by Jason Pinter
New Yorkers commuted into the city from parts of Connecticut-Greenwich being a popular hub-in large part due to the ever-booming Manhattan real estate market. For just a thirty-minute train commute, a million bucks could buy you a home or large condo as opposed to a onebedroom with the view of fire escape.
Meriden, though, was no Greenwich.
What struck me first was that the Meriden train station resembled less of an actual station and more like a glorified bus stop. A small hut was the only building on the gravelly lot. It had boarded-up windows, graffiti sprayed layer upon layer. A ticket vending machine sat lonely outside the hut, like a relic from the 1970s. I wasn't even sure if it accepted credit cards. A dirty, bearded man sat on a bench fully asleep, his yellow windbreaker also looking as if it hadn't been removed since long before the man's last shave. He looked comfortable, and clearly wasn't waiting for the train.
The air was cool, but I had no doubt the day would grow hotter throughout the morning. I buttoned up my jacket, stuck my hands in my pockets, and waited. The surrounding buildings were low, squat, though they seemed to have an air of vigor. Fresh coats of paint. Newly cemented sidewalks, clear of footprints and cracks. It looked like a city wrenching itself toward respectability, while experiencing a few hiccups along the way.
As well as brushing up on the Oliveira case file, I also read about the demographics and income of the city of
Meriden, specifically how both had changed over the years during Michelle Oliveira's disappearance. In 1997, when
Michelle was abducted, more than forty percent of
Meriden residents lived below the poverty line. The median income was a shade over $28,000. And more than sixty percent of residents had one or more children.
Today, the median income was more than $45,000, and was growing at a rate far larger than the national average.
Plus, only nineteen percent of residents currently lived below the poverty line. Yet less than half of residents now lived with children. I wondered if Michelle's abduction had anything to do with this. Whether the horrific nature of Michelle's disappearance convinced families it simply wasn't safe to raise a family here.
From what I could tell, this was a city that seemed to want to right the wrongs of its past. A city that desperately wanted to prove it was safe for girls like Michelle. And whatever part of the city didn't want to improve, it would remain contentedly criminal. A place where a girl could be abducted, and her abductors could remain free. That part of the city would be what it always was, and whatever happened was simply God's-or the criminal's-will.
I stood outside for a moment, unsure of what to look for, until a honking car horn brought my attention to the
Chrysler sitting alone in the lot. A woman was in the driver's seat. I could see her through the windshield, an uncomfortable look on her face. She didn't want to be here. I walked over, peered in through the passenger-side window.
"Delilah Lancaster?" I said.
She nodded, said, "Get in."
I obeyed. She started the engine as I buckled my seat belt. We peeled away from the station, leaving the tracks in our wake.
Her car was if not new then new er. A black 300 model, it had less than ten thousand miles on it, and there were no telltale signs of wear and tear on the interior. A classical station played on the radio, and I noticed Delilah's hand moving in nearly perfect rhythm, sliding gently up and down the steering-wheel cover as though she was conducting the symphony herself.
Delilah Lancaster was in her early forties. Her black hair was pulled back in a tight bun, a few errant streaks of gray shining through like silver threads. Her face had aged gracefully, the lines and striations of a woman who was comfortable in growing older. She moved delicately but with purpose, her eyes fixed on the road.
We sat in the car for several minutes, neither of us speaking. She drove past several streets of well-maintained homes. We passed by those into a less-friendly part of town that resembled the train station in its sense of abandonment. When we stopped in front of an empty building, I turned toward her to ask where we were.
"I agreed to talk to you," she said, her hands still on the wheel despite the engine being off. "But I don't want it in my house or in any place of business or pleasure. That's the agreement."
I nodded, reached into my bag for a tape recorder. She eyed it, curled her lip.
"This is also part of the agreement," I said. "You have to go on the record." She nodded. I turned the recorder on.
"You know I went through all this seven years ago," she said. "The police questioned me many times. I know I got scared that night, but all those police, I thought somebody had been killed. For a moment I thought it might have been
Michelle. All I know is, one day I was Michelle Oliveira's tutor, the next day she was gone from this world, and then several years later she rose like the phoenix."
"Why did you think she might have been killed? That seems like you were jumping to a pretty terrible conclusion."
"When you've lived in this city as long as I have, you've seen young boys killed because they were targeted by rival dealers. When you've seen young girls caught in the cross fire, then you can say that I'm jumping to conclusions. I did think Michelle might have been another victim.
That she'd been taken away forever."
"Well, now she's at Juilliard," I said. A slight smile crossed Delilah Lancaster's lips.
"She's the most talented individual I've ever had the pleasure of working with," Delilah said. "The moment I walked into the Oliveira home for the first time and listened to that girl play, the French bow moving in her hand like the wind, I knew it. French bows are mainly used by soloists, and most young students don't even know the difference. But Michelle, she made her father buy a French bow. Nothing else would suffice. Most young girls have posters on their walls of their favorite bands, their favorite athletes, boys they have crushes on. Do you know what
Michelle Oliveira had posted on her wall?"
I said I didn't.
