Carthage (9 page)

But Marcy could only repeat that at about 10:30
P.M
.—after they’d had dinner with her mother and her (elderly, ailing) grandmother—and watched a DVD—Cressida had left to return home as she’d planned, on foot.

“I offered to drive her, but Cressida said no. I did think that I should drive her because it was late, and she was alone, but—you know Cressida. How stubborn she can be . . .”

“Do you have any idea where else she might have gone? After visiting with you?”

“No, Mrs. Mayfield. I guess I don’t.”

Mrs. Mayfield
. As if Marcy were a high school student, still.

“Did she mention anyone to you? Did she call anyone?”

“I don’t think so . . .”

“You’re sure she didn’t call anyone, on her cell phone?”

“Well, I—I don’t think so. I mean—I know Cressida pretty well, Mrs. Mayfield—who’d she call? If it wasn’t one of you?”

“But where on earth could she be, at almost five
A.M
.!”

Arlette spoke sharply. She was angry with Marcy Meyer for allowing her daughter to walk home on a Saturday night: though the distance was only a few blocks, part of the walk would have been on North Fork Street, which was well traveled after dark, near an intersection with a state highway; and she was angry with Marcy Meyer for protesting, in an aggrieved child’s voice
Who’d she call, if it wasn’t one of you?

THE RAPIDLY SHRINKING REMNANT
of the night-before-dawn in the Mayfields’ house had acquired an air of desperation.

Now dressed, hastily and carelessly, Zeno and Arlette drove in Zeno’s Land Rover to the Meyers’ house on Fremont Street, a half-mile away.

Freemont was a hillside street, narrow and poorly paved; houses here were crowded together virtually like row houses, of aged brick and loosened mortar. Arlette had remembered being concerned, when Cressida and Marcy Meyer first became friends, in grade school, that her outspoken and often heedless daughter might say something unintentionally wounding about the size of the Meyers’ house, or the attractiveness of its interior; she’d been surprised enough at the blunt, frank, teasing-taunting way in which Cressida spoke to Marcy, who was a reticent, stoic girl lacking Cressida’s quick wit and any instinct to defend herself or tease Cressida in turn. Cressida had drawn comic strips in which a short dark-frizzy-haired girl with a dour face and a tall stocky freckled girl with a cheery face had comical adventures in school—these had seemed innocent enough, meant to amuse and not ridicule.

Once, Arlette had reprimanded Cressida for saying something rudely witty to Marcy, while Arlette was driving the girls to an event at their school, and Marcy said, laughing, “It’s OK, Mrs. Mayfield. Cressie can’t help it.”

As if her daughter were a scorpion, or a viper—
Can’t help it.

Yet it had been touching, the girl called Cressida “Cressie.” And Cressida hadn’t objected.

At the Meyers’ house, Zeno wanted to go inside and speak with Marcy and her mother; Arlette begged him not to.

“They won’t know anything more than Marcy has told us. It isn’t seven
A.M.
You’ll just upset them. Please, Zeno.”

Slowly Zeno drove along Fremont Street, glancing from side to side at the facades of houses. All seemed blind, impassive at this early hour of the morning; many shades were drawn.

At the foot of Fremont, Zeno turned the Land Rover around in a driveway and drove slowly back uphill. Passing the Meyers’ house, he was now retracing the probable route Cressida had taken, walking home.

Both Zeno and Arlette were staring hard. How like a film this was, a documentary! Something had happened, but—in which house? And what had happened?

House after house of no particular distinction except they were houses Cressida had passed, on her way to Marcy Meyer’s, and on her way from Marcy Meyer’s, the night before. There, at a corner, a landmark lightning-scorched oak tree, at the intersection with North Fork; a block farther, at Cumberland Avenue, at the ridge of the hill, the large impressive red-brick Episcopal church and the churchyard beside and behind it. Both the church and the churchyard were “historical landmarks” dating to the 1780s.

Cressida would have passed by the church, and the churchyard. On which side of the street would she have walked?—Arlette wondered.

Zeno made a sound—grunt, half-sob—mutter—as he braked the Land Rover and without explanation climbed out.

Zeno entered the churchyard, walking quickly. He was a tall disheveled man with a stubbly chin who carried himself with an aggressive sort of confidence. He’d thrown on a soiled T-shirt and khaki shorts and on his sockless feet were grubby running shoes. By the time Arlette hurried to join him he’d made his way to the end of the first row of aged markers, worn so thin by weather and time that the names and dates of the dead were unreadable.

