by Alan Russell
“You need to keep working with the media,” Cheever said. “The more publicity we get, the better the chances are someone might remember seeing something. And,” he added, “it couldn’t hurt to pray.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Duncan left the praying to his wife. The media he handled. Even as others gave up hope, he continued to advocate for his missing daughter. He appeared on local and national shows, prompting leads to come in from around the country. Cheever and his team prioritized the leads from most to least likely. Stella was said to have been seen with a band of gypsies; she had been sold overseas to a child prostitution ring; she was with a family that had lost their own child; a rich child molester was holding her in his mansion. Cheever made sure they ran down every tip, no matter how unlikely.
Days passed into weeks, but Duncan refused to give up. His efforts were a way of keeping Stella alive. Over time he broadened his message by targeting a penal system that “coddled” the likes of Guy Wilkerson. Duncan began to lobby for “Stella’s Bill,” a piece of legislation that would take “Megan’s Law” a step further. Megan Kanka had been Stella’s age when she met a tragic death at the hands of a convicted child molester who had moved into her family’s New Jersey neighborhood. Megan’s parents successfully lobbied to have information about high-risk sex offenders made available to the public.
“In the state of California, there are more than sixty thousand convicted child molesters and rapists,” Duncan said during one of his interviews. “Our citizens should be able to easily access the Sex Offender Database by phone or by computer, and know where these criminals are at all times. Even after parole, these criminals need to be constantly monitored. We should have the right to make our neighborhoods safe.”
Nothing could fill the void of Stella’s absence, but having a cause filled Duncan’s days. By displaying his pain in public, by trying to make something positive come out of something terrible, Duncan coped.
Eleanor admired her husband’s passion. She wished she could go out and beat the drums as he did, but that wasn’t her way. Her suffering was done in silence. Stella’s absence was her own black hole. It threatened to swallow her, drown her in darkness. She felt as if she was on the edge of falling into a chasm. What was hardest was the uncertainty of whether Stella was alive or dead.
Cheever walked up the path to the Pierce home. The curtains were half-closed, reminding him of a flag flying at half-mast. Ostensibly he was there to talk about developments in the case. In truth, Duncan had asked him to stop by and see his wife. Eleanor was meeting with a counselor, but neither those sessions nor her newly prescribed antidepressants appeared to be helping.
The Pierce home was now equipped with an alarm system, but Duncan said even that didn’t make Eleanor feel safe. Bars were in the process of being installed on the windows, and security fencing was going up around the perimeter of the property. To Cheever’s thinking, it was a bit like closing the barn door after all the animals were loose. Eleanor was becoming a prisoner in her own house. Duncan said his wife now insisted that Michael sleep in their room, but even that didn’t stop her from getting up four and five times a night to check on him. She no longer let him walk to and from school with friends. Every day she picked him up.
Cheever rang the doorbell.
Eleanor was slow to answer the door. From the sounds of it, she was still getting used to deactivating the alarm system. Every time Cheever saw her, she was a little paler and more drawn. He could understand her husband’s concern: she was turning into a ghost in front of their eyes.
Still, she hadn’t given up hope. He saw it there in her inquiring eyes. Cheever shook his head. “No news to report, Mrs. Pierce. The migrant-worker story didn’t pan out.”
Someone had called in a tip saying a white girl was living in a small migrant camp on the outskirts of a canyon in Encinitas. They had found a girl living in the camp, but she was a light-skinned Mexican national.
“How is it possible Stella just disappeared, Detective?”
Cheever tried to hide his own frustration. Since taking on the case, he hadn’t slept more than four hours on any night. He hadn’t felt so helpless since Diane’s illness.
“I don’t know.”
What he didn’t say was that San Diego County was larger in area than some states, with no shortage of remote outlying regions. A body could be buried in the Anza Borrego Desert or the woods of Julian, and never be found.
“Should I assume she’s dead?”
