When the Stars Go Dark: A Novel

by Paula McLain

  “Because it wasn’t your fault.”

  I felt heat in my cheeks, and pressure. More than anything, I didn’t want to cry. Not in front of Lenore, who would never forget it. “Well…anyway.”

  “No, listen to me, Anna.” She sat forward and reached for my hands. “This is important. Sometimes grown-ups fall down. Your mom was probably in a world of hurt. I don’t know for sure. What happened to your family might be because she felt too much pain, or because the world got to be more than she could handle. Or hell, any number of reasons. But not because of you, sweetheart. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  I desperately wanted to believe her, but it was hard. The way her palms were folded around mine, she seemed to be offering to carry something for me. If only I could let it go. “Do you dream about Hap sometimes?” I asked. If I didn’t change the subject, I really was going to unravel.

  Her eyes passed over me so gently, full of love and acceptance. “Too much. That’s something I’d change if I could.”

  “But you can’t.” I wanted her to know how closely I’d been listening to her from the beginning.

  “I can’t.”

  “But you can make bread.”

  “That’s right, Anna.” She squeezed my hands once, twice before letting them go. “That’s something anyone can do.”

  (twenty-eight)

  When Will and I step back onto Fourth Street, he’s fuming. “Would it have killed you to back me up? Jesus, Anna. You know what kind of pressure I’m under.”

  I stop him with my hand. “I do know. I’m sorry. But it wouldn’t have been right to get Rod’s team involved when the MOs don’t line up.”

  He releases a frustrated noise, his mouth tight and closed, but he’d heard everything I had. Polly’s abductor broke into her house on a warm night, with lots of activity on the street, and took Polly at knifepoint in front of witnesses. How could that be the same guy who somehow lured Cameron out of the safety of her home, and probably manipulated her beforehand? She went willingly, like a farm girl in one of Grimms’ fairy tales who gets lured deeper and deeper into the dark forest by shiny trinkets dropped on the path. Looking up only when it’s too late, when she’s lost and afraid, far too far from home.

  “We’re going to figure this out, Will,” I say, “but you have to trust me.”

  “Do I?” His eyes blaze.

  “Anna! Wait up,” Rod Fraser calls suddenly from Eve’s porch. He’s motioning me back.

  I ask Will to wait and hurry over. “What’s up?”

  “I just wanted to say how sorry I am.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I reply without thinking. Then it hits me. He doesn’t mean our case or his own. He means me. The funeral and investigation.

  “I should have sent a card.” His eyes are dark with emotion. “My heart really went out to you.”

  “It’s okay,” I say dumbly.

  “I guess you must feel ready now. To be back on the job.”

  “Almost.” It’s the most honest word I’ve spoken all day. “Thanks, Rod.”

  “Of course.” He clears his throat. “Listen. There is something I can do for you guys. It’s not much, but we’ve got a helicopter patrolling night and day now, with a photographer shooting anything that looks out of place or notable from the air. There’s so much ground to cover. So many places this girl could be.”

  “Ours too.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. It wouldn’t take much to send the crew higher and wider, down to Gualala, too. As you said, we wouldn’t want to miss anything.”

  “That’d be great.” I reach for his hand, and then hug him impulsively instead, leaning into his barrel chest and neck for one beat longer than the moment warrants, missing Frank Leary and my partner. Missing Brendan, as complicated as that sounds. But most of all missing Hap. I’ve never needed him more.

  “If Shannan Russo’s dead, her remains might be hidden in the forest somewhere,” I tell Rod. “Just a tip we got. And keep an eye out for her car, too. I’ll get you the plate number.”

  “Sounds good,” he says as I step off the porch, feeling the smallest flicker of promise. Rod hasn’t offered much, but sometimes you have to start there, with almost nothing. And hope for everything anyway.

  (twenty-nine)

  “A helicopter can cover a lot of territory,” I relay to Will as we walk toward his cruiser. “That will help make up for the men we don’t have.”

