Down To The Needle

by Mary Deal

  Chapter 13

  The doorbell chimed as soon as they stepped into the foyer from the garage. Joe stretched to open the front door and reached to shake the man's hand. “Come in.”

  The man stepped inside and eagerly reached for Abi's outstretched hand. “Detective Britto, ma'am. Chad Britto.” He pulled at his bushy mustache and beard and looked more like a construction worker than the image she had of modern-day police detectives who wore suits. If she saw him on the street the way he was dressed in jeans and a shirt, Abi would never guess he was a peace officer. Only now, as he shrugged out of his jacket exposing the shoulder holster and gun, did she associate him with law enforcement. His muscular chest and powerful looking arms said he spent a lot of time in a gym. He was near their ages and stood straight and fit. His tanned face and questioning eyes looked vaguely familiar but she couldn't remember from where.

  Det. Britto turned to Joe, smiled deviously, and then threw a playful punch to Joe's shoulder. “You dog, Arno!”

  Joe grinned, like he was one up on the detective. “Hands off!”

  Joe had never had occasion to introduce Abi to the detective. From the way Joe once described him, Det. Britto might think that Joe purposely hid her from him. Det. Britto was single and kept company with a small number of refined ladies.

  Abi hung the detective's jacket in the foyer closet. Despite the seriousness that brought them together, she had to smile. The sense of camaraderie between the two men bordered on comical, even after Joe having said the two of them hadn't seen much of each other since Megan's case began. Maybe that was also the reason Joe hadn't had a chance to introduce her to him. Strange indeed, was how the case that caused estrangement in their friendship now brought the two together again.

  “Why don't you fill me in on what you've got.”

  Abi had not shared anything about the special room upstairs with anyone. Not even Joe. It was both her private heaven and hell. Now she had to show it to both of them at once. Not only that, it felt like an invasion of her privacy, like having her innermost person bared.

  Familiar jittery feelings took over. She felt unsteady. She was always headstrong, despite angina, and had never been so weak that she needed help to climb a flight of stairs. The whole idea of beginning another search had gripped her, renewed innate hope, but adversely sapped her strength. “You need to get to know my daughter.” Her voice quivered. Det. Britto took her arm and eyed her curiously as she wobbled on the staircase.

  “These pictures…” Joe followed behind and carried both the old portfolio and the artist's tablet. “Abi says she has others that we should see.”

  Det. Britto threw a quick glance backward. “That stuff you got there, Winnaker's art, the same stuff you kept?”

  “Yep, and the ones I didn't know I had.”

  They paused on the landing.

  “Say, wait a minute.” Det. Britto took Abi's hand. “You've known this nice lady for how many years?” He politely smiled while looking straight into her eyes. Then he turned to Joe again. “How is it you two are just getting around to making these discoveries about Winnaker?”

  The hint of inquiry seemed to test the closeness of hers and Joe's relationship. She withdrew her hand from the detective's easy grip and fumbled with the cuff of her sleeve.

  “The story on the news last week. Abi never followed the case.”

  Maybe she had been in denial and that was the reason she had not associated her daughter with an inmate. By the time she and Joe met, the bits of information about the Winnaker case were no longer prime time news. “I only heard parts of the case whenever I had time to watch the news. This is the first I'd heard that she came to Seaport looking for family.”

  “No one ever mention it to you either?” He seemed to need affirmation for everything he learned.

  All Abi knew back then was that a gangland girl had been arrested for a torch burning. “I almost never watch TV,”

  “Ever read the newspaper? Listen to the radio?”

  Joe let out quick breath. “She doesn't sit still long enough.”

  “And you didn't tell her about your involvement, Arno, for fear of what? Stirring up some muddy water?”

  “No reason. The case was over. I was long out of it.”

  Abi had not mentioned looking for Becky till after she felt comfortable in her relationship with Joe. Now, she quickly updated Det. Britto on the details of her search throughout the years. “I'd never given up, but eighteen years had already passed by the time I met Joe.”

