Missing Girls- In Truth Is Justice Page 8

  “I think I’ve found an area in New Jersey that’s a lot like what we have here,” Gavin said. “Not the busy part close to the Turnpike—sort of west and north. There are lots of trees, rocks, and water. The train whisks passengers to Hoboken in forty-five minutes, and the tubes slip under the river and into the World Trade Towers in another fifteen. It’s in an established area, but it’s really brand new. It’s what they think of as the Fardale section of Mahwah. New but countrified. It’s nice.”

  “I’ll have to do some research on it,” Marcella said.

  “You could come out and look for yourself.”

  “We’re getting close to crunch time, aren’t we, Gavin? Fish or cut bait.”

  “I’m not pushing,” Gavin said. “No hurry. No time schedule.”

  “Everyone’s moving forward except me.”

  “Not really, Brett and Celia are right close-by.”

  “Brett said he and Lisa were thinking about moving in together—until he got his notice, that is.”

  “I know,” Gavin said.

  “You knew and I didn’t? Are you three keeping me in the dark?”

  “No, I just keep bugging them all the time with phone calls. I find out things. I guess I’ve been feeling lonely.”

  “Celia said she got another letter from that woman or man or whatever.”

  “She told me,” Gavin said.

  “God, you know everything about everybody. You’re wired in.”

  “I called her a week or so ago just to see how things were going. She had to tell me all about your visit again as if she hadn’t told me the whole thing before. She was amazed. How you actually laughed.”

  “I’ve never seen Celia so confident,” Marcella said. “She seems to have a lot of friends already. She’s enjoying her studies and really comfortable being on her own. She’s also smoking like a chimney. For some weird reason, that struck me as funny—maybe not funny, more like contented. She seemed so sure of herself, so secure. It made me glad, and I just had to laugh. Now she’s gotten another letter.”

  “I gave her Rathskeller’s address,” he said. “She’s going to send this last one on to him. It’s got a fuzzy picture in the envelope. Cel’ said she could barely make out what it was let alone identify anyone. She thinks this Pinky person has got to be some nut case getting kicks out of stalking her at Carleton through the mail.”

  “So, you’re still talking to Rathskeller?”

  “Of course. Not a lot. But, he’s kind of stealthy. He’s still poking around in the case, as he says—probably doing a whole lot more than he’s letting on. I get the feeling he doesn’t want to create false hopes or say that he’s finished with the case altogether. He hasn’t asked for any more money. I take from that he’s still working it, and will get the second half of his fee when he’s completely run out of leads.”

  “Nothing from the police or the FBI?”

  “I called Nickerson. There’s not much more he can do than sit still in this waiting for leads mode. Any mail addressed to us in Naperville is delivered to him at Police Headquarters. Our phone number takes callers into a special FBI line. There’s a lot of mail, but six out of ten are scribblings on little pieces of paper saying how sorry they are for our loss. Two out of ten are possible sightings from all over the country. Nickerson sends these on to the State Police. They have more resources and can call other states to help investigate. The rest are the disgusting ones, people making lewd references to little girls, kidnapping ransom demands that lead nowhere, and mindless rants about you name it.”

  “At least we’re still in touch. The search continues.”

  “I said it would and it will.”

  “You’re avoiding the subject of Brett,” she said.

  “The draft. It’s not the end of the world. He hasn’t said much about it— but I would think Vietnam has been on his mind all the time. His friends at school have been thinking of nothing else. How could they not? It’s the biggest thing in their life—all of them who don’t have a baby sister gone missing, that is. He just hasn’t brought it up with us,” Gavin said.

  “He brought it up to me,” Marcella said. “He’s relieved that he doesn’t have to make any decisions. They’ve taken that out of his hands. He thinks he can’t do anything less than what you did. But that was a long time ago, a completely different time. Can’t you talk to him about it? Can’t you tell him that this is not worth sacrificing his life for?”

  “I think he should take whatever comes his way.”

  “If he says nothing about what he’d like to do, they’ll gladly pack him off to the nearest grunt unit and he’ll be dead in a month.”

