Transgressions

by Ed McBain

  It was a good thing, the distraught mother gathered, that cases of missing/abducted children were relatively rare in the affluent Hudson Valley suburbs north of New York City, as crimes of violence in these communities were rare. This meant dramatically focused police attention, cooperation with neighboring police departments in Tarrytown, Sleepy Hollow, Irvington. This meant dramatically focused media coverage, replication of Marissa Banty’s likeness, public concern and participation in the search. Outpouring of sympathy, it would be called. Community involvement. You would not find such a response in a high-crime area, Leah was told.

  “Something to be grateful for. Thank you!”

  She wasn’t speaking ironically. Tears shone in her bloodshot eyes, she wanted only to be believed.

  It was in the distraught mother’s favor, too, that, if her daughter had been abducted and hadn’t simply run away of her own volition, hers would be the first such case in Skatskill’s history.

  That was remarkable. That was truly a novelty.

  “But she didn’t run away. Marissa did not run away. I’ve tried to explain . . .”

  Another novelty in the affluent Hudson Valley suburbs was the mysterious/suspicious circumstance of the “considerable” time lapse between the child’s probable disappearance after school and the recorded time the mother reported her missing at 8:14 P.M. The most vigilant of the local TV stations was alert to the dramatic possibilities here. Skats kill police will neither confirm nor deny that the department is said to be considering charging Branty, who has no previous police record, with child endangerment.

  And how it would be leaked to this same TV station, the distraught mother had evidenced signs of “inebriation” when police arrived at her home, no one at the station was in a position to say.

  So ashamed! I want to die.

  If I could exchange my life for Marissa’s

  Hours, days. Though each hour was singular, raw as a stone forced down the throat. And what were days but unchartable and unfathomable durations of time too painful to be borne except as singular hours or even minutes. She was aware of a great wheel turning, and of herself caught in this wheel, helpless, in a state of suspended panic and yet eager to cooperate with the very turning of the wheel, if it might bring Marissa back to her. For she was coming to feel, possibly yes there was a God, a God of mercy and not just justice, and she might barter her life for Marissa’s.

  Through most of it she remained calm. On the surface, calm. She believed she was calm, she had not become hysterical. She had called her parents in Spokane, Washington, for it could not be avoided. She had called her older sister in Washington, D.C. She had not seemed to hear in their shocked and incredulous voices any evidence of reproach, accusation, disgust; but she understood that that was to come, in time.

  I am to blame. I know.

  It doesn’t matter about me.

  She believed she was being damned calm! Answering their impudent questions and reanswering them and again repeating as in a deranged tape loop the answers that were all she had in the face of their suspicion, their doubt. She answered the officers’ questions with the desperation of a drowning woman clutching a rope already fraying to haul herself into a lifeboat already leaking water. She had no idea, she had told them immediately she had no idea where Marissa’s father was, for the past seven years there had been no contact between them, she had last seen him in Berkeley, California, thousands of miles away and he had had no interest in Marissa, he had sought no interest in his own daughter, and so truly she did not believe she could not believe that there was any likelihood of that man having abducted Marissa, truly she did not want to involve him, did not wish to seem in the most elliptical way to be accusing him . . . Yet they continued to question her. It was an interrogation, they sensed that she had something to hide, had she? And what was that, and why? Until finally she heard herself say in a broken defeated voice all right, yes I will give you his name and his last-known address and telephone number that was surely inoperative after so long, all right I will tell you: we were never married, his name is not my child’s name, he’d pretended even to doubt that Marissa was his child, we had only lived together, he had no interest in marriage, are you satisfied now?

  Her shame, she’d never told her parents. Never told her sister.

  Now they would know Leah’s pathetic secret. It would be another shock, a small one set beside the other. It would cause them to think less of her, and to know that she was a liar. And now she must telephone to tell them before they discovered it in the media. I lied to you, I was never married to Andrew. There was no marriage, and there was no divorce.

