Missing Daughter

by Rick Mofina

  “We still can’t rule out anything, or anybody,” Asher said.

  “That’s right. We can solve this case,” Zubik said. “It’s just that...”

  Zubik’s chair creaked as he sat back to take stock of the files, reports, the map on his monitor, those on the wall. Then his attention went to the large photos of Maddison Lane smiling back at him, and he blinked thoughtfully at her.

  “But what, Stan?” Asher said.

  “At this stage, I just don’t know how.” He nodded to his desk. “Maybe we missed something, overlooked something. Maybe the answer’s right in front of us.”

  49

  Karen stood alone at the edge of the school yard.

  The bell would soon sound the end to classes.

  This was sixth day of Maddie’s disappearance. Karen was losing her mind and had come here to find answers. She’d been moving through time feeling like an open wound, and didn’t know what else to do.

  She glanced at her phone, the phone that never rang or vibrated with a message from Maddie. But Maddie’s face was there, staring back at her, and Karen nearly touched it with her fingers. She found a measure of comfort viewing recordings of birthdays, Christmas, Maddie learning to ride a bike and her first day of school.

  Karen tapped the screen on her favorite.

  “Okay Mommy, I’m gonna sing a song for you!”

  Maddie, age four, her hair held back with two pink butterfly barrettes, standing in the living room holding her toy microphone in both hands.

  “Which song, sweetie?” Karen asking off camera.

  “‘You Are My Sunshine’!”

  Maddie begins, twisting her little body, eyes sparkling like diamonds, putting her whole heart into it...

  Tears rolled down Karen’s face. She could almost feel Maddie, almost smell her. She ached to hold her and never let go for she was broken without her. This morning Karen didn’t know the stranger in her mirror, a haggard, wretched woman who looked twenty years older.

  Is this the price to be paid for all the things I’ve done, the mistakes I’ve made, the secrets I’ve kept and the lies I’ve told? Is this my torment?

  The memories of them haunted her: Maddie’s disappearance, her mother dead in the garden, her sister underwater. For even when sleep came in short bursts, Karen was tortured by her dreams, dreams of her sister at the weir...

  Cassie’s eyes ballooning with horror...her foot stuck in the weir... Karen fighting to pull it out but it won’t move, oh God, it won’t budge! Karen giving Cassie air but Cassie struggles, a bubbled scream explodes from her mouth, life drains from her eyes; eyes that stare at Karen. Cassie’s hair flowing Medusa-like...the water gracefully swirling to reveal Maddie’s face...her lifeless eyes...accusing Karen...

  The bell rang, jolting her.

  School was over, and students began flowing from the building to the pickup zones, one for parents waiting in cars, one for school buses. Karen moved closer to the activity, her pulse picking up as she scanned the young faces amid the chatter of hundreds of conversations.

  Last night Tyler had learned from other kids about a rumor that one of Maddie’s friends had told police something Maddie had told her before she’d disappeared. But Tyler was unable to find out more because police told the friend not to tell anyone.

  That’s why Karen was here, moving among the streams of children.

  I need to know what Maddie told her, what was in her heart.

  Moving, turning this way and that, Karen searched dozens and dozens of faces until at last she found the face of Maddie’s friend.

  The one she needed.

  “Brooke!”

  Brooke Carson’s smile melted into surprise as she ceased talking with another girl.

  “Mrs. Lane. Hi.”

  “Brooke, I need to talk to you about Maddie. It’s very important.”

  The girl with Brooke gave a little finger wave and left.

  “Sure.” Brooke shifted under the shoulder strap of her backpack.

  “You’re one of Maddie’s best friends. She talked to you, she told you things, right, honey?”

  Brooke hesitated. “I guess so.”

  Karen looked around to a low brick wall and indicated they sit there.

  “I really should be going.” Brooke pulled on her strap.

  “Please sit with me. I just need a minute.”

  Brooke sat, noticing how Karen’s two-handed grip on her phone had whitened her knuckles. She tried not to stare at the lines carved into Karen’s face, the red veins webbing her eyes.

  “Brooke, I need you to tell me, was my daughter mad at me?”

  “Mad at you?”

  “Yes, I need to know what she told you.”

  “I—” Brooke shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Was she angry at me for being too strict with her about boys?”

  “Maybe a little, but I really don’t know.”

  “Did she tell you that we argued about boys?”

  “A little, I guess.”

  Karen gulped back a sob. “Did she forgive me?”

  “Forgive you?”

  “Did she say that she loved me?”

  Unease and worry began rising in Brooke’s face. “Mrs. Lane...”

  “I thought I knew Maddie. I know we argued and she’s rebellious, but she’s a good girl, isn’t she?”

  Karen gripped her wrist.

  “Why didn’t I know my own daughter? What didn’t I know?”

  “Mrs. Lane, you’re squeezing too hard.” Brooke looked off as if she wanted help.

  “I thought we were close. What do you know that I don’t know? You have to tell me—there has to be something!”

  “Please, Mrs. Lane, you’re scaring me.”

  “Tell me!”

