The Vanishing (6 page)

‘‘That’s impossible!’’ Carrie exploded. She felt her face redden. She was outraged that someone would even say such a thing. ‘‘First of all, I don’t believe Rosalia would
ever
do anything like that.’’ She thought of the woman’s soft musical voice and gentle beauty. ‘‘I know I only just met her, but you can tell a lot about a person by talking to them, especially if they’re the type of person who . . . if they’re capable of . . . something like . . .’’ She shook her head disgustedly. ‘‘Second of all, that couldn’t even happen. It’s not physically possible. Whoever told you that’s a liar.’’

Sanchez shrugged. ‘‘What’s more likely: a genetic abnormality that makes a human face look like a llama’s or a genetic abnormality that allows a human egg to be fertilized by llama sperm? Take your pick. I don’t know, and I don’t really care. All I’m concerned with is that we get them the assistance they need. These are the people who fall through the cracks. They don’t apply for aid because they don’t even know enough to know what they don’t know. They’re exactly the kind of family we should be helping, and it’s up to us to steer them in the right direction and make sure they receive the proper support so that maybe, one day, they can lift themselves out of poverty.’’

‘‘You’re right,’’ Carrie said. ‘‘You’re right.’’

‘‘Okay, then.’’ He turned back to his paperwork.

‘‘It’s just—’’

Sanchez looked up again.

‘‘—that I feel so . . . helpless here. Because no matter how much time and effort we spend, no matter how much money we throw at the situation, that boy’s always going to be . . . what he is.’’

‘‘Yes. And sometimes you have to accept that that’s how things are.’’

‘‘But—’’

‘‘I know.’’

Carrie looked down at the case folder in her hand with its pertinent data about Juan Olivera that gave no clue at all to the real facts of the boy’s existence. ‘‘What kind of a life do you think a child like that can have?’’ she asked.

‘‘Not much of one,’’ Sanchez admitted. His voice was kinder than usual, almost soft. ‘‘That’s why you have to let this go.’’

But she couldn’t.

The llama boy haunted her dreams.

In one particularly vivid nightmare, Carrie went to the Oliveras’ apartment to meet with Rosalia and was sitting in a torn vinyl chair across from her when suddenly the lights went out. It was night, and a power outage must have affected the entire neighborhood because the streetlamps winked off and every light in the apartments across the street was out. Rosalia moaned chillingly, as though in fear for her life, and said something incomprehensible in Spanish, followed immediately by two words whispered in English: ‘‘He’s coming.’’ Carrie had no idea what that meant, but her body was suddenly covered in gooseflesh and she was filled with a feeling of blind panic. From somewhere within the pitch-black darkness came a raspy chuckle, a terrible, evil sound that made her think of horror-movie monsters. Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness. The moon was out, and by its indirect glow she could see Juan creeping out of the bedroom, into the sitting room, toward her. He was naked and walking on all fours, and his llama head rocked crazily from side to side as he advanced on her, still chuckling. Rosalia prayed in Spanish, her desperation obvious even through the language barrier. Juan opened his mouth, showing fangs . . .

And then Carrie awoke.

In another dream, Social Services had been contacted by the police. Rosalia had died of starvation, and Juan was alive only because he had eaten her legs. The decision as to what to do with the child had been left up to her, since she was his caseworker, and Carrie decided that as he seemed to be more animal than human, he was to be pawned off to a zoo or sold to a circus.

It was wrong of her to entertain such thoughts, though she obviously did, and she was embarrassed by her primitive reaction to the boy. She wanted to help him, wanted to ensure that he had as normal a childhood and as easy a life as possible. But that was an intellectual response. Emotionally, she was frightened of him. It still did not seem possible that such a person—

—could exist, and her mind had a difficult time simply acknowledging the reality of his being. No matter how hard she tried, she could not reconcile her knowledge of biology with the boy she had seen in that apartment.
Is there a human brain behind those animal eyes?
she wondered.
Does he merely
resemble
a llama or is he
part
llama?

