What Has Become of You

by Jan Elizabeth Watson

  “He is number than a pounded thumb. And spineless? Let me tell you about spineless! I wouldn’t trust him to tell the truth if she’s with him.”

  Vera thought about New York City. She thought about Jensen saying, with a dreamy look on her face, Sometimes I thought I’d go down to New York to live with Bret. I printed up this map once of all the places Holden goes in New York, thinking I might go there sometime. It seemed a long shot; how could she have gotten there? By bus? There were coaches to Boston that ran every hour, twenty-four hours a day. Unlikely though it seemed, a blind hope began to rise in her.

  “I lived there for a few years,” she told Mrs. Cudahy. “New York City, I mean—not far from Columbia University. I daresay I know Bret’s neck of the woods pretty well.”

  “Hell of a place,” Les said ambiguously.

  “Yes,” Vera agreed. “Hell of a place indeed.”

  The conversation seemed to fizzle out. Jensen’s mother smiled at Vera—whether sincerely or insincerely, she could not tell—and Vera looked from her to her husband to the mute detective, who gave no indication whether she was paying attention to any of this, though Vera knew that she had to be. After a cumbersome silence, Jensen’s mother said she needed to excuse herself to go to the lavatory.

  “It’s to the left,” Vera said, charmed by the old-fashioned word lavatory—a word straight out of her own mother’s vocabulary.

  “I know where it is. Do you want to join me?”

  Vera did not know how to respond to this invitation. She had never been the type of woman who liked an entourage when she took a restroom break, and she didn’t particularly wish to join the woman in the bathroom. Absurdly, she thought of Bret Folger inviting Jensen into his bathroom so he could kiss her. But then she told herself: Don’t be a dummy. This is your one chance to talk to her without Cutler horning in.

  “If you’d like,” she said. She got up and followed Jensen’s mother down the hall. Take that, Cutler, she couldn’t help thinking.

  “I wasn’t sure about Jensen going to the Wallace School, to be honest,” Linda Cudahy said as soon as she’d shut the bathroom door. The bathroom had a tub in it—sometimes the volunteer committee used this tub as storage space for flyers—and Vera perched on its porcelain rim, discreetly turned away from Jensen’s mother as the woman unzipped her pants. She tried not to reflect too much on the ridiculousness of this situation; the woman’s voice rose over the resounding stream of her urine. “All those snotty people, and the teachers are the worst of them. But you really are different. I want to thank you for that. Thank you for becoming a friend to my daughter in such a short time. Thank you for what you’ve done, and for what you’re doing.”

  “You shouldn’t thank me,” Vera said. She felt humbled—a sensation she was not used to feeling. She was not used to feeling humbled by the basic goodness of people. The basset hound, loose still, was scratching outside the bathroom door to get in. Vera thought about how she used to follow her own mother into the bathroom, chatting at her while she bathed, chatting at her while she peed, barely taking note of the fact that she was using the toilet and might prefer some privacy. For some reason the thought made her sad. That kind of closeness to anyone had all been such a long time ago.

  Jensen’s mother, having finished her bathroom business, gave Vera a hug, flustering her even more. Back in the workroom, Vera shook hands with Les Cudahy and even gave the dog a farewell tap on the head as she bade the Cudahys good-bye and wished them well. Cutler stayed behind, writing something down in her notepad, and Vera waited until Jensen’s parents were gone before she spoke to her.

  “How do you think that went?” she asked.

  “Went? I think it went fine. What did you think of them?”

  Now why had Cutler asked her that? Did she think the Cudahys were suspects in their own daughter’s disappearance? Flattered that Cutler wanted to know her opinion, Vera said, “I guess they seem on the up-and-up to me.”

  “Good people.”

  Vera couldn’t tell if the detective was agreeing with her or simply trying to clarify what Vera had meant. “Good people,” she seconded. “So far as I can tell, anyway. What do you think?”

  Cutler looked less now like the cat that ate the canary than like the cat who has pocketed the canary in its cheek for safekeeping. “Classified information,” she said.

  • • •

  On the Monday of her school break, the lethal boredom of Saturday and Sunday had already done its work on Vera, and she could no longer stand to stay sequestered in her studio or wander pointlessly around Dorset looking for something to do. She headed to the BRING JENSEN HOME headquarters early in the afternoon, her thoughts full of last Friday’s morning class and their further attempt to discuss The Bell Jar.

  “Can I ask something?” Harmony had said, raising her hand near the end of class—something that she rarely bothered to do. Usually she just spoke outright, a habit that Vera had never discouraged.

  “Yes?”

  “When we finish up with this book, can we read something more upbeat afterward? All these people going off to mental hospitals is getting a little depressing.”

  “I’ll see what I can come up with,” Vera had said.

  “And not something about death, either.”

  “I’ll make note of this,” Vera said. “No death. No psychiatric hospitals. Perhaps there’s a good story about puppies or kittens that was left out of our anthology.”

  Harmony smiled an almost blissful smile—another rarity. “I love puppies and kittens.”

