Goodbye Sister Disco (12 page)

“Yeah. That'd be great.”

She was smiling at him now. “You're enjoying this, aren't you?”

“What?”

“This little domestic scene.”

“Sure.”

“Don't get used to it. It's not really my style.”

“I'll remember that.”

She put the beer on the table and sat across from him.

She said, “How's it going?”

“You mean the Penmark thing?”

“Yes.”

“It's pretty unpleasant.”

“I imagine it would be.”

“I mean, yeah, the murder of a young man and the abduction of a young girl. But it's not just that.”

“Oh? What else?”

“The people involved…”

“You mean the Penmarks?”

“Yes.”

“What about them?”

“They're creeps.” Hastings stopped, considered. “Well, I don't want to judge. They've had their daughter kidnapped. Who knows how you'd deal with that situation if it were you.”

“You mean if it were Amy?”

“I wasn't thinking that.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I'm sure. I can't do things like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you know what I mean. The nature of this work requires you not to think that way. I would think you would understand that.”

“What, because I defend criminals?”

“Sure. You can't afford to be bound up with sympathy or fear. Not for the victims. Not for your client either. Not too much, anyway.”

“That's true,” Carol said.

“It's the same here. I could say,
Gee, what if it was Amy that was kidnapped
? But that would lead to me having a breakdown and … that's not going to do anybody any good.”

“Okay. Then why are you down?”

“I don't know. Well, I guess I do know. The girl's family…”

“They're not nice people.”

“No.”

“And you feel sorry for the girl?”

“Yeah.”

“Beyond the kidnapping.”

“Yes.”

Carol was smiling at him. “What did you expect?”

“I don't know. I didn't expect anything.”

“Yes, you did. You expected them to be nice people because they had money.”

“No, Carol. Much as you'd like to believe otherwise, I'm not that predictable. I wasn't expecting Ozzie and Harriett.”

“Well, I'm not surprised.”

“That's good you're not surprised. But did it ever occur to you that you're predictable in your own way?”

“How so?”

“Someone's wealthy, you presume they got it by ill means. That they're corrupt.”

“I do not. I don't envy the rich.”

“I don't either.”

“No one says you do. I just wonder if you presume nice things about them, that's all. Don't categorize me either.”

“As what?”

“As the simplistic liberal.”

Hastings smiled at her. “I don't do that. I don't think I do, anyway.”

After a moment, she said, “No. You don't.”

Hastings said, “Gene Penmark may not be a nice man. But he never killed anyone. I don't think he ever stole from anyone. And no one deserves to have their daughter abducted.”

“I know that.”

“I know you do. I just wanted to say it.”

The sandwich was finished and for a few moments they looked into each other's eyes, their expressions simple, plain, and unsentimental.

Carol said, “Can you stay the night tonight?”

“No,” he said. “I've got Amy. I'm sorry.”

“It's okay,” she said. “Can you stay a little while longer?”

They got up from the table and moved to the bedroom. Undressed on opposite sides of the bed and met in the middle.

NINETEEN

Amy was still up when he got home. He unlocked the door and came in and she was curled up on the couch with a blanket over her, watching television. Becoming a little lady now. He remembered when she was younger—five or six—and would sit in front of the television on a little reindeer beanbag, one leg crossed over the other. It all went by too fast.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” Hastings said.

He turned to see what was on the television screen. A newscaster talking about Cordelia Penmark. Shit.

Hastings said, “Why are you watching this?”

She looked up at him, not hurt, but noticing his irritation. He was not often sharp with her. She said, “It's on all the news stations. What do you want me to do?”

“You can do your homework.”

“I already did it.”

Which was probably true, knowing her. Hastings checked his watch to see if she was up past her bedtime. Then realized she hadn't had a bedtime in a couple of years because she had been, since an early age, more or less self-disciplined. Shit.

Hastings said, “Okay.”

