this has happened to more than one child. That it even
happened to one is just…God, horrible.”
“You know I will. I know what this means to you. I hope
you know what it means to me. And not just from a professional perspective.”
“I know.” Amanda gathered her purse and began to
walk out of the store.
“That’s it?”
She looked at me, her eyes a mixture of hurt and confusion.
“That’s it,” she said. “For now, that’s all I can take.”
Then Amanda left.
I watched her until the door had closed and Amanda had
rounded the corner. It took a moment to regain focus.
I decided the next step was to call Delilah Lancaster. It
was clear she and Michelle were very close, to the point
where Delilah was contacted before any of Michelle’s
school friends. I figured there was a reason for that. If the
violin was all Michelle had left, I needed to speak to the
person who probably influenced her more than any.
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I sat in the store for another few minutes, then gathered
up the folder and left. I hoped that somewhere, Daniel
Linwood and Michelle Oliveira knew two people were
going to fight for them.
13
The next morning I went to Penn Station first thing and
bought a ticket on the 148 regional Amtrak en route to
Meriden, Connecticut. Delilah Lancaster was scheduled to
meet me. I’d spent the previous night going over her
comments, trying to gain a better understanding of her
relationship with Michelle Oliveira.
I took a copy of the file on Michelle Oliveira, a copy
of that morning’s Gazette and a large iced coffee that
promptly spilled all over my linen jacket when a kind man
with a Prada briefcase elbowed me in the head. I went to
the bathroom compartment on the train to clean it, and
though I was able to avoid stepping in the unidentified
brown goop on the floor, I left with a softball-size blotch
on my chest. I debated finding Prada man and throwing
him onto the tracks, but I needed my composure. Not to
mention I needed to stay out of jail.
When the train pulled out of the station, I cracked open
the Gazette and read the story Jack had written for this
edition. The piece focused on the looming gentrification
of Harlem, how real estate prices were soaring, speculative investors, many of them foreign, were snapping up
town houses and condos like they were Junior Mints. The
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average two-bedroom had nearly doubled in price over the
past decade. Foreign investors, emboldened by the weak
dollar, were monopolizing the market. The prices Jack
quoted quickly confirmed that if I ever desired to buy in
New York rather than rent, I’d either have to win the lottery
or find a sugar mama.
The reporting was solid, one of Jack’s better recent
efforts. Too many of his recent articles felt slapped
together, rushed, pieces he forced past Evelyn and the copy
editors simply because he was the man. Had the stories
been written by a younger reporter who hadn’t yet cut his
teeth, won major awards and written a shelfful of bestsellers, many of them would have been spiked. The old man
needed an intervention. The ink of the newsroom was still
the blood that pumped through his veins, but he was a
train slowly careening off the tracks. Without some
straightening out, the impending crash would permanently
derail his career.
The train took about an hour and forty-five minutes to
reach Meriden. I finished the Gazette and spent a good twenty
minutes staring at an advertisement featuring a man quizzically holding an empty bottle of water before realizing it was
hawking Viagra. When the train came to a stop, I noticed a
man with a friar’s patch of baldness jotting down the ad’s
Web site before hustling off the train. One new customer.
I disembarked the train and took in the city of Meriden.
I hadn’t spent much time in Connecticut, only having
traveled here once to interview a fast-food worker who’d
witnessed a murder while on vacation in NYC. A lot of
New Yorkers commuted into the city from parts of Connecticut—Greenwich being a popular hub—in large part
due to the ever-booming Manhattan real estate market. For
just a thirty-minute train commute, a million bucks could
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buy you a home or large condo as opposed to a onebedroom with the view of fire escape.
Meriden, though, was no Greenwich.
What struck me first was that the Meriden train station
resembled less of an actual station and more like a glorified bus stop. A small hut was the only building on the
gravelly lot. It had boarded-up windows, graffiti sprayed
layer upon layer. A ticket vending machine sat lonely
outside the hut, like a relic from the 1970s. I wasn’t even
sure if it accepted credit cards. A dirty, bearded man sat
on a bench fully asleep, his yellow windbreaker also
looking as if it hadn’t been removed since long before the
man’s last shave. He looked comfortable, and clearly
wasn’t waiting for the train.
The air was cool, but I had no doubt the day would grow
hotter throughout the morning. I buttoned up my jacket,
stuck my hands in my pockets, and waited. The surrounding buildings were low, squat, though they seemed to have
an air of vigor. Fresh coats of paint. Newly cemented sidewalks, clear of footprints and cracks. It looked like a city
wrenching itself toward respectability, while experiencing
a few hiccups along the way.
