“I can try. They held the funeral a week ago. No matter if Raymond was running drugs or kidnapping small children, he was still their son, and I expect he was once a sweet little boy. That’s who they buried, the sweet little boy. I’m going to count on you to remember that. The parents are shattered to the core.”
“I understand. I wouldn’t ask unless I thought it might save this child,” said Delia.
Pat looked at Delia again, as if she was trying to look into her. “I’ll walk out with you. Sitting is the curse of the twenty-first century.”
On the sidewalk, Pat stretched her arms up. “Why in the world would a car rental company give you a red car? Who does that? Rental cars should blend into a gray or beige background of invisibility.”
Delia patted the roof of the Ford Focus. “The Chinese regard red as the color of prosperity and good luck. Hayley and I need every bit of that. Thanks, Pat.”
CHAPTER 39
The Blanchard family lived in a house overlooking the town. Delia’s mother would have predicted as much. One day while driving around Portland, her mother had said, “The ship captains, the company CEOs, and whoever is on top of the pecking order will always pick a location that is physically above the rest of us, a strategic holdover from the days when you had to have a clear sight of the enemy before they climbed over your walls.” Her perspective was based on history and current political maneuverings.
The housing development looked less than ten years old, with three-car garages and lawns manicured by people who didn’t live in the houses. The Blanchards brick and stone house perched on the highest edge of the cul-de-sac. But unlike every other house on the street, theirs was not festooned with pots of early fall chrysanthemums. Even before stepping out of the red Ford Focus rental car, Delia knew there would be a great room and that the view would look over the town, with the rolling hills as a backdrop.
She rang the doorbell, still unsure exactly where to start, how to ask grieving parents to help her. Could she have helped anyone else after her parents were killed? John Blanchard had agreed to a brief meeting before he left for Nashville to pick up his wife, who had been with her mother since the funeral.
He’d been waiting for her. John opened the door. Delia was expecting someone different, rougher, meaner, someone who would try to shuffle her out the door after a few political non-statements. But as soon as he opened the door, she was struck by how unvarnished he was. Like Ben, or Ira. Just a man with dark circles beneath his eyes, chino pants that had recently become too large, and the unrelenting molecular fumes of grief.
“Delia? I’m John, come on in.”
“Thank you for seeing me. I’m very sorry for your loss,” she said, wishing she knew what else to say, but knowing that she had to address the power of death.
He led her into their kitchen. “Do you mind if we meet in here? Can I get you something to drink? Iced tea?”
He needed normalcy, and his upbringing cushioned him with its rules of hospitality.
“I’d welcome a glass of water.”
After carefully placing a glass of water in front of her, he joined her at the end of the island counter.
“I promise to keep this short. I know the police have spoken to you. . . .”
“Several times,” he said.
“I’m not concerned with the crime as such, but with finding the child’s mother. The girl’s name is Hayley. I’ve never done anything like this before, and I’ve worked in protective services for ten years. The girl is just five years old. She maintains that she was permitted to Skype with her mother, so I am convinced that the mother is out there and is being held against her will.” Delia took a breath. “I didn’t offer much of a lead-in and I apologize, but I know that you will understand a parent’s agony in this situation.”
Delia wondered if the man had eaten in the last few days. There was no lingering scent of food, no hint of reheated casseroles delivered by anguished friends. His digestive system must be on hiatus, unable to take in nourishment, sanded raw by the death of his son. She understood the terrain that he was thrust into; all the rest of life would seem miniscule, irrelevant.
“I will leave it to you to know how helpful my information will be to your case. I can only tell you about our son. Raymond.”
What could she pick out that the police might have missed? She had to start somewhere. To the left of the kitchen island, a small ledge served as the family desk, where people kept track of grocery lists, and the weekly schedule. A framed photo of a young man looked out from a moment of hopefulness, a place that would never be the same again. Golden-haired, a hint of scorn around his mouth, the top edge of one side of his mouth rising up, but handsome, killer handsome. The kind of man that women with a few broken parts would flock to.
