Missing Persons

by Stephen White

  8

  Details dribbled out the way they inevitably do.

  I’d continued to learn a few things from my conversations with Lauren. She wasn’t due back in her office until after the first of the year but was staying in touch with her colleagues daily. According to my wife the detectives working the case were apparently split into two camps during those crucial early days: those who believed that Mallory had run away and those who believed that she’d been abducted. Not surprisingly, public opinion was divided along the same fault line.

  Lauren’s reading of the shifting winds within law enforcement was that the runaway viewpoint was prevailing.

  TV and newspapers provided background. Hour after hour of background. Given the paucity of public facts, way too much background. But apparently that was only my opinion. Four thousand reporters and camera people and producers can’t be wrong.

  Right?

  Mallory lived in the Twelfth Street house on the Hill with her father and little brother, Reese, who was twelve years old. The Millers were separated; the children’s mother had moved away from Boulder when the children were much younger. The police had been in touch with Mrs. Miller-apparently, and surprisingly, the media had not-and were confident that she could add nothing pertinent to the investigation of her daughter’s disappearance.

  What was known publicly about the Christmas-night events in the Miller household?

  On Christmas evening Mallory had been home by herself. The Miller family had been invited to a holiday dinner at a friend’s house, but Mr. Miller and Reese had gone to the celebration alone after Mallory complained about a stomachache. Mr. Miller had offered to cancel the plans, but she had insisted that they go on without her.

  The physical evidence in the Miller home sounded screwy. Although a casement window near the back door was unscreened and unlocked, the family maintained that it had been that way for as long as any of them could remember. The police were not convinced that the rear window had been used to gain entry to the house, and there were no other possible indications of forced entry.

  A trail of tiny blood drops ran from Mallory’s second-floor bedroom down the stairs. The drops stopped abruptly a few feet from the door that led into the family room/kitchen at the rear of the house. Although DNA testing on the drops was pending, initial examination of the blood indicated that it was probably Mallory’s. The upstairs bathroom that Mallory shared with Reese was a mess, and reportedly Reese had told the police that the mess was severe, “even for her.”

  Did the blood drops and the messy bathroom constitute evidence of a struggle? It depended, apparently, on whom you asked.

  The record of incoming and outgoing phone calls indicated that Mallory had likely been home from the time her family left for dinner until the last time her father had called to check on her about ten minutes before nine. He had called a total of four times during the few hours that he and his son had been away from their home. Mr. Miller and Reese arrived back home at 9:20 or so.

  Mallory had left a note on the kitchen counter thanking Santa Claus for a great Christmas. The note said she’d already gone to bed so that she could be fresh for their ski trip the next day.

  In the note, Mallory didn’t make mention of her stomachache.

  Both Mr. Miller and his son agreed that the note had been written hurriedly. Mallory, known for flowers and hearts flourishes on all her correspondence and many of her school papers, and for generous helpings of XXXs-kisskisskiss-to accompany her signature, had signed the note with a single cursive M instead of her usual florid, all lowercased “mallory,” or her self-deprecating, ironic, all lowercased “mall.”

  Reese retired to his room, and Mr. Miller closed up the house, turned off the lights on the Christmas tree, and was in bed before ten.

  The next morning, Bill Miller went into his daughter’s room early-he said 4:30-because the Millers were planning to drive all the way to Steamboat Springs the next morning and Reese had insisted that he wanted to be in line when the lifts opened to try his new Christmas snowboard in some fresh powder. But Mallory wasn’t in her room. Since she hadn’t actually made her bed since mounting a brief public-relations campaign to extend her curfew the previous summer, there was no easy way to know if her bed had been slept in.

  Her clothes for the ski trip were neatly packed in a duffel on the floor.

