by Amy Gentry
“No, no,” he says. “I mean, there’s not even one photo of her in that nightshirt anywhere in the case files, just a description. I assumed you just didn’t have any. That’s exactly the kind of carelessness that would never have happened if this had been treated—” He breaks off, shakes his head, looks at the two photos again, and sighs. “Well, this puts that theory to bed anyway.”
“What theory?”
“That Julie ran away.”
I stare at him.
“Oh, come on, Anna. You had to know that was a possibility. It just didn’t look like a kidnapping.” He shakes his head. “Why do you think they investigated you and Tom so closely?”
“But Jane saw—”
“Eyewitness testimony from a ten-year-old? At that angle, from a dark closet, in a dark house? Not particularly reliable,” he says. “Honestly, Anna, there was always more than a little reason to believe she’d made it all up or was convinced to lie. Or, if she did see something, didn’t understand what she was seeing.”
“But—” They gave her a lollipop for sitting so long with the police sketch artist, I want to say, but the words sound stupid even in my head. “The investigation—”
“Sure, big, high-profile case, leave no stone unturned. With no other leads, they were ready to take her story seriously, in public at least. Behind closed doors, though—believe me, I was there, I know where it was headed. I saw all the signs.”
“No,” I say. It seems important to keep saying this, because what he is implying is actually worse than my worst nightmare. It’s something I have never even repressed. I never had to, because I simply never thought of it. Although now, with the word runaway instead of abduction ringing in my ears, I suddenly wonder why not.
As if reading my mind, he pries back the index finger of his left hand with the index finger of his right and starts on his list of evidence. “Minimal signs of forced entry. Almost staged, like someone just jiggled a lock pick around for a while, then opened the door with a key. The alarm wasn’t even on.”
“We sometimes—”
“I know, you didn’t set it every night, okay,” he says. “Could be. Or could be she disarmed it herself.” He moves on to the middle finger. “No weapon.”
“The knife—”
“Your knife, which he takes from the kitchen after he breaks in. He comes to this house in the middle of the night completely unarmed. And he walks straight up the stairs; he knows exactly which room—”
“We went over all this with the police. They said he must have staked out the house.”
“I’m not saying he didn’t,” Alex reminds me. “I’m saying what the police were saying. I was there, remember? I’ve seen the file.”
I sink, deflated, back into my booth.
“They didn’t believe there was any man. And even if there was—she almost had to have known him, Anna.”
I struggle to keep from raising my voice, and it comes out strangled. “Look, I don’t care if she knew him beforehand or not. She was thirteen. That’s child abduction.”
“Absolutely. Still a crime. But a very different kind of investigation. Runaways are a lot harder to find, because they don’t want to be found.” He waits for a second as if weighing whether to speak, then goes ahead. “I don’t know how to put this. If she’d been in my neighborhood, there would have been no question that she was a runaway.”
“But Julie was only thirteen—”
“So was Stephanie Vargas. She climbed into a car with a friend of the family in 2005. My little sister went to high school with her brother. We didn’t lift a damn finger for the Vargas family. She and her brother were staying with an uncle while Mom visited relatives in Mexico.” He sighs. “Stephanie was a straight-A student. She played the clarinet. She practiced every day.” He looks straight into my eyes. “Her body was found less than a mile from her house. Dumped in a drainage ditch.”
I shut my mouth. His face looks older, years older, and I can see the shadow of punches thrown. It fills me with rage. “So you knew,” I say. “You knew about this, you knew they weren’t really looking for Julie because they didn’t really look for this other girl, and instead of coming forward, instead of fighting for all those girls”—For Julie, Julie, Julie—“you just fucking quit?”
“I didn’t quit. I was kicked off.”
“That’s not what you told me before.”
“I lied.”
You and everybody else, I think. “So why didn’t you come to us back then?” I ask, relentless. “If you’re such a white knight, where were you eight years ago? When it mattered?”
