Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (9 page)

 

Chapter 15

I
'M SITTING ON
my couch in a daze. Sergeant Jackson kneels at my side.

“We got info entered into the NCIC and NCMEC,” he says. “We've issued an AMBER Alert. Bloodhounds are out searching the beach. We've got a team from Hamilton Air Force Base working with U.S. Coast Guardsmen doing a grid search for the square mile around the beach. We're doing door-­to-­door searches within that mile. We've got a sheriff's helicopter up with their infrared camera scouring the city and beaches, and another one searching the Marin headlands. We've got roadblocks and are distributing pictures of Frank Anderson.” He ticks things off on his fingers as he speaks. “The FBI is gathering a response team. Coast Guard is out on all nearby bodies of water.”

He trails off.

Coast Guard. Searching the waters. Looking for her body.

I sneak a glance at the clock. It is 4:30 p.m. She's been missing for ninety minutes.

“I'm going to need you to make a list of everyone you know,” he says, tapping his pen on his thigh and walking away, pacing near the window.

On a yellow legal pad off the coffee table and with my hand shaking, I list every person I know, along with their address and phone number. Some techie-­looking guys come in. They fiddle with the phone jack. After a few minutes, a thick, boxy phone console is on the table, connected to a tape recorder with wires.

Sergeant Jackson reappears. “Any calls you get, you hit record. John here will trace them. Also, I want you to keep a pen and pad near the phone. If the call comes in on your cell phone, write it down. If it's on your house phone, hit record, and write down the name and number on the pad. Record everyone, even your husband.”

Boyfriend.

“Got it?”

I nod, acting like I have it together. The sergeant stares at me. I wonder if my eyes are bulging. I rush to the bathroom, clutching my cell phone and throwing the door open in time to collapse on my knees and dry heave into the toilet. When I'm done, I wash my face, avoiding my own eyes in the mirror.

Slumping back to the floor, I grab my phone off the bathroom sink and dial the hospital, which connects me to my mom's room.

“Ella. I'm so sorry.” It's my aunt Lucia, my mother's sister. “Your mother is still unconscious. If it makes you feel any better, she looks good. Like she's sleeping. I'm sure she's going to wake up soon. You just concentrate on finding your little angel.” I hear her voice catch for a second. This is the second time my family has been through this. My aunt was there with my mother when Caterina was taken.

W
HEN
G
RACE WAS
four, I took her to Caterina's grave. She'd been asking about the picture I keep on my nightstand of Caterina and me. She didn't really understand that Caterina was a child when she died.

“Where is Aunt Caterina?” She would ask me this, and I never knew how to answer.

“In heaven with God,” I would say.

“Oh.” But her little face would scrunch up. I would sometimes catch her holding the picture and talking to Caterina. She called her “Sis” in her play chatter.

“Sis, let's go play dolls. No, I don't want to eat my peas. I don't like peas. Well, then you eat them.”

I loved how vivid her little imaginary world was, but it also filled me with grief that my daughter and sister would never meet.

“I'm going to Caterina's grave today,” I told Grace one morning. “I'm going to drop you off at Nana's first.”

“I want to go. I want to see Aunt Caterina,” she said, leaping up from her pile of stuffed animals and yanking open her dresser drawer to get dressed.

I hesitated. “You know she's not there, right? It is just a place Mama likes to go to remember her.” It was so hard to explain.

“Do you talk to her there?”

I waited a second and then said yes. “But she can't answer you, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay. Let's go.” She grabbed her little pink sweater and headed for the door.

At the grave, she stood there, solemnly looking at the little black-­and-­white picture of Caterina embedded into the grave marker.

“She's pretty.”

I smiled. “You look exactly like her except for your hair is dark brown instead of black and you have freckles.”

“Angel's kisses?” Grace tugged on one of her curls absentmindedly. And then she smiled. “I'm glad.” She reached up and grabbed my hand. “Can we go now?”

I nodded.

“Bye Caterina,” Grace said and skipped to the car, singing something under her breath.

“E
LLA?”
M
Y AUNT'S
voice jolts me back to my San Francisco bathroom.

“Aunt Lucia, what do I do? Please help me. Tell me what to do.”

The line is silent for a few seconds, then she clears her throat.

“This is not your sister, Ella. They will find her. Do you understand?”

I can't even choke out an answer. Instead, I click the disconnect button.

A
WOMAN WITH
blond hair held back by sunglasses on top of her head walks in my front door. I'm standing in the doorway of my bathroom, leaning against the doorjamb and trying to get the motivation to walk into the living room full of cops, when I spot her. She wears a chic black tunic and leggings with cute red ballet flats that I automatically admire, which sends a zing of sickening guilt through me. I shouldn't have another thought in my head except Grace. Not another motherfucking thought.

