Stay With Me (13 page)

“You okay, Ms. Spector?” says the cornrowed officer. Officer Benoit, she’s called.

Brenna nods. She realizes how hard she’s been breathing.

“It will be okay, ma’am.” Her voice is very calm. Her partner turns onto the West Side Highway, the car making a wide arc.
She closes her eyes. She pictures Maya, standing next to the pump at the Lukoil station on Van Wagenen and Main, Maya spotting the car and rushing up and racing into her arms.
I’m sorry, Mom. It was a dare. I didn’t mean to scare you . . .

Brenna bit her lip hard, coming back to the chair in the waiting room at the Tarry Ridge ER.

“Are you okay?” said Detective Plodsky, which made Brenna miss Officer Benoit. It made her miss two hours ago, riding in the squad car, feeling that hope.

“Just thinking.”

Detective Plodsky was from the Missing Persons Unit—a thin, no-nonsense woman with a gunmetal bob and pursed lips and eyes like a gate slamming. She’d shown up at the gas station in her own car just as the ambulance was leaving and followed the squad cars to the hospital.

During their first hour together in the waiting room, Plodsky and Brenna had barely exchanged three words, but she seemed to be making up for it now, as though she’d just remembered she was supposed to question her. The mother of the missing girl.
The runaway
. That’s how Plodsky had referred to Maya when she thought Brenna wasn’t listening. She’d said it to Morasco just as they arrived at the hospital.
How much do you know about the runaway?
she’d said.

Plodsky said, “Ms. Spector?”

“I didn’t hear your question.”

“Has Maya’s schedule changed at all in the past few weeks? Maybe she signed up for a new class, or activity . . .”

“She’s in the school chorus,” Brenna said.

“And that’s new?”

“Since September.”

She nodded. She had a steno pad in her lap. She wrote a word on it.

Brenna wished Morasco was here instead of Plodsky. Morasco, of course, was being questioned himself, his gun taken away, suspended from work while Internal Affairs investigated him as they would any police officer who had discharged his firearm. The man he’d shot—the only man who might know what had happened to Maya—was in surgery right now. He’d grabbed for something under his coat, yes. But as backup units discovered, the
something
had been a small white envelope containing half a gram of cocaine. He’d wanted to throw away his drugs, not shoot three cops. And while Cerulli and Cavanaugh had both agreed that there was no way of knowing what this obviously intoxicated guy was going to pull out from under his big black coat on a dark street after attempting to run away from police, Morasco had been the only one who’d fired.

The bullet had been found on the sidewalk, which was good—shots to the head tend to be easier to survive if there’s an exit wound. But Brenna hadn’t been able to find out whether it had gone through his brain. Last time she’d checked, doctors were using expressions like “touch and go” and “not out of the woods yet.”

Plodsky said, “Does Maya like to sing?”

“No.”

“Then why did she join chorus?”

“Because of a boy.”

“A boyfriend?”

“No. A crush.”

“Does Maya tell you about all her crushes?”

Brenna turned. Looked at her. “How would I know that?”

“Pardon?”

“If she didn’t tell me about one of them, how would I know that she hadn’t told me?”

“Has she been acting differently? Since she had this crush?”

The image floated through Brenna’s mind—
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
book, the folded-up sketches fluttering out . . . She pushed the thought away. The thought was irrelevant. The question was irrelevant. All of these questions . . .
The runaway
. All of it.

Plodsky needed to stop. She needed to leave. Brenna turned to her. “There’s a man who’s getting operated on right now. I doubt he has anything to do with Maya’s crush or her school activities, but he has her goddamn cell phone in his pocket so maybe it’s him you should be finding out about. Not . . .
school gossip
.”

Detective Plodsky gave her a look. To Brenna, it registered as a blend of pity, condescension, and disdain. “These questions are necessary, ma’am.”

“I think I just need a little quiet right now.”

Plodsky nodded. “Take all the time you need.” She didn’t sound like she meant it.

The man, the man whom Morasco had shot, the man who was getting operated on. His name was Mark Carver. They’d learned that from the driver’s license, along with his place of residence (2920 Woodhall Road, Mount Temple, New York) and his age (thirty-five). He owned an American Express card, a Kohl’s card, a membership to Planet Fitness. No business cards. No phone of his own. Save for his wallet, which had held the aforementioned items, as well as twenty dollars in fives and tens, nothing else had been found in Mark Carver’s pockets. No pills, which was rather surprising. Morasco said he looked like he had swallowed a medicine cabinet’s worth.

