by Paula McLain
But there isn’t an easy answer. Seventy-five percent of murdered abducted children are killed within the first three hours of being taken. But Cameron isn’t a child anymore. She’s fifteen. And then there’s this: In the slag heap of cases I’ve worked through the years, only once have I had a teenaged victim manage to escape her captor and come home, two years after she was abducted.
Usually even finding a body is a win. Whatever you can imagine, humans can do. And yet at the same time my cop brain knows that Cameron is probably dead, another voice, one that’s pure instinct and intuition, is telling me not to give up.
“Listen,” I say to Will. “We just can’t know until we get more information. You’ve been in touch with the department in Petaluma?”
“First thing this morning. Eddie Van Leer is the lead detective with the Petaluma PD.” Will reaches for the nearest notebook and rifles the pages. “Rod Fraser is the FBI special agent. You ever work with him?”
“Once, about ten years ago. He’s solid. Not your typical FBI guy at all. Doesn’t need to be the smartest guy in the room.”
“Well, somebody’s doing something right down there. Polly’s face is everywhere already. It’s a national case, when I’ve got nothing here. Van Leer tells me he’s got sixty men on the job already.”
“You can see why it’s blowing up there, can’t you? A twelve-year-old girl plucked out of her own bedroom on a Friday night? What parent hasn’t had that nightmare?”
“Okay, but Cameron Curtis has been my nightmare for more than a week now. I’m over my head here, Anna.” His voice catches and rings with strain. “I’ve had no help, no leads. The family is coming unhinged. And what do I tell them? Christ.”
It is way too much, what he’s been doing alone. It is way too much for both of us, but I’m not going to tell him that now. I put down my coffee and reach for his hand, rough and cool, before pulling back again. “Whoever took Polly Klaas might be our suspect too, but that’s a long shot, Will. A serial offender has very specific patterns and preferences. Polly is prepubescent, and also young looking for her age. She doesn’t have breast buds, doesn’t excite the same kinds of appetites. Cameron may be emotionally young, but she looks like a woman, not a child.”
“Okay, I get that. But opportunity comes into play sometimes, doesn’t it?”
“Sure. Polly could have been the first girl who walked by when he’d been triggered and knew he would take someone. But think about his behavior for a minute, Will. This guy in Petaluma walked right into a full house with a knife drawn, leaving witnesses.”
He nods slowly. Blinks against the unkind light. “And Cameron just vanished.”
“That’s how it usually happens, honestly, especially with teens. If you want to find someone like Cameron, where all the evidence is either absent or invisible, you have to study your victim to find answers. You have to live and breathe her. Dive deep. And then maybe, maybe, she’ll show you where to look for her.”
“You really want to jump into all this with me?” The hope in Will’s voice is palpable, a tattered flag waving through smoke.
“As long as I’m not the face of anything. My name doesn’t go down anywhere. Not on statements, not on payroll. I won’t talk to the media and I definitely won’t talk to the FBI. I’m here for you and those girls. That’s it.”
“Whatever your rules are, we can make it work. I’m just glad you’re here.”
I take a breath, and then feel for the cool, metallic edge of his desk, my shoulders already knotting with responsibility. “Me too.”
(fifteen)
On Tuesday, September 21, Cameron went over to her best friend Gray Benson’s house to study after school, and then walked home alone, arriving at around six-fifteen. She and her mother, Emily, ate dinner, and then Cameron went to her room. Just after ten, Emily checked on Cameron. The two said good night and then Emily alarmed the house as usual, heading to bed and assuming Cameron did the same. But at seven the next morning, when she went to wake Cameron for breakfast, Emily found her room empty and the alarm deactivated. She didn’t have time to think about why, if somehow it had malfunctioned or if she’d forgotten to turn it on. Her daughter was gone.
At 7:09 she called her husband, Troy Curtis, who was at their second home in Malibu. The call lasted three minutes. The second she hung up she called 911. Will’s office had responded in minutes. Before 8:00 a.m., they were interviewing Emily and sweeping Cameron’s room for clues. But there weren’t any.
The property had a security gate with a video camera that held a week of film. On the night of the twenty-first, the tape showed only typical comings and goings. Emily drove in around six that night, and then there was nothing else until the 911 call and the arrival of Will’s team. When they searched Cameron’s room and the rest of the property, there were no signs of a break-in, and nothing significant was missing. According to Emily Hague, Cameron had always saved her allowance and had at least a few hundred dollars in her room, but apparently it hadn’t been touched.
* * *
—
This is all I have and it’s almost nothing. The simplest explanation is that Cameron chose to run. She disarmed the alarm and bolted sometime in the night, out the front door and through the woods, avoiding the main gate with its camera. It happens all the time, kids throwing off their parents’ homes like shed skins, moving on to something or someone that promises freedom. One version of that freedom is black and permanent, like the bluff a hundred yards from Cameron’s front door. She could have walked right off of it, her body carried away by the current or ravaged by sharks, erased with purpose, her escape driven by an inner pain no one could see or even guess at.
