by Exile
He showed his badge at the office security window and they were buzzed into a waiting area that was split by a counter. On one side were two desks and office equipment. On the other, three chairs stood against the wall, a small table in front of them. The air reeked of copier ink, paper and an old woman’s too-sweet perfume.
“We’d like to speak to the principal, please. It’s regarding, May-Bell Paradis,” he said to the clerk. Spinoza nodded.
“Have a seat. I’ll tell him you’re here.” The clerk motioned to the waiting room chairs, next to a closed wooden door.
One chair held a kid with black hair that hung over his ears, and a black gaze that radiated age beyond his years. He looked up at them, and the age disappeared, leaving behind bored resignation. He wore a black T-shirt and jeans over long, outstretched legs, and had a black leather jacket across his lap. Now, who wore leather when it was a hundred degrees? Work boots with lug soles covered large feet.
Ron slouched down in the chair beside the kid and grabbed a magazine off the table. Old. Women’s. He tossed it aside and sat in silence. No banter between the two admin staff. Unnatural. Unhappy.
“You waiting for the principal?” Ron asked the kid.
“Yeah. He doles out what passes for justice ’round here. You’d like him,” the kid said with a lip curl.
Lots of attitude, this one. The kind that said what he thought. “You know May-Bell Paradis?”
“I might.” Normal caution. “What’d she do?”
“Who does she hang with in school?”
The kid grinned. “You gotta give a little, ta get a little, man. What’d she do?”
“Disappeared. Her mother thinks she’s been abducted.”
The kid snorted. “That old hag don’t know nothing.”
Ron sat up. “So you do know May-Bell.”
The kid shrugged, his grin gone. “She’s fucking trapped like the rest of us. The world, you know?”
He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, effectively ending the conversation.
Ron settled back, too. “We want to make sure she’s all right. You hear anything, I’d appreciate you letting me know.” He placed a business card on the kid’s knee and closed his eyes. He felt the kid stir.
“If I was May-Bell, I’d be so far from here you’d never find me. I’d never look back.”
Ron rolled his head sideways to look at the kid, but the boy’s eyes were still closed, and Ron’s card hadn’t moved. Had the kid even spoken? Spinoza didn’t look up from thumbing a magazine.
The wooden door beside them pulled open, releasing a gust of sea-scented aftershave and a student moving fast toward the main office door. A big man followed.
“You’ve visitors, sir. The police,” said the clerk. She nodded in their direction. Spinoza closed his magazine.
The principal was a tall, thin man, verging on the cadaverous, with large hands that stuck too far out of his grey suit jacket sleeves. He turned a sunken-fleshed face towards them. “How may I be of assistance?”
Ron stood and introduced them. “We’d like to speak with you about May-Bell Paradis.”
“I’m Stepford Hall, the Principal. Please, come in.” He motioned them into his office. Functional shelves of policy manuals, and educational theory. Above the book shelves was the expected inspirational office picture except, instead of the usual words like Strive, or Excellence, this one said Be and showed a street scene of people going about their day.
Hall must have seen his glance. He smiled as he sank into his seat. “We strive to keep our student’s expectations realistic – especially since the economic downturn.”
It was a short interview.
Stepford Hall knew nothing about May-Bell Paradis except her attendance – excellent – and that she was a good student, but he did print off May-Bell’s schedule and suggest that they talk to May-Bell’s teachers, beginning with her art instructor.
When they stepped out to the waiting area, the dark-haired kid was gone.
After receiving directions, Ron and Spinoza tramped the school halls. Posters of upcoming dances, club meetings and fashionable causes decorated the walls. The place echoed their footfalls like painful memories.
At the juncture of two halls a trophy case adorned one wall with chrome and photos of outstanding athletes. The other side of the hall displayed student art. One painting stopped Ron.
