by Paula McLain
Will has clearly had a day. He downs his Guinness in two minutes flat, his shoulders looking sloped and weighted down. I have an urge to hug him but think better of it.
“What was the upshot in Gualala?” I ask.
“Depressing as hell. By all accounts this girl Shannan is trouble with a capital T. A habitual runaway into drugs of every kind, and sex, too. In sixth grade she got suspended for giving a blow job in the school bathroom, apparently for some kid’s lunch money.”
I can hear the recoil in his voice. The revulsion. Because I’m a woman, my filter is different. I live in a woman’s body. Know the vulnerabilities acutely. All the ways you can get put on a table as a victim, or put yourself there. How sex can be weaponized from inside and out. “Go on. What else?”
“When Denny and I spoke with the mother, she couldn’t even remember how many times Shannan has run away. Usually she comes back after a few weeks, thinner and dead broke. This last time she sent a note saying that she was leaving of her own free will and didn’t want anyone searching for her. The postmark was stamped in Ukiah on June tenth. Sometimes Shannan talked about moving to Seattle, so Mom assumes she was headed there.”
“Why call in the absence now?”
“You’ll never guess.” The bitterness in his voice doesn’t suit him, but makes sense given the context.
“What?”
“She got a call from a psychic. A local woman named Tally Hollander. Anyway, this Tally finds Karen Russo in the phone book and calls to basically tell her Shannan’s dead. I mean, who does that?”
I feel cold suddenly. If that’s what happened, it does sound ruthless. “What did she actually say?”
“That Shannan had been murdered. Apparently she had a vision of a forest. She thinks Shannan’s body might be there.”
“What forest?”
“Beyond her extraordinary powers to narrow it down, I guess.” He makes a disgusted sound through his nose. “She called me, too, right after Cameron disappeared and was just as vague.”
“Really? Sometimes these people are legitimate, Will. I’ve had good experiences with a few, who were very helpful, actually. What did she say about Cameron?”
“That she’d been taken and was in some sort of tight space in the dark.”
“Hmm. That’s it?”
“Yep. She might as well have told us to look on Mars.”
My thoughts click rapidly. It’s hard to know what’s next with so little to go on. “Shannan had a car, right? Has someone run the license-plate number?”
“I’m not sure. I could ask Denny, but the note was pretty clear. Shannan wanted to leave.”
“Maybe, but she’s still a minor, Will. We don’t know that she wasn’t in some kind of real trouble, or being coerced somehow. And what if she is dead in the forest?”
His look is sharp. “Tally Hollander is obviously a nutjob. You’re not that gullible, are you?”
“Hey now,” I push back. “This isn’t about me, and you know it. If Shannan’s alive, she needs our help. And if it’s too late, she still deserves to be found. We can’t just give up.”
“This girl isn’t Cameron, Anna. She’s a runner who’s been screwing up her life for a long time. And you heard what her mother said. Shannan doesn’t want anyone looking for her. End of story.”
“How can you even say that, Will? You’re a parent.”
“What does that mean?”
“We’re responsible for this girl.”
“Why? Why are we?”
“Because everyone wants to be looked for, whether they realize it or not.”
* * *
—
It’s a long time before either of us speaks again. The impasse is like a physical object between us, taking up space and air. Finally he notices the copy of Jane Eyre, his eyebrows lifting in curiosity.
“What happened with Steve Gonzales?”
“I liked him. He seems like a decent guy and a good teacher, and he obviously cares about Cameron. I don’t think he’s involved in this at all, but you can polygraph him to rule him out.” Wait. My words catch up to me and seem to clang. In the cruiser, before the call about Shannan hijacked our day, Will had started to tell me something important. “Emily’s polygraph,” I remind him. “How did she fail?”
