Breaking Down Barriers

by Jean Martino

  He shivered, remembering how Jennifer had got a restraining order against him so he couldn’t even go to his own home anymore. His buddies at the police department had even had to serve it on him, their faces showing their commiseration and sympathy. He would never forget having to move into a small apartment and being denied access to the home he had worked so hard on for 20 years to make comfortable for his family. Even though Maggie was married then and Dan living on campus at Berkley, it had been the home they had grown up in, and he had wanted it always to be the place they came home to when they needed it; a place of warmth and security and love and fond memories.

  He could remember them taking their first steps in that house. He had watched them leaving for school with their little satchels on their backs, his heart swelling with love and pride in them. As a police officer he had taught them how to stay safe and always to do the right thing. They had been his life, his reason for getting up in the morning. He could still remember when Dan had been little and always wandering off; Jennifer calling in a panic to tell him she couldn’t find him. He’d had to recruit his buddies help to find him, hearing the call going over the car radio, “Officer Walker’s son, Danny, has wandered off again. Anyone seeing him please apprehend him and take him home.”

  He could never forget the day he was served with the divorce papers on the grounds of irreconcilable differences and how he went berserk again, breaking the restraining order and almost ending up in jail and losing his whole career. His buddies had kept him out of that again. They were always there trying to help him but he spurned their help, determined to not have them feeling sorry for him.

  The waitress arrived with his coffee and he tore the top off a sweetener packet and emptied it into it, slowing stirring it with his spoon. The courts had ripped the heart out of him, dividing their property 60/40... 60 to her, 40 to him. It had been a travesty, but being the woman she had gotten what she wanted. But he had stood firm and, although it broke his heart, forced her to sell their home to pay him the forty grand he had coming. That was when he had packed up almost. He didn’t want to even bother trying to buy another home. He didn’t care anymore. It showed in his work and he got sent by his Chief to the department’s psychologist. More shit he didn’t need.

  He was lashing out at everyone who tried to help him until finally Dan and Maggie cornered him at his apartment.

  When he opened the door to them that Sunday morning he hadn’t shaved for two days, his head was a mess, he had tried drinking away his problems to no avail, the place was a mess, he was a mess, and his kids walked in and took control.

  “Dad, what the hell are you doing with your life?” demanded Maggie, walking around picking up trash and cleaning off tables covered with take away food cartons. “This isn’t like you, damn it! You brought us up to take care of ourselves and walk tall and told us to never let anything or anyone ever pull us down, and here you are doing exactly what you told us not to do!” She collected an armful of newspapers and stood in front of him, flushed with anger as she brushed her blond hair off her face. “My kids need you! I need you! Goddamn it, Dad, stop this right now!” She burst into tears and rushed for the bathroom dropping the papers as she went.

  “She’s right, Dad,” said Dan, more in control. “I always looked up to you when I was a kid growing up, and I was always proud of you for how you put your life on the line to help others. You were my hero. You were a giant among the other kid’s fathers. I bragged about what you did and how great you were and...”

  As Scott felt the tears spilling down his cheeks, Maggie returned and threw her arms around him. “Daddy, we love you,” she sobbed. “Please don’t let this destroy you. What mom did is unforgivable. But we love you both. We don’t want to lose you. We can’t forgive her but we need you... we need our father.”

  Dan came up beside her and put his arms around his father too. “Let us help you, Dad. We aren’t kids anymore and you sacrificed so much to give us our chances in life so please let us help you now.”

  As he sipped his coffee, Scott felt the tears stinging behind his eyes, remembering. His kids had finally gotten through to him. He knew he was letting them down more than himself. It was their love and faith in him that got through to him. He had always thought once they got married and moved away from home they wouldn’t need him anymore. But there they were telling him they did; showing him their love and begging him to be the father he had always been to them.

  It had only taken him a couple of months to get his life together again and find a house he could make his home; determined no-one was ever going to drag him down again. His kids had saved his life and he had turned his attention back on them and his grandchildren; buying that campervan and taking his grandchildren on fishing trips, getting involved in their lives, learning that life didn’t end when Jennifer betrayed him but rather started... a new life.

  He looked up as someone slipped into the booth beside him.

  “Oh Scott,” said Linda. “I am so terribly sorry for acting like that. I had no right to get angry with you. I really wasn’t. I just felt so frustrated I wanted to lash out at someone and... stupid me, I lashed out at the very person who was trying so hard to help me. Can you ever forgive me? I can’t believe I spoke to you like that.”

  She reached for his hand and he squeezed it, then he lifted his arm and put it around her shoulders. “Hey,” he said, “It’s OK. I’m surprised you didn’t break sooner.”

  She leaned against his shoulder. “God what a bitch I was,” she said muffling her voice against his shirt.