Beyond the churchyard was a no-man’s-land of underbrush and trees, owned by the township.

The churchyard smelled of mown grass, not fresh, slightly rotted, sour. The air was muggy and dense, in unpredictable places, with gnats.

“Zeno, what are you looking for? Oh, Zeno.”

Arlette was frightened now. Zeno remained turned away from her. The most warmly gregarious of men, the most sociable of human beings, yet Zeno Mayfield was remote at times, and even hostile; if you touched him, he might throw off your hand. He prided himself as a man among men—a man who knew much that happened in the world, in Carthage and vicinity, that a woman like Arlette didn’t know; much that never made its way into print or onto TV. He was looking now, in a methodical way that horrified Arlette, for the body of their daughter—could that be possible?—in the tall grasses at the edge of the cemetery; behind larger grave markers; behind a storage shed where there was an untidy pile of grass cuttings, tree debris, and discarded desiccated flowers. Horribly, with a clinical sort of curiosity, Zeno stooped to peer inside, or beneath, this pile—Arlette had a vision of a girl’s broken body, her arms outstretched among the broken tree limbs.

“Zeno, come back! Zeno, come home. Maybe Cressida is home now.”

Zeno ignored her. Possibly, Zeno didn’t hear her.

Arlette waited in the Land Rover for Zeno to return to her. She started the ignition, and turned on the radio. Waiting for the 7
A.M.
news.

“SHE’S SOMEWHERE, OBVIOUSLY.
We just don’t know where.”

And, as if Arlette had been contesting this fact: “She’s nineteen. She’s an adult. She doesn’t have a curfew in this house and she doesn’t have to report to
us
.”

While Zeno and Arlette made calls on the land phone, Juliet made calls on her cell phone. Initially to relatives, whom it didn’t seem terribly rude to awaken at such an early hour with queries about Cressida; then, after 7:30
A.M
., to neighbors, friends—including even girls in Cressida’s class whom Cressida probably hadn’t seen since graduation thirteen months before.

(Juliet said: “Cressida will be furious if she finds out. She will think we’ve
betrayed her.
” Arlette said: “Cressida doesn’t have to know. We can always call back and tell them—not to tell her.”)

Juliet had a vast circle of friends, both female and male, and she began to call them—on the phone her voice was warmly friendly and betrayed no sign of worry or anxiety; she didn’t want to alarm anyone needlessly, and she had a fear of initiating a firestorm of gossip. She took her cell phone outside, standing on the front walk as she made calls; peering out at Cumberland Avenue, watching for Cressida to come home. Afterward she would say
I was so certain. I could not have been more certain if Jesus Himself had promised me, Cressida was on her way home.

One of the calls Juliet made was to a friend named Caroline Skolnik who was to have been a bridesmaid in Juliet’s wedding. And Juliet told Caroline that her sister Cressida hadn’t come home the night before, and they were worried about her, and Juliet was wondering if Caroline knew anything, or had any ideas; and to Juliet’s astonishment Caroline said hesitantly she’d seen Cressida the night before, or someone who looked very much like Cressida, at the Roebuck Inn at Wolf’s Head Lake.

Juliet was so astonished, she nearly dropped her cell phone.

Cressida at the Roebuck Inn? At Wolf’s Head Lake?

Caroline said that she’d been there with her fiancé Artie Petko and another couple but they hadn’t stayed long. The Roebuck Inn had used to be a nice place but lately bikers had been taking it over on weekends—Adirondack Hells Angels
.
There was a rock band comprised of local kids people liked, but the music was deafening, and the place was jammed—“Just too much happening.”

Inside the tavern, there’d been a gang of guys they knew and a few girls in several booths. The air had been thick with smoke. Caroline was surprised to see Brett there—“He wasn’t with any girl, just with his friends,” Caroline said quickly, “but there were girls kind of hanging out with them. Brett was looking—he wasn’t looking—maybe it was the light in the place, but Brett was looking—all right. The surgery he’s had—I think it has helped a lot. And he had dark glasses on. And—anyway—there came Cressida—I think it was Cressida—just out of nowhere we happened to see her, and she didn’t see us—she seemed to have just come into the taproom, alone—in all that crowd, and having to push her way through—she’s so small—I don’t think there was anyone with her, unless maybe she’d come with someone, a couple—it wasn’t clear who was with who. Cressida was wearing those black jeans she always wears, and a black T-shirt, and what looked like a little striped cotton sweater; it was a surprise to see her, Artie and I both thought so, Artie said he’d never seen your sister in anyplace like the Roebuck, not ever. He knows your dad, he was saying, ‘Is that Zeno Mayfield’s daughter? The one that’s so smart?’ and I said, ‘God, I hope not. What’s she doing
here
?’ Brett was in a booth with Rod Halifax, and Jimmy Weisbeck, and that asshole Duane Stumpf, and they were pretty drunk; and there was Cressida, talking with Brett, or trying to talk with Brett; but things got so crowded, and kind of out of control, so we decided to leave. So I don’t actually know—I mean, I don’t know for sure—if it was your sister, Juliet. But I think it had to be, there’s nobody quite like Cressida.”

