Here She Lies (25 page)

crews camped outside the Main Street entrance occasionally defaulted to reporting on themselves with another “live update on the situation in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.” Bobby and I kept the TVs on throughout the house so wherever we were we would hear the news bulletins. Soiffer’s appearance and our on-screen plea were continually repeated, but there was nothing new. I started to wonder if we’d have better luck getting information from
our
reporters—the small clutch of them huddled in vans out front or pacing Julie’s lawn to stretch their legs—but I had already cried twice on camera and Lazare had coached me not to overdo it and not to let them catch me off guard. He preferred scheduled, controlled news conferences.

Every half hour or so there was a woodpecker-like burst of knocking at our kitchen door, which we ignored. Until Lazare announced the results of his interview with Soiffer, or until Julie made a move, there was nothing more to say.

Finally, in the pitch-dark hours of early morning, Bobby and I retreated to the Yellow Room—and bed.

It had been over a month since I had made love with my faithless husband, but now his faithfulness had been rebuilt by a pile of rotten facts. He had never cheated on me; his denials had been accurate all along.

Julie had systematically stripped me down and ripped us apart. I felt a kind of angry sorrow that I didn’t recognize and felt as if, no matter what happened now—

if Lexy was back with us, unharmed, in an hour—I had lost something forever. Our marriage would never be as innocent as it once was. I put my hands under his T-shirt, pulled it over his head, unbuckled his belt and zipped down his pants. He pulled all the white cloth off my body. His skin felt warm and familiar and yet there was a sense of urgency in our lovemaking, as if it was the first time—or as if we’d never have another chance.

I loved him. But something was still wrong. I couldn’t detach my mind from Lexy. Nothing could blot out her absence, the empty crib in our room. Nothing.

Dawn arrived, bracing the house in its usual chilly mist before spreading fresh, clear light across the sky.

Peeking out the window of the Yellow Room, I could see individual dewdrops clinging to blades of grass and had to resist the urge to run out there barefoot and feel the dampness for myself. I hated being shut in the house like this, sleeping in helpless bursts, waking again and again to the sharp realization that my baby was still gone.

Bobby slept deeply and I tried not to disturb him as I turned on my camera, positioning myself at the window. I shot straight through glass and screen, wondering how these barriers would translate the outside view, how exactly they would distort the plain reality of grass. As my camera clicked and whirred I imagined Lexy, a little girl, running into the frame, her bare feet feeling the damp grass. I could
feel
her life. If Julie succeeded in keeping her, would her sensations of me as her real mommy eventually be erased? Would the two mommies, the double vision of me and Julie together in her buried memories, blur into one? I took a dozen shots before capping my lens and zipping the camera back into its case.

I dressed and went downstairs to the quiet kitchen, where I made coffee, then carried my mug into the living room and turned on the TV. Just as I settled into the couch, the phone rang. This early, in such total quiet, the sound hit me with the impact of a full-scale malarm and I stood abruptly, the seed of panic planted, before realizing that it was only the phone. A pretty television reporter I recognized from yesterday’s news conference, a blond woman in a pink suit, appeared on the screen. She was standing outside the Great Barrington Police Station, holding a microphone to her mouth, and at that moment I knew it was Lazare calling the house and that this time his preemptive warning had failed. The phone stopped ringing—Bobby must have answered upstairs—and I watched with the rest of the world for news of my child.

“It seems that Julie Milliken, who is being sought in the abduction of her niece, whom the world has come to know as Baby Lexy, is also under investigation in a just-developing case of identity theft. The victim: her identical twin sister, Annie Milliken-Goodman, Lexy’s mother. It was in front of Julie Milliken’s Division Street home nearly two weeks ago that this woman”—

a picture of Zara Moklas, smiling, appeared on the
screen
—“was brutally murdered. Just last night, Thomas Soiffer, who had been sought in connection with that case”—
a replay of his surrender
—“turned himself in to the police. And now the police are on their way to Barton, Vermont, where early this morning a motel owner reported renting a room to a woman and baby resembling Julie Milliken and Lexy Goodman. Barton police are already at the scene.” Bobby, fully dressed, came running down the stairs into the living room.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re meeting Lazare. If we’re not there in ten minutes, he’ll leave without us.”

