Father's Day (15 page)

“You mean about us?”

“Not exactly. Did you know about your daughter’s pregnancy?”

She pushed herself up from the couch and moved through a wide arch into the dining room. She kept her back to him, peeling the cellophane off a new pack of cigarettes she’d picked up from amid the array of envelopes and papers on the table. The smoke drifted over her head. She folded her arms in front of her, the cigarette between her fingers. She still hadn’t turned around.

“Who told you?”

“Did you really think I wouldn’t find out? Something like that doesn’t generally stay a secret for very long.”

“How much do you know?”

“No way, Sarah. I won’t play that game. Assume I know everything. I want to hear it from you.”

“I knew she was pregnant. What’s a mother supposed to do when she learns her daughter is pregnant? What would you expect me to do? Should I have made an announcement, had a baby shower? I was heartbroken, Lou. She should have been graduating high school, starting college, not . . .”

“Did you know who the father was?”

“Honestly, no.”

“Did she?”

Sarah turned to face him. She walked back across the room and squeezed out the cigarette in a glass ashtray on the coffee table in front of him. She still held the last drag in her lungs and let it escape through her nose. Lou could see the cut on her lip, still red as if it had healed and reopened. Her hair fell over her eyes as the last trickle of smoke escaped from the extinguished cigarette.

“She made some accusations.”

“What kind of accusations?”

“If you must know, she claimed it was Vince’s baby. She
implied that he raped her, at first. Then later, she said it was consensual. She was trying to get back at me. That was obvious. No one believed her. She’d never done anything but lie to us.”

“You didn’t believe her? After what happened to you.”

“Nothing happened to me, Lou. I’d have been more inclined to believe her if she’d said Tommy had done it.”

“Is Carol Ann Vince’s child?”

“Who told you that?”

“Vince did and I don’t think he had a reason to lie.”

“It shouldn’t have mattered, Lou”

“But it did matter. It mattered to Sam. It mattered to your daughter.” Sarah’s hands were skaking violently as she mishandled another cigarette and it fell to the floor.

“Why didn’t you tell me right away that she’d been pregnant?”

“Would it have made a difference? Would you have found her any quicker? Would you have found her at all?”

“That’s not the point!”

“What do you want me to do, Lou? Tell me what to do.”

“Can I take a look around your daughter’s room?”

“Why? I’m sorry. Of course. It’s the last door on the right.”

The stairs to the second floor creaked under his weight. He tried to step softly, stay on the edge of the boards. The carpet on the stairs was thick but the boards beneath squealed their complaint no matter where he placed his foot. He leaned his weight on the banister and pulled himself up two steps at a time. It was a long flight with a sharp turn about half way up.

At the top of the stairs, he emerged into a narrow hallway with three closed doors that he assumed were bedrooms and an open bathroom door at the end of the hall. The pictures in the hall were faded oil paintings in thick, oppressive frames, riders on horse back, great black horses, with fiery eyes, and a pack of dogs chasing a bright red fox. The fox looked scared while the men in their saddles, dressed in neat riding jackets and caps,
grinned maliciously at each other. The paint had dried in coarse waves of grotesque color and had begun to peel away like a dead layer of skin.

The coffee was going through him and he decided to use the bathroom first. There was nothing behind the shower curtain and nothing swimming in the bowl. He didn’t know what he expected to find. He was impressed with Sarah’s house keeping abilities. The porcelain shined and there wasn’t a pubic hair out of place. If cleanliness was close to godliness, there were a lot of people pretending to play God.

He rummaged through the medicine cabinet. There was an abundance of empty medication bottles, dusty plastic containers on dusty glass shelves. The prescriptions were in the name of Sarah Blackwell and there were all kinds of barbiturates, antidepressants, sleeping pills, the kind that mixed well with a glass of bourbon.

He eased back down the hall, his hand sliding lightly against the wall, inching toward the first closed door. There was one dim light overhead, a couple of burned-out bulbs behind a cloudy glass cover. The floor kept complaining under his feet, reminding him how old the house was and how old he was. With his back flat against the wall, he tried the glass knob. He turned it slowly with his left hand and let the door swing open under its own weight.

