Dark Rising

by Monica McGurk

  “Why not?”

  Tabitha squirmed in her seat once again and stared down at the tabletop. “I guess I didn’t like how he was with Hope. It was like …”

  “Like what?” Mona prompted, finding herself unable to breath.

  “He just didn’t want anybody else around her. He was kind of bossy.” She looked up, somewhat sheepishly. “I mean, I know I am bossy, too, but he was a different kind of bossy. Like he wanted to control her or something.”

  This was new, an angle she had not considered. Had Mona missed the signs of something more insidious in Hope’s relationship with Michael? Had she been encouraging Hope in her blossoming friendship, when all along he was a threat? What if Don was right, and she’d been too lax, too absent, to be a good mother to Hope?

  She shot him a glance, wondering if this newest revelation would cause him to blame her, but his face was calm. Only the slight wrinkle in his brow gave away the fact that he was troubled by what he was hearing.

  “I don’t think Michael would hurt her, Mrs. Carmichael,” Tabitha whispered. “I don’t think he would force her to go with him, either. But I can’t figure out why they would both be gone like that.”

  She nodded, trying to gulp down her fears. “And then you got the phone call from Hope?”

  “First, she sent me her and Michael’s part of the paper. That was a few days before the phone call. She left a short message, just saying to tell you she was okay.”

  “We listened to the message and took the SIM card, so we can analyze it further,” Hale interrupted.

  “She didn’t tell you anything more? Like where she was or what she was doing?” Mona prompted, frustrated to have such a tenuous tie to her daughter’s whereabouts.

  “No, ma’am.”

  Mona swiveled in her chair, turning to Hale. “What about this other missing girl, this Maria? Is that a possible connection?”

  Hale nodded. “We’re running that one down. Given what we know about Las Vegas, it is a possibility.”

  “What about Las Vegas?” Tabitha pressed. “Is Hope in Las Vegas?”

  Hale shook his head curtly. “We can’t comment on that at this time.”

  Tabitha, undeterred, thrust her chin out. She was a dog with a bone, again, the spirited young woman that Mona recognized from those afternoons in her kitchen, and Mona smiled despite herself.

  “Maria probably left to go find her little sister. She didn’t trust the people at the shelter, or the police,” Tabitha said pointedly, shooting a poisonous glance at Hale. “Maybe Hope was going to help her with that.”

  Hale perked up, but tried to appear casual as he probed Tabitha’s statement. “Why would you think that, Tabitha?”

  Tabitha began slowly. “Hope really identified strongly with Maria. She was very worried about her, and they seemed to … connect. She even gave Maria her phone number, in case Maria ever needed any help. The more we researched, the more obsessed Hope seemed to be with trafficking and about Maria.”

  The words were spilling out of her, the relief on her face palpable.

  “She wasn’t sleeping well. She was working at all hours, doing research online. And she was frantic when Maria went missing.”

  Hale scribbled a few notes down on his yellow legal pad while he peppered Tabitha with questions. “What do you know about this sister?”

  “Not much. Her name is Jimena. She was younger than Maria, and they got separated before the raid that brought Maria into Street Grace.”

  “Any idea where they were from?”

  “A border town in Mexico. It’s all in our paper,” she said, drawing out a plastic binder. “I brought a copy, just in case.” She slid the paper across the shiny table toward Hale. The plastic was black and pink, the colorful font of the title page and curlicue decorations belying the horror of their subject matter. Mona’s heart broke, thinking of Hope staying up at night, worrying herself sick about this other girl—and likely her own past. How could she not have seen it? She understood now why Michael was arguing with Hope—he was trying to protect her from herself, something she, Hope’s own mother, had failed to do.

  Hale flipped through the paper, skimming the pages for anything that jumped out at him. “Traffickers,” he muttered, slamming the cover shut. “There’s our Vegas connection.”

  Tabitha’s eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything.

  Hale picked up the paper and ripped the top sheet off of his notepad, handing both wordlessly to one of the anonymous agents in the back of the room. “Find out what you can.”

