by Kate Flora
If what we were hearing was the truth. It was frustrating to have such an information void on Heidi’s side. We couldn’t know whether she was telling the truth about being unaware of her pregnancy and about her stepfather and other men in the house, but it didn’t sound like something she would have made up, especially if she valued the Simmons culture as her friends said she did. The uncomfortable tale of her stepfather’s practice of deliberately walking in on her didn’t seem like something she’d tell to a boy, even one who was a friend, except in deepest confidence. And if she’d shared something so intimate, wouldn’t she also have shared her pregnancy, if she knew?
I wondered what Miller and Flynn were thinking, and where they’d want to go from here?
At the risk of sounding like the detective I wasn’t, I used the interval to suggest to Miller that they might find some items with The General’s DNA at the inn if everything hadn’t already been cleared away. He didn’t argue or even look at me funny, just nodded and left the room briefly to make a call.
There was another discreet tap on the door and Gareth’s assistant, Peggy, ushered in our third witness. If Bella had entered like a timid mouse, Ronnie Entwhistle came in like a German shepherd trained for crowd control. While his name suggested something from Hogwarts, he was more Refrigerator Perry. Angry, frustrated, concerned, and impatient. He was a shade of brown so dark he truly was almost black, and so handsome one instantly understood that black was beautiful. He shook our hands with one that swallowed all of ours except Flynn’s, a shake and squeeze that had a ‘let’s get on with this’ brevity. Then he perched on the edge of the chair Gareth had indicated.
He didn’t wait for anyone’s questions. “Heidi’s mother brought the damned stepfather, didn’t she?” he said. “Heidi told her not to. Heidi said she’d like her mother to come, but if The General came, too, she’d run away. But Heidi says her mother isn’t going to listen to anything Heidi tells her. It’s no wonder Heidi wanted to come here, is it?”
Flynn let Miller take this one.
“What has Heidi told you about her stepfather?” Miller asked.
“Probably what Jaden and Bella have already told you. That he won’t give her any privacy and it makes her very uncomfortable. He says she’s just a little girl and he’s looking out for her, but she’d have to be pretty feeble to believe that, and Heidi’s not feeble. Her narcissistic mother won’t do anything to protect her. Her stupid, self-centered bitch of a mother, I mean.”
Miller nodded. “Has Heidi said anything to suggest her stepfather has taken liberties with her? Been sexually aggressive?”
The boy squeezed his big hands together in a gesture I thought was an effort at control. “She hasn’t come out and said it, but it sounded like something had happened.”
“Can you give us a sense of that conversation?”
Ronnie fixed his fierce gaze on Miller. “It was confidential, sir.”
“I understand that, and we appreciate the importance of keeping your friend’s confidences, but we’ve got a serious situation here, Ronnie, one where Heidi may be in danger. She’s disappeared. No one knows where she’s gone. We have no way of being sure she’s safe or whether someone who doesn’t have her best interests at heart may be involved. Our best chance of finding her is if we’re working with good information. What you know is a valuable part of that.”
Ronnie shifted his eyes to Gareth.
“Sergeant Miller is right, Ronnie,” Gareth said. “We respect your desire to keep Heidi’s confidences between the two of you, but in a situation like this, protecting your friend may mean protecting whoever caused this pregnancy, while putting Heidi at risk. And, as you can understand, she’s very vulnerable right now, having just given birth. This is not a good time for her to be trying to manage on her own.”
“You just want to get her back here so you can turn her over to them.” He jerked his chin toward the two detectives. “Then, even if she doesn’t go to jail—” He glared at the two cops, “Which would be ridiculous since she’s just as much a victim here as that baby is—” A chin jerk toward Gareth, “And even if they don’t charge her, you’re going to send her packing back to California where she’ll have to live with the bitch and the creep and that would destroy her. I’m not going to help you with that.”
He sat silently for a moment, then added, “It’s no wonder she ran.”