“What was one of the best parts of Raymond?” she said.
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “No one has asked us anything about the good parts of him. I appreciate that, I truly do. If you are honestly asking, and not just trying to be polite in the face of my grief, I will tell you. He was a wonderful storyteller, right from the time he started school. He could spin a story that would keep you on the edge of your seat,” he said. John cleared his throat. “He could make you believe anything, always the fantastical, over the top.” He rubbed his fingers along the edge of the counter.
“The idea of day-to-day work, like most of us do, did not appeal to my son. It was like he wanted to show me that he could outdo me, although I must have told him hundreds of times that I didn’t so much care what he did as long as it was good, meaningful work. I told him that he’d find the kind of work that would make him happy. My father never would have given me that kind of advice. He would have said happiness was for other people, not us. My father said we were meant to work hard. I wish I had given Raymond less and asked more of him.” He rubbed his thumb into the palm of one hand. “Do you have children?”
Almost all parents asked her this. Did she belong to the parental club? Did she know how it felt to have her heart beat to bits with a cleaver like parents did?
“No, not yet. And I don’t know if I ever will,” she said.
He went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “He worked a few years as a pharmaceutical rep, but he wasn’t good at working for other people. Raymond had huge plans, first with the Internet, but if he couldn’t be Steve Jobs, it wasn’t enough for him. Then for the last two years, he told us he was going into business for himself.”
Delia wished for an open window to let in fresh air. She felt the vibration of air conditioning, still necessary in Tennessee during September. The air that circulated throughout the house was heavy with death, filled with murmurings that their son would never come back. The back of her throat grew thick with the stale air of mourning.
Before she could ask anything else, John looked to the right, to the great room, as if he viewed their family diorama. “My wife said Raymond wanted to surpass me. We had bad years of locking horns back when he was a teenager, but what father and son don’t? She said that I should have paid attention to what was going on, I should have asked questions about where the money was coming from in the last year. But he could be so defensive. If I questioned anything, he took it as criticism.”
This man was on a search of every word, every glance from his dead son. “You may never find an answer that fits the tragedy, but I know you have to look. Do you have other children?” she said.
He looked back at Delia, seemingly surprised that he was speaking to another person, not just to himself. “No. Only Raymond.”
“Did you ever meet Emma Gilbert, the woman who was with him when he died?”
“No. I told the police that I’d never heard of her before the . . .” He didn’t have a word for the execution-style slaying of his son. And Emma Gilbert and the other man.
Raymond had been young, handsome, possibly manipulative, and driven to show his father that he was more important. There had to be more women. She was counting on the
fact that Raymond would have used women. Would he have sacrificed them to his cause of empire-building?
“Did he have girlfriends, women he brought home to meet you?” she asked. The right question eluded her.
John took a breath and exhaled an unpleasant cloud tinged with the scent of someone who was sick. “Not for the last year.” He looked down and examined one of his fingers, picking away a few flecks of blood from the closely bitten nails.
There it was, the way he looked down, avoiding her question. Finally something. “If I can’t find Hayley’s parents, she will be put into the foster care system. No one has reported this little girl missing, and she has given us every indication that her mother is being held against her will. If you know of someone who might have understood what was happening with your son, someone like a girlfriend, please tell me. A slim thread of information might be all I need to find her mother. Hayley wants to go home. Hayley and her parents still have a chance.”
She could tell that he knew more. John had found a shred to hang onto, he had salvaged something from the wreckage of his son’s death. But why should he tell Delia? He didn’t know her. Their conversation would soon be over. She had to offer him a token, a sign that she wasn’t only asking him to give her what she needed.
“My parents were killed in a house fire when I was nineteen. It is likely that my father set the fire. My sister was just thirteen at the time, and there is something that I’ve never told her about the fire, that I’ve never told anyone,” said Delia.
