It’s time. Tell him Cam is coming to be with him the way we planned. Ask him where he wants to go and let me know ASAP. Then—do it.
Below that was Finny’s near-instantaneous reply: Bearkill, Maine.
Finny had said he could get Gemerle out of the forensic hospital practically as soon as they sent him back there from the courtroom, and we’d had no time to—
“Cam, we’re not prepared,” I protested. She must have sent the message as soon as she saw me on TV. “Why would you get this all started now when we’re not—”
But then I understood. She was ready; I didn’t need to be. Our plan had been to punish Gemerle, but she was doing something else. Then I understood, as the import of her email finally struck me. It wasn’t a punishment she had planned at all.
Not for him, anyway.
“I have to go now,” she said flatly.
I swallowed a painful sob. “I was never going along, was I?”
She shook her head at me almost kindly. “No. You weren’t.”
Now I got it: that she’d been using me, playing the helpless invalid to keep me devotedly caring for her, all the while getting stronger and more determined to leave me.
And now she was strong enough. I’d forced her hand, but she’d been meaning to do this anyway.
“But he hurt you.” I pointed to where the purplish marks of surgical staples still showed through her short fluff of returning hair; her eyes darkened defensively.
“He didn’t mean it. He never did. He just lost his temper, he was always sorry for it later. And he only took the baby so she could have a better life.”
Remembering, she looked away from me. “The other girls were glad he liked me the best. It meant he paid less attention to them. Then when the police came and arrested him, I promised I’d get him out, that we’d be together again. But I didn’t know how.”