“I can’t say for sure, but if I had to guess, I’d say blackout drunk in a public restroom somewhere,” he says. “Or in a parking lot, or behind a dumpster. It takes effort and determination to get kicked off the force just for being a drunk. Really fills up your social calendar.” He sighs. “Look, to be honest, even after I sobered up, I wasn’t too sure of myself.” He leans forward. “But I’ve tried to find her. Please believe me, Anna, I’ve tried.”
“Why do you even care?”
He shrugs uncomfortably. “Some cases you never forget. They just nag at you. You’re sure you screwed the pooch, but there’s no proof.”
We both stare at the photos on the table.
“Until now. We don’t need a DNA sample, not with this. I can take it to the police. You lay low; you don’t even need to be involved. They’ll compare the forensic report on the remains with Julie’s records. And we’ll find out what we already know.” He looks me in the eye. “Just say the word.”
But I can’t say anything.
“Do I have your permission?”
I look away. I nod.
“I know it’s too late, Anna. I know I can never undo what I did, or didn’t do, while I was drinking. But this is all I’ve got.” He pauses. “It’s all I can do to make amends.”
“I don’t want your amends.”
I want my baby.
Baby
woke up without opening her eyes. Her insides hurt, like her stomach was a fist squeezing itself as hard as it could. Or like falling asleep with a rubber band in wet hair and trying to pull it out in the morning. Like something that wouldn’t let go grabbing at something that wasn’t there anymore. She doubled up to push the walls of her insides tighter together to fill the hole, but her body moved sluggishly, and when she tried to wrap her arms around her knees, her wrists felt pinned to the ground by powerful magnets. She stayed like that, curled on her side, knees to chin, arms dead.
Her body was slow, but her mind was waking up fast. The absence that hurt her stomach sang in her ears like an alarm bell, ringing louder and louder, shivering up and down her spine. She had won. Esther was bleeding out of her onto a fat strip of towel wedged thick between her legs. Esther was gone at last and, with her, the last of John David.
She tried to conjure up his image, the way she had seen him once, wearing a wobbling halo of light. But when she saw a halo of light now, it was the glowing globe in the kitchen where she lay hard-backed on the table with her legs spread wide, and the darkness at the center of the light wasn’t John David but a man in scrubs with a surgical mask and gloves who gave her a sweet pill to melt her to the table until she sank right through it. Then her spirit went up, up, toward the light fixture, where the outlines of winged insects with burned-out guts lay in a dusty pile. With her last bit of will she flew up into that globe light and let her tissue get burned right out of her. And now she was an outline only she could fill in.
When she woke up again she was in so much more pain that she could hardly stand it. The bed hurt her bones. Where was she?
Because it was dark outside, it took a moment to realize she wasn’t on a bed at all. She lay on a slanted, corrugated slab of concrete under a bridge, the smell of gasoline and something sour filling her nostrils. Janiece sat a few feet away, her head and shoulders emerging from a mass of blankets. She stirred, and Janiece turned toward her.
�
�Hey, Baby, you feeling better?” Janiece asked. She leaned forward and adjusted some of the blankets without leaving her own nest. “You been making some noise there.”
She opened her mouth to say It hurts, but there was only a gasp of air where her voice should be, just as if the fist in her belly were squeezing her lungs too.
Janiece nodded. “Yeah, you got the cramps,” she said. “They’re nasty. I had the cramps real bad after mine.”
At the thought of Janiece with a baby in her belly, she blinked.
“I got nothing to give you for it, Baby,” Janiece continued. “Aw, don’t look at me like that. They don’t send you home with nothing over at Smith’s place. They give you one big double dose to knock you on your ass, but after that it’s ‘Naw, you gonna sell it’ or ‘You gonna snort it.’ Baby, they don’t give you nothing at Doc Smith’s. They don’t trust you for shit.” She was talking more to herself now, but loud, as if she had an audience under the bridge, where the pigeons were wedged up under the shit-streaked concrete like a row of stuffed animals on a shelf.
