Light on Snow (19 page)

T
o get to the highway that leads south to Concord, my father and I have to drive through the town of Shepherd. Few cars are out, most not willing to risk the slick roads even though the town plow has been by. Because it’s Christmas Eve day, all of the stores and some of the houses have Christmas lights on. They twinkle weakly in the bright sunshine. My eyes are slits in the glare.

“Are you all right?” my father asks.

“I’m fine,” I say, stabbing my feet into my boots.

“You need to stop at a store or something?”

“No, I’m okay,” I say quickly.

I can almost hear my father searching for the right words to say to his daughter. In the last hour I’ve berated him, I’ve made him sad, I’ve chastised him, I’ve made him angry. And now I’ve given him this startling piece of information with no forethought and no preparation. My news has left him speechless.

“Will he talk to you?” I ask in the truck when we hit Route 89.

“I think so,” my father says.

“Will they send her to jail?” I ask.

“If she’s convicted, she’ll probably go to jail.”

“What will the charges be?”

“I don’t know, really. Reckless abandonment? Endangering a child’s welfare?”

He doesn’t say,
Attempted murder.

“It’s all bad,” I say.

“It’s all bad,” he agrees.

He drives slowly, his posture more alert than usual. The highway has only one lane open, which is slick in the shade, slushy in the sun. On the other side of the highway, traveling north, a car spins off the road into the median, creating a high tail of bright crystals that drift into the wind.

I sit forward, anxious and impatient. Will Charlotte still be at the station, or will she have been sent somewhere else? I’m hunched with my hands in my pockets. The truck’s heater is pathetic.

Beside us, the snow rises ten, twelve feet in banks. Cars are buried in drifts and pine trees dip heavily toward the ground. When the snow melts or breaks apart, the boughs will snap upward, one by one, relieved of their burden.

“Will we be arrested?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

We kept a criminal in our house. Warren will argue that we had ample opportunity to call the police, that it was our duty to do so. He as much as told us that already. And having not done it, we’ll be found guilty.

“Are you scared?” I ask.

My father glances over at me and then back at the road. “You’re a brave girl,” he says. “Like your mother.”

My eyes well up. I squeeze my hands together until my knuckles are white.
I won’t cry,
I tell myself.

At the outskirts of the city, we take an exit off a second highway and find the street that the state police station is on. At the corner we pass the national guard building and then the Department of Transportation and the Supreme Court. My father makes a right and enters a parking lot behind a building that is large and square and modern and reminds me of the Regional.

“I’m going in with you,” I say. I have the door open before my father stops the car. I’m ready to hop out at the slightest hesitation in his voice.

“You’ll freeze out here,” he concedes. He has on a brown knitted cap. Warren will think the man never shaves. The stains on his parka—that humpy, beige, shapeless jacket I’m so used to that it hardly registers anymore—are vivid in the bright sunshine.

I follow him along a shoveled path and into the police station.

My father frowns. We seem to be in the motor vehicles department. He checks the address he’s written on a slip of paper. He asks a clerk where he might find Detective Warren. “That elevator there,” the man says, pointing. “Third floor.”

We take the elevator up. The floor is wet, and the elevator smells of cigarettes. On the third floor we find only a series of polished corridors, a row of wooden doors. My father sticks his head inside one of them and asks for Detective Warren.

“Oh,” a young woman says. “You want the basement.”

My father looks puzzled.

“Wait a second,” she says. “I’ll take you there,” she says.

The woman has on a turtleneck sweater, a woolen skirt, and black boots. “Quite a storm,” she says on the elevator.

In the basement she steps out of the elevator, holds it open, and points down a corridor. “The interrogation rooms and polygraph room are down there. That’s probably where Detective Warren is. You actually can’t go in that area, but over there is a cafeteria. If you ask someone, they’ll tell Detective Warren you’re here.”

“Thanks,” my father says.

The cafeteria has brick walls and fluorescent lights. Most of the white Formica tables are empty. My father points to a black plastic chair. “Wait here,” he says.

My father walks over to another table and asks a man in uniform how he might find Detective Warren. He gives his name.
Robert Dillon.
Hearing it always sends a small jolt through me, a reminder that he is someone other than
my father
or
Dad.
He is told to take a seat.

My father returns to our table and sits across from me. A middle-aged couple at the table next to us have their bodies turned toward each other. They speak in soft, coded messages. The woman says,
The third,
and a minute later the man says,
Only eighteen.
The woman says,
But how will . . . ?,
and the man says,
Walk.

Detective Warren appears at the doorway.

“Dad,” I say, and point.

My father stands. “I’ll be right back,” he says. “Here’s some money. There are machines over there, or you can get a sandwich.”

I watch my father walk past the detective. Warren’s eyes are steady, his mouth firm. He gives no indication that he’s ever met my father. Just before he turns to follow him, the detective glances at me. He doesn’t smile.

I don’t know what is said in the small room to which Warren leads my father. I’m not there. Later I’ll be able to put some of it together from bits of conversation my father will recall. There’s a two-way mirror and a tape recorder on a table. My father is not offered a cup of coffee or a glass of water. He is told to take his jacket off. He sees no sign of Charlotte, then or later.

He is asked to tell the whole story from the beginning.

From when we found the baby?
my father asks.

Right from the beginning,
Warren says.

My father tells the story of finding the baby in the sleeping bag. He relates it slowly and carefully, trying to remember all the details.

Had you ever met Charlotte Thiel before that night?
Warren asks.

No,
my father says.

You’d never seen her before?

No.

