My Soul to Keep (4 page)

Martinez appeared in a few minutes. I could feel the stares of the small crowd as he hugged me, walked me around the metal detectors, and escorted me to the elevators. We were silent as the elevator took us up to the fifth floor. We stepped out past a sign that read Crimes Against Persons (CAPERS).

I saw Maria sitting at a desk. “They can’t find the van,” she said. “They went to those people’s house. But no one was home.”

“Was it that family’s van? What’s their name—Dixon?”

“Dickerson,” Maria said. “They’re trying to find them. It’s a really good sign, don’t you think? That it was a family? Maybe it’s just a mistake. Maybe they just grabbed the wrong kid. Maybe they thought he was someone else. Someone who was supposed to ride with them or something.”

I looked at Martinez. He met my eyes, and we silently agreed not to say anything. Let her think that if it would keep her calm.

“It’s a good lead,” Martinez said. “You want something solid like this in the first forty-eight hours.”

“I saw the alert,” I said. “On the highway signs.”

“Did you know most of those kids get found?” Maria asked.
“They told me. Eighty percent last year. That’s pretty good odds, don’t you think?”

“Did you see anyone?” Martinez asked me. “Anything at all?”

“The only thing I can come up with was one guy who looked funny to me. He was standing with all the parents at the soccer game, but I never saw him with a kid. All the other parents seemed to have kids running on and off the field, and they were yelling for their kids by name. He was watching the game, but not the same way.”

“What sort of way?” Maria asked. “What do you mean?”

A stocky, necktied man with thick black hair and wire-rims interrupted us. He greeted Martinez and then turned to me. “I’m Detective Ybarra. Are you Dr. Foster?”

I nodded, and he said, “Could you follow me, please?”

I trotted obediently behind him down a short hallway and past a tidy kitchenette. I caught the acrid scent of coffee left too long on the warmer.

“Offer you a cup?” the detective asked.

I glanced at the stained carafe. “No thanks.”

He opened the door to a small room furnished with a white Formica table and two chairs. “Mind if we record this?”

“Not at all.”

“Have a seat.”

He took down my name and contact info, my profession—all my vital signs except temperature and blood pressure—and asked me some general questions about the afternoon and about how I knew Maria and Nicholas. She’d told the police by then about how Nicholas was conceived. I filled in a few blanks about my brush with his father the previous winter. Gordon Pryne was his name. Career criminal, serial violent offender. Nasty slick of a man.

“He’s back in Huntsville. At least, I assume he’s still there.”

He paused. “We’re still confirming that.”

I wondered if he knew something I didn’t.

“Listen,” I said. “I was just telling Maria—the one thing I do
remember is this parent. At least, I assumed he was a parent. He was standing with the crowd, but thinking back on it, I don’t think he really fit in.”

“Why would you say that?” He began to scribble notes.

“Well, he was pretty tall, for one thing. Like, almost NBA tall. So he stood out that way. But the other thing is, he didn’t seem connected to any of the kids. He wasn’t rooting for anyone.”

“Could he have been there with another parent? Was he talking to any of the adults?”

“Not really. But he was watching the game very closely.”

“A coach, maybe. Or a scout.”

“Do scouts come to little-kid soccer games?”

“No, you’re right. Probably not. But a coach, maybe.”

“I think a coach would be more engaged than he was.”

“Engaged how?”

“He seemed disconnected from them. He was watching them like they were objects, not people. Objectifying the kids, I think. He had a look on his face that was …” I searched for the word. “Predatory,” I said at last.

“You got a good look at him, then?”

“I got a decent look, but I’m not sure I can tell you much about him. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“Sounds to me like you were.”

“I was paying attention to the dynamic—the interaction between the people. But not really to the people themselves.”

He looked at me skeptically. “Is that a shrink thing?”

I shrugged. “Occupational hazard.”

“So you can’t describe him?”

“Tall, like maybe six-six or so? And white or maybe Latin. Not black, definitely. I think he had on a white shirt and shorts. Khaki, maybe. But honestly, that’s a wild guess. I may have imposed that in hindsight.”

“Hair color?”

“Don’t remember.”

