Caught (5 page)

"Something new in her daughter's case?" Wendy asked.

Vic shook his head. "Just the opposite," he said, which, of course, was much worse. For two, maybe three weeks, Haley McWaid's disappearance had been a huge story--teenage abduction? runaway?--complete with NEWSFLASH and scrolls-across-the-screen and bottom-feeding "experts" reconstructing what might have happened to her. But no story, even the most sensational, can survive without new food. Lord knows the networks tried. They had touched on every rumor from white slavery to devil worship, but in this business "no news" was truly "bad news." It was pathetic, our short attention span, and you could blame the news media, but the audience dictated what stayed on the air. If people watch the story, it stays on. If they don't, the networks go searching for the new shiny toy to catch the public's fickle eye.

"Do you want me to talk to her?" Wendy asked.

"No, I'll do it. It's why I get the big bucks."

Vic shooed her away. Wendy headed down the end of the corridor. She turned in time to see Marcia McWaid in front of Vic's door. Wendy didn't know Marcia, but she'd seen her in town a few times, the way you do, at the Starbucks or school car-pickup lane or local video store. It would be a cliche to say the perky mom who always seemed to have a kid in tow now looked ten years older. Marcia didn't. She was still an attractive enough woman, still looked her age, but it was as though every movement had slowed down, as if even the muscles that controlled facial expression were coated in molasses. Marcia McWaid turned and met Wendy's eye. Wendy nodded, tried to give a half-smile. Marcia turned away and entered Vic's office.

Wendy went back to her desk and picked up her phone. She thought about Marcia McWaid, that ideal mother with the nice husband and beautiful family and how quickly and easily that had been snatched away, how quickly and easily any of it could be snatched away. She dialed Charlie's phone.

"What?"

The impatient tone actually comforted her. "Did you do your homework yet?"

"In a minute."

"Okay," Wendy said. "You still want Bamboo House tonight?"

"Didn't we already have this discussion?"

They hung up. Wendy sat back and threw her feet up on the desk. She craned her neck and checked out the butt-ugly view from her window. Her phone rang again.

"Hello?"

"Wendy Tynes?"

Her feet fell back to the floor when she heard the voice. "Yes?"

"This is Dan Mercer. I need to see you."

CHAPTER 3

FOR A MOMENT, Wendy said nothing.

"I need to see you," Dan Mercer said again.

"Aren'tIalittle mature for you, Dan? I mean, I'm old enough to have a menstrual cycle and breasts."

She thought that she could hear a sigh.

"You're very cynical, Wendy."

"What do you want?"

"There are things you need to know," he said.

"Like?"

"Like nothing here is as it seems."

"You're a sick, twisted, depraved perv who has a genius for a lawyer. That's how it seems."

But even as she said it, there was just the slightest hesitation in her voice. Was it enough to warrant reasonable doubt? She didn't think so. Evidence doesn't lie. She had learned that often enough both personally and professionally. The truth was, her so-called woman's intuition was usually crap.

"Wendy?"

She said nothing.

"I was set up."

"Uh-huh. That's a new one, Dan. Let me jot that down and grab my producer, have him put one of those news scrolls on the bottom of the screen. 'Newsflash: Sicko Says He Was Set Up.' "

Silence. For a moment she feared that she'd lost him, that he had hung up. Stupid to get all emotional. Stay calm. Talk to him. Make friends. Be nice. Get information. Trap him maybe.

"Dan?"

"This was a mistake."

"I'm listening. You said something about being set up?"

"I better go."

She wanted to protest, scold herself for going too far with the sarcasm, but something about this felt like classic manipulation. She had danced his tangos before, several times, in fact, starting with the first time she tried to interview him last year for a piece about his work at the shelter, almost a year before he'd been caught on camera. She didn't want to cave, but she didn't want to let him go either.

"You were the one who called me," she said.

"I know."

"So I'm willing to listen."

"Meet me. Alone."

"I'm not crazy about that idea."

"Then forget it."

"Fine, Dan, have it your way. See you in court."

Silence.

"Dan?"

His voice was a whisper that chilled her. "You don't have a clue, do you, Wendy?"

"A clue about what?"