(twenty-four)
When I was first trained to interview suspects, I learned the Reid Technique of interrogation like pretty much everyone in law enforcement then. John Reid was a Chicago cop who came up with the method when in the 1940s and 1950s the Supreme Court outlawed beating, bullying, and threatening out confessions. Reid liked science. He was a polygraph expert and thought cops could be taught to detect lies, too, through a suspect’s unconscious tics and gestures, repetitive speech patterns, stress responses. Through a series of escalating questions and steps, the interviewer was supposed to take more and more control while the polygraph did its work to register minute changes in heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, and respiration.
Like Will, I’ve always carried healthy skepticism about the polygraph, considering it a tool, yes, but nothing to hang your hat on, let alone a conviction. An increase in heart rate might suggest guilty feelings or behavior, sure. But in a case like Cameron’s, with a child’s life at stake, a subject’s emotions might only be hot and chaotic and bewildering. Unreliable. Also, in my experience, guilty people have no trouble passing polygraphs. Narcissists, psychopaths. People without a conscience.
“What happened, Will? What tripped her up?”
It’s obvious from his look that he wants to drop this conversation, but finally he relents. “The question was ‘Have you ever done harm to your daughter?’ Emily’s answer was no, and you’re familiar with how this works. The question comes up a few more times, differently worded. Each time Emily says no, and each time, her heart rate spikes.”
“That seems significant. Do you disagree?”
“I don’t know. The discrepancy could mean anything. She might have spanked Cameron too hard once, or locked her in her room. Parents stew over that kind of thing for years.” Will holds his pint between his palms and rolls the glass back and forth as if it might help him measure his words, help him persuade me. “It could be this case, for all we know. Her feeling of responsibility. That she couldn’t protect Cameron in her own home.”
Listening, I have to wonder if I’m jumping to conclusions. Or is he missing what’s right here in front of us? Parental guilt can be a thorny and bottomless thing, I know all too well. But something did happen in Emily’s home, and not just the night her daughter disappeared. Emily didn’t protect her daughter when it counted, when Cameron was far too young to protect herself. That gap has widened with time, becoming the crevasse of this moment. In all the ways that matter right now, Cameron’s past has created her present. “Will,” I say, “we have to talk about the abuse piece.”
He seems thrown. “What makes you think it didn’t happen before she came to the Curtises, if it happened at all?”
I ignore his cynicism and plunge forward. “Statistically, onset of sexual abuse falls between ages seven and thirteen. Around ninety percent are targeted by a family member. And the victims, Will, they’re quiet, troubled, lonely children. Girls like Cameron.” An intensity has crept into my voice, telling me it’s time to dial back, to hold myself in check, but somehow even the notion of self-control feels far away, beyond my grasp. “I think we should confront Emily and see what happens. We go to the free clinic with a warrant for Cameron’s file and then push it right across the table at her.”
Will looks shocked. “Christ, you’re cold, Anna. Her daughter is missing.” The word flares between us, sharp and spangled. “You don’t think that garners Emily a break, a little benefit of the doubt? And what about Troy Curtis? Why does he get a pass? He might be the one who hurt her.”
I’m sudden
ly aware of the heat in the room. The smell of fried fish wafting from the kitchen. The sticky bar top under my hands. Will’s challenge isn’t at all rhetorical. He thinks I’m over the edge, here. And I might be.
“I’m not forgetting about Troy,” I say quickly. “But Emily was the one home alone with Cameron, and the primary caregiver. She’d stopped acting to be a full-time mom. And she’s the one who failed her polygraph. I don’t think I’m being cold at all, just realistic. We don’t have time for kid gloves, Will. If Emily knew about the abuse, not only would that guilt light up the polygraph exactly this way, but also implicate her. Maybe she feels responsible because she is responsible. Maybe she closed her eyes when it was time to open them wide. Maybe she held her tongue when she should have shouted from the rafters.” The barstool beneath me seems to vibrate with tension. My voice shakes, full of heat. “Maybe she protected her brother, Drew, instead of Cameron.”
Will sits back, his expression shifting. “You seem awfully emotional, Anna.”
