It is hard to discuss this without a touch of cynicism. Sharon’s disappearance brought the chance of benign publicity to many people. Harry Martini, the principal of Knox Consolidated, appeared on Syracuse and Utica TV stations talking about the dangers of children’s walking to and from school by themselves. And he described how Sharon was one of the bright stars of the ninth grade. Harry puffed himself up, looked forlorn, and wiped his eyes. I am sure he thought himself sincere, but I’m also sure that he barely recalled who Sharon was. She was a good student with a B average, but she had also been shy and didn’t call attention to herself. Given the publicity and how people spoke about her, one would have thought she was the brightest and most popular student in the school.
That is not to say people were lying. They thought they were being truthful, but it was as if by linking themselves to her, by talking about her to the press or to the authorities, they were appropriating some of her importance: the importance of her disappearance. If I had spoken to Harry Martini about this, he would have been outraged. And when I questioned Ruth Henley—Sharon’s English teacher—in the faculty lounge about how well she had actually known Sharon, she grew a trifle suspicious and said, rather unfairly, that I clearly regretted that Sharon hadn’t been a student of mine as well.
I did not, in fact, regret that Sharon was never my student, though her older brothers, Frank and Allen Junior, had taken biology with me. But what struck me as unfortunate was the spotlight: that people hurried to announce a connection with her. Looking from my classroom window, I would see TV crews taking footage of the outside of the school. Or they would be in the halls or talking to students or teachers or administrators. Because of their lights and machinery, they were immediately noticeable. Even Herkimer Potter, a special-education student who has attended Knox Consolidated almost forever, got excused from class to tell a TV reporter from Albany that he once gave Sharon a stick of gum and she had thanked him.
I came to see it as a malignancy that so many people wanted the attention directed at them as well. It represented one of their secret passions. But when I spoke of this to Franklin, he shrugged it off.
“It makes a reporter’s job easy. Ninety-nine percent of people are eager to talk.”
“They want to appear important,” I said.
“They want their lives acknowledged.”
“Harry Martini is looking for more than acknowledgment.”
“Acknowledged and authenticated,” said Franklin. “It proves they’re alive.”
But I couldn’t help thinking how people were showing aspects of themselves that were disagreeable.
The second level of the investigation, the local level, didn’t attract as much attention. Although the town police were involved, especially Ryan Tavich, the inquiry was directed by the state police. The captain in charge was Raymond Percy. I didn’t know him at the time, though Franklin and my cousin Chuck Hawley spoke well of him. Percy had a professionalism from which every trace of personality seemed removed. He lived in Norwich and had been promoted to captain only recently. He had served eight years in the army, mostly as a sergeant in the military police. He was tall, very fit, and dark-haired with a bit of gray. His long and very narrow nose reminded me of the blade of a hatchet. He wore dark suits and subdued neckties. Probably he was in his early forties. He showed no defects of character and was diligent, but he also displayed no emotion. I’m not sure what I would have preferred, though I would have liked an occasional curse or a smile. Really, I must seem inconsistent, complaining about some people’s secret vices and that other people appear to have none.
To all appearances Raymond Percy wanted to be a machine—perhaps that was secret vice enough. His interior life was hidden, which only made me eager for evidence of interior life. Perhaps that was my own weakness: the desire to see what lay below the surface, the belief that Raymond Percy was a different man at four o’clock in the morning when he woke up and stared at the ceiling.
Ryan Tavich was often with him.
“But what’s he like?” asked Franklin.
“Thorough.”
“Meaning what?”
“He generates a lot of paper, talks to a lot of people, requires a lot of reports.”
Franklin and Ryan were sitting at Franklin’s kitchen table. It was early evening during the first week of the investigation and they both had a beer. They thought Sadie was up in her room doing her homework but she was perched on the stairs listening.
“Does he ever talk about football?” asked Franklin.
“He never talks about anything not connected with the case.”
“Ever see any food spots on his shirt?”
“Come on, what are you saying?”
“I want to know what he’s like. How can I write about the guy if he’s a block of wood?”
I once drove past his house. Norwich is a town of beautiful Victorian houses but Captain Percy lived in a new split-level on a corner lot, white with black plastic shutters. A fenced-in yard, no basketball hoop in the driveway, no bikes or toys lying in the grass, all the drapery closed. It was hard not to think of Captain Percy’s house as resembling Captain Percy himself; and why shouldn’t it have? I knew he had a wife and two teenage sons, but from the outside there was no evidence of them.
Ryan Tavich took a statement from Megan Kelly an hour after she had called the police. Captain Percy talked to her the next morning in City Hall. Mrs. Kelly’s story about seeing Sharon through the front window, then not seeing her from the back was gone over repeatedly. Three to five minutes had passed between those two events. Mrs. Kelly readily admitted that a number of cars had driven by during that time, even though Adams Street was not heavily traveled, but the only car she remembered specifically was Houari Chihani’s red Citroën.
