Lost (12 page)

Funny how fear works. Until what, yesterday—has it been that long?—she’d thought of herself as basically fearless.
Death defying. She’d faced down the black monster when she was a little girl, so aside from shrieky-fun things like wiggly worms or stupid movies, there was nothing in real life that truly frightened her.

Until now. The hot steel box changed everything. Now she’s really and truly terrified. Having to deal with the adrenaline shakes, an unfamiliar weakness that seems to spread from her knees into her guts, making it hard to hold her pee. Hard to hold the lamp without her hands shaking. Hard to resist screaming. Hard to think coherently.

Thinking clear, that’s something to cling to, something to strive for. All she has to do, be as brave as her nine-year-old self. Back then she actually visualized herself in a coffin, and the hot steel box is not a coffin, not yet. Has to be a way out. There’s always a way out, right?

“Right? Right? Right?”

Kelly’s not too sure, but she may actually have said that out loud. Shout or a whisper, she can’t tell—the darkness makes it hard to distinguish words from thoughts, and her volume control is totally whacked.

Let there be light, she thinks, switching on the lamp. Holding it up to the grate, she can see where the narrow vent takes a ninety-degree turn. There are no fans blowing or circulating air, but to Kelly it feels as if the air is fresher at the vent, and she decides to linger in the vicinity.

If the air is fresher it must be coming from the outside, right?

“Right! Right! Right!”

Weird, but it’s like she can see herself screaming into the vent. Only she’s not screaming
help!
she’s screaming, “Right!” Which is pretty mental, when you think about it. What would someone think? They’re walking down the street, minding
their own business, and a voice shouting “right!” comes out of a vent? They’ll think
crazy person, mind your own business.

Kelly gets a grip, puts a different word in her mouth.

“Help! Help! Help!” she screams, shouting into the vent. Shouting into her own personal black hole. Black hole sucking in her fear, making it part of the darkness. Black hole where the little girl inside her still lives, visualizing coffins, facing the monster.

23. Snow Bunnies In Heaven

Randall Shane stands in the doorway, watching her sleep. Keenly aware that not all sleep is quiet or restful. Example: Mrs. Garner moaning softly, fingertips quivering against the pillow. Her large and lovely eyes move fitfully beneath her eyelids, indicating an active dream state—they won’t be good dreams, either, not with a daughter missing, presumed kidnapped.

Interesting woman, Jane Garner. Interesting not only because she’s strong willed and self-reliant, traits he admires, but because she’s an accomplished liar. Deftly pulling the curtain to hide a significant portion of her life, a crucial something having to do with the identity of her daughter’s biological father.

Rape? Shame? Some dark variation on family tragedy? What, exactly, makes her hold tight the secret, even at a time like this?

Shane backs away, closes the door, walks to the daughter’s bedroom in his stocking feet, holding his Top-Siders lightly in his left hand. Moving as quietly and purposefully as a big jungle cat, with the athletic balance and grace of a much younger man. Grateful as always that he had the sense to quit football after a single high school season, while his knees were still uninjured. Lots of big men his age, early forties,
were already limping from joints damaged long ago, when size and agility and adolescent adrenaline had put them into violent collisions with young men of similar size and agility. The human knee is a marvelous feat of biological engineering, but it is not meant to endure the sideways force applied suddenly by a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound tackler running at full speed, leverage enhanced by cleats. As Shane had determined on his own, at age fifteen, disappointing every coach who’d ever seen him move. Guy your size and speed, they’d say, what a waste. I’m fine, his shyly proud, teenage self would respond. Coaches would come back with promises of athletic scholarships, unaware that the big, rangy kid was an actual scholar, top of his class academically, that he’d read and understood medical research papers on sport-damaged joints and made a rational decision not to participate. Not because he was afraid of pain or injury—as an adolescent he had been totally fearless—but because he liked the feel of his large strong body, what it was becoming, and wanted to keep it that way.

