Lost Innocents (23 page)

The kitchen door swung open, and Charles Henson stood in the doorway, his face as pale as the flour on her fingers.

“I got away as fast as I could,” he said. “Is she still out there?”

Paulina nodded out and glanced out the window again.

“I called the chief after I spoke to you. I let them know exactly what I thought of his tactics. I promised him that they are going to be sorry they messed with me. How could they even think…? The girl was murdered, you know.”

Paulina nodded. “I heard.”

“As if she would ever hurt anyone, or anything. It’s outrageous.”

They were both silent for a few minutes. Then he said, “How did she take it?”

“She was upset. Then she answered the phone, and she went out there,” said Paulina, inclining her head toward the playhouse.

Charles’s shoulders sank, his indignation seeping away. “I’ve spoken to a psychiatrist, you know,” he said. “The same doctor she saw years ago. She liked him at the time. He has a very good reputation,” Charles said earnestly. “I told him all about it, and he thinks he can help her.”

“She won’t go,” Paulina said.

“She’s going to have to, Paulina. I don’t know what else to do.”

Paulina sank her hands farther into the dough. “That’s between you and her,” she said.

“Do you blame me? I only want to help her. You know that.”

“I know,” she said. “It’s nobody’s fault.”

Charles walked over to the window and looked out at the playhouse. “I guess I’ll go out and try to talk to her.”

Paulina didn’t look up. She didn’t want to see the expression on his face.

Charles opened the back door to the kitchen and let himself out, pulling it shut behind him. On leaden feet he walked down the little garden path to the playhouse. He could remember when the carpenters were finished with the playhouse, when they put the last daub of paint on the door and declared it done. Kenny had been over the moon with delight at his new hideout. It was a man’s kind of hideout, Charles had explained to his son as they had walked hand in hand between banks of flowers down this very path. Kenny had suggested that it was like Pooh’s house in the hundred-acre wood, and Charles had agreed that that was the very thing.

Though the day was gray, Charles could almost feel that warm little hand in his again, feel the sun on his shoulders, blessing his head. He’d been thirty-five years old when Ken was born, and he had not taken his son for granted—not a moment of his son’s short life had Charles been too distracted, too busy, to savor the joy of it. Charles had loved being a father. That had been some comfort to him in the years since. He tried to think of that time as a gift that had been given to them. A gift that they had truly appreciated.

When he reached the door to the playhouse, he did the only thing that seemed appropriate. He knocked.

“Who is it?” she called out from inside.

She sounded normal, almost gay, and even that filled him with dread. What did it all mean? Was this the manic prelude to the next breakdown? He did not want her to have to go away again. He wasn’t certain she would ever come back to him. He remembered those days when she was in the hospital as some of the worst of his life. When he went to see her, she would just stare at him as if she didn’t recognize him. When he got home, no one was there to greet him. “It’s me, darling,” said Charles, and his love for her reverberated in his anxious voice.

“Come in,” she said.

He opened the door and ducked down so that he could enter the little house. It took his eyes a moment to adjust. She was seated on the floor, on a quilt, her knees pulled up to her chest. A little candle lantern cast a faint glow. She patted the quilt beside her.

“Come and sit down,” she said.

“Why don’t you come back to the house, darling,” he said. “It’s chilly out here.”

“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought of it, but this is perfect. Come and sit here with me.”

She looked almost young in the candlelight, he thought. Her curls were tipped with gold, and her face also seemed to glow. She looked strangely peaceful. It frightened him more than if she had been raving.

“I know you have a good suit on,” she said.

“I don’t care about that,” he said, pulling up the knife-sharp pleat on his fine worsted wool trousers and crossing his glossy wing-tip shoes beneath him, Indian style. “I only care about you,” he said. “Paulina told me about the police coming here.”

Ellen nodded sadly. “They are trying to find the baby,” she said.

“I’m so sorry that they harassed you, darling, that I wasn’t here to throw them out.”

“It’s all right,” she said, taking his hand. “I don’t blame them.”

“Why don’t you come in the house,” he said gently. “We’ll have some sherry. Take the chill off.”

