Four of a kind, p.65
Four of a Kind, page 65
Past the dining room Tank split off to the right, went through the front hall and out the front door to rejoin the search as if the house hadn’t stood in his way at all. The line would shift and readjust to cover my absence without missing so much as a gum wrapper.
I entered the living room, which looked like a brass convention: seventeen fire chiefs from various towns all in Class A’s, spit and polished from the funeral. They had maps and radios spread out on the coffee table and the couches, coordinating hundreds of firefighters as the search widened and grew, concentric rings like the rippling of a pond. Bobby Dawkins stood among them, six inches taller than any other man, half again as wide. His shoulders were slumped, deep lines etched in his face; he looked like he was suffering the worst day of his life.
He was still dealing with the aftermath of a major shootout in his jurisdiction that had resulted in Jonas’ death. Our quiet town of Dunboro was being overrun by reporters trying to out-maneuver one another for the most exclusive angle. The burned and abandoned stone mansion that had been the operating base for a violent cult forty years earlier had formed a cinematic backdrop for dozens of newscasts in the past week. So far it was only local stations, but the story was proving to have legs and was threatening to go national. The only hotel in town – really it was more of a bed and breakfast – was booked solid. There were so many questions left unanswered about both the cult and the shooting, and new revelations and allegations were surfacing hourly. Could Tracy’s disappearance be related?
Bobby’s face lightened just the tiniest fraction when he caught sight of me, allowing himself the faintest hope that I would find the answers, and bring Tracy home, and make everything work out alright.
Oh Boy, here I go again.
Two
As I made my way through the crowd to Bobby, men turned away from their radios and maps to pat me on the back or murmur a word of condolences for Jonas. The pain of his death was so fresh to me, the feeling that if I had done things differently he might not have died left a hard knot in my chest that made it difficult to breathe. I nodded stiffly at their words and muttered thanks, my vision blurring and shimmering at the edges.
“Sam said you wanted to see me,” I said, my voice thick with emotion as I reached Bobby’s side.
“Let’s step outside.”
He led me around to where the living room joined the front hall. We went through the front door and out onto the steps, prefab concrete. Bobby went down them to the walk, a path of fitted flagstones running across the lawn to the street. I stopped and sat on the top step. I opened the bottle of water and drank half of it in one go. The icy water helped numb the knot in my chest.
“What do you think?” he asked me.
I ran the question through my mind on a hundred different levels as I slowly screwed the cap back on the water bottle and Bobby waited.
I think my wife is going to leave me for another man. I think sleeping with a younger woman and fellow firefighter named Rachael had been a bad idea. I think I should have stayed home and tried to talk to my wife about both of those things instead of coming out here to look for Tracy. I think I caused Jonas’ death. I think I’m tired of playing Batman. I think I want to somehow turn back the clock and go back to being a graduate student in physics surrounded by logical things like oscilloscopes and equations, and not people and their messy and chaotic lives. I think I want to find a way to put popular town selectman and murderous cult linchpin Edward Knox behind bars.
I let that internal dialog run its course. Then what I said was, “I think we have a missing girl on our hands.”
I said it like that, purposely choosing the words ‘we’ and ‘our.’ I was fully invested, all the chips on the table, balls all the way to the wall. It no longer mattered what I really wanted. Like Macbeth, I was halfway through a river of blood, and the only way out was to power through. There would come a day when my life could return to normal, when I found a way to balance my compulsive need to help, to be the hero, with the destruction and devastation it wrought on my life and those of my loved ones. But today would not be that day, not with a young girl missing. Then I reminded myself about how that plan of action had worked out for Macbeth.
“You think something happened to her?” Bobby said.
I was all too conscious of the fact that he had avoided using the word bad in that sentence. You think something bad happened to her? Something bad like a kidnapping, or a rape. Something bad that resulted in her being left in a ditch, her hands clutching at the coils of her own intestines, her blood pulsing out into the soil around her. My brain was crammed with horrific images I blamed on a steady diet of prime time television police procedurals; shows that survived and thrived on their ability to shock us with new and artful ways innocent people, often young women in their underwear, met their end each and every week.
I watched the lights of the searchers flickering in the woods across the road. They were peaceful in their own way, like fireflies. I tried focusing on the flickering lights. “She’s not lying in the woods injured; we’ve scoured those clean, literally. So wherever she is, it’s farther away than that, and either someone took her there or she went voluntarily. Her mother try her cell phone?”
“About ten times. It goes straight to voice mail. Verizon tells me that it’s not powered on, but they’ll let me know as soon as it is and what cell tower it is near.”
“She ever do anything like this before, the daughter? Just go somewhere without telling anyone?”
“Her parents say no.”
I recalled the conversation Bobby and I had just after Jonas’ funeral, when Tracy had not come directly home after her lifeguard shift but before the search parties had been called out, before the realization that she was gone had sunk in. “You mentioned yesterday that she has a boyfriend, works in a bar?”
“Tracy’s best friend says his name is Kyle and the bar is Donovan’s in Manchester. Manchester PD is still looking for him.”