  The waitress came up again and asked. “Are you ready to order now?”

  Scott pulled his arm forward and Linda sat up straight as they both picked up the menus. “You bet,” he said. “I’m gonna have the deluxe hamburger with fries, and Linda here will have,” he turned to Linda who was peering at the menu and pointing to the salads, “she’ll have the shrimp salad with thousand island dressing.”

  The waitress collected the menus and left and Scott put his arm around Linda’s shoulders again. “Feel better?” he asked.

  She nodded, staring down at her hands clasped together on the table, afraid to look at him unless he saw the confusion and fear in her eyes that she was now feeling. It all seemed so unfair. A week ago she had been living peacefully and happy in her little house in the Adelaide hills, and now her daughter had gone missing and she was falling in love with a man who one day she could lose too. She had to pull herself together somehow, not drive him away with her out of control emotions. She needed him more than he needed her and in more ways than one. “Yes,” she said, forcing a smile. “Much better. In fact I’m hungrier than I thought.”

  He laughed softly and gently squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll get through this somehow, Linda, and find Cindy and Michael. I promise you.” Easier said than done, he thought, but he wasn’t about to destroy her anymore than she was destroying herself right now.

  CHAPTER 7

  They held hands all the rest of the way to San Diego; Linda feeling scared at the thought of seeing Cindy and Michael’s car and Scott understanding and determined to make it as painless for her as he possibly could somehow.

  When they arrived at the impound yards, Scott explained to the man who he and Linda were and asked to see the car.

  “Sure,” the man said. “Detective Grant from the Newport Beach Police Department called yesterday and said you’d be down. I can open it for you from our master key. You want the trunk opened too?”

  “Yes please,” said Scott, taking Linda’s arm and leading her through the rows of impounded cars. He could feel her trembling and hoped she wasn’t going to faint on him. It would not be easy for her knowing Cindy and Michael had been in the car and now no one knew where they were, but it had to be done and she knew it and he counted on her strength to help her see it through.

  “Here it is,” said the man, and Scott and Linda walked around the white Camaro to the back where the man opened the trunk. As
it flipped open, Linda suppressed a gasp, not knowing what to expect. “Well I’ll leave you to look around and be back in ten minutes,” said the man, turning and walking away.

  “What are we looking for?” asked Linda, her voice steadier than Scott had expected.

  “Anything that looks out of the ordinary,” he replied, checking the trunk which was all too clean with nothing in it except the spare tire and some car tools. He walked around to the front and opened the driver’s side door. Leaning forward, he looked under the seats and between them and opened the glove compartment. Linda stood back and let him do his work, knowing all she would do was hinder him, thinking of Cindy and Michael sitting in the front seats driving to somewhere perhaps scared of something, perhaps Cindy knowing when she didn’t arrive in Australia as planned how worried she would be.

  She still didn’t understand why the car had been abandoned in that factory parking lot. Surely they would have known it would be discovered and towed away. Was that what they hoped would happen? Did Cindy know that she would have flown to California to find out what had happened and this was her way of letting her know she was alright? She shook her head to try and clear it. If that’s what happened then Cindy would have left another clue somewhere to tell her where they were but what? What could she have left that the police wouldn’t have found?

  Scott straightened and shook his head. “Everything is too clean,” he said. “Can’t find anything that could tell us they were even in the car let alone where they were heading.”

  “Please, Scott,” said Linda. “Keep looking. I know there’s something about the car to help us. I have this feeling that Cindy and Michael wanted me to find the car and left some clue there for me. I know it’s crazy because they couldn’t have known I would come here and the car would be impounded and I would be allowed to look at it, but I have this feeling that she is trying to tell me something.”

  He checked again, more thoroughly than the first time but finally gave up. “Honey, I’m so sorry, but I can’t see anything out of the ordinary. I’ve checked under the seats and down the sides of them and in the glove compartment and found nothing that could help us. And unless there was some indication that a crime had been committed, the police wouldn’t have dusted it for prints either.”

  Disappointment clouded Linda’s eyes as she walked around the car, knowing deep inside that it was futile but still clinging to a slim hope that there was some clue Cindy would have left, something, anything, even--- “A scratch!” she cried. Then hurried around to the rear passenger side door and bent forward, running her finger over the long curving scratch in the paint, from the handle downwards, that looked like someone had run a car key down it.

  “That’s it!” she cried, straightening and turning to Scott her eyes shining.

  “This?” he said, staring at the scratch. “Anyone could have done that in a mall parking lot.”