She heard a noise that might have been a sob, might have been a laugh. Hard to say over the phone. She gripped the receiver tighter and waited.

"If you want to meet me," he said, "I'll e-mail you the directions. Two PM tomorrow. Come alone. If you choose not to show, well, it was nice knowing you."

And then he hung up.

VIC'S OFFICE DOOR WAS OPEN. She took a quick peek and saw him on the phone. He held up a finger to give him a second, said a gruff good-bye to whomever was on the phone, and hung up.

"I just heard from Dan Mercer," she said.

"He called you?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Just now."

Vic leaned back, put his hands on his paunch. "So he told you?"

"He said he was set up and wanted to meet." She saw the look on his face. "Why? What else is there?"

Vic sighed. "Sit down."

"Uh-oh," Wendy said.

"Yeah, uh-oh."

She sat.

"The judge handed down her ruling. All evidence found in the home is thrown out, and because of the prejudicial nature of the press and our TV airing, she threw out all charges."

Wendy felt her heart sink. "Please tell me you're joking."

Vic said nothing. Wendy closed her eyes, felt the world closing in around her. She got it now, how Dan had known that she'd definitely show up at the meet.

"So now what?" she asked.

Vic just looked at her.

"I'm fired?"

"Yep."

"Just like that?"

"Pretty much, yeah. Bad economy. The suits upstairs are laying people off anyway." He shrugged. "Who better to ax?"

"I can think of many."

"Me too, but they're not damaged goods. Sorry, sweetie, that's just the way it is. HR will handle severance. You need to pack your stuff today. They don't want you back in the building."

Wendy felt numb. She teetered to a standing position. "Did you at least fight for me?"

"I only fight when I have a chance to win. Otherwise what's the point?"

Wendy waited. Vic looked down and pretended to be busy.

Without looking up, Vic said, "You expecting a tender moment here?"

"No," Wendy said. Then: "Maybe."

"Are you going to meet with Mercer?" Vic asked.

She turned back toward him. "Yes."

"You'll take precautions?"

She forced up a smile. "Man, I just had a flashback to something my mom said when I was starting college."

"And from what I know, you didn't listen."

"True."

"Officially, of course, you don't work here and have no standing. I should advise you to keep a safe distance from Dan Mercer."

"And unofficially?"

"If you could figure a way to nail him, well, heroes are easier to rehire than goats."

THE HOUSE WAS SILENT when Wendy got home, but that meant nothing. In her youth, her parents would know she was home because her music would be blaring from the ghetto box in her room. Nowadays kids used headphones or earbuds or whatever they called them 24/7. She was fairly confident that was where Charlie was right now, on the computer, earbuds firmly in place. The house could catch fire, and he would have no idea.

Despite this, Wendy shouted at the top of her lungs, "Charlie!" There was no answer. There hadn't been an answer in at least three years.

Wendy poured herself a drink--pomegranate vodka with a splash of lime--and collapsed onto the worn club chair. The chair had been John's favorite, and yeah, that was probably creepy, keeping the chair here and collapsing in it with a drink at the end of the day, but she found it comforting, so tough.

How the hell, Wendy had wondered before today, would she pay for Charlie's tuition on her current salary? Now that wasn't a concern because there was simply no way. She took another sip, glanced out the window, pondered where she would go from here. Nobody was hiring and as Vic had so delicately pointed out, she was damaged goods. She thought about what other kind of job she could do but realized that she had no other marketable skills. She was sloppy, disorganized, ornery, not a team player. If she took home a work report card, it would read, "Does not play well with others." That worked as a reporter going after a story. It worked almost nowhere else.

She checked the mail and saw the third letter from Ariana Nasbro and felt a sharp pang in her gut. Her hands began to shake. No need to open the letter. She had read the first one two months ago and nearly vomited. With two fingers, she held the envelope as though it had a stench, which it did when you thought about it, walked into the kitchen, and stuck it into the bottom of the wastebasket.

Thank God, Charlie never checked the mail. He knew who Ariana Nasbro was, of course. Twelve years ago, Ariana Nasbro had murdered Charlie's father.

She headed up the stairs and knocked on Charlie's door. Naturally there was no reply so she opened it.

