Tell Me You're Sorry (24 page)

The caddy master leaned over the counter toward Ryan. “The old bag's eighty if she's a day,” he whispered.

“No, this isn't for me,” Munchel said. “It's for a guest of Mr. Gunderson's. We're trying to remember the name of a kid who was a valet here for a couple of summers back in the mid-eighties. His first name was Matt . . .”

“It was Mike!” the caddy master chimed in.

“Do you have payroll records from back then?” the pro shop man said into the phone, ignoring his friend. “It was the same year we had the tournament—”

“Ask her if she remembers the name of Selena Jayne's old man,” the caddy master interrupted.

“Yeah, if you could look it up now, that would be great,” Munchel said, speaking over his friend. “I've got Mr. Gunderson's guest here . . . Yeah, I'll wait. Thanks, Doreen, you're a sweetheart.” He covered the mouthpiece and looked at the caddy master. “Barton . . . Barton Jayne. She could hear your big mouth yapping. Doreen says he retired eleven years ago . . .”

The phone's other line rang.

Munchel nodded to his coworker. “Can you pick that up on the other extension?”

The caddy master retreated to the back room. Ryan couldn't see him anymore, but he could hear him: “Pro Shop, Javier speaking.”

With the phone to his ear, Munchel smiled at Ryan. “So—who won the game this morning, Mr. Gunderson or Mr. Wagner?”

Ryan hesitated.

“Jim! It's Mr. Harvey on line two!” the caddy master called from the back room.

“Tell him I'll call him right back,” he replied, over his shoulder.

Ryan could hear the man in the other room mumbling into the phone. But he couldn't make out what he was saying. Why were they still talking? He wondered if Mr. Harvey was right now describing the Fleet Messenger Service kid to the caddy master.

Hang up
, he thought,
hang up already.

“Yeah, I'm still here,” Munchel was saying on his line. “Oh, yeah, Mark Metcalf . . .”

Ryan grabbed a pen from near the cash register and scribbled it down on the envelope. “Does she have a last known address?” he asked.

“Do you have his address there, Doreen?” He covered the mouthpiece, and gave Ryan a dubious look. “You know, it's going to be from when he was in high school—almost thirty years ago. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell he'll still be there.”

“Well, it's a starting point,” Ryan answered. “My dad's trying to track him down. He owes the guy some money.”

“Hey . . .” the caddy master said, emerging from the back room. He stopped in the doorway and folded his big arms. He was scowling at Ryan. “Did you tell the guys upstairs at the front door that you were with some kind of messenger service?”

Still on the phone, Munchel shushed him. “1107 Terry Lane . . . Evanston . . .” he said. “Okay, thanks, Doreen. I owe you one.” He hung up.

Ryan quickly scribbled the address down on the envelope. “Thanks so much, you guys,” he said. He put down the pen, and then grabbed the photo and the envelope. He backed toward the door.

The caddy master started to come around the counter. “Hold on there, kid. What's your name?”

“I'll be sure to tell Mr. Gunderson how much help you guys were,” he said with a tremor in his voice.

The bell rang as he pushed open the door with his back. “Thanks again!”

He wanted so badly to bolt out of there, but he forced himself to walk. He figured if he ran, they'd just chase after him. Still, he went at a fast clip—and in the opposite direction of the Men's Grill. He didn't dare risk going through there again, not if those guys upstairs were looking for him. He had no idea where he was headed, but saw a gate on the other side of the pro shop. He pushed it open, and discovered a sidewalk and a little strip of choppy, unkempt lawn. A couple of old patio chairs were on the grass. Ahead was another section of the building with a door marked
STAFF ONLY
. A blond kid not much older than him was standing beside the entrance, talking on his cell phone. He wore a busboy's uniform and smoked a cigarette. He barely looked up as Ryan hurried past him and opened the door.

Ducking inside, he found himself in what seemed like a basement area—with gray walls and a cement floor. Overhead, the fluorescent lights couldn't keep the place from looking gloomy. Somewhere close by, a water heater or air conditioner churned out a loud racket. Ryan passed some man with a big pushcart full of bundled towels that had “Lake Ridge Country Club” on them. He figured the guy must have unloaded the towels from a delivery truck. So he headed in the direction the deliveryman had come from. He hoped he'd find an exit, and prayed no one would be outside waiting for him.

He heard some women laughing, and turned the corner to see two cute girls in waitress uniforms. One of them was punching a time clock. They weren't much older than him. Farther down the hallway, Ryan spotted a green exit sign over a door that was propped open.