  Next, they needed to know exactly where she’d been after she had left the Nyack clinic at 6:30 P.M. of the day her daughter had disappeared. Now they knew she was a liar, and a desperate woman, now they had scented blood. They would track the wounded creature to its lair.

  At first Leah had been vague about time. In the shock of her daughter missing, it had been natural for the mother to be vague, confused, uncertain about time.

  She’d told them that she had been stuck in traffic returning home from Nyack. The Tappan Zee Bridge, route 9 and road repair and rain but yes, she had stopped at the 7-Eleven store near her apartment to buy a few things as she often did . . .

  And was that all, had that been her only stop?

  Yes. Her only stop. The 7-Eleven. The clerk at the cash register would recognize her.

  This was a question, a probing, that had to do with Leah Bantry’s male friends. If she had any, who would have known Marissa. Who would have met Marissa. Who might simply have glimpsed Marissa.

  Any male friend of the missing girl’s mother who might have been attracted to the girl. Might have “abducted” her.

  For Marissa might have willingly climbed into a vehicle, if it was driven by someone she knew. Yes?

  Calmly Leah insisted no, no one.

  She had no male friends at the present time. No serious involvements.

  No one she was “seeing”?

  Leah flared up, angry. In the sense of—what? What did “seeing” mean?

  She was being adamant, and she was speaking forcibly. Yet her interrogators seemed to know. Especially the female detective seemed to know. An evasiveness in Leah’s bloodshot eyes that were the eyes of a sick, guilty mother. A quavering in Leah’s voice even as she spoke impatiently, defiantly. I told you! God damn I have told you.

  There was a pause. The air in the room was highly charged.

  There was a pause. Her interrogators waited.

  It was explained to Leah then that she must answer the officers’ questions fully and truthfully. This was a police investigation, she would be vulnerable to charges of obstruction of justice if she lied.

  If she lied.

  A known liar.

  An exposed, humiliated liar.

  And so, another time, Leah heard her voice break. She heard herself say all right, yes. She had not gone directly to the 7-Eleven store from Nyack, she had stopped first to see a friend and, yes he was a close male friend, separated from his wife and uncertain of his future and he was an intensely private man whose identity she could not reveal for he and Leah were not exactly lovers though, yes they had made love . . .

  Just once, they had made love. One time.

  On Sunday evening, the previous Sunday evening they had made love.

  For the first time they had made love. And it wasn’t certain that . . . Leah had no way of knowing whether . . .

  She was almost pleading now. Blood seemed to be hemorrhaging into her swollen face.

  The police officers waited. She was wiping at her eyes with a wadded tissue. There was no way out of this was there! Somehow she had known, with the sickening sensation of a doomed cow entering a slaughter chute, she had known that a part of her life would be over, when she’d dialed 911.

  Your punishment, for losing your daughter.

  Of course, Leah had to provide the police officers with the man’s name
. She had no choice.

  She was sobbing, crushed. Davitt would be furious with her.

  Davitt Stoop, M.D. Director of the medical clinic. He was Dr. Stoop, her superior. Her employer. He was a kindly man, yet a short-tempered man. He was not in love with Leah Banty, she knew; nor was Leah in love with him, exactly; and yet, they were relaxed together, they got along so very well together, both were parents of single children of about the same age, both had been hurt and deceived in love, and were wary of new involvements.

  Davitt was forty-two, he had been married for eighteen years. He was a responsible husband and father as he had a reputation at the clinic for being an exacting physician and it had been his concern that he and Leah might be seen together prematurely. He did not want his wife to know about Leah, not yet. Still less did he want Leah’s coworkers at the clinic to know. He dreaded gossip, innuendo. He dreaded any exposure of his private life.

  It was the end, Leah knew.

  Before it had begun between them, it would end.

  They would humiliate him, these police officers. They would ask him about Leah Bantry and Leah’s missing daughter, did he know the child, how well did he know the child, had he ever seen the child without the mother present, had he ever been alone with the child, had he ever given the child a ride in his car for instance this past Thursday?

