Dina Santorelli (9 page)

Phillip Grand studied his
wife from across the bedroom as she tapped at her keyboard, the glow of the
monitor hardening her already sharp features and drawing all the pigment from
her tanned, taut skin. But even in this harsh light, Phillip thought Katherine
was striking, a modern-day embodiment of the word
handsome
—a type of
beauty that was no longer appreciated in a media-obsessed culture that put
undernourished, frail women on a pedestal. To him, Katherine was pleasing and
dignified, and what stood out to Phillip now were her heavily lashed, curious
eyes, which, as he had often noted, were identical to those of their daughter
Charlotte.

Charlotte...

Phillip
focused on his wife's fingers, long and skinny, moving swiftly, their pads
meeting the concave keys with ease, a byproduct of some thirty years of
practice since tenth-grade typing class.

"Honey,
why don't you come to bed?" he asked. "You need to rest."

Mrs.
Grand either didn't hear the request or ignored it.

Phillip
lay back on the bed and thought through the day's events—the blur of policemen
going in and out of the mansion and the intense questioning of his staff, a
small band of ambitious twenty- and thirtysomethings he once considered loyal,
but all of whom now seemed distrustful and aloof. All day long, the possibility
that he had a traitor in his camp, the thought that someone, out there, had his
little girl, and the worry that the media would get wind of Charlotte's
disappearance, weighed on him. Detective Nurberg seemed to think, and Phillip
was inclined to agree, that the media would only muddle the investigation at
this point. Although, despite the consensus among his Republican colleagues
that the liberal media was out to get them, the press in general had been kind
to Phillip Grand over the years. Was it naïve of him to think that more
searching eyes might be better than a few?

Phillip
rubbed his temples. He couldn't think anymore. His head ached, and he was
exhausted. It probably didn't help that he hadn't had anything to eat besides a
half package of Oreo cookies. And he didn't remember seeing his wife eat at
all.

The
typing stopped.

Katherine
was dialing the bedroom phone. He looked at his watch.

"Who
are you calling at this hour?"

She
held up her hand to silence him.

"Ellie...
Ellie... It's Katherine," Katherine said into the handset. "Yes, I know. I had
a question about the Tanner project. ... Ye... No, I'm fine. ... Well, I guess we
can speak in the morning. ... If that's easier for
you.
Well then..." She
hung up and continued typing.

The
governor shook his head. The police had placed emergency wiretaps on the
mansion's landlines, and he knew it would seem odd—suspicious—for his wife to
be placing business calls at 1:13 a.m. He was about to say something, but then
thought better of it and leaned his head back against his pillow.

Drive
and ambition were not only a passion for Katherine Grand, but a necessity, a
coping mechanism that got her through difficult times; they were two of the
qualities that had attracted Phillip to her. Having grown up with maternal role
models who spent their days idly, complaining about the color of wallpaper or
the inconvenience of a cool spring, Phillip thought Katherine was a breath of
fresh air—she had no intention of becoming a trophy wife, just as he had no
intention of having one. He remembered the day she came storming through the
door of his office when he was running for state assemblyman in the 131st
District. Dressed in one of those broad-shouldered, pinstriped power suits
popular in the 1980s, she had put her briefcase on his desk and told him that
she was going to be his campaign director. He already had one. She was
confident, forthright. "You need me," she'd said. "I can get you elected." She
opened up her briefcase and handed him an envelope containing incriminating
photos of the Democratic incumbent whose seat Grand was contesting.

Phillip
immediately showed his distaste. "I'm sorry, but I don't need to win that way,"
he remembered telling her, even though he was trailing in the polls by seven
points with the election six weeks away. "I'm afraid you're barking up the
wrong candidate." She smiled and left his office. The next day, compromising
photos of Assemblyman Mitchell Tuttle and a student intern appeared in the
Albany
Times
. Six weeks later, squeaky-clean Phillip Grand—war veteran, philanthropist—won
the assemblyman seat in a landslide. The following day, Phillip hired Katherine
as his media spokesperson. Two years later, he married her.

