by Meg O'Brien
“What?” Lacey prompted when he drifted off, thinking.
“That must be when she lost her interest in music,” he said. “When she came home, she had changed completely, and she didn’t seem to want to sing anymore. She stayed in her room a lot, the rest of that year. In fact, as I remember, she didn’t even go out with her friends from school.”
“Do you have any idea what was wrong?” Lacey asked.
“Not really. I guess I thought at the time that it was just one more teenage mood. A phase.”
“Look at the rest, Paul.”
He forced himself to continue reading.
It was after Wisconsin that I knew what it was all about. Music meant nothing. Life meant nothing. The only thing I wanted to do then was die.
The bio ended there. Paul, shocked, said heavily, “It sounds as if Angela is writing about Rachel. And it sounds like she knew Rachel better than I did.”
He felt a hundred years old, yet as if he had never learned a thing. As if all the lessons—lessons he’d thought had brought him to a point in his adulthood where he could claim to be a man—had been a total waste.
He looked at the bio again. “Except,” he said, “that Rachel wasn’t given everything a child could dream of. She didn’t have that kind of perfect family. First she lost her twin, then Gina and I…we grew apart.” He opened his eyes and said, his voice full of pain, “We turned Rachel over to a nanny to raise her. It must have been so lonely for her, growing up.”
Lacey held his hand, saying quietly, “So, Paul, what do you make of this?”
“I don’t know. It just briefly crossed my mind that this might not be Angela’s Web site at all—that it’s Rachel’s. And she’s written about a fantasy life, a life she wished was hers. But why would she have a Web site under Angela’s name?”
“I don’t know, Paul. It’s really strange.”
“And it tells me nothing, really. Except that Rachel was horribly depressed that summer.”
“Paul…why was she depressed?”
“That’s the hell of it. We never knew.” He stared at the computer’s monitor, as if looking for a clue. “Are you saying you think she wants me to find out?”
Lacey pushed back her chair. Getting up, she went into the kitchen. “Would you like more coffee? I can make a fresh pot.” Her voice was oddly muffled.
“Yes, thanks,” Paul said. “Make it strong.”
After a minute, he called to her. She didn’t answer, and he thought she hadn’t heard. He called again and rose to follow her, but she came from the kitchen, wiping tears from her eyes with a paper towel.
“What is it?” he asked.
She shook her head and didn’t answer, just sat at the desk staring at the computer screen. From behind her, he put his hands on her shoulders.
“What is it?” he asked again.
“Poor little girls,” she said softly. “Those poor little girls.”
He was struck by the deep emotion in her voice.
“Yes,” he said just as softly. “Both of them. Poor little girls.”
12
The mood in the Queen Anne house was somber when Paul walked in. Gina and Roberta were sitting opposite each other in the living room, in overstuffed chairs. The fire crackled and spit. To Paul, the room seemed overly warm, and he pulled at his necktie, loosening it.
As he came closer to Gina he saw that tears had run down her cheeks and dried there. Gina never wore a lot of makeup, but the small amount she’d put on that morning—war paint, she had called it, to prepare her for anything—had darkened the tears, accentuating them.
He noted that she was still in her robe. Roberta wore an unusually somber gray suit, compared to the bright colors she ordinarily flaunted like a banner, announcing her appearance. She looked at Paul and shook her head, as if to say that she hadn’t had much success at comforting her daughter. Roberta herself didn’t look so good, he thought. He reminded himself that Rachel’s disappearance was wearing on her, too. All too often, he left her out of the equation, simply because he didn’t know her well enough—or, to be honest, hadn’t taken the time to know her. Gina had always issued the invitations to holiday dinners and bought the birthday gifts. When Roberta came by on weekdays, he was usually at Soleil.
But Roberta was partly to blame for that. Her personal life was something she kept to herself. There was a mysterious air about her—as if the critical, somewhat nagging mother-in-law and mother had an entirely different side to her that existed outside of his and Gina’s presence. Now that Paul came to think of it, he had no idea what she did with herself from day to day or year to year.
Paul sat on the arm of Gina’s chair and stroked her hair. She began to cry, wiping at the tears and laughing softly. “Remember that old shaggy dog joke, about life being a fountain? Well, I feel like that fountain. I can’t seem to stop.”
“You don’t have to,” Paul said gently. “Let it out.”
She began to cry harder. “I just don’t—I don’t think we’re going to find her,” she said between sobs. “It’s—it’s been too long. Maybe we should have let Detective Duarte make it official sooner. Maybe we should have told the newspapers, so people could be watching for her—”
She broke off and swallowed over and over, as if there were a lump in her throat that just wouldn’t go down. “They say that if you don’t find someone within the first few hours, they’re probably—they’re probably—”
“Never mind what ‘they’ say,” Paul interrupted, pulling her close. “They don’t know our daughter. She’s a fighter. She wouldn’t let anyone harm her.”
“You don’t know that!” Gina cried angrily. “She could be lying in a ditch somewhere! What if she’s still alive but can’t move because she’s been injured? She could be freezing to death out there in that rain. Or Angela—”
Paul cut her off. “Don’t think that. It won’t help. Look.”