  “Karen.” Monica Carson, Brooke’s mother, gently loosened the woman’s grip on her daughter’s arm. “We understand how painful this is, but Brooke’s just a twelve-year-old girl. You’re frightening her.”

  “Brooke knows something about Maddie! Maddie told her something!”

  “Karen, we’re with you, we support you. But you must go through proper channels for information. Don’t do this to Brooke.”

  Karen looked into Brooke’s eyes. “I’m Maddie’s mother! I deserve to know!”

  Brooke fought her tears in the face of Karen’s anguish. “But police told me not to tell!”

  “Tell me!” Karen screamed.

  “Stop this, please!” Monica said.

  “All Maddie said to me was that something was happening in her life,” Brooke said.

  “What was happening? What?” Karen said.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know.” Brooke sobbed into her mother’s arms.

  “Karen, she doesn’t know,” Monica said. “We’re so sorry, but she doesn’t know.”

  Karen stared at them: A mother comforting her twelve-year-old daughter. A girl Karen had terrified. Her mother holding her, loving her the way a good mother should love her child.

  The world began blurring, spinning, and Karen’s mind raced.

  Did Maddie love me? Was I too hard on her about dating, forcing her to rebel the same way I rebelled? Did my sister die because of me? And now my daughter...gone...

  Again, the haunting images tortured her, finding her mother dead in the garden, Cassie dying underwater and Maddie’s empty bedroom.

  What have I done?

  Monica and Brooke caught Karen as she collapsed.

  BOOK TWO

  FOUR YEARS LATER

  50

  Lana Compton was certain that she and Pearl, her seventy-six-year-old mother, were going to die.

  Hurricane Zeus was bearing down on them.

  The storm had Category 5 strength with winds reaching 180 mph, and had alrea
dy churned through much of the Caribbean, killing twenty people. It would hit Florida’s east coast within hours. Evacuation orders had been given, and millions had fled or sought refuge in shelters.

  Not Pearl. At first she’d refused to leave her South Florida home. “I’ve lived here all my life, and if it’s God’s plan that I die here, so be it.”

  But after seeing TV news reports of the devastation in the Bahamas, Pearl agreed to go with Lana to the nearest storm shelter in Greater Miami—the gym of a new high school, built to withstand hurricanes.

  But now, as they neared its doors, Lana slid her arm tight around her mother’s waist, knowing they were too late. The rain was coming down in torrents, the lashing winds hurled palm fronds at them, and they stumbled. The last reports had put the wind speed near 50 mph and climbing fast. Miami-Dade County officials had made it clear: when the winds reached speeds of 40 mph, shelter doors would be closed.

  With one arm around her mother, Lana pounded her fist on the doors.

  “Please! Let us in! Please!”

  The winds howled with increasing velocity, peeling pieces of roofs off the houses nearby. Pearl screamed when a metal sign from a gas station knifed through the air, missing them by inches, crashing into the wall. Sheets of plywood followed, along with metal trash cans and hubcaps.

  In her panic, Lana saw a body hunched in a ball behind a stone planter, a teenage girl. She didn’t have a poncho, just a polo shirt, shorts and shoes.

  “Honey, are you okay?” Lana shouted.

  Terrified, the trembling girl raised her head, her face webbed with blood and matted hair. She was sobbing. Lana kicked at the door and, still holding her mother, moved closer to the girl, taking her hand. Then the doors pushed open against the pummeling winds and two men pulled all three women inside.

  “This girl’s hurt—you’ve got to help her,” Lana said.

  “She’s with you?” one of the men asked.

  “No. Don’t know who she is. She was just outside.”

  “Let’s get to the registration table. We need to sign everyone in,” one of the men said but, growing concerned, he looked at the girl, patting her wound with a towel, telling her to keep pressure on it.

  “What’s your name?” he asked at the table where staff members were poised to list her.

  She shook her head.

  “Do you have a wallet or identification?” a staff member asked.

  Again, she shook her head.

  “She’s alone, hurt her head and bleeding. She needs help now,” Lana said. “Maybe she’s got family in here?”

  “Okay, we’ll take care of her.” One of the men spoke into a walkie-talkie. While a staff member recorded the girl as a white, unaccompanied child, aged fifteen to seventeen, as well as her injury and time of arrival, two emergency volunteers emerged. One helped keep pressure on her wound with the towel. They draped a blanket around her and guided her through the large gym where more than a thousand people were sitting on sleeping bags and mattresses. Some were talking or playing cards, some were checking their phones and some were sleeping.

  The volunteers brought the girl to the shelter’s medical unit with its treatment stations behind curtained walls. They got her out of her wet clothes and into a paper gown. A nurse in a flowered smock began cleaning her head wound.

  It was a four-inch laceration. The edges of the wound were not separated. It looked like she’d been cut with a sharp, straight edge.

  “What happened?” The nurse was shining a light in the girl’s eyes.

  “I don’t remember. Something hit me hard on the head.”

  The nurse looked at her.

  “What’s your name?”

  The girl blinked, looking off as if traveling back in time.

  “I think it’s Maddie?”

