by Chris Mooney
The Missing
( Darby McCormick - 1 )
Chris Mooney
The Missing
Chris Mooney
Genuine tragedies are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.
G. W. F. HEGEL, I The Man from the Woods (1984)
Chapter 1
Darby McCormick grabbed Melanie by the arm and pulled her into the woods with no trails. Nobody came out this way. The real attraction was behind them, across Route 86, the biking and hiking trails along Salmon Brook Pond.
'Why are you taking me out here?' Melanie asked.
'I told you,' Darby said. 'It's a surprise.'
'Don't worry,' Stacey Stephens said. 'We'll have you back at the convent in no time.'
Twenty minutes later, Darby dropped her back-pack on the spot where she and Stacey often came to hang out and smoke – a sloping wall of dirt littered with empty beer cans and cigarette butts.
Not wanting to ruin her new pair of Calvin Klein jeans, Darby tested the ground to make sure it was dry before sitting down. Stacey, of course, just plunked her butt right down in the dirt. There was something inherently grubby about Stacey, with her heavy mascara, hand-me-down jeans and T-shirts always worn a size too tight – nothing was ever quite able to mask the sense of desperation that hovered around her like Pig-Pen's dirt cloud.
Darby had known Melanie since, well, since forever, really, the two of them having grown up on the same street. And while Darby could recall all the events and stories she had shared with Mel, she couldn't for the life of her remember how she had met Stacey, or how the three of them had become such good friends. It was as if Stacey had suddenly appeared one day. She was with them all the time during study hall, at football games and parties. Stacey was fun. She told dirty jokes and knew the popular kids and had gone as far as third base, whereas Mel was a lot like the Hummel figurines Darby's mother collected – precious, fragile things that needed to be stored in a safe place.
Darby unzipped her backpack and handed out the beers.
'What are you doing?' Mel asked.
'Introducing you to Mr Budweiser,' Darby said.
Mel fumbled with the charms on her bracelet. She always did that when she was nervous or scared.
'Come on, Mel, take it. He won't bite.'
'No, I mean, why are you doing this?'
'To celebrate your birthday, dumbass,' Stacey said, cracking open her beer.
'And for getting your license,' Darby said. 'Now we have someone to take us to the mall.'
'Won't your dad notice these cans are missing?' Mel asked Stacey.
'He has six cases in the downstairs fridge, he won't miss six lousy beers.' Stacey lit a cigarette and tossed the pack to Darby. 'But if he and my mom came home and caught us drinking, I wouldn't be able to sit or see straight for a week.'
Darby held up her can. 'Happy Birthday, Mel – and congratulations.'
Stacey drained half her beer. Darby took a long sip. Melanie sniffed her beer first. She always smelled anything new before tasting it.
'It tastes like soggy toast,' Mel said.
'Keep drinking, it will taste better – and you'll feel better too.'
Stacey pointed to what looked like a Mercedes snaking its way up Route 86. 'I'm going to be driving one of those someday,' she said.
'I can totally see you as a chauffeur,' Darby said.
Stacey shot Darby the finger. 'No, shitbird, somebody's going to be driving me around in one of those 'cause I'm going to marry a rich guy.'
'I hate to be the one to break this to you,' Darby said, 'but there are no rich guys in Belham.'
'That's why I'm going to New York City. And the man I marry is not only going to be drop-dead gorgeous, he's going to treat me right. I'm talking dinners at nice restaurants, nice clothes, any kind of car I want – he's even going to have his own plane to fly us to our fabulous beach house in the Caribbean. What about you, Mel? What kind of guy are you going to marry? Or is your heart still set on being a nun?'
'I'm not going to become a nun,' Mel said and, as if to prove her point, took a long sip.
'Does that mean you finally gave up the goods to Michael Anka?'
Darby nearly choked on her beer. 'You've been making out with Booger Boy?
'He stopped that back in the third grade,' Mel said. 'He doesn't, you know, pick it anymore.'
'Lucky for you,' Darby said, and Stacey howled with laughter.
'Come on,' Mel said. 'He's nice.'
'Of course he's nice,' Stacey said. 'Every guy acts nice in the beginning. Once he gets what he wants from you, he'll treat you like yesterday's garbage.'
'That's not true,' Darby said, thinking about her father – Big Red, they used to call him, just like the gum. When her father was alive, he always held open the door for her mother. On Friday nights, her parents would come home from dinner and Big Red would put on one of his Frank Sinatra records and sometimes dance with her mother, check to cheek, as he sang about how those were the days.
'Trust me, Mel, it's all an act,' Stacey said. That's why you've got to stop being so mousy. You keep acting that way, they'll take advantage of you every time, trust me.'
Then Stacey started in on another one of her lectures about boys and all the sneaky things they did to trick you into giving them what they wanted. Darby rolled her eyes, leaned back against a tree and looked off in the distance at the big, glowing neon cross overlooking Route 1.
As Darby drank her beer, she watched the traffic zipping across both lanes of Route 1 and thought about the people inside those cars, interesting people with interesting lives off to do interesting things in interesting places. How did you become interesting? Was it something you were born with, like your hair color or your height? Or did God decide for you? Maybe God chose who was interesting and who wasn't, and you just had to learn to live with whatever you were handed.