  “I know, I know,” said Linda, nodding her head, “but it’s in the same place and the same shape as one Cindy put on our car when she was a kid. She was eight years old and obsessed with writing her name on everything, the walls, the cupboards, everywhere she could use her colored textas. She’d been punished so much I had thought she was cured of it, but this one day I saw her in the driveway leaning towards the rear passenger side door and finally went out to see what was wrong. She had taken my car keys off the hook where I leave them in the house and was painstakingly trying to make a C in the car door’s paint. I was furious with her. She got grounded for a month for that and when Vito came home he wanted to spray the scratch but I told him, no, that I wanted it left there to remind Cindy how angry I was. It stayed there for the next four years until I replaced that car.

  Scott looked again at the scratch. It was definitely looking like a C. In fact it looked almost too deliberately curved than a casual scratch made by some careless or vindictive passer by. Perhaps it was just a stab in the dark but he could feel Linda’s excitement and didn’t want to deflate that for now.

  “It’s a long shot,” he said, intrigued by her story. “But it might just be a coincidence.”

  “No,” she objected. “I know Cindy made that scratch on purpose. It was her way of letting me know she was alright. It has to be. I know it.”

  “So what you’re saying is she somehow knew you would fly to California when she didn’t arrive in Australia, and somehow find the car and find that scratch?” he said, not liking the odds of that but willing to think about it.

  “I am,” she said stubbornly. “Cindy knew I would never just sit at home when she didn’t arrive and forget it. She knew I would come looking for her myself and not stop until I had found her. Scott, they left the car somewhere where it would be found and impounded didn’t they? They wanted it to be found. They knew if it was impounded I would insist on seeing it too. Cindy knows me like a book, and she knew she had to leave a sign that only I could find and read. They’re alive, Scott. I can feel it.”

  “But wouldn’t it have been better for her to leave a note or something in the house, knowing you could get in there with the spare key and the alarm shut-off code she sent you?”

  Linda’s brow furrowed. “Of course it would,” she said. “That’s why I went through the whole house so carefully, and her car. And that’s the other thing. I know Cindy can get careless sometimes about security, but if they had gone off on a trip and left her car, Michael would have made sure he had her car’s keys. But they didn’t take them, did they? They were stuffed into the glove box, almost as though they were telling me they knew I would come looking for them and because they couldn’t take the two cars for whatever reason, they wanted me to find the keys to Cindy’s car. I know Michael. He is very meticulous and Cindy’s the opposite so he always checks after her when they leave the house. She told me that herself. She thought it was cute. But in this case, Michael left her car keys. And I think it was deliberate. Like that scratch.”

  Scott was beginning to realize that Linda had a better grip on what was happening than he had thought. No note in the house, the keys to Cindy’s car left in the glove box, and now this C shaped scratch. His mind was racing with questions. Why had they abandoned the car even? If they had driven it to San Diego piled with luggage like their neighbor said they had, then why abandon it? Unless, he thought curiously, they were running from something, or someone who knew what car they would be driving. But if they had no choice but to abandon their own car then they would have had to rent another one. He made a note to check with car rental agencies in the area as soon as they got back to Newport Beach.

  Or perhaps they hadn’t needed to rent another car, he decided. Perhaps they had moved into a motel or apartment right here in San Diego. That wouldn’t be easy to check, it would require going to every motel and apartment building in the city and asking to check their recent tenant lists. And what if they had abandoned the car and taken a taxi to the airport and flown to another city? And what about all of the luggage the neighbor said he’d seen them putting in the car? Perhaps they’d not taken as much after all or left some somewhere like a storage facility? Another thing he should check. Dear God, he thought! The possibilities were staggering. If they didn’t want to be found, they wouldn’t be. More important was to find out why they had left their home and lives, and what they were running from and perhaps that would give him a better idea of where they had gone.

  “Do you think they might be in San Diego?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Perhaps they went to Mexico. They could have taken a taxi; it’s only a twenty minute drive from here. But what would they be running from and why? All I know is the last time we talked she said she was going to be running around doing research on some article she was working on, and might not get a chance to talk to me before she left to fly to Australia. She sounded fine then. She said not to worry, that she would be on that plane and expected me to pick her up at the airport.”

  They closed the car’s doors and walked back to t
he office. The man told them if they paid the impound fees they could take the car with them. Scott looked at Linda waiting for an answer.

  “There’s no point in leaving it here now,” she said, “unless the police need to check it again.”

  “They won’t,” said Scott. “And the longer we leave it here, the more it will cost to get it out and they could sell it eventually.”

  “Then I’ll pay to have it released now,” she said. “That way you can return your rental car too and drive the Camaro instead.”

  “We’ll talk about that when we get it back to the house,” he said, not really wanting to drive it but understanding Linda wanting to get it back to Cindy and Michael’s home again. “But there is one little problem. We need a key to drive it.”