Detective D. Case (12 page)

          “Winnie? Winnie, where are you?” It was her Mother.
She ignored her.

          But then it happened . . .

          A beautiful movie was playing on TV. The night outside
was chipped with ice and snow so nobody wished to go there. There they were, witnessing
not just a movie but an event unfolding beneath their eyes like a scroll rolling
out its story and truths, none of their eyes blinking (at least they thought it
that way). Flakes of snow dotted the window glass, frosting it over like a junior
blizzard--movement nobody thought about. All their attention was geared to the bride-to-be
wandering in an endless forest of wonder, somehow killing herself in tragic beauty.

          Two family members who weren’t there were Father and
Paul. This must have happened a year or two after the Winnie the Doll present, so
Paul was still in that other country Winnie forgot the name of and was coming home
for the special occasions. Father, at the time, was on his way to the docks so he
could pick his son up from where the boats were. Winnie was so excited for Paul
to come over (finally!) that although she watched the movie with the rest of the
family, her knees couldn’t stop bouncing. She kept a serious face about it, though.

          Winnie, now in the small closet in her bedroom, swallowed
hard. She felt her throat clutch and tighten. When her eyes were closed . . .

          Father, in the rain, was stricken with tears and rain
but looked the same. Mother was weeping on his shoulder, much later, as everyone
else watched. Winnie herself ran up the stairs, not crying at all, but just looking
. . . she just didn’t know what it meant then. The beautiful movie still played,
but none of the family wanted to watch, not anymore. She only watched the snow.

          “Winnie.” Mother was with her now, probably already
knowing where she was hiding. Most people in her family didn’t, but somehow her
mother knew everything about her, not caring if she knew about it or not. “Winnie,
someone’s here for us.”

          She looked at her mother. “What do you mean, mother?”

          “There’s a man at the door. He wants to see us all.”

          Winnie sighed. “The whole family?” she said, trying
to not sound like she was whining. Apparently she failed at that part.

          “Yes, Winnie, the whole family has to come.” She grabbed
Winnie’s hand.

          “Can you at least tell me who it is?”

          “An officer,” her mother told her.  A police officer
or officer of security, she didn’t know.

          The officer’s name was Lincoln Deed. Winnie found it
out from the name tag he wore. When she saw him, the officer named Lincoln looked
like he’d gotten into a fight with cats. Under her parents’ orders, she managed
to ask no questions to the officers and only watched. She would only answer when
spoken to.

          “. . . And this is our daughter,” both her mother and
father said in some special presentation of their youngest daughter.

          Officer Deed stooped down so he got a better look. “So
what’s your name, little girl?”

          “Winnie,” she choked. Never did she favor talking to
strangers.

          “Hmmm,” the officer mused, sounding like her name tasted
good. “Winnie McDermott, is that it?”

          “What about it?” The question didn’t make any sense.

          “I think it’s a beautiful name, Winnie. How old are
you?”

          “Ten.”

          “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Winnie.” He went
back to Mother and Father. “Mind if I come in? There’s some very important information
we need to go over. See, I was with a family called the Davidsons . . .”

          Winnie prodded her mother, tugging her sleeve and all,
and asked if she could go back to her bedroom. “Not now, Winnie. We all need to
participate and see what the officer needs of us. Just be patient, okay?”

          She made a face, a pouty one. “Okay.”

          They all sat down in the living room where Winnie’s
parents had a gorgeous dining table where they ate every day. It went all the way
to the other side of the room, which when Winnie measured it, added up to about
sixty Winnie hands placed in one line. It was a lot of hands and besides, when you
sat on the very end of the table, the other end was so far that it had a vanishing
point type of look. Winnie sat at either ends so she could see the vanishing point.
Father had told her about the phrase, “vanishing point”.

          “Sit here, Officer Deed,” her mother told the officer.
“Right over here . . . better?”

          “Yes, thank you.” Officer Deed, unfortunately, sat on
the best side of the table. It was Winnie’s favorite seat with the other side placing
second. “There seems to be a problem with the case you brought up. You know the
one about your missing son, right?”

          But Winnie’s mother just said “Paul” and then stayed
silent.

          “Yes, Paul.” Even Officer Deed sounded like he would
tear up, which made no sense to Winnie because police officers never cried. They
never acted human when she saw them, but this one somehow was different. “There’s
another case I, uh, discovered recently, involving a family, the Davidsons. I mentioned
that at your doorstep.”

          “Yes, you have,” Winnie’s father said. “What is it
that concerns you, officer? Does it have to do with Paul?”

          “Kind of,” said Officer Deed. “I spoke to the
Davidsons recently, which is how I got these . . .” He pointed at all the
scratches he received. Winnie wondered how a person could get hurt like that;
you probably needed surgery or something to make it all better again. One
bruise was right under the officer’s eye, which swelled like a bumble bee
sting. Winnie shivered, wincing.
Do families end up hurting each other?
 She
wondered about that, hugging her knees on her chair.

          Mother watched her. “Is there something wrong,
Winnie?” she whispered, lowering her voice away from Officer Deed’s louder one.

          Winnie looked up, saying, “No, mother. There’s
nothing wrong.”

          “It looks like it to me.” The long, etched lines
that were not wrinkles carved through her forehead and by her temples like
indented marks of never forgotten pain. A concerned face that turned the eyes
downward and looked up, resembling a disheartened saint. The world was
accustomed to this expression, especially mothers to their children. Mother had
this one on right now. Winnie thought her mother would be less concerned if she
wasn’t the family’s only child still alive.