He put his coat away and stored his gun. Then he got a Heineken out of the refrigerator and popped the top off. He came back to the living room and took a seat. He let out a sigh, then turned to his daughter.

“Sorry,” he said.

“It's okay,” Amy said.

“Did you have a good day at school?”

Amy shrugged. “It was all right.” She said, “Is it your case? The kidnapping?”

“Sort of,” he said.

“Oh.” For a moment, she didn't say anything else. Amy Hastings had inherited her mother's intelligence, if not her character. And she had a partial understanding of why Hastings was in something of a black mood.

Amy said, “Would you rather we watch
South Park
?”

Hastings smiled wearily. “No,” he said.

“
Friends
?”

“If you like.”

“I was kidding. Jay Leno?”

“If we must.”

“Or,” Amy said, “I could go to bed if you'd rather be by yourself.”

“No,” Hastings said. “Why don't you stay up with me for a while? A half hour, then go to bed. Okay?”

“Okay, Dad.”

*   *   *

She got up to go to bed while Leno was helping Russell Crowe laugh about something that wasn't that funny. From the hall she called out “love you” and Hastings said “love you too.” After she was gone, Hastings clicked the television off and sat alone in the quiet living room.

Eileen had been a Catholic of sorts. During their marriage, he had attended mass with her a few times. He saw a side of her there that he never could quite reconcile with the one he knew at home. Kneeling, praying, reciting the prayers from memory, receiving the Eucharist. She knew her theology too. Made a point of it, in fact.

Hastings remembered a priest who was from England, visiting apparently, giving a homily about the sin of anger. He said he reserved his harshest penances for those parents who took their anger out on their children. The priest seemed to have a passion not seen too often in the American clergy. But, whatever. An elementary sermon not said often enough.

Hastings was aware that he had either done that or come close to doing that to his own daughter tonight. Irritable and depressed, he had spoken sharply to Amy. Over nothing, really. They were neither one of them emotive types, and her acceptance of his apology was expressed by staying up with him a half hour longer than usual. And like that it was fixed. They said their
I love you
s as usual without any additional melodrama or meaningful pauses.

He was thinking about the last time he had questioned Amy about her viewing choices. He remembered coming home and seeing a DVD on the coffee table titled
Grizzly Man
. Not being a man who read the entertainment pages, he thought it was in the same ballpark as, or a remake of,
Grizzly Adams,
a soft-touch show from the 1970s. Nice liberal fellow with a beard having adventures with his friend Ben, the warmhearted bear. But no, that's not what it was. It was about a young man named Timothy Treadwell who was more or less mentally ill and went to Alaska to commune with the grizzly bears.

Once Hastings figured out what the conclusion was likely to be, he turned to Amy and suggested that they turn it off. She asked him not to do that and pointed out that it was a documentary, not a dirty R-rated film. Which was true, he remembered. But it was ultimately going to conclude with poor Timothy Treadwell being eaten by a thousand-pound bear.

Fortunately, there was no video of that scene. Though it was on audiotape, the filmmaker had mercifully refrained from playing it. So Amy and, for that matter, Hastings were spared the anguish of that. And once he realized that neither one of them would have to see a man and his girlfriend being torn apart and then eaten, he enjoyed the film and was actually glad that he had seen it with his daughter.

Hastings had been a hunter since childhood. There hadn't been much else to do in Nebraska. He'd tracked and killed quail, deer, and duck, but had never shot a bear. When the movie was over, he explained, as best he could, certain realities of nature to Amy. That you could give cute names to grizzlies like Sergeant Brown and Mabel and Big Mama, but that wasn't going to change them into human beings any more than if you gave the names to sharks in the sea. That you could tell yourself that you understood the bears and that they understood you. But telling yourself didn't make it so. Timothy Treadwell was an idealist and he made those bears his religion. And he was dogmatic in his self-made faith to the bloody end.