He’d had plans, big plans. All of which changed one remarkably cold day in Rochester, New York. Enrolled in the tough-as-nails engineering school at R.I.T., Shane maintains a perfect 4.0 average, despite working several part-time jobs. His job as a library assistant includes returning books to the higher shelves—they call him the human ladder—and keeping the pathways leading to the library clear of snow. That’s where it happens, outside in the wickedly crispy cold. One minute he’s leaning on his shovel, daydreaming about the Nobel Prize he will one day be given for his work in chemical engineering—astonishing discoveries that will change the world—the next minute Jean Dealy walks by in her arctic survival suit, armored and padded and insulated
against the fierce winter wind roaring in from the Genesee River. This on a campus where students routinely go hatless at ten below, and the truly foxy coeds wear thin little miniskirts, or less, no matter how cold it gets. And yet this young woman has chosen a genderless arctic survival suit that covers her from toes to nose, obscuring every feature but her marvelous eyes, peeking out of the padded suit. Eyes that floor Randall, stopping his heart as she passes by, the snow squeaking merrily under her fur-lined boots. The squeak of his big plans grinding to a halt because in that moment Jean Dealy becomes his new big plan, even before he knows her name or sees himself reflected in her amazing eyes.

Twenty-some odd years later, the thought still makes him smile. Strange how the physical act of smiling sets off a pang of loss that closes his throat, as powerful as a fist to the larynx. Mother and daughter connections, that’s what does it, that’s what gets him in the secret place where he tends his memories. Because, like his new client, Randall Shane has secrets of his own.

Snow bunnies in heaven, that’s just one of his many secrets.

He sits sideways at Kelly Garner’s computer because his knees are too big to fit under the desk. He scans the teenager’s files, makes a few notes and then carries the notebook to the front door, where he dons his Top-Siders. Out in the driveway he manually unlocks the Lincoln Town Car because the woop-woop of the remote key might awaken his sleeping beauty.

In the hush of the big sedan he picks up the clunky car phone, presses a key for an oft-called number, leaves a message.

“It’s me. Any and all information regarding the following
individuals—Jane S. Garner, her daughter Kelly Garner, no middle initial.” He gives the address, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, then concludes, “Particular attention to any information regarding Kelly’s birth father. Soonest. Thanks.”

Shane hangs up, glances at his wristwatch—too soon for the next call, the crucial call. The call that just might find the missing girl, or at least point him in the right direction. He powers the seat, lays it back as far as it will go. Closes his eyes, tries to rest, willing his mind to blankness. He thinks: Superman has his Fortress of Solitude, Randall Shane his Lincoln Town Car.

The self-comparison to a comic-book character makes him smile again, and this time the smile does not hurt.

24. Janet Reno’s Dance Party

In the dream my bed lies on a train, a swaying commuter train, and a giant peers in an open door, watching me sleep. Part of me knows I should wake up, search the train for Kelly, but I can’t keep my eyes open. It’s the train’s fault, because trains make me sleepy.

“Mrs. Garner? There’s someone to see you.”

Shane in the hallway, making his voice big enough to be heard through the solid panel of the bedroom door.

One moment I’m asleep, dreaming, the next I’m up, a cold thrill in my blood. Stepping into linen Capri pants, shrugging on a top and calling out, “What? What happened? Is it Kelly? What do you mean ‘someone to see me’?”

Shane waits until I open the door. Hands me a mug of hot tea. His cheerful smile has to be a good sign. “My friend from the agency,” he says. “She was kind enough to drop by.”

There’s a stranger in my kitchen, talking on her cell as I enter, bleary-eyed and clutching my mug of tea.

Remember the famous
Saturday Night Live
routine where Will Ferrell impersonates Janet Reno, the former Attorney General? Which was all the more convincing because Reno was such a tall, big-boned woman that at certain angles, under bad TV lights, she really did look like a man in drag. The FBI agent waiting in my kitchen has Reno’s masculine build—big swimmer’s shoulders—but a much more feminine face. A quite pretty face, with a delicate mouth, big, thick-lashed brown eyes, and a narrow, slightly freckled nose. The combo of large but delicately beautiful is unusual, and I find myself staring, a form of rudeness the agent is apparently used to, because she smiles a greeting and offers her hand.

“This is Monica Bevins,” says Shane by way of introduction.

“Good morning, Mrs. Garner,” she says. “Sorry to wake you so early, but I’m on my way back from the Long Island field office, so it was now or never. Hope you were able to get some sleep.”