He looked up, annoyed, pulled off the headphones. "What?"

"Did you do your homework?"

"Just about to."

He could see that she was put out, so he flashed the smile, so like his father's that it stabbed every single time. She was about to launch into him again, about how she'd asked him to do homework first, but really, who cared? It was pointless to get caught up in all that minutiae when her time with him was flying by so fast and soon he'd be gone.

"Did you feed Jersey?" she asked.

"Uh . . ."

She rolled her eyes. "Never mind, I'll do it."

"Mom?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you pick up the food at Bamboo House?"

Dinner. She had forgotten.

Charlie rolled his eyes, mimicking her.

"Don't be a smart-ass." She had decided earlier not to tell him her bad news yet, to wait for the right time, but she still found herself saying, "I got fired today."

Charlie just looked at her.

"Did you hear me?"

"Yeah," he said. "Sucks."

"Yep."

"You want me to pick up dinner?"

"Sure."

"Uh, you still pay for it, right?"

"For now, yeah. I think I can handle that."

CHAPTER 4

MARCIA AND TED MCWAID ARRIVED at the high school auditorium at six PM. Because the old cliche that "life goes on" could not have been more true, tonight, despite the fact that Haley had now been missing ninety-three days, was opening night of the Kasselton High School production of
Les Miserables,
featuring their second child, Patricia, in the roles of Onlooker #4, Student #6, and the always-coveted role of Prostitute #2. When Ted first heard about that, in the life they'd known before Haley had vanished, he had made constant jokes about this, how proud he was to tell his friends that his fourteen-year-old daughter would be Prostitute #2. Those days were long gone, a world and time lived by other people in another land.

A hush fell over the auditorium when they entered. No one knew how to act around them. Marcia got it but was beyond caring.

"I need some water," she said.

Ted nodded. "I'll save us seats."

She headed down the corridor, stopped briefly at the fountain, then continued. At the next turn, she made a left. Down the hall, a janitor worked a mop. He wore earphones, his head gently bobbing to a song only he could hear; if he noticed her, nothing on his face showed it.

Marcia started up the stairs to the second floor. The lights were dimmer on this level. Her footsteps clacked and echoed against the stillness of a building that during the day knew so much life and energy. There is no place more surreal, more hollow and empty, than a school corridor at night.

Marcia looked over her shoulder, but she was alone. She hurried her step because she had a destination in mind.

Kasselton High was big, nearly two thousand kids in four grades. The building was on four levels, and like so many high schools from towns with constantly growing populations, it ended up being more a series of pieced-together add-ons than anything resembling a cohesive structure. The later additions to the once-lovely original brick showed that the administrators had been more interested in substance over style. The configuration was a mishmash, looking more like something a child had made by mixing wooden blocks, LEGOs, and Lincoln logs.

Last night, in the scary quiet of the McWaid home, her wonderful husband, Ted, had laughed, really laughed, for the first time in ninety-three days. How obscene the sound was. Ted stopped almost right away, cut himself off in a choking way that became a sob. Marcia wanted to reach out, do something to comfort this tortured man that she so loved. But she simply couldn't.

Her other two children, Patricia and Ryan, were handling Haley's disappearance okay on the outside, but kids adapt more easily than adults. Marcia tried to concentrate on them and shower them with attention and comfort, but again she simply couldn't. Some probably figured that she hurt too much. That was part of it, but there was more. She neglected Patricia and Ryan because all she worried about right now, her sole focus, was on Haley--bringing her back home. Then, after that, she would make it up to her other children.

Marcia's own sister, Merilee, the popular know-it-all from Great Neck, had the nerve to say, "You need to focus on your husband and other children and stop wallowing," and when she said that word--"wallowing"!--Marcia wanted so much to punch Merilee in the face and tell her to worry about her own damn family and that her son Greg was taking drugs and her husband, Hal, was probably having an affair and to shut the hell up. Patricia and Ryan would hopefully get through this, Merilee--and you know what? Their best chance at being okay wouldn't be by having a mother who made sure that Ryan's lacrosse stick pocket was properly broken in or that Patricia's costume was the right shade of gray. No, the thing that would make them fine and whole, the only thing, would be to bring their older sister back home.