  “I’d rather have the men,” he says without looking at me.

  Wickersham Park is still eerily silent. We pass by an empty teeter-totter traced with shadows. “I know you’re mad at me. Let’s talk this through.”

  “What’s the point?”

  When we reach his vehicle, he slides behind the wheel, his body language all barricade. “You heard everything Rod said,” I try again. “Let’s use our energy to learn more about Cameron.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that you could be wrong about all this? What if there is a connection and you’re missing it, Anna? Have you never made a mistake?”

  I hold my tongue, looking into the splayed shadows along the street. “What if we go to Napa to see Drew Hague?”

  “Maybe.” The tension in his body shifts microscopically.

  “We’re less than an hour away from there. What do you think?”

  “It can’t hurt.”

  * * *

  —

  It’s only been an hour or so since we left the downtown area for Fourth Street, but it’s clear as we head back in that direction toward the highway that something has accelerated. Kentucky Street, one block west of Petaluma Boulevard, is bumper-to-bumper with media trucks now—local, regional, and national. Dateline, Primetime Live, America’s Most Wanted.

  “Must be a press conference,” I say.

  “Another one?”

  Since October 2, the day after Polly Klaas’s kidnapping, media attention has been growing exponentially, and local volunteer efforts, too, Sergeant Barresi explained before we headed to see Rod Fraser. These aren’t experts, just ordinary townspeople—getting involved with the search effort on their own initiative, going door-to-door, spreading the word about Polly. As Barresi told it, he’s both impressed and a little in awe at the size of the response. A local business owner donated empty retail space for the Polly Klaas Search Center, and the phone banks are already up and running. Someone else has divided the town and surrounding area into a grid of seventeen locales, and over six hundred townspeople are conducting daily searches of the fields, creeks, and farmland around Petaluma. They aren’t waiting to be told what to do, or how to be useful. They’re acting.

  Every restaurant and storefront already has Polly’s missing poster in the window. Apparently the owner of a small downtown print shop has rolled out thousands of copies and challenged every other business in town with access to a printer to do the same. A mailing effort is underway sending flyers to hospital emergency rooms and police departments all over Northern California. Truck drivers and bus drivers are being given boxes of flyers to distribute on their routes, widening the net even farther.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” I say to Will as we move slowly back through town.

  “Me neither. Four days in, she’s America’s Child. How does that happen?”

  “The town feels responsible for her. That’s rare. Do you really think they know her personally?”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” he says. “They care about her. That’s what matters.”

  “What is there to learn here?” I ask him.

  We’ve come to a long stoplight, and he stares at me. “That the word ‘kidnapping’ has a shitload of power.”

  “Emily should go public with a plea for help,” I say. “I know why she’s terrified of a media circus, but she still has a voice when most don’t. Millions and millions of
people know who she is. Think of what that kind of attention could do for Cameron.”

  “We can’t force her. She’s not ready, Anna.”

  “This isn’t about her.” I hear my voice pitch sharply. My heart has begun to thwack off rhythm. “We’re wasting so much time. We should have had a search center and a phone bank up from the beginning. We should have been printing flyers like crazy and sending them everywhere. If we had, Cameron might be home now.”

  “Are you saying I fucked up?”

  “Not at all,” I rush to say. “I blame the family. They’re the ones who begged you to keep all this quiet. Emily shouldn’t have a choice to hide away.”

  He sighs heavily and stretches his neck to one side, trying to unknot some of the tension there. “Maybe you’re right about the keeping quiet part. I should have trusted my gut on that. But you have got to back off Emily a little, okay? She’s not perfect, but she’s also not the enemy, Anna. She’s just a mom.”

  “I know.”

  “Shit. Her life just got smacked sideways.”

  I know. Deep in my chest, my breath catches on a familiar jagged hook. But Cameron is what matters now.

  “Maybe we don’t have witnesses or a crime scene,” I finally say, “but you and I both know Cameron’s life is just as much at risk as Polly’s.”

