Missing Child (18 page)

Haley swirled her wine in her glass and frowned. ‘No. Not really. Dan likes to avoid . . . entangling alliances, shall we say.’

‘He married you, didn’t he?’

Haley shrugged. ‘We were high school sweethearts. When you’re young like that, it’s easy to . . . make the wrong choice.’

‘Are you kidding?’ said Caitlin. ‘You were a prize. He was a fool to ever let you go.’

Haley chuckled. ‘Oh, thanks, but . . . I think we both realized it was a mistake.’

‘Really?’ said Caitlin. She had always assumed, from Haley’s lingering fondness for Dan, that he was the one who had chosen to quit the marriage.

‘Well, he was adamant about not wanting kids. And, call me a cockeyed optimist, but that is still something I want to do in my life.’

‘You will,’ said Caitlin.

‘I hope so.’

They were both quiet for a moment. Caitlin’s mind returned to Bandit, stuffed in the front seat of Dan’s car. ‘Why didn’t he want kids?’ Caitlin asked.

‘The usual male . . . ego,’ said Haley. ‘He wanted to do exactly what he’s doing. He lives for sports. He comes and goes as he pleases. He lives a pretty . . . idyllic life for a man. There’s really no room for kids in it. Or a wife.’

‘I suppose not,’ said Caitlin.

Haley raised her face and looked out the window. The gaslight from the street illuminated her soft profile. ‘It’s not only that. Sometimes it was just . . . hard to get close to him. He’s very . . . detached. Most of the women in his life are . . . temporary. In fact, the night of Geordie’s party, when he got so sick, he sent Jimmy Choos back to Philly on the bus.’

‘You’re kidding,’ said Caitlin. ‘He was really sick? I thought he was faking it that night so he could leave the party.’

‘Oh no, he felt wretched,’ said Haley. ‘He spent the night here. In the guest room. He showed up at my door and he was in such a bad way that I couldn’t turn him away. I thought of taking him to the emergency room at one point. His head was killing him and he threw up until he had the dry heaves. The next day he was just pale and limp. I tried to get him to stay and rest for the day, but he had work so he headed back.’

In spite of herself, Caitlin felt a surge of anxiety at this discovery. ‘So he was here in Hartwell that day. The day that Geordie was taken . . .’

Haley frowned. ‘Well, not really. He went back to Philly as soon as he could get out of bed.’

Caitlin hesitated. ‘Was he wearing an Eagles cap?’ she asked, thinking of the account of the teacher’s aide at Geordie’s school.

‘What?’ Haley asked.

‘Was he?’

‘He may have been. I don’t remember. Why would you ask me that?’

‘No reason,’ Caitlin said, although she had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. ‘I’m just desperate. God, I hate the thought of going back to my parents’ house. Every miserable thing that ever happened there is weighing on me the moment I walk in the door. And without Noah to turn to, I just tie myself up in knots thinking about Geordie. About what has happened to him. Where he could be . . .’

‘You can stay here, in the guest room,’ said Haley.

‘You are a really good friend, you know it?’ Caitlin said. ‘Nobody else even wants to speak to me.’

‘Noah’s gonna get over this. You wait and see. He really loves you.’

‘He loved Emily,’ said Caitlin.

Haley nodded. ‘Yes, he did.’

Caitlin wished she hadn’t mentioned it. She knew it was true, but she felt as if now that Noah had thrown her out, he was waiting for Geordie’s return with Emily’s ghost for company. After all, Noah probably still felt closest to her. Emily was Geordie’s mother. Emily, whom Caitlin’s brother had left to die in the street. ‘Why did it have to be Emily?’ Caitlin said aloud.

Haley met her gaze sadly. ‘I know,’ she said.

EIGHTEEN

S
am Mathis sat at the kitchen table while Caitlin put on the coffee pot and took out a bag of muffins which Haley had given her before she left her house last night. She offered one to Sam.

Sam held up a hand and shook his head. ‘I’ve eaten,’ he said.

‘Do you mind . . .?’ she asked, pointing to her coffee mug.

Sam shook his head again and Caitlin poured herself some coffee and sat down with a muffin in front of her on a napkin. She began to pick at it.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Judging from the look on your face, this isn’t good news. I know it’s not about Geordie. You would have told me already.’

‘True,’ he said. ‘We located the man that the cable TV guy saw on the street. They live in the neighborhood. His kid was sick and he came to take him home.’