She stops to speak to one of the uniformed police officers milling near my door, and he points my way. The woman heads toward me, lugging a large sketch pad and fold-­up easel. A giant black tote bag is slung over one shoulder. She carries it all effortlessly. When she gets close, she sticks out her free hand.

“I'm Anissa Kennedy,” she says, giving my hand a firm shake. Her gaze is somehow professional and sympathetic at the same time. “I'm a forensic sketch artist with the San Francisco Police Department. I've worked with them for the past fifteen years. Before that I was a professional artist, but after my best friend was murdered, I wanted to put my talents toward something that would really matter in this world.”

I was right. What I saw in her eyes was the empathy that only a person who has lost a loved one to violence can truly have. We are members of a melancholy tribe that recognizes one another on a subliminal level deep down inside.

I nod, and she continues.

“I'm going to ask you some questions so we can come up with a composite sketch of the man you saw on the beach the other day,” she says, shifting the sketch pad to her other hip. “It might be a little bit tougher, since a few days have passed, but I bet together we can come up with something that looks like him. You ready?”

“But it's not him.” My voice comes out warbly.
It's Frank Anderson
.

“Let's just get your description down as best as we can.” She pats my shoulder. “Just in case he saw something when he was on the beach. You don't need to worry about anything else.” She glances around at my crowded living room. “Can we go someplace quiet?”

I lead her to our bedroom.

When I close the door she says, “I always like to point out that a composite sketch is not a hard piece of evidence but, rather, an investigative tool.”

“I'm ready.”

Anissa sits on a pink velvet chair near my dresser, and I sit on the bed while she asks her questions. She hands me a thick catalogue. I flip through it as she sets up her easel. The catalogue has hundreds of face shapes. Eyes. Eyebrows. Noses. Lips. Cheeks.

“I know this is hard for you, but I need you to try to relax as much as possible. What I'm asking you is information you know, even if you don't think you know it,” she says, testing out some pencils on a scrap piece of paper. “You have all this information in your memory. I'm just going to help you access it.”

“Okay,” I say, staring off into space.

“The first, rough sketch is going to be done quickly. Then I'm going to show it to you, and we'll fine-­tune some of the details, okay?” She sharpens one pencil and sets it on the easel.

I nod and meet her eyes. It feels like even turning my head takes enormous effort.

“The first thing we're going to talk about is the general face shape of this man. So turn to that page, please, and we'll go over them.”

I flip to the beginning of the catalogue and look at the face shapes. I find one that is square-­ish, with a Superman-­type chin, and show her. She nods. Glancing occasionally at the picture I pointed out, she concentrates on the sketch.

We work on developing a sketch for what feels like forever and no time all at once. When I look up, an hour has passed. It is five thirty. Grace has been missing for two and a half hours.

The picture Anissa holds up at the end is a good likeness of the man I saw on the beach. I wish I could run it by Donovan to see if he agrees.

“It's him.”

She purses her pink lips and nods. “I'm going to sign and date the front, and then I want you to sign the back.”

After I sign the back, she opens my bedroom door and says a name I don't recognize. Standing there waiting, Annisa asks, “How accurate is it on a scale of one to ten?”

“Maybe an eight?”

But even though it is close to what I remember, I don'
t trust my memory
. Pulitzer Prize-­winning
Miami Herald
crime reporter Edna Buchanan cited studies showing eyewitnesses are bunk. “What about all those studies of eyewitnesses and how ­people can't really remember?” I ask.

“Don't you worry about any of that,” Anissa says, gathering her things. “If it makes you feel better, I have a good track record with my drawings. Eighty percent of the time when there is an arrest, the suspect looks like my sketch.”

She walks to the doorway of my bedroom, where a detective in a blazer and khakis waits. She hands him the sketch and he leaves.

Anissa gives me an apologetic look. “We're getting it to the media and making copies as soon as possible. We want to still make the six o'clock news.”

“But that guy is not the one who took Grace,” I say.

“They still want to question him. He might have seen something that day when you saw him on the beach,” she reminds me.

She's right—­if Frank Anderson knew the spot where my mother took Grace to the beach. He knew to find her there. That means he might have been stalking us for a while. He might have even been there the other night. What if that guy who touched Grace's arm is working with Frank or saw Frank on the beach that night?