She opened her mouth to speak again, but her breath kept snagging.
“What is it, Baby?”
“Stop calling me Baby.”
Janiece just looked at her, unimpressed. “Well, you ain’t Wig Girl anymore. What’s your name?”
She thought for a minute. She stayed silent.
“That’s right, Baby,” Janiece said. “You can be Baby for a little while, it won’t kill you.” She leaned over again, put out her hand. The fingers touched Baby’s hair and Baby couldn’t help it, she relaxed. The fingers were warm and heavy against her scalp, and the rough dry skin caught her hair and gave it little pulls, and her own skin tingled around the pulled hairs.
Baby lay on her side all night, but she didn’t sleep. Her stomach ached so much she couldn’t imagine feeling anything else. “You just need something to eat,” Janiece said. “Hang on, we’ll get something when Pete comes by.”
Baby didn’t ask who Pete was; she just nodded.
They waited and waited for Pete. Cars swooshed by at random intervals, sometimes several at a time, sometimes thirty seconds with none and then only one every ten seconds for a while. Baby counted them but she couldn’t see what color they were, or what kind. Janiece stared car-ward, immobile as the pigeons.
When Pete finally came, though, Baby knew she, too, had been sitting like a pigeon all this time, because Pete brought so much motion to the concrete ramp that Baby felt self-conscious, even while fresh rounds of cramps made her insides rattle like the wheels of the shopping cart that Pete pushed in front of him. When he got close, he pulled some scraps of blanket from around his wrist and tied them around the shopping cart’s wheels so it wouldn’t roll down the concrete slope.
“Took you long enough,” said Janiece. “I thought we were gonna rot over here. Look, Pete, I gotta get her taken care of so I can go get something to eat. I’m starving. I’ve been taking care of this baby all day and all night.”
“What do you need, J?” Pete asked without looking at Baby even for a second.
“What do you have to take the edge off?” she said. “Opes?”
“You wish,” Pete said. “I can get you some later but you have to hook me up, understand?”
“Tylenol?”
“No way. Sorry.”
“What the hell are you good for, Pete? Why have we been sitting here all night waiting for your sorry ass?”
“Go down to camp if you want Tylenol.”
“Not with this one,” she said, looking at Baby again. “She can’t fend yet.”
“Or the clinic.”
“We’re not going to any more clinics for a while,” Janiece said in a low, gravelly tone.
“Fine,” he said. “What I’ve got’s a little weed, that’s all I’ve got for now.”
“I knew you weren’t useless.” She smiled. “Come on, Baby, I got something for you. It’s going to help, trust me.” Baby willed her limbs to move, but the bumpy concrete was harder to navigate than she thought. “Come on, do you want it or don’t you? It’s going to fix those cramps up for you. And then I can go get us something to eat.”
Baby pushed herself halfway upright and saw Pete looking at her for the first time. A warm, rank scent filled the air, something like the insides of shoes but also like the steam off a cup of tea, not entirely unpleasant.
“Here, honey,” Janiece said, pushing the joint in her face.
Baby had seen a joint before when a boy brought one to school, though some other boys said it was oregano. It was certainly not something she ever would have associated with the smell that hit her in the face when Janiece handed her the twist of brittle paper, warm from the burning breath that had already passed through it.
“You gotta be kidding me,” Janiece said, seeing her confusion. “Like this, Baby, see?” She kissed the wrinkled tip of the joint with her cracked and puckered lips, sucked, held the lungful of smoke, and exploded it out with a cough. “You really are a baby.” She passed the joint, and Baby took it, tentatively kissed the moist tip, and sucked in. The smoke surprised her, a square feeling in her chest, something with corners and hard edges. She tried to hold it but her lungs convulsed, punching the smoke back out into the air. She started coughing uncontrollably.
“That’s fine,” Janiece said. “Take another. Don’t worry about me, Baby, you finish that yourself. It’s all for you. I was just showing you.”
