Final Approach (8 page)

Chapter Seventeen

I caught Jeannie’s eye from across the room to let her know she could ease up on Craig. Vince was out back at the picnic bench, having a plate of barbecue with Scud and Big Red. I joined them.

“I learned something neat about you tonight,” I told Big Red. “I didn’t know you were in social work.”

He nodded, and bit into a dinner roll.

“Is it as bad as they say?” I asked. “I hear such awful things on the news.”

He raised a hand to stop me. “My dear, I’ll talk to you about parachutes and pool tables, motorcycles and mackerel, but not about those kids. Not tonight, not on a boogie weekend.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I have a soft spot for children.”

“Got kiddos, Emily?” Scud asked.

I answered carefully. “I did, once. I lost her when she was very young.”

I glanced at Vince, worried that finding out this way would feel like a betrayal. He watched me with a wounded quality, but seemed more sympathetic than surprised.

“Anyway,” I said, “I’ll ask David about it later instead.”

Big Red grimaced. “Don’t do that. Touchy subject.”

“Why?” Scud asked.

Big Red took a swig of Busch, then seemingly chose to abandon his earlier taboo. “He’s being investigated.”

“Investigated? What for?” Scud asked.

Big Red wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked around to make sure David wasn’t near.

“Racial discrimination.”

I leaned in, incredulous. David seemed friendly enough. Then again, he wouldn’t be the first friendly bigot I’d met.

“We got audited this quarter,” Big Red continued. “There were a high percentage of cases closed as ‘Unable to Locate’—”

“Damn, Red. You already lost me,” Scud said through a mouth full of food.

Big Red started over. “Everyone’s assigned field cases to investigate. You know, a neighbor calls in that Mom’s mistreating Baby, or Dad’s using drugs…that sort of thing?”

Scud nodded.

“Sometimes families are missing when we visit. If they think they’ve been called in, a lot of parents leave for a while. Many take their kids.”

We barely noticed Jeannie when she walked up. Big Red was still talking.

“When that happens, we keep going back until we find them. At least three times. We talk to neighbors, check databases…If it all fails, a case might get closed as ‘Unable to Locate.’

“The auditor noticed a lot of Unable to Locates in our office, so he went through the records. Nearly all the cases were David’s
and
all of them were white kids. On paper it looks like he never really tried, just wrote the cases off and said he couldn’t find them…but I know David. He works hard on everything he does.”

I watched Vince and Scud weigh this new information against the person they knew as a friend. I wished I knew David better so I could form my own opinion. Jeannie listened and watched, clearly confused.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I finally said. “If he didn’t investigate cases involving white kids, that’d mean leaving them in potentially dangerous homes. If anything, that’s reverse discrimination.”

Big Red pointed his fork at me. “You’d think so. But the concern would be that David thinks whites can handle their kids and blacks and Hispanics can’t. So he works harder on his minority cases and looks the other way with the whites.

“At any rate,” he concluded, “Not a good idea to ask David about work right now.”

Scud stared at his brisket like he was thinking about something, but he didn’t say whatever crossed his mind. Jeannie leaned close to tell me she was turning in. She was sharing my tent.

Vince jangled his keys and said he was heading out too. I walked him to his truck.

When we got there, he opened its door and sighed. “Well. You’re not a bore. I’ve got that much. But…I can see there’s plenty still to learn.”

He gave a questioning look and didn’t say more. It seemed his way of asking me to finish what I’d started at the picnic table.

I braced myself with a deep breath and looked overhead at the stars.

“Her name was Annette,” I said, “and she died before her first birthday. My husband was with her.” My voice caught. “It was an accident…they were boating.”

Tears began to pool, but were too stubborn to fall, and I shifted my gaze downward. I swallowed hard and stared at Vince’s front tire with my hands shoved deep in my pockets. He was quiet.

“It was four years ago,” I added softly. “She would have started kindergarten this fall. Jack and I would have been married eight years in June.”