“It’s six o’clock in the morning and no one knows where he is? Doesn’t that seem suspicious to you?”
“Normally I’d say yes if a girl is missing and her boyfriend can’t be found, but his boss told Manchester PD he’s about as straight an arrow as any kid he knows. His apartment mate says he’s a night owl. He often stays out all night when he’s not on shift at the bar and comes home with just enough time to change his clothes and eat cold pizza before heading to work. He’s on the clock at noon today, so I expect he’ll turn up shortly. Of course if he skips work, I’ll move him right to the head of the suspect list.”
We were both silent as we gave my brain a chance to come up with some genius idea for finding Tracy. Jammed with a multitude of other distractions, it ended up disappointing both of us. Stupid brain. “OK,” I said, “It seems like so far we’re doing everything we can.”
“And we still haven’t found her.”
“And we still haven’t found her,” I agreed solemnly. I opened the water bottle and polished it off, then screwed the cap back on again and rapped it against my knee. “Mind if I talk to her parents?”
“I was hoping you would.”
I spent a moment basking in the irony of his response.
I remembered my first case, when I had been investigating the murder of a woman whose body I had discovered in a house fire. Her death, the brutality of it, had haunted me through sleepless nights. I recalled wanting nothing more than for Bobby Dawkins to allow me to help find her killer, which he had refused. He was the Sheriff; I was just a volunteer firefighter.
Over time, he had come to realize that he was fine at being a small town New Hampshire Sheriff, investigating petty vandalism or a DUI or burglaries, but the big stuff was beyond him, while I seemed to possess some mad skills. As I solved more crimes, he was coming to rely on me to step in at the precise time I was looking to extricate myself and try to get my life back in order. But as I said earlier, today would not be that day regardless of my personal cost.
I got up and brushed crumbs of concrete from the seat of my pants. I was about to head inside when Bobby added “The FBI is going to show up at seven this morning.” He said it with disappointment and some anger, the wounded pride of New Englanders who feel we can do everything on our own, pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, pilot our own ship, reap our own field, or whatever turn-of-the-century homily you care to apply.
“Who called them?”
“I did. Our town is just a few miles from the state border and the risk of a kidnapping going interstate is too high not to at least give them a courtesy call and let them know what’s up. They surprised me by saying they were coming immediately.”
“The FBI helping out is a good thing, Bobby. They have the experience, they have the tools, they have the manpower, and at this point I wouldn’t care if the Canadian Royal Mounties showed up if they helped us bring Tracy home. I’d even offer to pick up their horse poop.”
He nodded but said nothing. It would take some time for him to internalize that thought, and perhaps he would withhold judgment as to the goodness of the FBI until he saw them in action. Fair enough.
Checking my watch, I turned and went back into the house. I had about an hour to see what I could learn.
Three
I was largely ignored on my second pass through the living room. From the frustrated tones on the radios and the noisy folding of maps, it sounded as if they were calling everyone back in from the search. Likely they had ranged out as far as was practical. Also a lot of those firefighters had come for a funeral and stayed for a search, but they needed to return home. They could only shuffle manpower and equipment around for so long before seriously impacting firefighting coverage in their own towns.
As I entered the dining room, two women left headed for the kitchen, leaving Naomi Crawford and another woman alone at the table.
“I can stay if you need me to,” the woman was saying to Naomi.
“No,” she replied. “You may as well go to work. I’ll let you know when she comes home.”
“I’ll be back this evening.” The woman gave Naomi a brief hug and then passed me on her way out the front.
I stood waiting quietly at the head of the table until Naomi noticed me. When she did, she gave me a smile that was at once hopeless and hopeful. “Mr. Fallon, any word from the searchers?”
“Please,” I replied, “Call me Jack.”
“Jack, have you found my daughter?”
“We still have a lot of crews out in the woods.”
“You have a gift for not answering the question,” she said tiredly, though not unkindly. “Have you ever considered a career in politics?”
I gave her a weak grin. “I’m sorry. No, we haven’t found her.”
“Thank you,” she looked down at her phone, smearing greasy loops on the display screen with her thumb.
“Any luck with her friends?”
She hefted her phone as if she was going to throw it against the wall, then the energy drained from her and she placed it on the table in front of her. Words failed her and all she seemed capable of was shaking her head once, slowly.
“We’re not going to stop searching,” I said earnestly.
She looked up at me, regarding me silently for some time, and I held her gaze. She was an attractive woman, young for having a teenage daughter. I placed her at about thirty five tops. Her brown hair was intricately layered and extensively highlighted with streaks of red and auburn. She had a friendly face and light brown eyes that I thought would light up when she was excited or happy. She wasn’t happy now, and her eyes were flat like two old pennies.
“I read about you in the paper earlier in the spring,” she said.
I cocked my head to the side but gave no other response. I was starting to get this sort of thing a lot, and I wasn’t really sure how I felt about it. People would come up to me in restaurants or bookstores or the supermarket, wanting to shake my hand or congratulate me. Thankfully, few had asked for autographs. While I certainly found it flattering on one level, on another I was beginning to feel like the bearded lady or the dog-faced boy at the carnival, people staring at me, judging me, cheap newspaper entertainment with their morning corn flakes and coffee.