But the more Darby drank, the stronger and clearer that inner voice of hers grew, the one that told her, with some sense of authority, that she, Darby Alexandra McCormick, was destined for bigger things – maybe not the life of a movie star but something definitely better and a whole lot bigger than her mother's Palmolive world of cleaning, cooking and cutting coupons. Sheila McCormick's biggest thrill was the greedy hunt for bargains on the clearance racks.
'You hear that?' Stacey whispered.
Snap-snap-snap – the sound of dry twigs and branches being crunched by footsteps.
'It's probably a raccoon or something,' Darby whispered.
'Not the branches,' Stacey said. 'The crying.'
Darby put her beer down and poked her head up over the slope. The sun had gone down a while ago; she saw nothing but the faint outline of tree trunks. The dry, snapping sound grew louder. Was someone really out there?
The snapping and cracking sounds stopped, and then they all heard the woman's voice, faint but clear:
'Please let me go, I swear to God I won't tell anyone what you did.'
Chapter 2
'Take my purse,' the woman in the woods said. 'There's three hundred dollars in there. I can get you more money, if that's what you want.'
Darby grabbed Stacey by the arm and pulled her back behind the slope. Melanie huddled up against them.
'This is probably just a mugging, but he might have a knife, maybe even a gun,' Darby whispered. 'She'll hand over her purse, and then he'll run away and it will be over. So let's just keep quiet.'
Both Mel and Stacey nodded.
'You don't have to do this,' the woman said.
As scary as it was, Darby knew she had to look over the slope again. When the police came with their questions, she wanted to be able to recall everything she saw – every word, every sound.
The woman started crying. 'Please. Please don't.'
The mugger whispered something Darby couldn't hear. They're so close, she thought.
Stacey had decided to take a look, too. She moved closer to Darby.
'What's going on?' Stacey whispered.
'I don't know,' Darby said.
A car was heading up Route 86. The headlights formed a pair of eerie white circles that were now sliding and bouncing across the tree trunks and the sloping ground full of rocks, leaves, and downed tree limbs and branches. Darby heard music – Van Halen's 'Jump,' David Lee Roth's voice growing louder along with the worrisome voice in her head telling her to look away, look away now. God knows she wanted to, but some other part of her brain had taken control, and Darby didn't look away as the headlights washed over her, David Lee Roth's booming voice singing to go ahead and jump, and she saw a woman dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt kneeling by a tree, her face a deep, dark red, eyes wide and fingers desperately clawing at the rope tied around her throat.
Stacey jumped to her feet and knocked Darby backward against the dirt. A rock smacked the side of her head hard enough that she saw stars. Darby heard Stacey pushing her way past branches, and when she rolled onto her side, she saw Mel running away.
Next came the dry crack of branches and twigs snapping – the mugger was coming toward them. Darby scrambled to her feet and ran.
*
Darby caught up with Stacey and Mel at the corner of East Dunstable. The closest pay phones were the ones around the corner from Buzzy's, the town's popular convenience store, pizzeria and sub shop. They ran the rest of the way without talking.
It seemed to take forever to get there. Sweating and out of breath, Darby picked up the phone to dial 911 when Stacey slammed down the receiver.
'We can't call,' Stacey said.
'Have you lost your goddamn mind?' Darby shot back. Behind her fear was a severe and growing anger directed at Stacey. It shouldn't have come as a shock that Stacey had pushed her aside and run off. Stacey always put herself first – like last month, when the three of them made plans to go to the movies only to have Stacey cancel at the last minute because Christina Patrick called and invited her to some party. Stacey was always doing stuff like that.
'We were drinking, Darby.'
'So we won't tell them.'
'They'll smell the beer on our breath – and you can forget about chewing mint gum or brushing your teeth or gargling with mouthwash, because none of that works.'
'I'll risk it,' Darby said, and tried to yank Stacey's hand away from the receiver.
Stacey wouldn't let go. 'The woman's dead, Darby.'
'You don't know that.'
'I saw the same thing you did -'
'No, you didn't, Stacey, you couldn't have seen the same thing I did because you ran away. You pushed me aside, remember?'
'It was an accident. I swear I didn't mean -'
'Right. As usual, Stacey, the only person you care about is yourself.' Darby ripped Stacey's hand away and dialed 911.
'All you're going to get is punished, Darby. Maybe you won't get to go down the Cape with Mel, but your father won't -' Stacey stopped herself. She was crying now. You don't know what goes in my house. None of you do.'
The operator came on the line: 'Nine-one-one, what is the nature of your emergency?'
Darby gave the operator her name and described what had happened. Stacey ran behind one of the Dumpsters. Mel stared down at the hill where they used to go sledding as kids, her fingers touching each of the charms on her bracelet.
An hour later, Darby was walking back through the woods with a detective.
His name was Paul Riggers. She had met him at her father's funeral. Riggers had big white teeth and reminded Darby of Larry, the slimy next-door neighbor from Three's Company.
There's nothing here,' Riggers said. 'You kids probably scared him off.'