She smiled at him and reached out, running her fingers over his perfectly combed white hair. “You’re still so handsome,” she said.

He looked at her, puzzled. “You’re still my beauty,” he said.

“We’re not young,” she said.

“No.”

“Charles, I have to tell you something. I have been keeping something from you,” she said. “I’ve suspected it for a while, but yesterday, at the hospital, I saw the doctor…”

His palms broke out in a sweat as he panicked. Of course she was acting strange. She said she was afraid. How could I be so dense? he thought. She’s sick. Not mentally sick. Physically sick. Of course. It all made sense to him now. Cancer, he thought. It ran in her family. Cancer. “Oh no,” he groaned.

She shook her head. “No,” she said, reading his mind. “I’m not sick. I’m…pregnant.”

His mind careened back to the mentally unbalanced diagnosis. He stared at her, trying to make his expression unreadable so she wouldn’t know what he was thinking.

“I know,” she said. “That’s what I thought. When I first had the symptoms I thought it must be some terrible sickness. Or that I was imagining it. You know, my mind playing tricks on me. Then I started to suspect. It was as if it were a cruel trick of the universe. You know, one last turn of the screw to torture me.”

“But you’re too…”

“Old,” she said, smiling. “You can say it. I thought the same thing.”

“All these years…we never were able…”

“I know,” she said. “I know.” She grabbed his hands and squeezed them so hard that he felt the pain, marveled at her strength. “But it’s true. Do you understand what I’m telling you?” she said. “Despite everything, we’re going to have a baby.”

“Oh, my God,” he said. He struggled to unfold his aching legs to get near her. It seemed appropriate to be sitting here, in this playhouse, for he felt as terrified as a child. A tiny child all over again. “Oh, my God. Ellen.”

She laughed. A bright, uncomplicated laugh.

“But…at your…age. The odds. So much could go wrong.” He didn’t want to start imagining it. All he could feel was terror.

Indulgently she grasped his hands. “I know how you feel. I’ve been feeling it for weeks. But I’m past all that now,” she said. “I’ve had every fear that there is to have. But you know,” she whispered, “all of a sudden it’s gone. The doctor called this morning, just after the policeman left. He said everything looks good. I need to take extra hormones. Can you imagine? As simple as that? Just some hormones. And vitamins, of course. It’s amazing. Isn’t it amazing? I’ve been sitting in this playhouse since then. Remembering. Remembering everything. And making plans. You know what, Charles? I’m not afraid anymore. I feel at peace. I’m certain. This is our miracle, darling.”

“Ellen, what if…we can’t know.”

“What is there to know?” she said sensibly. “All will be revealed to us in time. We have to go forward and see what God has in store for us. I have to have all those tests they give to women my age. To find out if the baby is all right. I know in my heart the baby is all right. In no time at all we’ll be able to watch on a screen. They have this machine called a sonogram. The doctor said he could tell us whether it was a boy or a girl. I said I wouldn’t want to know. Is that okay?” she asked him gently. “I said it didn’t matter at all to us.”

For a moment Charles sat there, feeling stunned, disembodied almost. If she had told him she was going to die, he doubted he would feel any stranger. He crawled into her arms and let her hold him as his fears and hopes began to flash through him, shaking him like a fever. They came in waves, crests and troughs, one after another, rolling over him. Through it all she held him, and rocked him, and crooned to him that she understood, and promised him that everything would be all right.

Len Wickes, still in uniform, zipped up his leather jacket and began to walk down the winding pathways of Binney and Park. The park was a study in deep green gray, quiet except for the occasional cry of a bird and the thud of runners’ feet as a couple jogged by. Len did not meet their eyes. He felt as if they might look at him and shake their heads sadly. He felt as if the whole world knew of his humiliation.

He had returned to the station house, all set to communicate his suspicions about Ellen Henson, only to find Chief Cameron having an apoplectic fit. Not only Charles Henson but some of the other women he had interviewed had called to complain to the chief. Instead of kudos for his extra effort, he had received a blistering condemnation and a week’s suspension without pay.