  They walked along the landing, away from the master suite secluded at the back of the house, to the third bedroom at the front where sunshine poured in during the afternoon. Outside the doorway, she turned to look at both of them, not knowing how to prepare them for what was inside the room. Joe would now know the depths of her despair. Surely he would also realize she had kept it under control for the sake of their relationship, and for her sanity. Finally, she simply pushed the door open and switched on the light.

  The two men walked in and stood in the middle of a young girl's room daintily decorated in pinks, lavenders and sunny yellows, the colors of spring flowers that Becky loved. Joe turned slowly with eyes wide and tender. “You kept everything.” He reached, like he wanted to touch, but couldn't bring himself to do it.

  Small, framed photos and artwork covered the walls. Bookshelves and small tables held dolls, toys and books. A box of pastels lay on a table nearby, with two or three color sticks resting on an opened art tablet, the drawing unfinished. A small easel held another framed sketch. A hardened lump of modeling clay lay beside an open box containing once-fresh sticks. The lump once contained Becky's partial print, the heel of her hand where she tried to smash and soften the clay but was not strong enough to make much of a dent.

  Abi had caressed that lump so many times, rubbed her fingertips into the depression trying to feel her daughter's presence that the print had worn away. Only the slight depression remained. Through the years, the lump had turned powdery and begun to disintegrate. All the art materials lying opened made the room seem like an art session in kindergarten, though the scents had long since evaporated.

  Abi fought the urge to open the closet where a few pieces of Becky's outdated clothing hung. Every April fourth on Becky's birthday, the last one being a week earlier, she would sit quietly in the room. The private séance would end by holding her daughter's play clothes to her face and breathing deeply, trying to detect the smell of her child.

  “This is where her life stopped with me.” Abi pointed to some of the unfinished art. Her voice trembled. “I've never given up hope that someday she'll just walk in and finish these.” It was that hope that had gotten her through the roughest time right after the abduction and through all the times when she had to face the likelihood that no trace of her precious daughter would be found. In hope lay miracles waiting to happen. Hope had grown silent over the years, but occupied all the space inside her heart. She watched Joe, knowing he now saw an aspect of her life never shared with anyone. The entire display exemplified her determination to keep Becky's memory alive.

  Det. Britto showed no emotion and let his trained curiosity lead as he inched around the room, quietly taking in every detail of a child's art and Becky's baby photos.

  Joe leaned the portfolio and old art tablet against a bookcase. He spotted something standing atop one of the bookshelves by the closet, completely foreign to the rest of the objects in the room. He picked it up. “A Menorah?”

  Chapter 14

  “She saw it in a junk shop, but look.” She pointed to a cluster of small gold-framed drawings of the Menorah hanging above the shelves.

  Joe leaned forward and tilted his head to move his shadow as he studied them. “What attracted her to this thing?”

  “The simple lines, I'm sure. She found it just about the time she became interested in line art.” She took the Menorah from Joe and placed it back atop the book shelf, handling it as if it were the most valuable relic
ever found.

  Silently, Joe and the detective edged around the room, studying up close all the drawings interspersed with Becky's photos at different ages, labeled with her age at the time the photo was taken. Each piece of artwork was labeled with her age when the drawing was made. Next, they studied Becky's face.

  “Big gorgeous dark eyes.” Det. Britto rubbed a finger along the picture frame. “So this was your daughter.”

  “Is my daughter.”

  Scrutinizing another photo, he pointed with a pinky finger. “What's this?”

  “A mole, a beauty mark.”

  “Winnaker doesn't have anything like that.”

  “We've been all through that, Britto. Plastic surgery, maybe?”

  “Anything's possible. Do you have anymore, ma'am?” He motioned to the photos.

  “Preston took them all when he took Becky. I got these from my mother's belongings after she died.” She looked away. Her life sounded like one big loss of everything that meant anything.