  Mr. Miller’s initial suspicion was that his daughter had snuck out the night before-it wouldn’t be the first time-and for some reason hadn’t been able to sneak back in before dawn. He guessed she had fallen asleep at a girlfriend’s house, and was about to phone her closest buddy, a girl named Kara, when Reese noticed the trail of blood that seemed to start in the hallway between her bedroom and the bathroom they shared.

  While Bill Miller was searching for Kara’s phone number, it was Reese who called 911.

  Mallory’s teardrop-shaped backpack, which according to her good friends, Kara and Tammi-they were both more than willing to be interviewed by anyone with a camera-functioned more as a purse than a book-bag, wasn’t in the house. Missing along with the backpack were Mallory’s cell phone, her wallet, and her school planner. The school planner was important because Mallory apparently used it as an all-purpose notepad. It was where she was most likely to jot down friends’ phone numbers, weekend plans, and any musings about current romantic infatuations. The girls also assured police that Mallory kept a diary-they’d both read parts of it, though not recently-but it was never located.

  The absence of the school planner and the diary meant that detectives were missing a treasure trove of information about Mallory’s current life. The cell phone was crucial because the memory contained the numbers of everyone Mallory considered significant.

  The neighbors across the street, the Crandalls, reported that they saw a man “loitering” on the Millers’ sidewalk early that Christmas evening, before the snow had started falling. He was bundled up against the cold, they said, and walked back and forth down the block. They couldn’t provide a better description.

  An interesting and curious sidelight to the grand scope of media coverage of what was, at face value, nothing more than the case of a likely teenage runaway, was Mr. Miller’s refusal to do interviews with any of the national media luminaries who were desperate to do a two-shot with him. He limited his on-camera time to a pair of brief appearances with a local TV reporter, Stephanie Riggs-they’d previously become acquainted on a committee that was organizing a charity run-and to occasional solo stand-ups in the front yard of his home. Each time he professed his love for his daughter and urged her to come home, or at least to call.

  If someone out there has her, he’d add, please let her go. Please.

  I found that I was admiring his decision not to become a media slut.

  I thought he sounded like someone who thought his daughter had run away.

  The lead detectives on the case were a couple of senior people that Sam liked. I didn’t know either of them. A few other teams were assisting.

  Jaris Slocum and Darrell Olson were assigned to interview neighbors.

  Another pair of detectives was assigned to put together a detailed time line of events. That pair consisted of Sam Purdy and his partner, Lucy Tanner.

  9

  Diane had covered my practice while Lauren and Grace and I were up skiing.

  Once I’d finished retrieving the dogs from vacation doggie-camp at our neighbor Adrienne’s house, and after I’d finished unloading the car and stowing our ski gear, I phoned Diane to let her know that we were home and that I was on the clock. “We’re back from the mountains. You’re free to go play. No calls, I hope,” I said.

  “No calls. Your patients are always well behaved. How was it?” she asked perfunctorily.

  “Perfect-great snow, terrific weather. Too short. You and Raoul have a good Christmas?”

  “Yeah, you have a minute?”

  “Sure,” I said. I was already wary. Diane’s tone was a few degrees too serious. A f
ew as in almost 180. I guessed that we were about to talk, once again, about Hannah, and why someone would want to kill her.

  “I need a consultation,” she said.

  “Like a clinical consultation?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay.”

  “This isn’t a casual thing. It’s a formal consultation, Alan. You can’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you.”

  I was standing in the kitchen and I found myself searching behind me for a stool. Something about Diane’s manner screamed that this was going to be one of those why-don’t-you-sit-down conversations.

  “Of course.”

  Yowsa, I was thinking. What is this about?

  “It’s a consultation about a consultation. In a way.”

  “I’m ready, Diane.”

  “Did you know that every once in a while Hannah talked to me about her cases? When she wanted an opinion about something she was a little unsure about, she’d run it by me.”

  “I’m not surprised. You’re good.”

  “I am, but that’s not the point. A few days before she died she asked me out for a glass of wine after work. No big deal, we probably did it about once a month.”