"You're aware that most girls that age don't have posters, or much of anything on their walls. They haven't yet begun to have crushes, and wouldn't know who
Orlando Bloom was compared to Barack Obama. But
Michelle, she had a poster on her wall. I don't even know where she got it, or how. But right on her wall, above her bed, was a picture of Charles IX."
I waited for an explanation. "Is that a King of England or something?"
Delilah shook her head. "Charles IX is the oldest violin in existence. It was made in 1716 by Antonio Stradivari.
It is kept in pristine condition at the Ashmolean museum in Oxford. You can imagine this is not exactly a common item for a five-year-old to worship."
"Stradivari-is he related to the Stradivarius?"
"The same," she said.
"For a young child to hold such an instrument in this regard, it simply made my heart float. When she disappeared-" Delilah lowered her head, clasped her hands together "-I felt like I'd lost a kindred spirit. Someone who understood the beauty and passion of music like so few do in their lives. And to lose her at such a young age-I thought a great student had been taken. A shame in so many ways. And when Michelle came back, I thanked God for keeping one of his finest creatures on this earth."
"You really cared for Michelle, didn't you?" I asked.
Delilah looked at me. " Still care. I do care for her the way a teacher looks at a prized pupil, yes. But our bond went deeper than that. I cared more for Michelle than I did most of my friends and-" she sighed "-perhaps most of my family."
I looked at Delilah's hand, barren of any rings. She noticed this.
"My husband died three years ago. Pulmonary embolism. Life hits you when you never expect it. But I still have my music. That, at least, is everlasting. And one day
Michelle will create a composition that will stand the test of time. That students, like she once was, will study."
Delilah looked out over her town, the barren
building in front of her.
"This city has changed so much. So many people left after what happened to Michelle. I didn't blame them. I have no children, but if I did I couldn't justify raising them here. Now young families, dare I say yuppies, have moved into those houses. Rats joining a ship. I never thought I would see that in Meriden."
"You're against gentrification?" I asked.
"It pays my bills," she said. "And allows me more leisure time than I previously had. But Lord, if I could find one truly talented student in the bunch, it would make my year."
"Not many children like Michelle come along," I said.
"No," she agreed. "No, they don't."
"Aside from the obvious, was there anything about
Michelle that was different when she came back? Did she ever mention a family member, a friend, somebody you didn't recognize?"
Delilah shook her head. "Michelle didn't have many friends. The gifted ones never do."
"Did she strike you as different in any way? After she returned?"
Delilah thought for a moment. "She became more withdrawn. Michelle was once a vibrant, popular girl, but she never fit in again. You can't explain to a young girl why people are staring at her, knowing she can't possibly understand exactly what happened. One night, a few days after she came back, I thought I saw scarring on her arm, but I decided it was just a pimple, some kind of adolescent puberty thing. It saddened me to see such a lovely girl just have her soul sucked away. But what person wouldn't after going through something like that?"
"Did she ever say anything to you that gave any clue as to where she might have been all those years?"
Delilah shook her head. Stared ahead of her. I looked at the tape recorder. Afraid this was all I was going to get from Delilah Lancaster.
Another song came on the radio, the violin strings prominent. Delilah's fingers flowed with the sound. Then they abruptly stopped.
"What?" I asked. "What is it?"
She cocked her head, looked deep in thought.
"Beethoven's sonata," she said.
"Is that what's playing right now?" I asked.
"No," Delilah answered, her voice soft. There was a tinge of fright in there that made my pulse begin to race.
"Beethoven's Sonata no. 6. It's an incredibly difficult piece. It can take months, if not years, to master. Oh, God,
I remember that night."
"What happened?"
"It was only the second or third lesson after she returned," Delilah said. "Michelle was so down. Depressed. I asked her to play something that made her happy. And she picked up her bow and began to play…oh,
God…"
"What?" I said. "What happened?"
"The sonata. Michelle played it for me that night. I left the house cold, shivering. I didn't sleep for a week."
"Why?" I said, a shiver running down my back.
Delilah Lancaster turned toward me. "In the dozens of lessons I had with Michelle Oliveira, never once had she even attempted to play Beethoven. She had never tried to play that symphony. That sonata was not even in any of the books I purchased for her. Somehow she'd learned to play that piece in between the time she disappeared…"
"…and when she came back."
I looked at Delilah Lancaster. She was trembling, her hands gripping the wheel so hard they'd become white.
"Somebody else taught her how to play that sonata."
14
I marched into Wallace Langston's office and sat down.
He was poring over a pile of loose pages. He simply looked up and stared at me.
"I don't recall that chair offering you a seat," he said. I stood back up. Without missing a beat, Wallace said, "Now you can sit down, Henry. What's up?"
I took out the tape recorder, put it on the desk in front of
Wallace. "I just spent the day in Meriden talking to Michelle
Oliveira's old music teacher, Delilah Lancaster. She-"
"Michelle who?" he said. I forgot for a moment that
Wallace had dozens of other stories being run past him, and that even though this was hugely important to me, I needed to show him that I was right about my suspicions.