How am I ever going to tell Laurie? Len thought. She was still at work at the beauty shop, but when she got home and found him there…

Len sighed. She had been so excited when he’d brought home copies of the lists and started working on them. She thought it was admirable the way he did that extra bit that wasn’t actually required. She looked up to him for being a cop, and a good cop at that. It pained him to think how she’d feel when she found out. She was always so proud of him.

He still couldn’t understand why what he had done was so wrong. He was not used to being reprimanded. If anything, people teased him for being something of a Boy Scout, but he didn’t mind. He had joined the police force to help people. When something happened, like the death of Rebecca Starnes and the disappearance of the Wallace baby, it upset him more than it did some people. It was an insult to everything he was trying to do with his life. All he wanted to do, with every fiber of his being, was solve this case.

Len walked aimlessly beside the duck pond, not knowing where else to go. He saw a green-headed mallard gliding lazily across the surface. A mother sat on a park bench, watching her little son play with a sailboat at the edge of the pond. Len and the woman smiled at each other, and Len stopped for a minute to gaze at the boy. Someday, he thought, I hope I have a son. He and Laurie would be good parents. Len was sure of that. Thinking of Laurie made him feel sad and frustrated again. God, he hated to have to tell her this.

The kid was having a little trouble keeping the boat from turning over. Len crouched beside him, showed him how to right the boat and keep it from tipping, then straightened up again. He nodded to the woman on the bench and walked on. Maybe I’ll go over to the 7-Eleven, he thought, and get a cup of coffee. He didn’t feel like going home. He was a cop. What was there to do at home?

He started to cut across the clearing on the other side of the pond, his head down, his hands stuffed in his pants pockets, and nearly collided with a man who was standing on one foot, his hands and arms creating the shape of an L in the air.

“’Scuse me,” Len mumbled, moving to skirt the man. He stopped dead in his tracks and turned around. The man had shifted to another, less precarious posture. Len watched him in amazement, as if he were a phantom. The police had scoured this park at all hours and looked up every person of Asian extraction in the town of Taylorsville, to no avail. Every person they spoke to had heard about the abduction, the death of Rebecca Starnes, and some even acknowledged an interest in tai chi, but not one had ever done exercises in Binney Park at all, much less on the day in question.

It’s him, Len thought, and the excitement hit him like an electric shock. He’s the one. He’s here. Carefully Len turned back and walked up to the man. “Excuse me,” he said, trying to keep his voice casual. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”

The man’s broad, calm face crinkled into a frown, and his black eyes looked suspicious. He stood up very straight, but his hands and arms were slightly bent in a stance of readiness. “Yes,” he said in a deep voice.

“My name is Officer Leonard Wickes of the Taylorsville Police Department,” said Len, crossing his fingers since technically he was off the force as of this moment. “I’d like to ask you a few questions that concern the death of Rebecca Starnes and the abduction of Justin Wallace.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” protested the man.

“Is that tai chi you’re doing?” Len asked.

“That’s right.”

“Do you do these exercises in this park very often?”

The man nodded. “When I’m in town. I travel a lot on business.”

“Well, Mr. urn…”

“Ishikawa,” the man said a trifle reluctantly.

“Mr. Ishikawa…is that a Chinese name?”

“Japanese. My parents are Japanese. I am an American,” the man said pointedly with just a hint of impatience.

“Japanese, then,” said Len. “Do you live here in Taylorsville?”

“Yes,” he said. “I live in those apartments over there.”

“So you must have heard about what happened here Tuesday.”

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t know much about what’s been going on in town lately. I’ve been away. What happened?”

Out of town, Len exulted to himself. That explains it. No wonder he didn’t come forward. He’s been out of town. Len felt his heart lifting, soaring. He’d found the missing witness. He could hardly wait to tell the chief. They’d put him back on the force right away. They’d have to. “So you’ve been away on business,” Len said in a friendly manner.

“No, actually,” the man said, “I had tickets to the last game of the Series.”

Lens mouth dropped open, his problems and his purpose for the moment forgotten in his amazement at this piece of news. “The World Series? You got tickets? You went?”

Mr. Ishikawa nodded a little sheepishly, acknowledging the admiration in the other man’s tone. “I’m a big baseball fan,” he said.