by Lee Thompson
“I called them four times since yesterday. They act like I’m a criminal for asking for an update, and Richard, he sometimes takes their side, telling me to let them do their jobs, understand? But I don’t know that they will, do their jobs that is, if I’m not pushing them. Yet I know how swamped they are, even in the nice town we have here. There is only one policeman for every thousand people. And there are only four detectives, and that’s what we have to rely on. That one of those four men will find our needle in a haystack. But how much time do they have to look? And how long is too long without my baby here?”
“It’s hard to trust them without seeing any results,” Nina said.
Mrs. Stark cocked her head and placed one shaking hand on the table. Her fingers drummed idly, and Nina didn’t think Mrs. Stark was as strong as she pretended to be, and she couldn’t find any fault with that. She thought maybe some people had to pretend to be strong so they could go on living. She thought if you felt defeated, and gave in to that feeling, maybe you were. She wasn’t sure where it crossed over from a crutch to sheer denial.
Mrs. Stark said, “I don’t know what to do.”
“Me neither,” Nina said. “Just don’t lose hope?”
“She is six years old, six. And I’m not a fool. I know why they took her even though it sickens me horribly that they’d do that to any child, not just my daughter, and when we get her back, if we do, she won’t be our baby anymore,” she said, “that’s what I’m afraid of most. She won’t be our baby anymore.
“She’ll have been broken and we’ll never know what kind of storms are blowing her apart inside, and even when she pretends that she’s forgetting, that she’s learning to live and to trust again, we’ll know it’s just that, an act. And we won’t be able to blame her for it. But sometimes I think we’ll want to because she should have stuck to her daddy’s side like glue…” She shook her head and pulled a napkin from a holder on the table and blew her nose noisily.
“The worst part is that I think it will be better for them to just kill her, and I know Richard thinks that too, because we don’t want her to suffer the rest of her life, to dream about what they did to her, you understand? And it’s selfish on our part because we don’t know how we could ever deal with that, how we could deal with knowing she needs comfort more than any other person ever needed it, and no matter how hard we try, or what we do, we won’t be able to provide it.”
She stared at the floor and then her hands.
Nina felt tears slipping down her cheeks and she wanted to be strong for Mrs. Stark and tell her that it would be okay, that there had to be some hope until they knew that there wasn’t any, but she didn’t have the strength in her to lie. It all came out with her tears and left her feeling powerless. She choked as she swallowed and when she could breathe again, she said, “I’m sorry. For everything.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s only one person’s fault. And I can’t help thinking about all these sick bastards that do this kind of disgusting act and if they get caught they go to prison for three years before the system kicks them loose instead of castrating them. Sometimes I think the powers that be want those degenerates walking the streets, but I know that can’t be right.” She sniffled. “I just want my daughter back. That’s all. Back in one piece. Come home safe.”
Nina stood and went around the table and hugged her tightly. They cried together for what felt like an hour, but it wasn’t exhausting for either of them. It felt like a cleansing, like sharing that fear that lived in people that went unacknowledged amongst many, and the oven’s heat warmed the room until they were both sweating and Mrs. Stark laughed, relieved maybe because she had someone to lean on, even if the child couldn’t understand exactly what she was going through, and she said, “I better put that pizza in before I burn us down.”
Nina smiled. “That’s a good idea.” She watched Mrs. Stark take care of it and when she sat back down, Nina said, “You’re a good person.”
“I’m not better than anybody else,” Mrs. Stark said, “but I was just thinking that you’re a good person too. Most adults wouldn’t do what you’ve done for me and here you are a child, and me knowing that and feeling like it was nice of you but it didn’t mean anything.” She inhaled a bunch of air and looked Nina in the eyes and said, “But it means a lot to me. You keep being who you are and don’t let no one change that, you hear me?”
Nina grinned and lowered her head, embarrassed. “Okay.”
6
Richard spent four hours that morning going door to door and talking to people. No one had seen anything. When he got back into his car and drove over to Ted’s, his best friend was sitting on the porch drinking coffee, a notebook sitting next to him on a small green plastic table. He wore a white undershirt and dark blue jeans and soft cream moccasins. Theodore Gunderson was a small black man who looked much younger than his thirty-five years. Clerks frequently carded him when he bought cigarettes. He tapped a fresh pack against the heel of his hand and pulled the cellophane off and stuck it into an empty coffee can, then lit up. He’d been setting presses on the steel machines at Maytag for more than a decade. Richard stood on the edge of the porch. Ted’s eyes looked very white, and he said in a southern twang, “Glad you came over. I found some things out.”
“What I asked you about this morning over the phone?”
Ted nodded, dragged on his cigarette, and blew smoke at the porch ceiling. “I got all three of their names and addresses. Men like this, I don’t know why they get breaks like they do. But we’ll talk to each of them, together we’ll know if any of them is acting suspicious, and even if they don’t know anything about Robin, maybe they’re messing with somebody else’s kid and maybe, we push on them enough, we can stop it.”
