Carthage (6 page)

It was perhaps a ten-minute drive from the Roebuck Inn at Wolf’s Head Lake to the entrance of the Nautauga Preserve and another ten-minute drive to Sandhill Point. Anyone who lived in the area—a boy like Brett Kincaid, for instance—would know the roads and trails in the southern part of the Preserve. He would know Sandhill Point, a long narrow peninsula jutting into the river, no more than three feet across at its widest point.

Outside the Preserve, Sandhill Road was quasi-paved and intersected with Bear Valley Road that connected, several miles to the west, with Wolf’s Head Lake and with the Roebuck Inn & Marina on the lake.

Sandhill Point was approximately eleven miles from 822 Cumberland Avenue which was the address of the Mayfields’ home.

Not too far, really—not too far for the daughter to make her way on foot if necessary.

If for instance—(the father’s mind flew forward like wings beating frantically against the wind)—she’d been made to feel ashamed, her clothes torn and dirty. If she had not wanted to be seen.

For Cressida was very self-conscious. Stricken with shyness at unpredictable times.

And—always losing her cell phone! Unlike Juliet who treasured her cell phone and would go nowhere without it.

Zeno was still on the phone with Eisner who was complaining about the local TV station issuing “breaking news” bulletins every half hour, putting pressure on the sheriff’s office to take time for interviews, come up with quotable quotes—“The usual bullshit. You think they’d be ashamed.”

Zeno said, “Yes. Right,” not sure what he was agreeing with; he had to ask, another time, if he could speak with Brett Kincaid who’d practically been his son-in-law, the fiancé of his daughter, please for just a minute when there was a break in the interview—“Just a minute, that’s all I would need”—and Eisner said, an edge of irritation in his voice, “Sorry, Zeno. I don’t think so.” For reasons that Zeno could appreciate, Eisner explained that no one could speak with Kincaid while he was in custody—(any suspect, any possible crime, he could call an accomplice, he could ask the accomplice to take away evidence, aid and abet him at a little distance)—except if Kincaid requested a lawyer he’d have been allowed that call but Kincaid had declined to call a lawyer saying emphatically he did not need or want a lawyer. Zeno thought with relief
No lawyer! Good.
Zeno could not imagine any Carthage lawyer whom Kincaid might call: in other, normal circumstances, the kid would have called
him.

In a voice that had become grating and aggressive Zeno asked another time if he could speak with Bud McManus and Eisner said no, he did not think that Zeno could speak with Bud McManus but that, when there was news, McManus would call him personally. And Zeno said, “But when will that be? You’ve got him there, you’ve had him since, when—two hours at least—two hours you’ve had him—you can’t get him to talk, or you’re not trying to get him to talk—so when’s that going to be? I’m just asking.” And Eisner replied, words Zeno scarcely heard through the blood pounding in his ears. And Zeno said, raising his voice, fearing that the cell phone was breaking up as he approached the entrance to the Preserve, driving into the bumpy parking lot in his Land Rover, “Look, Gerry: I need to know. It’s hard for me to breathe even, without knowing. Because Kincaid must know. Kincaid might know. Kincaid would know—something. I just want to talk to Bud, or to the boy—if I could just talk to the boy, Gerry, I would know. I mean, he would tell me. If—if he has anything to tell—he would tell me. Because—I’ve tried to explain—Brett is almost one of the Mayfield family. He was almost my son. Son-in-law. Hell, that might happen yet. Engagements get broken, and engagements get made. They’re just kids. My daughter Juliet. You know—Juliet. And Cressida—her sister. If I could talk to Brett, maybe on the phone like this, not in person with other people around, at police headquarters, wherever you have him—just on the phone like this—I promise, I’d only keep him for two-three minutes—just want to hear his voice—just want to ask him—I believe he would tell
me . . .”

The line was dead: the little cell phone had failed.

“DADDY.”

It was Juliet, tugging at his shoulder. For a moment he couldn’t recall where he was—which daughter this was. Then the sliver of fear entered his heart, the other girl was missing.

From Juliet’s somber manner, he understood that nothing had changed.

Yet, from her somber manner, he understood that there’d been no bad news.

“Sweetie. How are
you
.”

“Not so good, Daddy. Not right now.”