He took me gently by the shoulders and pulled me toward him. He wrapped his arms around me and cradled my head in one of his hands. I was too weak with memories to return his embrace, but he didn’t let go. We stood like that, silently, for what seemed like minutes. Then Vince kissed me lightly on my forehead, and I took more comfort in his gentle touch than I could have found in any words.

Chapter Eighteen

That night I dreamed of Thanksgiving with Jack and Annette. Keith and Nora Shelton dropped by unannounced and brought a sweet potato casserole. Annette and Mattie played side by side on the floor next to the dining room table, ignoring each other, absorbed in their own toys, and I worried because I hadn’t set out the nice china. The doorbell rang, and before I could answer it, Vince and Trish let themselves in. Vince wiped his feet, and Trish tracked in dirty snow. Jack shook Vince’s hand in the foyer and suddenly Vince was wearing Jack’s clothes, sitting in Jack’s usual spot on our sofa. I returned to the dining room to find Big Red where Mattie had been. He was reading Annette a book. Behind them, Trish scooped sweet potato casserole onto an unadorned plate, and her fancy bracelet slid down and covered the tattoo on her wrist.

“Your tattoo,” I mumbled, and it was the sound of my voice that woke me.

Jeannie breathed deeply and obliviously behind me in the tent. I checked my watch. It was almost six o’clock in the morning. The crickets were obnoxious.

“Wake up.” I rolled partly over and gave her a crude shove.

She rolled further away.

I shoved her again. “Wake up,” I said. “Get dressed.”

“Why?” she complained, half asleep.

“We’re going to see Richard. I remember something.”

***

Jeannie drove. I used the time to delve into my journal. Maybe there was more I hadn’t connected. More that I should be able to connect. Maybe.

July 16—Flight 1622

Dr. Raleigh is an old Air Force friend of Dad’s. He’s a grief counselor at a residential facility near Portland. I’ll be there for two months. Dad said he called Raleigh for some objective help, but I think he called because he’s not sure what to do about me. I’m not sure what to do about me either.

It’s been nine days since Lake Erie swallowed my family. I try to remember what we did together nine days before they died, and I can’t. Does that mean I took them for granted? Who doesn’t think there will be endless days of games and stories and afternoons at the park with her baby? Of jokes and kisses and morning coffee with her husband?

Jack grew up on the water and knew his way around all sorts of boats. He said himself the rental was a beautiful craft. They had mild weather, calm water, and all Jack’s experience on their side. It was supposed to be their special morning together. How could something so family-affirming be the opposite? The lake gave no hint of its intentions.

I left today with my grass too high, my bills unopened, and my laundry on the floor. I might lose my job. I didn’t ask for leave—just packed when Dad said pack and left Jeannie to make my excuses. Some of my friends don’t even know what happened. How would I tell them? Call them up with the news?

I think Jeannie told Dad about the pills, but she denies it and I won’t ask him. Does he think I didn’t consider him reason enough to hang on? If Annette swallowed a bottle of pills, I would feel like I’d failed her. Now I feel like I failed my dad.

He had the foresight to know I’d miss the Shelton trial. I’d forgotten. The assistant D.A. arranged a deposition yesterday afternoon. I hope it goes well for them in court. Their nightmare is ending. Mine is nine days old.

I didn’t tell anyone where I’m going, not even Jeannie. Just told her I was leaving for a while to get help with putting my mind and heart back together the best way I could.

August 8—Emerson House

Only one nurse here knows my name without looking at a chart, and I still pick up mail from a cubby slot marked for the last person who stayed in my room. I miss home, and I’m afraid to go back.

What does it feel like to drown? A man who drowns knows he’s dying. What does a baby know? I think they both know terror—the man, because he understands what’s happening, and the baby, because she doesn’t. I imagine a father grieving for a baby he can’t save, and a baby crying for a father she can’t find.

