The Thief of All Light

by Bernard Schaffer

  On the other hand, she thought, there was plenty of evidence that Molly was being an asshole. She loved getting attention. She loved busting Carrie’s balls for not spending more time with them. She loved getting Carrie’s goat with phony pictures and stories.

  In her mind, she pictured Molly yelling at her. “Oh my God, you idiot! I sent you a picture just the other day. How did you not know this was a freaking joke?”

  Any experienced cop was going to hear all of that, nod politely, and walk away.

  She moved past the car toward the playground, seeing the swing set and monkey bars ahead, in the clearing. The swings rocked back and forth in the breeze, like something from a poltergeist movie. Carrie ignored them, sweeping the tree line with her flashlight, searching for any signs of disturbance in the woods. She saw no broken branches. No discarded shoes or clothing. She cursed under her breath, turning around as she searched.

  “Molly!” she cried out, throwing her head back. “Nubs!” she bellowed, so loud and long that her voice cracked like dry wood. “Answer me,” she whispered. “Please.”

  Carrie had not prayed since she was a little girl. She’d stopped when she heard her father do it and realized her prayer would not be answered. Rosendo would get drunk in his chair, then stumble into his room late at night, shut his door, bury his face into his pillow, and cry out, “Please, please God, I beg you. Bring her back to me. Please. In the name of sweet Jesus, and the Virgin, and all the Saints, I pray to you.”

  He’d done his best to hide it, but Carrie had heard every word and his long-drawn-out sobs afterward. In her mind, prayers had always been for the weak.

  Standing in the park, she lowered her head and closed her eyes. “God, I’ve never asked you for anything, but I’m asking you now. Please let them be okay. Please give me a sign and help me find them and let them be okay.” She paused, then added, “In the name of Jesus, the Virgin, and the Saints, I pray to you.”

  She kept her head lowered, listening. She heard nothing but the swings rocking on their chains. “Fine, then,” she said, as she clicked the flashlight back on and headed into the woods to hunt anew. “I’ll do this myself.”

  12

  BILL WAYLON FOLDED HIS HANDS BEHIND HIS HEAD AND REMAINED motionless, eyes closed, as he listened, taking in every detail. “Tell me again. One more time.”

  Carrie sorted her thoughts. “She called me in the morning and asked me if I wanted to go to the park. She said Nubs had the day off. She said something about wanting to watch the joggers run past.”

  “I got all that,” Waylon said. “Did the kid really have the day off from school?”

  “I checked the calendar online. It was just like Molly said.”

  “And as far as you know she’s had no contact with anyone since that phone call?”

  “Not directly. I even called all the prisons this morning. Nothing.”

  “And we know she left in her car, because it was found at the park,” Waylon said. “What we don’t know is how she left it there. Or why.”

  “Or where she went.”

  “And there was nothing in the woods, you said?” he asked.

  “Nothing. I searched for two hours, then I went back this morning when it was light out and searched again.”

  A thought jolted his mind hard enough to knock him out of his meditative state, and he looked across the desk at her, squinting through one open eye. “What was that part you said about ‘not directly’?”

  She’d been dreading having to explain this part to anyone. It all sounded so stupid. “Molly sent me this weird picture yesterday. I don’t know. She’s always doing stuff like this to guilt me into spending more time with her. It’s bizarre. I’m almost embarrassed by this whole thing because I feel like it’s one of her gags and she’s going to laugh her ass off when she finds out we all freaked out.”

  Waylon leaned forward against his desk and held out his hand. “Show me the picture.”

  Carrie brought up the text message as she said, “It came in as we were leaving the coroner’s office.” She handed her phone across the desk.

  “Was she going to a party or something?” he asked, looking at the screen. “She’s awfully dressed up to go to the park.”

  “No, and I’ve never seen that dress or those shoes before, either. I don’t even know where the hell she took that picture. We don’t know anyone with a farm.” She reached to take the phone, but Waylon did not move. He continued to stare at it, rubbing his fingers through the long whiskers of his mustache. “Hmm,” he said.

  “What?” Carrie asked. “You see something?”

  “I don’t know. It looks familiar to me, but I can’t say from where.”

  “Oh, that’s just great,” Carrie said as she slammed back against the chair. “I can’t put out an Amber Alert because Nubs is with her mom. I can’t put out a missing person report on Molly because she’s not suicidal. Now the closest thing I have to an actual detective is telling me, Oh, I think I recognize it but I’m not sure. Well, that’s not good enough, Bill! I’m telling you right now, if I don’t find out what happened to that little girl, I’m going to lose my mind.”

  “Listen to me, kiddo. I know this whole thing means a lot to you, but sometimes we can’t control what other people do. If your friend decided to run off, you just need to hope she has enough sense to call you. My advice is to let it go, for now.”

  “No!” Carrie shouted, slamming the desk with her hand. “You saw something in that picture, and I want to know what it was!”

  “I’m not sure what it was.”

  “Then what can I do next?”

  The gears of Waylon’s mind seemed to be rotating against one another like some antiquated, enormous machine.

  Carrie thought of something. “Just a few days ago I took another report of a missing girl. A twenty-two-year-old named Denise Lawson. She just never showed up, either. Maybe there’s a connection.”

