Chosen for Death (20 page)

Chapter 15

I woke on Friday feeling like someone had performed a root canal on my spirit. The only emotion that didn't seem to have been reamed out was anger—that was intact. I'd been betrayed by my family; now I was outside, with Carrie, in the realm of the orphans.

Dad is usually at the office by eight-thirty—I get my workaholic genes from both sides—and I called him there before I left for work. His secretary doesn't come in until nine, so I knew he'd answer the phone himself. I hesitated when I heard the familiar voice, knowing he'd hoped I'd forget his suggestion. I didn't hesitate for long.

"Hi," I said, "it's Thea. Mom OK today?"

"Thea," he said. "I'm glad you called. I'm sorry about last night. I guess we all got off on the wrong foot." There was a slight pause before he spoke again, being extremely careful about what he said. "I talked with your mother about your plan to search for Carrie's birth parents. I understand. We both understand how upset you are about your sister's death. Of course we all want the murderer to be found. We just don't see how this search can help."

"I can explain that," I said.

"Let me finish, Theadora. Just thinking about someone else as Carrie's mother causes your mother great pain. I know you realize that. Going through the legal steps to get the records released would be much more painful. I'm sure you understand how hard this has all been for her. I cannot support you in an endeavor which would cause her more pain. You can't put your mother through that."

"But it won't..."

He cut me off. "Carolyn is dead. Finding her birth parents now cannot possibly do her, or them, any good. A course of action which benefits no one, and which hurts people in the process, should not be pursued. Surely you can see the logic of that, Thea? What basis do you have for this theory that Carolyn's search is connected to her death?"

I told him about the notes in Carrie's car. About what Lorna had told me. About the papers I'd found in Carrie's closet. I didn't tell him about the dream and Carrie asking me for help. No lawyer would consider that a credible reason for anything. I knew it didn't sound like much, and that's exactly what he said.

"I know it's not much," I said, "but it's the only avenue left. Plus my instinct, or woman's intuition, or whatever you want to call it, tells me that if I duplicate Carrie's search, I'll find her killer."

He swept away my arguments like I was an annoying gnat. "Intuition? Hysteria, more likely. You've had a difficult few weeks, I know. But let a little more time pass and all this will seem silly to you, too." He took an audible breath. "Let it rest, Thea, will you please? For my sake and your mother's."

When I was a teenager, I was a pretty good kid. Michael was the wild one. I didn't do a lot of wild things, and I rarely lied to my parents. I was about to do that now, and I hadn't had enough practice to do it well. "Ok, Dad, you win," I said. "I'll stop bugging you and Mom about searching for Carrie's birth parents." It was a carefully phrased capitulation. If Carrie did it on her own, so could I. I just wouldn't tell them what I was doing. Sure it would be harder, but life didn't seem bent on offering me the easy route, so this was nothing new. Dad thanked me too profusely and hung up. I grabbed my briefcase and went to work.

At noon I went to the library and used the computer to search for books about adoptees. The books confirmed what I already knew—that the agencies were usually uncooperative and the easiest way to search was to have the adoptive parents participating, because they had a right to see the records. I made some calls and located a search group in a nearby town which met on Saturday mornings. The woman I spoke with was friendly. She invited me to attend and gave me careful directions.

The rest of the day I concentrated on a proposal we were making. At five I took it in and gave it to Suzanne. "I've baited the hook," I said. "Let's cast this one out and see if the fish bites."

"I hardly think a headmaster as tweedy as Throckmorten would appreciate being called a fish," she said.

"I'll try that again." I went out and came in again. "I've released the fox," I said. "Let's see if the hunters will give chase."

Suzanne frowned. "Better, but still not right."

"One more time," I said. "In this envelope I've placed two pages from a rare, illustrated version of the
Story of O.
To see the rest, the recipient must sign the enclosed contract and return it to me."

"You're still no great beauty," she said, "but at least you've recovered your sense of humor. Doing anything interesting this weekend?"

"Thought I'd buy a six-pack and go drive into some trees. Unless I get sidetracked cleaning the oven. What about you?"

"Hiking in New Hampshire," she said, "with Paul."

"Sounds better than driving to Maine to collect a battered colleague," I said. "Hope the weather's good."

She grinned mischievously. "I don't care. If it's not, we'll spend the weekend in our room." She hummed a bit of "White Christmas."

"Looks like you've still got your sense of humor, too," I said. "See you Monday."

"Tuesday," she said. "I'm taking Monday off."

"Unthinkable. You must not be yourself."

She picked up her bag, shoved some papers into it, and locked her desk. "No one lives forever. I've decided to have some fun while I can."

I couldn't argue with that. I hoped things worked out for her, but I wasn't optimistic. A recently separated man is a poor candidate for romance. Not that I was much of an expert on romance myself. Hadn't I been entertaining lustful thoughts about that policeman on Saturday, thinking he was kind and perceptive, only to find him acting like a jackass the very next day?

