Vanishing Girls (9 page)

“She was answering my e-mail. I’m sure she’s gone to bed by now. She’s just a—”

Child
, I was going to say.
She’s just a child
. But before I could get the word out, he hung up.

Ben walked into the kitchen holding Mac’s empty glass. “Daddy’s thirsty.”

“Why are you awake so soon, sweetie?”

“I didn’t sleep.” He handed me the glass and darted away. Putting him in for naps these days was wishful thinking; at almost four, he wanted me to understand that a “big boy” like him could make it through the day without extra sleep. I was almost ready to buy into the fact that he was growing up. But not quite.
He was just a child
. At his age, there was no disputing that; but how could you tell when it was time to step back? At what point was a mother supposed to loosen the reins of nurturing?

And when you didn’t have a mother anymore, at what point did the rest of the world start tugging the reins in the opposite direction? Who would be there to offer protection when the only people who loved you were gone?

As I filled Mac’s glass with ice and water, I couldn’t help thinking about Dathi, wondering about her. How had Ishat reacted to my (poorly timed) newsflash that she had been up past her bedtime using the computer? I hoped he wasn’t punishing her too harshly. And then I thought about the kids in the Lemony Snicket books I’d read aloud to my niece Susanna last time we’d visited—three orphans who endure a domino effect of loss and danger.

What was Dathi up against now?

How could I get ahold of her without inflaming Uncle Ishat?

I was a little afraid to send her another e-mail, in case he intercepted it, but decided to risk it.

Hi Dathi,

I hope you’re okay. I care about you. I know that sounds strange since we don’t really know each other. But I do care about you—a lot. I hope you’ll call me as soon as you can, or at least write back to me. Here is my address and both my phone numbers so you can reach me in any way, at any time.

Love,

Karin

I typed in my home number, my cell number, and my mailing address. Now she could reach me any which way, and I sincerely—desperately—hoped she would try.

Chapter 9

B
y Sunday morning the wheel had turned, and turned, and turned.

Mac’s fever had broken, his coughing had eased, and he was up and around.

I had hired an assistant, to start the next day: a thirtyish woman named Star who had three years of administrative experience at an investment bank and had lost her job in a flurry of corporate layoffs.

The first blizzard of the winter had hit the East Coast.

And the investigation into the Working Girl Murders had moved forward a couple of notches. Billy came over to fill us in . . . and to help me shovel.

I tackled the front stoop and the ground-floor entrance while Billy did the sidewalk in front of our house, as the people upstairs had already left for the holidays. Ben helped, using his little shovel to push remnants of snow into the street. Mac stood at the window watching us, feeling guilty, I supposed, that he wasn’t doing it himself or at least helping; not wanting to risk a relapse, Billy and I had insisted he stay inside and keep warm. Finally, we convened at the kitchen table for a brunch of scrambled eggs, croissants, and hot chocolate.

“We should start eating better.” Mac scooped some eggs onto a torn-off piece of croissant and popped it into his mouth. “Mmm, that is really good.”

“You look like you lost about ten pounds this week. Eat better later.” Billy’s smile was a flash of white; I realized I hadn’t seen him smile for weeks.

“So, how are
you
feeling?” I asked him.

“Well, I’m not at a crime scene right now—so fine.” He exhaled a thin laugh. “I’ve been thinking it might be time for a new line of work.”

“Like what?” Mac leaned forward, interested; after all, it was the course he himself had taken out of the job when it had grown too intense.

“No idea.” The smile was fully gone now, the gloom returned.

Mac sat back in his chair and glanced at me.

“You still haven’t called that number,” I said, “have you?”

“Actually, I did call. Left a message. Happy?”

“I know it’s irritating that I keep reminding you, but you have got to deal with this.”

“She’s right,” Mac said.

Billy dropped his face into his hands, swallowing up his eye patch, and for a moment I saw him as he was when I’d first met him almost four years ago. At forty, he’d looked a decade younger than his age, and he’d had such an ease and confidence. He’d been arrestingly handsome, the way he looked at you with those deep brown eyes. Lately, all that implicit vigor suddenly seemed missing. The skin on the backs of his hands now was lined and powdery dry. When he lifted his face, his one functional eye looked bleary and sad. It took a moment for the creases on his cheeks, left by the pressure of his hands, to dissolve away.

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I finally called. I know I need to get to this somehow—but it’s so damned powerful when it hits me. I mean, I come to, and I don’t even know where I went or what happened. I don’t see how some stranger can reach inside my head and flip a switch and turn it off. If it were that easy, I’d do it myself. I don’t see what the point of putting this on the record is, except maybe to bomb my career.”

“Maybe that’s the reason to do it,” Mac offered with a wry smile that elicited zero response from Billy.

“I don’t know what I want.”

“There won’t be a switch,” I said. “Sometimes talking just helps—a lot.” I knew, having talk-therapied my way through several crises. “Anyway, it’s not like you can hide this forever from the people you work with. Sooner or later they’ll figure it out.” What I didn’t say was that Ladasha probably already had.

