The Disappeared Girl

by Martin J. Smith

  “You should have brought the kids,” she called over her shoulder. “I made macaroons this morning.”

  He could smell the coconut. “Brenna came home early and took them all to a matinee. Melissa, too. We’ve been trying to get her out of the house, keep her busy.”

  “What’s happening with her job?”

  “On hold. She’s just not ready to go back right now.”

  “She’d have to work with the guy again, the married sleaze who got her pregnant? That’d be hard.”

  Christensen shook his head as he settled onto a stool at a kitchen island topped with hammered copper. “It’s not what you think. She talked about waiting until she’s really pregnant, out to here, and then going back. Make things really uncomfortable for him. She was laughing about it this morning.”

  “That’s healthy.”

  “She has good days.”

  “So she’s decided to have the baby?”

  He watched his sister pour lemonade from the crystal pitcher over the ice in his tall glass, then top it with a sprig of fresh mint. He sipped and swallowed hard, thinking about his daughter’s mysterious genes. “It’s complicated. It’s a girl, though.”

  “Damn,” Carole said.

  “I know.”

  Christensen took another sip, but this one he held in his mouth. A car door had slammed outside, and he was afraid the lemonade might catch in his throat.

  Chapter 25

  The air pressure in the house seemed to change when Michael Dorsey opened the front door. Christensen felt it in his ears even before he heard his brother-in-law’s booming “Caaaaarole!” Or did he imagine it? Could mistrust be measured in pounds per square inch?

  “In the kitchen,” she called.

  Christensen heard a travel bag thud onto the marbled floor of the foyer—the same leather overnighter Dorsey carried when he left the radio station after their contentious first conversation about the plane crash. He’d no doubt seen the Explorer out front; he knew Christensen was here. Still, Dorsey offered no greeting.

  “Jim’s here,” Carole shouted.

  His brother-in-law stepped through the kitchen door, nearly filling the frame from side to side. He was wearing the same suit he wore when he left but with the jacket slung over the forearm of a white shirt that was noticeably damp at the armpits. His hair hadn’t traveled well, either. The comb-over had shifted in a way that left an inch-wide gap across the fleshy bulb of his head.

  “Don’t you look like the weary road warrior?” Carole said.

  Dorsey laid the suit jacket across the back of a nearby chair. “Didn’t travel used to be fun? Cocktails. Hot towels. Now it’s dry pretzels and cavity searches. And that was in first class.”

  “Different world,” Christensen said, but again got no acknowledgement of his presence.

  Carole, too, noticed her husband’s determined effort to ignore him. “Jim dropped by,” she said.

  Dorsey’s eyes finally strayed in Christensen’s general direction. “That lemonade looks great. Can I get one?”

  Christensen felt as welcome as a repo man. He wasn’t imagining the pressure. Being in the same room with Dorsey suddenly had a weight that it never had before. Neither of them spoke as Carole busied herself at the refrigerator, pouring the lemonade over ice, again punctuating it with a mint sprig. She set the glass on the copper-topped kitchen island near her husband and put her hands on her hips.

  “Tell you what,” she said. “I’m going back outside. I’ve got no idea what’s happening here, and I’m going to assume—demand—that one of you will explain it to me at some point. But right now, I’m just getting in the way of a conversation you two obviously need to have. You can tell me about New York later.”

  With that, she was gone. Through the kitchen door, across the foyer, out into daylight. The pressure only seemed to rise.

  “I have to know everything you know,” Christensen said.

  Dorsey studied him from behind the rim of his crystal tumbler as he drained it. The ice collapsed in a tinkling crash as Dorsey set it back down on the counter.

  “I don’t need this right now, Jim. Really, I don’t.”

  “I’m sorry about that. But I have to know.”

  “Why? Why now, after all these years, do you suddenly want answers I’m not in a position to give?”