Later that morning, Tuesday, September 19, Ryan and Captain Percy drove to Aurelius College to talk to Chihani. He was teaching his class in nineteenth-century European history and Captain Percy had him called from class. Ryan said later that he himself wouldn’t have done this, that it seemed pointless to have Chihani gossiped about. Percy had a sergeant with him, as well as a driver. There was nothing discreet about their visit. Megan Kelly had already talked to people about having seen Chihani’s Citroën and some expressed surprise that Chihani wasn’t in jail already, that he hadn’t been arrested the previous day.
The uniformed sergeant and a college secretary escorted Chihani from class. Ryan and Captain Percy saw him in an empty office in the administration building. Ryan said they could hear him quickly limping down the hall, the soft step, then the louder one. Chihani wore a black turtleneck under a gray sport coat and he wore his beret. He also carried a cane. He was not happy.
“I meet the students of that class twenty-six times in the semester. You have just disrupted one of those times. Now I will have to schedule another class.”
“Sit down,” said Captain Percy.
“I do not choose to sit down.”
“I’m asking you to sit down.”
“By what authority?”
Captain Percy explained who he was.
“None of that,” said Chihani, “can persuade me to sit down if I do not choose to sit down.”
And so Chihani stood, holding his cane flat against his right leg.
Captain Percy stood as well. In fact, all four men stood even though there were enough chairs. Chihani and Percy were both the same height, a little over six feet. Both were trim, but while Percy was muscular, Chihani was wiry and angular.
“You were seen yesterday,” said Percy, “driving out Adams shortly after three o’clock. Can you say where you were going?”
“Why is this necessary?”
“It is part of a current investigation.”
Chihani stared at the floor, seemingly unwilling to answer. Then he spoke: “I was driving to Henderson’s Orchard, where I meant to bu
y apples, cider, and a jar of honey.” He had a contemptuous expression as if scornful that the police should be interested in his apple buying.
“As you left town did you see a girl riding a bicycle?”
“I saw no one.”
“You must have passed her,” said Ryan.
“I still saw no one.”
“You meant to buy apples,” said Percy. “Did you buy them?”
“On my way I discovered that I had not brought sufficient money and so I came home. I mean to go back this afternoon.”
“Did you come back to Aurelius on Adams?”
“I turned on Drake in order to go to the bank.”
“Did you get to the orchard, then turn around?” asked Ryan.
“I turned before I got there. Why is this important?”
“The girl was wearing a blue sweater and had a red book bag,” said Percy. “Her bike was blue and red.”
“I didn’t see her.”
“Where is your car now?”
“It’s parked in the faculty lot.”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to take you downtown,” said Percy.
For the first time Chihani looked surprised. “Why should you do that?”
“The girl has disappeared.”
“Then I would like to call my lawyer,” said Chihani.
Percy had Chihani’s Citroën towed to the state police barracks in Potterville. He had already obtained search warrants for both the car and Chihani’s house.
At City’ Hall Chihani said nothing that he hadn’t said at the college. He had not seen the girl. He had turned around before getting to the orchard. His lawyer was a woman, Agnes Whitehead. She made it clear that her client had to be charged or released. While Chihani was in police headquarters his house was being searched by a state police lab crew. After delaying as long as possible, Percy released Chihani late in the afternoon. No sign of Sharon was found in his house. The state police kept his car for another day but they found nothing to indicate that Sharon Malloy had ever ridden in it.
“The trouble is,” Ryan told Franklin, “it’s unlikely that Chihani could have removed all trace of her. There were traces of other people, even women, but not Sharon.”
“What women?” asked Franklin.
“IIR members. Harriet Malcomb, for instance, and Joany Rustoff.” They were again sitting at Franklin’s kitchen table. From the other room came the sound of Sadie practicing scales on the piano.
“So Chihani presumably didn’t clean up his car.”
“Right. Besides, it’s impossible to clean selectively, to erase one person’s traces and not another’s.”
“Is there any evidence that Chihani ever talked to Sharon?”
“None.”
Franklin called in Sadie and asked if Sharon had ever talked about Houari Chihani.
“Who?” said Sadie. Practicing the piano was something that her father made her do and Sadie didn’t mind being interrupted.
“He teaches at the college and drives a red Citroën.”
“That little red car? I’ve seen it but I didn’t know who it belonged to. What kind of name does he have?”
“Algerian.”
“Was he born there?”
“I guess so,” said her father.
“That’s a long way from Aurelius,” said Sadie.
Although Chihani had been released, he remained a potential suspect. State troopers and sheriff’s deputies talked to people along Adams and Fletcher to learn if they had noticed him. Many remembered the red Citroën but they were not sure if they had seen it on that particular Monday afternoon.