Carrie did her research. Rosalia and Juan were indeed qualified to receive health coverage if Rosalia was willing to classify her son as handicapped, and Carrie returned to the tenement building on Thursday to discuss the situation. As before, the bedroom was dark, and also as before, there was no sign at first of Juan. She sat on the same torn couch she had the first time, speaking slowly and carefully so that Rosalia would be sure to understand, and explained the situation in detail, glancing every so often toward the darkened doorway, unable to help herself.

‘‘No!’’ Rosalia insisted in her heavily accented English. ‘‘Juan es no handicap! He do everything all boy do!’’

‘‘I know,’’ Carrie countered patiently, ‘‘but Juan
is
different, and if you just let me list him as handicapped—’’

‘‘No!’’ Rosalia shouted. ‘‘No es handicap!’’

‘‘I understand. But—’’

‘‘I say no!’’ She started to cry, and Carrie backed off. She felt frustrated in a way that she ordinarily did not, and though it was unethical, she wanted to simply fill out all of the forms herself and then tell Rosalia that the problem had been solved rather than try to convince the woman of the right course of action. She hazarded a glance toward the bedroom door. Juan had crept out from his hiding place once again and was sitting amid the torn newspaper, staring at her. Was there comprehension in those dark animal eyes? She couldn’t tell, but she thought of her dreams and wondered what she would do if he suddenly started scurrying toward her on all fours.

‘‘Just think about it,’’ Carrie told Rosalia, packing up her papers. ‘‘I really don’t see any other way for you and Juan to get medical coverage. Besides, this way, if something should happen to Juan, an accident or—’’

‘‘No,’’ Rosalia said firmly, wiping away the last of her tears.

‘‘Okay, okay.’’ She took a deep breath. ‘‘If you need me, you still have my card, right?’’

Rosalia nodded.

‘‘Call me if you need help or even if you’d just like to talk, all right?’’

‘‘Thank you.’’ The woman’s voice was back to its usual soft tone, her pretty face no longer registering agitation.

Carrie got up to go, and before she did, took one last look at the boy in the bedroom. Juan was standing up now, digging through the right front pocket of his jeans and at that second, he seemed just like an ordinary kid wearing a mask. Then he looked up, and she saw his pointed ears prick up, saw his dark overlarge eyes focus on her, saw a long pink tongue reach between small teeth and lick slimy blackened lips. The sight chilled her to the bone. His face didn’t look quite as much like a llama’s from this angle. It looked more like that of a mutated wolf or some other animal that she couldn’t quite place.

A monster,
she thought, but pushed the idea out of her mind.

On her way back to the office, Carrie stopped off at a 7-Eleven for a Big Gulp. The afternoon was hot, her car had no air-conditioning, and after breathing the foul stale air of the Oliveras’ dirty apartment, she needed something sweet, wet and cold to cleanse her mouth.

Carrie never read the tabloids. Even in line at the grocery store checkout, she usually glanced at the covers of the women’s magazines, with their endless prescriptions for better sex, rather than waste her time with the outrageous inanities printed in the
Enquirer
, the
Star
and their ilk. For some reason, though, today as she stood behind a hirsute man buying beer and lottery tickets, Carrie bypassed
Cosmopolitan
and read the cover of the
Weekly Globe.
PROSTITUTE GIVES BIRTH TO RHINO BOY! the headline screamed. Beneath that was a grainy photograph of a garishly dressed woman holding the hand of a small child with a hairless head and what did indeed appear to be a horn growing out from the spot where his nose should have been.

Carrie’s stomach dropped. More than anything else, it was the grain that got to her, that granted the picture verisimilitude. Faked photos these days were usually much clearer than this. She recalled several years ago seeing a perfectly focused, perfectly composed picture of the president supposedly shaking hands with an alien. Something about both the graininess and the artless composition of this photo, however, made it look as though it had been taken by a hidden camera, without the consent of the subject, and to her that made it seem much more real.

Of course, she thought of Juan. There was no real physical similarity between Juan and the rhino boy, but the parallels were impossible to ignore.