  “You think? What’s your last name, Maddie?”

  The girl began crying again. “I can’t remember.”

  “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.” The nurse returned with a man wearing jeans, a Dolphins T-shirt and a stethoscope around his neck. “This is Dr. Shirer. He’ll take a look at you.”

  He examined her wound, which did not penetrate her skull. He placed the bell of his stethoscope on her back. Then he felt her skull, her jaw, shone his light in her eyes and checked her nose and ears.

  “So you got a bump on the head from something?” He had a kind face.

  “It hurt. I saw stars and I felt I was spinning. Maybe I fainted.”

  “Do you have a headache?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me your name?”

  “Maddie... I think it’s Maddie?”

  “Your last name?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “How old are you, Maddie?”

  “Sixteen, I think.”

  “Do you know where you were when it happened, or what happened?”

  “No.”

  “Are you here with family?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Do you know what day it is, or who the president is?”

  “No.” She covered her face with her hands and cried. “Why can’t I remember anything?”

  “Well, Maddie, you’ve suffered a pretty good head injury, a concussion. Probably hit with debris in the storm. Memory loss is a common symptom. It could be short-term, or it could last longer.”

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” the nurse said. “We’ll get you some dry clothes and get you reunited with your people here.”

  Dr. Shirer patted the girl’s leg.

  “We’ll give you some ibuprofen for your headache and patch you up. You won’t need stitches. But when it’s safe, I want the paramedics to get you to Holy Palms Memorial as soon as we can for X-rays and a scan to check the severity of your concussion. It’ll be done through emergency relief. I’ll sign all the papers. We’ll get a protective services person to watch over you. Don’t worry, okay?”

  The girl nodded while crying. “Thank you.”

  “Meantime, while you’re here, we’re going to put your name and picture up on the gym video board, so that your family or friends can find you.”

  Less than fifteen minutes later, the mystery girl’s face stared from the video board at all the people in the shelter. The message under it said: “This is Maddie. If you know her, please come to the medical station.”

  51

  Anna Croll kept looking at the video board and the picture of the girl known only as Maddie.

  Something about her is calling to me, and I don’t know why.

  “It’s been up for hours,” Croll said. “They must not have found her family.”

  “Maybe you should check it out, Anna,” said Mitch, her husband, who was playing board games with their daughter and son. “We’ll be fine, go.”

  Croll kissed her family then left their space on the gym floor. Navigating her way to the shelter’s admin tables, she had second thoughts. Was she overreacting? Had she misread her instinct? Croll was a mother, a wife, and an attorney who helped the South Florida chapter of Searching for Lost Angels, a national missing children’s group.

  Mitch is right. I just need to know that she’s okay.

  Croll showed her laminated ID to several shelter staff, a nurse and Red Cross officials who were huddled at one of the tables. Rita Salena was among those who knew Croll and her organization.

  “Has anyone come for her?” Croll indicated the video board. “Has she been reunited with her family?”

  “No one, Anna,” Rita said.

  “What’s the girl’s story?”

  “She was found alone outside with her head bleeding.” Rita typed on a keyboard and was reading from a monitor. “She suffered a concussion and memory loss. We got her to Holy
Palms. They’ll keep her there for a while. We checked our databases with other shelters to see if anyone’s looking for her. We’ve put out a notice with her photo. Nothing so far. She had no wallet, ID or phone in her clothes.”

  “Maybe she was assaulted and robbed? Who’s with her at Holy Palms? Did protective services assign someone to her?”

  “Denise Perry. Want her contact info?”

  “Yeah, I’ll call her. Here’s mine.” Croll handed her a card. “Keep me posted.”

  * * *

  The next morning after the hurricane had passed, Anna Croll left the shelter with her family, counting her blessings: they were safe and their home had sustained little damage.

  Other than toppled trees, smashed car widows and debris scattered everywhere, much of her neighborhood was unscathed. It was the same for most of Croll’s relatives in South Florida. She was grateful because so many people had lost so much.

  Throughout it all, Croll had never forgotten about Maddie, the mystery teen at her shelter. By midafternoon she called Denise Perry who was still at the hospital with the girl.

  “No,” Perry said, “aside from the bump on her head, the medical staff found no sign she’s been assaulted, and we’ve had no luck so far identifying her.”

  “Do you mind if we take a shot at it, Denise? I could be there with another member this afternoon, if you’ll allow it.”

  “All right. With the storm’s aftermath everybody’s stretched right now, and we could use any help we can get.”

  Next, Croll called Penny Metcalf, her sister-in-law, and asked her to meet her at Holy Palms to help try to identify the teen.

  “Oh, Anna, we’ve got so many storm-related calls. I’m not sure I can book off the time,” said Metcalf, a Miami-Dade police officer and a member of Croll’s missing children organization’s chapter.

  “This is storm-related and it won’t take long.”

  Metcalf considered her reasoning and sighed.

  “You’re like a dog with a bone, Anna. I’ll meet you there.”

  * * *

  Later that afternoon Croll and Metcalf waited in an office near a nurse’s station before Perry brought the girl to them.