  “Not every kid lands on the milk carton,” Will replies flatly, his voice seeming to come from very far away. “Some just vanish.”

  I can hear him hanging on to his anger about Rod and my disloyalty, but I don’t care suddenly. I’m angry, too. “That’s right, Will. But I’m not ready to be okay with that. Are you?”

  * * *

  —

  It’s taking us forever to get through the center of town. Traffic is standing still for no reason that I can see. It’s the middle of the day, too early for rush hour, as if there’s such a thing in a small borough like Petaluma. We’re all but creeping.

  Then I see why. “Will, stop the car.”

  Strung between two streetlights in the middle of Petaluma Boulevard, a banner has just been erected. Large work ladders still straddle the sidewalk. A dozen or more kids and their parents spill into the street looking up. A block ahead of us, the central traffic light changes to red, and we watch a woman in jeans and an open trench coat climb out of her VW Beetle. Then others follow, killing their engines to stand in the street, staring up at the bulging, colorful bubble letters: PLEASE SEND POLLY HOME! LOVE P.J.H.S.

  “Oh Jesus,” Will says. He puts his cruiser in park and we get out, now part of whatever this is, a spontaneous gathering, a voiceless prayer.

  These are Polly’s classmates from the junior high school. They’ve painted hearts and flowers, birds and clouds, six feet high and forty-five feet long, sweeping over the street. No matter what happens next, it’s amazing what they’ve done. Even if the sign gets forgotten one day soon, faded and abandoned in Polly’s shuttered rescue center. Right now, past the puffy hearts and flowers and balloons, past cheerful hope and sweetness, innocence is a demand. Her seventh- and eighth-grade classmates have written a letter—sky-high and bright and loud—to Polly’s abductor.

  (thirty)

  Leaving Petaluma, we follow directions that Will’s deputy, Leon Jentz, has passed along to Will over the radio, skirting the Petaluma River along 116 before cutting farther inland, through lush farmland and then into wine country. Emily said her brother had done well for himself, but as we drive through the more commercial, kitschy part of town, over the Napa River and onto the Silverado Trail, it becomes obvious that Drew has done much more than well. Extravagant estates glow like jewels next to big-name wineries like Stag’s Leap and Mumm, their tasting terraces etched into the hillsides with million-dollar views. “Scenic” isn’t the word. This is paradise, with a staggering price tag.

  Will whistles as we roll through the gated entrance to Provisions, Drew Hague’s private vineyard. Leon did some research for us and learned that Emily’s brother and sister-in-law don’t bottle or distribute their own wine, just sell the grapes in and around the valley. Their product is widely respected apparently, even prized, but it’s obvious that their money was made well in advance of their success here. The curved drive carries us past sculpted cypress trees toward a Grecian-looking manse with high columns surrounding a central courtyard. It’s like Tara, or the Parthenon.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Will says with a chuckle.

  The struts and pediments on the main house seem borrowed from the Greek Empire. Creamy-looking stucco goes on and on in every direction, much of it strung with ivy. Near the vast marble entryway, two slender deerhounds doze, barely noticing our arrival, as if like everything else they’re strictly ornamental.

  When we ring the bell, an assistant in a striped suit with a lapel mic lets us in, looking like a security guard crossed with a marketing director.

  “Wait here, will you?” she says, depositing us in a thickly carpeted library. Custom cherry shelves gleam from floor to ceiling, filled with hardbound volumes and cataloged sets that appear to have been arranged by color. In the hearth a grand fire blazes, though it’s barely October. I can feel it from across the room, and begin to sweat.

  After what seems an unreasonably long interval, Lydia Hague arrives in a plain yellow T-shirt and the kind of overalls you’d buy at the local Farm & Fleet. I do a double take and watch as Will does the same before he introduces us. Whatever we’ve been expecting, it’s not this.