“I’m fine,” I shoot back, instantly on the defensive. “I just know I’m onto something here. Look, I found this poem in Cameron’s locker. It might be important.”
He takes Cameron’s postcard as I push it his way and reads the lines silently. When he’s finished, he looks up. “Shit. What fifteen-year-old reads Rilke?”
“A wounded one. ‘I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.’ Doesn’t that say it all? Some violence is random, obviously, more about chance and opportunity. But sometimes it’s very specific and in sync, like there’s a hidden connection, a vulnerability predators can sense in certain victims, even seeing them for the first time. When the damage is there, it can come through like radar. Almost as if the darkest part of someone’s story can speak directly through their body, alive in their cells. Do you follow me?”
Will looks uncomfortable, his face pink. “Are you saying it’s the victims’ fault somehow? That they’re causing someone to target them?”
“No, not at all. The opposite.” I pick up the postcard again, feeling frustrated. The right words seem beyond me.
“Then how? What actually happens?”
“I worked with a really smart psychological profiler once,” I try again. “He used the term ‘bat signal’ to talk about this sort of thing, how victims unwittingly announce themselves to abusers. We all come into the world with a pure bright light, right? We’re innocent, fresh as fucking heaven. Bright and pure and clean.”
“I believe that,” Will says, and the catch in his voice makes me feel less alone. “Everyone’s born with a clean slate.”
“Yes.” Emotion vibrates along an invisible string between us. “But then for some kids—one in ten, maybe, though it might be closer to one in four—really hard stuff happens to them, in their own family, or by an acquaintance whom that family trusts. Trauma, neglect, abuse, manipulation, coercion, exposure to violence. And they don’t have the tools to process it, or the words to talk about it. So silence follows. Forced complicity. Shame. Soon what you’ve got is thick black tar, and when the light shines through…” I let my sentence trail, knowing he’s probably realized I’m not talking just about my cases through the years, that some of what I know, I’ve lived first.
“Bat signal,” he says soberly.
“Yes. Big as the moon over Gotham City. And every psychopath, sociopath, sadist, alcoholic, narcissist piece of shit anywhere can see it and comes running. And when the two find each other, they click. They recognize each other on some deep level. It’s like they speak two variations of the same language.”
“Wow, okay. Jesus. That makes a little too much sense.” He picks up the damp napkin under his glass and begins to worry it, shaking his head. “But how does the original abuse happen if everyone gets a blank slate? Why are some kids targeted and not others?”
“Cameron wasn’t even four when her life was upended,” I explain to Will as my thoughts ricochet back through decades, to my own childhood and Jenny’s, and countless others’, gathering charged momentum. “Think about how young that is to have your whole life turn on a dime. But old enough to not know who you are anymore, or where you really belong. Even if Cameron didn’t seem lonely or scared to Emily and Troy, you can see how so much confusion and uncertainty could make her a little too trusting of others. She wanted love. She wanted to feel okay.” The muscles in my throat feel tight and strange, my tongue heavy, but I force my way to the end of my point. “And if that wasn’t enough, the scar of that early trauma might very well have drawn someone else her way. Another predator.”
Will sighs. “That would be pretty fucking ironic. I mean, if Emily and Troy thought they were helping a needy kid and ended up causing the damage that led to her being taken?”
He has been listening. “You asked why I can’t let Emily off the hook, Will? It’s exactly that. What if everything bad that happened to Cameron happened after she was rescued? After she was supposed to be safe and secure and happy?” My voice cracks on the last word. My hands tremble on the edge of the bar.
Will has noticed all of this and more. I’m well over my head and we both know it. But he can’t begin to realize how many other forces are pushing me, why there’s no way I can slow down now—why I can’t and won’t lose Cameron, no matter what.
He pushes back in his chair to better face me, his brow a map of concern. “You’re smart about this stuff, and really experienced. I know that. I also know your work in San Francisco took you through a lot of things no one should have to see, Anna. Maybe that’s why you’re back here.”