  “Abi lost both her mother and her daughter around the same time.”

  “Preston took Becky a few months after Mom passed away.” Her voice cracked again and she didn't like hearing it. It was almost too much, the memories she had stored in her mind and that robbed her of much peace. Now to have to relive those memories, actually explain them again, brought back all the sadness and anger. Still, Abi was practiced at holding her emotions and this moment was the most important one in twenty-three years.

  Joe came to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

  Det. Britto's expression was empathetic. He reached over and placed a hand on her shoulder.

  She sighed and turned away, knowing that if this detective were to help, she would have to disclose everything. She crossed the room and then turned to face them. “After mom died, I put her things in storage. After Becky disappeared, I moved to Lawton for a few years. When I moved back to Seaport and finally went through mom's boxes, I found these.” She gestured toward the walls. “They're the only photos I have of Becky.” She turned away and stared at the thick purple drapes that were kept closed to keep the sun from fading the drawings and photos. Disgust of living with the truth welled up; horrors that could not be put to rest and would not be understood till Becky came home again. “Mom never liked Preston. She told me that Preston would cause me nothing but grief.” Abi fought back anger. “She said he would turn me into misfortune's daughter.” Abi always valued her mother's advice, but at that time, being young and in love, refused to listen and married Preston anyway. “For a while, I was angry at her for being right, even after she died.”

  Joe kept shaking his head. “But her dying left you these.”

  She whirled about. “Like a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  “Your husband, for whatever reason, stole all your daughter's pictures?” The detective's face showed little emotion. His voice contained less.

  “Yes.” The memories were as fresh as they had been twenty-three years earlier, recounting them again, as she did then to the police. “He came to the house while I was at work, turned everything inside-out and took every last one. He took some of her stuffed animals and nothing more. Not even her clothes. Then he went to her kindergarten and… and took her, right off the playground.”

  “I'm sorry, ma'am.” Now it seemed Det. Britto's turn to shake his head slowly in denial. “Long before you and Joe met, your daughter's file had already gone cold. No new clues to keep it alive.”

  Abi listened and tried to understand how the police department functioned, but her mind was on the stolen photos, one of the reasons Becky could still be alive. “Preston taking every last picture proves he planned to hide her and I wouldn't be able to provide anything to help identify her. Just like her clothes. Preston took nothing that the police could use to identify her.”

  “In hindsight, did you notice any signs that he might want to abduct her?”

  “Never. And later, when I found these photos in mom's stuff, the mole still couldn't help find her.”

  “Back then, they didn't have the means for finding missing persons like they do now.” Det. Britto thoughtfully stroked his beard. “Did you try to get on any of those TV shows?”

  “I did.” It was a case the networks were eager to air. “They did two follow-up shows too. Not one clue came in.”

  Abi reached for several of the pages from the art tablet they found in the cabin and held them up, looking for similarities with those on the wall. “This is what I meant, Joe. Look at these.” Both men came close. Det. Britto momentarily placed a hand on her shoulder again. She held the drawing upside-down as she and Joe had first viewed it. Then she turned it right side up. “The Menorah. This is the Menorah.”

  Det. Britto reached to hold an edge of the art page. “Run that by me again?”

  “Look here.” Abi's finger trembled as she pointed to the Menorah drawings on the wall.

  Joe leaned in close comparing the two. “There is a similarity.”

  Abi pointed to the metal artifact on the bookcase. “This is made of bronze. With our coastal climate, it oxidized quickly. Becky never missed anything when it came to art. She was fascinated with the color changes. She used to check it periodically, watching more and more oxidation appear in the cracks and crevices.”

  A framed sketch of the Menorah that hung on the wall, marked as produced around age five, had been drawn with a light blue-green colored pencil. “Becky chose blue-green to try to capture the hues of the oxidation.” Abi held the old loose sheet of paper up to the light. She licked the tip of her finger and pressed the moisture onto the end of a line on the faded drawing. Dampened, brightened hues came clearly to the surface. “I knew it! This one's blue-green too.”