  “Okay.”

  “She had a specific case she wanted to discuss-a kid she’d seen the previous Friday. I didn’t know the girl’s name at the time, of course. Still don’t, not for sure.”

  What Diane was describing was far from unusual. Collegial consultations between psychotherapists are often casual, and usually conducted in a way that protects the patient’s anonymity.

  “Yes?”

  “The strange thing-the thing that Hannah wanted my consultation about-was that this kid had come in on her own. Her parents didn’t arrange the session. Kid just showed up in her office, sat in the waiting room, and wanted to talk.”

  “A walk-in?” I asked. I didn’t know a single private-practice psychotherapist in Boulder who saw patients without appointments.

  “A walk-in.”

  Diane didn’t treat adolescents. Occasionally I did. I said, “Usually a parent makes the contact, and comes to the first session. That should have been a red flag.”

  Diane cleared her throat as a way of letting me know that my unfortunate propensity toward platitudes was interfering with her narrative. She added, “I know that.” Her tone was not only scolding me for being condescending, but was also making clear that even if she didn’t eat fois gras she knew what a goose was.

  I tried to remember Colorado mental health law. I thought the age threshold when a child could seek treatment without a parent’s consent was fifteen, but I wasn’t totally certain. I’d have to check.

  “How old was the kid?”

  Diane answered, “Fourteen, fifteen-I’m not a hundred percent sure. I’m pretty sure Hannah said ‘teenager’ but…” I suddenly guessed where we were going. And I didn’t like the road map I was seeing. At all. I feared that Diane was intimating that Hannah Grant had seen Mallory Miller for psychotherapy less than a week before Hannah died, and only two weeks before Mallory had disappeared. I said, “You’re not thinking Hannah’s mystery patient was Mallory Miller, are you?”

  “Everything fits.”

  Other questions began making soft landings in my head like a platoon of paratroopers. Why would Mallory seek treatment without consulting her father? And why with Hannah? Had she made a second appointment? Had Hannah made a diagnosis? Was Mallory fearful? Had Hannah said anything about Mallory thinking of running away?

  And the most important question: Is there any way I can avoid hearing any more about this?

  But Diane had an agenda that was quite different from insulating me from becoming more complicit, and she had a line of inquiry that I wasn’t anticipating. She said, “I can’t tell anybody about this, right? That’s what Hannah had wanted my consultation about. I told her that I thought she had to sit on it, had to wait and see what developed with the kid. Now, I want to hear from you if I was right.”

  I hesitated while I considered the peculiar circumstances she was describing. While I pondered, Diane filled in the dead air. “You have the craziest practice within a thousand miles of here. I figured that if you don’t know what to do about something like this, then nobody does.”

  I ignored the accusation, or compliment, or whatever it was. I said, “You probably can’t tell anybody anything. But it ultimately depends on what the girl told Hannah during the appointment. And on her age. For legal purposes I think you have to assume that right now you’re Hannah-you have the same confidentiality responsibilities that she had when she saw the kid. Are you wondering about talking to the police? Is that it?”

  “Sure, but I’m wondering about going to Mallory’s father, too. I’m sure he’d love to know-”

  “You probably can’t talk to him. Other than the usual child-abuse exceptions to the privilege, your hands are tied. Even if you were sure it was Mallory-and it doesn’t sound like you are-I don’t think you could tell anyone about the girl’s session.”

  Because it was Diane I expected her to argue with me. She didn’t. She asked, “You want to know what she said? Why she was there?”

  “To give you any useful guidance, I probably have to.” That was my way of saying, “No, not really.”

  Diane paused before she said, “I don’t really know that much. The girl was depressed about the holidays. And she misses her mom.”

  10

  Despite its cosmopolitan airs, Boulder is, at its core, a small town. As would likely have occurred in any other small town, it seemed that everyone knew someone who knew someone who had some connection to the missing girl. In the week between that season’s Christmas and New Year’s celebrations many hours were lost, probably way too many, in informal parlor sessions intended to identify the precise arcs of those degrees of separation.

