by Jodi Picoult
“That’s all right, Daddy.” Sasha shrugs. “I’m used to it.”
The hell with a bullet. What kills me is disappointing my kid.
I kiss her on the crown of her head and let the teacher walk me to the door. Then I drive right to the station and get a quick briefing from the sergeant who took the original complaint.
Mark Maguire, a UVM graduate student, is slouched in the waiting room. He’s wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his face and is bouncing his leg up and down nervously. I watch him for a second through the window before I head out to meet him.
“Mr. Maguire?” I say. “I’m Detective Matson. What can I do for you?”
He stands up. “My girlfriend’s missing.”
“Missing,” I repeat.
“Yeah. I called her last night, and there was no answer. And this morning, when I went to her place, she was gone.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Tuesday morning,” Mark says.
“Could there have been some emergency? Or an appointment she didn’t tell you about?”
“No. She never goes anywhere without her purse, and it was still in the house . . . along with her coat. It’s freezing out. Why would she have gone somewhere without her coat?” His voice is wild, worried.
“You two have a fight?”
“She was kind of pissed off at me this weekend,” he admits. “But we’d talked it out. We were good again.”
I bet, I think. “Have you tried calling her friends?”
“No one’s seen her. Not her friends, not her teachers. And she’s not the kind of person who cuts classes.”
We do not usually open up a missing person’s case until thirty-six hours have passed—although that’s not a hard-and-fast rule. The extent of the net to be cast is determined by the missing person’s status: at risk, or at no apparent risk. And right now, there’s something about this guy—some hunch—that makes me think he’s not telling me everything. “Mr. Maguire,” I say, “why don’t you and I take a ride?”
* * *
Jess Ogilvy is doing pretty damn well for a grad student. She lives in a tony neighborhood full of brick houses and BMWs. “How long has she lived here?” I ask.
“Only a week—she’s house-sitting for one of her professors, who’s in Italy for the semester.”
We park on the street, and Maguire leads me to the back door, which isn’t locked. That’s not an uncommon occurrence around here; in spite of all my warnings about being safe instead of sorry, a lot of folks make the incorrect assumption that crime could not and does not happen in this town.
In the mudroom, there’s a mélange of items—from the coat that must belong to the girl to a walking stick to a pair of men’s boots. The kitchen is tidy, and there is a mug in the sink with a tea bag in it. “I didn’t touch anything,” Maguire says. “This was all here when I showed up this morning.” The mail is stacked neatly in a pile on the table. A purse lies on its side, and I open it to find a wallet with $213 still in it.
“Did you notice anything missing?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Maguire says. “Upstairs.” He leads me to a guest bedroom where the drawers of a single dresser are half open, clothes spilling out of them. “She’s a neat freak,” he says. “She’d never leave the bed unmade, or have clothes lying around the floor like this. But this box with the gift wrap on it? It had a backpack inside that’s gone now. It still had the tags on it. Her aunt got it for her for Christmas, and she hated it.”
I walk to the closet. Inside are several dresses, as well as a few button-down men’s shirts and pairs of jeans. “Those are mine,” Maguire says.
“You live here, too?”
“Not officially, as far as the professor goes. But yeah, I’ve been staying over most nights. Until she kicked me out, anyway.”
“She kicked you out?”
“I told you, we kind of had a fight. She didn’t want to talk to me on Sunday night. But Monday, we’d worked things out.”
“Define that,” I say.
“We had sex,” Maguire replies.
“Consensual?”
“Jesus, dude. What kind of guy do you think I am?” He seems truly affronted.
“What about her makeup? Her toiletries?”
“Her toothbrush is missing,” Maguire says. “But her makeup’s still here. Look, shouldn’t you be calling in backup or something? Or posting an AMBER Alert?”
I ignore him. “Did you try contacting her parents? Where do they live?”
“I called them—they’re in Bennington, and they haven’t heard from her, and now they’re in a panic, too.”
Great, I think. “Has she ever disappeared like this before?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only been going out with her for a few months.”
“Look,” I say. “If you stick around, she’ll probably call, or just come back home. Sounds to me like she needed to cool off for a while.”
“You gotta be kidding me,” Maguire says. “If she left on purpose, why would she forget to take her wallet but remember her cell phone? Why would she use a backpack she couldn’t wait to return for store credit?”
“I don’t know. To throw you off her trail, maybe?”
Maguire’s eyes flash, and I know the moment before he springs that he is going to come after me. I throw him off with one quick move that twists his arm behind his back. “Careful,” I mutter. “I could arrest you for that.”
Maguire tenses in my hold. “My girlfriend’s gone missing. I pay your salary, and you won’t even do your job and investigate?”
Technically, if Maguire is a student, he’s not paying my salary, but I am not about to press the point. “Tell you what,” I say, releasing him. “I’ll take one more look around.”
I wander into the master bedroom, but clearly Jess Ogilvy hasn’t been sleeping there; it is pristine. The master bathroom reveals slightly damp towels, but the shower floor is already dry. Downstairs, there’s no sign of disorder in the living room. I walk around the perimeter of the house and then check the mailbox. Inside is a note, printed from a computer, asking the postman to hold the mail until further notified.
