by Jeff Shelby
I resisted the urge to argue that she wasn’t his daughter. “So, she left with him?”
They both nodded. “She said he was driving her to the store. But they were both acting weird. We should’ve known something was wrong. But we were just happy that she was speaking to us again. So he came and picked her up and they left.” He swallowed. “We haven’t heard from her since.”
“Any idea where they went?” I asked.
Alex shook his head as his wife stared at the floor. “None. We don’t know his parents well. I’ve tried to talk to them, but have gotten nowhere.”
“I want the address,” I said.
Valerie looked up at me, unsure. Then she looked at her husband.
Who was still looking at me.
“We don’t know anything about you,” he said. “We’ve just told you everything we know and we don’t know anything other than you two are claiming to be Ellie’s real parents. So, how about if you share something before we give you anything else?”
I stared across the coffee table at him. “You want me to share something?”
He nodded.
“Easy,” Lauren whispered.
I turned to her. Smiled. “I’m fine. I’m happy to share.”
She eyed me, wary.
I turned back to Corzine, leveled my eyes at him for a long moment. He shifted on his sofa, uncomfortable under my stare.
“Here’s what I’ll share,” I said, slowly. “Eight years ago, I walked into my home for about two minutes and our daughter was taken from our front yard. Vanished. Gone. I lost my career as a police officer. I lost my wife. I lost my friends. And I lost my daughter. But I didn’t lose hope.”
Corzine glanced away, unable to hold my gaze.
“I’ve spent eight years looking for her,” I continued. “Every morning, I wake up and hope I’ll find something that leads me to her. I’ve helped hundreds of people find their missing children but haven’t been able to locate my own. Every night, I go to bed and wonder where she is, how she is, who she is. I don’t sleep. I wonder.”
He tried to look at me, but his eyes drifted past me to Lauren.
“I wondered who took her. If she was alive. If she was good at math. If she had a boyfriend. If she liked the color blue. If she liked snow. You name it, I’ve wondered about it,” I said, smiling at him. “And every morning, I forced myself to get up, to keep looking until I found an answer. One way or another.”
He leaned back in his couch, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else.
“And all of that, all eight years of sleeplessness and wondering and destruction to my own life has led me here,” I said, pointing at the coffee table. “Right here, right now. And I’m here to get my daughter. Today. I don’t care about you, your wife, the kid in the other room or your fucking pets. I don’t care. I’m here to get her. And if you ask me one more question, if you really think you have the right to ask me one more question about who I am or what I’m doing here, after what you’ve done—I swear to God—it will be the last question you ever ask. Anyone.” I leaned across the table. “And her name is Elizabeth. It’s Elizabeth Tyler.”
Except for a clock ticking somewhere in the background, the room was silent. I leaned back from the table, aware that sweat was running down my back beneath my shirt and jacket. Lauren was still next to me. The Corzines were looking down at their feet, unable to look at either of us.
“I will ask again for Bryce’s address,” I said.
Alex reached over and touched his wife’s hand. She nodded, stood and left the room.
“I’ll assume you haven’t contacted any authorities regarding her disappearance, given your relationship to Elizabeth,” I said.
He shook his head. “We have not, no. For exactly that reason.”
I wasn’t sure yet if that was a good thing or a bad thing. At that moment, I could make an argument for either side.
“You checked cell phone records?” I asked. “Her bank account?”
He nodded. “Yes. Both. Nothing’s been used since she left. I’ve turned her room upside down, looking for any clue and I can’t find a damn thing.”
“You should look at her room,” Lauren said.
Before I could say anything, Valerie returned and handed me a piece of paper with the names of Bryce’s parents, a phone number and an address.
“They live about twenty minutes from here,” Alex said as Valerie sat down next to him.
I took the paper, folded it up and put it in the pocket of my jacket.
Lauren stood. “I want to see her room.”
I knew that we needed to, that we needed to take a look and see if there was anything in there that might help us.
But I wasn’t sure I was ready to see where she lived.
FORTY-FIVE
I couldn’t go in.
Lauren sat down on the floor next to a bed covered with a lavender bedspread and dotted with small pillows. She looked up at me, standing in the doorway. “What are you doing?”
I tried to shrug. “Nothing.”
“You aren’t coming in?”
“I’m fine right here.”
She watched me for a moment, then let her eyes drift around the room.
I looked, too.
A small, stuffed tiger on the bed. A desk in the corner stacked with books. A Twins baseball hat hung on a wall peg. An iPod dock next to the bed. Mirrored closet doors. And framed pictures I couldn’t bring myself to look at.
Lauren ran her hand along the bottom of the bedspread and pulled the tiger off the bed. She closed her eyes, hugged the tiger for a moment. Then she stood and pulled one of the pictures off the wall. She set the tiger down and held the picture like it might crumble.
“She’s beautiful,” she whispered. “Elizabeth is beautiful.”
I didn’t say anything.
