She's Not There (8 page)

“Shit,” Caroline said, listening as her daughter explained to Hunter where exactly they were and what they were doing there.

“No, I'm not kidding.” Michelle held the phone toward her mother. “He wants to talk to you.”

Caroline shook her head, refused to take it.

“He's pretty upset,” Michelle said, returning the phone to her purse minutes later. “He wants you to call him.”

“He's not my husband anymore. I don't have to talk to him if I don't want to.”

“Now who's acting like a child?”

“Are we ordering dinner or not?”

Michelle snatched the menu from her mother's hands. “Fine. I'll have the house salad, no dressing, just a wedge of lemon, and a spinach and parsley smoothie, no yogurt.”

“Sounds yummy,” Caroline said, rolling her eyes and relaying Michelle's order to room service, along with her own order of a steak with fries, a side salad, a slice of cheesecake, and a large Coke. Not that she wanted any of it. She just wanted to make a point. Although she was no longer sure what that point was.

“Just so you know, I'm sorry about the way things turned out,” Michelle said at the end of the mostly silent meal. “I was hoping she'd at least have the decency to call.”

“Me, too. Thanks for coming with me, for being here.”

“Well, I couldn't very well let you come alone.”

Caroline reached across the portable table the waiter had set up to pat her daughter's hand, but Michelle's hands were already moving toward her lap. She wanted to ask what was going on in Michelle's life, how she really felt about Hunter's new baby, if she was dating anyone special, if she'd decided whether or not to return to school, if she had any idea what she wanted to do with her life, but she was afraid to disturb this moment of guarded peace. “Peggy tells me you're doing a great job at the hospice,” she said, choosing the safest option.

Michelle shrugged. “I don't do all that much.”

“She said you have a real way with the patients.”

“We don't call them patients. We call them residents.”

“Oh.”

“Patients are waiting for a cure,” Michelle explained. “Residents are waiting to die.”

Caroline took a moment to absorb the casual distinction. “That can't be easy for you.”

“The court didn't give me a whole lot of choice, did it? Do you believe in God?” Michelle asked in the same breath.

“What makes you ask that?”

“I was just thinking of this woman at the hospice,” Michelle said. “She isn't that old. Fifty-ish. A former drug addict, but then she got religion and turned her life around. Everything was starting to look up. She got a job, met this guy, then boom, she got cancer. I was sitting with her the other day and she asked me to read the Bible to her. So I opened it, just randomly. And it's this passage from Luke about the Prodigal Son. Do you know it?”

“It's been a long time since I read the Bible.”

“Well, Jesus is telling a group of people this story about a wealthy landowner who has two sons. And one day he decides to give them each a lot of money. One son takes the money, then immediately takes off. ‘See you around, Dad. Nice knowing you.' And off he goes. But the other son, he stays put, saves his money, works hard. Years go by. The father doesn't hear boo from the one who left. And then one day, he's back. And guess what? He's dead broke. Spent every last dime. Pissed it all away on cheap wine and loose women. ‘Dad,' he says. ‘I've sinned, but I've come back home.' And what does his father do? Does he cast him aside? Does he lecture him, tell him he's no longer welcome?” Michelle paused dramatically. “No. He welcomes the ingrate back with open arms. He even throws a huge feast to celebrate his return. And the other son says, ‘Hey, wait a minute, that's not fair. I'm the one who stuck by you all these years. Don't I deserve a little party?' But the father says no. He doesn't see it that way at all. And according to Jesus, the father is right. According to Jesus, it's better to welcome one sinner back into the fold than to honor the ones who never strayed in the first place.” She shook her head. “I don't get it. Do you?”

Caroline felt the full weight of the parable fall across her shoulders, like a heavy woolen blanket. “I know you feel I haven't always been there for you,” she began. “And I'm sorry if I've let you down…”

“Wait a minute. You think I was talking about me and Samantha? About you?”

“Weren't you?”

“I was talking about Jesus.”

“I'm sorry. I just thought…”

“Well, you thought wrong.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Not everything is about you.”

Caroline bit her tongue to keep from apologizing again.

“What difference does it make anyway? It's all so lame,” Michelle pronounced. “God, religion, heaven, hell. It's just a load of crap.”

“Michelle…”

“Don't worry. I don't tell that to the residents.” She pushed herself away from the table and stood up. “I'm going outside for a smoke.”

“Do you have to?”

“I won't be long.” She fished inside her purse for her cigarettes, held up the package triumphantly.

“It's dark…it's cold.”

Michelle retrieved her jacket from the closet, throwing it over her shoulders as she opened the door. “You don't have to worry. I'll be back.”

T
he hours immediately after Caroline discovered that Samantha was missing were a blur of tears, screams, and veiled accusations. “Samantha!” she screamed repeatedly over Michelle's terrified cries. “Samantha, where are you?” She raced through the suite, Michelle nipping at her heels like a frightened puppy. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.”