When I finally take a step out of my quiet bedroom, the scene in the rest of my condo seems like sensory overload. The TV is blaring, showing footage of Ocean Beach and one of the snapshots of Grace I gave the sergeant. They've blown up one of my favorite pictures of Grace. They've cropped the butterfly out of the picture so the entire frame is taken up by her little face and mop of dark brown curls. I want to kneel in front of the TV and run my finger along the glass, tracing her tiny pink lips, small smattering of freckles on her nose, and giant dark eyes.

But it was just a teaser for the lead story we will see in a minute, so the picture disappears and instead the screen shows two television anchors looking grim.

I want to go hide in my room. Our small condo is filled with cops, and it makes it hard to breathe. In all the chaos, I barely notice my sisters-­in-­law, Sally and Nina, rush in, eyes puffy and red from crying. They scoop me up in their arms and hold me close, breathing into my hair. I fall into their arms, suddenly weak. They are all weeping, but my eyes are dry. My daughter has been kidnapped and I haven't shed a tear.

“They'll find her. Don't worry, they'll find her,” Sally says, clutching my hand, her blue eyes shot with red. Nina's heart-­shaped face is filled with fear. She doesn't say a word, only tucks my hair behind my ears and looks into my eyes. She can't disguise the sorrow in her eyes, and she doesn't try. She squeezes my hand. Words are not needed. We huddle on the couch, holding hands, my knuckles white. We all grow quiet watching the TV, waiting for the newscast to start.

Sergeant Jackson is on his phone by the window. I can hear him talking about a vehicle. A ripple of hope fills me. How did they get a vehicle description? He is describing a big white van without windows, jotting notes and repeating it back to whoever is on the other end of the line. A kidnapper van. In the newsroom, we've always jokingly called big vans without windows “kidnapper vans.” Now it seems like the worst joke ever.

As soon as he hangs up, the news starts, my cell phone and the house phone ring at the same time, and the clock on the wall strikes 6:00 p.m. My heart sinks.

Those first three critical hours have come and gone.

 

Chapter 16

W
ITH BOTH PHONES
ringing, I reach for my cell and Sally answers the house phone, reaching for the pen and paper where we are supposed to record the calls. Donovan is on my cell. The thump of helicopter blades nearly drowns him out. He is shouting.

“I'm going up in the air,” he says. “They've got someone pulled over in San Mateo. White van.”

“Where?” I realize how loud I've said it when everyone in the room stops and stares.

“Stay put.” Donovan is shouting over the noise of the helicopter starting up. “I'll be at the van in seven minutes. Will call you then.”

He hangs up. I stand, holding the phone to my ear even though the line is dead.

Sergeant Jackson hangs up his phone and hurries over. “Just sit tight there for a few until we know more. If it's her, I'll personally escort you there in my vehicle, lights and sirens. Got it?” He puts his hand on my arm. I stare at it. He doesn't think it's her.

He clears his throat. A shiver of apprehension goes through me before he even speaks.

“I need the names and numbers of Grace's medical doctor and dentist.” He must see the look of horror on my face, because he quickly adds, “Standard procedure in cases like this.”

Cases like this.
I scream it in my head but manage to keep my lips pressed tightly together. I know this is standard procedure, but how can this apply to my life? To my daughter?
Motherfuck. Motherfuck. Motherfuck. He's talking about dental records and the tiny X-­ray they took when she broke her finger running down that grassy hill last summer.
No, no, no, no. Things used to identify a body.

Sally is busy talking to someone on the phone. She twirls a strand of her blond hair around one finger as she does. It sounds like some family member. Every once in a while she glances over at me. Clutching my cell in my hand, I pace, waiting for Donovan to call back. I stop by the door, slip on my shoes, hang my bag over my shoulder, and grab a sweater. I'm ready to run out that door as soon as Donovan calls.

Please dear God let the van have Grace in it and let her be okay
.
I will do anything you want if you bring her home safe to me. I will let her become a nun if that is what you have planned for her.
I realize I'm in the bargaining stage of the grief process, which makes no sense because I'm not really grieving. There is no reason to grieve. Grace is missing. We will find her. Besides, as far as I know, God doesn't make bargains.

I wander into the hall and stop at Grace's bedroom. Things are out of place, but the cops didn't ransack it like I've seen elsewhere.

A few of the drawers on her little white dresser remain pulled out. Her bed is mussed up. I grab a fistful of the covers in my hands, wishing they hadn't taken her pillow, wondering why they took her little pillow. Her brush is missing from the top of her dresser. A stack of papers is on her little art desk. They've been flipped through. I sit on the floor next to the desk, not letting go of the cell phone. A few times I check to make sure the battery hasn't died.

