Closer Than You Know

by Brad Parks

  No, you can’t do that, she reminded herself.

  She still wanted to.

  Finally, she brought him to her body and began patting his back, like you were supposed to do with a baby, like every baby in the known history of Homo sapiens wanted.

  Except for this baby. Her efforts to snuggle him were, once again, futile.

  It was stunning, really, how this little creature could be so demanding of her attention and yet so manifestly unsatisfied when he received it. And she didn’t have any idea what to do about it.

  The majority of their preparation had been focused on the things they needed to do to acquire a baby. They had crossed t’s and dotted i’s, trying not just to meet the standards but exceed them by a wide margin. It had almost become this game: How much can we impress Social Services? How perfect can we be?

  She had really thought it would all be for nothing, or at least that there would be a long wait before anything happened.

  And then, suddenly, mere days after they received their certificate, the family services specialist, Tina Anderson, had called. You’re not going to believe this, but a baby just became available. Would you like to begin your journey as a foster parent? she asked.

  Yes, the woman had said immediately. Yes, yes, yes, of course we want the baby!

  That was less than twenty-four hours earlier. It already felt like years.

  Having failed, again, to soothe this unsootheable baby, she considered her other options. He wasn’t hungry. Correction: He wouldn’t eat. He kept refusing the formula she gave him.

  Diaper change. Maybe she’d try that. She flopped him down on the changing-pad, unsnapped his onesie, took off the old diaper, balled it up, and tossed it in the diaper pail.

  Except the moment fresh air hit the baby’s penis, a stream of urine came jetting out. It arced high in the air, then landed on the baby’s face and in his mouth—resulting in an even louder protest from the child.

  “Oh God!” the woman yelped. “Stop that! Stop that!”

  Grabbing a rag, she cleaned the baby, then the floor next to the changing table, where some of the pee had landed. She was just straightening herself when her husband walked into the room.

  She immediately burst into tears.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, confronting a woman and a child who both appeared to be on the brink of apoplexy.

  “I am so bad at this,” the woman said in frustration. “I’ve been a mother for less than a day and I already want to give up.”

  He took her in his arms.

  “You’re a great mother,” he said. “You two just need time to get to know each other.”

  “You . . . you think?” she said between sniffles.

  “Yes. And you’re going to have all the time you need. This is our baby. And he’s always going to be our baby.”

  THIRTEEN

  A name. Amy Kaye finally had a name.

  She could barely keep herself in her seat as she drove back from Daphne Hasper’s house and let this new discovery flop around in her mind.

  There had been so many times, sitting in a dusty file room, poring through cases that had been forgotten by all but the victim, when she daydreamed about having something other than a shifting description of a man who whispered.

  A name changed everything. A name came with a face you could put in a lineup; a story you could check against existing facts; movements you could surreptitiously follow, especially early in the morning, which is when so many of the attacks occurred.

  Best of all, a name corresponded to a human being brimming with DNA.

  She couldn’t get a court order to test Warren Plotz yet, of course. One victim, thirteen years after the fact, saying she had a vague feeling it might be some creepy guy she went to high school with? She couldn’t put something so half-baked in front of a judge.

  Her greatest fear, of course, wasn’t that a judge would laugh her out of his chambers. It’s that she’d get the order and, shortly after Warren Plotz had the inside of his cheek scraped, he’d hop on the interstate and never again be seen in Augusta County.

  She wanted to find a way to get him locked up first, then get her sample.

  There was already a lot about Plotz that, at least circumstantially, seemed to fit. He graduated high school in 1999, the same year as Daphne Hasper, and was now thirty-seven.

  That meant he was sixteen at the time of the 1997 rape. It was a little young, but Amy had never been sure about that case—it was the “low voice” perpetrator, which wasn’t quite the same as a whisper. Maybe it wasn’t him. Or maybe he was too young to think someone might recognize his voice and didn’t start whispering until later.

  Hasper said she believed Plotz had gone out on the road in one of his father’s rigs not long after graduation. So it would have made sense there weren’t many attacks locally during those years.

  Amy wondered about the other jurisdictions, littered along the routes Plotz had traveled, with their own smattering of unsolved sexual assaults. Had he focused on certain areas or just looked for opportunities wherever he pulled off the road?

  Maybe once they got Plotz’s data in CODIS, the FBI’s combined DNA index system, there would be a slow, steady trickle of cold cases being solved in cities and towns all along America’s interstates. How many young women were there out there, wondering if their personal demon would ever be brought to justice? How many more women had suffered Plotz’s malevolence and never reported it?

  Whatever the number, the women of Augusta County eventually got it the worst. That run of attacks in 2002–03 would have been when Plotz was twenty-one or twenty-two. That fit solidly within the profile Amy was already developing. Power-reassurance rapists get their name for their need to reassure themselves of their own sexual dominance. Plotz, at twenty-two, would have been growing into his own physically and sexually, and would have been particularly attuned to that need.