I feel myself flush, unable to meet his eyes.
“If all this gets to be too much, you need to tell me, okay? I’m here. We’re a team.” He reaches out for my arm and squeezes it for emphasis. “Yes?”
“Of course.” I swallow hard. “But, Will, someone has to save this girl.”
And it has to be me.
(twenty-five)
The next morning, October 5, I drive into town just as the sun is rising to meet Will at the GoodLife and grab coffee. Then we climb into his cruiser and head south along the coast toward Petaluma, skirting a single long gray fogbank that blanks out the sea and the horizon, everything but the road.
“Any news about the Russo girl?” I ask. I woke up thinking about her, as if I need another missing girl on my mind. “Did you run the plate?”
“I did. Nothing of note except the registration’s expired. Her mother decided not to renew the tags probably. Why waste money?”
“What about an APB on the car? Just to be sure.”
He shoots me a here we go again look. “On a psychic’s claim?”
“Maybe,” I say, holding my ground. “Maybe you don’t believe in them, but they’re not all crazy. Anyway, what does it cost us to follow up on this?”
He says nothing.
“Just because the girl’s led a troubled life doesn’t mean she’s not worth our time. We shouldn’t let anything go right now. The stakes are too high.”
He tucks his chin, half a nod. I watch his face, waiting for more, and finally he says, “Okay.”
* * *
—
An hour later we come into Petaluma through olive groves, cattle land, a rural patchwork of farms and fields. I’ve forgotten how like New England this part of California looks and feels.
“It’s Our Town,” I tell Will as we roll along Petaluma Boulevard, past historic adobe buildings and vintage façades. There seems to be only one bar, and the sign reads SALOON.
“We used to call it Chickaluma.” Will points at the poultry-processing plant. “Can you believe we’re forty-five miles from San Francisco?”
It’s too close. I have a spiking irrational fear that all my pain and regret might get louder at this distance. “Crazy,” I say thinly, focusing on the tidy storefronts and sidewalk, the savings bank with a giant smil
ey-face sticker in the window. Nothing seems out of place, not even a jaywalker. “A town like this feels so safe and apart from the outside world. You start to wonder if it’s dangerous.”
“The fairy tale of it, you mean?”
“Right. False security. You stop looking over your shoulder, because the picture feels real. Nothing bad can happen when there’s a moat around the whole town, right? Battlements. Guards at the gate. But the dragon shows up anyway.”
Will glances over. His look is loaded. “You know what this place reminds me of?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Mendocino.”
* * *
—
The Petaluma PD is just north of downtown. We park, sign in, and wait at the front desk until a junior officer appears to lead us back to a string of offices.
“This is Sergeant Barresi,” he says, stopping at an open door.
The sergeant is a big guy with a sallow face and slicked-back hair. As he stands up from behind his desk, I’m reminded of a lot of commanding officers I’ve worked with over the years, right down to his beige suit, so new it looks shiny. For the press conferences, I guess. Ready or not, he’s PR now. It’s already clear that this case will be high profile. Polly’s age and the way she was taken, so brutally and from her own home, have triggered widespread fear and concern. The entire nation will be watching this one unfold.
“I thought we were supposed to meet with Ed Van Leer,” Will says.
“He’ll be along shortly. We’re co-leading the case. Tell me what I can do for you.”
“We’ve got a missing girl up in Mendocino,” I jump in. “Cameron Curtis. I’m sure you’ve heard. Now there’s another missing report filed in Gualala. Shannan Russo, age seventeen, last seen early June. Just trying to see if any dots connect.”
“We’re not even sure what our own dots are,” Barresi says flatly. “Crime happened late Friday. We’re only at Tuesday morning, here. I’ve got FBI everywhere, from Washington and San Francisco, more agents than I’ve ever seen in one place. But that doesn’t mean I can find my ass.”