Soon it became generally known that Chihani had been taken to City Hall and that his car had been towed to Potterville. I would be willing to wager that each person who thought about Chihani also thought about Oscar’s being arrested for placing those bombs. And people thought about the IIR in general. Indeed, some began to wonder if the group hadn’t been involved with the vandalism in Homeland Cemetery, which the police continued to investigate. No proof existed that the vandalism and the bombs were linked, but Aurelius was a small town and the number of people willing to break the law was limited. So people thought there might also be a connection between the IIR and Sharon’s disappearance. It was not lost on Franklin that Aaron was supposed to have met Sadie on Monday afternoon and hadn’t shown up. Where had he been? Of course Franklin passed this information on to Ryan Tavich.
Ryan must have felt unhappy with himself. Though he knew that the IIR was responsible for the vandalism, he had decided not to say anything about it. He didn’t see it as one more instance of his protecting the son of his dead lover or even Harriet Malcomb. He was simply avoiding trouble for a bunch of rather harmless students. Given the unpopularity of Chihani and the suspicions about the IIR, the fact that its members had been tipping over the gravestones of some of Aurelius’s most respected dead would be blown out of proportion. So he had kept silent.
Seventeen
Ryan had in fact tried to find Aaron the Monday of Sharon’s disappearance. He went to Aaron’s apartment four times. He stopped by Harriet’s apartment twice. They had become very cool to each other since August. It irritated Ryan that he couldn’t look at her without desire and it irritated him that in their five weeks together he had never known what she felt about him. Ryan also visited the other members of Inquiries into the Right, including Barry, who said later, “He looked angry. I thought he wanted to hit me.”
Ryan couldn’t help thinking about Aaron’s violence toward Hark and Sheila Murphy. He also thought how Aaron had been hanging around Sadie. Perhaps Ryan was even jealous. When he took Sadie fishing he may have seen himself as offsetting Aaron’s influence. But no matter how much Ryan disapproved of Aaron, he couldn’t help the fact that whenever he saw him, he saw Aaron’s mother’s face staring out at him, those slightly upward-tilted eyes.
Ryan should have told Percy the moment he learned that Aaron was missing, but he didn’t. Monday night and Tuesday morning he searched for Aaron, waking up the members of the IIR and going twice to Paula McNeal to see if she had heard from her half brother. But nobody had heard from him.
Paula had left Franklin’s house around five o’clock, soon after Sadie had found Franklin and her in bed together. She was sorry that Sadie was upset but she was also angry at Franklin for acting as if he had betrayed his daughter. It was Paula’s habit when something bothered her, however, to be silent, to swallow it, so it was easy for others to think that nothing was wrong. The news of Sharon’s disappearance overwhelmed her resentment but didn’t make it go away. So she went home, and Franklin spent an hour or two with Ryan Tavich before going to the city council meeting. He left Sadie at my house because Mrs. Kelly was still occupied with the police.
I was struck that Franklin brought her over personally instead of letting her walk. After all, I lived two houses away. It was my first intimation of the changes that would occur because of Sharon’s disappearance.
Sadie was upset about Sharon but the news hadn’t quite sunk in. She was more concerned about finding Paula with her father.
“Why does he like her?” she kept asking. “Can’t he see that she’s only tricking him?”
“Why would she trick him?” I asked.
“Because she’s dishonest.” Sadie glared at me from under her bangs. Then she grinned at her own seriousness.
“But what do you think she wants from him?” I asked.
“Maybe his money, maybe our house. Maybe she hates me and is trying to hurt me.”
“Maybe she loves him.”
“He doesn’t need that kind of love,” said Sadie.
I kept a few boxes of macaroni and cheese on hand for her visits and we shared one that evening. Sadie did her homework and then watched TV while I worked on lab reports. The eleven o’clock news ran a brief story about Sha
ron’s disappearance and showed the photograph of Sharon standing in front of the garage.
“That’s my sweater,” said Sadie. “That’s the sweater that Paula gave me.”
—
Ryan Tavich finally found Aaron at around eight o’clock Tuesday morning. Or rather, Ryan was parked in front of Aaron’s apartment building when he looked in his rearview mirror and saw Aaron walking up the sidewalk. It was a cool morning but Aaron was in his shirtsleeves. Ryan got out of the car.
“I’ve been looking for you,” said Ryan.
Aaron didn’t say anything. His hair was loose and hung down past his shoulders. There were circles under his eyes.
“Where have you been?”
“Out,” said Aaron.
“Where?”
“Just out.”
“Why didn’t you meet Sadie after school yesterday?”
“I was busy.”
“Do you know anything about Sharon Malloy?”
“I saw something on the news last night. Did they find her?” Aaron took an elastic out of his back pocket and began putting his hair in a ponytail.
“Where were you yesterday afternoon around three o’clock?”
“I was busy.”
“Be more specific.”
Aaron thought a moment. “That’s as specific as I’ll get.”
The Church of Dead Girls Page 14