  Amy wondered if she could subpoena his company’s records and match attacks to when he was at home, in between hauls. That would also have to wait until she had more solid evidence against Plotz.

  And then—and this was the part that really had Amy thinking Plotz was her guy—there was Hasper’s belief Plotz had returned to work an office job.

  No more roaming. No more interstates. Just his home county and his twisted carnal urges. That’s why the attacks had been nonstop since then.

  As soon as Amy returned to her office, she went onto her computer to see what it could tell her about the suspect she had been waiting three years to meet.

  He had no criminal record. Or at least if he did, it wasn’t in the Commonwealth of Virginia. His name didn’t pop up on any cases in LexisNexis, which covered other states. He had also never been a federal inmate.

  Which made sense. That’s why his DNA wasn’t on file.

  From there, Amy began doing other searches. It’s a common misconception that prosecutors and other law enforcement officers have access to a host of comprehensive, all-knowing, Big Brother–style databases far beyond the reach of the general public.

  Maybe the NSA did. As for Chief Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Amy Kaye? Her best sources for penetrating the privacy of everyday citizens was a little less exotic.

  Facebook. LinkedIn. Instagram. Amy had learned to stalk subjects on social media platforms with the best of them.

  It turned out she and Warren Plotz had a mutual Facebook friend—a man Amy had played softball with—which gave her access to some of Plotz’s profile.

  His photos revealed an unremarkable man in his mid- to late thirties. He was a little bit on the heavy side, but more solid than overweight. He had short brown hair, which he parted to the side. He favored aviator-style sunglasses that Amy thought made him look like a douchebag. He wore a chunky watch on his left arm that appeared to be expensive.

  Judging from his vaca
tion pictures, he was doing just fine financially—certainly better than your average trucker. But that made sense, given that his father owned the company.

  It was difficult to tell his exact height. But from looking at a few group photos, he appeared to be in the average range. There were a lot of pictures of him with friends at bars. He didn’t appear to have children.

  According to his “About,” he was married to a Deirdre Plotz. That was slightly unexpected. Power-reassurance rapists tended to be the live-in-the-basement-with-Mother types; or, if not that, at least unassuming. Their failure in other areas of life—with their families, on the job, and particularly in relationships—fed their feelings of sexual inadequacy.

  But that was not what leapt out most in that section. It was his employer. Diamond Trucking. The name was familiar. Amy just couldn’t place it.

  She was in the midst of pondering this when there was a knock on her office door.

  “Come in,” she said.

  She soon saw the dark brown hair and small blue eyes of Aaron Dansby. In truth, he was not unattractive, in a strictly physical sense. He looked a bit like a poor man’s Matthew McConaughey. And like McConaughey, he played the role of the scion of Southern aristocracy quite well.

  He was looking particularly foppish on this day, with a new light-blue suit, a subtly checked shirt, and a bow tie. She had told him never to wear bow ties in front of a jury because they made him look smug and pretentious. He told her she was wrong, because his wife liked them—as if the entire jury pool was made up of former Estée Lauder girls.

  This was a somewhat rare appearance for Dansby. He usually asked her to come into his office.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  “How’d it go with your interview?”

  “Fine,” she said tersely. She hadn’t forgotten his threat from the previous night.

  “Great, great,” he said. “Did the victim remember anything useful?”

  Amy could feel him trying too hard, forcing the conversation in an effort to project normalcy. This was classic Aaron Dansby. He had attempted to bully her the night before. She had fought back. Like most bullies, he immediately backed down. And now he was going to play nice while pretending the confrontation had never happened.

  “She actually gave me the name of a potential suspect,” Amy said. “She admitted it was just a hunch, but she said she never told investigators about it at the time.”

  “Oh, really? Who?” Dansby said, continuing to feign interest.

  “Warren Plotz. His family owns a trucking company. Don’t get too excited, because it might not turn into anything. But it’s at least someone to check into a little.”

  “Plotz, huh? That’s a good lead. You should definitely chase that,” he said absently. And then he made his awkward pivot to what he really wanted to talk about: “Did you see the news last night?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  She knew he wanted her to ask how it went. She wasn’t going to give him that pleasure.

  “Oh, well, Claire said it looked great.”

  Claire Dansby was his wife. She was usually kind in her assessments.

  “That’s . . . good,” Amy said.

  “Definitely. So, no problems for Friday? You’ll be able to get an indictment?”

  “Sure. I talked to Jason this morning. I don’t think we have anything to worry about. The bust was clean. Possession is clear. The defendant left her cell phone with the paraphernalia. It’s a slam dunk.”

  “Good, good,” he said with a nod. “Keep the pedal down. I want us to send this one away for a good long time. Maybe even longer than Mookie Myers.”

  “That’s probably not going to happen. Myers had a record. This woman doesn’t.”

  Dansby crossed his arms. “I don’t want people saying we went soft on Coke Mom because she’s white.”

  “She’ll still get at least five years,” Amy assured him. “The sentencing guidelines are what they are.”

  This seemed to satisfy Dansby. “Okay. Okay, I guess we can spin that with the media when the time comes.”