  “You’ve been very helpful, Miss Franklin,” Hale said, standing up to conclude the interview. “Dr. and Mrs. Franklin, they can validate your parking at the front desk. We’ll be in touch if we need anything more from you or your daughter.” He looked down at Mona, still seated in the hard plastic chair. “Mona and Don, we’d like you to stay a few minutes, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course,” Mona said. Her brain was feverishly trying to piece together the implications of what she’d just learned, but nothing seemed to fit. Nothing.

  From across the table, Mrs. Franklin reached over and touched Mona’s hand. Mona looked down, startled, to see she’d been gripping the edge of the table so tightly that her hand was turning white and bloodless.

  “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Franklin said. “So very sorry.”

  “We’ll pray for you. And for Hope,” Dr. Franklin added.

  Mona was surprised by how good it felt to have that little touch, the words of comfort. But she could feel the walls of her defenses shifting, knowing if she indulged in that moment of sympathy and self-pity, the entire thing would come crashing down around her.

  Instead, she smiled politely and drew her hand away. “She’s fine. I know she is.”

  A knowing look crossed both of the elder Franklins’ faces. “Of course she is,” Mrs. Franklin added. They rose to their feet, bundling Tabitha before them, looking anywhere but at Mona as they made their way to the door. As they shuffled out of the too-small room, Tabitha shot one last glance behind her.

  “You did well, Tabitha,” Mona said to her as she paused at the door. “Thank you.”

  Tabitha’s eyes welled with tears. “I feel like it’s my fault, ma’am.”

  “Why ever would you say that, Tabitha?” Mona answered, surprised. “Of course you’re not to blame.”

  “If I hadn’t pushed her so hard …”

  “About the paper?” Don asked, finally breaking his silence.

  “About the paper, and about Stone Mountain, and her tattoo …” Tabitha choked back a sob as both Mona and Don froze in their chairs.

  “Her tattoo.” Don’s voice was flat, dead, as he repeated Tabitha’s words.

  Tabitha nodded. “I didn’t mean to make her feel bad. I thought it was so cool, and to be able to read it … I guess I was showing off. I didn’t know it would make her upset. Please, you’ve got to believe me, I’d do anything to have her back. She was my only real friend.” Mrs. Franklin held her daughter’s heaving shoulders, trying to comfort her.

  Mona’s mind was racing now. Tabitha said she could read Hope’s Mark. Clearly, Tabitha didn’t know Hope’s history or some of this would make more sense to her. Would Agent Hale be piecing this together? She knew Don already had. He was pressing her knee under the table, silently urging her to be careful, to not let this opportunity slip away.

  She had to figure out a way to get more out of Tabitha before she and her parents left the room—and do it in a way that Hale wouldn’t pick up on. Before she knew what she was doing, she was pushing away from the table and moving to Tabitha’s side.

  “Tabitha,” she soothed, bending at the knees to get closer to Tabitha’s height, “of course you did only what you thought was best for Hope. We know that, and we know how good of a friend you were to her. Don’t worry about it, sweetie.” She beamed at Tabitha, her best “trust me” smile, able to dazzle CEOs and Chairmen of the Board around the world, and leaned in to give Tabitha
a big hug. She lingered there, murmuring her hasty instructions to Tabitha, then kissed her above the ear.

  “Thank you for being such a good friend to Hope, Tabby,” Mona said, holding Tabitha’s shaking hands in hers and stepping back to look at her appraisingly. “Thank you.”

  Tabitha looked up at Mona, blinking away her tears before nodding quickly. Then, she slipped out of Mona’s grip and slid silently out of the room, her parents closing flanks behind her. Hale closed the door behind them.

  “That ended up being more promising than I’d anticipated,” Hale intoned, yanking the knot of his tie loose and plopping himself down in a chair. “Sometimes, with a little extra time, witnesses come up with a few things they forgot the first time they give their statements. Like this girl, Maria.”