  “We see connections when we want to see connections,” Waylon said.

  “Or we see them because there’s an actual connection.”

  “Listen, young people leave home all the time, Carrie. You know that. Let’s be honest here. The only reason you’re interested in this is because she’s your friend. If you took this same exact call on the street, you’d think nothing of it and move on. And guess what? You’d probably be right.”

  “Maybe this isn’t a street cop type of situation, Bill.”

  “You want to call one of your new friends up at the County, is that it?” he said, sounding wounded. “My word’s not good enough for you all of a sudden?”

  “What I need is a real detective,” she said. “Someone who understands all of this.”

  “Well, there’s no one like that around here, Carrie.”

  “There used to be,” she said. “The best. You said so yourself.”

  When Waylon looked down, averting his eyes from her, Carrie cursed and got up from her seat, slamming the door open so hard it rattled the closet full of old uniforms behind it. She was halfway down the hall before she heard Waylon’s voice, beaten and weary. “I don’t know where he is. He went into hiding after he got out of prison. He didn’t want me to be able to find him.”

  She stopped, turned, and looked up as he came to the door, slumping against the frame, the weight of his years imprinted on his face like deep weathering. He lowered his head and said, “But I know who we can ask.”

  * * *

  The mechanical voice on the car’s mobile data terminal laptop said, “Stay on this route for seventy-six miles. You will arrive in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, by ten thirty-six A.M.” Waylon glanced down at the computer screen and checked his route, making sure he was going the right way.

  “Can’t you just use the GPS on your phone like a normal human being?” Carrie asked.

  “These phones are going to be the ruin of society, you trust me. The more we rely on them, the more the government takes over our lives. No, thank you. I’ll use the GPS on t
his thing, and the NSA can stuff it.”

  Carrie rolled her eyes as she opened the case file sitting on her lap and read through the papers assembled there. “You put a report together on your friend already?” Waylon asked.

  “No, this isn’t for Molly. Almost two weeks ago a woman came to the station to report her daughter was missing. Denise Lawson,” Carrie said, lifting a driver’s license photo out from behind the report. Carrie shook her head. “Young, brunette, pretty. Her mom said she didn’t come home and nobody had heard from her. You know what I told her?”

  Waylon didn’t have to look away from the road to know her eyes were boring into the side of his face.

  “I told her there was nothing I could do.”

  “Look, it’s not your fault that the State Police don’t let us enter capable adults into the system, kiddo. If you’re an adult in this country, you have the right to walk away and not be bothered by the government. Does it go wrong sometimes? Sure. But think how many abused women were able to escape their husbands because the police weren’t allowed to stop them.”

  “I should have looked into it.”

  “You’re looking into it now.”

  Carrie looked out the window at the road signs whizzing past. “Where are we going in Harrisburg?”

  “To the district attorney’s office.”

  “Who’s there? Someone who knows Rein?”

  Waylon ignored the question. “If you see a Dunkin’ Donuts, holler. I need coffee bad.”

  Cornfields and trees stretched as far as she could see. “I think there’s a Starbucks up ahead,” she said, pointing downrange.

  “Can’t stand Starbucks,” he said. “It tastes burnt to me. I’m a Dunkin’ man, all the way. You ever had a Krispy Kreme?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  Waylon whistled and said, “You are missing out. They’ve got this red light in their window that says ‘Hot and Fresh Donuts’ or something, and when it’s turned on, that means the original glazed are just coming out of the oven. They’ve got this conveyor belt that if you walk into the store, they sometimes just hand you one for nothing, just for walking in. And the second you put that thing in your mouth, it just melts. I’m serious. It melts into warm, sugary goo. You could eat those things until you get diabetes.”

  “If I ever see one, I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.

  “But the coffee sucks. Tastes like somebody took Starbucks already-burnt coffee and burnt it up all over again.”

  “Conversations like this are why people think all cops do is eat donuts, you know,” Carrie said.

  “You know where that comes from?”

  “No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.” She sighed.

  “Back in the old days, you didn’t have 7-Eleven or Wawa or any of that sort open overnight. Everything shut down after nine p.m. Except the donut shops. So that’s where all the old-timers used to go to get coffee. They were just looking to find a way to stay awake, and protecting the only businesses open at three in the morning, so people would always see cop cars parked there and assumed it was for the donuts. You ever seen a cop eat a donut on duty?”

  “No,” she said. “I guess I haven’t.”

  “And you never will. Gets all over your uniform and makes a hell of a mess. Cops drink coffee. They don’t eat donuts. That whole thing is bull.”

  She laughed and said, “Unless it’s a Krispy Kreme.”

  “A hot and fresh Krispy Kreme original glazed is the exception to the rule. When the red light is on, that’s not a donut. That’s what they call a transcendental experience.”

  They drove the next ten miles in silence, Waylon tapping the steering wheel. They’d given up on trying to listen to the radio, as the stations seemed to change every ten minutes. The only thing they could get was low-fi, static-filled gospel music, and neither one of them was in the mood.

  Carrie watched him drum with his thumbs and said, “Are you nervous about whoever we’re going to see?”