  Det. Britto leaned even closer to compare the two drawings. He showed no reaction. “How do you get a Menorah out of those random lines, ma'am?” He might observe with trained reservation but personal empathy showed when he reached out to touch the frame of the art on the wall. His expression was one of sadness.

  “This picture on the wall, she copied the structure of the Menorah. Back then, she had the Menorah to look at.” It was a pretty good representation for a five-year-old. “Now look at this one, Detective. Let's assume the older artist was trying to remember this through the traumatized memory of a five-year-old.”

  Joe seemed to be catching on. “In my studio, Megan said she had vague memories of images that she used to draw, but couldn't quite bring to mind.”

  “I get it.” Det. Britto came out of his reverie. “After the abduction, Becky blocked all the years before age five from her mind. Then later, drawing these, she was trying to remember something from deep inside her subconscious.”

  “Maybe she could have retained just enough memory so that something pleasurable, like her art, stuck with her.” Joe pointed and followed the half-circle of the base. “She almost follows the flow and shape of the Menorah.”

  “See here.” Abi still held the drawing found at the cabin. “It's like she's forgotten the cross bar at the top.” The candles of the Menorah were in the right places, but without the crossbar across the inverted arc, the candles hang in mid-air.

  “Yes, yes.” Det. Britto seemed drawn into the scenario. “And she drew the inverted arc angular, like a V, instead of rounded like a bowl.”

  Joe slapped the back of his hand into the other palm. “That's why this drawing looks fragmented, especially when viewed upside-down.”

  “Notice, too, ma'am. She's got the right number of lines, which would represent candles.”

  Abi drifted away from the two men to compare similarities of other drawings, then first felt elation, then nearly uncontrollable fright as reality began setting in. “I knew it. Come look at this.” They turned and joined her across the small room. “Trees. Cypress trees at Pt. Meare.”

  Det. Britto took another drawing, studied it and shook his head. “How do you see trees from those curly lines?”

  She directed him to a
framed drawing standing on another shelf, which he carefully picked up and held alongside the art from the tablet. “Becky was on the pier when she drew those in the frames. Those lines are softer. They curve around and twist just like the twisted trees clinging to the rocks on the sea wall.”

  “Okay, I've been there.” Det. Britto sounded doubtful and handed back the drawing.

  Another loose page showed the bursts directed upward, and opposite of the way they had viewed it when it looked like fireworks falling downward. “It looks like she was searching her memory again when she tried to draw the tree scene.” Only a mother might decipher what a young artist tried to portray. “These are the tree trunks.” Abi pointed to the longer lines. “These straight lines that look like fingers from the one vertical line—”

  “Those are the branches. Britto, look at this.”

  “I'm looking, man.” He seemed to recognize the similarities. “Those clumps of shorter lines are the needles, right?” He compared the images again. “Yeah. Cypresses, from the genus Cupressas. Grows in temperate climates and has clumps of compressed needles.”

  For a second, Abi had the same sense that she had earlier, something familiar about Det. Britto in his knowledge of horticulture, but from where? She pushed the thought from her mind and focused again on the loose drawing. The drawings on the wall showed curly line art, and the direction of the lines in both the old loose art and the newer ones were the same. “Compressed needles that grow upward, that stick out of the crevices in the rocks at Pt. Meare.” Abi's voice wavered again. “We looked at these drawings upside-down, Joe. These peaks above look like mountains below the fireworks, they're actually the tops of the rocks along the sea wall.”

  Each peered silently at the pictures, comparing. Then Joe sighed. “Why would she change from curly lines to straight ones?”

  Det. Britto kept nodding. “It could have something to do with a comment Winnaker's psychiatrist made.”

  Abi perked, alert to hearing anything new. “And that was?”

  “That she preferred straight line art because of her close association with her dad, a male figure.”