The Disappeared Girl

by Martin J. Smith

  Brosky was dead, cause unknown but under circumstances the cop called “unusual.” He’d apparently died in the early morning the day after he’d told Christensen his story about the river rescue.

  Now Vargas was dead, an apparent suicide but with “curious parallels” to the Brosky death. She’d died early this morning, the day after she’d told Christensen and Melissa about her grim maternity work in Buenos Aires more than two decades before.

  “I’ll be real honest with you here,” the cop said. “I think there’s a lot more to all this, Mr. Christensen.”

  “But you’re not going to tell me why, are you?”

  “I can tell you a few things, but you’ll have to tell me a few things.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  “Why so cagey?”

  “I could ask you the same thing.”

  Twice now the cop had excused himself from the room and returned a few minutes later. Each time, he shared a little more. Each time, his questions got a little more specific. He’d returned a few minutes ago with some papers and handwritten notes, and he consulted them now.

  “Hypothetical,” the cop said. “We’ve got a couple of bodies, and there’s a reason to believe these people didn’t just die, but rather died at the hands of someone else. We’d call that murder, right?”

  Christensen nodded.

  “No sign of forced entry in either case. What’s that tell you?”

  He’d watched enough cop shows to guess. “It was someone they knew.”

  “That, or maybe it was someone who knew how to get in. But let’s assume these people knew their visitor enough to open their door. Now—” The cop made a show of rustling the papers in his hand. “We’ve got some people looking into this, putting together information about how these people spent the twenty-four hours before they died. And—”

  “You’re still talking about these hypothetical people, right?” Fatigue was making Christensen punchy.

  The cop smiled. “You’re a smart man, Mr. Christensen, so I won’t bullshit you.”

  “You are bullshitting me. You’ve been bullshitting me for two hours.”

  “Why so defensive?”

  Christensen stood up. “That’s it. I’m done. I came here willing to help, hoping to find out what was going on. You’re telling me nothing and treating this like an interrogation. I’m done.”

  “You’re free to leave.”

  “I know. I am.”

  Christensen’s hand was on the conference room doorknob when the cop spoke again. “Can I ask you about these phone records, though?”

  Same tone, but when Christensen turned he saw that avuncular, cat-with-a-canary smile. “Phone records?”

  The cop flipped a page and tugged a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket. “I mentioned we had some investigators on this, right? One of the first things they check is phone records. And they found a couple of curious things. Mind if I share?”

  Christensen waited, but didn’t sit back down.

  “The fat blue guy, this Brosky, he didn’t have a phone,” Demski said.

  “That’s curious?”

  “In this day and age? I think so. But it doesn’t really tell us much, does it? Now this old gal’s phone records, that’s another story.” He set the reading glasses on the end of his nose and scanned the papers. “She got six calls in the last couple of days. Two of those were from a number in Shadyside.”

  The cop recited the number, his eyes fixed on Christensen’s face. Christensen focused all his energy on his own left eye to keep it from twitching.

  “That number familiar to you, Mr. Christensen?”

  He said nothing.

  “Phone book says it’s yours.”

  “If you knew, why’d you ask?”

  “What can you tell me about that?”

  Christensen thought back to the night he heard Melissa on the phone in his home office, to the scrap of legal paper with a scribbled phone number.

  “My daughter,” he said. “She called her a couple days ago, late.”

  “Your daughter?”

  “Long story.”

  “It fits, though. Some of the seniors who knew this Vargas woman said two people visited her yesterday afternoon—a guy who looked a lot like you, and a young woman. They were there maybe three hours. That’s what you meant when I heard you say you ‘just saw her yesterday’?”

  Christensen nodded.

  “That feels like progress,” the cop said. “Good. Thank you. Now here’s the weird part. This guy in Braddock, he had a visitor, too, not long before he died. Guy who looked a lot like you. Drove a car a lot like yours.” The cop reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a business card across the conference room table. “Left this on the guy’s kitchen table.”

  Christensen read his own name off the card.

  “And I’m guessing you wear a size ten shoe, Mr. Christensen?”

  The cop pointed at Christensen’s feet. He looked down at his favorite pair of cross-trainers. Suddenly, he understood the cop’s weird interest in his shoes. He reached for the wall behind him for balance as the cop delivered his coup de grace.

  “We still got some testing to do,” he said, “but it looks like the same footprints were at both death scenes. Maybe they’re yours? If they are, maybe you can help me understand why that is, Mr. Christensen?”

  The air seemed to drain from the conference room, and he had a sudden, overpowering urge to call Brenna.

  “I’ve got nothing else to say to you,” he said.

  “Your choice.” The cop grinned. “We’ll be in touch.”

  Chapter 50

  The phone at home rang and rang as Christensen weaved through traffic on the Duquesne Bridge, headed for Route 65 North and a showdown with Michael Dorsey. Brenna and the younger two were out. Melissa wasn’t home yet, apparently still in Oakland, where he’d dropped her that morning to have more blood drawn. He focused on his cell phone’s keyboard long enough to disconnect, and in that instant found himself practically in the trunk of a slow-moving Grand Marquis.

  “Whoashit.”