The rest of the staff followed Suzanne out like ducklings after their mother. By five-fifteen I was alone. I worked until eight, enjoying the solitude, then took my library books and went home, stopping on the way for a pizza. The cute little teenager who waited on me couldn't help staring at my face. "You should have seen the other guy," I said.

I spent the evening in my favorite chair, bourbon bottle and ice bucket by my side, reading the sad, happy, confused, or arduous stories of people who had searched for their birth parents. Beyond noticing how it affected Carrie, I'd never thought much about adoption before. One anecdote after another described how adoption agencies denied adoptees information about their parents, treating them like they had no rights or interest in the matter, doling out bits of non-identifying information like crumbs to the starving. I was furious on their behalf. What right did my parents have to refuse to help Carrie? Just because they had raised her didn't mean Carrie wasn't a separate person with her own needs, her own sense of identity.

It was after midnight when I finally put the books aside and pried myself out of the chair. Bed looked very inviting, but before I quit for the day I wanted to find the notes I'd taken out of Carrie's raincoat pocket. I hoped I'd brought them back with me, and not left them in Maine in one of the boxes. If only I had her diary. I was sure it contained a careful account of the search. But the murderer had her diary.

I found the papers, still in my unpacked suitcase. I took them and crawled into bed, meaning to read through them before I went to sleep. Seeing Carrie's handwriting made me sad. I got up, found a tissue, and tried again, but I was asleep before I got through the first paragraph.

The experts tell you it's a bad idea to drink and drive. These days the warnings are printed right on the bottles. I agree; that's why I rarely do it, whatever my family and the police may think. And though the bottles don't tell you so, it's also a bad idea to drink and sleep. I slept like a crocodile in the sun for the first hour, and then I began to dream. I was dressed in camouflage pants, combat boots, and an olive T-shirt, with a camouflage bandanna tied over my hair, leading a similarly dressed squad of commando adoptees silently through the night in a raid on an adoption clinic. In a mere three seconds, I picked the lock and dismantled the alarm, and then we descended, removing all the records to two red Broncos. We all wore yellow rubber gloves and carried kids' walkie-talkies.

At four-thirty I woke hot and sweaty, with an awful headache. I swallowed three extra-strength painkillers, took a cold shower, and went back to sleep. I slept soundly until my alarm watch began beeping. I cursed it and shut it off. Didn't the damn thing know it was Saturday? Of course it did. One of its jobs was to keep track of the days of the week. Then I remembered the search group meeting. I set a Guinness-quality record for fastest toilette, threw on some respectable pants and a purple silk shirt, grabbed Carrie's notes and my briefcase, and ran. If traffic was light, I might make it.

Chapter 16

Carol Anderson had warm brown eyes surrounded by smile lines, and a wide mouth that was made for smiling. Right now, though, she wasn't smiling. She was listening intently to my explanation of why I wanted to search for Carrie's birth parents, and shaking her head. "It's not a good reason for a search," she said. "What are you going to tell her parents, if you find them—that their daughter is dead? You'd only be inflicting hurt on more people, not helping anyone." She sighed. "There are so many people who need help, for more immediate, personal reasons. We're a small group, all volunteers. We just don't have the time or resources to spend on a search for revenge." I'd liked her instantly, and her words really stung.

She spread her hands wide, palms up. "I wish I could help you deal with your sister's death. I wish I could have helped your sister. But with this... and your parents against it, I just can't help. You have to understand how it is for us, here in the search movement. We already struggle to overcome a lot of opposition from the legal system, adoption agencies, adoptive parents, and even birth parents, even though we're constantly seeking to explain and publicize our point of view. Using the search process to catch a murderer may seem very logical to you, but it achieves none of our goals, and a story like yours could be very harmful to the interests of other searchers."

I couldn't let her reject me like this; I needed her help to do what I had to do. "Look, Mrs. Anderson," I said, "I know it's not your usual search, but this is the only thing I have to go on right now. Carrie was searching, and she found something, or someone, and then she was killed. It's the only route I know to find her killer."

"I understand that," she said. "We counsel people all the time to be prepared for disappointment, that they may not like what they find... they may be rejected... or the birth parents may be dead. The birth parents may not be at all what they've been expecting, so it's not that we're incurable optimists here who expect happy endings. For a lot of people, any ending, however unhappy, is better than living with uncertainty. It's still a big jump to go from the search with the unknown ending to the search where your goal is to accuse the birth parents of murder."

We were standing in a church basement. The room was low-ceilinged and dark, with a utilitarian vinyl floor, false-wood paneled walls, and accordion-pleated panels which could be pulled out to divide the room. They were pulled back now to accommodate many rows of chairs. It had been a well-attended meeting, and interesting. I'd felt like an intruder listening to some of the stories. Everyone else there seemed to be an adoptee at some stage in a search, and they were sharing successful methods and techniques. Many people had tears in their eyes when one man got up and said, "I've been searching for four years. This week I found my mother. She has eyes just like mine."