“Get a look at his face?”

“No.”

“Facial hair or anything?”

“Not that I noticed. Did you guys interview anyone like that? You talked to all the parents, right?”

“We’re talking to everyone who was in the park when we arrived. If he left before that, I can’t say.” He hunched thick shoulders over the table and scribbled on his notepad for a minute, making lists and drawing arrows between columns. He was left-handed, his writing square and precise, his manners genteel. He wore a gold wedding ring that had clearly gone the distance.

He looked up and caught me staring.

“Would you be able to identify him?” he asked.

“From a photo? Or in person?”

“Either one.”

“Probably not from a photo. I don’t remember a face. Maybe if I saw him in person, dressed the same way? I don’t know. I’m sorry. I guess my memory isn’t very reliable.”

“Nobody’s is, really,” he said. “That’s only on TV. Eyewitness testimony is always the least reliable evidence in any case.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yep.”

A knock at the door, and Martinez came in.

Ybarra told him what I’d said.

“How’s your girlfriend?” Ybarra asked.

“Tougher than I would be.”

“Did you guys talk to Christine Zocci?” I said. “She got a good look at the guy.”

“We talked to her,” Martinez said. “She wasn’t too helpful. Just said he was mean and black.”

“Dr. Foster just said he was white,” Ybarra said.

“I said white or Hispanic. But we may not be talking about the same guy. I saw the guy on the field. I didn’t see the guy behind the tennis courts. Christine was the only one who saw him.”

Ybarra checked his notes. “The kid told me he was white.” He turned to me. “Didn’t you say you saw the arm when he grabbed her?”

I nodded. I’d forgotten. “It wasn’t black.”

“She also told us he had a snake,” Martinez said. “Did she mention that to you?”

“A live snake? How is that possible?” I said.

“She couldn’t elaborate. I don’t know if she saw a real snake or maybe he had one on his T-shirt,” Martinez said.

“Or maybe a tattoo,” Ybarra said.

“She could have meant he was mean as a snake,” I said.

Ybarra looked at me blankly.

“Christine”—I hesitated—”has a way of seeing things from … I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a lunatic,” I said, realizing even as I said it that I sounded exactly like a lunatic. I slowed down and thought about how to word it. “She has a way of seeing things from another point of view.”

“What point of view would that be, Dr. Foster?” Ybarra asked.

“A spiritual one.”

Martinez watched him, waiting for his reaction.

Ybarra was looking at me like I’d just coughed up a live frog.

I stammered on. “It could be what she meant when she said he was black. That he had a mean, dark soul.”

“What, you mean she sees things? Like, literally? As in ‘I see dead people’?” Ybarra said.

“No, not like that,” I said. “She just has a vivid imagination and a good feel for spiritual things. It’s like a radar.”

Ybarra rolled his eyes, irritated.

Martinez poked him and winked at me. “Seriously. I’ve seen it before. My grandmother was that way. She could tell things before they happened.” He shrugged. “The kid could have a gift.”

I figured this would be an inappropriate time to mention that I’m cursed with the same gift. A gift I would give back in an instant if I could locate the customer-service department and acquire the necessary forms.

Ybarra rolled his eyes again. “I’ll make a note.”

“It’s just a possibility,” I said. “I’ll see if I can clear it up—”

Ybarra interrupted me. “I’d prefer you didn’t talk to her about any details like that.”

“Why not?” I felt strangely hurt.

“Kids’ testimonies are fungible enough without anyone poking around in there trying to suggest things.”

“I wasn’t going to suggest anything. I was just—”

“All the same, Dylan,” Martinez said. “It’s better if you stay out of it.” He turned to Ybarra.
“Fungible?”

“My eight-dollar word for the day. Look it up.”

Ybarra turned to me. “We’ll add the snake to the description as a possibility, just in case it wasn’t a ‘radar’ thing.”

I forced a smile and thanked him. “Who does your kid interviews? Do you guys have a child psychologist or something?”

Martinez nodded. “She’s in with them now.”

“Could you write her name down for me?” I asked. “I’d like to talk to her.”

“I thought we just agreed you were going to stay out of our investigation,” Martinez said.