Ted stood and stretched his back. He looked a bit ragged and Richard knew it was because his friend loved Robin as if she were his own daughter. When his wife had run out on him and found a man who could get her pregnant, the two men had shared many nights on this porch, talking about Ted’s frustrations. He had wanted a son or daughter as much as his wife had, yet she hadn’t believed him. Her excuse for leaving was that she thought he had something on the side, and her pulling that crap was worse than the fact that he was impotent. Ted said, “I’ve gotta get something from the house real quick. Be right back out, Rich.”
Richard waited. Ted was inside for a few minutes. He came back out wearing a thin, olive army jacket. The highly polished wood grips of a pistol reflected the morning light near his left hip bone. Richard pointed at it and Ted looked down and zipped the jacket up a few inches. Ted said, “Taking your car or my truck?”
“Whatever you prefer,” he said. He straightened his shoulders and said, “I appreciate you helping me with this.”
“You’d do the same for me if I was in your position.”
Richard nodded. “You carrying that gun we better take my car, less chance of getting pulled over by the police. I don’t want them to know what we’re doing.”
“Let’s get to it.”
Richard squeezed his daughter’s barrette and headed toward his used Lexus. Ted kept step just behind him, praying under his breath. The air seemed to crackle with electricity.
They drove back across town to Richard’s neighborhood and parked along the street from the first address Ted had received. His old friend said, “My buddy said we get into any trouble we never met him.”
“There won’t be any trouble.”
“We’ll see. We hear a kid crying when we knock on one of these three doors and things could blow all to hell.”
Richard nodded. “I never believed in violence, but you’re right. We find Robin or any other kid in one of these houses and I’m going to want that gun you brought.”
“Keep calm and everything should be all right. I got a plan. Just follow my lead.”
They got out and looked at the slip of paper Ted held and then at the addresses on the houses. They walked down to the first house. The yard and flower
beds around the house looked immaculate and a small sign bearing the name and number for Torrent Lawn & Landscape was stuck in the grass near the sidewalk. The man who owned the place was named Terrence Forester. They knew nothing about him. Richard led the way up the walk to the front door. He beat his fist against the wood, heard a man moving around inside, headed toward them, and he thought: It could all change right here, in the next few seconds…
A giant of a man opened the door. His skin was dark as coal and his eyes were bloodshot. Richard guessed him to be in his mid-forties. Terrence had the build of an overweight linebacker. He glanced from Richard to Ted and said in a voice that seemed too small for his body, “H’ep you, gentleman?”
Ted said, “We’re with the church.”
“The church? I don’t belong to any church.”
“Have you ever considered embarking on a personal relationship with Christ?” Ted said.
“I’m not interested in religion. If that’s all—”
Ted slapped his hand against the door casing and Richard listened for any response to the noise. Terrance raised his eyebrows, his mouth opened wide as he looked for the right thing to say. “What’s this about? You two ain’t with no church.”
Ted said, “You know God will forgive you for your sins, I assume.”
“What sins? I live a modest and honest life.”
“Bullshit,” Richard said.
Terrence raised his chin a little. “What’s your name, boy?”
Richard said, “You like little kids?”
“Get off my goddamn porch.”
Ted looked agitated and lowered the zipper on his army jacket and stuck his hand inside his coat. The big man in the door said, “I’m not looking for any trouble. You know somebody I hurt, that was all a long time ago and I paid for my crimes. I won’t ask you again to leave.”
Richard held out the barrette. Terrence looked at it, said, “What am I supposed to say about that thing?”
“Does it look familiar?”
“Somebody take your kid, and you think I do it, okay. I see why. But you got the wrong man.”
Ted and Richard both studied his face for a second. Ted tapped Richard on the shoulder. Richard felt it too. Whatever the man had done in the past, he sensed no guilt or fear coming from him now. He said, “How did you get straightened out?”
“None your business. Get out of here. Don’t come back.”
Ted said, “Thanks for your time.”
Richard hesitated on leaving. He’d expected more from the ordeal. Back at the car, leaning against the hood, he said, “He looked normal. I would have never guessed he did shit like we’re looking for.”
“Let’s focus on the next one.”
Richard nodded. They walked three blocks away. The next house was more rundown, the lawn shaggy, the driveway cracked and upended at jaunty angles in places. There was a rusty basketball hoop above a garage door and he wondered how many times this predator had used that old hoop to get young kids playing on his property. The siding was dirty, the window curtains drawn. Ted looked at him for a second as they neared the door and said, “This place has a strange vibe to it.”
“Looks deserted,” Richard said.
Ted nodded and they stopped at the door and he rang the bell. “Termite problem here, I bet. Good thing we’re doing assessment damage, trying to save these houses structures before they cave in on their owners.”
Richard nodded. He listened for any sound inside but heard nothing. Ted rang the bell again and then beat his fist against the door. Another minute passed and the small hairs on the back of his neck tingled. He said, “Let’s try the back door.”
Ted raised his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t hurt to check if we can look in a window.”
“I think this guy moved. He could be out there living under another name, doing what he’s always done.”