A sign reading NORTHWEST KINGDOM MOTEL & CABINS

stood at a turnoff from Route 5 in Barton, Vermont.

Bobby and I sat in the backseat of the squad car that had met our helicopter at a local airfield; Lazare sat up front in the passenger seat. Our car kicked up dust all the way down the long road bordered on both sides by towering pines. Half a mile along we were forced to stop. The road was blocked by four different camera crews, each with its satellite tower reaching skyward from vans that seemed too small to hold it. In the near distance I could see a clapboard motel. To its right, attached cabins, each with its own porch, staggered backward into the woods. Lazare thanked the cop who had driven us and got out. Bobby and I exited opposite doors of the squad car—and we ran.

About a hundred feet ahead, two men talking with each other stood out for their lack of uniforms: one a middle-aged man with close-cropped red hair, in baggy jeans and battered work boots, the other a tall man with a shock of white hair and a full beard, also in jeans and work boots. Beyond them, at the farthest end of the asphalt parking lot, outside the last cabin, I saw my pale blue rental car. The trunk and all four doors were wide open. An unmarked van was parked at an angle beside it and some kind of technician in a green jumpsuit was leaning into the trunk.

The two men turned around when they noticed us running toward them. Closer, I saw that the red-haired man was holding a walkie-talkie. He said something to the other man and walked to meet us.

“Detective Lazare?” He must have recognized him from TV.

“That’s me,” Lazare said. The two men shook hands.

“Detective Andy Phipps. Pleased to meet you.”

“These are the parents, Annie and Bobby Goodman.” Lazare introduced us. “Baby girl here?”

“Not now, but she was,” Phipps answered. “Come on, meet Leo Brook, owns the place. You can hear it from the horse’s mouth.”

Brook greeted us with a nod of his bushy chin. This close, I noticed the bulbous nose and bloodshot eyes of northern solitude. I knew his kind from my New England college winters. They were the
locals
, men and women skilled at hunkering against the bitter cold year after year, spending too much time alone, maybe drinking too much, emerging in spring older than a single season.

“Like I was telling the detective”—Brook’s voice was coarse yet gentle—“they checked in early this morning, using the name Erin Garfield. Wanted the farthest cabin. Said she didn’t want the baby to wake anyone in the night. I told her there’s no one else here right now, but she said that’s what she wanted. I’m not one to quibble with a paying guest. Had no reason to doubt her until I opened the newspaper over breakfast.”

“They’re not here now?” It was all I cared about.

“Like I told the detective, they went out a while ago.” Brook’s voice rose with distress, as if his lack of vigilance, when he had been unaware that it was required, had failed us all. “Didn’t see where exactly.

Kicking myself but good, I can tell you.”

“You couldn’t have known, Leo,” Detective Phipps said. “You got us here—that’s what counts. If we have any more questions, we’ll look for you in the office.” Brook nodded, glanced at me and Bobby, then left us with the long, reaching strides of a very tall man who seemed to buckle with every step.

“All their things are still in one of the rooms,” Phipps said. “My guess is they don’t know they’re missed here and they’ll be back.”

“But the car,” Bobby said.

“Left on foot, probably. Leo said there was a stroller parked outside the door this morning, but we can’t find it anywhere. I think they went out for a walk.”

“A walk?” I looked all around. The compound was nestled in forest and the driveway was long, feeding directly into the main road. It didn’t look like good walking territory, not for a set of wheels unsuited for rough ground. But Lexy must have needed a nap and Julie must have decided to lull her with a ride in the stroller, which often succeeded in calming her when I, and my breasts, were unavailable.

“Leo gave you a cabin to use while you wait.” Phipps threw Lazare a key. “I’ll be here if you need me.”