  Christensen hit the same wall he’d hit two days before. “Spare me the cloak-and- dagger stuff, Michael. It’s me. An usher at your wedding? Father of your favorite nieces?” He paused to let Dorsey consider the scope of their relationship. “The guy who’ll be forever grateful for what you did for me and Molly in 1983, no matter what happened?”

  Dorsey went to the refrigerator and poured himself another glass. After putting the pitcher back on the shelf, he put one arm on top of the open door and the other on top of the refrigerator itself. He stood for a long time, letting the chilled air cool him.

  “How is she?” he said without turning around.

  “Melissa? Confused. Desperate.”

  Dorsey faced him but kept the refrigerator door open to cool his back. “Who’s pushing this, Jim? You or Melissa?”

  “What does it matter?” Christensen shot back. “She needs to know everything she can about her medical history.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there may be problems with the baby. She needs information.”

  “Jim, what kind of problems?”

  Christensen backed off again. “She can tell you if she wants, but I’ll leave that to her. I just want to help her get the information she needs.”

  Dorsey set his glass on the kitchen island then backed into the cooling air again. “I’ve told you everything I can.”

  “You didn’t tell me she was on that plane, Michael. I know that now.” Christensen felt himself clenching and unclenching his fists, struggling for control. “She doesn’t know what I know—I haven’t told her everything—but she already believes she was on it, believes it so strongly that she’s experiencing the crash all over again. It’s terrifying her. But it’s also making her think there’s more she doesn’t know. Documents. Records. Names. She came from somewhere, Michael, and right now she needs to know what she’s dealing with—”

  Dorsey closed the refrigerator door much too hard. “How much do you know?”

  Christensen sensed a breakthrough. “I talked to the towboat pilot who pulled you and Melissa from the river that night.”

  “Oh Christ.”

  “I showed him an old picture. He recognized you.”

  “Goddamn it, Jim. You have no idea what you’re dealing with here.”

  “You left me no choice.”

  Dorsey paced the kitchen like a caged cat. “Do you have any idea what I went through to make that adoption happen? How long you and Molly would have waited if I’d gone by the book? Jesus—you’d still be waiting.”

  “I know—”

  “Bringing her into the country this way got her out of that godforsaken baby warehouse that much sooner. Did I cut some corners to get it done? Damned right I did. I had to cut a deal with the orphanage. I had to sidestep immigration laws. I had to fly a military transport rather than a diplomatic plane. And at the risk of everything I had at the time—my career at State, my future with the administration—I got it done for you.”

  “And then the plane went down.”

  Dorsey nodded. “Just my goddamned luck. But no one could know we were on it, Jim. No one. The whole thing—everything would have come apart. Melissa would have been sent back. Best case, I’d have been shit-canned. Maybe prosecuted. And you’d still be on a waiting list for a domestic adoption. You’d have been lucky if it happened before your Social Security checks started coming. So I did what I had to do.”

  “The crash cover-up.”

  “The only option.”

  Christensen waited. Dorsey had conceded what he could no longer deny, but how much more information was he prepared to share?

  “There were others on the p
lane,” Christensen prompted.

  Dorsey looked like he’d been gut-punched.

  “Not just the pilots,” Christensen said. “Melissa. You. Another man. A woman. This towboat pilot—he said he pulled four people from the river alive.”

  Dorsey chopped the air with his hand. “He’s wrong. Or he’s lying.”

  “Four people. That’s what he told me.”

  “It was me and Melissa. That’s it. They found us in the water after I got her out of the plane.”

  Christensen couldn’t let it drop. “There had to be other people on board. The salvage crews just found a skull—”

  Dorsey turned away. He was shaking with rage. When he turned back, Christensen could see he, too, was struggling for control.

  “Michael, I—”

  “Stop now, Jim. Please. Just stop.”

  “You’re not telling me everything.”

  “I told you what you wanted to know. Yes, Melissa was on that plane. Her memories are real. Put her mind at ease. I can talk to her if you’d like, tell her the story of what happened that night. But that’s it. That’s all I can say. No more questions.”