He drew a printout of the Web site bio from his shirt pocket and handed it to her, trying to steer her in another direction. If she could find something to put her energies into, even this questionable lead, it might help. Gina had always been strong in times of emergency. In fact, if the truth were told, she was the one who had held their family together all these years, while he just went along, following her cues.
“This bio is on a Web site under Angela’s name,” he told her, looking at Roberta as well.
Gina dried her eyes with the already soggy Kleenex she held in her hand. Tucking it into a pocket of her robe, she took the paper and tried to read. “My contacts are blurry,” she said. “Could you read it to me?”
“Of course.” Paul did so, looking up now and then at their faces for a reaction.
When he had finished, Gina seemed more mystified than worried. “How did you find this?” she wanted to know.
“One of the investigators,” he said vaguely. “Oddly enough, it wasn’t difficult to find. Angela still uses the name ‘Angela Bradley.’”
“Let me see.” Gina rubbed her eyes and reached for the paper.
“I’d like both of you to read it,” Paul said. “Tell me what you think.”
Gina scanned the page. “This—this is crazy,” she said. “This can’t be Angela.”
“Give me that,” Roberta said, reaching for it and pulling her reading glasses from her purse, which was beside her on the sofa. Small noises of surprise escaped her throat as she read it to herself.
“It’s beyond strange,” Roberta said. “It’s almost as if—” She hesitated, looking at Paul.
“What? Tell me what you think, off the top of your head.”
“Well, it seems to be written by Rachel, not Angela,” Roberta said. “Gina?”
“I thought the same thing,” Gina said. “Paul, remember that summer when Rachel came home from camp and seemed so depressed? I thought she was just going through something temporary, that maybe she’d met a boy there and didn’t know how to handle it. You know how those summer romances are. I th
ought if she’d met someone at camp, she might be depressed because she couldn’t be with him after she came home.”
“Actually,” an unusually calm Roberta said, “Rachel wasn’t really all that interested in boys that year. I tried to tell you—”
At Gina’s expression, she broke off. “This isn’t the time to get into that. Suffice it to say, Rachel had something else on her mind that summer.”
She looked down at the bio again. “There are ways to find out who owns a Web site. Through the server, for instance. The police could find out.”
Paul and Gina both looked at her, surprised.
“Server, Mom? Since when have you been into computers?”
“I’m into all kinds of things you don’t bother to know about,” Roberta snapped.
“I suppose we could check with the server,” Paul said. “Or rather, get Duarte to do it. They probably wouldn’t give any information to us.”
“I do think Mom may be right,” Gina said, “that this sounds like it was written by Rachel. I mean, how could Angela have written it? She had no way of knowing what happened to Rachel that summer. I’m wondering if Rachel wrote it, and for some reason just put it under Angela’s name.”
“But why would she?” Paul asked. “What would she hope to gain by doing something like this?”
“I don’t know,” Gina said worriedly. “I just think we have to admit that we don’t know our little girl as well as we thought we did.”
“Putting it mildly,” Roberta said.
Changing the subject, Gina asked, “Where have you been all afternoon, Paul? I thought you were coming right home after Soleil.”
“I was there most of the time,” he said. “It just took longer than I thought.”
Gina didn’t press the matter, for which he was grateful.
13
Paul called Duarte first thing the next morning and asked if he had a few minutes. “I have something I’d like to show you that I need your help with.”
“Good timing,” Duarte said. “I’m taking some time off, but I’ve got a few things to clear up first. Come on by.”
“I’ll be right over,” Paul said. He wondered why Al was taking a vacation at such a busy time of year. He felt disappointed, too, that the detective wouldn’t be around in case he needed him. It was funny, how he’d come to depend on Al in such a short time.
At the precinct, he found the detective with his desk looking cleaner than he’d ever seen it before. There was some good-natured grousing directed his way from a couple of other cops about all the work he’d pushed onto their plates, but Al didn’t seem a bit bothered by it.
“I’ve been holding up your end way too long,” he said, catching a balled-up wad of paper that was thrown at him and tossing it back. “It’s time you sniveling little kids grew up.”
Paul dodged another paper projectile just in time as he sat down at Duarte’s desk.
“Okay, okay, back to work,” Duarte said. “If you babies didn’t whine so much, you could get a hell of a lot more done.”
He looked at Paul. “So, whatcha got for me?”
“Take a look at this.” Paul pulled the Web site page from his coat pocket and slid it across the desk.
Duarte studied it. “I don’t know a lot about computers, but Angela’s name is here at the bottom, after the www. That means it’s her page, right?”
“Web site, yes. Ordinarily, that would be true. But I’m not so sure about this, Al. She knows way too much about Rachel—more than Angela could ever know. Gina and I think that maybe Rachel wrote it and used Angela’s name for some reason.”
“Yeah? You got any idea what that reason might be?”
“None at all. We talked about it last night and couldn’t reach any logical conclusion. I was hoping you might have some ideas.”
Duarte sighed. “You know, Paul, there might not be anything logical about this at all. Sometimes, when you’re dealing with troubled people, like this Angela person, you have to think outside the box. One thing that occurs to me is that maybe the information on this Web site isn’t the important thing. Maybe it’s the person who was meant to read the Web site.”