“No problem.”

“Back in the day Monica and I were in the same class at Quantico,” Shane adds. “Difference is, I eventually resigned and she eventually got promoted. And promoted. And promoted. Monica is now an assistant director. Affectionately known as an ‘A-Dick.’ And duly expected to rise to the D.D. That’s deputy director. As high as you can go without a presidential appointment.”

“Randall, stop gushing.”

“Sorry, ma’am.”

The big woman rolls her pretty eyes, but the irritation is feigned. She’s basking in his admiration. Truth is, given her size and forthright personality, she and Shane look like they
could be brother and sister. And that’s the vibe between them—old, trusted friends who have endured bad times and good.

“I understand this big galoot is going to help locate your daughter,” she says. “Mrs. Garner, are you okay?”

My legs are still wobbly and I feel weirdly on the verge of tears and don’t want to unleash that particular fountain. So I nod and sit down, clutching at the counter.

“You took a pill,” Shane reminds me.

A sleeping pill, right. No wonder my brain feels muffled in cotton.

“Randall has requested a shadow investigation,” the big woman says. “Are you in agreement?”

“Shadow investigation?” I ask, puzzled. “What’s that?”

“It’s what we sometimes do in a situation like this, when we haven’t been officially brought in. Despite what you see on TV, the agency almost never imposes on a local investigation if the parents are uncooperative. We follow very specific guidelines governing abduction or kidnapping cases. Bottom line, without a request from the parents or the Nassau County Police, we can’t take an active role.”

“What about me?” I ask. “I’m a parent.”

“Indeed. And we’ll put your daughter on our missing persons list, and alert all of our local offices. If evidence develops that your daughter has been abducted—a ransom call or note, or some other indicator—this will automatically become a full-on, agents-in-place investigation. Meanwhile, we’ll very quietly take a look at Edwin Manning, see what we can determine. As I say, what we call a shadow investigation.”

“Okay, I get it.”

“You understand we are constrained from an active role, unless and until you get a ransom demand?”

“Yes,” I say.

“I wouldn’t authorize this if Randall hadn’t assured me that your daughter is not a typical teen runaway, in which case you’d have to rely on local police efforts to locate her.”

A sudden flush warms my cheeks. “Kelly’s in trouble and it has something to do with Manning’s son. We know that. We were there.”

The big woman nods. “So Randall said. He’s almost always right about these situations. His track record is nothing short of amazing. That’s why I’m responding, and why the agency will take a look. I’m leaving the legal paperwork that will enable us to pen register your telephone lines, have it on the record if a kidnapper calls. You okay with that?”

“Yes, of course. Whatever it takes.”

“Let’s hope Randall got it wrong this time and your daughter is just acting out. Believe me, hard as that is to deal with—I have two grown daughters, so I know—hard as that is, any sort of abduction scenario is much, much worse.” She hands Shane a legal-size envelope, the paperwork for the phone tap. “Sign and fax to the Melville office, they’ll get the ball rolling. Are we clear?”

“Yes, ma’am, all clear,” says Shane.

She ignores the taunt, turns to me. “Mrs. Garner?”

“Find my daughter. That’s my only concern.”

“We’ll do everything we can. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to be in Washington by noon.” She shakes my hand again, gives Shane a sisterly peck on the cheek.

“Don’t worry,” she assures me on her way out. “You’re in capable hands.”

The capable hands come through an hour or so later. I’m drinking too much tea and trying to clear my head. Checking my cell for messages that haven’t been left, generally working my anxiety up to higher and higher levels. Desperately wanting something, anything to happen, to convince me we’re going forward, making progress.

The phone rings. My office phone.

I enter at a run, find Shane with the phone already up to his ear, saying, “Yes. Yes. Got it. Thank you very much.” He hangs up.

With my permission, Shane has cleared a space on my worktable for his laptop, one of those sleek, turbocharged things, with a wide screen and a titanium case. A spiral notebook lies open, filled with neat, legible handwriting, some of it emphatically underlined. The phone has been repositioned nearby. He’s been busy, obviously, and I feel a little twinge of guilt for getting much-needed sleep while he worked the phones and the Web, set up the meeting with his high-ranking friend.