The Disappeared Girl

by Martin J. Smith

  “This guy—the man in the picture—it looks like him?”

  “The bigger one, yeah,” Brosky said. Again: “I’ll be damned.”

  Chapter 21

  The cramped street was familiar. He had been here before, just once, after he’d read in the newspaper that the boat pilot had told someone his story. Was he anything to worry about? Was he credible? Guerra had no way of knowing back then, so he’d spent an afternoon watching the old man come and go. The man usually carried a beer or a sack of brown liquor from the nearby store, so he’d concluded that the man’s crazy tale about pulling survivors from the water was likely to sink as quickly as the plane. Besides, the only person listening was that freelance investigator, and no one seemed to take him seriously.

  But now, here he was again. The adopted girl’s father was asking questions, and his questions led him to this claustrophobic river town, to the boat pilot’s front door. The discovery of the plane had given the old man’s crazy story new life, and that was a concern.

  He bent to retrieve his ancient leather medical bag from the floor of the Comet’s front passenger seat and set it on his lap. It yawned open when he unfastened the clasp, and he peered inside to make sure everything was in order, regretting that it had come to this. The skills he’d learned during those rigorous years in medical school were meant to relieve suffering, to save lives. And the skills he’d learned in service to his country were meant to protect. He found it distasteful to use them for any other purpose. And yet he had sometimes, especially toward the end of his time there.

  Different life, different times, he reminded himself. What he did then was done in service to a higher cause. Besides, he was following orders.

  His medical school professors had taught the importance of preparation. Every possibility anticipated, a tool at hand for every contingency. And so it was today. He reached in and touched the pistol grip of the device, then the extra battery. His fingers also found the sticky outer edge of the thick tape roll on the bag’s flat bottom. He’d brought two rolls, just in case, for necessary restraint while he worked.

  He closed the bag again and set it on the passenger seat beside him, then checked his watch. The two men had been inside for nearly ninety minutes. He had been parked a block away the whole time, waiting, watching, hoping the old man had been smart enough to tell his visitor nothing. He suspected that was not the case, but he had to find out.

  Chapter 22

  Sleep, any more, wasn’t much different from the rest of Brosky’s day. He never rested. For that matter, he never really woke up. Just drifted in and out of the haze until his sour stomach sent him to the shitter, drank again, sank back into the thrashing, cottonmouth vapor. He’d run out of beer that afternoon and hadn’t felt like going out, but he still had the Imperial. Any left? Christ in a chicken basket—couldn’t remember. He opened one eye and saw the ceiling.

  Place was dark—no clue what time. There was a clock somewhere, but that would mean looking around, maybe turning on a light to see it. That would mean pain. It was dark—close enough. Definitely not daytime. He closed the eye again, its lid like sandpaper. Tried to rub it, but his right hand wouldn’t move. Tried the left hand, but it wouldn’t move either.

  “You are a sound sleeper, Mr. Travis L. Brosky.”

  Both eyes wide open now, still seeing nothing. Rolled his head to both sides, wondering if he’d heard the husky voice, or just thought he’d heard it. Tried to sit up; couldn’t. A familiar weight held him down, like a rhino sitting on his chest, and his left arm was numb. Lifted his head enough to see he was spread eagle on the bed. That’s when he remembered the guy who showed up at his door, right after the other guy left. He was pointing some kind of gun.

  Brosky tried to roll, but couldn’t. His bare skin stuck to plastic, and the plastic moved with him. Had he showered? Maybe. But why the hell was he sleeping on the shower curtain?

  “Open wide.”

  Only got out “What the fuck—” before fingers pried his jaws apart and jammed something soft and round between his teeth. A rubber ball? What came out then was angry garble followed by the sound of heavy tape being torn from a roll. Then somebody was leaning over him, gently lifting his head and wrapping duct tape around it twice, covering his mouth with the ball inside. Whoever it was lifted his head again and slid something over it, some sort of hood, and tugged it down like a curtain over what little he could see. His head filled with the smell of old canvas and suddenly felt like it was spinning. An Imperial drunk didn’t feel like that. This was something else. Something he’d felt twice before, before each of his heart attacks.

  “There, now we can talk.”

  Brosky tried to sit up again, but his wrists and ankles were held tight to the iron posts of his bed. The clang of metal on metal bounced off the walls of the concrete room. Struggled again, got the same sound. Handcuffs? Brosky knew the feel of them well enough. He heard the man moving around the room, shutting windows, pulling shades. Heard the click of the wall switch by his front door.

  Wide awake now. And scared. He knew that pain in his chest all too well. He’d rode the rivers for decades, facing down everything from floods to pirates. Not afraid to die. But now he was in uncharted waters, caught off guard by—Jesus. He’d never been so vulnerable in his life. His scream came out his nose as a muffled pig snort.

  “Relax, Mr. Brosky. Please. Our conversation has just begun.”

  He knew the voice now—the guy who’d called. The keep-your-head-down guy. This was about the plane crash, just like that other guy who’d come that afternoon with the pictures. The hood filled with the sound and smell of his breath, which Brosky knew was coming fast and hard. Tried to get it under control, but it was no use.