  Possibly they would want to examine the car. Would he allow a search, or would he insist upon a warrant?

  Davitt had moved out of his family home in February and lived in an apartment in Nyack, the very apartment Leah Bantry had visited on Thursday evening after her shift. Impulsively she had dropped by. Davitt might have expected her, it hadn’t been certain. They were in the early stages of a romance, excited in each other’s presence but uncertain.

  This apartment. Had Marissa ever been there?

  No! Certainly not.

  In a faltering voice telling the officers that Davitt scarcely knew Marissa. Possibly he’d met her, once. But they had spent no time together, certainly not.

  Leah had stayed in Davitt’s apartment approximately a half hour.

  Possibly, forty minutes.

  No. They had not had sex.

  Not exactly.

  They had each had a drink. They had been affectionate, they had talked.

  Earnestly, seriously they had talked! About the clinic, and about their children. About Davitt’s marriage, and Leah’s own.

  (It would be revealed, Leah had led Davitt Stoop to believe she had been married, and divorced. It had seemed such a trivial and inconsequential lie at the time.)

  Leah was saying, stammering, Davitt would never do such a thing! Not to Marissa, not to any child. He was the father of a ten-year-old boy, himself. He was not the type . . .

  The female detective asked bluntly what did Leah mean, “type”? Was this a “type” she believed she could recognize?

  Davitt forgive me! I had no choice.

  I could not lie to police. I had to tell them about you. I am so very sorry, Davitt, you can understand can’t you I must help them find Marissa I had no choice.

  Still, Marissa remained missing.

  “People who do things like this, take children, they’re not rational. What they do, they do for their own purposes. We can only track them. We can try to stop them. We can’t understand them.”

  And, “When something like this happens, it’s natural for people to want to cast blame. You’d be better off not watching TV or reading the papers right now, Miss Bantry.”

  One of the Skatskill detectives spoke so frankly to her, she could not believe he too might be judging her harshly.

  There were myriad calls, e-mail messages. Blond-haired Marissa Bantry had been sighted in a car exiting the New York Thruway at Albany. She had been sighted in the company of “hippie-type males” on West Houston Street, New York City. A Skatskill resident would recall, days after the fact, having seen “that pretty little pig-tailed blond girl” getting into a battered-looking van driven by a Hispanic male in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven store a few blocks from her home.

  Still, Marissa remained missing.

  . . . hours in rapid succession jarring and discontinuous as a broken film projected upon a flimsy screen she would not sleep for more than two or three hours even with sedatives and she slept without dreaming like one who has been struck on the head with a mallet and she woke hollow-headed and parch-mouthed and her heart beating in her chest like something with a broken wing.

  Always as she woke in that split-second before awareness rushed upon her like a mouthful of filthy water My daughter is gone, Marissa is lost there was a sense of grace, a confusion in time like a prayer It has not happened yet has it? Whatever it will be.

  HAVE YOU SEEN ME?

  Like a sudden bloom of daffodils there appeared overnight, everywhere in Skatskill, the smiling likeness of MARISSA BANTRY, I I.

  In store windows. On public bulletin boards, telephone poles. Prominent in the foyers of the Skatskill Post Office, the Skatskill Food Mart, the Skatskill Public Library. Prominent though already dampening in April rain, on the fences of construction sites.

  MISSING SINCE APRIL 10. SKATSKILL DAY SCHOOL/15TH ST. AREA.

  Hurriedly established by the Skatskill police department was a MARISSA Web site posting more photos of the missing blond girl, a detailed description of her, background information, ANYONE KNOWING ANYTHING ABOUT MARISSA BANTRY PLEASE CONTACT SKATSKILL POLICE AT THIS NUMBER.

  Initially, no reward was posted. By Friday evening, an anonymous donor (prominent Skatskill philantropist, retired) had come forward to offer fifteen thousand dollars.

