The Seeker A Novel (R. B. Chesterton) (19 page)

“Good.” His eyebrows drew together and he stood uncomfortably by the door.

“Is something wrong?”

He stepped closer to the bed. “There’s no gentle way to say this, Aine. Karla Steele is dead.”

I heard what he said, but I couldn’t take in the meaning. “What do you mean? How did you find out? She’s in Nebraska with her sister. Joe said they had plane tickets …”

“I wish that were true. We found her body this morning.”

This couldn’t be happening. “Where?”

“Hikers found her in the woods at Walden Pond.”

“Walden Pond … this isn’t possible.” I pushed the laptop aside and slid out of bed. “She left days ago for Nebraska. Joe said her sister came to take her back.” For the second time. “What happened to her?”

His face told me the answer was gruesome before he spoke. “She was beaten to death, Aine. The coroner says some of her bruises date back to before she was killed. As in several days before. Do you know anything about that?”

I didn’t know how to answer. If I said the wrong thing, I could be facing serious trouble, murder charges. Lying, though, never led to anything but hard times.

“Several days ago Karla attacked me here, on the path from the inn to the cabin. She came out of the dark and tried to kill me. I fought back. That’s how Joe got her to agree to leave town. I said I wouldn’t go to the authorities if she would leave. Joe said she’d get help in Nebraska, that her sister had made arrangements for voluntary commitment, some psychiatric help.”

“And the last time you saw her?”

The days blurred together. “I can’t remember exactly. It was that night. Monday night? I’ve lost track of time and I couldn’t say for certain what today’s date is.”

McKinney visibly relaxed. It seemed I’d passed the test of truth-telling in his book. “Joe said you were pretty beat up in that encounter too.”

So Joe had already told the chief. Probably for the best. “She ambushed me and clubbed me with a hockey stick. If I’d gone down, I don’t doubt she would have killed me.”

“Karla had a violent streak.” He took off his gloves and unzipped his heavy coat. “Couldn’t say if it was natural or if it was drug-induced. Doesn’t matter now.”

“Who killed her?” Images of her body, blood red against the white snow, infiltrated my brain and the urge to vomit caught me by surprise. I managed to suppress it.

“We’re working on it.” McKinney’s face furrowed. “This doesn’t look good for Joe.”

“What do you mean?” I stood up, bare feet freezing on the floor. But at least I had feet and not the blackened stumps of my fantasies.

“She was found in Joe’s territory, a place he’s charged with patrolling. It’s also a place where he would have free rein, should he happen to want to beat someone to death. No one goes to Walden Pond in this kind of weather, and no one would know that better than Joe.” McKinney didn’t sugarcoat his thoughts. “You know Joe couldn’t do that. Tell me you don’t suspect Joe of hurting her. He tried to
help
her.”

“He’s just lived down the disappearance of Mischa Lobrano. This won’t raise public confidence in him.”

“But he had nothing to do with this!”

McKinney ignored my passionate statement. “Tomorrow, when you’re stronger, I want you to come down to the station and make a statement about the assault. You should have called me when it happened.”

It was more what he didn’t say that upset me. “I
told
Joe we should call you. I wanted to report the assault, but Joe persuaded me not to. Now look! It’s a thousand times worse because it looks like I hurt her and then she died.”

He didn’t deny it. “I’m afraid that’s exactly how it will look to some people. Joe’s been tarred by the brush of tragedy in the past. Folks will dredge that up and see that now his ex-girlfriend is dead. First his student, then his girlfriend. Some people will see more than coincidence in that. You can see how that looks bad for him.”

I couldn’t hold back the tears. The unfairness frustrated me so badly that I wanted to cry or break something. But I knew losing it and smashing a plate or glass against the wall wouldn’t help my case. “Joe had plane tickets for her and her sister to go back to Nebraska.

He didn’t know she was in town, and neither did I.”

“Have you talked to Joe?”

“Dorothea said he’s been here at night watching over me. I was really sick. She said he would be here in half an hour.”

“Please ask him to call me. I don’t like this any better than you do, Aine. Concord used to be a sleepy place where the biggest excitement was a reenactment of a battle from two hundred years before. We don’t have a lot of murders here, which is why Mischa Lobrano’s disappearance caught in the public’s imagination.