Done in watercolours, its faded blue-greys and greens hinted at treetops and sky. In the centre a swirl of colour and line suggested a child in a swing so high she hung above it all. Wild blond hair blew out from her shoulders and became part of the clouds. It was delicate and beautiful and wild. Scratched in the corner were initials he couldn’t make out.
“So what d’ya think?” he asked.
Spinoza shrugged. “Looks okay. Like someone has a thing with swings.” He cocked a brow. ”You maybe? You were asking a lot of questions this morning.”
The wild-haired blonde could be May-Bell. If it was the Paradis swing set it was proof that both swings had been there and that one was missing – the one the girl in the painting was on. Pondering that, they found the classroom. He knocked on the door, and they stepped inside.
Bright and dark colours splattered the floor, tables and easels. Students wore paint-splattered smocks, as they dabbed brushes on canvas. The taint of turpentine and paint filled the room and a dark-haired woman paused at students’ shoulders. She headed toward Ron.
She was a pretty woman, with large dark eyes, and lush lashes. She had high cheekbones with just enough natural colour and a trim figure that, though she was Ron’s age, hadn’t gone to fat.
“Ms. Leary?” He kept his voice low. “I’m Detective Conway and this is Detective Spinoza. We’re investigating the disappearance of May-Bell Paradis. Can we step into the hall?”
“Of course.” She preceded them into the deserted hallway. “How can I help you?” She looked from Spinoza to Ron.
“May-Bell’s mother reported that she hasn’t seen her daughter since night before last. We understand May-Bell has excelled in your class. Have you noticed anything unusual about her?”
Ms. Leary frowned. “Not really. She’s the clichéd artistic genius – always distracted except for her art. She’s a fantastic painter. Really talented. Someday she’ll be someone to reck-on with in the art world.”
Spinoza’s pen scritch-scritched across his notepad. “Can you think of anyone who might want to harm May-Bell – or abduct her?”
“Harm her?” Her skin paled a little. “Do you think something’s happened to her?”
“We have to explore all possibilities,” Ron said.
There was that lone pink sneaker, on the parched lawn.
Ms. Leary crossed her arms. “I can’t think of anyone. She was liked well enough. She never mentioned any issues. She seemed happy since she got a boyfriend.”
That was news that Elvira Paradis seemed unaware of.
“Can you think of any reason for May-Bell to run away?”
She shook her head, frowning again.
“So who’s this boyfriend?” Spinoza asked
She glanced back at her room. “I’d introduce you, but he’s absent today. His name’s Todd Sloan. Tall boy. Dark-haired. He likes black leather, but the kid has an artist’s soul.”
He thought of the kid from the office. “You don’t happen to have a photo of him, do you?”
She led them down to the trophy case and studied the displays and photos. “There. That’s Todd.”
The dark-haired kid stared back at them, his hair slicked by sweat, muscled arms exposed by a basketball shirt. Arms like that were certainly enough to overpower a skinny wraith like May-Bell Paradis.
“Do you think I could get a copy of that photo?”
She shrugged. “The office might have one. But Todd wouldn’t do anything to May-Bell. He genuinely cared for her. He’s been using her as a model for his painting.” She motioned to the watercolour that Ron had ad
mired. “That’s his work. He has a whole series of them.”
“Really.” He glanced at Spinoza and read his matching concern. Was the kid obsessed with May-Bell? “Any possibility of seeing his paintings?”
“Uh…” Ms. Leary suddenly seemed uncertain. “Todd wouldn’t do anything to May-Bell. Really.”
As if she reassured herself.
“Let’s see those paintings, shall we?”
He eased her back to the classroom, but by the time they reached it she was visibly struggling with whether to cooperate.
“I think we may have met Todd today in the office,” he said. “He expressed a bit of attitude toward authority. Is that what he’s like?”
Ms. Leary looked up at him. “No. Maybe. It depends, I guess. Me, he had no problem with.”
Understandable. A pretty teacher wasn’t hard to take direction from.
“So those paintings?”