Clutching the envelope close to his chest, he passed the two girls and nodded at them.

“Hey, good-looking, where are you going in such a hurry?” one of them called out.

The other girl laughed. “I get off at eleven!” she yelled.

His face turning red, Ryan retreated outside. He stopped and peeked around the laundry delivery truck. He didn't see anyone in the driveway, which was obviously for deliveries and employees. As he hurried toward the street, he passed another tall chain-link fence shrouded with a tarp on the interior. Again, he heard tennis balls getting smacked back and forth. Stopping for a moment, he caught his breath. Ryan realized he was on the other side of the tennis courts—and maybe it was on this exact spot that the photograph had been taken twenty-seven summers ago.

From what he could tell, it was the last summer his father and his three buddies had hung out together. The guy from the pro shop had said Mark Metcalf was a nice kid. No one had described his father or Dick Ingalls that way. So—what was Metcalf doing hanging out with them? As he hurried up the driveway toward the street, he kept replaying in his head something else those two men in the pro shop had said about Mark Metcalf and that summer:

“He was here when we had the tournament—and when that waitress disappeared.”

“Did they ever find out what happened to her?”

Ryan ran down the block to where he'd parked his VW bug. He jumped inside the car, and dug a pen out of the glove compartment. With a shaky hand, he scribbled on the envelope:

The note to himself was written right beside that other name: Mark Metcalf.

Ryan was still catching his breath when he pulled his cell phone from his pants pocket and speed-dialed a number. It rang twice before someone answered.

“Ryan?” she said.

“Hi, Stephanie, I got it,” he said. “The guy was a valet here at Lake Ridge Country Club. And his name's Mark Metcalf. He lived in Evanston at the time. That's why none of my father's classmates recognized him. He was in a different school district . . .”

“Mark Metcalf,” she repeated—as if she were jotting it down. “I wonder if he's still alive. I'll start looking him up on the Internet. Ryan, you're amazing. Good job. What's the name of the country club again?”

“Lake Ridge Country Club,” he said. “It's in Wilmette. And listen, Stephanie, remember how we figured if something happened with these four guys, it happened over the summer the picture was taken?”

“Yes . . .”

“Well, I think it happened here—at the country club. And I think it might have something to do with a girl disappearing . . .”

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

 

“H
ey, Mark,” said the head newswriter, Jesse Moritz. He leaned back in his chair. “I'm printing up tonight's lead stories right now.”

There were two big desks in the newsroom. One belonged to Jesse, and the other to the associate producer. The rest of the staff were stuck in work cubicles—with dividing walls short enough so everyone could see the five, six, and eleven o'clock news on the big flat-screen TV on the wall.

Jesse's desk was always a mess—as was Jesse. He had glasses, a goatee and unruly, long, dark brown hair. He dressed like a slob. No one would ever guess the guy had three local Emmys. Today, he wore a Mariners T-shirt that had a hole in the shoulder, plaid shorts, and sandals.

“I can see you're pushing the casual Fridays policy to the limit again, Jess,” Mark said, drolly. He watched the printer spit out the last page of the lead stories.

“I would have worn my thong, but it's at the cleaners,” Jesse said, handing him the pages. “Here you go. I threw some three-syllable words in there today just to screw with you.”

Mark cracked a smile. “Well, they better have them written phonetically on the teleprompter or somebody's ass is going to be in a sling.” He patted Jesse on the shoulder, and headed to his office. Mark, his co-anchor, Debi Donahue, and the producer were the only ones with their own offices. The rooms were small, with windows that looked out to the newsroom.

Unlike his writer friend, Mark Metcalf always dressed impeccably. One of the benefits of being a news anchor was that they gave him a budget for his on-the-air wardrobe. He also had a local Emmy, but just one. However, he'd recently made
Seattle
magazine's list of Top Ten Best Dressed Men in Seattle. The people in the newsroom got a chuckle out of it. They blew up the page from the magazine, framed it, and hung it in his office. His co-anchor, Debi, said he looked like the dapper dad in a Macy's catalog: “Mr. Square-jaw with his perfect brown hair and the touch of gray at the temples, so handsome, no wonder you get more fan letters than I do.”

His mail was in a basket attached to the outside of his office door. There were about a dozen envelopes today, which Mark set on his desk—along with the lead news stories. He took off his dark blue blazer and carefully placed it on a hanger so it wouldn't be wrinkled for the broadcast in a little over an hour. He hung the hanger on a coatrack behind his desk, sat down, and started opening his mail. A lot of it was the usual junk mail. But he came across a card with a lily on the front of it. “With Deepest Sympathy,” it said.