“The woman in the car, Lorraine,” she elaborated.
“Loretta,” I corrected her, “Loretta Watley.”
“You and your wife flew to California to find out what had happened to her.”
And Texas, and New York, I added to myself.
“Why did you do it?”
It was a difficult question, and I took a while composing my answer. “I had to,” I said at last. “I had to because no one else would have.” I stopped there, but felt my explanation incomplete. I ran my fingers absently along the line of healing stitches in my cheek. It was hard to describe why I had done what I had in looking for Loretta Watley’s killer, why I had gone so very far, the price I and Valerie had paid, and continued to pay, to do so. Perhaps it was sufficient to say that I thought it was the right thing to do, though the jury was still out as to whether or not that was true. I took another breath to continue. Ten seconds later I let it out again, acres of words left unuttered.
After it was clear I wasn’t going to say any more about it, she said, “The Sheriff told me that the FBI will be here soon.”
“That’s what he told me too.”
She frowned, tasting something bitter. “Out of towners,” she said.
“They have experience in this sort of thing. They have the tools and the manpower,” I said, regurgitating my earlier argument to Bobby. The xenophobia some New Englanders exhibited surprised me.
With Naomi my argument felt like shoveling against the tide. She was shaking her head before I was halfway through the first sentence. “My daughter is a job to them, nothing more than a job. They don’t know Dunboro. This isn’t their town. They’re probably making jokes about our family trees being telephone poles and how many teeth we have left in our heads while they drive up here from Boston. They don’t care.” She said this last bit matter-of-factly. The old platitude about things being good enough for government work came to mind.
I could see where this discussion was headed, and although I had already admitted to myself and to Bobby that I was committed to finding Tracy despite whatever my personal cost might be, I didn’t want to say it out loud to her mother which felt dangerously like making a deal with my own private devils. I wonder if Naomi Crawford knew, if she realized how manipulative all of this was to me. Probably not. She was desperate and grasping at straws, one of which just happened to have Jack Fallon written on it.
“You care, Jack. You care about the people and this town,” she said.
I gave her nothing.
“You care,” she repeated, insisted.
I nodded slightly and that was it, the chink in my armor leading straight to my soul.
“A few minutes ago you told me that you wouldn’t stop searching for her.”
“I did,” I admitted with a shallow breath, a gasping feeling like I couldn’t get enough air.
“Promise me. Promise me, Jack Fallon, that you’ll bring my daughter home.”
There it was. I felt like a mouse that helpfully constructed its own trap. But I was the man I was, and I didn’t know how to be anything else. To do otherwise would be to deny what drove me which, even as it was killing me, was increasingly all that I had.
“I promise.”
She smiled, and I noticed that I had been right about her eyes. They filled with a warm and wonderful light that was beautiful to behold even as they freighted me with a fresh burden, one that I wasn’t sure I would be able to bear.
Four
The rising sun cleared the tree line to the east and struck the dining room window full on, some plant outside with broad leaves giving the light a green hue. Birds began to noisily work on a feeder hanging from the eaves. I heard a car start up at one of the neighbor’s homes. The pitch changed as it shifted into gear and then diminished as it backed down the driveway into the street. I heard it shift again and the car droned off into the distance until the sound faded away to nothing.
Another day was getting rolling, and I became aware of my exhaustion – emotional, physical. I hadn’t spoken to Valerie since walking out the door last night. Jonas’ funeral was sixteen hours ago. I hadn’t been to sleep in twenty-four. My thoughts were moving thick and slow and syrupy, leaving me feeling dull and distracted, incapable, but the clock was ticking.
“May I see your daughter’s room?”
Without a word Naomi got up from the table and led me upstairs.
The wall along the stairway was festooned with family pictures. Tracy took after Naomi with brown hair and eyes. The pictures told me she had dabbled in soccer and gymnastics when she was younger but had transitioned to track later, and that she was good at it. There were many photos of her on the winner’s podium, either in first or second place.
At the top of the stairs we took a right. Down the hallway the door to Tracy’s bedroom was open. Naomi stopped at the threshold, waiting for me to enter ahead of her.
The walls were painted pale lavender. The bed was made with a matching lavender bedspread. Her desktop was free of paper or clutter, holding only a MacBook. There weren’t any piles of loose clothing on the floor. She was a very neat teenager.
Perhaps it was my fatigue, but I had no idea where to begin. At random I crossed the room and pulled open one of the desk drawers; I found pens and pencils, a compass and protractor, a ruler, a small box of paperclips and a partial ream of paper still in its wrapper, and slid it closed. The next drawer down held school report cards. I flipped through them and saw a whole lot of A’s. Not a C caught my eye in the stack. I closed that drawer and turned, finding myself staring at a shelf weighed down with dozens of track trophies. An old team jacket was hanging spread out on the wall behind it. The name Tracy had been silk screened across the back, but the T has been purposely scraped off leaving only ‘racy.’ Maybe it was her nickname.