My father says he first met Charlotte in our back hallway when she arrived in the blue Malibu. She said she wanted a present for her parents for Christmas, a story that, now that my father looks back on it, seemed thin to him even at the time. He remembers the way Charlotte later confessed that she hadn’t come to buy something; she simply wanted to see my father.

Why?
Warren asks.

To thank me,
my father says.

Thank you?

Yes.

For what?

For finding the baby.
My father thinks a minute.
She also wanted me to take her to the place where we found the baby.

In the woods?

Yes.

Did you take her?

No. Well, yes. I didn’t, but Nicky . . . started out. The next day.

My father explains that he wanted Charlotte to leave at once.
Actually, she tried to leave,
my father says.

He tells Warren about Charlotte fainting.

He tells of feeding Charlotte, of letting her sleep.

Of not wanting to know more than he had to.

Of Charlotte tripping over the sleeping bag. Bruising her palms.

He tells the story of her story.

Let me get this straight,
Warren says, hitching his chair forward.
She told you that James said the baby was in the car. No last name?

No.

And that when she got to the car, she touched the baby?

No, she touched the mound of blankets. She thought the baby was in them.

She didn’t suspect a thing.

No.

And you believed her?

I did, yes.

What my father doesn’t know, and will not learn until later, is that Warren has already heard this story. My father’s version—apart from the possibility it might reveal new facts—is a way to check the consistency of Charlotte’s confession.

Are you going to arrest me?
my father asks.

We’ll get to that when we get to it.

My daughter had nothing to do with this,
my father announces.

I thought you said Nicky tried to take Charlotte Thiel to the spot in the woods.

Well, yes.

What happened there?

Nothing. I discovered they were missing and overtook them before they’d gotten to the place.

Someone’s been there,
Warren says.
Messed it up pretty badly, too.

My father realizes his mistake at once. He doesn’t know that Charlotte has already confessed, but he thinks that she might in the future. And he has no idea what went on inside the orange tape.

I had the distinct impression they were traveling away from the house and not returning to it,
my father says in a halfhearted attempt to recover his credibility and to protect me.

But he is no match for Warren.

Why didn’t you call the police?
the detective asks.

I knew if I picked up the phone, she’d leave.

But you wanted her to leave.

Well, yes. But she was sick. She wasn’t well.

Why not call an ambulance?

I didn’t think an ambulance could make it up the drive.

I made it up the drive.

My father pauses.
Is this the point when I need to call a lawyer?
he asks.

Warren ignores the question.
She was leaving your house this morning for good,
he says.

Yes.

Where was she going?

I don’t know.

You didn’t ask?

No.

Why?

I didn’t want to know.

A teenage boy is brought into the cafeteria and delivered to the middle-aged parents sitting next to me. The son is sullen, and the father seems nervous to see him in the flesh. The son will be released to the parents, an officer says, but he has to return that afternoon for the arraignment. I watch the threesome leave the cafeteria, the bewildered parents shuffling behind their boy.

I get up and walk over to the vending machines. There’s one with soft drinks, one with candy. I select a Coke and a bag of M&M’s and return to my table.

I finish the Coke and the candy. The officer in uniform gets up to leave. I think about getting some Fritos. After forty-five minutes I begin to worry. What if they arrest my father and forget to tell me about it? How will I get home? Who will pick up my grandmother at the airport? Will my father have to spend Christmas in jail?

Did she tell you anything else about the boyfriend?

That he was at school with her. That he played hockey. His parents live outside Boston. She says she called his family house, and his mother told her he’d gone skiing.

Incredible,
Warren says.

Incredible,
my father repeats in a rare moment of camaraderie.

My cramps, I realize, have disappeared. The Motrin is a miracle. I wonder if I need another pad. How do you tell? Do they sell them in the ladies’ room, like they do at school? I still have some change left.

I leave the cafeteria and look for a sign that says Restrooms. I find it and follow the arrows, wondering as I go which closed door my father is behind. I listen for voices. I find the ladies’ room. No one could miss it. It has the biggest symbol of a woman on the door I have ever seen.

When I return to the cafeteria, I’m disappointed not to see my father waiting for me. What if he came while I was away? I see a man in a suit in a corner with a cup of coffee and a newspaper. I take a deep breath and walk to where he is sitting. “Excuse me?” I ask.

“Yes?” he asks, looking up.

“Do you work here?”

“I do,” he says.

“I’m just wondering,” I say. “My dad went somewhere with Detective Warren?”

“Well, he’s probably still with Detective Warren,” the man says.

“He won’t, like, have to leave without me, will he?” I ask.

“No, I’m sure someone will be out to talk to you.”

It is not a reassuring answer, but I can see I’m not going to get a better one.

“Thanks,” I say.

What happened after Charlotte and James got into the car?
Warren asks.

They drove home.

And then what?

She said she wanted to bring the baby in herself, but he said he wanted to get her—Charlotte—in first, and then he’d bring the baby in. She did go in. She said she drifted off, because when she woke up, James was sitting across from her and he was crying.

And then what?

He told her the baby was dead.

And did you believe her, that a new mother would walk into a house and leave her baby in a basket in the backseat of a car?

Under those circumstances, I felt it was possible. Yes, I felt that she was telling the truth.

Why didn’t you call the police?

Warren has asked this question before. My father’s chest tightens.
I’ve explained that.

Warren folds his hands on the table.
She was with you, what, forty-eight hours? At any minute during that time, you could have picked up the telephone. That’s a lot of minutes to decide not to call the police.

My father remains silent.

I could put you away for a year, six months anyway. Who would take care of your daughter?