  Mona wasn’t going to tolerate chitchat. “What do you have, Agent Hale?”

  He ran his fingers through his hair so it stood on end, another visible sign of the long days and nights he’d been keeping.

  “We had the time to check into this Michael character, in between her first statement and when we pulled you in to talk to her. You know this kid?”

  Mona nodded, knowing that Don would be listening keenly for details. “He spent a lot of time with Hope. He was one of the first kids she met when she started at her new school. Very mature for his age, it seemed. But I guess you’d expect that from an emancipated teen.”

  “Emancipated? So you never met his parents? No guardians?”

  “No.”

  “How close were they, Mona? Were they dating?” Don’s voice had an edge to it, accusing.

  Mona closed her eyes, picturing the way Hope’s face lit up when Michael walked in the room; the way her body subtly turned to address his whenever he moved; the way Hope spilled out her secrets, counting them out and sharing their burdens, which Michael gladly took up for her. How could you know that if you hadn’t been there to see it for yourself? She settled back down into her chair, trying to determine how, exactly, to describe their relationship.

  “No, they weren’t dating, but I think they were very close.”

  Hale sighed, rubbing his face. “So, here’s the thing. You remember him. Tabitha Franklin remembers him. The people at the front office of the school remember him. But there is no actual record of him being enrolled in Dunwoody High School. No registration forms. No parking passes. Nothing about his emancipated teen status. No grades reported in the system. We tried to go to his home and confirm his whereabouts that way, but we can’t even find an address for him in the school IT system. It’s as if the kid never existed.”

  Mona’s mind went to the obvious explanation. “It’s the IT system. It’s horribly antiquated. They probably have paper copies of all of those things sitting in some dusty pile somewhere.”

  “We thought so, too. But then we used our own systems to try to track him down, looking for the court records from his emancipation hearing, social security information, any public record of him. Nothing.”

  He let his words sink in.

  “Like I said, it’s as if the kid never existed.”

  He leaned in close to Mona. “Mona, are you sure you knew this kid? I mean, really knew him? Did you trust him with your daughter?”

  She was gripping the table again. What was he saying?

  “I did.” She whispered. “I trusted him. He was so good to Hope.”

  Hale did not back away but raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Really? Sounds like a jealous bastard to me.” The way in which he dismissed her was unmistakable. She felt her cheeks burn red with anger, the implied inattention and naïveté on her part an insult. Hale rose back up to his full height. “But that’s not all.”

  “What more could you have found?” Mona whispered, afraid to ask.

  “We were able to track the call Tabitha received back to Nevada. It was made from a hotel well outside of Las Vegas. Our agent on the ground questioned the staff. They reported seeing three girls together in the time frame we are talking about. Two Hispanic, one Caucasian. One was limping. One, the Caucasian, was badly scarred on her face and arms. Looked like burns, according to the night clerk. The clerk said it was hard to gauge the recency of the injuries, because the scarred one was pretty mobile for being that messed up. But it fits our time frame. And it could place your daughter with this Maria.”

  “Was Michael with them?” She whispered, not sure if it would be a good or bad thing if he were.

  Hale shook his head. “The clerk only saw the girls. But we’re running through all the security cameras to make sure there was nobody else with them who came in separately.”

  Mona sat in silence, her logical mind shifting the pieces of the puzzle around. She could make no sense of it. She was acutely aware of Don, glued to his seat next to her. She sensed the quiet anger mounting in him, anger she remembered from the early years of their marriage, when she’d discovered the intensity of it—his absolute cold control—which made her yearn for the messiness of a real argument.

  Hale looked at her, furrowing his brow. “You know I am only telling you these things as a favor to our friend Clay. But maybe I should stop. Sometimes it’s actually harder for family members to have the details as they unfold, when there are no answers.”

  He paused to assess her reaction. Mona felt keenly that this was a test of some sort.

  “No,” she sighed. “I appreciate being kept in the loop. Especially when I know I am still not officially in the clear.” She smiled grimly. “I want you to keep telling me as much as you can.”