  “That’s pretty gloomy,” Gavin said.

  “I want you to intervene,” she said. “I want you to tell him that he doesn’t have to do what you did.”

  “I didn’t have to do anything except what came my way. That’s all I would want him to do.”

  “A toss of the dice.”

  “Yes. The same odds as everyone.”

  “Gavin. You see dead foxhole buddies staring up at you whenever this subject arises, as if every able-bodied man on the street today owes it to them to go. It’s not fair. It’s not true.”

  “Did you tell him to make a run for the Canadian border too?”

  “I won’t dignify that with an answer. I think we should make sure he at least knows you wouldn’t be devastated if he wound up peeling potatoes in the mess hall ‘til it’s over. There are lots of honorable ways to serve.”

  Gavin puffed out his cheeks and let the air escape in a long silent pause. He looked into her eyes. “I’ll talk to him. But, he’s his own man,” he said.

  “To me that sounds as if you have no intention of doing anything about it.”

  “I’m an ordinary person. I don’t know what you mean. I’m opposed to doing something about it. If he told me he was going off to a commune in Seattle, I’d know what to do. I hate the whole protest movement or whatever it’s called. It’s just an excuse to thumb noses at authority or to drop out and go on an extended camping trip. If Cel’ did it, I’d be royally pissed. Brett? I’d be this close to punching him in the nose.”

  “I want to call somebody with the power to change the trajectory,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Some people can open doors.”

  “Are suggesting we call your buddy, Breedlove?”

  “Yes. Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “Marcella, tell me that you will not call Gus Breedlove. Tell me that you have cut off all communication with him—that even if you wanted to call him, you wouldn’t, out of respect for me. Tell me.”

  “Gavin! I’m pulling your chain. Pulling your chain. Pulling your chain.”

  “Thank you for that,” he said.

  At home, Gavin went right upstairs to the bedroom with the suitcase. Marcella, at the window, felt his hands on her hips. She turned around to face him. He took her face in his hands and kissed her lightly on the lips, again and again. He took her hands and backed out and over to the stairs. They went up to the bedroom together. He began to unbutton her blouse, but she backed away and disappeared into her walk-in closet.

  It’s wrong of me, but all I can think of is Yasmina. I expected to smell her on him when he kissed me just then, but I didn’t smell Yasmina. I see this Yasmina everywhere I look. It’s all imaginary. There are a dozen explanations for the money. So what if she was competent? So what if he was bringing her along to New York? So what?

  She kicked off her shoes, shed her blouse, and dropped her skirt to the floor. She rummaged through a drawer, held up the black silk camisole she’d worn on their twentieth anniversary night four years ago and regarded herself in the mirror. She was still as slim as ever, her ribs visible, her thighs firm and tanned and thinning to her fantastic, shapely calves.

  She remembered so well Gavin’s satisfied smile, and the surge of desire she felt and subdued by pushing her clenched hands into her la
p. She remembered standing in the middle of the bedroom face-to-face with a naked Gavin, reaching up to run the fingers of both of her hands through the hair on the back of his head—remembered the feel of his hands on her butt and his hands coming up her back under the silk and along her ribs to her breasts. Then, she shuddered and closed her eyes. She balled the thing up and threw it back into the drawer.

  She quickly got naked, then wrapped herself in her light-blue bathrobe that fell from her shoulders to the floor. She joined Gavin on top of the bedspread. She looked up into his eyes. When he got going, her face pressed against his ear. She was sure she saw the white disk again at the ceiling.

  We both know that I’ve held the final decision whether or not to move to New Jersey within myself all this time. I despise myself for even considering the idea of leaving our house in Naperville. I see Hannah stepping out of some phantom vehicle at the curb outside. She runs to the front door, full of joy at having found her way back home when she thought she’d never see her family again. But the door won’t open. She falls to the ground and sobs.