  “You girls,” Vera had said, feeling a wash of affection for all of them—even Harmony, whose face was rather transformed by that smile. “Don’t forget to give me your journals before you go. And I’ll say so long but not good-bye, because we’ll be meeting again in just nine short days.”

  Seven days now, Vera thought. And they can’t come soon enough.

  At headquarters she found Amy Nimitz and Lacey Tondreau in the kitchen, stuffing themselves with homemade oatmeal cookies that Amy had brought in.

  “Did you know the police have a good lead?” Amy said to her as soon as they had exchanged greetings.

  “On Jensen?”

  “Yup. Robin hinted as much yesterday, but I don’t know exactly what it is. Only that it’s good.”

  The other two women talked so much—their subjects shifting from speculation to gossip to the latest clearance sale at J.Crew—that Vera was not able to accomplish much over the next couple of hours. When she decided to leave and take her unfinished paperwork home with her, Amy pushed a bag of leftover cookies into her hands, insisting she take them with her, and told her she would see her tomorrow.

  Vera was already out the door and halfway down the front walk when the door of the copy center burst open and Amy came running out. “I forgot to tell you, you got some mail!” she said, holding an envelope out at arm’s length.

  “I did?” Vera said. The envelope she took from Amy was oversized, with the stiffness and thickness of a greeting card, and bore a New York postmark. “There’s no return address. Who would write to me here, from New York City?”

  “Maybe it’s something from a donor you reached out to. A thank-you for a thank-you, or something like that.”

  “That’s probably it,” Vera said, tucking the envelope into her bag, She lifted her hand in a half wave and continued down the walkway, rounding the corner and crossing the street; as she neared the first set of traffic lights, a car door slammed shut, and she turned to see what she had been too preoccupied to notice before: the unmarked police cruiser slowing down beside her.

  Out of the passenger seat came Detective Ferreira wearing another one of his pristine white shirts under a light jacket; Vera could just make out Cutler in the driver’s seat.

  “Vera Lundy,” Ferreira said. “Just the person we’re looking for.”

  Sh
e felt herself submit—a process so easy, so effortless, that she wondered why she hadn’t done it sooner. Submission, when one agreed to it, was the easiest thing in the world.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked.

  “I’d like to bring you down to the precinct to ask you a few questions.”

  She got into the back seat of the car without a word. “Am I under arrest?”

  “Now why would you ask that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you were under arrest, I’d be reading you your rights and telling you you were under arrest.”

  The submission came with a huge sense of relief that she hadn’t expected, and there was an undercurrent of something else, too—a sense of déjà vu that she couldn’t place at first. On what other occasion had she been feeling this same glad surrender, in such a similar way? Then she remembered.

  It was the end of her first semester at college, the beginning of Christmas break. Her weight had fallen to seventy pounds. She could barely walk from class to class. She had told the college that she wouldn’t be back for the spring semester, and when her parents drove up to get her, loading all her things in their trunk, she could feel only as though she’d been rescued. Riding away in her parents’ car, she had settled against the back seat cushions and seen her bony chin reflected in the passenger window. She had been grateful to know she was going home. She had just enough strength left for gratitude. The feeling was much the same now, riding in the back of Detective Ferreira’s car on the way to the station.

  Chapter Ten

  Vera had never been to a police station before, and despite her penchant for true-crime cases, she had never been a fan of TV shows about cops. She didn’t know what to expect as Ferreira and Cutler brought her past the front desk manned by a boyish-looking officer and down a hallway broken up by cramped, pedestrian-looking workstations that hummed with energy and tension. She didn’t know if she would be searched or fingerprinted—was that only for people who had been booked? And what did it mean to be “booked,” exactly? Cutler opened the door to a small, plain room, mostly empty except for a round table; the plastic chairs tucked into it were the same as those in Vera’s own classroom. “Have a seat,” she said.

  “Am I being recorded?”

  “Do you have an objection if you are?”

  “No. I was just asking. Would you like some cookies?” Vera was still holding Amy’s bag of leftovers, which the detective had glanced inside when she’d gotten into his car—looking for weapons or drugs, probably, and finding wholesome baked goods instead.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Ferreira said.

  “No,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just thought . . . I don’t know what I was thinking.” She put the bag down on the table.

  “Let’s get right down to it,” Ferreira said. “We’re here to follow up about your student Jensen Willard. I’m going to ask you one more time: Did you see Jensen at any point after that?”

  “No, sir,” Vera said. She moistened the outer corner of her lips with her tongue and thought: It’s pointless. They know something. Hesitating, the words catching in her throat before they broke free, Vera looked the detective right in the eye and corrected herself: “Yes, sir. Yes, I actually did. And I do know that you’re expecting me to say something. I’m just not sure where to start.”

  “My suggestion? Start by changing the story you told before, and make it factual this time. Otherwise this isn’t looking so good for you.”

  Vera tried to tell him. “On that Friday . . .” she began, but her throat again clenched around the rest of her words. Propping her elbows against the circular table, she covered her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry. I don’t think I can explain.”

  “All right. If that’s how it’s going to be, I have a little something I’d like to show you.”