“Mischa
disappeared
. It was never proven that anything bad happened to her.” Even though I knew better, I wasn’t about to admit I’d conversed with her ghost.

McKinney shook his head slowly. “She was nine when she didn’t come home. And it’s been nearly a decade. Imagine, all that time with not a sign of her.”

“Are her parents still in the area?”

“They are, and you’d better leave them alone. They’ve been dragged through hell backwards. Don’t stir this up with them.” He was warning me, but he was also issuing an edict. The Lobranos were hands-off. No outsider would be allowed to stir that fire to a hotter burn.

“Do you have any photographs of Mischa?”

He looked down at the gloves in his hand. “Why would you want a photograph?”

I couldn’t tell him the truth. “I don’t know. I want to see what she looks like. Now she’s a part of my life too.”

“Stop by the office and I’ll pull the file. We might have given the pictures back to the parents, but if we have copies you can look at them.” His fingers tightened into a fist around his gloves. “There wasn’t anything else we could give them. No peace. No closure. That girl disappeared without a trace. If you’d asked me before if such a thing was possible, I would have said no.”

“Were there tracks? Snow?”

He pointed to the chair beside the bed and I waved him into it. “I don’t want to tire you. Dorothea gave me my orders before I came in here.”

“Please. This will help me.”

He puffed out his cheeks. “She was a pretty child. Nine, as I said. Fourth grade. Just at that age where they begin to develop real personality and interests. Mrs. Cooper, the principal, said Mischa had fallen in love with biology. She had an impressive leaf collection and she’d started drawing the insects native to this area.”

“She sounds like a very smart child,” I said. “She was blond, right?”

“She was. Long blond hair that curled naturally. Blue eyes. She looked more like her father than her mom. DeWitt Lobrano had that all-American look. Mischa was like him.”

“No child is perfect, but she sure sounds close.”

“She had a temper, her mother said. And she was competitive with a streak of daredevil, but from all accounts she was a sweet-natured child.” He leaned back in the chair. “It doesn’t seem possible that she won’t come back.”

If the little girl I’d met at Roger Brent’s shack was Mischa, Chief McKinney might revise his opinion. Whatever had happened to her, she wasn’t the child he described.

“Were there other children in the family?”

“None.”

“What do you think happened to her?”

He didn’t hesitate. Chief McKinney had spent many hours going over what had happened to Mischa Lobrano. “It was late October, and the first snow fell that day. The leaves at Walden Pond, still red and yellow, were caught by surprise, like the rest of us. The tourist traffic was slacking, but there were still visitors. I think that afternoon, some stranger with a penchant for little girls was at the pond. Mischa went there, looking for a bug. I think she was snatched and was out of the state before the sun went down.”

“Do you think she’s still alive?”

This time the answer was slower. “There are days I hope she isn’t. I know too much about what happens to children who get pulled into that life. They’re traded like furniture. One man gets tired or wants a younger child, and he trades up. Each week a child gets older, less appealing. Until in the end, it’s simpler to kill them than it is to provide for them.”

His words stunned me. “You really think a little girl from Concord, Massachusetts, could have ended up in the flesh trade?”

“That’s exactly what I think happened. She was walking through the woods of Walden Pond. She went in right about the place I found you. She was seen by two of her mother’s friends as she headed down that path. And that was the last anyone ever saw of her.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

“Joe doesn’t like to talk about it, but you should know.” He stood up. “When you see Joe, tell him to give me a call.”

27

Joe showed up at the cabin, Chinese takeout in hand. The relief on his face when he saw me dressed and sitting at my desk made me smile.

“I’m too tough to let a bit of snow take me out.”

“I was worried.” He put the food on the kitchen counter. “You were really sick, Aine. The doctor was flummoxed. You didn’t have pneumonia, but you had such a high fever and were so disoriented.”

I stood up and went to him. I’d developed my own theory about my illness: it had come compliments of Mischa. She’d held me in the cabin for hours, filling my mind with lies and probing for my secrets. She’d infected me like some kind of virus. But I couldn’t tell Joe. I couldn’t tell anyone. “Whatever it was, I’m fine now. When I was a child, I would sometimes get sick, like a wave encompassed me. Then it would pass. Like now.” I kissed his neck. “I assure you, I’m healed.”