“What the hell is going on?” Hunter demanded, coming out of the bathroom, his shirt off, toothbrush in hand.

“She's gone. Samantha's gone.”

“What are you talking about? How can she be gone?” He ran into the children's bedroom, emerging wide-eyed and ashen-faced. “Where the hell is she?”

“Oh, God. Oh, God.” Caroline was on her hands and knees, searching the closet, under the coffee table, behind the drapes. “She's not here. She's not here.”

“That's impossible. She
has
to be here.”

They searched the master bedroom, then searched the entire suite again.

“Mommy,” Michelle kept crying. “Mommy, what's wrong?”

A terrifying thought crept into Caroline's brain. Michelle had always been jealous of her baby sister. Was it possible she'd done something to harm her? Caroline had heard stories of resentful siblings dangling babies out of second-story windows. Was it possible that Michelle…? The thought was too horrifying to finish. She rushed to the window between Michelle's bed and the crib. But the window was too high for Michelle to reach on her own and besides, it was securely locked and impossible for a child to open, let alone close and re-lock. Even so, Caroline threw it open and leaned well over its side, her eyes desperately searching the ground below. The restaurant was right there. Surely someone would have seen or heard a child fall.

Maybe Samantha had woken up and somehow managed to climb out of her crib, then when she couldn't find her mother, opened the door and wandered down the hall.

Caroline ran out of the bedroom and flung open the door to their suite. She raced down the long corridor, screaming: “Samantha! Samantha, baby, where are you?”

Doors along the corridor opened, people warily poking their heads out, asking what was wrong.

“Have you seen my baby?” Caroline demanded of each curious face. Was it possible Samantha had made her way to the elevators and managed to press the call button? Could she have stepped inside and somehow reached one of the lower buttons? Had she proceeded unnoticed across the lobby and out into the night? Could she, right now, at this very second, be out there in the dark, stumbling blindly on her chubby little legs, toward the ocean? “Where are you, baby?” Caroline cried. “Where are you?”

And then Hunter was beside her, Michelle balanced precariously on the inside of his arm. He wrapped his other arm around his sobbing wife and led her back to their suite. Then he called the front desk, told them his child was missing, and instructed them to call the police.

“But where can she be?” Caroline asked over and over again. “You just checked on her half an hour ago.”

“She was sound asleep,” Hunter assured her, repeating the same thing to the hotel manager when he arrived twenty minutes later, having been roused from his bed at home.

“You left your children alone in the room?” the portly, middle-aged Mexican man asked, not even attempting to mask his disapproval. “We offer a babysitting service…”

“The sitter never showed up,” Hunter said.

The hotel manager lifted his cell phone to his ear, muttered something into it in Spanish.

“We checked on them every half hour,” Hunter told him.

“We never should have left them alone,” Caroline said.

“Our records show that the request for a sitter was canceled,” the manager stated, lowering his cell phone to his lap.

“Obviously a mix-up,” Hunter said. “We never canceled.”

“We never should have left them,” Caroline said again.

“Where are the police?” Hunter asked. “We're wasting precious time.”

“They are coming,” the manager said. “They have to come from Tijuana…”

“Shit.” Hunter jumped to his feet. They were gathered in the living room. Michelle had fallen asleep on the sofa, her head in her mother's lap.

“I assure you we are doing all we can in the meantime. We have every available staff member searching the premises.”

“Someone's taken her,” Caroline wailed softly. “Someone's taken my baby.”

“Can we go over this once again?” the manager asked. “To make sure I understand and can help with the police investigation.”

“It's our anniversary,” Hunter began, his voice low and steady, despite having already told the manager everything they could about the evening. “We'd arranged for a sitter, the same thing we've done every night since we got here a week ago, but she didn't show, and our friends were downstairs in the restaurant waiting, so we thought…”

“
You
thought,” Caroline interrupted.

Hunter continued as if she hadn't spoken. “…that since the restaurant was right downstairs…It's right under our window, for God's sake…We thought it would be safe…”

“
You
thought,” Caroline said again.

“We checked on them every half hour.”

“The last time you checked was when?”

Hunter glanced at his watch. “About an hour ago now.”

“Oh, God,” Caroline said.

“If she's anywhere in the hotel,” the manager said, “we'll find her.”

“And if she's not, if someone took her,” Caroline said, trying to muzzle her growing hysteria so as not to wake Michelle, “she could be anywhere by now.”

“Who would take her?” the manager asked. “How would they have gotten inside the room? You said the door was locked when you got home.”

“I don't know how,” Caroline said, looking to her husband for an answer.

“You lost your keycard,” Hunter said.

Caroline tried not to hear the hint of accusation in his voice.

“When was this?” the manager asked.