As well as brushing up on the Oliveira case file, I also
read about the demographics and income of the city of
Meriden, specifically how both had changed over the years
during Michelle Oliveira’s disappearance. In 1997, when
Michelle was abducted, more than forty percent of
Meriden residents lived below the poverty line. The
median income was a shade over $28,000. And more than
sixty percent of residents had one or more children.
Today, the median income was more than $45,000, and
was growing at a rate far larger than the national average.
Plus, only nineteen percent of residents currently lived
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below the poverty line. Yet less than half of residents now
lived with children. I wondered if Michelle’s abduction
had anything to do with this. Whether the horrific nature
of Michelle’s disappearance convinced families it simply
wasn’t safe to raise a family here.
From what I could tell, this was a city that seemed to
want to right the wrongs of its past. A city that desperately
wanted to prove it was safe for girls like Michelle. And
whatever part of the city didn’t want to improve, it would
remain contentedly criminal. A place where a girl could
be abducted, and her abductors could remain free. That
part of the city would be what it always was, and whatever
happened wa
s simply God’s—or the criminal’s—will.
I stood outside for a moment, unsure of what to look for,
until a honking car horn brought my attention to the
Chrysler sitting alone in the lot. A woman was in the driver’s
seat. I could see her through the windshield, an uncomfortable look on her face. She didn’t want to be here. I walked
over, peered in through the passenger-side window.
“Delilah Lancaster?” I said.
She nodded, said, “Get in.”
I obeyed. She started the engine as I buckled my seat
belt. We peeled away from the station, leaving the tracks
in our wake.
Her car was if not new then new er. A black 300 model,
it had less than ten thousand miles on it, and there were
no telltale signs of wear and tear on the interior. A classical station played on the radio, and I noticed Delilah’s
hand moving in nearly perfect rhythm, sliding gently up
and down the steering-wheel cover as though she was conducting the symphony herself.
Delilah Lancaster was in her early forties. Her black
hair was pulled back in a tight bun, a few errant streaks of
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gray shining through like silver threads. Her face had aged
gracefully, the lines and striations of a woman who was
comfortable in growing older. She moved delicately but
with purpose, her eyes fixed on the road.
We sat in the car for several minutes, neither of us
speaking. She drove past several streets of well-maintained homes. We passed by those into a less-friendly part
of town that resembled the train station in its sense of
abandonment. When we stopped in front of an empty
building, I turned toward her to ask where we were.
“I agreed to talk to you,” she said, her hands still on the
wheel despite the engine being off. “But I don’t want it in
my house or in any place of business or pleasure. That’s
the agreement.”
I nodded, reached into my bag for a tape recorder. She
eyed it, curled her lip.
“This is also part of the agreement,” I said. “You have
to go on the record.” She nodded. I turned the recorder on.
“You know I went through all this seven years ago,” she
said. “The police questioned me many times. I know I got
scared that night, but all those police, I thought somebody
had been killed. For a moment I thought it might have been
Michelle. All I know is, one day I was Michelle Oliveira’s
tutor, the next day she was gone from this world, and then
several years later she rose like the phoenix.”
“Why did you think she might have been killed? That
seems like you were jumping to a pretty terrible conclusion.”
“When you’ve lived in this city as long as I have, you’ve
seen young boys killed because they were targeted by
rival dealers. When you’ve seen young girls caught in the
cross fire, then you can say that I’m jumping to conclusions. I did think Michelle might have been another victim.
That she’d been taken away forever.”
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“Well, now she’s at Juilliard,” I said. A slight smile
crossed Delilah Lancaster’s lips.
“She’s the most talented individual I’ve ever had the
pleasure of working with,” Delilah said. “The moment I
walked into the Oliveira home for the first time and
listened to that girl play, the French bow moving in her
hand like the wind, I knew it. French bows are mainly used
by soloists, and most young students don’t even know the
difference. But Michelle, she made her father buy a French
bow. Nothing else would suffice. Most young girls have
posters on their walls of their favorite bands, their favorite
athletes, boys they have crushes on. Do you know what
Michelle Oliveira had posted on her wall?”
I said I didn’t.