  It was reported by the media that Skatskill police were working round the clock. They were under intense pressure, they were investigating all possible leads. It was reported that known pedophiles, sex offenders, child molesters in the area were being questioned. (Information about such individuals was confidential of course. Still, the most vigilant of area tabloids learned from an anonymous source that a sixty-year-old Skatskill resident, a retired music teacher with a sexual misdemeanor record dating back to 1987, had been visited by detectives. Since this individual refused to speak with a reporter, or consent to be photographed, the tabloid published a photograph of his front door at 12 Amwell Circle on its cover, beneath the strident headline LOCAL SEX OFFENDER QUERIED BY COPS: WHERE IS MARISSA?)

  Each resident of Briarcliff Apts. was questioned, some more than once. Though no search warrants had been issued, several residents cooperated with police allowing both their apartments and their motor vehicles to be searched.

  Storekeepers in the area of the Skatskill Day School and along Marissa Bantry’s route home were questioned. At the 7-Eleven store in the mini-mall on the highway, so often frequented by young people, several clerks examined photographs of the missing girl, solemnly shook their heads and told police officers no, they did not believe that Marissa Bantry had been in the store recently, or ever. “There are so many children . . .” Questioned about Leah Bantry, whose photograph they were also shown, the eldest clerk said, carefully, that yes, he recognized this woman, she was a friendly woman; friendlier than most of his customers; but he could not say with certainty if she had been in his store on Thursday, with or without her daughter. “There are so many customers. And so many of them, they look like one another especially if they are blond.”

  Detectives queried teenagers, most of them from Skatskill High, and some no longer in school, who hung out at the mini-mall. Most of them stiffened at the approach of police officers and hurriedly shook their heads no, they had not seen the little blond girl who was missing, or anyway could not remember seeing her. A striking girl with electric blue hair and a glittering pin in her left eyebrow frowned at the photo and said finally yeah she’d maybe seen Marissa “like with her mother? But when, like maybe it wasn’t yesterday because I don’t think I was here yesterday, might’ve been last week? I don’t know.”

  Skatskill Day School was in a stage of siege
. TV crews on the front walk, reporters and press photographers at all the entrances. Crisis counsellors met with children in small groups through the day following Marissa’s disappearance and there was an air in all the classrooms of shock, as if in the wake of a single violent tremor of the earth. A number of parents had kept their children home from school, but this was not advised by school authorities: “There is no risk at Skatskill Day. Whatever happened to Marissa did not happen on school grounds, and would never have happened on school grounds.” It was announced that school security had been immediately strengthened, and new security measures would be begun on Monday. In Marissa Bantry’s sixth grade class children were subdued, uneasy. After the counsellor spoke, and asked if anyone had a question, the class sat silent until a boy raised his hand to ask if there would be a search party “like on TV, people going through woods and fields until they find the body?”

  Not after a counsellor spoke with eighth graders, but later in the day, an eighth-grade girl named Anita Helder came forward hesitantly to speak with her teacher. Anita was a heavyset girl with a low C average who rarely spoke in class, and often asked to be excused for mysterious health reasons. She was a suspected drug-taker, but had never been caught. In class, she exuded a sulky, defiant manner if called upon by her teacher. Yet now she was saying, in an anxious, faltering voice, that maybe she had seen Marissa Bantry the previous day, on 15h Street and Trinity, climbing into a minivan after school.

  “. . . I didn’t know it was her then for sure, I don’t know Marissa Bantry at all but I guess now it must’ve been her. Oh God I feel so bad I didn’t try to stop her! I was like close enough to call out to her, ‘Don’t get in!’ What I could see, the driver was leaning over and sort of pulling Marissa inside. It was a man, he had real dark hair kind of long on the sides but I couldn’t see his face. The minivan was like silver-blue, the license plate was something like TZ 6 . . . Beyond that, I can’t remember.”