  Gavin and Brett and Celia are real and present. They need to go on with their lives, to live. This isn’t a deliberate decision to push Hannah out. It’s embedded in the demands that keep piling up—decisions everywhere that I can’t leave to them to make alone. Gavin came back to be with me. Our bodies fit together like they used to. I either have to chain myself to the porch and wait for Hannah to come running, or go on with life, like the rest of the family. I hate myself.

  Dear Hannah, June 16, 1971

  I thought this day would never come. I swore to myself that it wouldn’t. I’ve decided that I will bend and go with Dad. We’re moving to New Jersey so he can take a new job. If only that were the real reason. It’s really because Celia and Brett and Dad all have a life even if we don’t. They have to keep moving because their world keeps moving unlike ours which seem more and more like cocoons we’re trapped in. It’s also because I’m a coward—afraid to break away from Dad and be truly all by myself in this house. Besides, I don’t know if I’m mad enough at him to leave him alone by himself. We’ve done it for a couple of months, but that’s not forever. I love Dad even though he’s made me abandon you. He says it’s for our own good and we can keep searching for you from there. I cringe at the thought of you coming back here to find us and not finding us here. Please forgive me. I love you with all of my heart.

  Mom

  Chapter 12

  At home, Gilbert Rathskeller and his wife, Jackie, sat in the dining room at a round oak table that was cloaked in a white tablecloth. They had never eaten from TV tables or anything as unimaginative as that while the kids were growing up, so they weren’t going to start now that they were all long gone with their own families.

  Jackie was thin and fastidious and made-up for this ritual, as always—she could be mistaken for Audrey Hepburn in the short hairdo she sported in Roman Holiday. She wore a white shirt with a stiff collar that stood up and a full skirt. She had dark hair and a genuinely happy face. Jackie had prepared her delicious chicken marsala with plenty of mushrooms. Separate side dishes held a tossed salad and green beans. Gilbert liked garlic bread, so that went along with the meal as well. They would finish up with coffee brewed from freshly ground beans.

  “So, tell me,” Jackie said.

  “This is pretty good. If Pinky’s culprit—the woman she says is holding a child not her own—is somebody who used to be local to Naperville but has moved away, that person would be intensely curious to know what the local authorities are saying about the case—what their theories are—that kind of thing. So, they buy a subscription to the local papers, a subscription that gets mailed to them. The idea is to call the subscription departments to see if I can have a look at their records and try to spot someone who subscribed close to the time Hannah disappeared, someone who lives in a nearby state, and has kept up the subscription all this time.”

  “Wow,” Jackie said. “But Gilbert, really, that’s got to be a complete shot in the dark. Don’t hold your breath on that one.”

  “I beg to disagree. I’ve never done this before, but it might fit this case. Whoever’s holding Hannah lives just far enough away for it to make sense.”

  “Why stop with newspaper subscriptions? What if this person specifically knew Hannah but moved away? What if this person used to teach in the school?”

  “I could try to identify a teacher who may have retired or just moved away. But the thing is, the culprit could have been a Sunday school leader, a coach, Campfire Girls, you name it. It might be very hard to turn up somebody like that.”

  “As you say, pick your best thought and go with it. Anything happening with the photograph?”

  “Ah yes. The picture. Nothing in the picture itself. It’s slightly out of focus. Taken from in back of the people in it. It might have been taken in a post office. You can see an oblong slot in the wall. There are numbers on the back of the photo—a coding system maybe.

  “This is going ultra-slow, honey. It’s very touchy. It could be that one good lead. When you’re at this point, you stay cool. You don’t give this Pinky woman any inkling that you’re in the slightest bit interested in her. These people, they can be balancing on the edge. They can go ballistic in seconds and do things they had no thought of doing when they started down this road. Do you catch my drift? I’m saying this could be very dangerous for Hannah if it’s not handled right. Very.”

  “I understand,” Jackie said.

  “Who develops pictures for people? I mean who handles the developing? Hobbyists with their own darkroom, maybe. But the numbers on the back say it’s a processing operation. That says drugstore to me. So, I call Walgreens. ‘Do you have a photo processing operation of your own?’ Yes, they said—centralized processing for the whole chain. ‘Is there a numbering system’? Yes, they said.”