It hurts that Jack and Annette are gone, but it hurts more that they suffered. Ask any woman to imagine—really imagine—her husband helpless to save himself and their baby. Imagine him in the final moments when he becomes aware of an outcome he’s powerless to prevent. Ask a mother to imagine her baby sinking below the choppy surface of a vast lake, spitting water, eyes open even while she sinks—her arms stretched upward, reaching for air, her feathery hair pulsing in the murk. A tender, trusting life, delicate and vulnerable, and the loveliest creature her mother ever beheld…Swallowed. I don’t understand how anyone recovers from losing a family.

I tell this to my counselors in various forms and different words every day at our sessions. They say my pain will ease with time. I listen and nod and force brave smiles, and I wonder if I’m the only one here who doesn’t believe I will heal.

September 14—Homecoming

I take a deep breath after being home for two hours and know this is the hardest day yet. So, I sit down at my kitchen table and write.

My house is full of beautiful things that hurt to look at.

I read a poem taped to the refrigerator. Jack wrote it on our fourth anniversary. It’s smudged from the years and I wish I’d framed it instead of taping it to the door. On the table in front of me is a stack of mail the neighbor has collected. On top is a card from
Motor Trend
magazine asking if Jack wants to renew for another year.

I look at the refrigerator again and smile and cry at the kid art she made with her teacher’s help at daycare. A finger painting. Random crayon scribbles on yellow construction paper.

In the windowsill is a plaster handprint from last winter. Behind me, her toy box waits in the living room. I have the unworldly sensation that the toys want to know when she’s coming back to play, but I don’t know how to answer them. Her bath toys are in the tub, and the half-empty bottle of Johnson & Johnson is waiting for her. I don’t want to shower there.

In the kitchen, I open the cupboard to find some tea. Instead, I find Annette’s Cheerios and graham crackers. I burst into tears and collapse on my floor.

I try to get a grip. I start some laundry. The dryer is full of Jack’s clothes. Do I fold them?

His car’s in the garage and his sunglasses are still on the dash.

This is supposed to be a busy house. There is supposed to be a little girl pestering me right now to stop writing in my journal and pick her up instead. There is supposed to be a lawn mower humming in the backyard, and when I look out this window, I should see Jack out there wiping sweat off of his forehead. Instead, the only noise I hear is in my mind and the things I look at sting my eyes like the sun.

***

“You saw the tattoo in Austin?” Richard asked.

Jeannie and I sat across from him at a Denny’s near his office. Our waitress had come twice for our order, but we’d been too preoccupied to choose. My tattered journal was beside me in the booth, touching my leg. I felt strangely unwilling to part with it and ran my finger over its spiral binding.

“The day I found Mattie, I saw that cursive T. The manager at the restaurant had it, and it was in the same place on his wrist.”

Jeannie emptied a package of Equal into her coffee. Richard didn’t seem to notice his.

“I suppose that could be a coincidence, but—”

I cut him off. “But there’s a common thread, missing kids.”

He nodded.

“There’s more.” I pointed out that both Karen Lyons’ home security system and mine had failed on the nights of our respective break-ins.

Richard snapped his fingers. “That reminds me. We know how Casey’s abductor got in.”

I wanted to continue my line of thought but his new information derailed me.

“Karen Lyons’ back door is one of those lead glass styles…you know, with the big pane that takes up most of the door?” He outlined a rectangle in the space between us. “A closer look at the door showed how the alarm was bypassed. The kidnapper removed the glass, frame and all.”

“What?” Jeannie screwed up her face in disbelief.

“The whole frame,” he said again. “He, or they, took out the entire frame and set it aside. The alarm didn’t sound because no entry was breached and no glass was broken.”

“And since it happened at night,” I said, thinking out loud, “She wouldn’t have had her motion detectors on. Nobody has those on while they’re at home.”

“Exactly.”

I thought about Karen’s security bypass and mine from years ago. Both clever schemes, obviously planned by someone with experience.

“Why take the time to replace the frame before leaving?” Jeannie said. “That doesn’t make sense.”

I thought about what had happened at my own house. “It makes sense if you want to buy time. When my house was broken into, it took days to figure out how my system was skirted. Similar circumstances here. What if Casey and Mattie’s kidnappings are related? Could the same people be responsible?”