  “As you prefer. But if that is the case, you may want to see one other thing. Come with me.” He looked perfunctorily at Don. “Both of you.”

  Hale steered her out the door, not bothering to wait for Don, and led her back down the hallway to what had become the central command post for the investigation. The bank of screens, blinking with data and video feeds, was overwhelming, but, at the same time, reassuring. Even as they puzzled things out for themselves, the FBI’s algorithms and search functions were systematically looking for Hope, leaving nothing unexamined.

  “We got a data feed from the interrogation of the Chinese traffickers we picked up after that fire in Las Vegas. Only one of them talked, but what he had to say was, well, interesting, to say the least.”

  He guided her to a desk and held the chair for her as she sat down. The video was poised to run from the desktop monitor, the little triangle for “Play” blinking patiently.

  Hale tapped the “Play” button and sat down on the edge of the desk, next to Mona.

  The camera angled in closely on the face of the man being questioned. The bags under his eyes and faint stubble suggested he’d had a rough night. Despite that, Mona could tell he commanded the room. Fatigue did nothing to undercut the presence of a man who was accustomed to ruling with impunity, a man who was routinely obeyed. His expression was unruffled by the circumstances in which he found himself. Only a faint hint of irritation, found in the disdainful curl of his upper lip, suggested anything even unpleasant about his interrogation.

  Hale narrated over the close-up. “This is Chen. One of the leaders of the Triad trafficking group, as far as we can tell. This is about halfway through the session we had with him.”

  Off camera, Mona heard the agent questioning Chen.

  “You are sure? You are sure that is the man you gambled with? The man who came to your compound last night?”

  Chen looked straight at the camera. “You must find more interesting interrogators. I find this one to be repetitive and slow-witted.” He shifted his gaze, presumably to address his questioner. “Yes. As I told you before, I am sure this is the man. I will never forget his face.”

  “Can you pick up the book and point to the man in question? Hold it up to the camera. Let’s get a close-up,” the voice said, giving instruction to the cameraman.

  The camera zoomed out and Chen wearily lifted a heavy book, flipping it so the open pages were visible. He pointed at the third picture in the
middle row.

  “This is him. Mr. Carmichael.” The camera zoomed back in for the tight shot. Chen’s finger rested on a snapshot of Mona’s estranged husband, Don.

  Mona’s head began to swim.

  “Careful, Mona,” Hale soothed, watching her reactions as closely as he watched the evidence before him. “Remember, we already knew there was someone out there who looked like Don.”

  She nodded, unable to speak, unable to look at the real Don, standing right behind her, her eyes riveted to the video.

  “You’re sure?” the off-screen agent asked again.

  “Yes,” Chen sighed, snapping the book shut and dropping it on the table in front of him. “For the last time, I am sure this is the person. What I want to know is why you are so interested in him.”

  The cameraman reset the angle, giving Mona a fuller picture of Chen. Even the poor quality of the recording couldn’t hide the glint of interest in his keen eyes.

  “You don’t need to know that. Why were you working with this man? What were your business dealings with him?”

  Chen’s face broke into an open sneer. “You think I would work with such a man? I would kill him if I had the chance. But perhaps you will find him and deal with him before I can.”

  There was a long pause. Mona knew the technique. The interrogator was drawing out the uncomfortable silence, laying the trap, hoping the awkwardness of the silence would draw out the nervous chatter that often spelled the downfall of people with something to hide.

  Chen just sat. He was too good to fall for such a ploy, Mona could tell.

  The interrogator tried again. “Does this man traffic, like you? Is he Triad?”

  Chen smiled, thinking he had won. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Did he run your operations in Atlanta?”

  “What operations? I am a simple Chinese businessman. I don’t have any dealings in the United States.”

  Mona heard a shuffle of papers off-camera. A few brisk footsteps, and the agent filled the screen, dropping some papers in front of Chen before disappearing once again.

  “Do you recognize this girl?”