Half Moon Bay

by Alice LaPlante

  * * *

  Dread paralyzes everyone. Parents hold on to their daughters’ arms, lock their doors at night. Even Adam at work, usually so sunny, is subdued. Jane? She’s back to her normal state, barely containing her terror and rage. At night she can’t sleep. Instead, she paces the cottage, walks to Mavericks Beach at 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., greedily sucking in the sea air with each step, exhaling noisily. Breathing, breathing. But instead of calming her down, it revs her up, increases her adrenaline, makes her stride faster and faster to reach the promontory of land that is Mavericks, in the depth of the night, feeling like the edge of the world where the earth touches the sea.

  * * *

  A few days after Rose’s disappearance, a headline in the Main Street newspaper stand jumps out at Jane. SIX CHILDLESS WEEKS. She pulls her motorbike over, stops, inserts a quarter in the newspaper dispenser, and puts the Moon News in her saddlebag. She reads it when she gets to the nursery. It is a profile of the first victims, the McCreadys, Heidi’s parents, on how they are coping. Or rather, how they are not. The mother has quit her job as a systems analyst at a big Silicon Valley software company, the father has taken a leave of absence from his San Francisco law firm. Jane hadn’t realized that Heidi was their only child. They are in marriage counseling. They are falling apart.

  The woman in the picture looks washed out, vapid. The man, resolute, even smiling a little bit for benefit of the camera. They are not touching each other.

  Been there, done that.

  * * *

  The anguish of loss. The agony of betrayal. Bereft twice over. Three times if you count her mother. Four if you count her father (she doesn’t). To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. What about losing both parents, a husband, and a daughter within nine short months? Catastrophic negligence.

  * * *

  A Sunday morning in mid-September. 8:00 a.m.

  Jane is at the D-A-R-L-I-N-G shrine in San Gregorio, patting the earth around a cluster of California asters (Corethrogyne filaginifolia)—she plants indigenous flowers here, they last longer than exotics, and a lot longer than cut flowers—when she hears a car approaching. Early Sunday mornings, not many vehicles pass on this isolated coastal road, which is why she usually comes at this hour. But the car doesn’t drive past. She feels, rather than hears, it stop behind her as she kneels, the heat of the engine warming her back. It’s the coast’s usual balmy September, but there’s still a chill in the air, a promise of rain. The weather here predictable for its unpredictability.

  So you’re the one. A male voice. An uplift at the end of the sentence so it sounds like a question.

  Jane doesn’t turn, but continues tamping down the soil around the base of the asters.

  One of many, she says finally. She doesn’t want to acknowledge the person or persons in the car or encourage them. No one who understands the significance of the shrine, who truly gets it, would approach in such a way.

  You make quite a startling picture. A deep voice. He would sing bass in a choir. O freunde, nicht diese Töne! Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen. Beethoven. Beethoven understood what was what.

  Jane doesn’t look or answer, and so the reverberations from the idling car are the only sounds for a few moments. She knows what’s coming. And, yes, here it is: Can I take your photo?

  This happens a lot. Don’t assume anything, Jane isn’t any great beauty, especially not now. It’s the hair. A shade of red that makes people stare, makes them ask—sometimes quite rudely—if it’s real. Jane wears it straight and long, past her shoulders, and today it’s loose, down her back, and, she knows, dramatic. Only a few wisps of gray that, if anything, make the red stand out more. Recent DNA studies in Ireland have determined that all red-haired people are descended from one person. Another exclusive society to which Jane belongs. She likes that, belonging has been a lifelong struggle. Although she’s not enamored with the fuss people make about her hair. Whether she’s at work in the greenhouse or walking on the beach, people surreptitiously lift up their cell phones, snap pictures. Annoying. Intrusive.

  Jane sighs and answers without turning around. I’m going to continue doing what I’m doing, and I’d rather you just left.