  “But it’s been so long—”

  “Please.”

  Christensen might have pressed, but something in Dorsey’s eyes made him stop.

  “Don’t push this,” Dorsey said. This time it sounded like a prayer.

  Chapter 26

  Ski Demski slammed the car door, hoisted his gun belt and spit on the sidewalk, watching the old guy in the wifebeater T-shirt scuttle down the front steps. Jesus, could he be any uglier?

  “Afternoon,” Demski said. “You the one who called?”

  “Vernon Knezevich,” guy said, working his arm like a pump. “Don’t want no trouble, see. Just trying to help, but I don’t want no trouble. Always been on good terms with Braddock cops. You know Palowski? Done his body work for years.”

  Demski couldn’t make sense of what his dispatcher had told him. This guy wasn’t helping much. “Command said you got a renter not moving, something like that?”

  “Right.”

  Demski hawked another wad and spit. “County sheriff handles evictions, not us.” Knezevich made this sort of frowny face, all confused. Which confused Demski. “He not paying his rent, or what? That why you want him out?”

  “Want who out?”

  “This renter who won’t move. What you called about.”

  Knezevich waved away the words. “No, the guy who rents from me … see, we got this apartment out back.”

  Demski peeked around him, at the concrete walkway running down the side of the house. “Apartment my ass,” he said. “Alley garage is more like it. Got a permit for that?”

  “Don’t want no trouble, like I said.”

  “Permitted, or no?”

  “You ain’t listening, officer. This guy ain’t moving.”

  “I heard you.”

  “I don’t mean moving, like moving out. I mean, like, not moving around. Ain’t moved off his bed all day. Don’t answer when we knock. Something’s wrong, I think. Guy’s name’s Brosky. Travis—that’s what it says on his checks—but he calls himself Trey. Keeps mostly to himself.”

  “White guy?”

  Knezevich nodded. “But he drinks like a—like a fish. Pays his rent on time. No trouble at all until Mudgie—that’s my wife—went to roust him this morning. She could see him through the window, on his bed, but he ain’t moved since. We started wondering.”

  “What’s he do?”

  “Worked the riverboats, I think, back when he worked. Mostly just drinks now and watches TV.”

  “He lives alone in the—” Demski crooked his fingers like quote marks “—‘apartment’ back there, does he?”

  “Hey, I’m trying to help out here.”

  First call of the day and it’s another passed-out drunk. Demski sighed. Two more years to retirement. “Better show me then.”

  Knezevich talked as he walked. “Mudgie thinks something’s really wrong. ‘Vernon!’ she yells, and I come running up from the basement. We musta knocked for 20 minutes. He ain’t moving.”

  “You’re sure he’s still back there?”

  “We’d of seen him leave if he went somewhere.”

  “He got a gun?”

  “Not that I know. Like I said, he’s been no trouble all these years.”

  Knezevich led the way down the concrete passage, through the back yard, up to the door into the apartment. “Trey? It’s Vernon,” he called. He knocked as loud as he could and got a noisy, hollow rattle from the delaminating door. “Trey?”

  Demski cupped his hands around his eyes and looked in. To the right, a big fat guy was face up on the bed, wearing only Bermuda shorts, eyes closed. Knezevich took a peek as well.

  “He still ain’t moved,” Knezevich said.

  “Step back.”

  Knezevich moved aside. Demski settled his hand on the butt of the gun on his hip and pulled it quietly from its holster. He laid it along the side of his thigh then stepped up closer to the door.

  “Hey, hey,” Knezevich said. “He wouldn’t hurt nobody, I don’t think.”

  “Mr. Brosky?” Demski called. “Braddock Police, Mr. Brosky. Would you mind stepping to the door here so we can talk?”

  Demski grunted when he got no answer. He tried the doorknob, but it was locked.

  “Got a key to this?”

  Knezevich handed him the spare key. “Don’t you need a warrant or something?”