If she was suicidal or even just good and lost emotionally, her adoption might be part of that emotional equation. Cameron was surrendered to the state just before her fourth birthday, a particularly tender age, though in my experience they all are. Whatever her life was like before she was given up—whether or not she consciously remembered any of it—that time would still be with her, I know all too well, embedded in her nervous system, knitted into her singular blueprint. So would the whiplash of displacement. In a single day, a car ride with a social worker, her old family was erased, blotted out, and new parents appeared from nowhere—one of them a household name, no less. That part I can only imagine, but it had to be confusing and difficult for Cameron, as she got older and became more aware of the larger world, that her new mother was a world-famous movie star. Almost as confusing as how she could lose her family in one moment, because of a decision someone else made for her, probably without even trying to explain. With the signing of some papers, her story had stopped and restarted. The girl she had been was deleted along with her birth name, and all the rest of it. Siblings, pets, neighborhoods, toys, memories—whole years just gone.
Since looking at her file is like seeing a version of my own story, I know that even if Cameron felt lucky to have landed with the Curtises, as I had with Hap and Eden, she wouldn’t necessarily be free of ghosts. No matter how resilient children can be, or how wanted, loved, and nurtured they are by their new parents, the original wounds of abandonment and rejection aren’t just magically healed. Grit and inner strength don’t altogether heal those wounds, either, because the parenting piece is primal.
Mothers and fathers are supposed to stay. That’s the original human story, in every culture, since the beginning of time. Mine hadn’t, and neither had Cameron’s. All the scars I still carry, she carries, too. Trust issues, attachment trouble, identity problems, feelings of emptiness, isolation, alienation, and despair—cracks in the soul that can’t be mended. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. How anyone with a hole inside them will search on and on, sometimes all their lives, for ways to fill it.
(sixteen)
That Christmas when I was eight, my mom stayed gone. I was afraid, of course. Worried that she’d gotten into tr
ouble somehow and couldn’t call me. I tried not to think about how many ways she might have become stuck out in the world on her own while the kids and I piled into her bed to sleep together, giving Freddy his very own pillow. At some point during the day, the kids had finally stopped asking about Santa altogether, which felt like a small victory. As I dropped off to sleep, I had one hand on Amy’s silky hair, and the other on Jason’s T-shirt, and that helped quiet my mind somehow.
The next morning I let the kids watch TV while I raided the Folgers can in the kitchen and walked to the drugstore for bread and milk and eggs and peanut butter, since the grocery stores were closed. I passed Phyllis and Bernard on the way back, and she made a face at me like she knew what was what.
“Where’s your mom today?” she asked pointedly.
“Sleeping,” I said again, the first thing that had flown to my mind.
“Again?”
“Yeah.” I hated her, suddenly, and her dog, too. “Hope you had a good Christmas,” I said with false brightness. “See you later.”
* * *
—
Even though Phyllis had rattled me, once I got home and shut the door, we had a great day. In fact, it was one of the nicest we’d ever had. There weren’t any presents, but there was food and all the TV we wanted. We built a fort out of sheets and blankets in the living room and kept it up all day. When it grew dark, we turned off all the lights except for the tree and lay down on the carpet beneath it, looking up through the splayed branches as the rainbow bulbs blinked on and off, almost dreamlike. Then I got the kids into the bathtub and made sure they washed their hair and said their prayers. By the time we went to sleep that night, I was starting to believe we could just go on this way forever, even if my mom never came home. I knew how to take care of Jason and Amy. I could do it. We would be okay—or more than okay. We would be happy.
Very early the next morning, though, I woke up tired. Jason had wet the bed and we all got soaked. I had to put towels down on the bed after that but kept accidentally rolling onto the wet spot and waking up again. I was still worried about Phyllis, too, and wondering if we would run into her again, or if she would start making phone calls, even, to see where my mother really was. I was pretty sure she hadn’t believed me.
I got up and went into the kitchen and started making breakfast for us, but kept checking out the window every few minutes to see if someone was coming. The kids had cartoons on, turned up too loud. I felt anxious and distracted and kept thinking I heard someone coming down the hall outside. Finally, I went and checked there too, looking both ways along the corridor. That’s when I smelled the eggs burning. I had the gas turned up too high and the butter had blackened and begun to smoke. The second I realized what was happening, I shoved the pan off the heat with a skittering clatter, but the smoke alarm went off anyway, screaming and blinking in the middle of the kitchen ceiling. I couldn’t reach it, even with the chair. The sound was earsplitting and endless as my heart raced. Both kids started to cry and I was yelling at them to stop, but they only wailed harder. I couldn’t think. I didn’t know what to do. And then someone was pounding on the door, and I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. We should have only had cereal. Cereal and peanut butter.
The cops pushed into our living room, two of them, heavy and wide, scaring the kids with their uniforms and holstered guns, their strings of questions. When was the last time I’d seen my mom? What did she say before she left? Had she mentioned where she was going on Christmas Eve? Did I know how to contact my dad? Was there other family around? Mostly, I didn’t have answers for them. Jason and Amy were cuddled up next to me on the couch, pressing hard against my sides. I kept trying to tell the kids it was going to be okay, but I already knew it was far too late for that.