  He doesn’t depart even though she hears nothing but silence after she speaks. The car continues to idle. She imagines him pulling out his phone, centering it, trying to frame her against the memorial and the pale yellow pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana) that encroaches wild everywhere up and down the coast, displacing the precious native flora.

  Finally, the man’s voice again.

  Okay, I’m leaving, O Ammut. Then, with a hint of laughter, Greeter of death, eater of hearts, I do you homage.

  This finally makes Jane look. A silver late-model Mercedes sedan, with the big hood and long trunk. A man is the only occupant. He is leaning out the passenger’s window, the side closer to Jane. She nearly forgets to breathe. He has a face that would heal wounds. Dark-complexioned, high cheekbones. Very black coarse wavy hair. Deep brown-black eyes. A hint of sadness, the way the lines around his eyes crease downward. A dark archangel. He looks vaguely familiar. She remembers the walk on the beach. How beautiful. It’s he.

  Don’t mind me. It’s just that you make for quite a startling image, against the grave there.

  It’s not a grave, it’s a memorial, Jane says, and turns back to the flowers. She is afraid of what might show in her face. She hears a faint Keep up the good work as the car moves on.

  Something has begun.

  * * *

  Later that day, Jane can’t settle. She keeps thinking of the encounter at the shrine. She’s wound up. Agitated. What will she do with the rest of her day? Sundays are very quiet in Half Moon Bay. Read a library book? She is finally making her way through the twentieth-century French writers Rick had loved so much: Maurice Druon, Boris Vian, Sartre, Camus. Jane had always thought it an affectation—Rick read them in the original French—but she now finds herself attracted and, in an odd way, comforted, by the bleakness and absurdity of the worlds portrayed. They make her world tolerable.

  One excerpt from The Stranger has been her companion for several weeks now:

  I said that people never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as another and that I wasn’t dissatisfied with mine here at all.

  That’s what Jane tells herself these days. One life was as good as another. But she is perturbed after meeting the stranger at the shrine. Stirred up. Something in the universe has been disturbed. If she believed in past lives (she doesn’t), she would think she knew him from one. There was some familiarity, recognition, between them. She wonders if he is the new man in town. If so, she understands the town women’s barely suppressed excitement. She is excited too. Darkly thrilled.

  * * *

  Jane’s mother used to tell her that doubting others led to wisdom but doubting yourself led to madness. When Jane was small, she thought she was mad. She was mad, by her mother’s standards. Jane doubted everything she said, felt, or did. At dinner she’d watch her parents and sisters eat the same food as she did, but with more apparent enjoyment. She wondered what they were tasting. Was it as salty, as sweet, as savory as her meal? When they drank water, was it as clear and cold and good as she thought? Was their milk richer than hers? She ached with questions over such things.

  When they watched television, she knew for certain that her experiences differed from the rest of her family’s because they would nod and laugh at spectacles that had Jane close to tears. Videos of a toddler getting gobsmacked by a snowball in the face, a man wearing Plexiglas wings jumping off a roof and plummeting to the ground, all sorts of extravagant accidents and, presumably, injuries, and Jane’s family roared. This was the most popular show on TV at the time.

  Jane was considered odd for that, and for other reasons. Her sisters could talk her into doing anything. Don’t you have any sense? her mother would ask after finding her plastered in mud from being
instructed to roll in a large puddle after a thunderstorm. Or moral compass? she’d ask after Jane was caught stealing various items—chewing gum and, later, lipstick and mascara—for her sisters. Jane had no answer to these questions. On one particularly shame-making occasion when she was eleven, this odd tendency to be cajoled into doing things she knew were not quite right made her the laughingstock of the neighborhood. Jane had been babysitting for a mischievous six-year-old neighbor. One of her duties was to supervise her bath, and somehow as she rinsed the conditioner out of her charge’s hair, the little girl managed to convince Jane that she too was meant to remove her clothes and take a bath. It was expected. And so the mother came home to find Jane naked in the bathtub. The six-year-old, by now in a towel and sitting on the toilet observing, laughed uproariously, as did the mother, after a nonplussed silence. The news was all over the neighborhood within twenty-four hours, and Jane’s sisters had a field day. Time for a bath, Janey, they’d taunt.