Juliet had roused him from a sleep like death. There was some reason for waking him, she was explaining, but through the roaring in his ears he was having difficulty hearing.

That beating pulse in the ears, the surge of blood.

Though his heart was beating slow now like a heavy bell rolling.

The girl should have leaned over him to kiss him. Brush his cheek with her cool lips. This
should have happened
.

“Be right down, honey. Tell your mother.”

She was deeply wounded, Zeno knew. What had passed between her sister and her former fiancé was a matter of the most lurid public speculation. Inevitably her name would appear in the media. Inevitably reporters would approach
her
.

It was 5:20
P.M.
Good Christ he’d slept two and a half hours. The shame of it washed over him.

His daughter missing, and Mayfield
asleep.

He hoped McManus and the others didn’t know. If for instance they’d tried to call him back, return his many calls, and Arlette had had to tell them her husband was sleeping in the middle of the day, exhausted. Her husband could not speak with them just now thank you.

This was ridiculous. Of course they hadn’t called.

He swung his legs off the bed. He pulled off his sweat-soaked T-shirt, underwear. Folds of clammy-pale flesh at his belly, thighs like hams. Steely-coppery hairs bristled on his chest and beneath his arms dense as underbrush in the Preserve.

He was a big man, not fat. Not fat
yet
.

Mischievous Cressida had had a habit of pinching her father at the waist.
Uh-oh Dad-dy! What’s this.

It was a running joke in the Mayfield family, among the Mayfield relatives and Zeno’s close friends, that he was vain about his appearance. That he could be embarrassed, if it were pointed out that he’d put on weight.

Dad-dy better go on that Atkins diet. Raw steak and whiskey.

Cressida was petite, child-sized. Except for her frizzed hair like a dark aureole about her head you might mistake her for a twelve-year-old boy.

Arlette said disapprovingly: “Cressida won’t eat, because she ‘refuses’ to menstruate.”

The father was so shocked hearing this, he pretended he hadn’t heard.

A couple of months ago when Brett Kincaid had come to the house in loose-fitting khaki cutoffs Zeno had had a glimpse of the boy’s wasted thighs, flat stringy muscles atrophied from weeks of hospitalization. Remembering how Brett had looked a year before. It was shocking to see a young man no longer
young
.

Therapy was rebuilding the muscles but it was a slow and painful process.

Juliet helped him walk: had helped him walk.

Walk, walk, walk—for miles. Juliet’s slender arm around the corporal’s waist walking in Palisade Park where there were few hills. For hills left the corporal short of breath.

His arm- and shoulder-muscles were as they’d been before the injuries. When he’d been in a wheelchair at the VA hospital he’d wheeled himself everywhere he could, for exercise.

His skull had not been fractured in the explosion but his brain had been traumatized—“concussed.”

A hurt brain can heal. A hurt brain will heal.

It will take time. And love.

Juliet had said this. She was gripping her fiancé’s hand and her smile was fine and brave and without irony.

And so it had been a shock—a shock, and a relief—when only a few weeks later Juliet told them the engagement had ended.

Except, things don’t end so easily. The father knew.

Between men and women, not so easily.

Christ! Zeno smelled of his body. The sweat of anxiety, despair.

Before bed that night he would change the bedclothes himself, before Arlette came into the room—Zeno had a flamboyant way with bed-changing, whipping sheets into the air so that they floated, as a magician might; tucking in the corners, tight; smoothing out the wrinkles, deft, fast, zip-zip-zip he’d made his little daughters laugh, like a cartoon character. In Boy Scout camp he’d learned all sorts of handy tasks.

He’d been an Eagle Scout, of course. Zeno Mayfield at age fourteen, youngest Eagle Scout in the Adirondack region, ever.

He smiled, thinking of this. Then, ceased smiling.

He staggered into the bathroom. Flung on the shower, both faucets blasting. Leaning his head into the spraying water hoping to wake himself. Losing his balance and grabbing at the shower curtain but (thank God) not bringing it down.

The sheer pleasure of hot, stinging water cascading down his face, his body. For a moment Zeno was almost happy.

In the bathroom doorway Arlette stood—beyond the noise of the shower she was speaking to him, urgently—
She’s been found! It’s over, our daughter has been found!
—but when Zeno asked his wife to repeat her words she said, anxiously, “They’re here. The TV people. Come downstairs when you can.”