  Demski didn’t answer, just twisted the key and pushed the door. It swung open with a creaking sigh and banged against something hard enough to rattle the glass in the window. Still, Brosky didn’t move. And now that they were inside, Demski could see how faded Brosky’s skin looked. The only real color on him was the scar down the center of his chest, and even that was pink rather than red. He was starting to feel pretty sick about the whole thing.

  “Dead?” Knezevich asked.

  Demski was in no hurry. This wasn’t exactly a first-aid situation. He peeled off his sunglasses and scanned the room, checking the cooking area, the toilet, the see-through plastic curtain with the cartoon characters on it hanging in the shower. Finally, he said, “Looks that way. When was the last time you saw him up and around?”

  “Mudgie saw him yesterday, coming back from the beer distributor with a case of Iron. Pulling it on a kid’s wagon. She thought that was funny, wondering if he’d talked some kid into letting him borrow it so he wouldn’t have to carry the case back to his place. Then she said some guy came to visit him in the afternoon.”

  “You know the guy?”

  “I stay in the basement, mostly, but Mudgie saw him. Beard. Glasses. Said she never saw him before.”

  “Ever see Brosky after that? Alive, I mean.”

  Knezevich shrugged. “Don’t think so.”

  “Guy use drugs?”

  “Not that I know. Liked his beer, though. Don’t you need to check his pulse or something?”

  Demski smirked. “He look alive to you?”

  Now that their eyes had adjusted to the light inside the garage, they could see that Brosky’s skin was pale blue. Otherwise, the guy could have been sleeping.

  “Guess you’ve seen dead bodies before,” Knezevich said.

  “Definitely got the look,” Demski said. He pointed to Brosky’s chest scar. “He have heart problems?”

  “Bypass operation. Who hasn’t? But we didn’t talk much. You think that’s it? Heart attack?”

  Demski shrugged. He was preoccupied with two tiny marks to the left of the dead man’s massive scar, like the pinpricks of a barbed fishhook. “Not my call. I’ll get the coroner out here. But for now let’s secure the scene so those folks can sort this out. Could I ask you to back out the way we came in, please? Don’t touch anything. Just step back through the door and we’ll close this off for now.”

  Knezevich did as he was told. Demski followed, but stopped to read a business card lying face up on the kitchen ta
ble. “Know anybody named Jim Christensen, Mr. Knezevich?”

  “No.”

  “But you said somebody was here to see this guy yesterday?”

  “You think it’s a clue?” Knezevich said. “This guy’s card?”

  “Most killers don’t leave their business card at the scene of the crime. You keep watching those cop shows, though. You’ll get the hang of this.”

  Demski took one long, last look around. He squinted at the shower curtain for a long time. Beads of water clung to the inside surface of the clear plastic. Demski tugged a notebook from his back pocket and jotted himself a reminder.

  “What?” Knezevich said.

  “Musta showered right before. Least he met his maker with no BO.”

  Chapter 27

  Melissa gripped the handrail as the elevator rose twenty-four floors through the silver tower of One Oxford Centre. It felt strange being back among people and traffic and the pulse of daily life. She’d hoped to be steadier on her feet by now, but she could feel the energy ebbing back into her body. She wondered if her physical strength might be the only thing that ever returned to normal.

  The lobby of Brenna’s law office was a warm embrace of dark woods, thick carpet, and brass letters announcing entry into the legal defense firm of “Flaherty & Kennedy.” Melissa had only been here a few times before.

  “May I help you?” the receptionist asked.

  “I’d like to see Brenna.”

  The receptionist had a hard edge that her professional clothes couldn’t hide. Melissa knew she’d been a hooker once, one of Brenna’s clients who needed a fresh start. Mid-thirties, but with the eyes of someone much older. Years behind this desk hadn’t softened her much, and there was mistrust in those eyes when she looked up from the appointment book.

  “I don’t see your name here. What time—”

  “I’m her—” Melissa cleared her throat. “Her stepdaughter. Melissa Christensen. No appointment. I’m just dropping by.”