“So you know where she is?”
Ronnie Entwhistle didn’t answer.
“What about her father?” Miller said. “You called her father when this happened.”
“What about him?”
“He cares about Heidi, and he’s worried about her. Evidently you thought he should be involved, since you called him.”
“Not really. If her mama is a narcissist, her daddy is Peter Pan. I only called him ’cuz Heidi asked me to.”
The boy folded his arms across his chest and glared at all of us. “She didn’t want him here because she believed he would be much help. She was scared and wanted someone here who cared about her, somebody who maybe could negotiate with you…uh…the school, I mean, on her behalf, and he was the best she could do. But if you’ve met him, you must know that when it comes to looking after her, her dad’s pretty useless. Otherwise, why would he have left her with them?”
We were learning things, lots of things that illuminated the situation and gave us possible avenues to identifying the baby’s father, but in the finding Heidi department, we were making no headway.
Miller tried a different tack. “You think the stepfather is the father of her baby?”
Ronnie stayed silent, but he shook his head.
“She tell you who it is?”
“She didn’t know she was even pregnant, so how could she tell me?”
“You really believe that?”
Ronnie was big and tough. He was also just a kid, though clearly a kid with more street smarts than Jaden or Bella. He looked at Gareth again. “Dr. Wilson, what am I supposed to do here? I don’t know what I should say and what I shouldn’t and I don’t know what’s going to help Heidi and what might hurt her.”
“Let’s take it one step at a time, Ronnie,” Gareth said. “Can you answer that question honestly?”
“I can. Yes. I do believe that Heidi didn’t know she was pregnant. But I think, now that she knows…now that she’s had the baby, she may have some idea who the father is. But that’s just me guessing. Honest, it is. She never said anything before all this that suggested she knew, and when I spoke with her last night, she just said something really vague.”
“What did she say?” Miller asked.
“She said she had no idea that anything had happened but it must have been him.”
“Who is ‘him’?”
“She didn’t say.”
“There was nothing in the context of the conversation that made it clear?”
“Clear as mud. It was more like she was talking to herself.”
Miller waited for a better answer.
“See, Heidi tells us the truth. Her friends. Teachers. People here at Simmons. That’s why she came here, so life would finally let her be honest. But before, in California, she said she’d learned to lie about everything. It was the only way to have any privacy. The only way to keep herself safe.”
“Safe from who?”
“Just about everyone but Will. She can trust him, which is why…” Ronnie broke off, glared at us, and shrugged his great big shoulders. “Safe from who? Whom? You know what I know. Someone who was around the house is what I figured.”
“Did Heidi have a boyfriend back home?”
About this Ronnie was clear. “Nope. She wasn’t interested. Between her parents and the creep, it’s no surprise. She hasn’t exactly had models for the possibility of a positive relationship.”
“That doesn’t usually stop people from forming relationships.”
Another big shrug. “I can only tell you what she told me. Plus, she said boys didn’t find her in
teresting. Which is dumb, because she’s really pretty. She’s not all girly and flirty and stuff or all into clothes and makeup. She’s just straightforward. It’s what makes her a good friend. She’s not playing games. She’s not trying to get me and Jaden interested in her. She’s just, you know, real.”
He looked at Gareth. “I don’t think they understand about Heidi.”
“It’s hard,” Gareth said, “when they haven’t met her.”
Ronnie nodded, then told us something we should have known from the start. Something that helped explain why her judgmental mother thought she couldn’t have a boyfriend. Why she might have been extra self-conscious about her body and dressing in private. “Not that it slows her down or anything, she’s really okay with it, but maybe the reason Heidi didn’t have boyfriends, and the reason her mother says she’s unattractive, is that she has a partial prosthetic foot. She was born missing three of her toes. A lot of guys aren’t going to be cool with that.”