  “It’s harvesttime,” Lydia says, as if that explains everything from her unkempt silvering hair to her shoeless state, her white athletic socks plain and bright on the rich carpeting. Since she doesn’t seem embarrassed, maybe it does. “My husband will be tied up for the rest of the day, I’m afraid, and into the night, too. We pick our whites after dark a lot of the time, to keep the sugar levels stable.”

  Her niece is missing and she wants to talk about sugar levels? “Cameron’s in real trouble,” I say, feeling annoyed. “He’ll need to make himself available.”

  I’m ready for an argument, but Lydia only nods soberly and then reaches for the house phone. “Drew’s on one of the tractors,” she says once she’s hung up, “but Janice will try to reach him.”

  Janice is the stripe-suited assistant, I assume.

  She gestures to the seating area in front of the fire, plush and oversize. “Of course we’re worried sick about Cameron. How can we help?”

  Will and I share a look before sitting down. It’s hard to get a bead on Lydia or this place. There’s a glaring disconnect between how she looks and the palace she lives in, between her initial distractedness and her steadiness now. What’s the story?

  “Can you describe your relationship with your niece?” Will asks her once we’re settled. “Would you say you’re close?”

  “We were a lot closer when she was young. Our son, Ashton, is two years older, so they grew up together, at least at holidays. We moved out here five years ago.”

  “Before Emily and Troy relocated to Mendocino,” I fill in.

  “That’s right. The idea was to see each other more, but that hasn’t happened as much as we’d like. We’re so busy now, and Ashton is out east most of the year.”

  Her tone is steady, but her body language has changed and stiffened. I have a sense she’s holding something back. “When did you see Cameron last?”

  “In July, I guess, for Emily’s birthday.”

  “How did she seem then?”

  “Cameron? A little checked out, actually. She seemed to be going through something, but the whole day was sort of a train wreck.”

  I study Lydia, feeling beads of sweat pearl on my forehead. Now that I’m closer to the fire, it seems even more ridiculous and overpowering. I lean back, blotting the perspiration with my sleeve. “Would you say you and your husband have things in common with Emily and Troy?”
<
br />   Lydia’s brows lift. “Not really. They’ve made certain choices….” She lets the rest of her sentence drop.

  “Choices?” Will prompts.

  “Emily hasn’t had a typical life, I know. I try not to judge.”

  “But?” I encourage her.

  “But we’ve never really understood why she stays with Troy, honestly. He’s incapable of being faithful, even when they were first dating. A man like that doesn’t change, and Emily should have so much more, should have her pick of anyone. It’s never made any sense.”

  Will catches my eye. I’ve said as much to him about Troy’s infidelity, but the pattern is a lot clearer to me now that I know Emily’s family history. “What about Cameron?” I ask, shifting focus. “Has the tension in her parents’ marriage changed her in your opinion?”

  “Maybe,” Lydia says thoughtfully. “But honestly, she’s been changing for a while. Or that’s how it seems to me.”

  “In what way?”

  “More sensitive, I guess, and easily upset. Harder to get close to.”

  “Guarded?” I throw out.

  “Maybe that’s it.” Her gaze darkens. “When she first came, I thought it was going to be a good thing for all of them. Emily had wanted a child for a long time. And she was always so overwhelmed by her career. Hollywood.” Lydia says it as if she’s named a virus.

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know exactly. At some point, Cameron seemed to shut down and go inward. Honestly, I’ve been worried about her for years now. Not that there was a lot of room to say that to Emily.”

  I sit forward, suddenly far more interested in Lydia. Will seems to agree.

  “Worried how?” he presses. “About what exactly?”

  “I thought she might hurt herself or something. Don’t girls her age do that sometimes, cut themselves or act out self-destructively?”

  “Did you ever offer her any help?” I ask.

  “I tried. In July she seemed like she was barely there. When I asked, she said she was fine, but later we learned she’d just found out about the baby. Troy’s assistant, no less. What a nightmare.” Her look is barbed. “You know about that, I assume.”