“Well, I made the call and no one’s returned it yet.” Billy sipped his hot chocolate. Took a deep, exasperated breath. And shifted the conversation in another direction. “So, about the case.”

Mac swiveled to Ben, who was coloring in his drawing book at the table. “Hey, Benster, want to go hang some of your drawings in the gallery?” The gallery being our downstairs hallway, where one wall was filling with Ben’s artwork.

“Good idea.” I crossed the kitchen to get a roll of masking tape from an under-counter drawer, and handed it to Ben. “Remember: two-inch pieces, the size of Maretti.”

Ben “vroomed” his way out of the kitchen, thinking now about his favorite yellow race car Maretti, and we listened as he thumped his way downstairs. Then Mac and I both pulled up close to Billy to hear the latest developments. I had barely slept the past two nights, thinking about it all. The woman on Nevins Street, and Chali, with those knives buried in their chests. The bloody scene at the Dekker house. Abby, with her blue fingernails and rainbow toenails, unconscious in her hospital bed. Dathi, alone in the world, and so far away. I drained my hot chocolate and filled my mug with coffee, leaning in to let a puff of steam warm my face.

“The lab came through with something on Abby.” He reached into his jeans pocket, pulled out a flash drive, and put it on the table.

I opened my laptop. While it booted up, Billy explained.

“There were traces of black paint and sawdust residue on her pajamas. Turns out there was a security camera inside that bodega on Nevins; guess they’re tired of getting broken into in the middle of the night. It pivots back-to-front and caught some of what passed by on the street. Got a good shot of the license plate of a black car, and the paint matches. So does the sawdust—owner of the car parks it in his garage in Queens, where he also has a woodshop.”

An image of tools and knives cluttered my mind; the idea that a man good at carving up wood might also like to carve up women sickened me. “He’s a carpenter?”

“Woodworks as a hobby,” Billy said. “Guy’s a mortgage broker. Married. Three kids.”

Mac grimaced. “Here we go.”

“What was he doing in Brooklyn that late on a Sunday night?”

Billy handed me the flash drive. “He can tell you himself.”

I plugged the drive into a port on the side of my laptop and we waited while the media player loaded. Billy reached over to guide the mouse and click on the video he wanted to show us. A rectangle appeared, and he clicked play. On the screen, a pudgy, middle-aged man wearing a crumpled business suit was raking fingers through a mousy comb-over. You could see that his scalp was freckled. He wore a thick gold wedding ring.

Billy and Ladasha sat across from him in the Eight-four’s small interrogation room. The lighting and relatively poor quality of the tape made it feel even grimmer than it probably had been in reality. Ladasha opened the interview with the standard recitation of date and time, for the record. Then she spoke directly to the man.

“Please state your full name.”

“P-P-Patrick John R-R-Ryan Sc-Sc-Scott.”

His hands, now resting on the table, visibly trembled. I felt a little sorry for him.

“That’s a lotta names.”

“We’re I-r-rish-Am-merican.”

“They call you Patrick or Pat?” she asked.

“P-P-Pat.”

“So Pat, you wanna tell us what you were doing in Brooklyn on Sunday night?”

“Dr-dr-driving home.”

“From?”

“D-d-dinner with friends.”

“Just you alone?”

“M-my wife, she wasn’t f-f-feeling well, she st-stayed home.” Pat glanced at Billy, who was taking notes.

“Where did you eat?”

Pat hesitated. “S-someplace nearb-b-by, can’t r-remember the name. It was It-t-alian.”

Billy’s eye stayed on the paper, jotting notes, but I knew him well and could see his reaction of disbelief. Anyone would have looked harder at the man claiming, to the cops, not to remember where he ate the night of a murder when he was caught on tape driving through the scene of the crime. But Billy held on to his restraint and didn’t flinch.

Ladasha tapped the table with a short pencil she held more as a prop than a writing implement, since Billy was taking all the notes. “Well, how about when you do remember, you let us know. We’ll give the restaurant a call. And maybe you mentioned it to your wife when you got home that night, maybe she’ll remember. We’ll give her a call. What’s her name?”

“Andie.” Pat’s eyes skipped from Ladasha to Billy and back to Ladasha, and then he blurted out, “But d-d-d-don’t call her. She w-w-w-won’t remember. Sh-she was as-sl-sleep when I g-g-got home.”

Ladasha stared at him as his stutter rapidly worsened when he spoke about his wife.

“Whenever you’re ready,” she said.

“R-ready?”

“To tell us the truth.”

She leaned back in her chair, her lips pursed. I could picture her talking to her kids this way, as in,
Cut the crap, this is me talking to you, and I don’t have time for your bullshit
.

“Well, when you’re ready, you let me know.” She stood up and left the room in a classic interrogation move to see if the interviewee would open up better one-on-one.

Billy put down his pen and looked at Pat. “She means well.”

Pat nodded, and even smiled a little. “She m-makes me n-nervous.”