  “You’ve had a bit of a shock,” the intruder said. “I am sorry about that. It was necessary so that we could now speak more honestly with one another.”

  Brosky thrashed and pig snorted again.

  “The charge you experienced on your doorstep is the gentle one, and the effects of it will pass in a few minutes. It will do you no permanent harm.”

  Brosky heard himself whimper inside the hood. His mouth was dry, but he needed to swallow.

  The man tapped his chest scar. “But I’m sure you do not want to experience it again, am I correct, Mr. Brosky?”

  He nodded. Then he felt the man tap him in the center of his chest.

  “You have had surgery here? Heart?”

  He nodded again.

  “Let’s hope that does not complicate things. Of course, your answers will be important.”

  Brosky felt the man’s weight shift. In the irregular pulse in his ears, he could hear his crippled heart struggling.

  “So, you had a visitor this afternoon? Just nod to answer.”

  He nodded.

  “He wanted to talk to you about something that happened many years ago, did he not? Something about which you had been warned by telephone not to speak?”

  He felt himself gag on his saliva, but when he did it went down. But he could feel his body’s systems failing.

  “He was here a long time, Mr. Brosky. Nearly two hours, by my watch.”

  Brosky was at the edge of consciousness, felt his own piss against the side of his leg. It collected in a reservoir at his crotch, held there in a warm pool by the plastic shower curtain underneath. In the darkness of the hood, his breathing grew weaker.

  His captor sighed deeply and pulled the hood up a bit, just enough to expose his mouth. Still, breathing was impossible. “You had been warned, Mr. Brosky. You had been warned. And this, you see, could have been avoided. But now you will tell me everything about your conversation, all right? What the man already knows. What the man wanted to know. When I take this tape from your mouth, you will tell me everything. Do you understand, Mr. Brosky?”

  But by then his body had begun to buck, and the man’s voice sounded hollow, distant.

  “Mr. Brosky?”

  Chapter 23

  “
But why would Michael lie to you?”

  Brenna rolled to face him as she answered, and the ancient joints of their antique oak bed protested with each realignment of her featherweight body. Her clock radio’s luminous silver-blue face set behind her like a pale midnight moon, the only light in the room. It defined the faint outline of her head but not the details of a face that always seemed fresh and welcoming.

  “That’s what I can’t understand—why he’d lie,” he said.

  “But you’d trust this pathetic alcoholic you just met today more than the guy who’s been married to your sister for more than thirty years?”

  Said out loud, it sounded ridiculous. Christensen folded his arms behind his head and stared at the ceiling, as he’d done since killing the light. Brenna was a defense attorney, one of the city’s best. He knew her cross-examination would be brutal when he started the conversation. He started it anyway.

  “Something about the old guy—he has a daughter he hasn’t seen since she was born. Talking to him about Melissa’s adoption, about her need to know more, that’s what got me in the door. It went from there. Turns out he wanted to talk, too.”

  “Drunks are like that.”

  “Bren, my bullshit detector’s almost as good as yours. I got no signals. And the story Brosky told seems, I don’t know—it’s just consistent with too many things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Facts this Krug guy put together. Things Melissa told me when she was talking about her dreams, or memories. It’s all part of the same story. I believe Brosky pulled four people out of the river that night, including Melissa and Michael. I believe he was told to keep quiet about it.”

  Brenna ran a soft hand across his bare chest and kissed his neck, but didn’t let up. She tugged his chin toward her. “So why is the boat pilot talking now?”

  “It’s not the first time. He talked to Krug.”

  “But you said he regretted that. The paper wrote about the rumors, and he started getting these calls. Why would he take that chance again by talking to you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You need to know before you talk to Michael. First rule of inquiry: Don’t ask questions unless you already know the answer. So why would this guy tell a total stranger a story he kept quiet for more than two decades?”

  “We connected, Bren. I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that. With me—I just think he understands, on a very deep level, the other side of the adoption equation. He’s old and alone and has a daughter out there somewhere he hasn’t seen since she was born. He understood how important it might be for Melissa to fill in the blanks.”

  The bed creaked again as Brenna curled in beside him. “When’s Michael back from New York?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “And you’re going to confront him with all this?”

  “I’m going to talk to him about it.”

  “Baby, he stonewalled and walked away from you the first time you brought it up. This time you’re going to flat-out accuse him of lying. What makes you think that’s going to go any better?”

  The scene at the radio station replayed in Christensen’s head. Looking back, that’s when he knew something was wrong. He made his living probing people’s pasts, untangling the snarl of truth and memory. But for twenty-two years, he’d somehow managed to ignore the shadow in his own daughter’s past, a shadow that now was reaching across the decades and into all of their lives. Melissa had come to him as a gift. To question the giver back then would have seemed ungrateful. What gave him the right to question now? What if I can’t answer, Jim? What if there are reasons why I can’t?

  “We have to know,” he said.

  “And you should. Melissa should. But you’re talking about the only family you’ve got besides us. Michael. Carole. You push this, Jim, it may change everything. You sure you’re ready for that?”