  He yanked the wheel left and careened into the adjoining lane, grateful that no one was there. The minutes since he’d left the police station in Braddock had screamed past in a blur of disbelief and harrowing questions. During the past forty-eight hours, the two people he’d tracked down for more information about Melissa’s adoption had died. Demski wasn’t offering many details, but the cop obviously suspected murder, and apparently a single killer. What had started as a deeply personal odyssey for Melissa had become something else entirely, and he wanted answers, fast. His brother-in-law knew the truth—had always known it, or at least more than he was telling. But the stakes were higher now.

  Christensen raced along beneath scudding gray clouds and beside the brown Ohio River, past the forbidding walls of Western Penitentiary and the looming span of the McKees Rocks Bridge, beneath which the military cargo plane’s wreckage, and its secrets, lay buried for two decades. Through Bellevue. Through Avalon and Emsworth. He dialed the house again as he passed the long-shuttered Dixmont State Hospital, but still no one answered. By the time he reached Sewickley and turned northeast toward his sister’s place, he could feel his heart thudding in his chest and feel his pulse in his eyes.

  How to start this conversation?

  By the time he chirped to a stop in their driveway, Christensen was seething. He killed the motor and stepped out without closing the driver’s side door behind him. Within seconds, his agitated knock brought him face-to-face with the man he’d come to see.

  “Michael,” he said, “we have to talk.”

  Dorsey had opened the front door wide, but now he closed it a little and braced himself against it, as if Christensen might suddenly lower his shoulder and charge.

  “Keep your voice down. Carole’s napping.”

  “I need answers. I need them now. No bullshit.”

  Dorsey wedged his bulk even tighter into the narrowing sp
ace between the door and frame. “What’s this about, Jim?”

  “What’s this about? What’s this about?” Christensen knew he sounded hysterical but couldn’t help himself.

  “Jim, you need to take a deep breath here—”

  “How about you tell me what this is about, Michael, before somebody else ends up dead?”

  Dorsey stepped onto the front porch and closed the door behind him. He leaned close enough that Christensen could smell good scotch on his breath.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I think you know.”

  “Don’t play games.”

  “I know about Argentina. I know about the stolen children. I talked to the woman who was on the plane, Beatriz Vargas.”

  The name seemed to stun Dorsey. When he recovered he said, “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “She’s dead, Michael,” Christensen pressed. “Melissa and I talked to her about all this yesterday—the babies, the mothers, the mechanical school, everything. This morning, they found her body. The towboat pilot—Brosky? Same thing. I talk to him one day, he turns up dead the next. Don’t lie to me, Michael. How many more people are going to die while you keep your goddamned secrets?”

  Dorsey opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He opened it again, managing only a pathetic “Jim, I—” before the door behind him suddenly swung open.

  Carole stepped into the frame, her normally perfect hair a lopsided tangle. She wore the agitated expression of someone who’d been rousted from sleep. Still, true to form, she tried to be pleasant to the two men squared off on her front porch.

  “Hey, you two. What’s all this?”

  Neither man looked her in the eye. Dorsey didn’t even turn around.

  “Private matter, babe,” he said. “Give us a few minutes.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll be happy to fill you in,” Christensen said, his eyes never leaving Dorsey’s.

  “Shut up, Jim,” Dorsey said.

  “Your husband’s lies are destroying my daughter. His lies are—”

  “Jim, just shut the fuck up. Now.”

  “I think his story about my daughter being abandoned at birth is a lie.”

  Dorsey took a step toward him, clenching and unclenching his fists. Christensen stood his ground.

  “I think his story about bringing her here from some Buenos Aires orphanage is horseshit,” Christensen said. “I think he’s been lying to me and to Melissa all these years.” Christensen finally leaned around Dorsey and looked his sister straight in the eye. “I think maybe your husband is involved in something really—I don’t know. Something really awful. And he’s not telling anyone the truth.”

  His words hit Carole hard, he could tell, but she was calm as she stepped around Dorsey and stood between the two men. For the first time in his life, Christensen saw seething anger in his sister’s eyes as she stared straight at him.

  “You’ve got no right,” she said.

  “He’s probably been lying to you, too.”

  The next moment seemed to unfold in slow motion. His sister’s eyes narrowed. She raised her open right hand, preparing to slap him hard, when Michael Dorsey grabbed her wrist from behind. She turned and roasted him with a glare. Her husband then spoke in a whisper.

  “Wait.”

  Chapter 51

  The expression on Carole Dorsey’s face was a heartbreaking mix of confusion and concern. Michael Dorsey, standing behind his wife, held tight to her wrist and, for the second time, stopped Carole from striking her brother.

  “Jim can’t talk to you like that,” she seethed. “This is our home. I won’t have it.”

  Dorsey looked away, and in that moment Christensen knew there were things Dorsey had never shared with Carole. He found some comfort in that; at least she wasn’t part of the lies. But he also understood for the first time the potential devastation he was bringing into his sister’s seemingly perfect life.

  “Let’s go inside,” Dorsey said. “Please.”