Picking up a few of Grace's drawings, what must be a cross between a smile and a grimace spreads my lips apart as I choke back a sob. I flip through her crayon scribbles. One makes me pause. It is three stick figures in a row. Me, Donovan, and a tiny figure with brown crayon hair that is Grace. It is what we are wearing that stops me in my tracks. Donovan has on something mostly black. Black pants. Black shirt with a white stripe down the middle. He also has on a top hat. Or at least what looks like one. Grace has drawn me in a long, white gown that trails off behind me. The white blob on my head trailing off behind me must be a veil. Both Grace and I are holding little clusters of red circles that must be Red Grace flowers. Her favorite.

It's our wedding.

The last time I spoke to Grace on the phone, I realized how badly she wants her parents to be married. I've ignored her pleas and dismissed them as childish.

I'm so sorry, Grace. I didn't know how important it was to you.

I should have realized. Because most little kids want their parents to be the same as everyone else's. When you are little, anything different is difficult to understand. The differences you grow to embrace with age are hard to accept when you are a child figuring out how things work in the world.

My cell rings. I shoot to my feet, shoving the picture into my bag as I answer.

“Wrong van.” It's Donovan. There is so much sorrow and disappointment in those two words that my knees collapse. I stretch my entire body out on the little rag carpet in Grace's room, pressing my face into the knotted folds of pink and green and squeezing my eyes together as tightly as I can.

No.

The phone is still in my outstretched arm. I hear Donovan's voice, but I can't make out what he is saying. I don't care what he is saying. Unless he tells me he has found Grace, I don't care about anything else.

M
Y SISTER-­IN-­LAW
S
ALLY
finds me on the floor later.

Donovan must have hung up, because he's no longer on the line.

I glance at the time on my phone. It is now seven. Four hours have passed since Grace disappeared. I don't think I have it in me to get up off the floor. I've been lying here for what feels like forever, although it's really only been an hour.

“Marco called,” Sally says.

I stare at her feet beside my head. She has on black Chanel flats. “How's Mom?” I ask.

“I don't know.”

I arch my head to look up at her, and her forehead crinkles in confusion. “Wasn't Marco at the hospital?” I ask.

“No. He and Dante have been out at the beach helping the search.”

I'd thought my brothers would rush to the hospital to be with my mother, but they are out trying to find Grace.

“I should go see Mom.” I scramble to my feet.

Sally rubs my arm. “There's nothing you can do there. Last time I talked to Aunt Lucia, she could barely hear me because of all the noise in the room. Mom's hospital room is packed with aunts and uncles and cousins. The nurses are losing their minds. She's probably pretending not to wake up so she doesn't have to deal with all of them.”

The image of all my Italian aunts and uncles, crying and praying the rosary and arguing in my mother's hospital room, makes me smile.

But I quickly grow somber. How can I sit here smiling when my mom is unconscious and Grace is . . . God knows what she is going through? I don't even realize I'm yanking at my hair until Sally gently moves my hands away.

“Ella, I came in here to tell you that Sergeant Jackson wants to speak to you.”

I take a deep breath, stand up, and head down the hall. When I walk into the main room, I see my cousin Tricia making coffee in my kitchen. With her big eyes, skinny body, and massive mop of black curls, she looks just like Cher in
Moonstruck
. She drops everything on the counter and rushes over, scooping me up in her arms, weeping so hard that the front of my shirt is instantly wet.

She pulls back, wiping her nose. “God, I'm sorry.” She looks away, then thrusts a stack of papers at me. “I had my coworker print out these fliers off the police website. They are all over Ocean Beach and the neighborhood surrounding it.”

Tricia works for the San Francisco Child Protective Ser­vices office. I'm afraid to look at the flier, but I pick one up with a trembling hand.

Grace looks out at me with her innocent smile, and I feel like a giant hand just wrapped itself around my heart and squeezed it, trying to make it pop.

The flier describes her like this:

“Grace Giovanni is a white female with brown curly hair and brown eyes. She is 2'5” weighing 32 lbs. Her left pinky finger is slightly crooked. She has pierced ears with pink and white flower earrings. Last seen wearing a yellow flowered swimsuit and no shoes.”

Sergeant Jackson hovers at my shoulder.

“Now, all of this is just a precaution in case we don't find her in the next few hours,” he says. “I'm going to tell you what happens if they don't find her by about two a.m., just so you are prepared. At that time, most of the searchers will go home to catch a few hours of sleep and they'll be back out first thing at dawn. Some of my guys are still out there, but I have to say that most of the square mile surrounding the beach has been thoroughly searched. We will keep them out there until two just in case. But honestly, there's a good chance, a really high likelihood, that she's not in the area anymore and was taken somewhere else. That's why we really need to shift our focus to getting the word out as far and wide as we can. I've scheduled a press conference for ten in the morning tomorrow, and I think you and the father should be there.”