John stopped picking at his fingers. She had pulled him back from the full weight of his son’s murder. This man had gone through the agony of flying to the East Coast to identify and ultimately retrieve his son’s body. There was nothing more horrible left for him. Delia did not want to believe that the human heart was designed for this much suffering. But what if it was?
“Recently my sister has been demanding details of the fire. I went into the burning house before the fire trucks arrived. I never told her that I heard my mother calling. She must have been trapped upstairs. She was yelling for my father. They were still alive, and . . .” Delia stopped, caught between two worlds: one of fire and the other of Raymond.
John’s eyes cleared. He said, “And they died. No matter what you did, they died.” He stood up, went to a cabinet, and pulled open the door. He pulled out another glass and filled it at the faucet.
“No matter what I tried to do, I couldn’t bring Raymond back from his obsession with the big deal, striking it rich. But I never imagined he would enter the world of marketing heroin. Not in a million years,” he said. He looked at the water in the glass as if he were seeing it for the first time. He took a long drink, nearly emptying the glass. Delia wondered if this was the first thing that he had ingested all day.
“Raymond did have a girlfriend, or she thought she was his girlfriend. She showed up here last week. She told me she’d been living on the streets in Nashville and somehow read about Raymond’s funeral. I’ve been trying to help her; my wife doesn’t know. No one does,” he said.
Delia could almost taste the man’s need to stay connected with his son.
“She’s in a rehab center on the outskirts of Nashville. I agreed to pay her bill if she’d just stay, if I can visit her and when she’s able, she can tell me about who our son had become. You know, did he talk about me? Was he angry with me?”
“Is she addicted to heroin?”
He nodded yes.
Delia couldn’t threaten the tenuous lifeline that John gripped. “If I could talk with her, it might help me find the girl’s mother. She might not know anything, but John, I don’t have anything else to go on. I am lost. Would you help me? Please.”
Now he could get back to familiar territory. He was the mayor, public servant. He had the power to say yes or no. Delia waited for him to gain equilibrium and prayed that he would make the decision in her favor.
“I could stop at the rehab center before I pick up my wife at her mother’s house. You can follow me. I can’t guarantee that Courtney will talk with you.”
Delia could breathe again. “Thank you.” The young woman had a name: Courtney.
“She doesn’t always make sense. They’re evaluating her for what they called dual diagnosis.”
Addiction and mental disorders. Delia was back on familiar territory.
CHAPTER 40
Mid-September in Tennessee felt like July in Portland. It was just as humid, except in Maine, the sodium chloride in the air combined with the water in the atmosphere and swirled above the land until a breeze started up farther north in Damariscotta and ran down the coast, pushed by the muscled shoulders of Canadian air, and took the whole murky mess out to sea. Then the ocean opened her throat and swallowed.
Here in Tennessee, the moisture built up and formed a bond with the blossoming cloud of carbon monoxide from Nashville and the highways that spiraled out from the city. The only thing that could carry away this blanket of dank air was a thunderstorm, maybe a tornado. Even so, the moisture would only rise again, pulled up by the heat, and start all over again.
It was four o’clock and Delia’s blouse was wet under the arms, damp wherever it touched her skin.
Delia’s picture of a drug rehab center was dashed by the upscale setting where John pulled up his black Jeep Wrangler. The façade of the two-story building was painted white brick, and the landscaping rivaled John’s neighborhood. If he was paying for Courtney’s treatment, his bank account was taking a big hit.
“They’ll be eating dinner soon, and their schedule is not flexible. We only have a short time to talk with her. I wasn’t expecting the traffic snarl-up.”
John led the way into the rehab center, which was camouflaged as just another house on the outskirts of Nashville. The front door was huge. The thick metal door was made to look friendly yet secure, with decorative trim outlining an inner rectangle.