“Everyone thought Jaycee Dugard was dead,” Cheever said. “And no one was holding out much hope for Shawn Hornbeck, but he was found six years after his abduction. I haven’t given up hope. That’s why we’re still working every angle.”
“My husband says he will make it his life’s mission to see that Wilkerson never gets out of prison.”
Cheever nodded. Usually he knew in his gut that a suspect was guilty, but not this time. The most serious charge they had on Wilkerson was his alleged fondling of two of the students he was tutoring. Even so, children sometimes lost it on the witness stand, and Wilkerson’s conviction wouldn’t be a slam dunk.
“I hardly see Duncan anymore,” Eleanor said. “He’s been talking with the DA so much I think he should become a prosecutor. This morning he’s doing a radio interview, and this afternoon he’ll be speaking at a luncheon.”
“We’re grateful for all his efforts.”
“It’s Duncan’s way of coping.”
What’s yours? Cheever wanted to ask.
“Is the hotline generating any more tips?” Eleanor asked.
“Calls have slowed,” he admitted. “But we’re still following up on everything we get, even the crazies.”
“Are there lots of those?”
Cheever nodded. “I think people want to help. They want to believe. To try and get our attention, they often say they’re psychics. As you might expect, they’re invariably short on specifics.”
“Aren’t there psychics who help the police?”
Cheever wished he hadn’t brought up the subject. “For every supposed hit, there are probably a hundred failures. There was a book that tracked the successes and failures of so-called psychic detectives. On the whole, their record isn’t very impressive.”
“That’s been your experience?”
It would have been easier to just nod, but he couldn’t quite do that. “I’ve been on the force a long time and seen my share of crackpots. Hundreds of self-proclaimed psychics have come forward to help, but I only know one who ever has.”
Eleanor suddenly perked up. Her eyes had been distracted, but suddenly took on a laser focus as she waited for him to continue.
He held up a hand to forestall her hope. “Linda hasn’t helped every time, mind you. On more than a few occasions, she’s struck out. But she was a big help on two cases I worked. In the first one, we suspected the husband had buried his wife somewhere in the vicinity of their house. The bloodhounds came up empty, and I was dubious she’d do better, to say the least. I brought her a topographical map of the area in question, an area of about five square miles. And lo and behold, Linda marks an X on the map, and that’s where we found the buried wife.”
Cheever realized he was making an X with his index finger, and brought his hand down to his side. It wouldn’t do to make more of this than necessary. “In the other case, we had the body, but not the murder weapon. Linda described her impression of where the gun was, saying it was hidden under a large, gray boulder. She wasn’t exactly sure where that boulder was. I figured that was just another fuzzy description that psychics are famous for giving. But when I went back to the scene of the homicide, I noticed an outcropping of rocks on a not-too-distant hillside. I tromped up there and found this huge, gray boulder. I really had to put my back into that rock to move it, and the whole time I was working it, I remember feeling stupid, but when it finally budged, there was the gun.”
“I want to talk with her,” said Eleanor.
Li
nda Fabian didn’t look like the kind of psychics featured on television shows. There was nothing exotic about her. She was in her midfifties, and her mop of hair was in need of a new dye job. She was heavy, but seemed comfortable in her heft. She didn’t read palms or tea leaves or tarot cards, and she had a day job as a real estate agent. Her “impressions” were something that had been with her since childhood. There was no rhyme or reason to what she sensed. Linda didn’t look her gift source in the mouth. It just was.
She didn’t ask for, and wasn’t willing to take, any compensation from Eleanor. Receiving money might taint her vision.
“I’d like to see Stella’s room,” Linda said.
She was led upstairs. Without being told, Cheever and Eleanor stopped talking and stayed outside the room. Linda walked around, taking in her impressions. She paused at the bookshelf, then reached for one particular book: Charlotte’s Web.
“Her favorite book,” Linda said.
She wasn’t asking a question, just stating her finding as fact. Eleanor nodded anyway.