Who the hell types a note to the postman?
Snapping on a pair of gloves, I slip the note into an evidence bag. I’ll have the lab run a ninhydrin test for prints.
Right now, my hunch is that if they don’t match Jess Ogilvy’s, they’re going to match Mark Maguire’s.
Emma
I don’t know what to expect when I go into Jacob’s room the next morning. He slept through the night—I checked on him every hour—but I know from past experience that he won’t be expressive until those neurotransmitters aren’t raging through his bloodstream anymore.
I called Jess twice—on her cell, and at her new residence—but only got voice mail. I’ve sent her an email, asking her to tell me what happened at yesterday’s session, if there was anything out of the ordinary. But until I hear back from her, I have to deal with Jacob.
When I peek in at 6:00 A.M., he’s not sleeping anymore. He’s sitting on his bed with his hands in his lap, staring at the wall across from him.
“Jacob?” I say tentatively. “Honey?” I walk closer and gently shake him.
Jacob continues to stare at the wall in silence. I wave a hand in front of his face, but he doesn’t respond.
“Jacob!” I grab his shoulders and pull on them. He topples to the side and just lies where he has fallen.
Panic climbs the ladder of my throat. “Speak to me,” I demand. I am thinking catatonia. I am thinking schizophrenia. I am thinking of all the lost places Jacob could slip to in his own mind, and not return.
Straddling his big body, I strike him hard enough across the face to leave a red handprint, and still he doesn’t react.
“Don’t,” I say, starting to cry. “Don’t do this to me.”
There is a voice at the door. “What’s going on?” Theo asks, his face still hazy with sleep and his hair stick
ing up in hedgehog spikes.
In that instant, I realize that Theo might be my savior. “Say something that would upset your brother,” I order.
He looks at me as if I’m crazy.
“There’s something wrong with him,” I explain, my voice breaking. “I just want him to come back. I need to make him come back.”
Theo glances down at Jacob’s slack body, his vacant eyes, and I can tell he’s scared. “But—”
“Do it, Theo,” I say.
I think it’s the quiver in my voice, not the command, which makes him agree. Tentatively, Theo leans close to Jacob. “Wake up!”
“Theo,” I sigh. We both know he’s holding back.
“You’re going to be late for school,” Theo says. I watch closely, but there’s no recognition in Jacob’s eyes.
“I’m getting in the shower first,” Theo adds. “And then I’m gonna mess up your closet.” When Jacob just stays silent, the anger Theo usually keeps hidden rolls over him like a tsunami. “You freak,” he shouts, so loud that Jacob’s hair stirs with the force of his breath. “You stupid goddamn freak!”
Jacob doesn’t even flinch.
“Why can’t you be normal?” Theo yells, punching his brother in the chest. He hits him again, harder this time. “Just be fucking normal!” he cries, and I realize tears are streaming down Theo’s face. For a moment, we are caught in this hell, with Jacob unresponsive between us.
“Get me a phone,” I say, and Theo turns and flies out the door.
As I sink down beside Jacob, the bulk of his weight sways toward me. Theo reappears with the telephone, and I punch in the page number for Jacob’s psychiatrist, Dr. Murano. She calls me back thirty seconds later, her voice still rough with sleep. “Emma,” she says. “What’s going on?”
I explain Jacob’s meltdown last night, and his catatonia this morning. “And you don’t know what triggered it?” she asks.
“No. He had a meeting with his tutor yesterday.” I look at Jacob. A line of drool snakes from the corner of his mouth. “I called her, but she hasn’t phoned me back yet.”
“Does he look like he’s in physical distress?”
No, I think. That would be me. “I don’t know . . . I don’t think so.”
“Is he breathing?”
“Yes.”
“Does he know who you are?”
“No,” I admit, and this is what really scares me. If he doesn’t know who I am, how can I help him remember who he is?
“Tell me his vitals.”
I put the phone down and look at my wristwatch, make a count. “His pulse is ninety and his respirations are twenty.”
“Look, Emma,” the doctor says, “I’m an hour away from where you are. I think you need to take him to the ER.”
I know what will happen then. If Jacob is unable to snap out of this, he’ll be a candidate for a 302 involuntary commitment in the hospital psych ward.
After I hang up, I kneel down in front of Jacob. “Baby, just give me a sign. Just show me you’re on the other side.”
Jacob doesn’t even blink.
Wiping my eyes, I head to Theo’s room. He’s barricaded himself inside; I have to bang heavily on the door to be heard over the beat of his music. When he finally opens it, his eyes are red-rimmed and his jaw is set. “I need your help moving him,” I say flatly, and for once Theo doesn’t fight me. Together we try to haul Jacob’s big frame out of his bed and downstairs, into the car. I take his arms; Theo takes his legs. We drag, we push, we shove. By the time we reach the mudroom door, I am bathed in sweat and Theo’s legs are bruised from where he twice stumbled under Jacob’s weight.
“I’ll get the car door,” Theo says, and he runs into the driveway, his socks crunching lightly on the old snow.