“This afternoon. At the pool. I dropped my purse. Everything fell out. I didn't realize I'd lost the damn thing until I got back upstairs…”

“This wasn't the first time you lost one,” Hunter said.

“That's right. I lost one earlier in the week,” Caroline confirmed, her voice shaky. “Oh, God—you think someone might have picked it up and used it to steal my baby?”

“Can you think of anyone who might have done this?” the manager asked, the same question the police asked when they finally arrived almost half an hour later.

“Did you notice anyone suspicious, perhaps someone following you around?” the police asked.

“No one,” Caroline said, her body growing numb with fear and fatigue. Every time she answered one of their relentless questions, she felt her energy dim, her voice grow weaker. Almost two hours had passed since they'd returned to their suite. It was after midnight. A search of the hotel and its grounds had thus far proved fruitless. Samantha was gone. By now she could be anywhere. “Can't you issue an Amber Alert?”

“We're not in California,” Hunter said, his voice betraying his impatience. With the police. With their questions. With her. “They don't have Amber Alerts in Mexico.”

“We've notified the border patrol to be on the lookout for anyone traveling with a small child,” one of the officers said. Caroline had initially thought there were two policemen, but now she saw that there were three, two of them looking barely out of their teens, one closer to middle age. All had black hair and piercing, judgmental eyes. The younger two wore uniforms of navy pants and white shirts; the oldest was dressed in street clothes, gray pants, and a rumpled short-sleeved shirt he hadn't bothered to tuck in.

Caroline thought of the thousands of people who snuck across Mexico's border into California every year, and her body filled with despair. The border was so close, and they'd already lost so much time. If someone had wanted to sneak her daughter into the United States, she was long gone by now. The greater likelihood was that whoever took her was still in Rosarito, that he'd taken her somewhere close by for his own perverse purposes. The police were conducting room-to-room searches of both wings of the hotel. “There was a waiter,” Caroline said with a shudder, her mind's eye filling with the image of a man in a white jacket pushing a portable dinner table down the hall. “Room service. I passed him in the corridor after I checked on the kids. He stopped a few doors down.”

“What time was this?”

“Around nine o'clock.”

“We'll check on it,” the hotel manager said, already speaking into his cell phone.

“And I saw a housekeeper on the floor at four o'clock. No,” she amended immediately, “it was closer to four-fifteen. I told her I'd lost my keycard and asked if she could use her master key to let me inside.”

The manager nodded, relayed this information to the person he was speaking to.

“Just how many people have access to master keys?” Hunter asked.

The hotel manager lifted his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “Many people—the senior staff, housekeeping, the clerks at the reception desk, the valets who bring your luggage to your rooms. The same as in hotels in America.”

Caroline noted the defensiveness in the manager's voice.

“So the last time you saw your daughter was…when exactly?” the oldest officer asked Hunter.

“Nine-thirty.”

The officer turned his gaze to Caroline. “And you checked her again at ten?”

“No. We were leaving in a few minutes, so Hunter said it wasn't necessary.” She glanced accusingly at her husband, who immediately looked away. In truth, it had been more like ten minutes, she realized. Would those ten minutes have made a difference?

“So it would appear your daughter disappeared sometime between nine-thirty and shortly after ten o'clock.”

“Yes,” Caroline and Hunter said together.

“And that you were the last person to see her,” the officer said to Hunter.

“Yes,” Hunter said, his eyes growing opaque with tears.

The phone rang. One of the younger officers directed Hunter to answer it.

Caroline felt a sudden surge of hope. Was it possible Samantha had been kidnapped and was being held for ransom? Was it the kidnapper on the phone, calling with his set of demands?
Whatever you want,
Caroline thought.
We'll give you all the money we have. Just bring my daughter back to us, unharmed.

“Hello?” Hunter said, listening for several seconds before lowering the phone to his chest. “It's your brother,” he told Caroline. “He's calling to make sure everything is okay. Apparently the police just searched their room, told them a child had gone missing…” His voice caught in his throat. He hung up the phone without saying anything further.

Minutes later, Steve and Becky were banging on their door. The police ushered them inside. Peggy and Fletcher arrived soon after, Rain and Jerrod only seconds behind them.

“My God, what happened?” Becky asked, rushing to Caroline's side, her voice as shrill as an alarm clock, jolting Michelle from her sleep.

“Mommy!” the child cried, sitting up and burrowing into her mother's chest.

“Where's Samantha?” Becky asked.

“Oh, God,” Peggy said, eyes darting frantically in all directions.

“It's Samantha?” Rain asked. “Samantha's the child who's missing?”

“How can that be?” Jerrod asked. “You checked on her every half hour.”

“The eight of you were having dinner together?” one of the officers asked.

Caroline could no longer differentiate between the various voices. She felt as if someone had lowered a giant glass bell jar over her entire body, like that author who had committed suicide by sticking her head in an oven. What was her name?