“No way to know that,” Ted said. They stepped off the porch and walked around the side of the house and into the back yard. An above ground pool, with its side caved in, sat in the middle of the lawn. A six foot privacy fence bordered the lot. Ted said, “I bet his neighbors found out what the hell he done and they drove him out of here in a hurry.”
“Can’t say I blame them.”
There was a back sliding door on the rear of the house, near the west corner. The shades were drawn there too. The place where the deck had been was nothing but overgrown weeds and reddish soil. Richard walked up to the slider and saw that someone had put a cut-off broom handle in the track to keep anyone from opening it. He picked up a rock that lay where the deck used to be and said, “I’m going in there. He might have her, might have just left yesterday.”
“This place been abandoned a while.”
“Could be where he brings his victims. Doesn’t mean he has to live here.”
“You just going to break the window? That could land us in hot water.”
“And the gun you’re carrying won’t?”
Ted shrugged. “Break it, then. I’m curious what it looks like in there, but we’re probably going to find little. The guy who took Robin might not even be from your part of town. Might not even be from here.”
“I know that,” Richard said.
“Okay, just keep an open mind.”
He chucked the rock through the back slider. The whole sheet of glass caved, the top portion like a guillotine, and both of them jumped back as it crashed down. Ted looked annoyed. Richard said, “How was I supposed to know it’d make so much noise?”
Ted drew the pistol from beneath his coat and held it in a tense hand. He nodded. Richard went in first, with Ted close behind him. It was gloomy inside. Ted drew the shades back, said, “Give us a little more light to work with.”
The house smelled of water damage. There was a plate with rotten food on the table. Ted moved to the left of the large dining room while Richard went to the right.
Richard wasn’t certain how they should approach searching the house. It choked him up, imagining that he’d open one of the bedroom doors and find his daughter handcuffed to a bed, her mouth gagged, her beautiful brown eyes so red from crying, from the terror she’d already endured, and he knew, and she, even as young as she was, would have known, that when the bad man was done with her, he would kill her and dump her body.
As much as it pained him, imagining how he might find her, he knew there would be such relief, too. His feelings were so intense that he could feel her light weight in his arms now. He wiped his eyes.
Ted was working his way through the living room and toward a closed door on the far side of the living room. Man could be in that room, waiting with a shotgun, and he could pull the trigger the moment Ted opened the door. Richard whispered, “Go slow.”
Ted looked back and nodded, his face full of worry and determination as if he’d just been imagining the same scenario. Richard was glad that his friend had brought the pistol. Who knew what desperate criminals would do to defend themselves?
He swallowed noisily and wished he had something to drink, something hard. He waited near the hall that led back to two more closed doors, until Ted stood off to the side of the room he was about to check and swung the door back.
Richard could see into the room clearly, see the stained mattress and box spring with no sheets on them. He could see his daughter tied to the bed and his chest hitched, and he blinked and then it was just an empty bed and he leaned against the wall, all his energy running out of him like he’d sprung a leak.
Ted checked the room.
When he came back out, he shrugged and looked apologetic. He pointed beyond Richard. The two of them moved down the hall. There were only two rooms left. Richard’s feet felt as if they were made of clay. He knew how easy it was to make a wrong step and how it felt to come tumbling down. It had happened in that park when he turned back from the ice cream truck.
And how many dreams would he and Loretta have about that frozen moment of his recognizing Robin was no longer on the merry-go-round? And Rob
in, if they never found her, how many dreams would she have when she was separated from those whom she loved and who loved her?
They checked the door on their right first.
The door on the left was another ten feet away.
At the end of the hall, facing them from the wall, someone had hung what appeared to be an amateur painting. It was about two feet wide and three feet tall. The children playing in the park were smiling and happy beneath the bright sun. So many young lives so full of potential, and the viewpoint, Richard thought, could have been from anyone. But the owner of the painting had seen it in a special light…
His stomach felt full of acid. He let the anger burn stronger inside him, not attempting to suppress it. Ted touched his shoulder and shook his head, then he pointed at the closest door.
When they went inside slowly, they found a mattress on the floor and children had scribbled on the walls with Crayons. Robin went through that phase as well, trying to render what she had seen in the previous months, or simply trying to exorcise what she saw in her imagination.
The drawings on the walls here were grotesque parodies of a grown man leaning over a helpless girl with long blonde hair. The child’s mouth was open, the man’s hand gripping her shoulders. The erection in his crudely drawn pants looked like a tumor.
Richard whispered, “How old do you think this shit is?”
“No idea. One more room, then we better call the police and tell that detective about this place. It’s like an abandoned temple. Who knows what kind of trophies are buried under the floorboards, or hidden behind the walls?”
“He would have taken all of that with him when he left,” Richard said.
“Let them worry about that.”
“He’s out there somewhere right now.”
Ted said, “I know.”
They went back into the hall, left the room open, and Ted held the pistol out in front of him. Richard grasped the door knob of the last room and twisted it and pushed the door in.