"Seven years before Daniel Linwood disappeared, a girl named Michelle Oliveira vanished from Meriden, Connecticut. For almost four years there was no trace of her. No suspects, no arrests, nada. Then, just like Danny Linwood, she shows up at her parents' doorstep without the vaguest idea what happened. No scrapes, no bruises, and police can't figure out what the hell happened or where she'd been."
Wallace slowly put down the pages. I had his full attention.
"I thought that whole 'brothers' thing was strange, but it seemed clear to me that after Daniel was kidnapped, he retained some information from his time gone. I wanted to find out if this was a common occurrence for kidnapping victims. Upon running a search, I found this Oliveira girl, who disappeared in the exact same way. Michelle was very close to her music teacher, this Delilah Lancaster, so
I figured she might be able to shed some light and maybe help me understand Danny's case better. During the interview today, it turns out that in between Michelle Oliveira's disappearance and return, the girl learned an entire new violin sonata. Somehow she'd had access to both instruments and music books. So not only was she kidnapped, but she was kidnapped by somebody who knew her well enough to know she was a violin prodigy."
Wallace looked at me, looked at the recorder. "She played violin, this Michelle Oliveira?"
"A prodigy," I said. "She's at Juilliard now."
"There's no chance she started studying this sonata before she disappeared, and simply finished it later?"
I shook my head. "I asked Delilah that. She said they were using a workbook in which that specific sonata was not a part of the lesson. When they resumed lessons after
Michelle returned, suddenly this ten-year-old has turned into Yo-Yo Ma."
"How did Lancaster explain it?"
"She couldn't," I said. "And neither could Michelle.
Delilah asked her where she learned it, but Michelle didn't know."
"And Lancaster believed her?"
"Without a doubt. Like Danny Linwood, it's an imprint on her brain, the moves in her muscle memory. Unconscious. I did leave several messages for the Oliveiras but haven't heard back yet, and frankly I'm not expecting to.
But something strange is happening to these kids while they're gone. Obviously somebody took them, and they're retaining a piece of memory from their time away. It's not much, but it definitively links Michelle Oliveira and
Daniel Linwood. I don't know how or why, but their disappearances are connected."
"This is stunning stuff, Parker. And where did you get all this information on Oliveira?" Wallace asked.
"I… Most of it from newspapers. Lancaster was interviewed by the Journal-Record. "
"You just happened to come upon this?"
"I dig deep," I said, thinking of Amanda, not wanting to get her into any trouble.
Just then there was a knock at Wallace's door. We both turned. Our jaws simultaneously dropped when we saw the striking figure in the doorway.
"Gray," Wallace said. I recognized the man immediately, but for the life of me couldn't imagine why he was here.
The man entered, striding up to Wallace with casual confidence.
Wallace said, "Henry, you've met…"
"Senator Talbot," I said. "We met just the other day."
Gray Talbot smiled at me. "Hello, Henry," he said. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."
15
I stood out in the hall, trying to hear what Wallace and
Gray Talbot were discussing behind closed doors. Though
Wallace had told me to wait by my desk, I wasn't nearly patient enough. I felt better pacing a tread on the carpet outside of his office. I wondered what the hell Senator
Talbot was doing in the Gazette offices. Wallace seemed surprised, and I was pretty sure Gray had stopped by totally unannoun
ced. Generally not the behavior of most politicians who throw a press conference to announce they've voided their bowels.
I felt slightly dirty, like a journalistic Peeping Tom, straining for quick glimpses. I could only make out corners of the office-Wallace had drawn the shades. I could see
Talbot pacing back and forth, his face angry. He was looking in one direction, which inferred that Wallace was sitting at his desk, most likely being defensive.
I got the distinct impression that Wallace was being read the riot act for something, I just wasn't sure what.
Finally after about twenty minutes, the door opened and
Gray Talbot exited. His navy suit was unruffled, his hair unmussed, his demeanor unshaken. Whatever he'd come for today, he'd gotten it.
As he walked by he slowed up, turned to me slightly, leaned in. I could smell his light aftershave, saw a small nick by his jawbone.
"Parker," he said. "You're better than this. I haven't forgotten what we spoke about. And I hope you haven't, either."
Before I could ask what the hell he was talking about,
Talbot was in the elevator.
Without waiting another second, I burst into Wallace's office. The editor-in-chief was sitting down, hands steepled, chin resting on his thumbs. He looked up at me without moving, his eyes flickering.
"Sit down, Henry." I sat.
"How did you get that information about Michelle
Oliveira?" he asked. I opened my mouth to speak. "And if you lie to me you're fired."
I sighed, knew I was cornered, knew there was nothing
I could do.
"I have a contact at the legal aid society. This person gave me information about the Oliveira case. The police report, and more." I kept it gender nonspecific, just in case. "The rest I did myself. Frankly I didn't really need it, it was just a shortcut-"
"Shortcuts are the death of our industry, Parker,"
Wallace said. "Jayson Blair took shortcuts. Stephen Glass took shortcuts. I don't expect you to want or need those.
And I hope to God you yourself think you're better than them."