          Silent talk between the mother and daughter – they
both knew it.

          The mother’s tight frown and opening arms spoke: let’s
go upstairs to your bedroom. Winnie understood more than any words. She had an
instinct for language, but not the one that people were most comfortable with.

          Her bedroom had been an artist’s vision of creating
work. Although the girl never understood architecture or building foundations,
she knew well enough about what colors of paint should cover the walls, and how
the bed’s design and scheme should be. Winnie made her choices precisely and
with caution, taking days or even weeks before arriving at final decisions; she
never understood why some artists preferred to splash colors and streaks across
a board or canvas – the result looked like some two-year-old finger painting
project on a late afternoon that you paste a name on and hang in the public art
museum. Worst of all, people loved it! You should have seen the way Winnie spun
into that grouchy shade of green so apt with vomit and disgust. People had
their opinions, but things like that were an insult to art, and worst of all
the technique of abstraction. She preferred to keep her art, in a sense,
normalized
but not in the way people think. Winnie deviated from the regular penchant
of human nature.

          You could say she liked to be different.

          Winnie mulled the thought of what her bedroom should
appear to be. Settling on the ocean, everything turned vibrant; always, always,
always when Winnie knew what she wanted, everything fell into place like
destiny. Bright, deep blues squiggled the walls in an imitation of water waves
riding the surface, building up into waves. Fish swam in the blue scene,
starfish and anemone and a marine hatchetfish (she always warned her friends
about the hatchetfish before entering her room). Occasionally, when friends
came over, they described her bedroom walls like a painting – a mural, if you
like the term. She supposed so and agreed with most of them. In a subliminal
sense, Winnie had a lighthouse on the farthest corner of the bedroom, right
next to where the walls met and made the corner. When measured, the
red-and-white lighthouse was no longer than an index finger. Winnie needed it
small so that, when she slept, it would always be calling; she always reaching
for something.

          But
all of this didn’t occur to her when she entered. Only her mother still lay in
her mind. Both sat on Winnie’s bed, the sheets the color of sand and beaches.
Beaches and oceans were two things that always stuck in her mind, that made her
take off from the city view she always had beyond her window.

          “Winnie,” Mother said. Uh-oh. Winnie never liked it
when Mother said her name like that, so concerned and so worried. It was the voice
of thin ice that broke the heart instead of slowly melting it. She said it again,
“Winnie.”

          But Winnie didn’t speak. Watching with her large eyes,
she kept quiet.

          “Your dad and I want to let you know that everything
is all right. There’s nothing to be afraid of. That man –”

          “What about him?” Winnie had nothing against the police
officer. “He did nothing wrong.”

          “I know he didn’t. I just don’t want you to be scared,
that’s all.”

          Winnie stared, disbelieving what her mother was saying.
“I’m not scared of that man,” she said. “How come you think so?”

          “Then what’s on your mind?” her mother insisted. Truly,
the words of the question pressed onto Winnie like deep water. “Is it Paul?”

          Everything broke. Winnie held onto Mother, trying to
readjust herself. She didn’t wail, but she felt the tears dropping from her eyes.
The hope of the lost was slipping away, away from her reach . . .

          “Winnie.” Again with that voice!

          “Mother,” she said as gentle as she could. “Don’t say
that. Please.”

          “Say what? Is it your name? Is that what’s wrong with
you?”

          She shook her head. Her name was beautiful, it was the
name of her favorite doll. Why should that be a problem to her?

          But she said: “Where did Paul go?”

          Her mother’s eyes were unmoving, for some reason refusing
to blink. Stiff eyes, she would call them, probably because of the way her mother
desired to appear braver than what she could muster. Two shaky breaths later and
Mother began to talk again. “Paul . . . dear, we don’t know, no matter how hard
we try,” she explained. “They’ve been looking for five years.”

          “Then they should try harder,” Winnie argued.

          “It’s not that easy.”

          “I don’t think so. I could help them.”

          Mother shook her head. “You’re too young to go looking
in places like that.”

          “What, did Paul do something wrong that you can’t tell
me about?”

          “You know I told you everything about him, Winnie.”
Mother’s eyes weren’t looking at Winnie when she said that.

          “Mother?” asked Winnie.

          Her mother turned.

          “What did Paul look like? I don’t remember.”

          A partial truth, actually, if you took all the facts
and pieced them together in the way someone puts together a jigsaw puzzle. Part
of it she said in pure honesty, because Paul’s face had become a ghost that continued
even now to fade out. In fact, Paul was the lighthouse nearing the corner of her
bedroom, going farther until she couldn’t see it even when squinting. Her arms
were too tiny to reach it, but she never gave up, even when she should have done
so long ago. But on the other hand, Winnie had asked the very same question a few
weeks ago to both her mother and father, so it made no difference now to ask again.
Still . . . Winnie’s mother knew her brother Paul better than she did, despite his
favoring her more than other family member (he never said this but you didn’t have
to be a detective to figure it out).

          “He was tall,” her mother said, then paused. “Do you
really not remember what Paul looked like?”

          “No, I don’t.”

          “You rarely saw Paul with a beard or mustache. He preferred
himself clean shaven. Even in the winter, when times were really cold, you only
saw hair when you got really close. They were really tiny hairs. Of course, he loved
to shake hands and greet people. He never wore glasses. In all, he was very much
a younger version of your father, but at the same time . . . there was this smile
that belonged to neither of us. His eye color was blue, unlike your father or me.
Always insisting on going outside, that was Paul. Never did he gain weight.”