“Do I have time to shave?”

Arlette came to the shower, to peer at him. Arlette didn’t reach into the hot stinging water to draw her fingers across his stubbly jaws.

“Yes. I think you’d better.”

Quickly Zeno dried himself, with a massive towel. Tried to run a comb through his hair, took a hairbrush to it, hoping not to confront his reflection in the misty bathroom mirror, the bloodshot frightened eyes.

“Here. Here are fresh clothes. This shirt . . .”

Gratefully Zeno took the clothes from his wife.

Downstairs were uplifted voices. Arlette tried to tell him who was there, who’d just arrived, which relatives, which TV reporters, but Zeno wasn’t able to concentrate. He had an unnerving sense that his front door had been flung open, anyone could now enter.

The door flung open, his little girl had slipped
out.

Except she wasn’t a little girl any longer of course. She was nineteen years old: a woman.

“How do I look? OK?”

It wasn’t unusual for Zeno Mayfield—being interviewed. TV cameras just made the interview experience more edgy, the stakes higher.

“Oh, Zeno. You cut yourself shaving. Didn’t you
notice
?”

Arlette gave a little sob of exasperation. With a wadded tissue she dabbed at Zeno’s jaw.

“Thanks, honey. I love you.”

Bravely they descended the stairs hand in hand. Zeno saw that Arlette had tied back her hair, that seemed to have lost its glossiness overnight; she’d dabbed lipstick on her mouth and had blindly reached into her jewelry box for something to lower around her neck—a strand of inexpensive pearls no one had seen her wear in a decade. Her fingers were icy-cold; her hand was trembling. Another time Zeno said, in a whisper, “I love you,” but Arlette was distracted.

And Zeno was disoriented, seeing so many people in his living room. And furniture had been moved aside in the room. TV lights were blinding. The female reporter for WCTG-TV was a woman whom Zeno knew from his mayoral days when Evvie Estes had worked in City Hall public relations in a cigarette-smoke-filled little cubicle office at the ground-floor rear of the old sandstone building. Evvie was older now, hard-eyed and hard-mouthed, heavily made-up, with an air of sincere-seeming breathless concern: “Mr. and Mrs. Mayfield—Zeno and Arlette—hello! What a terrible day this has been for you!”—thrusting the microphone at them as if her remark called for a response. Arlette was smiling tightly staring at the woman as if she’d been taken totally by surprise and Zeno frowned saying calmly and gravely, “Yes—a terribly anxious day. Our daughter Cressida is missing, we have reason to believe that she is lost in the Nautauga Preserve, or in the vicinity of the Preserve. She may be injured—otherwise she would have contacted us by now. She’s nineteen, unfortunately not an experienced hiker . . . We are hoping that someone may have seen her or have information about her.”

Zeno Mayfield’s public way of addressing interviewers, gazing into TV cameras with a little frowning squint of the brow, returned to him at even this strained moment. If there was a quaver in his voice, no one would detect it.

Evvie Estes, hair bleached a startling brassy-blond, asked several commonsense questions of the Mayfields. In his grave calm voice Zeno prevailed when Arlette showed no inclination to reply. Yes, their daughter had spoken with them on Saturday evening, before she’d gone out; no, they had not known that she was going to Wolf’s Head Lake—“But maybe Cressida hadn’t known she was going to the lake, when she left home. Maybe it was something that came up later.” Zeno wanted to think this, rather than that Cressida had lied to them.

But he couldn’t shake off the likelihood that Cressida had lied. She’d lied by omitting the truth. Saying she was going to a friend’s house, but not that, after visiting with her friend, she had plans to turn up at Wolf’s Head Lake nine miles away.

It had been established by this time that Cressida had remained with her friend Marcy until 10
P.M.
at which time she’d left for “home”—as she’d led Marcy to think.

Cressida hadn’t driven to her friend’s house which was less than a mile from the Mayfields’ house, but walked. It was believed by Marcy that Cressida had then walked back home—having declined an offer of a ride from Marcy.

Or, it might have been that someone else, whose identity wasn’t known to Marcy, had picked Cressida up, when she’d left Marcy’s house on her way home.

Not all of this made sense (yet) to Zeno. None of this Zeno cared to lay bare before a TV audience.