Mark let out a sigh, and opened the card. There were six or seven printed lines—something about loss and healing. He glanced over the lines, and read the personal message at the bottom:

He glanced at the framed photo on his desk—of Dina, Alison, Danny, and him, taken in front of the doughnut sculpture at Volunteer Park last year. They all looked so happy, but in reality, the kids had been fighting and ready to kill each other. At one point between poses for their photographer friend, Dina turned to Mark and whispered, “Can we just ditch these monsters after this and go for a drink someplace? Wait. I'm a horrible mother, aren't I?”

He looked at her, smiling in the photo, and wished he could tell her now that she was a wonderful mother—and the love of his life.

They had buried Dina nearly a month ago. He was still getting sympathy cards. He hadn't thought that his TV audience knew about his wife's death. But apparently they did. The news services didn't pick up the story, and in the
Seattle Times
obituary, Dina's suicide was referred to as “an accident in their home.” However, some local bloggers and tweeters (probably Alison's classmates) got wind of the real story, so it wasn't that much of a secret. His producer had wanted Debi to make a discreet announcement on the news—just to explain Mark's absence that week. But Mark asked them not to.

When he came back to work, he was tempted to say a quick on-the-air thank-you to viewers for their support. But he just didn't want people Googling Dina's name for information about how she'd died. The official report was so vague. It only inspired people to keep digging until they found some blog that said Dina Metcalf had asphyxiated herself in an old Vista Cruiser. He was ashamed of it. He was ashamed of the stupid old car he had her driving. He'd gone on Craigslist and sold the damn thing for cheap last week. Catalytic converters in cars had long ago put an end to that type of suicide.

Instead of making an on-air announcement, he answered every e-mail and every sympathy card. He still had about eighty cards left from a box of five hundred the funeral parlor had printed up. He would send one of those—with a personal note on the back—to Sylvia Hartman.

He wasn't the only one ashamed about Dina's suicide. Poor Alison was devastated. She assumed all the blame, too. The morning of the funeral, she didn't even want to come out of her room. Mark went in there, sat on her four-poster bed, and held her in his arms while she sobbed. “It's because of me that she killed herself,” Alison lamented. “I was so mean to her when she stopped by school that afternoon. She was worried about me. She just wanted to make sure I was okay. And I was such a nasty bitch to her . . .”

He stroked her curly, brown hair. “Alison, honey, that kind of stuff bounced right off your mom. We talked on the phone minutes after she left the school, and she was joking about it. I'm not saying she didn't take you seriously when it mattered. But she was your age once, and she remembered how it was with her mother, the arguments and flare-ups. She knew you loved her. There's no way you could have caused her to—to do what she did.”

Alison gently pulled away from him and wiped her eyes. “Then why? Why did she kill herself?” she asked in a raspy, broken voice.

Mark shook his head. “I really wish I knew, sweetheart.”

It still haunted him. He'd asked Dina's parents, her sister and two brothers, her close friends, and even her doctor—and none of them could come up with a single reason why Dina would have taken her own life. Mark figured it had to be something he'd done, only he was just too goddamn stupid to realize how much he'd hurt her. That was what shamed him most of all.

He pushed Sylvia's sympathy card to one side, and opened up the rest of his mail. The last piece looked like it might be another sympathy note. But when Mark pulled it out of the envelope, he found a card with a color-tinted photo of a baby's hand wrapped around a man's index finger. “For My Father . . .” it said under the picture.

“Oh, Jesus, no,” he murmured, warily opening up the card.

There was a twelve-line printed poem that he barely glanced at. What mattered most to him was that under the words, “Happy Father's Day,” there was no signature.

 

 

 

Jenny knew where she was now and what day it was. From the local TV newscasts, she had to be in Cedar Rapids or somewhere nearby. She figured her captor was staying in a house and this fallout shelter was in his backyard. She often listened for voices overhead. She thought she heard someone laughing once, but the sound was so far off, it could have been anything. A train roared by four times every day, but she didn't hear any cars.

Right now she was sitting on the ugly brown sofa, watching
The Sandpiper
with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton—on Encore. The movie had been shot in Big Sur. On the screen right now, Liz and Dick were on a beach, with a blazing orange sunset in the background.

She missed sunsets. She missed the sky, and cool breezes off the water. She longed to be outside again. The movie wasn't helping, but it was the closest she could get to what it was like up there—beyond several feet of dirt.