Juliet asked what time this had been.

Caroline said about 11:30
P.M.
Because they’d left and gone to the Echo Lake Tavern and stayed there for about forty minutes and were home by 1
A.M.

“Oh God, Juliet—you’re saying Cressida hasn’t come home? She isn’t home? You don’t know where she is? I’m so sorry we didn’t go over to talk to her—maybe she needed a ride home—maybe she got stranded there. But we thought, well—she must’ve come with someone. And there was Brett, and she knows him, and he knows her—so, we thought, maybe . . .”

Slowly Juliet entered the house. Arlette saw her just inside the doorway. In her face was a strange, stricken expression, as if something too large for her skull had been forced inside it.

“What is it, Juliet? Have you heard—something?”

“Yes. I think so. I think I’ve heard—something.”

FOLLOWING THIS,
things happened swiftly.

Zeno called Brett Kincaid’s cell phone number—no answer.

Zeno called a number listed in the Carthage directory for
Kincaid, E.—
no answer.

Zeno climbed into his Land Rover and drove to Ethel Kincaid’s house on Potsdam Street, another hillside street beyond Fremont: a two-storey wood frame with a peeling-beige facade, set close to the curb, where Ethel Kincaid in a soiled kimono answered the door to his repeated knocking with a look of alarmed astonishment.

“Is he home? Where is he?”

Fumbling at the front of the kimono, which shone with a cheap lurid light as if fluorescent, Ethel peered at Zeno cautiously.

“I—don’t know . . . I guess n-not, his Jeep isn’t in the driveway . . .”

Between Zeno Mayfield and Ethel Kincaid there was a layered sort of history—vague, vaguely resentful (on Ethel’s part: for Zeno Mayfield, when he’d been mayor of Carthage and nominally Ethel Kincaid’s boss, had not ever seemed to remember her name when he encountered her) and vaguely guilty (on Zeno’s part: for he understood that he’d snubbed this plain fierce-glaring woman whom life had mysteriously disappointed). And now, the breakup of Zeno’s daughter and Ethel’s son lay between them like wreckage.

“Do you have any idea where Brett is?”

“N-No . . .”

“Do you know where he went last night?”

“No . . .”

“Or with who?”

Ethel Kincaid regarded Zeno, his disheveled clothing, his metallic-stubbly jaws and swampy eyes that were both pleading and threatening, with a defiant sort of alarm. She had the just discernibly battered look of a woman well versed in the wayward emotions of men and in the need to position herself out of the range of a man’s sudden lunging grasp.

“I’m afraid I don’t know, Mr. Mayfield. Brett’s friends don’t come to the house, he goes to them. I think he goes to them.”

Mr. Mayfield
was uttered with a pointless sort of spite. Surely they were social equals, or had been, when Zeno’s daughter had become engaged to Ethel’s son.

Zeno remembered Arlette remarking that Brett’s mother was
so unfriendly
. Even Juliet who rarely spoke of others in a critical manner murmured of her fiancé’s mother
She is not naturally warmhearted or easy to get to know
.
But—we will try!

Poor Juliet had tried, and failed.

Arlette had tried, and failed.

“Ethel, I’m sorry to disturb you at such an early hour. I tried to call, but there was no answer. It’s crucial that I speak with Brett—or at least know where I can find him. This isn’t about Juliet, incidentally—it involves my daughter Cressida.” Zeno was making it a point to speak slowly and clearly and without any suggestion of the pent-up fury he felt for this unhelpful woman who’d taken a step back from him, clutching at the front of her rumpled kimono as if fearing he might snatch it open. “We’ve been told that they were together for a while last night—at the Roebuck Inn. And Cressida hasn’t come home all night, and we don’t know where she is. And we think—your son might know.”