Joe held me, his hand stroking my hair. “Chief McKinney told you about Karla.”

“He did.” I spoke with my cheek pressed to his chest. “I’m so sorry, Joe. McKinney wants you to call him.”

“I stopped by before I came here.” He eased away from me.

“What happened?”

“They’re still investigating. She was at Walden. You know the place where the two big black oaks make a natural place to sit?”

I knew it well, because I often sat there daydreaming about Bonnie and Thoreau. While Joe unbagged the takeout, I arranged the chairs so we could sit together. “She shouldn’t have come back.”

“No, she shouldn’t have. From the brutality of the murder, the chief thinks it was drug-related. Karla always thought she could lie and cheat and never face the consequences. McKinney figures she was trying to make a buy from someone she already owed money to.”

“I told him she’d attacked me, but he already knew. He was a little upset we didn’t call and report the incident, but I think I explained everything—how it would drag you back into the limelight, reopen old wounds. I told him she’d promised to leave town if I didn’t press charges.”

Joe put his elbows on his knees and lowered his head into his hands. “You were right. We should have reported it when it happened. If she’d been locked up, she’d be alive today.”

I stood and massaged the tight muscles of his shoulders. “If she’d gone to Nebraska, she’d be alive.” My anger boiled to the surface. “She’s put you in a terrible place, and me too. Now we’re both involved in a murder investigation for a freaking meth head!”

Joe eased out from under my hands. “I’m sorry, Aine. I am.” Pain touched his features. “When Mischa disappeared, it was such a blow. I was fond of her, as a teacher is often connected to a student who shows curiosity and a love of learning. She was a special child. Gifted. And the way she disappeared, going into the woods. I felt responsible. I’d encouraged her interest in biology.”

I pressed him back to the chair and knelt in front of him. “But that’s what teachers do.”

He captured my hands and held them. “I was certain we’d find her, maybe lost. But safe. But she was gone. Fool that I am, it never occurred to me I’d be accused. When the investigation zeroed in on me, and the parents of children I’d worked with and been friends with all turned against me—”

I wanted to comfort him, but there was nothing I could do or say to change the past. Time doesn’t heal all wounds. How well I knew that lesson. The best I could offer was to hear him talk. When he continued, I held myself still.

“My mother’s health broke. She was a vibrant part of the Concord community, active in little theater and her church. She became a recluse who wouldn’t even open the door to the grocery boy who delivered her order. The media was up in her face, asking questions about my childhood, my sexual proclivities, checking into innocent games of kickball or nature walks with students. Every single thing I did as a good teacher came back to haunt me.”

“I would have given a lot for a teacher who cared like you did.”

My words earned a smile, but it was fleeting. “My fiancée, Amanda, was dogged everywhere she went. She was a teacher too, and the implications that she might have assisted me in some kind of sick, sexual predator activity ruined her. She couldn’t take it. She tried. She tried hard. But I was suspended from teaching and every day at work was hellish for her. She broke the engagement and moved. I don’t blame her, but it only made me look more guilty.”

“I’m so sorry, Joe.” I was glad he wasn’t married, but I wouldn’t have wished a breakup for such horrid reasons. “Now I understand why you didn’t want to tell me about Mischa.”

“I intended to tell you. But I wanted you to know me. To know who I am, before you had to judge the past accusations.”

I filled our wine glasses and pressed one into his hand. “I believe you.”

His palm grazed my cheek. “You don’t have a disloyal bone in you.”

Now was the time to tell him about Patrick. To confess that my own wound and fear of abandonment had pushed me into an action I wished to eradicate. But I couldn’t. Not now. Not when the scab had been ripped off the past. “You were never charged with anything. Surely that was enough.”

“Not by a long shot.” He sipped the wine and put it down. “For a teacher, an accusation of sexual predation is a death sentence. Top that off with the possibility of child-murdering and there’s no overcoming the perception.”

“It’s just unfair.”

“What’s unfair is that a smart, curious young girl disappeared and was never found. My career was damaged. My mother’s life was ruined. But Mischa is gone, and god knows what she suffered or is suffering still.”