“You’re aware that most girls that age don’t have
posters, or much of anything on their walls. They haven’t
yet begun to have crushes, and wouldn’t know who
Orlando Bloom was compared to Barack Obama. But
Michelle, she had a poster on her wall. I don’t even know
where she got it, or how. But right on her wall, above her
bed, was a picture of Charles IX.”
I waited for an explanation. “Is that a King of England
or something?”
Delilah shook her head. “Charles IX is the oldest violin
in existence. It was made in 1716 by Antonio Stradivari.
It is kept in pristine condition at the Ashmolean museum
in Oxford. You can imagine this is not exactly a common
item for a five-year-old to worship.”
“Stradivari—is he related to the Stradivarius?”
“The same,” she said.
“For a young child to hold such an instrument in this
regard, it simply made my heart float. When she disappeared—” Delilah lowered her head, clasped her hands
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together “—I felt like I’d lost a kindred spirit. Someone
who understood the beauty and passion of music like so
few do in their lives. And to lose her at such a young
age—I thought a great student had been taken. A shame
in so many ways. And when Michelle came back, I
thanked God for keeping one of his finest creatures on this
earth.”
“You really cared for Michelle, didn’t you?” I asked.
Delilah looked at me. “Still care. I do care for her the
way a teacher looks at a prized pupil, yes. But our bond
went deeper than that. I cared more for Michelle than I did
most of my friends and—” she sighed “—perhaps most of
my family.”
I looked at Delilah’s hand, barren of any rings. She
noticed this.
“My husband died three years ago. Pulmonary embolism. Life hits you when you never expect it. But I still
have my music. That, at least, is everlasting. And one day
Michelle will create a composition that will stand the test
of time. That students, like she once was, will study.”
Delilah looked out over her town, the barren building
in front of her.
“This city has changed so much. So many people left
after what happened to Michelle. I didn’t blame them. I
have no children, but if I did I couldn’t justify raising
them here. Now young families, dare I say yuppies, have
moved into those houses. Rats joining a ship. I never
thought I would see that in Meriden.”
“You’re against gentrification?” I asked.
“It pays my bills,” she said. “And allows me more
leisure time than I previously had. But Lord, if I could find
one truly talented student in the bunch, it would make my
year.”
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“Not many children like Michelle come along,” I said.
“No,” she agreed. “No, they don’t.”
“Aside from the obvious, was there anything about
Michelle that was different when she came back? Did she
ever mention a family member, a friend, somebody you
didn’t recognize?”
Delilah shook he
r head. “Michelle didn’t have many
friends. The gifted ones never do.”
“Did she strike you as different in any way? After she
returned?”
Delilah thought for a moment. “She became more withdrawn. Michelle was once a vibrant, popular girl, but she
never fit in again. You can’t explain to a young girl why
people are staring at her, knowing she can’t possibly
understand exactly what happened. One night, a few days
after she came back, I thought I saw scarring on her arm,
but I decided it was just a pimple, some kind of adolescent puberty thing. It saddened me to see such a lovely girl
just have her soul sucked away. But what person wouldn’t
after going through something like that?”
“Did she ever say anything to you that gave any clue as
to where she might have been all those years?”
Delilah shook her head. Stared ahead of her. I looked
at the tape recorder. Afraid this was all I was going to get
from Delilah Lancaster.
Another song came on the radio, the violin strings
prominent. Delilah’s fingers flowed with the sound. Then
they abruptly stopped.
“What?” I asked. “What is it?”
She cocked her head, looked deep in thought.
“Beethoven’s sonata,” she said.
“Is that what’s playing right now?” I asked.
“No,” Delilah answered, her voice soft. There was a
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tinge of fright in there that made my pulse begin to race.
“Beethoven’s Sonata no. 6. It’s an incredibly difficult
piece. It can take months, if not years, to master. Oh, God,
I remember that night.”
“What happened?”
“It was only the second or third lesson after she
returned,” Delilah said. “Michelle was so down. Depressed. I asked her to play something that made her
happy. And she picked up her bow and began to play…oh,
God…”
“What?” I said. “What happened?”
“The sonata. Michelle played it for me that night. I left
the house cold, shivering. I didn’t sleep for a week.”
“Why?” I said, a shiver running down my back.
Delilah Lancaster turned toward me. “In the dozens of
lessons I had with Michelle Oliveira, never once had she
even attempted to play Beethoven. She had never tried to
play that symphony. That sonata was not even in any of
the books I purchased for her. Somehow she’d learned to
play that piece in between the time she disappeared…”
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