Detective Plodsky said, “Has Maya been behaving differently at all?”

Brenna sighed.
I suppose you’ve decided that’s all the time I need
. “Differently?”

“Aside from signing up for chorus, does she have any new, out-of-the-ordinary activities or habits?”

“She asked to see a psychiatrist,” Brenna said it very calmly. “I took her to one yesterday.”

Detective Plodsky’s jaw dropped open. “Do you have any idea why?”

“She was held at knifepoint a few weeks ago.”

“Are you . . .
what
?”

“We managed to keep that part out of the news. It was DeeDee Walsh. The senior detective on the case was John Krull. Sixth Precinct.” She turned to Detective Plodsky. “Do you think DeeDee Walsh might have anything to do with Mark Carver?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you should ask her.” Brenna glanced at her notepad, then back at her face. “Maybe you should write it down.”

Plodsky returned Brenna’s gaze, held it long enough to make her feel uncomfortable. “Ms. Spector.”

“Yes?”

“How does your daughter feel about your job?”

“What?”

“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but has your work as a private investigator made her feel . . . unsafe?”

Brenna stared at her. “What are you saying?”

“Has she ever said she’d be happier somewhere else?”

She swallowed hard. “All teenagers say that.”

“Has
she
?”

Brenna turned away from her. She tried to focus on the sounds of the ER waiting room—the hum of the electric lights, the fuzzy voice over the loudspeaker. “
Dr. Clark, you are wanted in surgery . . .”
She stared across the room, at the portrait of the older woman on the wall—Lily Teasdale, same as at the police station, the gold plaque beneath it, the cream walls, the clean, pinkish floors . . . But she still felt the radiator-warmed air of her own apartment on October 1, the garlic-laced scent of the spaghetti Bolognese she’d made for dinner, a memory of her former boss invading her brain and Maya standing over her, Maya’s sad, cracking voice, yanking her out of it.

“You know what’s weird, Mom?”

Brenna sees Maya standing feet away from her, her dish in her hands, but she’s still got her foot in the memory. “What . . . what’s weird?” Brenna can see the way Maya watches her, the sadness in her eyes, the start of tears. But in her mind she is still in October 23, 1998. She is in a diner with her old boss Errol Ludlow. She is hearing his voice . . .

Maya says, “In order to get your full attention, you have to be something that happened in the past.”

Brenna slipped her hand into her bag, touched Clea’s journal. As always, the feel of it brought her back. But it didn’t soothe her. She still held on to the image in her mind—her daughter standing over her, thin fingers wrapped around her plate, the lost look in her eyes, and the way Brenna had seen her that night,
as though through glass . . .
“Not my job,” she said to Plodsky.

“Pardon?”

“Maya may have been unhappy with me. But not because of my job.”

“Did you have any arguments recently? Any times when—”

“Please. Stop.”

“I’m trying to help find her.”

“I know.” Brenna got up. “I’m sorry.” She walked up to the front desk, another image in her mind: Maya’s drawing of Clea, shot in the head and bleeding. Brenna tamped down the thought. “Any word on Mr. Carver?” she asked the nurse.

“No, ma’am,” she said. Her eyes were large and clear and very blue. Like Clea’s. Like Maya’s. “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear.”

“Brenna.”

She turned around to see Nick Morasco, standing behind her. She exhaled, some of the tension draining out of her. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Through being questioned?”

“For now,” he said. “There’ll be more tomorrow.” He looked pale, very tired, his eyes bigger and darker than usual behind the wire-framed glasses. “Any word on Carver? Is he still in surgery?”

She nodded. “I think so.”

“Brenna. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t help it. Seeing her phone . . . Maya’s phone on him. He said it was his, and it rang and I saw your face on the screen . . .”

“He reached into his pocket, Nick,” she said. “He could have been grabbing for anything.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “But.”

“I understand.”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“Nick,” she said. “I understand.”

He put his arms around her and she hugged him back. They stayed like that for a long time. Holding each other up.

“I’ll stay here,” Morasco said, finally. “You go home. Danny Cavanaugh is in a squad car outside. He said he can take you.”

“But I don’t think I can . . .”

“If Maya comes back home, you need to be there.”