Seventeen
It was not politically correct, or Simmons correct, to say, “Why has no one ever mentioned this before?” So I didn’t. But I did give Gareth a look. So did Miller and Flynn. Not that it changed anything, and yet it did. Without any information about the ways in which this issue with her foot might impair her, knowing about it made me worry more about Heidi managing on her own, and about her vulnerabilities to seduction and predation. It made me angry with Gareth for not giving me all the facts when he knew I needed them. When knowing as much as possible about a situation was critical to managing it well. Maybe it had been in the file Gareth gave me as I was heading out last night. A file I’d not had a chance to open.
And I’d bet that it gave Miller and Flynn reasons to think Heidi might have been lying about a sexual adventure because it was something no one—meaning the hateful mother and stepfather, and possibly her peers at her former school—believed she could have.
There was a long silence after Ronnie’s declaration, so long that he got uncomfortable. He wore the look of someone who thinks they’ve gotten something very wrong.
“What,” he finally said. “You didn’t know about her foot? Sheesh, I thought everyone knew. It’s not like she tries to hide it or anything. Not that you’d know, seeing her and all. She’s just regular like the rest of us. But there are things she can’t do so easily, like run fast and do sports. I mean, she can, but she doesn’t like to because she’s not so good at it, and Heidi already feels like she’s not good at so many things. She thinks, because of her mother the bitch, that she’s ugly and plain and dumb and useless. As well as a cripple.”
His look invited us to share his amazement. “When she’s really great.”
“Where are you from?” Miller asked.
“Dorchester. Boston. Why?”
“Did you arrange for a friend with a car to come and get Heidi and take her somewhere?”
“Did I what?”
“You heard the question.”
Ronnie looked at Gareth. “Is he accusing me of something?”
“He’s just asking, Ronnie. Did you help Heidi leave the campus last night?”
“No.” He didn’t look evasive or anxious or like he wondered how we’d take it. He didn’t look like he was hiding something. He just looked really pissed off that Miller had asked such an offensive question.
There was a long silence, then the boy said, “Can I go now?”
Their pact to tell the truth could be difficult sometimes. Miller had jumped the gun. Asked the ultimate question without building up to it first. And now Gareth had to tell the truth—that Ronnie could leave any time he wanted.
Miller tried to backtrack. “We’re just trying to make sure she’s safe,” he said.
“Wish I believed that. But, excuse me if I sound rude, I don’t believe you. I think you want to use Heidi as an example to other girls. I saw your boss, the DA, on the TV last night, and he didn’t sound the least bit concerned about Heidi. He sounded like someone who wanted to put her in the stocks, like they used to do around here, and let people parade past and insult her. Going on and on about her abandoning an innocent newborn. Well, Heidi’s been abandoned, too. And she’s innocent. And she didn’t know anything about that baby.”
He stood, and again I was struck by his size. Still a kid, and yet possessing a massive man’s body. “Sorry,” he said. “I’d like to help but I can’t be a part of that. Unless you can convince me that the DA, and you all, don’t have it in for Heidi, then I’ve said all I’m going to say.”
Unlike the others, who’d tried to hide the fact that they were lying, Ronnie was completely upfront. He wasn’t going to lie to us, unless his answer to the question about the car had been a lie, but he wasn’t going to say anything more. I was sorry for Miller and Flynn. They had a hard job to do. It was also their job to do it well. To do the best job of getting important information. Witnesses were often difficult, reluctant, or wary, and the challenge was to find a way past that to the truth. Part of the truth, in this case, being whether he had any knowledge of Heidi’s plans for last night.
When the door closed behind him, no one said anything for a while. Finally, Miller broke the silence. “Well, that went well, didn’t it?”
He was looking at me but I refused to be baited.
“Heidi’s dorm mother?” I asked, looking at Gareth.
He shook his head. “Sgt. Miller and Detective Flynn are going over there. They want to have a look around Heidi’s room.”