Bobby and I followed Gabe Lazare across the parking lot. The doors of two neighboring cabins were wide open. One must have been ours and the other, directly in front of the blue rental car, must have been Julie’s. Outside the second door a uniformed officer was posted and inside was a moving shadow, someone searching. I paused, longing to enter the cool darkness of their room, to see and smell and feel the place where my baby had only recently been, as if any sensation associated with her might wipe clean my worry. I could see the curved ends of two twin beds with brown-striped mustardy bedspreads. As I neared the cabin a cop shook his head, warning me not to come any closer.

I turned to Bobby, wondering if he shared my frustration, if he also wanted to get inside that room. But his attention was caught on something else: the car, the
trunk
of the car, out of which the green-garbed technician unfolded his body to standing. In one gloved hand he held a paper bag and in the other—Julie’s kaleido-scopic sweater.

Lazare hesitated, glanced at the sweater and nodded at the technician, who slid it into the bag. I wondered if the detective remembered me wearing the sweater to Julie’s the night I arrived. He must have, since he’d commented on it at the time. I remembered being struck that he would notice a piece of clothing when a woman had been killed. I remembered thinking, wearing the bright sweater, how Zara’s blood looked even brighter, how I had not known that an abundance of fresh blood could be so vivid, bathed in artificial light.

I had forgotten all about the sweater since that night and now wondered how it had gotten into the trunk.

For all I knew, Julie had worn it when she took flight with Lexy. I could just see her standing at her closet, deciding what to wear, and I instinctively agreed with her that because this brash garment was impossible to hide in, it was perfect for an escape. Opposite Day, we used to call it as kids, delighting in how easy it was to defy people’s expectations.

Bobby and I looked at Detective Lazare at the same time. Deflecting our questions with his practiced silence, he put his hand on my lower back and guided us into our waiting cabin.

It was like a rustic suite with just the basics: a bare-bones living room—nubby couch, upholstered rocking chair, two-seat table, TV—and a small bedroom tucked away at the back. Even on this bright spring day the inside light was gritty and dim, struggling through two meager curtained windows. Lazare sat on the rocking chair and folded his hands over his middle.

Bobby and I sat together on the couch. I realized that until our impromptu helicopter ride that morning when the only thing on our minds was zeroing in on Lexy, we hadn’t seen the detective since his TV image escorted Thomas Soiffer into the police station in the middle of the night.

“What did Soiffer have to say?” I asked. “Where is he now?”

“We’re holding him on a parole violation.” Outside, a cloud shifted; the room brightened and the fine lines on Lazare’s face came into focus.

“Was he charged with murder?” I asked.

“Without his blood analysis and without a murder weapon, we don’t have any case. No evidence, no arrest.”

“But—” I started.

Lazare clapped his hands on his knees and stood up.

“Let’s just leave it at that for now.” He crossed the room, turned on the TV and sat back down in the rocking chair.

I felt the injustice of a censured child and wanted to shout at the man, shock him into telling us more. It was
wrong
of him not to tell us. Our daughter was
missing
.

We had seen a woman,
dead
, outside my sister’s house.

The sight of Zara Moklas came back to me, her body eerily still, throat sliced open, oozing the final essence of her life. I looked at Bobby, hoping to engage him in my frustration, but like Lazare he had shut down, checked out, and was watching (or pretending to watch) Oprah interview a young actress who intermit-tently giggled.

It was an unbearable wait, worse even than my night in prison. Despite the shock and humiliation of that, I had believed, at least, that Lexy was safe. I had believed I’d be reunited with her quickly and that somehow my wrongful arrest would get sorted out. I thought of Liz; our conversations since the morning when I’d returned to Great Barrington had convinced her beyond a doubt that I would be easily vindicated of the embezzlement charges, but that was hardly the problem anymore. The problem was that I had lost my baby and my sister, all in one fell swoop. I had lost my
heart
. Who was I without them? As my mind lit on that question—the problem of boundaries of experience and meaning, all the implications of
self
, not so much as a series of experiences but perceptions, beliefs and feelings that define what we think of as a person’s
soul
.

I sensed myself drifting. Who
was
I? Who was
I
?

And then, suddenly, I heard Julie outside. “
Stop it.