She stared at the photo in her hands. “And it’s her, Joe. You were right. It’s her.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Lauren giggled at the photo. “It’s her.” She held it out to me. “Look at her.”
I glanced down at the floor. “I know. I know it’s her.”
“Joe?”
“I know it’s her, Lauren.”
“Look at me.”
I did. “What?”
“Why won’t you come in?”
I tried to say something, but the words wouldn’t come.
“I mean, you found her,” she said, spinning slowly in the room. “You did it. This is her room. We’re going to find her. We are standing in her room. Her life is right here.”
“I don’t want to see it.”
Lauren stopped and stared at me. “What?”
I kept my eyes on her, careful not to look at any of the photos. “I don’t want to see what I’ve missed, alright? I don’t want her to have had a life without us. And all this? This is what I missed. What I didn’t get to give her.”
She walked over to me, then reached out her hand to me, the picture in her other. “Come here.”
I shook my head.
“Joe,” she said. “Come in here.”
My heart thumped in my chest and my fingers tingled.
“Come on,” she said.
I reached for her hand and let her gently pull me into the room. She pulled me in close to her.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, tears forming in her eyes. “She’s okay.”
“Not yet,” I said, my breathing coming in bursts. “Not yet she’s not.”
“But she’s alive,” she said. “She’s alive.”
Tears were pushing behind my eyes.
“Look at her,” she said. “Look at Elizabeth.”
She held out the picture frame and I took it, my hand shaking.
Elizabeth was hugging another girl and they were cheek to cheek, smiles taking up most of the frame. Her face was a miniature version of Lauren’s and there were very faint freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her teeth were perfectly straight and the one ear I could see was pierced
twice, sporting a small emerald colored star and silver hoop. Her hair was long, pulled back into a ponytail. There was nothing hidden in her expression, just a teenage girl with a friend, mugging for a camera.
My tears spilled onto the glass frame, blurring Elizabeth’s face. I handed it back to Lauren before I dropped it.
She took the photo and wrapped her arms around me, hugging me as I shook and cried.
“We’ll get her,” she whispered in my ear. “We’ll get her.”
FORTY-SIX
There was nothing in her room that indicated where Elizabeth was.
I sat on the bed, mostly ineffective, as Lauren weeded through drawers, the closet, anything she could find. She pulled out stacks of clothes, sifted through her books and papers, checked every nook and cranny.
Nothing that told us where she went.
We walked back out to the Corzine’s living room. They were both still sitting on the couch, huddled together, looking dazed and confused. Lauren and I resumed our seats.
“Nothing?” Alex asked.
We both shook our heads.
“So now what?”
“We’re going to go to Bryce’s home,” I said, glancing at Lauren. “Check there.”
“We’ll come with you.”
I stared at him for a moment, then laughed. “No. You won’t.”
Anger flashed in his face. “You know, I’m a little tired of you telling me what’s going to happen here. You walk into my home and…”
“You stole our daughter,” I countered. “You may not have been the one who showed up in my yard and took her, but as far as I’m concerned, you might as well have. You have no rights here. You wanna argue about it? Let’s step outside then.”
“Joe,” Lauren said. “Easy.”
“We’ve raised her,” Alex said, his voice rising. “We’ve taken care of her. We’ve given her a good life.”
“You’ve given her a phony life,” I said. “You are not her parents and you should stop with that charade right about now. The only thing you are—the only thing—is culpable in a child’s abduction. So, you’ll keep your ass here in this house. You won’t move. You won’t do a goddamn thing unless I tell you to.”
“Or what?” he said, squinting at me, then waving his hand in the air. “What are you gonna do?”
I stood. “First, I’ll call the police. Then I’ll call the federal authorities. Then I’ll call my friend here at DCFS. You’ll be arrested. You’ll be vilified.” I pointed down the hallway. “And you’ll lose custody of your real daughter.”
The anger drained from his face and his wife clutched at his arm.
“And make no mistake,” I said. “That’s all probably going to happen anyway. The only difference is how fast it’s going to happen. We can do it now or you can buy yourself some time and start preparing.”
They exchanged nervous glances, the severity of the situation finally settling on them.
“So. Alex,” I said. “That’s what I’m gonna do if you so much as move two inches off that couch. We’re going to Bryce’s home. You will sit here until I tell you not to. And if the phone rings and it’s my daughter, you’ll call me immediately. And then you’ll sit down and wait for me to show up and tell you what to do.”
Valerie’s head was on Alex’s shoulder and she was crying again.
“Any more questions?” I asked.
Neither of them moved.
I looked at Lauren. “You have a card and a pen?”
She nodded and pulled both from her bag. I scribbled my cell on the back of her business card and laid it on the coffee table.
“You have my cell and you have Lauren’s,” I said. “You hear from her, you call one of us. Immediately.”
Alex’s eyes drifted toward the card. “I just want her to be okay. So we can explain. That we didn’t know.”