Together, we manage to get Jacob to the car. He doesn’t even make a sound when his bare feet touch the icy driveway. We put him into the backseat headfirst, and then I struggle to pull him to a sitting position, practically crawling into his lap to fasten his seat belt. With my head pressed up against Jacob’s heart, I listen for the click of metal to metal.
“Heeeeere’s Johnny.”
The words aren’t his. They’re Jack Nicholson’s, in The Shining. But it’s his voice, his beautiful, tattered, sandpaper voice.
“Jacob?” I cup my hands around his face.
He is not looking at me, but then again, he never looks at me. “Mom,” Jacob says, “my feet are really cold.”
I burst into tears and gather him tight in my arms. “Oh, baby,” I reply, “let’s do something about that.”
Jacob
This is where I go, when I go:
It’s a room with no windows and no doors, and walls that are thin enough for me to see and hear everything but too thick to break through.
I’m there, but I’m not there.
I am pounding to be let out, but nobody can hear me.
This is where I go, when I go:
To a country where everyone’s face looks different from mine, and the language is the act of not speaking, and noise is everywhere in the air we breathe. I am doing what the Romans do in Rome; I am trying to communicate, but no one has bothered to tell me that these people cannot hear.
This is where I go, when I go:
Somewhere completely, unutterably orange.
This is where I go, when I go:
To the place where my body becomes a piano, full of black keys only—the sharps and the flats, when everyone knows that to play a song other people want to hear, you need some white keys.
This is why I come back:
To find those white keys.
* * *
I am not exaggerating when I say that my mother has been staring at me for fifteen minutes. “Shouldn’t you be doing something else?” I finally ask.
“Right. You’re right,” she says, flustered, but she doesn’t actually leave.
“Mom,” I groan. “There has got to be something more fascinating than watching me eat.” There’s watching paint dry, for example. Or watching the laundry cycle.
I know that I’ve given her a scare today, because of what happened this morning. It’s apparent in (a) her inability to leave my side for more than three seconds and (b) her willingness to cook me Ore-Ida Crinkles fries for breakfast. She even forced Theo to take the bus today, instead of being driven into school like usual, because she didn’t want to leave me at home alone and had already decided that I was going to have a sick day.
Frankly, I don’t understand why she’s so upset, when I am the one who went missing.
Frankly, I wonder who Frank was, and why he has an adverb all to himself.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I announce. “Are you coming, too?”
That, finally, shocks her into moving. “You’re sure you feel all right?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll come up and check on you in a few minutes, then.”
As soon as she is gone, I put the plate with the French fries on the nightstand. I am going to take a shower; I just have something to do first.
I have my own fuming chamber. It used to be the home of my pet fish, Arlo, before he died. The empty fish tank sits on the top of my dresser now, inverted. Underneath the fish tank is a coffee cup warmer. I used to use a Sterno, but my mother wasn’t very enthusiastic about fire (even one burning at low level) in my room, hence the electric warmer. On top of this I make a little boat out of aluminum foil, and then I squeeze in a small nickel-size dollop of Krazy Glue. I take the mug of cocoa (nondairy, of course) my mother brought me and stick it in the chamber, too—it will provide humidity in the air, even though I won’t want to drink it after the fuming, when white scum is floating around on its surface. Finally, I place inside the drinking glass that has a known sample on it—my test fingerprint—to make sure everything is working.
There’s only one thing left to do, but it makes my stomach clench.
I have to force myself to sort through the clothes I was wearing yesterday to
find the item I want to fume, the one I took home from her house. And that of course makes me think of everything else, which means the corners of my mind go black.
I have to actively work to not be sucked into that hole again.
Even through the latex glove I’ve slipped on I can feel how cold the metal is. How cold everything was, last night.
* * *
In the shower, I scrub really hard, until my skin is too pink and my eyes are raw from staring into the stream of water. I remember everything.
Even when I don’t want to.
Once, when I was in third grade, a boy made fun of the way I talked. I didn’t understand why his impression of me, with words falling flat as pancakes, would be funny to anyone. I didn’t understand why he kept saying things like Take me to your leader. All I knew was that he followed me around on the playground, and everywhere he went, people would laugh at me. What is your problem? I finally asked, turning around to find him right on my heels.
What is your problem? he parroted.
I’d really prefer it if you could find something else to do, I said.
I’d really prefer it if you could find something else to do.
And before I knew what I was really planning, my fingers closed into a fist and punched him square in the face.
There was blood everywhere. I didn’t like having his blood on my hand. I didn’t like having it on my shirt, which was supposed to be yellow.
The boy, meanwhile, was knocked unconscious, and I was dragged to the principal’s office and suspended for a week.
I don’t like to talk about that day, because it makes me feel like I am full of broken glass.
I never thought I’d see that much blood again on my hands, but I was wrong.
* * *
It only takes ten minutes for the cyanoacrylate—the Krazy Glue—to properly work. The monomers in its vapors polymerize in the presence of water, amines, amides, hydroxyl, and carboxylic acid—all of which happen to be found in the oils left by fingerprints. They stick to those oils, creating a latent image, which can be made more visible by dusting with powder. Then, the image can be photographed and resized and compared to the known sample.