In her peripheral vision, she noticed a workman with a carpenter’s belt strapped onto his waist, not worn and softened to his shape as Greg’s was, but new and stiff. She turned to glance at him as his hammer swung from a leather loop. His shirt, the blue of shattered bird eggs in the spring, bore no soiled spots, no paint splatters. He didn’t wear work boots, but running shoes, New Balance, with a large dark blue N covering the sides of his gray shoes. A baseball cap was pulled low over his eyes. Shouldn’t he be careful with saws and hammers, the sharp rasp of metal tools on his vulnerable toes?
As John pulled open the front door, the workman turned away, picked up a crowbar, inserted the sloped end to a window frame, and thumped until one piece of wood screeched against old nails. He looked over his shoulder and said, “Rotten wood. It’s best to get rid of it.” If she had to guess, she’d say the workman was a recent graduate of the program.
Inside, John pressed a button on the wall to alert an attendant. Delia looked up; security cameras covered the front door. Delia picked up a pamphlet on a side table. The Phoenix House, treatment center for addiction.
“John, it’s always good to see you. We weren’t expecting you today. Are you here to see Courtney?” said a woman who appeared from the hallway. Her blond hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, white blouse, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, wedding ring, black pants, shoes with a heel but the kind that wouldn’t rub out a blister after walking three blocks. This woman could easily clean up for a fundraiser, blow-dry her hair, pull on a little black dress, and slip on shoes meant for show.
“Carolyn, this is Delia. She’s visiting from out of town,” he said.
He didn’t say, South Portland, where my son was murdered. He didn’t say, We’ve come to ask Courtney to help us. He didn’t say, Courtney is all this woman has, she’s the last hope.
Carolyn extended her hand. Delia’s hand pulsed with heat. Carolyn’s hand was cool and dry after a day in the air-conditioned climate of The Phoenix House.
“I’ll let her know that you’re here. She’s just finishing with a group meeting
. Her thinking is still compromised. We’re working with her, though. Next week is the full clinical review to determine the least restrictive environment.”
Delia understood a therapeutic bailout in progress. The treatment center was having a hard time handling Courtney for whatever reason, and they wanted to move her elsewhere. She wondered if John understood the clinical jargon.
The muscles along his jaw tightened. He understood.
“Please wait for her in the living room,” she said, clicking open a door that led to the main portion of the house.
“May I use your bathroom?” asked Delia. She hadn’t peed since she’d left Pat’s office, hours ago.
Carolyn pointed the way. The bathroom revealed the lineage of the house before The Phoenix House bought it. Black and white tile on the floor, old pedestal sink, and a family bathtub that now held plastic shelving filled with cleaning supplies. She needed a moment alone before meeting her last hope.
* * *
By the time Delia returned to the living room, Courtney, all twenty-one years of her, twitched on the edge of one fat-armed chair. The couch and chairs were covered in sturdy tan canvas, the kind you could use to hoist a sail and catch the wind for a ship. They were on casters, mobile, able to be reconfigured at a moment’s notice. Courtney’s hip bones peered out from the rim of her low-rise jeans, the flesh around her belly button exposed and leading the charge. Brittle-limbed, she pulled one leg under her and flopped onto the seat of the chair.
John, now Courtney’s confidant, or wanting to be, hung on to this perilous remnant of his dead son, this girl/woman. Raymond’s companion, he had said. He rolled his chair closer to Courtney.
“Who’s she?” said Courtney, tilting her head toward Delia.
This should be interesting. How would John introduce her?
“She’s from Maine. She’s trying to help the child who was found with Raymond.”
A speck of light changed direction in Courtney’s brown eyes. Withdrawal from heroin was one thing, but Delia sensed the presence of another medication announcing its ownership of Courtney’s eyes and her skin. Suboxone? If Delia were to come closer, her overactive nose might detect the alteration in the blood and oxygen pumping erratically through Courtney’s young body.
The Tiger in the House Page 20