The lawyer’s daughter in me was already wondering whether they could do that when Gareth said, “It’s part of the contract here. We have the right.” Like he was reading my mind. I hope he couldn’t read all my thoughts. And he seemed to have forgotten that I’d asked to speak with Heidi’s dorm parents yesterday.
“You do know that a reporter got into her room yesterday, right? And your department has the things he took from her room?” I asked.
Miller nodded. “Got any ideas about where we look for the girl?” he asked, an edge in his voice like he thought I’d had a hand in her disappearance.
“I think you’re on the right track,” I said. “Look for someone with a car, or connections to a car. Ask the local taxi companies or the Uber drivers if anyone picked up someone matching Heidi’s description near the school last night. Give her friends a little time and see if they come up with anything else. Ask the other girls on her floor if they have any ideas. Bella’s her roommate, but that doesn’t mean she’s closest to Heidi. Or ask Bella who else Heidi was friends with. Check her phone records and see who she called. Check her credit card use. One of her parents must know the number. And ask her parents some hard questions about their visits to Heidi last night, and any other conversations they might have had with her. Ask them straight out if they were involved in Heidi’s disappearance.”
I stopped, because what I was telling them was so obvious. “And we’ve still got this girl with the name of a Rhode Island town. Tiverton.”
I looked at Gareth, “We are going to see her, right?”
“She’s in a two-hour lab this morning. We’ll see her later.”
Flynn gave me another of his suspicious looks and made some notes.
“As for the rest—” Yeah. I know. He hadn’t asked. “It wouldn’t be a bad idea to put a little pressure on Heidi’s mother, see if you can find out what was really going on in that house. Find out if General Bradley Norris did get on a flight to California this morning.”
I switched back to Gareth. “No word from Mrs. Norris?”
He shook his head.
I added something to Flynn’s list. “And whether Lorena Norris was on that flight.”
There were so many loose ends I felt like a spider whose web had exploded as I watched Miller and Flynn depart.
I was glad they were heading over to Heidi’s dorm. I needed some time with Gareth without the constabulary looking over our shoulders. He looked like he was ready to have them gone, too. They’d been well behaved, but we h
ad things to strategize about, and didn’t want to have those conversations before an audience.
As Miller and Flynn were heading out, Gareth’s bustling assistant came in with a handful of pink message slips. She gave the majority of them to him, but there were a few for me as well. I shuffled quickly through them. Work, work, and work. Nothing about my father—a case of no news is good news. I hoped. Still, I excused myself for a moment, stepped into the small lounge I’d been using, and called the hospital. They confirmed that he’d gone home.
Then, because finding Heidi was paramount, Heidi’s friends were our best source, and we were now far enough into the day to make it a respectable hour to call California, I got out the number for Nina Smirnoff that Mrs. Norris had given me, and called.
Making a cold call like this, you never know what to expect. What I got was an attempt at a brush-off. “I’m sorry,” Nina Smirnoff said when I explained I was calling about from Heidi Basham’s school and wanted to reach her daughter Stephanie, “Stephanie isn’t here. She has gone to boarding school herself. She wants to put the whole business with Heidi behind her, as do I. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
Can’t meaning won’t. What whole business with Heidi, I wondered? I made a few more attempts to persuade her to give me Stephanie’s contact information without revealing too much about Heidi’s situation, but Nina Smirnoff—so disliked by General Norris for her criticism of their parenting style—was a brick wall. I figured my only option was to shock her. “I’m so sorry to be bothering you with this,” I said, “when evidently something unpleasant happened between Stephanie and Heidi. I wouldn’t be making this call except that Heidi just gave birth to a premature baby when she believes she’s never had sex, and now she’s disappeared. She’s just sixteen, and scared. We don’t know if she’s run away, or been taken. We’re desperate to find her. Her parents are no help at all, while the police are looking to arrest her for abandoning her baby. I was hoping Stephanie might know something that could help us find her. Or protect her from arrest.”