Brenna pulled away. She looked into his eyes and touched his face. For a few seconds, she flashed on earlier today, her mother at the door. She remembered how angry she’d been at Nick, felt the anger again, running through her veins. But only the memory of it, not the reality.
Why
, she wondered.
Why get so upset over something so small when hours later, the whole world . . .

“We’re going to find her,” Nick said. “Or she’ll come home. Either way, she’s going to be okay.” He said it as though he knew it, as though he wasn’t just hoping.

“Thank you.” Brenna cast a quick glance at Plodsky, writing in her notebook. She kissed Morasco softly, and slipped out the door.

11

Officer Danny Cavanaugh was only seven years older than Maya. Brenna had met him back in December, while working on the same case that had brought DeeDee Walsh to her home on December 21, but he was kind enough not to mention the case as they drove. Kind, or clueless. Brenna was grateful either way. She needed quiet—she’d take it any way she could get it.

She was sitting in the back of the squad car. Every so often, her flip-book of a mind would shift back to other rides in other squad cars she’d taken while working on cases—January 12, 2008; March 29, 1999 . . . She’d touch the journal in her bag and then she’d again recall the ride earlier tonight, Officer Benoit’s clicking braids, the siren blaring, the hope . . .

“You comfortable, Ms. Spector?” Danny said. “Do you want me to turn the heat up?”

Danny Cavanaugh’s hair was safety-cone orange. He had a round, freckly face and wide-set eyes. In his uniform, he reminded Brenna of one of those plastic LEGO dolls, Little People. Brenna had given Maya a box of them as one of her Christmas presents back in 2002—a firefighter, a construction worker, a doctor, a nurse, a policeman . . . all so cherubic and sweet. Christmas had fallen on a Wednesday that year, but Brenna and Maya had celebrated on Thursday morning, December 26, Maya having spent Christmas Day as she always did, with Jim and Faith. First thing Maya had done after opening the box of Little People was to marry the nurse and the firefighter
. I now ponounce you husband and . . .

“I’m fine,” Brenna said.

Which was a lie, of course. She wasn’t fine. She was confused and upset and guilty-feeling, her heart pinging around in her chest, her stomach hollow. She wanted to cry but she couldn’t. She wanted to fix things, but she couldn’t. She wanted to punch the seat until her hand broke, but instead she flipped open her phone, reread Maya’s text message, and that hurt more. Had someone forced Maya to write that text, or had she written it herself, of her own free will?

Or had Mark Carver written it, when he was alone, after . . . Brenna shut her eyes
. No . . .
This was the way Brenna’s mind usually worked when she was on a case, running through all scenarios, considering every possibility. But this was Maya. Her own, only Maya. There were some possibilities she couldn’t consider.

“Anything you need, let me know,” said Danny, who just one month earlier had saluted her outside an abandoned building in Mount Temple as they prepared to search for the body of a very nice woman’s only son.

“Thanks Danny,” she said, then corrected herself. “Officer Cavanaugh.”

“Ms. Spector?”

“Yes?”

“I just wanted to say that . . . um . . . what happened with Detective Morasco.”

“Yes.”

“I was there, and . . . you know . . . It was a very tense situation.”

“I’m sure it was.”

“I mean, I know from reckless and Detective Morasco was definitely not. That guy may not have had a gun, but he was under the influence and . . .”

“I would have shot him,” Brenna said, “whether he had a gun or not.”

Danny Cavanaugh nodded. He stared straight ahead. “I hope you find your daughter,” he said.

Brenna’s phone rang. She flipped it open, looked at the screen. Faith. She’d spoken to Faith three times tonight already, but of course she understood. Everyone handled situations like this in their own way. Faith needed to talk.

She hit send. “He’s still in surgery, Faith,” she said. “I’m on my way home. Nick’s supposed to call me with any news.”

“Faith’s asleep. She took a pill. She had to.”

“Jim.” First time she’d spoken on the phone with him since May 1, 2000, a Monday. The day their divorce became final. But Brenna didn’t go back to the date. Jim’s voice sounded so different now, drained and flattened.

“She told me she was going to Lindsay’s,” he said. “She gave me Lindsay’s address and phone number. But I never called the parents. I never okayed the overnight with anyone. If I had done that . . .”

“I know.”

“It’s my fault.”

“It’s not.”