“Join the club. You want a soda or a coffee or something?”

“Just some w-water. Th-thank you.”

Billy left the room, and returned with a plastic cup of water, which he handed to Pat. Another classic technique: Disarm your suspect, make him feel he can trust you even if he can’t trust the other cop. You are different, kinder, more understanding, safe to talk to.

“So,” Billy said.

Pat stared at him a moment, and then spoke in a nearly stutterless rush: “I didn’t eat out that night. I didn’t meet anyone. I went out alone. I drive over to Nevins Street sometimes looking for hookers, okay? Don’t tell my wife. Pl-please, pl-pl-please don’t t-t-tell her.”

“Hey, man, you’re only human. I get it.”

“I s-s-saw the g-g-girl and I w-w-wanted to try s-s-someth-thing dif-different. So I f-f-fol-lowed her in my-c-car.”

“Pause it a minute, Billy,” I said.

He stopped the video so Mac and I could take that in:
Something different
.

“Is he saying what I think he’s saying?”

“You bet. He saw Abby and figured she was working the street.”

“She’s
eleven
.”

“Welcome to reality, Karin.” For a split second Billy’s expression hardened, as if a mask had suddenly appeared over my friend’s face: his skin, an impenetrable plastic coating; eye, burnished, unreal. Then the Billy I knew returned: all too human, flesh and blood.

I caught my breath. “All right. Show us the rest of the interview.”

Billy hit play.

“Th-then she d-d-d-arted in fr-front of my c-car s-s-sud-denly. I sh-should have st-stopped when I h-h-hit her b-b-but I was sc-scared and I k-kept g-g-going. I d-d-didn’t even s-see th-that wom-m-man. I d-d-didn’t even kn-now about her until the n-next d-day, in the n-n-newsp-paper. It was d-d-ark out. I j-j-just dr-dr-drove.”

“It
was
dark out,” Billy echoed.

“R-r-right before she r-ran in fr-front of my c-c-car, I saw a sh-shadow. A man, I think. A d-d-dark man. R-r-running up to th-those pr-projects on Third Avenue. He c-came out of n-nowhere. I w-w-was s-s-surprised. Then the g-girl shot out and she sc-sc-scared me and I t-t-took off.” Pat let his eyes drop off Billy’s face and shook his head slowly, regretfully. Then he looked up and his tone toughened. “I shouldn’t have d-d-done it!”

Done what? Considered sexually victimizing a young girl? Or hitting her with your car and taking off? Or murdering several women? My guess was what he regretted most was
getting caught
.

I didn’t feel sorry for him anymore.

Across from Pat, Billy held his cool and shook his head. “Sounds freaky. I would have been spooked, too.”

“I kn-know wh-wh-what she thinks. She th-th-thinks I have s-s-something to do with those m-m-m-murders. B-b-but I d-d-
don’t
.”

“You were just driving by.”

Pat nodded, closed his eyes, and began to weep.

Billy stopped the video as Pat’s hands rose to cradle his balding head.

“There were traces of Abby’s blood on his car, which you would’ve expected, given how badly banged up she was. But no one else’s blood. So he could be telling the truth.”

“What about the dark man running up toward the projects?” Mac asked.

Billy shrugged. “It’s not exactly a new story for white folks caught in a bad situation to say some black guy came out of nowhere and made their world spin out of control, now is it?”

He had a point. Two famous cases from the past leaped to mind:

In 1989, Chuck Stuart reported that an armed black man appeared at the car window, robbed his seven months’ pregnant wife of her jewelry before shooting her dead (and ultimately their unborn son, too), and then ran off into the night. A ferocious manhunt in Boston’s black communities ensued for weeks. Stuart’s brother later admitted to throwing the jewelry into the Charles River at Chuck’s request. Chuck then killed himself, having conjured up a black man everyone now realized didn’t exist; he had shot his wife and unborn son himself, to avoid the responsibilities of parenthood, and hopefully date a coworker.

Then, in 1994, Susan Smith, a young Southern mother, begged the country to help find the black man who had carjacked her SUV with her two young sons strapped into their car seats in the back. The manhunt continued until the car was found submerged in a lake. Both little boys had drowned. Smith finally confessed that she had invented a fictional black man to distract from the truth: She had forfeited her children’s lives in the hope of pleasing her boyfriend, who didn’t want kids.

“You’re right about that.” Mac threw up his hands.

I sat back in my chair, embarrassed.

And then I thought twice. “Wait a minute. He said he saw a dark shadow, not a black man. He mentioned the projects. A dark shadow running toward the projects. He didn’t say ‘black man running into the ghetto.’ Let’s just be clear. If we’re going to try to avoid stereotypes, we have to really avoid them.”

Billy grimaced and reluctantly nodded.

“Pat thought Abby Dekker was a prostitute just because she was walking on Nevins Street. I mean,
really
.”

“It was nearly midnight.”

“So anyone walking on a seedy street late at night is selling sex?”