Caitlin sighed.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Sam.

She could see the discouragement in Sam Mathis’s eyes. ‘I know you’re doing all you can,’ she said.

‘That’s kind of you,’ he said.

‘Believe me, if I thought cursing you out would bring him back,’ she said grimly, ‘I’d call you every name in the book.’

Sam acknowledged the truth of this with a brief smile.

Caitlin hesitated. ‘I went to see Geordie’s Uncle Dan yesterday in Philly. I went to apologize about Emily. But while I was there, I found Geordie’s favorite toy, a stuffed dog named Bandit, in his car.’

Sam immediately straightened up. ‘You’re sure it was Geordie’s toy?’

‘Positive,’ she said.

‘Did you ask him about it?’

Caitlin sighed. ‘I did more than that. I . . . entered his car and took it.’

‘How did you do that?’ Sam asked.

‘I’d rather not say,’ she said, avoiding his gaze. ‘The car was not damaged, I’ll say that much. Anyway, I confronted Dan with Bandit. He seemed more angry that I’d gotten into his car than anything else.’

‘How did he explain having the toy?’

‘Well, at first he just seemed baffled. In the end, he came to the same conclusion I did. Geordie was probably fooling around in his car at the birthday party and left Bandit there. I know that’s the last time I can remember seeing him – Bandit. On Geordie’s birthday.’

‘Is that what you think happened?’ Sam asked.

‘Probably,’ she admitted.

‘Was it possible that Geordie had the stuffed animal with him when he was taken? In his backpack maybe?’

‘We forbid him to bring Bandit to school with him. Bandit was like a . . . security blanket for him. And it got him that kind of negative attention. The bullies love things like that. So he knew better than to take it with him. Although I know he didn’t always obey us about that,’ Caitlin said.

‘But to your best recollection, the last time you saw the toy was the day of the party?’

Caitlin nodded.

‘We questioned Geordie’s uncle, of course. I couldn’t find any reason to pursue it. Do you know of anything we might have missed? Was there reason to suspect Dan Bergen? Has he ever behaved . . . inappropriately toward his nephew? Anything that set off alarm bells?’

‘No. Truthfully, no. I think I just went a little crazy when I saw Bandit. I insisted on coming into his house. When he tried to get me leave I started screaming for Geordie. As loud as I could. But there was nothing.’

‘Well, I think I had better pay him another visit, all the same. Just to be cautious,’ said Sam. ‘I’ll go see him today.’

‘Dan’s gonna be furious with me,’ said Caitlin. ‘I’m already his least favorite person in the world.’

‘Because of Emily’s . . . accident,’ said Sam.

Caitlin nodded. ‘But go ahead. I don’t care what he thinks. He’s always going to hate me. They all will. Because of Emily.’

Sam nodded. ‘Actually, Emily’s accident is what I came here about.’

Caitlin looked at him warily. ‘Let’s have it.’

‘Your father’s truck,’ said Sam.

She waited, but didn’t ask.

‘They’ve gone over it very carefully. There are traces of blood, but it was too deteriorated to give us DNA. All that time out in the elements . . .’

‘It wasn’t in the elements,’ Caitlin protested. ‘It’s been in the garage all these years.’

‘The garage is hardly a controlled environment. We found evidence of squirrels, raccoons, birds. A lot of rust.’

‘So what are you saying?’ Caitlin asked.

‘Well, we cross-checked your father’s truck against the forensic evidence we found on Emily’s body . . .’

‘And . . .’ Caitlin urged him on.

‘We know that the vehicle which hit her had a very similar paint job. We’re trying to see if it can be matched exactly.’

Caitlin shook her head. ‘What do you mean, “the vehicle which hit her?” I told you who hit her. It was my brother.’

Sam shrugged. ‘I have no reason to doubt that what you said about your brother was . . . well, the truth as you perceived it . . . I mean, there would be no reason for you to tell such a tale. It only reflected badly on you and was very destructive to your marriage. Obviously.’

Caitlin stared at him, waiting.

‘There’s something odd about that truck,’ he said.

Caitlin shook her head, as if she wasn’t able to make out his words.

‘Maybe I will have some coffee,’ he said. ‘Half a cup.’

