Vanishing Acts (35 page)

“After midnight; that's when I opened up shop.”

“How would he have to get to your shop?”

“He'd come up the stairs, and ask someone for directions.”

“What was going on on the stairs?” Emma asks.

“It's a crack house, what you think was going on? Couple of folks lying around shootin' up, smokin', some fellas fightin', you name it.”

“So, he took his young daughter through this scene, and then what?”

“He told me he needed to become someone else.”

“Did you ask why?” Emma says.

“I respect my clients' privacy. But I had the perfect set of IDs for him–a thirty-year-old father with a four-year-old girl. I gave him the Social Security numbers and some doctored birth certificates and even a driver's license.”

“How much did you charge for the new identity?”

“Fifteen hundred. I cut him a break and only took a thousand for the kid.”

“How long did the whole exchange take?”

“About an hour.”

“How were you paid?”

“Cash,” Greengate says.

“Do you remember anything in particular about the little girl?”

“She was cryin'. I figured it was past her bedtime and all.”

“What did her father do?”

He grins. “It was actually pretty cool, man. He did magic tricks. Pulled a quarter out of her ear and shit.”

“Did the little girl say anything?”

He thinks for a minute. “After we signed everything, and the money changed hands, he told the kid they were playin' a game, and everyone had a new name. He said she was gonna be Delia now. And she asked what they were gonna call Mommy.”

As Emma lets this sink in, I try to see the girl I used to be, the one I never got to know. I try to imagine the words Rubio Green-gate has tossed into the courtroom, sitting on my own tongue. But I might as well be any member of the jury: These aren't recollections to me, they're brand-new pictures.

Why do some memories bleed out of nowhere and others stay locked behind doors?

“Mr. Greengate, you've had some previous felony convictions. Several theft charges are on your record, and you've been arrested for manufacturing identities.” He spreads his palms. “Professional hazard.”

“Were you serving time in jail or prison twenty-eight years ago, when Bethany Matthews disappeared?”

“No. I was workin'.”

“Right now, Mr. Greengate, you've been charged with petty identity theft in New York.”

“Yeah.”

“Were you in custody in that state, before you came to us with this information?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you receiving some benefit for your testimony here today?” He smiles. “The DA say if I testify here, I get a reduced sentence there.”

“In light of that, Mr. Greengate, can you give us a reason to believe you actually are telling the truth?”

“I know something about those dead folks that never came out in the obits,” he says. “I had to doctor up the copies of the birth certificate when the guy paid for them.”

“Mr. Greengate,” the prosecutor says, walking toward him with a piece of paper,

“do you recognize this?”

Greengate looks it over. “It's a copy of the original birth certificate. The one I fixed for the girl.”

“Can you read the part that's highlighted?”

He nods. “Cordelia Lynn Hopkins,” he says, “Race: African American.” During the lunch recess, I tell Eric that I need to go let Greta out. Instead of driving home, though, I leave the car in the lot and start walking east. I hold my breath every time I cross an intersection, like she told me to. I close my eyes when a shadow crosses my path.

The first body of water is one of the canals that run through Phoenix, the reservoir of water tapped from the Colorado River. I remember Ruthann saying the Pueblo Indians had designed the canals in the city, the ones still being used years later. This, to me, seems like good fortune, so I take off my shoes and sit on the bank. The tiny mojo bag is pinched between my fingers. Inside is a pinch of white pepper, a little sage. A sprinkling of powdered garlic and some cayenne. A spot of tobacco, a thorn from a cactus, a tiger's eye stone. My mother says that for the past four nights, she has slept with this underneath her pillow, but that it will take both of us to make this work.

Muddy water moves through the sieve of my toes. I turn to the north, then the east, then the south, then the west. If you are up there, Ruthann, I think, I could use your help right now.

“Sanctified Santa Marta,” I say, feeling foolish. “Slay the dragon of his misfortune.”

I pick at the stitches that hold the charm bag shut. The contents float on the air, then settle on the surface of the water. The stone sinks right away; the rest of the powder is harder to track.

But I watch until I cannot see a speck anymore, like she instructed. I fold the red fabric and tuck it inside my bra, where I will keep it until the moon asks for it back. When I'm finished with the mojo, I step out of the canal and put on my shoes. I walk back to the courthouse. It's not that I believe, exactly. It's just that, as with most acts of faith, I can't afford not to.

After court is adjourned, Eric goes back to the law offices to prepare for tomorrow's testimony. Fitz comes with me to pick Sophie up from the day-care center, and suggests we all go get something to eat, but I am afraid to be alone with him, I don't know how I'm supposed to feel. “Rain check?” I say, trying to sound breezy and comfortable. I hurry Sophie outside the court before Fitz can plead his case, only to run into a gauntlet of reporters. The lights on their cameras blind me, and send Sophie burrowing into my arms; it's enough to make me understand that all I really want to do is crawl into our pink trailer and hide. I make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner, and then as I'm watching Sophie draw pictures of blue whales and mermaids and other creatures that live in the bottom of the sea, I fall asleep.

In my dreams I'm wearing a collar, and Greta is holding my leash. She wants me to find something, but I have no idea what I am supposed to be looking for. When I wake up, the first thing I think about is not my father's trial. The sun has bitten halfway through the horizon, and the whole trailer is flooded in an eerie orange light, as if Sophie's colored it completely while I've been sleeping. I glance down at the floor and see a scattering of pictures, but she's not drawing anymore.

“Soph?” I call, sitting up. I walk into the bathroom, but she's not there. I check in the bedroom. “Sophie?”