Amy, being young, seemed to take more interest in the fact that Timothy's watch was still ticking when they found it inside the bear.

Hastings sipped his beer and wondered what would have happened to Timothy Treadwell if he had instead gone to live with the Penmarks. Mama bear, Papa bear, Lexie bear, Edie bear. Jesus. The mother he had not quite gotten a handle on. But as to the rest … well, was it fair to judge a family who had potentially had one of their own taken away from them? Perhaps forever? How would you know how you would react unless it happened to you?

He remembered watching a deposition of police officer who was sued for allegedly using excessive force when he shot and killed a man who had charged him with a knife. At the deposition were the brother and sister of the dead man. Hastings watched them during the deposition and saw not a trace of grief or sadness. And it was hard to avoid concluding that they were only using their brother's death as a means to sue the city for money.

Hastings had seen too much in his career by that time to be horrified by that scene. Yet, the events of this day were disturbing him. It was difficult to see in Gene Penmark any fear or terror over the fate of his daughter. It was impossible to see any in Cordelia's barracuda of a stepmother.

As to the sister, Hastings wasn't quite sure what to think. A relatively young woman who was a walking demonstration of why it was not only a sin to envy the rich but a waste of time as well. A miserable, deviant girl who may well have been corrupted by cynicism and nihilism. Angry at her father, contemptuous of her stepmother … perhaps justifiably so on both scores.

Though still, apparently, concerned for her sister.

When he had first questioned Edie Penmark, Hastings thought he detected a frightened, sad girl beneath the anger and bitterness. He thought she was opening up to him. But then he had asked her about her divorce and what caused it and she started to get ugly with him. Perhaps he should not have asked her about her personal life, but he felt the questions were necessary at the time. He was thinking, vaguely, that a disgruntled ex-boyfriend or ex-husband of Edie's may have had something to do with her sister's abduction. Perhaps it was a long shot, but Hastings often went with his gut during investigations and discarded hurt feelings thereafter. In any event, the questions did not justify her asking him if he wanted to fuck her. She obviously had meant to shock him. Or debase him. Reduce the tough-talking cop to the level of a man fiddling with himself at a strip joint. It was an act he had seen many times before and it was hardly shocking to him. Nor would it have been to most experienced detectives. He remembered rolling his eyes at that scene in
Basic Instinct
when Sharon Stone opened her legs to reveal the sunshine state to a few detectives in the interrogation room and the detectives responded with dry throats and gulps like it was the first time they'd ever seen one. Silly.

Hastings looked at his watch. Late. It had been a long day and he wasn't sure he had the energy to analyze it anymore. They weren't one step closer to knowing who had kidnapped Cordelia Penmark.

TWENTY

Lee Ensler was one year out of Brown University when she started a Web site dedicated to the things that mattered to her. She was the daughter of a neurosurgeon in Chicago and she had no need for a steady income. This gave her the time and the opportunity to write about the things worth fighting for: animal rights, gender equality, antifascism, and eco-defense. She wrote long, earnest essays promoting the Zapatista cause in Mexico and denouncing Bush's criminal war in Iraq and Afghanistan, accusing the United States of plotting to kill Chavez in Venezuela and the Israeli Mossad of planning 9/11. She was a well-educated girl and she did not doubt herself often.

Between preparing essays for the Web site, she would travel. She spent a year in Europe, most of it in Germany, where she found plenty of young people sympathetic to her worldview. During that time, her belief that democracy was a joke was strengthened. Either consciously or unconsciously, she sought out people whose views were similar to hers. She labeled discussions with these people “interviews” and took their statements as confirmation that the United States was a sick society. A land not of the Bill of Rights and free spirit and opportunity but of gross individualism, decadence, and corporatism. In time, Lee Ensler became disenchanted with liberalism and, indeed, came to look upon that label with contempt.

In spite of that, some part of her knew that she would not be content living in Europe indefinitely. So she returned to the States. She did not inform her parents of her return.