Caitlin wanted to shake him and refuse him even a sip of coffee before he explained himself, but she forced herself to remain calm. She got up, poured him the coffee and even offered cream and sugar. Then she set the mug in front of him and sat back down at the table.

‘The truck . . .’ she said.

Sam blew on the coffee and then took a sip. He frowned, as if he were trying to figure something out while he was speaking. ‘I noticed this when you first showed me the truck in the garage. The guys at the lab noticed the same thing. The damage to the truck is in the center of the front bumper. I mean, it is caved in from the impact of hitting someone, or something.’

‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ said Caitlin, waving a hand as if to flag him down. ‘Something? You act like there is some doubt about who was hit by that truck. I’m telling you, there is no doubt. When I heard about the hit-and-run on the news and confronted James, he admitted it. He described the woman. It was Emily. Hell, he was haunted by the thought of her eyes. Trust me. He didn’t take his own life because he hit a deer.’

‘I suppose not,’ said Sam.

‘And he was able to tell me the exact location of the accident. I’m not wrong about this, Detective.’

‘I understand,’ said Sam. ‘I do. But the evidence contradicts that story. Emily left Geordie asleep in his car seat and came down the drive to pick up her mail. She was hit as she was standing by her mailbox at the side of the road. We know this for a fact. The mailbox was still hanging open. The mail was scattered everywhere. That means that whoever hit her veered over to the side of the road, either because they were impaired at the time or they lost control of their vehicle. Judging from where the body came to rest, they had to have collided with her with the right-hand side of their bumper. That’s where the impact was. That’s what should be damaged on your father’s truck if that was the vehicle that hit Emily. Not the middle. The right-hand side. The passenger side.’

Caitlin put her elbows on the table and covered her mouth with her hands. Was it possible that she had been wrong? Had she hounded her brother to death for something he hadn’t done? She thought about it for a moment and then dismissed it. No. He admitted it to her. She didn’t put words in his mouth. He had hit a woman. Then he had driven away and left her to die in the road. It didn’t matter what Sam Mathis said about the truck. That was the truth.

‘In any case,’ said Sam, standing up from the table, ‘this is good news for you. As of right now, there will be no charges filed against you. The evidence doesn’t support your version of the crime.’

Caitlin frowned at him. ‘You’re lying!’

‘You’re welcome,’ he said.

After he left, she sat at the table for a long time, thinking about what Sam had said. Finally, she forced herself to get up and go down the hall to James’s room. She had never cleaned it out after he died. She didn’t have the heart. She always thought of the messy, cave-like room as his lair. A dark hole in the house that she avoided at all costs. She sat down on the edge of his bed and looked around at the rubble of his belongings on the floor, and his Gothic fantasy posters on the walls. Every one of them depicted razor-wielding creatures in black, dripping blood.

Her job involved dealing with young people, but the young people whom she saw at the college seemed to be surrounded by light. Many had grown up in poverty, but they were earnest and hopeful and hard-working. They were envisioning a bright future and her job was to help that become a reality.

James had never been that way. His whole world had been dark, as long as Caitlin could remember. She used to feel so sorry for her parents, trying their best to cope with a child whom they could not understand. ‘Why is he like this?’ her father had asked her once in exasperation. ‘You’ve taken all these courses on psychology. Why does he do the things he does?’

Caitlin claimed to have no idea. But she knew that her mother’s pregnancy with James had been unplanned and unwelcome. They had never intended to raise a teenager in their late fifties. She also knew that they would never have said as much to James. Never. In the end, they loved James, just as they had always loved her. But that sense that he was unwanted may have crept into James’s psyche. There are so many ways, she thought, that those feelings could be communicated.

Oh, James, she thought. I couldn’t bear to find out now that you had admitted a crime you didn’t commit. She began to look, in a desultory fashion, through his belongings. His school papers were still there in folders. Unlike her, he had never been the brightest student, and the teachers hectoring comments, the underlined red Ds and Fs on the papers, were a reminder of what a torture school had become for him. She opened the drawer in his bedside table and there, on a pile of opened letters, was a school photo of Karla. Love you, she wrote across it, with a heart-shaped kiss. Caitlin picked up the letters and looked. They were all from Karla, sent from the rehab center where she had been confined, Caitlin riffled through a few of the pages. The content was stupefyingly banal, like most people’s letters, Caitlin reminded herself. But to James, obviously, they had been important. He had kept them, and her picture right there beside him.