  He knocked on the doorframe twice for emphasis, then walked back to do whatever it was he did instead of his job.

  Amy returned her eyes and her thoughts to the screen. Diamond Trucking. Warren Plotz worked at Diamond Trucking. And then . . .

  Of course. It was also where Melanie Barrick worked.

  Amy’s arm hair stood at attention as a chill passed through her. She had always hypothesized that as soon as she had a name, she would start finding connections—between the perpetrator and the victims, and between the victims themselves.

  It was an unexpected twist that this particular victim was about to be indicted on drug charges. It complicated matters, because it meant Amy couldn’t immediately march off and reinterview Barrick.

  But that would come in time. What mattered for now is that she was making actual headway on Warren Plotz. Three years after she started her investigation, it finally had momentum.

  FOURTEEN

  My first night in jail reminded me of being back in a group home: the thin mattress, the smell of human exhaust, the night noises from too many people in too small a space.

  There would have been a time in my life when I actually would have been soothed by this soundtrack—the coughs and snores, the groaning of cheap bedsprings, the occasional nonsensical somniloquy from one of my bunkmates. Now it was just a reminder of times I had worked hard to forget.

  If I slept, it was only intermittently—more like dozing. My heart wouldn’t stop pounding. I kept thinking about Alex: Where was he? Was he okay? How was I going to get him back?

  I yearned to run my hand over his soft head, to smell his sweet baby smell, to hear his lovely laugh. That was something he had only started busting out in the past week or two. It came from deep in his belly, and it was the most perfect, joyous sound in the world. Ben was so enamored of it, he sampled it so he could turn it into a ringtone.

  Would I ever hear that laugh in person again?

  Then there was the darker, even more perplexing question: Who told Social Services I was trying to sell my baby? Who would invent such a fiction? Who despised me that much? And why? I couldn’t assemble it into a narrative that made any kind of sense.

  In the morning, I was awakened from my not-quite-sleep at five a.m. I was soon seated in front of a representative from Blue Ridge Court Services, who had to make a bail recommendation for the judge I would face later in the day. After grilling me for a little while—Did I have a criminal background? How long had I lived in the area? Did I have family here? Did I have a job?—he returned me to the general population.

  By that point, it was after six, and my fellow inmates were shuffling around, going to the bathroom, cackling at one another, bickering over this or that.

  No one told me what I was supposed to do or where I was supposed to go, but the rhythms of institutional living were familiar to me. I slipped into the flow easily and succeeded in not making eye contact or otherwise engaging with my fellow inmates all the way until breakfast. Then, just after I had parked myself alone at a table in the dining hall, placing my tray of watery oatmeal and rubbery eggs in front of me, I was approached by three young black women.

  “Yeah, I told you that’s her,” one of them said, like she was proud of herself.

  “We saw you on the news this morning,” another said. “You, like, famous.”

  “They calling you Coke Mom,” the third said. “They say you had a lot of coke. They put your picture on the TV and everything.”

  I tried not to show any reaction as I absorbed this information. If it was true—and I couldn’t imagine they were making it up—it was another ignominy to add to the ones I had already suffered. Right now, everyone in Staunton I had met since I was thirteen, everyone from my teachers to my fo
rmer employers to my current one, were clucking their tongues and wondering whatever happened to Melanie Barrick.

  The second one’s face brightened. “Hey,” she said, “if you Coke Mom, you think maybe I could be Coke Daughter? You can hook me up when I get out.”

  The other two laughed at this, elbowing each other in a good-natured fashion.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be Coke Cousin,” the third said. “You be Coke Aunt. We be, like, one big happy Coke Family.”

  More laughter. I still hadn’t said anything.

  “Aww, come on, now,” the third one said. “We just messing with you.”

  I returned my attention to my eggs, which had chunks of powder in them from where they hadn’t been well stirred. I lifted my fork to my mouth. I just wanted them to go away.

  “What? You too good for us, is that it?” one of them said, then shoved my tray toward me.

  I caught it just before it tumbled into my lap. Some of the oatmeal sloshed out of its shallow plastic bowl and onto the table.

  “Is that it? You think you all hot because you been on TV?” she said.

  Since silence didn’t seem to be accomplishing much, I looked up at the woman and glared.

  “I have nothing to say to you,” I said quietly. “Now please leave me alone.”

  “Ohh, Coke Mom wants to be left alone,” she taunted. “You think I take orders from you, bitch?”

  “No. But I think I have a right to be left alone.”

  The woman was about to come up with a rejoinder when a corrections officer strode up toward us. She was an African American woman, close to six feet tall, with large breasts and a rounded butt. Her hair was in long braids—extensions, probably—that she had wrapped into a tight bun for work purposes. She had a set to her jaw that made her disapproval of this situation plain.

  “All right, Dudley, that’s enough,” she said. “Go sit down somewhere. Not here.”

  “I’m just talking to—”

  “You want me to write you up? You want some time in seg? Keep talking.”