Jim breathed into the phone. Brenna kept her eyes on the back of Danny’s head, his orange hair against the dark blue of his police shirt. She looked at his chubby hands on the wheel and she stayed here in the car, her ex-husband on the phone with her, breath shaking. “I could have . . .” His voice trailed off.

Earlier tonight, Faith had told Brenna what Lindsay had said: Maya had never showed up for a sleepover. She’d never even been invited. And even if she had . . .
Lindsay’s parents weren’t even at her house
, Faith had said.
They’re out of town all week. Can you imagine?

“Maya has never lied to you,” she told Jim. “When she said she was going to Lindsay’s and that her parents would be there, you had no reason not to trust her.”

“Brenna,” he said. “I could have stopped it.”

Such pain in his voice. Stretched thin enough to break. Brenna closed her eyes. “You didn’t know. You can’t stop things that you don’t know are happening.”

“I should take a pill. I should try to sleep but I can’t.”

“I know,” she said.

“If I could trade myself for her, I would. If I could take twenty years off my life, I would, just to bring her back right now . . .”

“I know. I would, too.”

Jim said nothing. Brenna pressed the phone to her ear. She listened to his shaky breathing, and for a long time they stayed like that, sharing the silence as the squad car rolled along. She felt as though they were in the same dark room, standing over something dying, watching it slip away.

Stay with me. Stay with me, please . . .

Danny took the turnoff for the Cross County Expressway. Traffic was very light—only a few other cars on the road. They’d be in New York City in fifteen minutes at the most. “I’m sorry, Jim,” Brenna said.

“About what?”

“About me. My memory. I’m sorry I’ve made things so hard for you and for Maya. I’m sorry I spent so much time in the past that I was never fully there with you when we were married. I know that’s the real reason why you left me. I know it wasn’t because I did that job for Errol.”

“Brenna—”

“It was because you knew I’d never change, and I don’t blame you. I haven’t changed. I can’t change.”

“Stop.”

“I think it’s the reason why Maya left, too.”

“No,” he said. “That’s not true. Maya loves you so much.”

Danny’s eyes were visible in the rearview, aimed straight at the highway. Brenna hoped he was lost in thoughts of his own. She didn’t want him to hear this.

“She loves me,” she whispered. “But she isn’t happy with me.”

“Brenna . . .”

“Yes?”

“Maya needs you. So do I.”

Brenna swallowed hard. He’d used the present tense. For both of them. Brenna hung on to that. “Okay.”

“Let’s not give up,” he said. “Please.”

“I won’t,” she said, looking out the window, at the dark, empty highway, at the city lights in the distance. “We won’t.”

There was something about the way Jim had spoken to Brenna, the hushed tone of his voice, the worry in it. It brought on a recent memory—sitting in the lobby of Lindsay’s building with Faith and him, Faith saying it, nearly under her breath.

She’s been keeping secrets. She’s been typing on her computer, and then she hides the typing . . .

“Have you gone through her computer?” Brenna had asked.

“Faith and I read her e-mails,” he had said. “Nothing but homework questions and confirmations of iTunes purchases.”

“Facebook?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Looks the same.” Which had meant
nothing worth looking at
. Maya had just gotten her own Facebook page a month earlier and so far, she’d added no friends beyond Faith and Trent (Brenna and Jim weren’t on Facebook). She’d posted one status on December 12:
“Here I am on Facebook!”

“I want to look at everything, too.” Brenna had asked Jim to copy the contents of Maya’s computer onto an external hard drive, put it in an envelope, and leave it with the doorman of his building. She’d picked it up on the way home.

Yes, the police would surely be going through that laptop tomorrow with tweezers and magnifying glasses. But Brenna hadn’t wanted to leave all of that up to the Missing Persons Unit. She’d wanted to see for herself what Maya had been typing. She’d wanted to get a jump on Plodsky and her cohorts and start finding her daughter now. Also—and probably more importantly, if she was going to be honest—she’d wanted something to occupy her mind, to stop it from churning and remembering and fearing for the worst.

Back at her apartment, though, when Brenna took off her coat and turned the light on, the first thing she saw was the bag full of Clea’s belongings on top of her desk: Brenna’s fears staring her straight in the face—the twenty-eight-year-old clothes of someone she loved, a disappeared girl. She heard the hum of the radiator and felt the hollowness of her home and all she could think of was Maya’s empty room at the end of the hall.