He entered slowly and stopped dead in his tracks. His glance fell on a reflection of himself, centered in a full-length mirror across the room. He was startled momentarily, looking at himself fixed in the oval frame. He felt ridiculous. He looked more like a burglar than a cop. If he had his gun out, he might have fired and there’d be nothing left but a lot of broken glass and shattered silence.

The room he entered belonged to Carol Ann Blackwell. It was the room she’d lived in as a child, the place where her last
memory of childhood would always remain, a place she’d been kept prisoner by her past. It was left very much as one would expect a child’s room to look—a girl’s room with a lot of pink on the walls, fluffy pillows, stuffed animals, teddy bears, and white furry kittens. A bedspread, embroidered with pink and lavender flowers, was folded neatly back on the bed, exposing two down pillows, wrapped in plain white cotton pillowcases. A chest of drawers, the color of eggshells, sat against the wall under a row of small windows. A silver music box sat on top of the chest between two snow globes. They were souvenirs from the Philadelphia Zoo. He picked one up and shook it. The snow swirled around three black and white penguins sliding over a frozen mountain lake, a mother and father penguin and a baby. They had their black fins extended as if they were holding hands. He replaced it in the same spot and watched the snow settle gently to the ground.

A jewelry box covered in purple velvet lay next to it, along with a hand mirror, appointed in silver, and a matching brush and comb. The room was a picture of neatness, as if she’d boarded the school bus that morning and was expected to return that afternoon.

Lou looked out the narrow windows, through the thick branches and green leaves of the towering maple outside that must have cast im mense shadows into that small room at night. He turned to take one last look around. It was like stepping into a distorted doll house, childhood memories and fears, dreams and nightmares beneath a placid surface. He had the impression Carol Ann Blackwell hadn’t spent much time there in quite a while, since long before she went missing.

He pulled out each drawer, slowly and quietly. Their hollow, empty sound made him wince as he pushed them closed. He pulled open the closet door. A handful of wire hangers
hung from a rod and the wooden shelf above it held nothing but dust. He noticed a thick layer of dust covered every surface. It was the kind of dust kids draw in with their fingers. It swirls in the air when it’s disturbed, raised from sleep by a child’s finger, as easily as from a gust of wind. It tickles your nose and gets into your throat. It could go untouched for years, never bother a soul. But the sleeping particles are suddenly set in motion, like planets in orbit, and when the dust finally settles, the world is different. It looks the same but it’s not. The deck has been shuffled. The order changed, the past disturbed. Even the dust of the tomb, he thought, is rarely left untouched forever.

He walked to the other window, pulled up the blind with a string that felt like frayed thread, and looked down into the driveway and out toward the street. He could see the garage, locked like a fortress behind the house. The night sky still had that dark shade of blue to it, blackness forcing the sun to the other end of the world.

He noticed flakes of white paint and plaster, on the floor in the corner, where it had cracked and fallen from the ceiling. The carpet was a faded, washed-out green, the color of paper flowers and dentist chairs. The pictures on the wall were still, like they hadn’t been moved in years. One was a sad faced clown, his head poking out from behind a galloping, wild-eyed carousel horse, a black tear on his cheek. Another was a portrait in pencil of a young girl, her hair fallen down over one eye, covering half her face, the other half, pale and expressionless. They were like two visitors that had never left.

Next to the bed sat a short, square bookcase that doubled as a nightstand. It had a lower shelf that still held a small collection of books. A wind-up clock and a radio sat on top of the stand in front of a small lamp made of ceramic ballet slippers,
petite slippers tied with pink ribbon under a yellowing shade. There must have been a telephone at one time. The jack was visible near the floor.

The shelf was lined with children’s storybooks from one end to the other, fairy tales bound in worn covers, their pages thin and brittle, their spines broken and bruised. There were oversized picture books of animals, birds, and dinosaurs. There were cartoon books and books on astrology, depicting the constellations, like stick men in the sky. The largest book on the shelf was a thick, gray high-school yearbook, its pages stained with fingerprints and nail polish. Lou pulled it out, sat on the bed, placed the book on his lap and began turning the pages.