  He released Carole’s wrist and it hung in the air, defying gravity, defying her instincts. Dorsey turned and retreated, lumbering into the house like a dying elephant. Carole faced Christensen, and again he saw something in her eyes that gave him pause. She had no idea what was going on.

  “Somebody better start talking to me,” she said, trailing her husband inside.

  Dorsey was waiting in the living room, looking like a chastened child on the sprawling corduroy couch. A half-drunk scotch-rocks sat on the coffee table in front of him, and he drained it as Christensen and his sister settled into the chairs facing the sofa. Still, Dorsey avoided their eyes. For once he seemed unable to conjure words.

  “Take your time,” Christensen said, “but no more secrets.”

  Dorsey nodded, focusing briefly on Carole. When he said, “I’m not sure where to start,” it was clear he was talking to her.

  “Michael?” she said.

  Dorsey tipped the glass again and the ice shifted. It was the only sound in the room. He set it back on the coffee table and resumed. “I suppose it starts with us, Carole, a long time ago.”

  “What starts?”

  “Just let me talk. It’s a long—”

  “What starts?” she repeated.

  Christensen reached for Carole’s hand, but she jerked it away.

  Dorsey sat back into the couch cushions and clasped his hands on top of his head. His eyes were red and wet at the rims. “You know how when you’re a kid, and you’re invincible, and you do things that, later in life, seem unbelievably stupid and dangerous and doomed from the start, but you do them anyway when you’re young and never really think things through?”

  Christensen encouraged him with a nod.

  “Try to imagine this,” Dorsey said. “It’s the 1970s. I’ve just blown through college and grad school with honors without ever breaking a sweat. I’ve got a master’s degree in international relations and a staff job at the State Department. And a title—by 1977 I’m a deputy undersecretary. For God’s sake, I’m twenty-nine years old and I’m the king of the goddamned world.”

  Carole eased back into her chair. “And married five years.”

  “Remember how we had the world at our feet, babe, literally? I traveled so much—Europe, Asia, Africa. You went everywhere with me, at least at first.” Dorsey shifted his focus to Christensen. “But after a while, for her anyway, it just got to be too much. We were such gypsies. We had an apartment on Dupont Circle in D.C., but we were never there. Just lived out of suitcases and embassy housing, wherever we were. So after a while Carole wanted to settle, to have a place of our own.”

  Dorsey unclasped his hands and swept his arms around a room that seemed lifted from the pages of a shelter magazine, adding, “You know how she is.”

  Christensen’s sister was in no mood to be patronized. “You’d better get where you’re going with this soon.”

  Dorsey reached again for the scotch glass. “In 1978 I got a temporary posting to Buenos Aires. Two years. But we’d just bought our first house, the one in Falls Church. Carole decided to stay behind. We needed the money for the house, and she wanted the time to get the place in shape. So I—”

  Dorsey stood up and went to the living room’s wet bar. He poured himself another dose of liquor without offering anything to the others. When he returned, he sat heavily and again clasped his hands above his head. This time, he seemed to focus on the ceiling.

  “So you went alone to Buenos Aires?” Christensen prompted.

  Dorsey nodded. “I met someone.”

  The air in the room seemed suddenly charged. This was a twist Christensen hadn’t even imagined.

  His sister, too, seemed stunned. “A woman?”

  Dorsey took a long, slow swallow from his glass. “That was a rough time for us, Carole, remember?”

  Christensen’s sister was already seething. “Tell me this was just a good fuck, Michael. Tell me that’s all there
was to this.”

  Dorsey stared harder at the ceiling. “That’s how it started.”

  “Oh Jesus, Michael.” Carole folded her arms around herself. “Oh Jesus Christ.”

  Christensen suddenly felt like he shouldn’t be here. “Michael, I—Melissa. That’s all I need to know. This other stuff, it’s something you and Carole—”

  “Let me talk, Jim,” Dorsey said. “Just let me tell this.”

  Christensen felt like he’d kicked loose a rock that for decades had held a mountaintop in place. Dorsey lowered his eyes and for the first time looked directly at Christensen. The effect was profoundly unsettling.

  “I’m so goddamned sorry about this,” Dorsey said. “Back then, I just couldn’t imagine that we’d be sitting here, all of us, all these years later—I was invincible, remember? I could do anything? I even thought I could pull this off.”

  “Michael, pull what off?” Christensen said.

  Dorsey closed his eyes. “There was—she got pregnant.”

  Carole curled her legs onto the chair, clutched her sides tighter, and sobbed. The impact on Christensen was more subtle.

  “What the hell does that have to do with Melissa?”

  But even as he spoke, Christensen realized his question was one beat behind his brother-in-law’s implication. Then Dorsey drove it home.

  “Everything,” he said. “Everything.”

  Chapter 52

  The adrenaline rush that carried Melissa through the long night at the computer and her long morning at the blood lab had finally worn off. She’d intended to walk home for the exercise, but the idea grew less appealing by the time she was done, and she’d decided to take the bus. She might have slept through her stop on Fifth if the Port Authority driver hadn’t hit the brakes hard enough to wake her. She trudged up the aisle and stepped down onto the sidewalk, numb with fatigue and focused on covering the two blocks between where she stood and her bed.