“Sorry.” I held my hands up in defense. I’d try to pry it out of him later.

I answered a few more questions but had nothing more to contribute. Ybarra eventually thanked me and cut me loose.

Martinez decided to stay with Maria. She had no family in the area and obviously needed the company. I hugged her good-bye and promised I’d check on her later. I waited around for Liz and Christine to finish with their interviews. I walked a path between the coffee makers and the bathrooms, resisting an overwhelming urge to clean both. When they finally emerged, Christine was tearful, sucking her thumb and whining for her new bunny.

Since Eeyore wasn’t welcome at their hotel, we stopped there to pick up clothes and toothbrushes, and then we all went back to my house.

Christine, usually a buoyant, joyful child, was grouchy and weepy. She cried throughout the evening, fussing over the littlest things. Wanting
the stereo on, then off. Wanting to be outside, then in, always on the wrong side of the door. Complaining about her supper. Making picky requests and then refusing to eat anything at all. All she wanted was to hold Eeyore and Melissa. We finally settled her on a pallet on the bedroom floor, the three of them nestled into a pile of pillows and old quilts, and at last she fell asleep.

Liz and I talked into the night, trying to come to terms with what had happened.

As much as you know otherwise, this sort of catastrophic event seems unreal, impossible. Almost imaginary, as though it happens only to fake people in some distant netherworld. You see them on news programs, their faces flushed and wet with tears, their sanity leaking out a drop at a time, and you want to believe it’s not possible for such a thing to happen to you.

It’s a necessary form of denial. If we didn’t think about it that way, most of us could never leave our houses.

But now we were the ones in the drama. Live action, real time, real life. It wasn’t virtual. It was actual. And it was too terrible to take in.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t allow myself to think about it. I was just missing the circuitry to comprehend it. I couldn’t get my brain to imagine where Nicholas might be or who might have him. It was as though the passageway, the avenue, was just blocked.

It wasn’t until the middle of the night—3:30 a.m., to be precise—that the passageway gaped open, an empty hole of the blackest blackness, smelling of rotting eggs and death. Peter Terry stood right there in the doorway, bald and emaciated, his pasty white skin looking pickled and lifeless. He wore khaki shorts and a white polo shirt—a nice little dig, and just like him to pay attention to such details.

He walked over to the bed, pulled an ashen hand out of his pocket, and tossed something heavy onto the mattress.

“For you, Dylan,” he said with a snide smile. “And we begin again.”

He turned and walked away from me, showing me the bloodstain on the back of his shirt—evidence of an ancient badge of dishonor. A gash running blade to blade, where wings had long ago been ripped away.

I looked down to see a snake writhing on the quilt—and then woke with a lurch to a dark, cozy room, Liz breathing quietly behind me.

I lay there and shivered, though the night was hot and thick with humidity.

Christine had woken up on the floor. I got out of bed and tiptoed over to her, whispering for her to follow me. We scooted into the kitchen and shut the door behind us. I poured her a glass of milk and cracked open a fresh package of Oreos.

I sat on the table, my bare feet in the chair next to hers. “Christine.” I handed her a cookie. “Is there anything you haven’t told me?”

She dipped it into her milk three times and took a slow bite.

I waited until she washed it down with a swallow of milk. “Was his skin black?”

She took another bite and chewed with her eyes down, looking into her glass.

“Or was it his soul? Did you mean maybe his soul was black?”

I heard her mumble something.

“What did you say, sweetie?”

She took another sip of milk. “His heart.”

“His heart was black.”

“Uh-huh.”

I handed her another cookie and watched her dip it into the milk. Three times, each bite.

“Why didn’t he take you?” I said. “I mean, he grabbed you. But then he left you there behind the fence, all safe and sound. Why would he do that?”

“It was scary,” she said.

“I’m sure it was.”

“He was mean.”

“I know he was.”

I waited for her to answer my question.

She started to cry.

I got up and got her a Kleenex, kneeling down beside her chair so my eyes would be level with hers. “Christine?”

She took the Kleenex and wadded it up in her hand, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her pink jammies.

“He didn’t want me,” she said at last.

“What? Did he say that?”