* * *
—
The Curtises live north of town on a secluded stretch of Lansing Street, high above Slaughterhouse Gulch. When we pull up to the security gate in Will’s cruiser, he pushes a button, and someone buzzes us through.
“It sure looks like a movie star lives here,” I say as the wiper blades rattle, sluicing back a thin film of rain.
“She’s not a movie star anymore. She stopped working as soon as they moved here four years ago.”
“What is she like?”
“Before all this, you mean? I don’t even know. The family hasn’t had anything to do with the rest of us. The husband commutes on a private plane. They have all their groceries delivered. I’m surprised they let Cameron go to public school instead of hiring a tutor or something. That must have been their one concession, a stab at real life.”
* * *
—
As we park and get out, the broad door opens and Troy Curtis appears, youthful and handsome in faded jeans and a sweater, blinking at the drizzle. We hurry toward him through the door he holds open, and that’s when I see he’s older than I thought at first, late forties, maybe, with small lines of tension around his eyes and mouth.
Will and I step into the entryway, where everything is spotless and almost surgically arranged. Recessed lighting and Danish-looking furniture all in white. Pale glossy flooring that we’re dripping on.
“Let me get you some towels,” Troy says, disappearing.
When he comes back, I rub myself self-consciously while Will introduces me, saying what we’ve agreed on, that I’m a criminal investigator consulting on Cameron’s case, nothing more and nothing less.
“Any news about this kidnapped girl in Petaluma?” Troy asks. “Does this have anything to do with Cameron?”
“We don’t know anything yet,” Will says. “We’re in close touch with the team there, though. As soon as we have news we’ll share it.”
Troy’s nod is weary as he leads us into the living room and motions toward sleek, armless chairs. I’m still holding my towel and fold it under me, feeling out of place here, off-center. But that won’t do. “Is your wife at home, Mr. Curtis?”
“Emily just went to lie down. The last few days have been tough on her.”
“Of course,” I say. “This has to be a terrifying time for you both, but I’m a little behind on this case.” I glance at Will to make sure I’m not overstepping myself, but he’s settled back in his chair. I have the lead, his body language tells me. I’m the one who needs catching up. “Can you walk me through the night of Cameron’s disappearance?”
Troy looks drained, but agrees. “I wish I’d been here, but I work in LA and stay at our Malibu house during the week.”
“What usually happens here on weeknights?”
“Dinner, homework. The usual stuff. I checked in with Emily a little before ten, Cameron was in her room. Everything seemed fine.”
“And the next morning? What happened then?”
“When Cameron didn’t come to breakfast, Emily checked her room, and that’s when she called me. I told her to contact the police, then I got on a plane.”
“Has your daughter seemed unhappy to you lately?” I ask.
Troy shakes his head. “Cameron’s always been quiet. She’s an introvert, more like Emily than me. But I wouldn’t say unhappy.”
“I understand she gets good grades and is sort of bookish. Not particularly athletic or popular. Did you ever think there might be more to her shyness or withdrawal?”
“What do you mean?”
I meet his eyes, which are cloud gray. “Some kids go inward, but really they’re acting out secretly. Cutting or using drugs. Engaging in risky sexual behavior.”
“No.” His flinch is almost microscopic, but I’ve seen it. “Nothing like that. She’s a good kid.”
“I’m not suggesting that your daughter’s not a good person, Mr. Curtis, or that she’s done anything wrong.”
“Teenagers can be hard to read.” Will steps in.
“Sometimes they’re struggling and no one knows,” I add. “They’
re good at hiding what they feel.”
“I’m not with her as much as I used to be,” Troy says. “But Emily would have noticed if something was really troubling Cameron.”
“Tell me a little about the adoption,” I say, changing course.
“We used an agency in Sacramento, Catholic Family Charities. I believe they’re still there.”
I jot down the name in the notebook I’m carrying. “Open or closed adoption?”
“Closed. Why do you ask?”
“Just thinking out loud. It’s not always the case, but some kids never get over the pain of being rejected. Abandoned by their first family. That pain can lead to certain types of behaviors and risks.”
“I already told you, nothing like that.”
“Did the agency reveal anything at all to you about her birth family?”
“Very little. We knew they had another child, quite a bit older. Also that there was some history of drug abuse and incarceration.”
“That didn’t scare you?”
“A little, I guess. Emily had very clear ideas of wanting to do some good, of helping where help is most needed.” His gaze narrows and suddenly he’s on the defensive. “Are you saying we did something wrong?”
“Not at all, I’m just laying out a few things to consider. Tell me, were there any older men in Cameron’s life that might have shown a particular interest in her? A family friend, perhaps, or a teacher?”
“Not that I can think of off the top of my head.”
“Steve Gonzales,” Emily says from the base of the floating staircase. “Her English teacher.” She’s approached us without making a sound.
(seventeen)
It’s one thing to see Emily Hague as Heidi Barrows in her sitcom Soho Girls, her jokes and clothes and haircut known all over the world, and another to be with her in her living room in the middle of an all-too-real tragedy. She’s more beautiful than any camera has been able to capture, and sad in a way that’s far too familiar. For a brief moment, I wonder if I’m going to be able to handle being here, but then the deeper objective takes over.