Ms. Leary led to them to a series of shallow drawers that filled one wall. She pulled one out.
A similar watercolour lay on top, the sky a little lighter, the trees and landscape a lot darker and a beam of light caught the figure who had left her swing behind and was leaping – or was that falling – from the swing back to earth. It looked like the landscape would swallow her up.
“A different feel to this one,” he said.
Ms. Leary nodded.
He rifled through the stack of paintings. A pastel of a similar scene. An oil with the sky almost tropical blue and a dark brooding landscape with May-Bell Paradis sitting alone on a swing on a two-swing set. For all the bright colour of the sky, the landscape drained the life and colour out of everything.
“These are not happy paintings. Not like the one on the wall.”
He found Ms. Leary studying him.
The rest of the paintings were all dark and getting darker, except for the last one. It was done with a less skilled hand – the other paintings showed a swift progression in the artist’s skill, but this one captured a wild emotion the others hadn’t. It showed the same dark landscape and swing set, except that only one swing hung there. The sky was a deep blue verging toward night with the last blush of sunset still edging the horizon. Against this, miniscule from distance, a figure wildly pumped a swing through the air, suspended on nothing.
“Strange.” He met Ms. Leary’s gaze.
She touched the canvas almost in admiration. “This was his first work in class. He was almost embarrassed when I told him how talented he was.” She smiled, but the smile faded. “You know, I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but May-Bell got upset when she saw it. She and Todd got into an argument, but things blew over and they started dating.”
The tiny figure in the painting seemed filled with joy and freedom, like a bird following the sunlight. He could remember childhood dreams that were similar. Escape. Salvation. So why was Todd Sloan painting May-Bell escaping?
“Can we see May-Bell’s paintings, please?”
Ms. Leary slid out another drawer. “May-Bell’s work is also stunningly good, but darker. There are rarely people in her work. When there are, they aren’t happy.”
The painting on top was an abstract swirl of dull brown with small square blotches that suggested houses covering the entire world except for a corner that held a brilliant green.
He thumbed through the others. Dark forests with the suggestion of a lost, red-hooded child. Dark alleyways with ethereal smudges that could be ghosts. The canvases got steadily darker until he reached the one on the bottom. The painting was lighter, brighter, a woodland scene of huge trees and shafts of sunlight illuminating a fantastical garden of crimson blooms and a woman in a gossamer robe tending them. Through the trees were hints of carved moss-covered stone archways.
“Why are the first paintings so different for both Todd and May-Bell?” Spinoza asked.
“The assignment, I guess. I asked them to paint something that could only be true in their wildest dreams. I always assign that first to get it out of their systems. Once they get that on the page, I can start working with them to find the beauty in the mundane.”
“Interesting.” Ron said. Another way to kill dreams.
“If you think of anything else, or if Todd shows up, would you give me a call please?” He handed her his card.
She looked at it, nodded. Her gaze was sad and lonely.
They left the school at three o’clock after retrieving Todd Sloan’s address from the school office. The school belched out escaping youngsters. The two of them were silent as they piled into the sedan.
“So what do you think?” Spinoza asked.
“I think we need to find Todd Sloan.”
Like the Paradis house, Todd Sloan’s home hunkered in a parched lot of cracked earth, chipped white paint exposing grey boards. It reminded him of flesh showing through torn nylons. Old newspapers and candy wrappers piled at the base of the house as if they held up the weary structure. A sheet of milky plastic had been nailed over the broken front window.
“Imagine growing up here,” Spinoza said.
“We’ve seen worse.”
“But this area used to be nice.”
Ron shrugged and climbed out of the car. The air smelled of car exhaust, dust and despair. At the house, he knocked on the door. There was movement inside, but no one answered.
“We’ll get Todd’s photo out to the uniformed officers. They’ll pick him up,” he said.
When there was still no response they left and headed for the office. Finding out what had happened to May-Bell Paradis would wait another day.