  Eventually Jane escaped, and came west, where having her own thoughts seemed less dangerous. She was wrong. It wasn’t having her own thoughts, but having her own life, that was the risk. After giving her too, too much, the God Jane only half believed in couldn’t resist. He took it all back.

  * * *

  When Jane quit her job at the Botanical Gardens in Berkeley—or, rather, when it quit her, since she woke up one morning simply unable to go on—her supervisor got her the position at Smithson’s Nursery. He was a close personal friend of Helen Smithson, the owner, although Jane knew her by reputation only. Smithson’s Nursery about as far away from Berkeley as you could get and still be in the Bay Area. At least you’ll be tangentially in your field, Dr. Blackman, Jane’s supervisor, had said. Helen’s doing interesting work with Zone 15 and 16 indigenous plants. He’d taken his glasses off, massaged the indentations on either side of his nose, and looked at Jane before putting them back on again and continuing to type out his email to Helen. He was, is, a kind man. He knew Jane was in trouble, understood many of the reasons, but, unlike other people, didn’t probe. When you’re ready to come back, call, he’d said.

  Jane didn’t intend to do anything of the kind. That life was gone forever. If there was another life for her, it lay elsewhere. Perhaps on the coast. Jane loved the sea. She looked on a map, located Half Moon Bay. Yes. She thought she’d leave her ghosts behind in Berkeley. She thought she’d feel free. But no. Wherever you go, there you are. Jane remembers that adage from her father’s many attempts to get sober. Yes, here she is.

  * * *

  The second missing little girl, Rose, is found on Pebble Beach, just south of Pescadero. Exactly eight days after her disappearance. Where children go to collect the multicolored stones washed smooth by the rough surf on that stretch of beach. Technically it’s against the law to take any stones from the beach, a directive no one with kids pays any attention to.

  Like Heidi, Rose has been carefully made up and posed, this time propped up against a rock next to a half-finished sand castle. Like Heidi, she has not been violated in any way. Nothing has been taken from her. Except my life, except my life, except my life, Jane thinks when she hears the news from Adam, who passed by the crime scene on his way to work on Route 1 from Santa Cruz that morning. He’d gotten the scoop straight from an officer guarding the scene. There’s a monster out there, the cop had said.

  Rose had been found by a man walking his dog—or rather, by the dog—at dawn. Given the tidal schedule, authorities were able to calculate that Rose had been placed on the beach after 3:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Another two hours, and she would have been washed away by the waves. So it was someone who knew the locals’ habits, or they wouldn’t have taken that chance. The horror of it seeps into everything in town. People look at neighbors with suspicion, at strangers in the streets with something akin to terror.

  * * *

  The Moon News publishes guest articles written by experts. An FBI agent writes that a serial killer is someone who commits a series of two or more murders as separate events. Usually, but not always, such murders are committed by one person acting alone. It is typically in service of some abnormal psychological gratification.

  The agent writes in a stilted, pedantic voice. Although it is true that most serial killings involve sexual contact with the victim, the motives of serial killers can include anger, thrill seeking, financial gain, and attention seeking. The murders may be executed in a similar way, or the victims may have something in common: age group, appearance, gender, or race, for example, he lectures. Women serial killers are rare. The fact that the majority of serial killers are men leads researchers to believe this abnormality is associated with the male chromosome set.

  Jane thinks of all the people she has known whom she distrusts. No. She has no reason to believe that such madness is confined to the male sex.