  “I’m excited, actually. Haven’t seen him in a while. I keep up on him in the paper and on Facebook, you know how that goes. He’s always taking pictures with different good-looking women. I mean, really good-looking women,” he stressed.

  “I get it, you dirty old man,” Carrie said, smiling.

  “Older than dirt. Not dead.”

  * * *

  They walked out of the parking garage and looked up at the Dauphin County Courthouse, a bizarre, boxy building. It looked like an art deco version of an ancient Greek temple, with squared-off pylons that stretched up the length of the building on the front and the sides. She followed Waylon to the front desk. He held up his badge and said, “We’re both carrying.”

  The desk officer, an overweight, white-haired man with hearing aids in both ears, placed two plastic bins in front of them and said, “Put all your weapons in here. You’ll get them when you come out.”

  Carrie slid her pistol out of its holster and laid it flat inside the container. The desk officer slid each container into a small storage bin and locked it, handing each of them a key. “Go around the side. The elevator is on your right.” As they walked away, his hearing aids emitted a high-pitched squeal, and he dug into his ears to adjust them.

  “Makes you feel safe, doesn’t it?” Carrie said as they waited for the elevator. “Hopefully the bad guys don’t figure out that all they need to do is rub two nickels together to disable the guard.”

  Waylon looked at the people standing around them and leaned toward her, whispering, “We’re in someone else’s backyard right now. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When they reached the district attorney’s floor, Carrie followed Waylon, who smiled politely at the secretary behind the bulletproof glass and said, “Bill Waylon, here to see Jacob Thome.”

  As the secretary lifted her phone to call into the back offices, Carrie glanced at her chief and said, “Thome?”

  He ignored her, watching through the glass as a young attorney, no older than Carrie, came hurrying down the hall and called out, “Uncle Bill!”

  Waylon smiled as the office door opened and the man propped it open with his foot to give the chief a warm embrace. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

  “I wanted it to be a surprise,” Waylon said.

  “Come on in, I want everybody to meet you.”

  Waylon cocked his thumb back at Carrie and said, “Jacob, this is Officer Carrie Santero. She works for me.”

  Thome shot his hand out toward her and squeezed firmly, his smile radiating through his firm and squared-off jaw. “Nice to meet you, Officer Santero.”

  His eyes were fixed on hers and she was held by them, finding them familiar but unsure why. “I . . . Hi, how are you?” she said.

  She fell in beside Waylon as they made their way down the hall, and he leaned toward her ear and said, “See why he gets those good-looking women? He’s not married, you know.”

  “Oh, shut up.” Carrie groaned.

  Thome held up his hands as they entered the main room and called out, “Everybody, I want you to meet somebody!” The attorneys and secretaries stopped working and looked up at them. “This, is my uncle Bill Waylon. He’s chief of police out in Coyote Township, but back in the day he was a county detective with my dad. Together, they caught Krissing the Child Killer.” Thome put his arm around Waylon, whose face flushed with embarrassment, and he said, “This man right here is a goddamn hero.”

  * * *

  Thome’s desk was piled high with cases and law books. Three frames hung on his wall. One was his law degree from Temple University, the second was a photo of his mother and him at his Temple graduation ceremony, and the third was a small photograph of Thome as a child standing next to a man, both of them holding a large fish and smiling proudly. Carrie leaned forward to get a better view and realized the man in the picture was Jacob Rein.

  “He made me use my mother’s maiden name,” Thome said as he went around the desk and sat
down. “Told me I’d never get hired anywhere otherwise. I understand why he thought that, but looking back I regret that decision.” He looked at Waylon and said, “I have no reason to be ashamed of him being my dad.”

  “I’m sure he’s real proud of you either way, Jacob.” Waylon looked around the office and said, “You seem to be making out pretty good here. How many trials you had so far?”

  “Ten in two years,” he said. “We’re running understaffed, so we try to slide everything through with pleas, but I’ve been able to get in on some important cases.”

  “I read about that rape case you handled with the two defendants. Shame the jury wouldn’t go for Felony 1.”

  “Can you believe that?” Thome said. “They got hung up on the fact that the victim went to the one guy’s house to have sex with him, but not the other. They set that girl up, though. Those guys deserved to go to prison forever.”

  “Juries are tricky. Told you that a long time ago. It’s hard for the average person to conceive of what kind of animals some people are. They try to find the good in everybody. In my experience, if you’ve got three charges of all varying degrees of penalty, they’ll usually pick the one in the middle. Just to be fair.”

  “I’ll get them next time.”

  “That you will,” Waylon said.

  “So what brings you guys out here? Some kind of training seminar?”

  “Not exactly. I need to speak to your father.” Before Thome could say anything, Waylon held up his hand and said, “Now, I know he doesn’t want that, but it’s important. Real, real important. You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.”

  “What’s it about?” Thome said.

  “We’ve got a few missing girls and a bad murder, Jacob. I’m not too proud to say I don’t understand exactly what I’m seeing, and I’m hoping he can help me.”

  Thome scrunched up the side of his mouth as he weighed his thoughts. “You know, I think he’d love to see you, Uncle Bill. It might be good for him.”