Or it wouldn’t. That night, at home in his two-room apartment, Ron sucked back a beer in his T-shirt and shorts because his air conditioning had quit again. The TV in the corner droned sitcom reruns and the room smelled of his dinner of ham sandwich with sauerkraut on pumpernickel.
He leaned back in the easy chair that comprised his living room furniture, eyes closed and feet up. This was his thinking position and he needed to think, because something about the May-Bell case itched like a bug under his skin.
Todd Sloan lived near enough to May-Bell that he could have been stalking her since the Paradis moved in just a few weeks before school. That was the only way he could have known her well enough to have painted her as his first art project.
Or else Ron was just imagining things and the kid had been inspired to incorporate May-Bell into his painting when he’d met her in class.
But that felt wrong. And Todd Sloan had disappeared right after he found out they were looking for May-Bell. The logical deduction: Todd Sloan ran.
He recalled his few brief words with the kid. May-Bell trapped. Not abducted, but escaping. The kid had spoken with sadness and longing and – yes, bitterness. That was what Ron had heard – the bitterness.
He sat up and stabbed the TV off, then grabbed pants from the unmade bed across the room. Grabbed a shirt, his badge and gun and a jacket to hide the fact he was armed. Then he headed out.
He parked a block away from the Paradis house. At two in the morning the neighbourhood was quiet, even dogs slumbering. He started walking; the night air fresher, untainted by day-time unhappiness. A fading moon stretched his shadow on the sidewalk.
At the Paradis house he wondered whether he was being a fool. The house was dark as he followed the yard around to the back. The parched grass whispered under his feet. The side gate stood open. Elvira Paradis had said she kept it closed.
Moonlight filled the backyard and illuminated the swing set, the lone swing rocking gently at the urging of a seated Todd Sloan.
Ron stepped through the gate and Todd startled and then slumped as if he’d long ago given up hope.
Ron slouched across the yard. “You miss her, don’t you?”
Todd nodded, but wouldn’t meet his gaze.
“You saw her when she first moved in. You saw her and were infatuated.”
Another nod. “She was just crazy beautiful. All that wild blond hair and eyes that were dying. S
he was dying just like the rest of us, moment by moment. She hated that it was happening. Before school started I watched her because I didn’t have the guts to talk to her. Every night she’d climb out her window.”
“And she’d come out here, to swing,” Ron said softly.
“It was the strangest thing I ever saw. She’d swing higher and higher, almost desperately. I was scared she was going to swing right over the swing set’s top bar, but instead light filled her and filled the swing and suddenly the chains released and she was flying – up into the sky. I watched her that first time, swooping and laughing and then she swung back down and the swing attached again. She did that every night for a week and then school started and she didn’t do it anymore.”
“But you painted what you’d seen.”
Todd frowned. “She freaked. But we worked it out. We were together and she was happy – at least a little.”
But his hands formed fists around the swing chains. “At least I thought we were. She said the reason she could make the swing fly was that she could fuel it with all the happiness she had from when she was young, from before her mother and she were banished from their – place. She said happiness was a gift, a magic, and that living here stole it from her.”
Todd swung the swing back and forth, his feet scuffing through the green grass that was fading to brown.
“Night before last she flew again, didn’t she?”
Todd shrugged. “The swing’s gone, isn’t it?” Loneliness, bitterness, the weight of the world.
“So you didn’t hurt her?” How the hell was he going to report this?
The kid looked up at him. “Hurt her? She was magic, man. I’d have gone with her, but I couldn’t find enough happiness anymore. I guess she knew I’d bleed it off of her, too, eventually.” He sighed and his tears caught the predawn light.
Ron remembered that feeling all too well. He settled himself cross-legged on the grass beside the swing. There was nothing he could say. He’d lost the art of happiness, too.
Side by side they looked up at the empty sky. The moon was setting. Another day of heat and crime and ugliness coming their way.