The man in front of her finished scratching his lottery tickets, grabbed his bagged beer and walked away with a muttered, ‘‘Shit.’’ Impulsively, Carrie grabbed the tabloid and popped it on the checkout counter next to her Big Gulp. Once in the car, she opened the paper, turning pages until she found the rhino boy article. Flanked by two more photos nearly identical to the one on the cover and obviously taken in sequence, the story was short and sketchy with very little hard information. The ‘‘prostitute,’’ if that’s really what she was, was identified only by her first name—Holly—and the city in which she lived— which just happened to be San Francisco.

Coincidence?

Carrie was beginning to think not.

The
Weekly Globe
was a national publication based in Minneapolis, but there was an address and phone number for a West Coast bureau listed in the staff box, and as soon as Carrie got back to the office, she called the number, got a receptionist on the line and asked to speak with Kent Daniels, the reporter who’d written the article.

‘‘I’m sorry,’’ the receptionist said in a pinched Ernestine voice, ‘‘but it is the policy of this publication not to give out the numbers of its contributors.’’

‘‘I’m not asking for his home phone. Just transfer me to his desk or his voice mail.’’

‘‘The
Weekly Globe
is one hundred percent freelance written,’’ the woman said. ‘‘Mr. Daniels does not have a desk or a phone here.’’

‘‘I just need to contact him,’’ Carrie said, beginning to get frustrated. She paused, thinking of something. ‘‘I read his article on the rhino boy.’’ Here she paused again, this time for dramatic effect. ‘‘I know someone else like that.’’ She didn’t elaborate, leading the woman to read between the lines that she might be calling in order to provide the reporter with a tip for a new story.

‘‘I’m sorry,’’ the receptionist repeated, ‘‘but it is the policy of this publication—’’

‘‘Forget it,’’ Carrie said tiredly. She hung up the phone. She was not entirely convinced that the rhino boy was real, but the connection with Juan, as tentative as it might be, was enough to keep her going a little further.

She thought for a moment. A lot of prostitutes received some sort of assistance, particularly if they had children. She could pass around the photo and see if anyone recognized the woman, or even access records within the department and see if any Hollys were assigned to one of their caseworkers. Even if that angle didn’t pan out, Social Services had numerous contacts within the police department. The two worked together frequently. She herself had good rapport with a sergeant who had recently referred to her a victim of domestic abuse. Someone somewhere was bound to be able to identify this woman and her child if they really existed.

She hit pay dirt almost immediately.

Jan Nguyen had counseled Holly a few years back. She, too, had seen the tabloid and had brought in the paper to show Sanchez. Carrie saw Jan and caught her before she could go into the supervisor’s office. ‘‘I need to talk to you,’’ she said.

Holly’s real name was Elaine Peters, and she was indeed a prostitute who at that time had been working the park. When Jan had been counseling her, Holly had been pregnant, but then she’d called one day and said she’d had an abortion and found a new job and didn’t need or want the state’s help anymore. Jan suspected Holly’s pimp was behind this, and she made several attempts to meet again with Holly, but all of her efforts were rebuffed, and she finally gave up, sucked back into the endless stream of cases that flowed through Social Services.

Carrie explained her interest in the case, told Jan about Rosalia and Juan, and said that she’d like to meet with Holly if she could.

Jan was by the book. She went to Sanchez first, showed the supervisor her copy of the tabloid and explained the situation. He gave her permission to contact Holly once again and allowed Carrie to tag along. ‘‘This is not Juan,’’ he told Carrie, ‘‘but I understand your interest. I have to admit, I’m curious myself. Keep me up on what’s going on.’’

‘‘We will,’’ she promised.

The phone number they had on file was no longer in service. Although Jan searched through the records using Holly’s real name as well as various permutations of both her legal and street monikers, she came up with nothing. She was willing to wait, talk with some other caseworkers and come at this from another direction tomorrow,but Carrie wanted to act now, and Jan agreed to accompany her to the listed address.

Sanchez not only allowed them to take two hours but let them check a car out of the pool—an offer that shocked them both. Carrie quickly went to the bathroom while Jan printed out a map to the location, and after arranging for each of their calls to be covered, they were off.

Jan drove. It was a twenty-minute drive through some of the worst areas of the city, and Carrie was grateful that the other social worker was with her. Even after five years, she still didn’t feel comfortable going into really rough neighborhoods alone.