  My friend and neighbor Adrienne, a Boulder urologist, made it clear that one of the key players in the drama-someone connected to the Miller family, or to one of the public faces of the law enforcement team-was one of her patients. I had two biking buddies who had daughters who played on the missing girl’s U-15 club soccer team. Lauren’s legal assistant’s teenage son’s best friend used to cut the grass at the missing girl’s house.

  Like that.

  As I’d suspected when I first heard that Mallory’s father’s first name was Bill, it turned out that I, too, had a tangential tie to the Miller family. It was tangential only because of the passage of time. Years before-I would have to check my records to put a precise number on the question of how many years, but I was guessing somewhere around eight or nine, maybe even ten or eleven-I’d seen the missing girl’s parents for a solitary couples therapy session. Just one. Given the time lag since that session, my recall of the intervention was surprisingly clear, probably because of how disheartening my clinical appraisal was at the time.

  Mr. Miller had dragged his reluctant wife in for the evaluation. It had been clear to me from the moment the introductions started that Mrs. Miller did not want to be in my office. Her demeanor had reminded me of a child who would gladly promise never, ever to eat candy again if she could only avoid the dentist’s drill this time. All that was absent was a foot stomp.

  My clinical antennae were further tuned by her appearance. Any professional who has spent enough hours with people suffering acute mental illness would have recognized that Mrs. Miller’s physical appearance was just the slightest bit off. Her hair, her makeup, her clothes-everything was just a degree or two away from ordinary. My session with the Millers was on a lovely Indian summer September day, and Mrs. Miller came dressed in a wool suit, carrying a straw bag, and wearing scuffed white pumps. On her eyes she wore big, bright Jackie O sunglasses. All the pieces, individually, were fine. Acceptable, at least. But together on a fine autumn day they totaled a sartorial sum that I guessed only Mrs. Miller could fully comprehend.

  For his part, Mr. Miller was in something close to full-blown denial about the extent of the d
aunting challenges he faced. He appeared to have convinced himself, at least temporarily, that a few heart-to-heart sessions of some old-fashioned talking therapy would be just the trick to help lead his wife away from the middle of the field where she’d been aimlessly wandering and ease her back onto the straight and narrow marital tracks where she belonged.

  Where exactly was Mrs. Miller doing her figurative wandering?

  Into another man’s bed? No. Drugs? Alcohol? Nothing so pedestrian.

  Mrs. Miller, it turned out, attended weddings. Usually two or three ceremonies a month, but during prime nuptial season she would do more. “Ten one month,” Mr. Miller had reported to me over the phone when he’d called for the initial appointment. “That’s her record. This past June. The truth is she’d do ten a week if she could fit them in.”

  She dressed elegantly for each one of the ceremonies. Her collection of wedding outfits numbered in the dozens, and she had an enviable assortment of spring and summer hats-Mr. Miller called them hats; Mrs. Miller referred to them as “my bonnets.” She bought nice gifts for every one of the happy couples. Many of the outfits and all of the wedding gifts were purchased from cable TV home shopping channels. She stayed away from registries-“Who needs to be told what to buy? My Lord,” she asked aloud during our session-and apparently her gifting tendencies leaned toward ceramic figurines of animals. Puppies and kittens mostly, but occasional angels and young children.

  The wedding presents were always pricey things. “It’s her only vice,” Mr. Miller had said in admirable defense of his wife’s largesse. During one particular month of nuptials every newlywed couple received-after a one-hour this-is-it closeout sale on QVC-a beautiful shiny chrome home espresso machine from Italy. The piston kind. The total tab for the machines was almost two thousand dollars.

  The UPS guy and the FedEx lady who drove the routes that included the Millers’ home were on a first-name basis with everyone in the household.