She'd been in this underground bunker for eight days. It seemed like an eternity. Routines helped the time go by—the TV, books, those bland packaged meals, sessions on the stationary bike, her daily shower, and bed. Despite these temporary distractions, there was no getting past that she was stuck there, utterly trapped—and for how long, she didn't know. Nor did she have any idea how this imprisonment would end.

The electricity and utilities were on a timer. Everything shut down at 11:30 nightly—and came back on at 6:30 in the morning. That included the heat. There was only a dim blue light in the bathroom that she could see by at night. Sometimes, when she couldn't sleep, she wrapped herself up in a blanket and took a book in there to read.

The two tiny green lights on the cameras overhead never went out. She knew he was watching her. Yet, she couldn't help feeling he'd gone away and left her there all alone. The last time he'd spoken to her had been on that first day, before he'd switched on the power and given her the food and supplies—before he'd violated her. There was no way in hell she missed the son of a bitch. But she needed him.

Where was he? Was he already in some other city, looking for the next woman? He and his partner had probably gone through all her money by now. It had been over a week since he'd taken her “wish list.” And of course, she hadn't seen any of those items yet. She wondered what that was all about.

Four nights ago, she'd snuck out of bed and managed to unscrew the little light over the desk. She hid it, wedging it between the wall and the side of her mattress. She decided if he ever came back to have his way with her again, she'd grab that lightbulb and stab him in the throat with it.

Two nights ago, she'd faked a seizure, thrashing around the room for several minutes and then collapsing on the floor—right by the bed. She had the lightbulb within her reach. She lay on the cold floor for three hours. Every once in a while she opened her eyes just enough to see the green pinpoint lights above her. He never came down. He didn't speak to her over the sound system. She was almost sure no one had witnessed her little skit.

The notion that she was all alone terrified Jenny. As much as she hated him, that creep was her lifeline. With him gone, she was even more helpless and vulnerable. What if a storm knocked the power out? She'd slowly suffocate in this little prison. She imagined him and his partner getting into an accident. If they were killed, no one would ever know she was down here.

Jenny tried to focus on the movie. But while Liz and Dick made out on the beach, she started thinking about her cat again. She wondered what they'd done with him.

Certainly her friend Carroll had figured out by now that something was wrong. Were the police looking for her? Even if they'd started searching for her, how long before the Oakland police detectives put it together that she was buried in someone's backyard in Cedar Rapids, Iowa? They would never find her.

On the TV, Richard Burton's wife, played by Eva Marie Saint, had just figured out that he was sleeping with Liz. She was crying and screaming at him.

In the background, Jenny thought she heard children laughing.

She immediately grabbed the remote and muted the TV. The children's voices were still there. They were above her. They must have been cutting through his yard.

If she could hear them, they might be able to hear her.

“HELP!” she screamed. She leapt to her feet. “HELP! I'M DOWN HERE—UNDER THE GROUND! HELP ME!” She banged on the corrugated wall again and again—until her hand hurt. “CAN YOU HEAR ME? THERE'S SOMEONE DOWN HERE! CALL THE POLICE!”

She paused, and listened. One of the kids was squealing.

“Wait, shut up!” another one said. Jenny couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl. The voice was so faint and far away. “Did you hear that?”

Jenny started pounding on the wall again. “I'M DOWN HERE!” she yelled. “PLEASE . . .”

But she trailed off at the sound of a distant rumble. She knew they couldn't hear her, because the train was passing by. She couldn't hear them, either.

As the roar of the train faded, she started banging on the wall again—with her other hand this time. “ARE YOU STILL THERE?” she called, her voice getting hoarse. “CAN YOU HEAR ME? IS ANYONE THERE? HELP ME!”

She fell quiet for a moment, and just listened. She didn't hear a thing.

The children had moved on.

“PLEASE, HELP ME!” she cried out desperately. Tears streamed down her face. “GOD, DON'T LEAVE ME HERE! IS ANYONE UP THERE? CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?”

Jenny staggered back and collapsed on the ugly brown sofa. She rubbed her sore hand.

“Please, help me,” she whispered—to no one.

 

 

 

The staff members in the newsroom broke into applause and whistled when Mark emerged from the studio after the eleven o'clock broadcast. Debi was in the doorway ahead of him, and she made a big, sweeping gesture with her hand—as if presenting him to the others. The phones were ringing. With a grin on his face, Jesse came up and shook his hand. “That was classic, Mark,” he said. “And listen to those phones! I'll bet this goes viral . . .”