He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. He fanned the pages between his fingers, looked at the glossy pictures, the awkward smiles and faces. He found her picture as he knew he would, the face of a girl with experience beyond her years. There was something missing in her face, though, in her expression, an emptiness like the blank stare of the blind. Between the torn pages, he saw a paper, folded flat like a pressed flower. It wasn’t a plain paper. It was some kind of document. He pulled it out and carefully unfolded it. It was a birth certificate in the name of Carol Ann Blackwell.

He studied the names, places, and dates printed in official scroll, saw the lies and deceit come into focus. Another folded piece of paper fell from the book at his feet. He picked it up and unfolded it. The paper was ragged and torn. The slanted handwriting was in pencil, smudged and faded. It was a suicide note. It wasn’t addressed to anybody. It spelled out all she’d learned, the truth about who she was and what she feared she’d become.

He put both papers in his pocket and came down the stairs. Sarah was waiting by the window, a cigarette dangling from her lips. Lou walked to the window. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he thrust them into his pants pockets. Vincent
Trafficante was coming up the front steps. Lou heard his footfalls on the porch, heard his key in the lock. The door came open and they were face to face.

“Mr. Klein, this is a surprise. Not entirely unexpected. How’s the investigation coming along?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t been much help.”

“She’ll come home when she’s good and ready. She’ll give her mother a heart attack first. She’ll saunter in dripping in self-pity, with an ‘I’m sorry,’ and ‘I hope I didn’t worry anyone.’ Do you have any children, Mr. Klein?”

“Yes, a girl.”

“An only child?”

“Yes, she is.”

“Then we have something in common. Sarah told me you’re divorced. I take it she lives with her mother.”

“She’s back and forth.”

“A tough situation. Honestly, Mr. Klein, Sarah is at liberty to employ who she pleases, but as I said before, this whole thing is a waste of time and money.”

“I believe your daughter could be in danger.”

“What kind of danger?”

“There is only one kind of danger, Vince.”

“You mean her life is in danger. Please, Mr. Klein. If you want me to be perfectly honest, I still think you’re harboring some misguided loyalty to your friend, and you think you can somehow exonerate him. Well, the truth is, Sam Blackwell was a tool. That’s all he ever was and Sarah knew it all along. He was useful to me at one time. He gave my wife the semblance of respectability, raised my daughter, and for that I’ll always be indebted. I’ll say a prayer for him next Sunday.”

“Vincent, Lou was just leaving and I’m very tired. Could we finish this conversation some other time?”

“Before you go, Mr. Klein, Lou, I hope I haven’t offended you.
We’re having a little party tomorrow night at the restaurant. I’d like you to be my guest. There will be some very important people there. Cocktails at six and dinner at seven. Bring a date if you’d like.”

Vincent put out his hand and Lou shook it. His fingers felt cold and he could tell Vince felt it, too. He went awkwardly out the door, a frown on his face as he met Sarah Blackwell’s lingering gaze. Suddenly, she grabbed him by the arm and escorted him onto the porch.

They stood for a moment listening to the wind chimes ring in the breeze, their breath visible in the cold air. They looked down both sides of the street at the line of old homes, not more than a few feet between them, all of which had seen better days. Vince’s sudden interruption had initiated a stark silence between them. She kept her eyes averted, trying to hide the crack in her composure.

“I would have liked to ask Vince a few questions before I left. You pushed me out of there as if you were afraid of what we might say to each other. Or were you embarrassed that he walked in on us. If I saw it, I’m sure he did.”

“What did you want to ask him, anyway?”

“I thought Vince might be more objective, give me some facts about your daughter that you might be reluctant to give. He’s not shy about giving his opinion.”

“There’s nothing he can tell you that you don’t already know. Can’t we leave him out of it, Lou?”

“I don’t think so. Death seems to hover around that man, like a shadow. It doesn’t touch him but it’s there, like an unseen force. People just disappear, turn up dead, and not a finger gets pointed at him.”

“The same thing can be said about you, you know. Hasn’t death followed you for your whole life? Isn’t everyone you’ve ever loved dead?”