I check under the bed, in the hamper, under the kitchen cabinets, in the refrigerator, anywhere a child might play hide and seek. Outside the trailer, the only thing I hear are the distant rumble of cars and an occasional dog barking. “Sophie Isabel Talcott,” I say, as my heart starts to race. “Come out right now.” I glance across at Ruthann's dark trailer, where Sophie had spent so much time this past month.

Greta wriggles out from the spot beneath the trailer steps where she's been lying in the shade. She looks up at me and whines. “Do you know where she is?” I start banging on the doors of neighbors I have never bothered to meet, asking for Sophie. I check every nook and cranny of the pink trailer. I stand in the front yard again, and call out her name at the top of my lungs.

How hard would it be to take a little girl when no one is watching?

I suddenly hear my mother's voice, from the witness stand: Can you honestly tell me that you've never in your life made a mistake?

I fumble in my purse for my cell phone and call Eric. “Is Sophie with you?” He is distracted by something else; I can tell by his voice. “Why would she be at the office?”

“Then she's missing,” I tell him, choking back tears. There is a beat of utter disbelief. “What do you mean she's missing?”

“I fell asleep. And when I woke up ... she's not here.”

“Call the police,” Eric orders. “I'm coming home.” The police want to know how tall Sophie is, how much she weighs. If she was wearing a blue shirt or a yellow one. If I remember the brand of her sneakers. Their questions rope me like a noose; I don't have any of the right answers. I can't be sure if she was wearing a blue T-shirt today, or if that was last week. I haven't measured her lately. I know she has pink sneakers, but I cannot tell them the brand name.

The details I can give them are not the ones that will help find a missing child, but they're indelibly inked on my heart: the dimple Sophie has in only one cheek; the space of the gap between her front teeth; the beauty mark that sits square on her back. The sound of her voice when she calls for me in the middle of the night; the rock she has in her pocket that glitters like gold in the sun. I can tell them that she is just tall enough to touch the door frame when she is on my shoulders. I can estimate her weight, by judging what's missing in my arms.

Eric sits on the trailer steps, answering their questions. He has taken off his tie, but he is still sporting the suit he wore in court. I am aware of the other neighbors, watching us from their porches and trailer windows. I wonder if they know who we are; if they are aware of the irony.

The detective speaking to Eric puts his notepad away. “Sit tight, Mr. Talcott,” he says. “We'll put out an Amber alert immediately. The best thing you can do is stay right here, just in case Sophie finds her way back.”

I watch him radio in the information we have given him, I hear distant sirens. Was this how my mother felt, when she realized I was missing? As if the entire core of her had been removed; as if this planet suddenly seemed much larger than it had ever been before?

I can't trust the police to find my child. I can't trust anyone. I wait until the detective has gone to speak to the neighbors; and then I whistle for Greta. “You ready to work, girl?” I croon, and I rub her between the ears. Eric stands up. “Delia,” he says. “What do you think you're doing?” Instead of answering him, I slip on Greta's harness. I don't care about stepping on the toes of a police administration I do not know; I don't care about the detective's instructions to stay put. All I know is that I was the one who screwed up, by falling asleep. This is the seminal difference between my own mother and myself: I will search for my daughter longer, and harder, than anyone else. At the promise of a search, Greta's whole body starts to quiver. “I'm her mother,” I say to Eric, because in any perfect world, that ought to be explanation enough. If Sophie was taken away in a car, I am not going to get very far. A scent will only carry if, by chance, the window was rolled down. But when I find Sophie's pillow and scent Greta off it, she takes off immediately. She circles around the front yard, where Sophie has played for a month. She sniffs the cacti Sophie painted under Ruthann's direction. She casts in widening circles, and then she finds a path that takes us out of the trailer park.

As Greta works, her nose pressed to the pavement, I think about everything that might go wrong: the desert wind, scattering the scent cones; the spongy, scorching asphalt that might mask Sophie's smell with its own bitter black one; the onrushing cars and exhaust that might interrupt Greta's careful track. The dog is heading toward the highway, the same way we came home from court today, and although I am trying hard not to think about it, I'm wondering if Greta is picking up that old scent instead.

I try to remember all the statistics: how many kids disappear every day in America; how, exponentially, the chance of finding a missing child decreases after a certain amount of time missing; how long a person can survive in the desert without water.

Greta and I have been searching for only a half hour when she cuts behind a shopping center and then doubles back. She takes off at a run, and I race after her.

“Sophie?” I start yelling at the top of my lungs. “Sophie!?” And then I hear it: “Mommy?”

In utter disbelief, I let go of Greta's leash. She rounds the concrete corner of the building and jumps up, her front paws nearly reaching Sophie's shoulders. I fall to my knees before Sophie, sobbing, grabbing for every inch of her that I can. She is holding an ice cream cone in her left hand, and she doesn't seem to understand why I have been reduced to a puddle in front of her. “I thought you were lost,” I gasp into the sweet skin of her neck. “I didn't know where you'd gone.”

“But we left you a note,” Sophie says, and that's when I realize she is not alone. In front of the ice cream parlor stand Eric, the detective, and Victor Vasquez. “I would have called you,” Eric says, “but you left so fast you didn't take your phone.” Victor steps forward, an embarrassed flush covering his face. “You were sleeping, and after all that happened today, I didn't want to wake you up. So Sophie and me, we left you a message.”

The detective holds it up–crayoned, on one of the pieces of paper Sophie had been using for her pictures, took sophie for an ice cream–back in 1/2 hour!–victor.

“It was caught behind the couch,” the detective says. “The fan must have blown it off the table.”

Mortified, I take it from his hand. “I'm so, so sorry,” I murmur. “I guess I overreacted . . .”