  Christensen dropped an arm around Brenna’s shoulder and pulled her closer. Within minutes her breathing fell into the enviable cadence of sleep. But her questions were trapped moths. Their wings batted the night air around him until dawn.

  Chapter 24

  Christensen set the Explorer’s emergency brake and marveled, as he often did, at the designer life his sister lived behind the perfect hedge of her manor house in Sewickley. If it was just about money, or putting on airs, he might have resented it. But long before Carole married Michael and grew wealthy, she lived with the graciousness and style of someone whose home was never without fresh-cut flowers, who composted because it was right, who varnished gourds for holiday centerpieces, and who, with her trusty Felco No. 2 pruners, was at the moment gathering crookneck squash from her garden into a handwoven wicker basket, no doubt for use in some delicate but flavorful summer soup.

  The guest parking area of their driveway was maybe fifty yards from the garden, on the opposite side of the house. Carole looked up as he closed the car door, pushing the brim of her sun hat higher on her forehead for a better look at who’d arrived. He was here without notice, but she smiled and waved the hand holding the pruners—his gift to her three Christmases ago—and slipped the tool back into a leather holster on her belt. She would greet him like visiting royalty and offer something wonderful to eat: a cup of vichyssoise, maybe, or fresh bread with homemade blackberry jam. She’d probably pour him fresh-squeezed lemonade from a crystal pitcher, and it would be neither too sweet nor too sour, but just right.

  He used to wonder how different things might have been if Carole and Michael had ever had children, if their lifestyle would have survived the daily mayhem of child rearing.

  “Hey!” she called as she moved toward him.

  Christensen waved and leaned against the car door. He hadn’t slept at all the night before and watched her approach with hazy fatigue. He bent to her willingly when she pulled him into a hug.

  “What brings you downriver?” she said.

  He wasn’t ready for that conversation just yet. “How can you live in this dump?”

  Carole’s smile flickered as she surveyed what surely was the most carefully barbered real estate in the area. “Things get so overgrown in the summer.”

  “You can’t be serious. It looks like a spread in a shelter magazine.”

  “That bank of myrtle should be weeded out. It’s looking pretty shaggy.”

  Christensen followed her accusing finger to a manicured hillside thatched with myrtle plants. “Sister, you need more to do.”

  “Like hell,” she said. “Come on in. I’ve got lemonade. Made it this morning.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “Michael’s due back any minute.”

  No coincidence. He’d asked her his flight time that morning when he called. “Four thirty, you said?”

  Apparently his tone was telling. His sister stopped her advance on the house’s front steps and turned around.

  “Jim, what’s up?”

  “Long story. I just need to talk to him, that’s all.”

  “Well—anything I can help with?”

  Christensen shook his head. “How about some of that lemonade?”

  She studied his face. Was it giving him away? Could she read in it the anguish he felt about his decision to confront her husband with questions he should have asked twenty-two years before?

  “Michael told me you came to see him at the radio station before he left,” she said. “I’m feeling a little out of the loop, you know.”

  “How much did he tell you?”

  “Just that you’d stopped by. That he was rushing to the airport after the show and couldn’t talk long.”

  “How’d things go in New York?”

  “You’re trying to change the subject.”

  “No really, how’d it go?”

  Carole shifted the basket of summer squash from one arm to the other. “You two are up to something. This better not be about my birthday.”

  She was having a birthday in two weeks. With everything else going on, he’d completely forgo
tten. Still, he dragged an imaginary zipper across his closed mouth.

  “He’d better not be planning anything,” she said. “You know I hate surprises.”

  He let her believe what he hadn’t said, hoping the conversation would shift. This was between him and Michael, and given her husband’s cryptic reaction the day before yesterday—What if I can’t answer?—he wasn’t sure how much, if anything, Dorsey had shared with his wife about how he brought Melissa into the country.

  “Don’t keep me in suspense,” Christensen said. “Does he have a deal with the network?”

  The lines of Carole’s face shifted into an irrepressible smile. “It looks good. They’re still talking—nothing signed yet—but I think they’re close to working it out.”

  “He’ll be gone a lot, Sister, probably even more than when he was with the State Department. There’ll be speaking invitations, promo appearances, everything that goes along with a national show. You ready to be a weekday widow again?”

  She shrugged. “Our first ten years of marriage, we only lived together five years. Back then he was gone months at a time, to places I couldn’t even find on a map. The travel now, it’d just be short trips. Besides, absence makes the heart grow fonder, you know.”

  “I seem to remember you complaining a lot to anybody who’d listen.”

  “I was a child bride.”

  “You were young and lonely and pissed.”

  “I’m older and wiser. Plus, I get plenty of Michael Dorsey since he settled into this radio career. You try living with somebody who gets paid to be contentious. When he’s on the air, I can turn him off. In bed, at dinner, he just keeps opining. Hon, I could stand a little solitude.”

  Christensen smiled. “He’s a force of nature. I imagine that takes a toll.”

  His sister turned, finally, and headed up the steps. Christensen followed her through the solid oak door and into a front hall with a floor checkered by alternating black and white squares of polished marble. She set her work gloves on an antique ladder-back chair and carried the basket of squash down the hall to the kitchen.