“Sure,” said Pete. “I don’t want any. Never saw you turn down a joint, though, J.”
“I was just showing Baby how,” she said. Meanwhile, Baby was coughing again, but a thick syrup had dripped down over her so she hardly even felt like she was coughing. Then came a deliciousness in her stomach that was like the easing of the fist, or maybe, when she noticed it, the fist was still there, clenched as tight as ever, but she didn’t care anymore because all the muscles had started turning into elastic one by one, or something gummier that could stretch forever, like Silly Putty. Her skin shivered under scores of hair follicles that seemed to have turned into little antennae, and her whole body dissolved into points of light. Or bubbles, like the ones in a soft drink. She felt so happy, so safe. Even the under-freeway had turned into a vault, and she was something precious tucked away inside, hidden where no one could find her.
“You feeling a little better, Baby?” said Janiece, and now she could nod. Her mouth opened up as if on its own, and “Yes, thank you,” came out as if from a pull-string dolly.
“So polite! That’s good. That’s real good. You keep puffing on that. But you’re gonna get hungry next. I gotta go get some food from the camp. Here’s Pete, he’s going to look after you while I’m gone.”
Baby shook her head from side to side at the sight of Janiece rising to her feet. Suddenly Janiece looked very skillful standing on her two feet, since the whole world was tilted and she was balancing perfectly on the side of it. Baby twisted her neck to make the world go straight again, but it settled back into a slant and she remembered that it really was slanted, and that struck her as funny, so funny that she started laughing and laughing. Her stomach hurt from laughter, not from cramps, unless they were the same thing. She had forgotten what the cramped feeling was about. There was nothing inside her. She was Nothing.
By now Janiece was gone, and suddenly Baby understood what was happening with crystal clarity. It was too late for her to move, of course, she was pigeoned against the concrete like a doll on a shelf with huge, glassy eyes that wouldn’t stay closed, even when Pete began fumbling at her clothes under her sleeping bag, and the smells of him became overwhelming. Okay, she told herself, because the panic was starting to rise in her, thick and warm, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that screaming for Janiece or anyone would do absolutely nothing, because this was just another path she had chosen to walk down, remember? From now on she was choosing everything that filled her, and right now it was Nothing, right now it was Pete, right now it was a thing she h
ad to do to earn the warm syrup of smoke coating her insides with glitter paint.
This slow, syrupy world gave her all the time she needed to understand what to do next. It was like she was in a bubble with the man named Pete and the sleeping bag and the pigeons and the cars, whose headlights never illuminated the place behind the pillar for more than a quarter of a second, but in those flashes she saw that Pete had fists and that there was a knife concealed in his pockets, and why wouldn’t there be? It wouldn’t be the first wicked blade she had stolen.
Baby lay still, waiting for it to be over. Nothing watched for an angle.
13
I watch her all week long, waiting for something to happen.
Now I am thankful for her short red hair, which both reveals and defamiliarizes her face. I retrace its contours, not with a mother’s intimate knowledge but with a stranger’s curiosity. I try not to superimpose the real Julie over the false Julie, compare line to line, but rather to learn every curve and dimple anew. Her chin is fine and pointed, but her jaw is sharper and squarer than it looks at first glance, her forehead higher and shadowed with the very first creases that no amount of blank-facing will completely smooth away. I try to determine the degree of the slight angle between the bridge and the tip of her nose, trace the flanges of her nostrils.
I do not look at her eyes if I can avoid it. Too dangerous. She’ll feel me looking, and I’ll feel something that may or may not be real.
Even so, I’m making her uneasy. She drops a glass in the sink Wednesday morning and it shatters; Tom has to take her by the shoulders and move her aside so he can clean it up. She runs to her room and closes the door, dramatically but as quietly as if she’s performing a role in a silent film. She can get up and down the stairs with hardly a creak or thump. I wonder if she is pacing in her bedroom; if so, we hear nothing of it downstairs.