Phillip
got up from the bed and stood behind his wife. He put his hands on her
shoulders.

"Phillip,
you're annoying me."

"Come
to bed," the governor said.

Katherine
stopped typing. "I can't," she said.

"You
need to sleep."

"I
can't
sleep." Katherine stood up and walked to the window. A family of moths hovered
just beneath the recessed lighting of the overhanging eaves, flapping their
tiny wings in confusion. Arthur, the night guard, was sitting in a chair just
outside the security post at the main gate talking to a policeman.

"We'll
find her," Phillip said. He walked over to his wife and spun her around so that
she was facing him.

"This
is my fault," Katherine said.

"What?"

"It
is. I'm Charlotte's mother." Her face seemed softer away from the white light
of the computer screen, the crevices returning around her eyes and mouth, the
freckles visible again on her nose. "If I had been here, this wouldn't have
happened."

Phillip
reached in and hugged his wife. She stood there hard, resisting, as she always
did for the first few moments, but her body weakened. "I don't think there's
anything that you could have done," he said, "that I could have..."

"The
press is going to have a field day with this," she muttered into his shoulder.

As
much as Phillip was a media darling, Katherine Grand hadn't been so lucky. She
and the press had had a loathe/hate
relationship from
the start—they accused her of spoon-feeding them fluff, and she charged them
with demanding nothing but dirt. Over the past ten months, in particular,
Katherine had taken a lot of hits in the media for being an unfit mother—a
"Mommie Grandest"—to quote one local blogger who went so far as to run a press
photo of Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford beside a headshot of Katherine Grand.

"The
press doesn't know anything," Phillip said, as Katherine released herself from
his grasp and sat down. She unbuttoned her jacket, hung it on the back of a
chair, and slid her feet out of her pumps, rubbing the ball of her right foot.

"You
don't really believe that, do you?" Phillip sat on the floor next to his wife.

"Believe
what?" Katherine asked. He could already feel her distancing herself from the
vulnerability of just a few minutes before.

"That
this is your fault."

"Do
you?" she asked.

Phillip
wiped the smudged mascara flaking on her bottom eyelid with his thumb.

"No,"
he said. "I believe it's mine."

"Oh,
Phillip," Katherine said, with a wave of her hand. She stood up and walked back
to her desk. "There you go again, taking responsibility for things that don't
concern you."

"How
can you say that?" Phillip's voice grew loud. "How do you know that? Katherine,
you are an accomplished, amazing woman, but it's not your name they've got
etched onto picket signs. It's not your face they've got drawn on a doll-sized
body hanging from a noose, parading it around."

"Phillip,
that was two years ago."

"I
don't care!" Phillip stood up and began to pace in front of the king-size bed.
"I've kept that haunting image in my mind for two years,
two years
,
wondering how anyone,
anyone
, even if they're diametrically opposed to
something I feel strongly about, would feel compelled to do that."

It
took a lot to rattle Phillip Grand. He was repeating words twice, Katherine
thought, a telltale sign that he was serious. She turned from her computer.

"There
are schmucks in the world, Phillip. C'mon. You know it deep down. It amazes me
that after forty-seven years on this earth, it still surprises you when bad
people do bad things."

"It
doesn't surprise me, Katherine. I've seen my share of people doing horrible
things."

"Oh,
here we go again." She rolled her eyes. "The war."

"I
love how you dismiss that. You always have. As if what happened over there was
a figment of my imagination. To this day, every day, there are casualties
there. Kids,
kids
, fighting for people they don't know and will never
meet. For God's sake, you gave a speech at last month's Wounded Warrior Project
luncheon."

"I
don't dismiss it, Phillip," Katherine said calmly, unscrewing her post earrings
and placing them in a crystal bowl on her dresser, "but I also don't dwell on
it."

"Well,
maybe you would if you'd been there."

"Oh,
that's just great." Katherine took out a pair of flannel pajamas. "I love how
people who have fought in military conflicts don't think much of anyone who
hasn't."