  * * *

  Helen Smithson is Jane’s hero. Mid-fifties with iron-gray hair, she runs Smithson’s Nursery efficiently yet with kindness and humanity. The lines starting to appear on her face are all laugh lines; she will be a remarkable-looking old woman. She has taken Jane in with kindness. She is the only person who knows Jane’s full story, and Jane trusts her to keep it that way. She is married to her second husband, Hugh, and her two children from her first marriage are grown. They all seem to coexist amicably together. Holiday meals at their house are confusing. Once, when Jane was there for Sunday dinner, Helen’s ex-husband introduced himself as Hugh’s husband-in-law.

  How are you coping with all this? Helen asks Jane to her office, invites her to sit down. She takes two bottles of water out of the mini-fridge next to her desk, hands one to Jane.

  This being . . . ? although Jane knows well what Helen is talking about.

  Helen gives her a look.

  I’m fine, Jane says. The plastic bottle is cool. She longs to place it against her cheek, which she fears is burning. Just fine.

  Good, says Helen, but she doesn’t move or smile, and Jane knows she isn’t done yet.

  I’ve noticed that you’re spending less time on the retail floor.

  Perhaps. Jane gives in and brings the water bottle up against her forehead. Ahh, lovely coolness. My plants have needed some extra attention. I had to dig up the batch of Ceanothus and repot them due to some mold.

  Your plants are fine. If anything, they are way past expectations. You have the proverbial green thumb. Here Helen smiles.

  But, she continues, I do need you on the floor. You’re my native plant expert. I know we discussed how you’re not a salesperson, but your knowledge is essential for making some of the tougher sales.

  Jane studies Helen’s coffee mug. Emblazoned on it was a smiling sunflower with a bubble coming out of its mouth. Everybody digs me!

  The thing is, Jane begins, and stops. She puts both hands on the seat of her chair and pushes herself straight. The thing is, people want to talk. They want the local gossip. They want to talk about the girls. And I can’t. I can’t do it.

  Helen nods. I thought as much, she says. And then, Are you still seeing Dr. Blanes? Dr. Blanes is Jane’s shrink.

  When Jane shakes her head, Helen says, It’s time to go back to her. You need to be in touch with and talking to someone smarter than me.

  Helen left it at that, but Jane went back to her Ceanothuses knowing she has been given a warning.

  * * *

  It is the last week in September. The weather has changed for the better. Some of the coast’s most beautiful days come in autumn. In summer, the heat from the peninsula meets the bitter cold of the sea, creating fog so thick that the summers are often the coldest days of the year. On the rare day in summer when the fog bank hangs just offshore, Route 92, which connects the coast with Silicon Valley, turns into a virtual parking lot. Everyone from Redwood City to Sunnyvale eager to get to a sunny beach.

  Of course, the water is still too cold, even in July and August, to swim. But out come the volleyball nets and the beach barbecues and the coolers and u
mbrellas, and for a day or maybe, miraculously, two, people in Northern California get a taste of what it’s like on an East Coast beach. Then the fog rolls in and shrouds the landscape again, turning it into a painting by Schoenhausen. Gray shapes in the mist rather than houses, cars that suddenly appear out of the dense fog, startling you when you cross the street. That’s summer in Half Moon Bay.

  But autumn and winter belong to its inhabitants. Thus, September 23 dawns a glorious morning, the bluest of blue skies and the ocean a deep aqua to match.

  Jane gets a call on her cell. No one ever calls her, so at first she stares at her buzzing phone. It’s a 202 number. Washington, D.C. Who does she know in Washington, D.C.? No one. So she ignores it. In a moment her phone pings to tell her she has a message. She listens. It is a woman’s voice. She identifies herself as FBI. She wants Jane at temporary headquarters today at 11:45 a.m. Please be punctual. You can find us at 854 Main Street. Jane knew the place. Everyone did. They’d papered over the windows of the storefront with old Moon News copies so you couldn’t see in. The address alone is displayed on the door, no other identifier. Nothing gives it away except the suited men and women coming and going.