He looked sad, torn, distraught. Tired. He’d probably been worried sick for the last few days, wondering where Elizabeth had gone off to and what she was doing. He looked like he really cared about her, like a father would about his daughter.
The only problem with that was that he wasn’t her father.
I was.
FORTY-SEVEN
Lauren was plugging Bryce’s address into the GPS when my phone rang. I saw the number, thought about letting it go to voicemail, then answered. “Hey, Isabel.”
“Hi,” she said. “Where are you?”
“In the car and I’m busy,” I said. “What’s up?”
“It’s Rodney,” she said. “The detective we talked to?”
“Right.”
“He’s had a stroke,” she said. “He’s in the hospital. Not life-threatening, but there’s some impairment and he’s going to be there for a few days. Tess called me this morning.”
“Oh, wow,” I said. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Lauren held the GPS up with the address on the screen. It said we were seventeen minutes away. I nodded at her.
“How busy are you?” she asked.
“Very,” I said. “But I can’t get into it right now.”
“Okay, I understand,” she said. “But here’s the thing. He’s asking to see you.”
“He wants to see me?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Tess just said that he’s saying he wants to talk with you. And it’s not like he’s out of it and just mumbling. He’s coherent. The impairment is in his movement, I guess. But he’s insistent that he wants to talk with you.”
“I can’t do it right now, Isabel,” I said, turning the key in the ignition. “I’m in the middle of something.”
The line buzzed for a moment. “With your daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Alright,” she said. “I understand. But can you just make some time to see him? I’ll send you the hospital address. When you get some time, will you go see him?”
I wasn’t sure when I’d have time, but I also felt like I owed Rodney. “I will. I’ll let you know.”
“Okay,” she said. “Thanks. And good luck.”
We hung up and I put the phone back in my pocket.
“Everything alright?” Lauren asked.
I turned the heater down, the air in the car stuffy and heavy. “Yeah. It’s fine. I’ll take care of it later.”
She hit start on the GPS and we pulled away from the curb.
“I thought you were going to go after him,” Lauren said after we’d been driving for a few minutes.
“I thought I was, too.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because they are hurting, too.”
The GPS instructed me to turn right onto a major street and we slid into the traffic. “I don’t care about them.”
“You should.”
“You’re on their side?”
“I’m not on anyone’s side, Joe,” she said. “I’m just trying to put myself in their shoes. And they aren’t shoes that are comfortable to wear.”
“You think?”
“I don’t mean it like that,” she explained. “Look. You don’t really think they were the ones who took her that day, do you?”
“I don’t know what I think.”
She frowned. “Bull. If you thought they did, there wouldn’t have been anything I could’ve done to keep you off of them. I’d be calling a criminal defense lawyer right now because you’d be charged with murder.”
I didn’t say anything.
“So, I know you don’t think that,” she said. “Their story holds up. You may not like it, but it holds up. They were desperate to have a child. They’d probably gone through all of the right channels and got stonewalled. That isn’t unusual and you know it.”
The light turned red and I slowed to a stop.
“They found a way to adopt a child they thought needed to be adopted,” she continued. “Were they naïve? Probably. Did they overlook some things? Probably. But desperation can do
that to people. They were told they had an opportunity to adopt a little girl who needed a home and they took it.”
Traffic starting moving again as the light switched to green.
“For the last eight years, they gave her a place to live,” Lauren said. “They did all the normal things parents do for their kids. I’m grateful for that.”
“Grateful?” I asked, unable to hide the surprise in my voice. “You’re grateful?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Joe, I’ve run every awful scenario through my head for the last decade. Every horrific thing that could’ve happened to her. Guess what? Finding her living with a family and finding out she’s had a fairly normal life? That wasn’t on the horrific list. Ever.”
The GPS told me to switch lanes and I complied.
“They didn’t take her,” Lauren said. “They made a mistake trying to do a good thing— a selfish thing—but ultimately, a good thing. I wish they had thought harder about adopting a girl through illegal channels. I’m angry about that, obviously. But big picture?” She shook her head. “They took care of our little girl. I’m not angry with them for that. I don’t hate them for that.”
Her words all made sense, but I couldn’t purge my anger, think as rationally as she did. Anyone that had been a part of Elizabeth’s disappearance deserved my wrath, as far as I was concerned. Anyone that was a part of that had also kept her from me for all those years. I’d never forgive that and I’d never be sympathetic to the consequences they had to deal with.
At the very least, though, her words calmed me and gave me something else to focus on for the moment. It allowed me to clear my head and begin thinking about Bryce Ponder’s parents.
The GPS directed us into a tree-lined neighborhood, the branches heavy with snow. Small, one-story brick homes on large, square lots. The GPS told us we’d reached our destination and I pulled the car next to a pile of snow that was supposed to be the curb and cut the engine.
The house sat up on a small embankment, the garage behind the house, off the alley. Icicles hung from the rain gutters and the walk up the embankment had been shoveled—the shovel still on the front porch next to the door.