“Meaning, Angela—or Rachel?”
“Neither one. Meaning you, Paul. Maybe we were intended to find this site when we started looking for Angela. Maybe it’s not coincidence you found it, and maybe there’s some sort of message here for you. The thing you gotta ask yourself is, who would want to send you this message? And what the hell is the message?”
Duarte leaned back and stared at the ceiling, a troubled look on his face. “Anyway, that’s one idea. You might come up with something else. You just gotta let your mind roam, see what it comes up with.”
“Well, one thing that occurred to me is that there is a contact page on the Web site. One of those things where you click on a box, or just the word ‘e-mail,’ and it takes you to an e-mail page. We clicked on it, and the address was just a nickname, or whatever it’s called. You know, like a CB handle—Loverboy, or Redhead. This one was Twins, with four numbers after it, then the ‘at’ sign and the name of the server.”
Al shook his head. “You’ve lost me there. How do you know so much about this stuff?”
“My friend, Lacey…she’s a computer whiz. She’s the one who found this.”
“Yeah? Well, good for her. I still haven’t had a talk with her, by the way. Or your mother-in-law. I figured on doing that this afternoon. Maybe I’ll go over and see the girlfriend first. Have her show me the Web site while I’m there. You say there are more of these ‘pages’ on it? Maybe there’s a clue somewhere.”
“She wrote about her love of antiques on one page. Then this bio, and the e-mail page. I don’t remember anything else. But then, I wasn’t looking at much, after I saw the bio. My mother-in-law seems to know something about computers, and she says you can find out from the server who it is that owns the site.”
“Sure, that much I do know. I’ll ask one of the guys to get it started.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry to drop this in your lap, especially since you’re taking time off.”
“Hang on,” Al said. He went to talk in an undertone to a cop two desks behind him. Then he motioned Paul over. “This is Detective Hal Barnes,” he said. “He’s gonna follow up on the Web site, find out who owns it. He’ll call you when he has the information.”
“Thanks,” Paul said, extending a hand. “I appreciate your help.”
“Al tells me it’s your little girl who’s missing,” Detective Barnes said, adding, “I saw the APB. Let me know if you need anything else. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
“I guess she’s not really my little girl,” Paul said, feeling both sad and embarrassed. “Rachel is twenty-one. But she’s missing. Her mother and I are very worried about her.”
“I’ve got a kid of my own,” Detective Barnes said, nodding. “Eighteen. When they’re in trouble, they’re always our ‘little kids’ again. Funny how that works. Funny—and scary.”
Paul nodded his agreement.
“I’ll bring you up to speed on the case when I get back this afternoon,” Al said to Barnes. He motioned to Paul. “Come walk with me. We’ll grab a hot dog somewhere.”
As they went down the hall together, he said, “Like Hal mentioned, if you need anything else along those lines, let him know. Meanwhile, you and I will be doing the real work.”
“The real work?” Paul turned to him, bewildered.
“Yeah, well, the lieutenant’s been complaining about me being out so much. He said I couldn’t spend so much time on your case. The FBI’s on it now, and Rachel’s twenty-one, after all. Like you said yourself back there, she’s not a kid. For all anybody knows, she could have taken off on her own and she’s perfectly happy somewhere. Lieutenant says there are more important cases hanging fire while I’m spinning my wheels on this.”
“I don’t get it,” Paul said. “If you can’t work on the case…”
“Well, I figure what
the lieutenant doesn’t know won’t hurt him. And if I’m on leave, he won’t know what the hell I’m doing.” He grinned at Paul.
“Al, you’d do that? Take a leave to help us out?”
“Why not?” Duarte said, shrugging. “God knows I’ve got plenty of time coming to me. I haven’t taken a real vacation since L.B.J. was in the White House.”
“L.B.J.?” Paul smiled.
“Well, maybe Reagan. Seems like I’ve never had time off. My life’s been all about work. Which, in case you haven’t guessed, is why my wife left me.”
“You said you still see your son, though.”
“Not as much as I’d like. See, back when he was born, I didn’t know what I was missing. I’d come home from work and he’d be in bed, and the next morning I’d be gone before he woke up. I was either missing in action or too tired to feed or change him at night, any of that daddy stuff. I figured that was my wife’s job. So it wasn’t like I ever really knew him, you know?”
“Yes. I know.” Paul thought back to all the trips he’d taken around the world when the twins were little, looking for antiques to establish his business. He did do his best to spend time with them when he was home, but Gina bore the full brunt of responsibility when he was gone. That was something he’d never questioned. Their “jobs” had seemed clear-cut.
And, like Al, the end result was that he didn’t get very close to the girls those first couple of years. It wasn’t until they turned two or three and Angela began to seek him out that he started to feel like a real father. She was always at him. “Daddy, do this, do that.” And she was so irrepressible, he couldn’t resist.
There were times when he wondered if he would ever have become a real father to his children if it hadn’t been for Angela, pushing him all the time, not letting him off the hook. Now, looking back, he realized how left out Rachel must have felt.
“Paul?”
They were at the vending truck outside, and Duarte was asking him something.