I nod but think,
We won't need it.
She'll be home by then. She has to be home by then
.

“I've been talking to your sister-­in-­law Nina, and she's going to set up a volunteer center tomorrow—­”

He's interrupted by a commotion at the door.

Donovan.

He stops in the doorway, and our eyes meet across the room for a second. Behind him, I see the diminutive form of his mother.

Mrs. Donovan. I don't call her this to her face. Her first name is Fiona, but I try not to use that. I try to avoid calling her anything to her face because it is so awkward.

I've been with her only son for eight years now but have only seen her less than a dozen times, usually on a holiday or some big family event. She lives in Sacramento, where Donovan's six sisters live. Once a month Donovan takes Grace up there to see them. It's usually the one Saturday a month I'm scheduled to work in the newsroom. It's not that I don't want to go, it's just become a tradition for him to take Grace there when I work a weekend shift.

I
think
Donovan's mother likes me, but I don't know for sure. What I do know is that she doesn't approve of us “living in sin,” as she told Donovan once. I don't think I'm going to be fully welcomed into her family until I'm legally married to her son. And a stubborn part of me is angry about that. I'm the mother of her beloved grandchild. Doesn't that count for something?

It does. I know it. She adores Grace. And the ravaged look on her face right now tells me she's hurting.

Sergeant Jackson is at Donovan's side, and he pulls away to speak to him.

“Can you take a look at this sketch and confirm that it's the guy you and your girlfriend saw.”

“Fiancée,” he says stiffly. I remember feeling the small velvet box in his jacket pocket. The picture Grace drew flits back into my mind.

We're going to get her back and then we're going to get married
.

The words fly into my head before I realize it, and then I decide they are true.

We will get her back and get married to celebrate
.

Then I notice Mrs. Donovan is in front of me.

“Gabriella, we came as soon as I heard,” she says. One hand with long mauve nails pats her bright red hair while she looks around in a daze. Her eyes are red.

“We?”

“Jamie is parking the car. She drove.”

Donovan's sister came, too. “Thank you for coming.”

Her hands, wrinkled and filled with age spots, fiddle with her old-­fashioned handbag, undoing and resnapping the clasp. “We won't be any bother. We're staying over at the Marriott at Fisherman's Wharf.”

“You can stay here,” I protest, but she shakes her head.

“We don't want to be a bother. We just want to help. What can I do?” Her manner is matter-­of-­fact despite her red-­rimmed eyes, and I realize she needs to feel useful, like she is helping.

“I've been meaning to get into the kitchen and help my cousin Tricia make coffee and set out some food, but I just haven't had a chance to do it.”

Fiona sets down her purse, straightens her shoulders, and says briskly, “Don't worry about it for another second. It's taken care of. Send Jamie into the kitchen when she arrives.” She marches into the kitchen, and Donovan looks my way. His eyes are filled with gratefulness. I give him a slight smile and instantly feel guilty. How can I even consider smiling right now?

I make my way over to him and grasp his fingers like a lifeline. He continues talking to Sergeant Jackson but squeezes my hand so tight it hurts. I relish the pain.

“I just got done meeting with Agent West,” he says to Jackson. “He's got a BOLO out for Frank Anderson. If there is a volunteer center set up, I want criminal background checks run on all the volunteers,” Donovan says, rhythmically squeezing my hand. “I want a camera filming everyone who signs in. I want a list given to me of everyone who volunteers, and I want a cop stationed at the volunteer center.”

Sergeant Jackson hesitates for a second, mouth wide open, looking like he's about to protest, but then he closes his lips and nods. “Whatever you say, boss.”

He's with a different department and outranks Donovan, yet he is deferring to him in this case. I'm filled with gratitude. He is preventing this nightmare from being even worse. If we wanted or needed things done and the police pooh-­poohed us or dismissed our concerns, this would get ugly fast. Donovan has good reason for his demands. Donovan knows what I do. And what Sergeant Jackson probably knows. There is a chance her kidnapper will show up at the volunteer center and sign up to help search as a sick thrill.

Looking around, I see that our tiny condo is packed with ­people. Everyone is busy doing something to help find my daughter. My phone rings. It's Aunt Lucia again. She spoke to the doctor and wants to fill me in on what happened to my mother. With my phone pressed to my ear, I rush to my bedroom and lock myself inside so I can listen where it is quiet.

I take notes as she talks. What she says is very confusing to me—­I think she had a hard time understanding what the doctor was saying—­so after I hang up, I grab my medical handbook and look up what she told me.