"It's
not that we don't think much of you," Phillip said with a sneer. "It's that we
don't have the luxury to wonder and theorize like you do."

But
Katherine wasn't listening. "It's just like parents."

"What?"
The two of them somehow had slipped into a familiar argument. Phillip couldn't
remember what had set them off.

"Parents—
breeders
—they
think you're not really an adult until you have children. It doesn't matter
what you accomplish, if you work your way through college, part-time, and start
a company from scratch, if you're not getting up in the middle of the night to
breast-feed, then you're
less than
." Katherine had now disrobed, except
for a pair of panty hose that she peeled off leg by leg, revealing a pair of
black bikini-cut underwear, and Phillip watched her fight her way into her
pajamas, first the sleeves, then the pant legs, muttering to herself the whole
time. The only words he caught were "egotistical" and "flabby whores." She went
to the bathroom and shut the door. The water faucet was running, and Phillip
imagined Katherine's face covered in suds and her mouth a big gaping hole that
continued to open and close.

Phillip
lay back down on the bed. He hated fighting with Katherine. He hated fighting
with anyone, really, and this was accomplishing nothing, but Katherine's last
words about parenting were ringing in his ears. He had pushed for a child—a
litter, actually—practically from their wedding night, but Katherine wouldn't
hear of it. He wore her down over time, and she agreed to "one child—that's
it." Charlotte had been born just before Phillip and Katherine's fifteenth
wedding anniversary, and no sooner had he seen those tiny fingers and toes than
he had begun hinting for another. Phillip knew the loneliness of the only
child. He remembered how, even as a preschooler, he had tried to use his money
to bribe his classmates to play with him, how he'd ask for a brother or sister
every Christmas, but instead had opened box after box of toy trains and cars. Charlotte needed a sibling.

It
wasn't until that very moment that Phillip realized that, deep down, he
did
think that everyone should have kids, that it was a natural rite of passage for
adults. Did that make him a horrible person? "Egotistical"? He thought again
about the Phillip Grand doll hanging from the noose, which had left such an
indelible mark on him. He hadn't even seen it in person, but on the evening
news, which was covering a pro-choice rally at a local Planned Parenthood
clinic after his State of the State address in 2009. "The governor is telling
us what we can and can't do with our bodies," the young woman, named Laurie,
told the news reporter. "He says it's murder." Then, with a sly grin, she
looked into the camera and pointed to the doll. "Murder like this, governor?"

Katherine
opened the bathroom door. Her face was scrubbed and shiny, and her hair had
been combed back around her ears. She stood before the bed.

"I'm..."

"It's
okay," Phillip said. "I'm sorry too."

Katherine
gave a quick nod, turned off the bedroom light, and climbed into bed next to
her husband. Phillip turned toward her and put his hand on her waist. "We'll
find her, Katherine. We will."

Katherine
stared up at the ceiling and then turned onto her side, away from her husband.
The vibration of Phillip's cell phone on the nightstand startled them both.

"Is
it Nurberg?" Katherine flipped around, flinging off the covers. Phillip had
given the detective his personal cell number.

Phillip
looked down at the caller ID. It wasn't Nurberg. The telephone number was
familiar, though he couldn't place it, and there was no photo accompanying it,
which meant that his phone didn't recognize it.

"I
don't think so," he said.

"Who
else would be calling your private line at this hour?" Katherine asked, and
then she bolted upright. "Oh my God!"

"I
don't know. Just relax." Phillip's hand was shaking.

"I'm
running downstairs to get Detective Matrick. They're not calling the landline.
Oh my God! They're not calling the landline! They're calling your personal cell
phone. We're not ready. We can't trace it. Can we?"

"Wait."

Katherine
didn't wait. She grabbed her robe and ran out the bedroom door.

The
phone kept ringing. There were only three people who had this telephone number:
Katherine, Rosalia, and, now, Detective Nurberg. Katherine had insisted that
she be able to reach Phillip at any time and bought him this cell phone last
Christmas, and Phillip had given the number to Rosalia just in case she had to
reach him in an emergency. Even his mother called him on his business cell.