“Suppose we go with that,” Richard said. “How would a couple in Texas become interested in a boy from Cleveland? It seems random.”

“The couple with Mattie thought they were adopting him,” I said. “Maybe they were mixed up in underground baby-brokering.”

Jeannie smooshed her Equal wrapper into a tight little ball.

“Keith Shelton’s a petroleum engineer,” I continued. “Texas has hundreds of oil refineries. That could be the Cleveland-Texas connection.”

“It doesn’t explain how they’d know about his boy,” Jeannie said.

“The planes,” Richard said. He looked at me. “Emily, the day you found Mattie, didn’t his parents fly from Cleveland to Austin on a private plane?”

I thought back, and fragments of that day realigned in my mind.

“It was Keith’s company’s jet,” I said. “His vice president wanted to help them out, so they wouldn’t have to wait for a commercial flight. I’d forgotten, but I read it a few days ago—”

“You folks ready?” The waitress was back. We made hasty choices and she lumbered toward the kitchen with our orders.

Richard asked me to finish what I was saying.

“She read it in her old journal,” Jeannie answered for me. “When you showed up at work last week, you really stirred the pot, mister.” Her tone was borderline sour.

Richard raised his eyebrows, as if this were news to him. I tried to kick Jeannie under the table but got the table base instead.

I waved off her comment. “Forget it.”

Richard hesitated. “Stirred the pot how, Jeannie?”

I interrupted. “We are not going to have this conversation.”

“As if he doesn’t know…” Jeannie muttered into her handbag. She pulled out her cigarettes and dug for a lighter.

“Exactly what conversation are we not going to have?” Richard asked me.

Jeannie found the lighter, lit up, took a drag, and exhaled smoke over one shoulder. She returned her gaze to Richard. “The conversation about how you took a bribe to botch her friend’s kidnapping trial.”

I was paralyzed with disbelief. Had she really said that out loud?

Richard looked at me, astonished.

“Is that what you think? That I took a bribe to throw the Shelton trial?”

The waitress returned and told Jeannie we were in a non-smoking section. Jeannie shot her a pissy stare that sent her back to the kitchen.

“Do you?” Richard pressed.

I pushed my coffee away and slapped my journal on the table in front of me. I flipped through its pages, looking for the entry. Jeannie laid a hand delicately on my wrist, her way of telling me to calm down. I swatted it away. When I found the page I wanted, I shoved the notebook at Richard and watched him read it.

September 22

Nora dropped by to check on me. They lost the case. When she told me, she seemed to be holding back. Something was off. I said I couldn’t understand how the case was lost after everything I’d said in my deposition. She seemed as shocked by that statement as I was by hers: What deposition?

The assistant D.A. said I no-showed. When his office tried to reschedule, I’d already left for counseling.

A memory snapped into place—a phone call asking to move the meeting. Same time, different office. Something about trying to get a court reporter on short notice. There was one who’d do it, but a different location was better for her. I didn’t give it a second thought, just drove to the new address and told my story.

There were three people: the assistant D.A., Reed’s attorney, and the court reporter. They went through all the motions. I never suspected anything was other than it seemed. Who the hell were those people?

“They tried to get a retrial,” I said when Richard finished reading. “But there were no witnesses to corroborate my story, and everyone knew I was clinically depressed.”

Jeannie pointed her cigarette at Richard. “Emily only told one person when and where the real deposition was going to happen.”

Richard dropped his gaze to the table.

“Me,” he said softly.

“They bribed you to set up the switch, didn’t they?” I asked. “And you did it.”

It was the first time I’d confronted him to his face.

He stood and reached for his wallet.

“No,” he said, sounding beaten down and exhausted. “They didn’t bribe me. They threatened me. They knew things about my kids…where they had ball practice and dance lessons, what time they caught the bus. I didn’t put too much stock in it until…”

He shook his head.

“Until what?” Jeannie asked.

“Until the boat wreck,” I said quietly, finishing for him. For the first time, I realized Jack and Annette’s deaths might not have been accidental.

Richard laid a twenty on the table and silently walked away.