  Lifting her face, Vera belatedly noticed the TV set and the video equipment on a wheeled stand in the corner. Detective Ferreira turned on the TV and slid a tape into the player. From the picture quality, Vera knew she was looking at a surveillance tape. The still, grainy image on the TV was that of a glass door—a door with no one behind it. It reminded Vera of the cheap scares prevalent in horror movies, when a quiet interlude is followed by a killer blasting in. A shadow appeared in the frame, advancing toward the door until the shadow was a person: no killer but Vera herself, recognizable in her distinctive coat and hat. Before disappearing from the frame, the grainy onscreen version of Vera looked up, almost as though acknowledging the surveillance camera above.

  “Notice the time and date in the corner,” the detective said. “Eight thirty at night on Friday, March thirtieth. This was at the Roundview Hotel, as I’m sure you’re aware. Let’s fast-forward to ten fifty-eight p.m. on that same evening and see what we see.”

  While he advanced the tape, she knew already what she would see: the glass door again, a view of two females exiting. Herself, and a slightly smaller girl in a long black coat who was carrying an army knapsack. As the sliding door opened for them, the girl turned as though she was saying something to Vera; even in the grainy footage, the lines of her profile were sharp.

  “That look like anybody you know?” Detective Ferreira asked.

  Vera nodded. “It’s Jensen Willard.”

  “See, the kid who was working the night shift at the Roundview has been in Vegas for a nice little vacation,” Cutler spoke up. “He wasn’t around to see the local news stories. But he got back last night and happened to see a paper. He recognized Jensen Willard’s picture as being a girl he’d checked in a few days before. He remembered something else, too: a woman coming to meet her in the lobby, then leaving with her a little later.”

  Cutler paused, clearly leaving an inroad for Vera to say something. She kept her mouth shut.

  “And one more thing,” Ferreira said. “We’ve got a truck driver who said he saw two females heading toward Pine Street on the night of the thirtieth, sometime before midnight. He said that one had a long, dark coat and the other had a paler coat with a fur collar. Just like the one in the surveillance tape. Just like the one you’re wearing right now, as a matter of fact.”

  Vera almost said, It’s fake fur—a reflexive response, meaning nothing—but caught herself just in time. She did not want the detective to think she was being either flippant or combative.

  “You have nothing to say for yourself?” the detective prodded.

  In a weary but resolute voice, Vera said, “I do, actually. I do have something to say.”

  It took some time as she attempted to fill in the gaps of the narrative told by the video: how she had gone to the hotel because she was concerned that Jensen had checked into a room to kill herself that night. She told him of how she had convinced her to check out and walked the girl home as far as Middle Street.

  “How did you know she was going to be at this hotel?” Cutler asked.

  “She wrote it in her journal. She more or less said where she was going to be, almost like she wanted me to find her there. I have two handwritten pages that you didn’t see. They’re at home now if you want them.”

  “Didn’t you think this information could be valuable? Why didn’t you mention any of this when I spoke to you before?”

  “I thought I might be in trouble with my boss and . . . I don’t know, maybe legally. My first instinct was to protect Jensen, which is why I didn’t tell about what she wrote in the journals. My second instinct was to protect myself, for not having spoken up right away. But I really have been thinking every single day that tomorrow would be the day I’d tell you. I really did.”

  “Funny how tomorrow never came along. You’ve made a poor decision, as you’ve doubtless figured out,” Ferreira said.

  “I know.”

  That pause again, and that penetrating look. It took all of Vera’s self-control not to squirm around in her chair. “You’re known to
have some weird hobbies. What’s that all about?”

  “Hobbies?”

  “All these books about serial killers you’re always checking out from the library.“

  Vera wondered how he had known. She wanted to ask the detective if he found serial killers interesting, too; she imagined that he did, or he wouldn’t be in his profession. But again, such a comment might be misconstrued. Best to keep her answers clipped and straightforward. “I just find serial killers interesting,” she said.

  Detective Ferreira settled back in his chair. He looked as if he was holding back a smile; it was the same smile Vera sometimes held back when her students stumbled upon a truth more profound than even they realized. “Do you know what I find interesting? Getting answers. And seeing justice done.”

  “As do I, Detective.”

  “I see that Ivan Schlosser’s another one of your hobbies. My father worked on that case, just so you know.”

  Vera furrowed her brow, thinking. “Your father worked on the Schlosser case? Was his name Ferreira, too?”

  “No. Vachon. I was adopted by my stepfather.”

  “Oh, right . . . Vachon. I remember reading about a Vachon who worked on the case.” Vera looked up at the detective, abashed. “I’m sorry . . . it’s just that I know a lot about the Schlosser investigation.”

  “I doubt that very much. I know things you’ll never know, even if you read all the articles ever printed on the subject. Maybe you’re thinking you’re going to write a little something about it. Maybe a book to titillate the masses. But you know what’s not titillating? Finding a twelve-year-old girl with her head cut off and having to tell her parents what you’ve found.”

  Vera could not argue with this. She could only nod, unsettled by where this line of conversation might be going.

  “That could be Jensen Willard now. She could be in that same condition. But we don’t know, do we? We don’t know because you left her there on Middle Street after dark.”