Stop. Get to work
.

She switched on her computer. Checked her bank balance. Maya had an ATM card but there had been no withdrawals since January 15, and Brenna had been the one to make it. She checked her credit card. No new charges, either.

“Where are you, Maya?” She said it to no one, said it into thin air.

Brenna took a breath. She checked her texts and saw one from Trent:
Read your e-mail.

Trent. He didn’t know. She hadn’t told him. She texted back:

Maya’s gone

She waited. No response. Probably asleep. It was late, after all. Past midnight, and tomorrow was a workday.

She opened her e-mail. The only new one was from Trent, and it was titled “BrennaNSpector.” She stared at the name—the name of the person who had been e-mailing with Alan Dufresne—both Dufresne and those e-mail relics from another time. Souvenirs from before everything fell apart. She opened it.

Queen Bee,

Didn’t find out much about the Hotmail addy. The “name” listed under the account is 3434. I was able to hack in though (the password? “Password.” For real. Who does that?) Anyway, here’s what I found: Besides that correspondence with Alan Dufresne, the only e-mails to that account have been from missing persons pages, verifying the address. Turns out 3434 has been posting pictures of Clea on pages like that Snapfish one for at least two years (account is set to automatically delete e-mails over two years old) then taking them down between two and four months later. The pics never stay up longer than four months.

But two years, Spec. Two. Years. You know what that means? (It means Nick is off the hook. Just in case you need me to spell it out for you. Which you usually do.)

Yolo,

TNT, aka Mack Daddy

Brenna read the numbers:
3434
. A thought passed through her mind, but then she pushed it away. It wasn’t possible. And even if it was, she didn’t care. She took the external hard drive out of the envelope, attached it to her desktop, and saw the icon come up on her screen—a folder, labeled “MAYA’S COMPUTER.”

She choked up at the name. Her daughter’s name. She double-clicked on the icon, and Maya’s desktop appeared—a manga character, a girl with spiky purple hair and huge searching green eyes, and for the briefest of moments, Brenna slipped into a memory. February 2, 2009, curled up on the couch after dinner, Matthew Ryan on the stereo, Maya squeezed next to her, laptop open.

Maya clicks on a folder marked “Art,” then a file marked “Untitled” and a manga-style image fills the screen—a girl with spiky purple hair and huge eyes, green and searching.

“She’s cool,” Brenna says. “Where did you find her?”

Maya turns to her. She smiles. “I drew her.”

“You did?

“Yep.”

“That’s . . . how did you get so good?”

Maya shrugs. “It’s not bad, I guess.”

“You have a name for her?”

“I’m thinking Yoru.”

“Yoru?”

Maya stares at the face on the screen, the light from it reflected in her sad, clear eyes.

“It means ‘night’ in Japanese.”

“Yoru,” Brenna whispered. There was a cluster of folders to the left of the screen. She double-clicked on the one marked “English homework.” A collection of files appeared, and she clicked on the most recent:

“Book Report: Tess of the D’Urbervilles—January 19, 2010.”

The due date was this coming Tuesday. She’d last worked on it yesterday morning at 10
A.M.
—one hour before her visit to Dr. Lieberman. Would she have really completed a book report if she was planning on leaving?

Brenna thought of Maya’s hands on her keyboard, typing, her green-eyed screen saver, Night. “
Why Night?”

Maya shrugs. “Because she never lets you see all of her,” she says. “She keeps you in the dark.”

I have found new friends, a beautiful new life.

Had Maya composed the text in her mind before writing the book report? Had she known Mark Carver? Had they been planning her getaway for weeks, just like Clea had no doubt planned hers with Bill?

No. She wouldn’t. Would she?

The first sentence of the book report read:
A beautiful love story is at the heart of Thomas Hardy’s
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
. But it is a love story that is born of sorrow.

Sorrow. The name of Tess’s ill-fated child, Brenna remembered. She wondered if Maya had been making a pun and imagined herself asking her, wishing she could. Wishing she could know all of her, some of her, any of her.

There was a knock on her door. Brenna headed for it fast, pressed her face up against the peephole, feeling a split second of hope . . .

Trent.

She opened the door. He wore the same clothes he’d been wearing earlier, though he looked as though he’d just woken up from a deep sleep, his hair banged up on one side, his shirt rumpled. She tried to smile, couldn’t. “Took you long enough.”