Linda’s double chin started vibrating. It was like she was being pulled somewhere. She went over to the window and peered out into the distance.
“She loved looking at stars,” said Linda.
Though it was midafternoon, the room seemed to darken. It was almost like Linda was seeing Stella’s stars in the sky.
She walked over to the nightstand and opened its drawer. She thumbed through the items. The “P” drawer was what Cheever called it—pencils, pens, pad, papers, and pictures.
“She took a picture with her,” Linda said. “There was a house. And people. It was very green.” She shook her head. “Not a house. More like a cabin, with big trees around it.”
Eleanor appeared confused until a look of realization came over her face. “Last summer we took a family vacation to Big Sur. We all stayed in a cabin. Stella had a copy of that picture. She told me she wanted a frame for it.”
She hurried over to the drawer, pulled out the other pictures, and flipped through them. “It’s not here,” she said.
But Linda wasn’t listening. She was back at the window, looking out. She was still, but her pose reminded Cheever of one of those dogs who point. There was a lot going on inside her, turbulence of all sorts masked by tensed flesh.
“She’s alive,” Linda said.
Eleanor gasped, half sob and half glee, but Linda only looked puzzled. Her eyes were scanning the sky.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this. It’s like she’s here, but not here. I know that doesn’t make any sense.”
She closed her eyes. She looked like a person straining to hear.
“She’s alive,” Linda said again, this time with even more certainty, “but she’s far away, far, far away.”
She shook her head a few times, as if not understanding.
“Far away,” she whispered.
SEVEN YEARS LATER
CHAPTER TWELVE
Luke put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “You don’t have to do this,” he said.
They were standing atop a bluff known as Dead Man’s Cliff, overlooking La Jolla Cove. The cliff was well named. People had died while attempting the hundred-foot jump down into the Pacific Ocean.
Most locals referred to the spot below them as the Clam. It had gotten its name because of the way two of the edges of the cliff stuck out over the water and resembled a stony clamshell. It wasn’t only the jumping spots that had names; you didn’t want to land in an area known as the Washing Machine, which typically demanded its pound of flesh or more.
For more than twenty years, it had been illegal to jump anywhere on the cliffs. NO TRESPASSING signs threatening hefty fines and arrests attempted to discourage the daredevils, and during the summer there were frequent lifeguard patrols. In February, though, the lifeguard presence was minimal. Still, to survive a leap, the conditions needed to be right. There were only a handful of days in every calendar year when the tide was seven feet or greater and the swell was gentle enough that you didn’t have to be afraid of smashing into the rocks. Even then, land the wrong way, with a face-plant into the water, and you risked the possibility of blacking out.
Michael took off his street clothes. His swimming shorts were underneath his jeans. He put on a rash guard, booties, and wet-suit gloves.
“There’s too much bird crap on the rocks,” said Luke, surveying the area. “You won’t be able to get a running leap. You’ll slip and break your neck even before you have a chance to jump.”
Michael didn’t respond; his attention was on the blue ocean expanse.
“In your heart you know this is stupid, bro,” said Luke. “Don’t you get enough thrills doing your wild-blue-yonder thing?”
Luke was the hard-core surfer; Michael’s passion was the air. Despite his mother’s objections, Michael had gotten his single-engine private pilot’s license at the age of sixteen. He loved nothing more than being airborne. When he was up in the air, he was free of his mother’s smothering and all the crap that had come with his sister’s disappearance.
“I’ve never been a fan of gravity,” said Michael.
“Duh,” said Luke. “And you wouldn’t want your whole future messed up, would you? What would the big brass at the Air Force Academy say if they heard about this jump of yours?”
“They’d probably say I’m perfect to fly a Viper.”
Luke snorted. “Yeah, right. I’m pretty sure they only want someone levelheaded at the controls of a jet that costs millions of dollars.”