He stopped walking and shined his flashlight on a blue L.L. Bean backpack. It was unzipped all the way and she could see the three Budweiser cans lying inside the bottom.
'I take it that's yours.'
Darby nodded as her stomach flipped and squeezed and flipped again, as if it were trying to tear itself away to find a place to hide.
Her wallet had been removed from her backpack. It was now lying on the ground, along with her library card. The money was gone, and her learner's permit, printed with her name and address, was missing.
Chapter 3
Darby's mother was waiting for her at the police station. After Darby finished giving her statement to the police, Sheila had a private talk with Detective Riggers for about half an hour and then drove Darby home.
Her mother didn't talk. Darby didn't get the sense Sheila was mad, though. When her mother got this quiet, generally she was just deep in thought. Or maybe she was just tired, having to pull double shifts at the hospital since Big Red died last year.
'Detective Riggers told me what happened,' Sheila said, her voice dry and raspy. 'Calling nine-one-one – that was the right thing to do.'
'I'm sorry they had to call you at work,' Darby said. 'And I'm sorry for the drinking.'
Sheila put her hand on Darby's leg and gave it a squeeze – her mother's signal to let Darby know everything was okay between them.
'Can I give you a piece of advice about Stacey?'
'Sure,' Darby said. She had an idea what her mother was going to say.
'People like Stacey don't make good friends. And if you hang out with them long enough, at some point they'll end up dragging you down with them.'
Her mother was right. Stacey wasn't a friend; she was dead weight. Darby had learned the lesson the hard way, but the lesson was learned. As far as Stacey was concerned, good riddance.
'Mom, the woman I saw… Do you think she got up and ran away?'
'That's what Detective Riggers thinks.'
Please God, please let him be right, Darby said to herself.
'I'm glad you're okay.' Sheila squeezed Darby's leg again, only this time it felt harder, the way you grip something to keep from falling.
Two days later, on a Monday afternoon, Darby came home from school and found a black sedan with tinted windows parked in her driveway.
The door opened and out stepped a tall man wearing a black suit and a stylish red tie. Darby spotted the slight bulge of a sidearm under his suit jacket.
'You must be Darby. My name is Evan Manning. I'm a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.' He showed his badge. He was tanned and handsome, like a TV cop. 'Detective Riggers told me about what you and your friends saw in the woods.'
Darby could barely get the words out. 'You found the woman?'
'No, not yet. We still don't know who she is. That's part of the reason why I'm here. I'm hoping you can help me identify her. Would you mind taking a look at some pictures?'
She took the folder and, with a sense of falling, opened it to the first page.
The word MISSING ran across the top sheet. Darby looked at a Xeroxed picture of a woman wearing a nice string of pearls over a pink cardigan sweater. Her name was Tara Hardy. She lived in Peabody. According to the information printed under her picture, she was last seen leaving a Boston nightclub on the night of February 25.
The woman in the second picture, Samantha Kent, was from Chelsea. She had failed to report to her shift at the Route 1 IHOP on March 15. Samantha Kent had a painfully toothy smile and was the same age as Tara Hardy. Only Samantha was heavily into tattoos. She had six of them, and while Darby couldn't see any of them in the picture, the description and location of each of the tattoos were listed.
Both women, Darby sensed, carried the same desperate quality as Stacey. You could see it in their eyes, that bottomless need for attention and love. Both women had blond hair – just like the woman from the woo
ds.
'It might be Samantha Kent,' Darby said. 'No, wait, it can't be her.'
'Why not?'
'Because it says here she's been missing for over a month.'
'Look at her face.'
Darby studied the picture for a moment. 'The woman I saw, her face was thin and her hair was real long,' she said. 'Samantha Kent's face is round and she has short hair.'
'But it looks like her.'
'Kind of Darby handed the folder back and rubbed her hands on her jeans. 'What happened to her?'
'We don't know.' Manning gave her a business card. 'If you remember anything else, even the smallest detail, you can call me at this number,' he said. 'It was nice meeting you, Darby.'
Her nightmares didn't stop until about a month later. During the day, Darby rarely thought about what happened in the woods unless she happened to bump into Stacey. Avoiding her was easy enough – too easy, really. It just went to prove how they'd never really been true friends.
'Stacey said she was sorry,' Mel said. 'Why can't we go back to being friends?'
Darby shut her locker. 'You want to be friends with her, that's your business. But I'm done with her.'
One thing Darby had in common with her mother was a love of reading. Sometimes on Saturday mornings she'd join Sheila on her yard sale trips, and while her mother was busy haggling over the price of another stupid knickknack, Darby would be on the prowl for cheapo paperbacks.
Her latest find was a book called Carrie. It was the cover that had grabbed her attention: a girl's head floating above a town in flames. How cool was that? Darby lay on her bed, deep in the part where Carrie was going to the prom (only the popular kids were going to play a sick, cruel joke on her) when the living room stereo kicked on and Frank Sinatra's booming voice started singing 'Come Fly with Me.' Sheila was home.
Darby glanced over at the clock on her nightstand. It was almost eight-thirty. Her mother wasn't supposed to be home until eleven or so. Sheila must have knocked off work early.