  “Wow,” Jackie said.

  “It’s identification of the store where the order was placed among other things. But these numbers weren’t theirs. They mix letters in. This was all numbers.”

  “Right,” she said.

  “Do they develop for third parties, like other chains? No. If it’s a local pharmacy—no affiliation of any kind, I might need to find another large-scale developing operation. I put that on the back burner and call another chain, Hy-Vee. Bingo. It was a good fit. If it’s their numbers we’re dealing with, the photo sent to Celia was developed for someone using the Galesburg, Illinois store. The next four numbers indicate the date the order was placed, and the last three is the order number. Eleven numbers in all.”

  “So, call the store,” Jackie said.

  “Right. But you never know who you’re talking to when you call somewhere. You lie like a rug about what you’re calling about. I did call and said I’m Hy-Vee Central Photograph Developing—sounds authentic enough—very likely there is such a department in Hy-Vee. I said we fouled up our deliveries, and in order to prevent duplicates, we needed to verify that they had received an order from us.

  “It was a man on the other end of the line. He asked again for the order number. There was a long pause. Ostensibly, he was checking his list. ‘That’s not ours,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you’ve got the right store?’

  “I told him the store number I had was 0215 and he said: ‘That’s us. Order number 014 doesn’t compute, though. Something’s wrong.’ So I asked if he got the date right and he told me September sixteenth. But the number on the photo reads 0906, the sixth. ‘Oh, so the full number is 02150906014,’ he said, and I told him that was the number I had. He then verified they had obviously received that one.

  “I almost peed my pants—and told him we were okay and that he had saved my life—to build a little sympathy into it, like he’s saved some little peon like me down in the trenches at Hy-Vee from getting fifteen lashes for incompetence.‘Good. No problem,’ he said. But Jackie, don’t ask me why. I know the pharmacist stinks. He was suspicious of me. Why? See what I mean?”
>
  “Not exactly.”

  “This was ordinary, run-of-the-mill, business. He’s nervous about it. Why? See?”

  “Nervous.”

  “Yes. Definitely. I told the FBI something was fishy there. I said if I were they, I’d be going after this in a big way. I have a contact at the local bureau. She said they would pursue it. Then, she called back and told me they’re dusting the photo for prints. When they saw they had a good print other than Celia Armand’s, they got a court order to tap the phone at the pharmacy, and at the home of the manager of the store. They’re listening. That’s where we are,” Rathskeller said.

  “Good for you, Gilly,” Jackie said. “Good for you. Are you going to grind up some coffee beans, now?”

  Chapter 13

  Gavin rented a Chevy Camaro and picked up her up at Newark Airport. When he left for work in Manhattan on the Weehawken ferry, Marcella took the car and picked up a road map of the northern third of the state. She searched for the area Gavin thought was a lot like where they lived in Naperville. He had zeroed in on the township of Mahwah. It showed on the map as a square with a bite taken out of the center of its eastern side, leaving lobster claw-like protrusions of land at the top and bottom. The southernmost one was identified as the Fardale section. The township was along the boundary with New York in the north.

  She found Route 17 and headed north, turned off and went west along Ramapo Valley Road, past Ramapo College and the forest preserves along the river. It was definitely out in the country. She poked around the ski area of the county preserve called Ramapo Reservation. There was no town center to speak of. She drove into Ramsey and to the library to look up some history.

  It was farm country from pre-Revolutionary War days—when a handful of families owned large tracts of land that they turned into truck farms that they passed to the next generation, and then the next. Eventually, some of the land was split off from the large tracts and was turned over to relatives or families moving into the area. What had once been heavily forested hill country, had then become clear-cut fields, and was only now turning once again to trees. Marcella meandered out of Ramsey and found herself on Wyckoff Avenue. She turned off at Fardale Avenue. Within a minute or two she was at the Chapel Road intersection. It felt eerie. Within an hour or two of striking out to look around, she was at the same spot Gavin had found.