“Even so, I can’t disappoint the Y-Girls,” Michael said. “They’re waiting for a show.”
“Screw them,” said Luke.
The Y-Girls were the in-group at Torrey Pines Academy. The queen bee was Tiffany, who was usually flanked by Courtney and Kimberly. In lockstep just behind them, you could usually find Sherry, Cassidy, Emily, and Brittany. Since the seven of them had names that ended in y, they referred to their group as the Y-Girls. Nonmembers liked to call them the “Yes Girls.”
“I told Courtney I was going to do it,” said Michael, “and she told the rest of them.”
Michael and Courtney were a sometimes couple. “So?” said Luke. “Tell her you changed your mind.”
“Everybody’s waiting for a show. Besides, don’t I always say it’s better to live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse?”
“You say a lot of stupid things. That doesn’t mean you really believe them. In four months you’re supposed to be reporting to Colorado Springs.”
Michael didn’t comment. He was still looking at the ocean. Luke wanted to get him to look elsewhere.
“Maybe you’re just doing this to make your mother happy,” said Luke. “Is that it? If you hurt yourself you can change your mind about the Air Force Academy and go to UC San Diego. Isn’t that where she wants you to go?”
Not hiding the annoyance in his voice, Michael said, “Like I’ve been telling you for years, as soon as I graduate, I am getting the hell out of Dodge.”
“Listen,” Luke said, “I didn’t want to be a party pooper, so I came along, but right now I got to tell you that I’m feeling real sick. I mean my stomach is doing flip-flops, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I started hurling chunks. And since you’re my ride, I kind of need you to take me home right now. I’m like ready to get into bed and hibernate.”
Michael finally looked away from the water. Luke was holding his stomach and had adopted a pained expression. When Michael took an involuntary step back, Luke found himself breathing a little easier. It was a good start. Michael opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by the sound of girls cheering from below them.
“If you got the game, we got the cheer!”
Those damn Y-Girls, thought Luke. Their timing couldn’t have been worse. They had positioned themselves on the rocks below so as to better see and record Michael’s leap of faith.
“No fear,” they chanted, “more cheer. No fear, more cheer!”
&nbs
p; Luke could see Michael’s expression change.
“They’re like Sirens,” said Luke. “All they’re doing is calling you down to the rocks.”
Luke’s English class was reading The Odyssey, which is how he knew about Sirens. But his argument didn’t seem as convincing to Michael as the Y-Girls’ cheering.
“Go, Michael!” yelled Courtney.
“Misters before sisters,” pleaded Luke.
Michael shook his head. “The ocean’s calling for me.”
“That’s not the ocean. It’s a bunch of sea lions and seagulls. Nothing is calling for you. I know that because I’m right here, and I’m talking to you.”
Michael didn’t seem to hear a word Luke was saying. His friend’s eyes were on the ocean again. He wasn’t even hearing the Y-Girls, who had started another inane cheer.
“I’ll tell everyone your dad called me,” said Luke. “I’ll say someone tipped him off. I’ll swear he told me that if anything happened to you, I would be prosecuted.”
“That sounds like law-and-order Congressman Pierce,” Michael said, not hiding his derision.
“Yes, it does,” said Luke. “Everyone will believe it.”
“But it will be a lie,” said Michael. “And I’m kind of tired of living a lie. That’s what my life has been since—well, you know.”
In his head Luke heard Mrs. Pierce’s words: “Promise me you’ll watch out for Michael.”
Luke had only been a kid when she’d extracted that promise from him. It wasn’t fair. He was more than a year younger than Michael, but Mrs. Pierce had still made Luke his keeper. For all these years, Luke had been looking out for Michael. And now he had to stop him from going over the cliff.
“You’re lucky to have two parents who love you like they do,” he said.
“Stella has been gone for seven years, but they’re still not over it. None of us are.”
“Your sister’s disappearance was a tragedy,” said Luke. “But isn’t one tragedy in your family enough?”