The Dead Place (21 page)

The sky was a solid line of black. Neon signs from shop lights seemed to mock Kate’s fear. She tried not to think of Grace all alone in the night. “What if he’s got her?”

“Who?”

“Whoever took Lily Slocum and Elizabeth Hirsh.”

Ian sighed. “Please, Kate.”

“I think it’s a reasonable thing to ask.”

“If you suggest that Terrence Simnic has her—”

Kate cut him off. “I wasn’t going to! It was a mistake—I was wrong—please let it go.”

They drove in silence for another block. She glanced at her watch. “It’s after eight. We have to report her missing.”

“No,” Ian said immediately. “No way.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to involve the police again if I can help it. Chances are that Grace is at home right now sulking because we’re not there to notice her. Let’s go home first. If we need to go to the police, we can do it later.”

“That’s what you thought two hours ago.”

“It’s still the most plausible hypothesis.”

Kate didn’t say anything, but her expression must have conveyed what she felt because Ian sighed again.

“What do you want me to do, Kate? Drive straight to the police station and act hysterical because our daughter is late getting home? They probably have a special file on us already.”

“You mean me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Fine. I was trying to include myself in this, but you’re right—you’re the one who accused our neighbor of being a serial killer.”

“I’ve apologized, Ian. Many times. I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“Nothing, I just want you to stop and think before jumping to conclusions again.”

Houses along their block were studded with welcoming light, while theirs was so dark as to retreat into the sky around it, shades of charcoal and black, the two blank windows and shadowed front porch a reproach.

This time it was Ian who went through the house calling Grace’s name. Kate didn’t follow him, going into the kitchen instead to find the note she’d left their daughter exactly where she’d put it. Kate crumpled it in her hand, thought better of it, and straightened it out again. They might need it.

When Grace had been small, she’d wandered off fairly regularly, a child who resisted holding hands, always wanting to be independent, running from their care from the beginning. She wanted her mother’s company then, but not too close, not hampering her freedom to wander where she chose. She’d always been lost in her own little world, absorbed in whatever she was doing at the moment.

Kate had been the same way as a child, and her mother had been the one to suggest that they come up with a system to keep track of Grace in crowds. Either she or Ian were in charge of keeping Grace in sight at all times. Ian had little patience with it, forcing Grace to hold his hand, but she’d make it painful for him, going red in the face and protesting any infringement on her personal space.

Kate remembered the anxiety she felt when she was in a shop and Grace had been standing next to her cart one minute only to vanish the next. She’d been four or five then, a small girl with a serious expression that belied her age, her dark hair in two little pigtails on either side of her round, solemn face.

For years, Kate had relived in nightmares the moment when she’d looked down and discovered Grace was gone. Cart abandoned, she’d moved rapidly through the store, calling Grace’s name in a level tone first, then shouting it. People stared and an employee stopped her, asking what was wrong. He’d called on his walkie-talkie and they shut the doors of the store and then, just as Kate was convinced that Grace had been kidnapped, there she suddenly was, appearing from a far section of the store with a toy in her hand, holding it up to ask her mother if she could have it.

The memory of crushing Grace to her chest, holding her tight, washed over Kate and she felt tears stinging her eyes. When was the last time she’d held Grace like that? When was the last time she’d told her daughter she loved her?

“She’s not here and she hasn’t been home.” Ian stood in the kitchen doorway looking worried for the first time. Kate felt a perverse satisfaction that he’d finally been roused to concern.

“We need to go to the police,” she said, and this time he didn’t argue.

The desk sergeant on the evening shift was different, and if he registered their name he gave no indication of it. They were ushered into the squad room and helped by a short uniformed policewoman with bobbed brown hair and freckles who looked barely older than Grace. Her name badge read
L
.
DOMBROSKI
. What did the L stand for? Kate wondered as she watched her filling out forms in looping, childlike writing.

“We can file a report now, but there’s not much we can do until she’s been missing twenty-four hours,” the policewoman said after listening to them.

“You won’t look for her until tomorrow afternoon?” Kate said. “But anything could happen in that time!”

“All the squad cars will get a copy of her picture,” Dombroski said in a soothing voice, “and if they happen to spot her, they’ll definitely pick her up. Also, a description will go out.”

“Can’t you do one of those, what are they called, Amber alerts?”

“Do you have reason to believe your daughter was abducted, ma’am?”

“Yes, possibly!” Kate said. Ian put a hand on her arm, more restraint than comfort.

“We don’t know what happened to her.”

“Has she run away before?”

“No,” Kate said. “No, and she wouldn’t do that.”

“She might.” Ian’s disagreement was quiet.

Kate turned on him. “What do you mean? You think she’s run away?”

“Maybe.” Ian looked grim. “She might have.” He looked from his wife to Officer Dombroski. “She’s been seeing a young man we don’t approve of—Damien Rattle.” He spelled the name.

The officer wrote this down. “Where does Mr. Rattle live?”

“Manhattan. I don’t know the exact address.”

“Upper East Side,” Kate said. “Eighty-ninth and Park, I think.”

“How do you know that?” Ian asked.

“Don’t you remember how Grace tried to impress us with his address?” She looked at the other woman. “She thought we’d accept him if he came from money.”

Ian said, “So what happens if she doesn’t return home within twenty-four hours?”

“Then we do an organized search and the FBI will be alerted, Mr. Corbin,” Officer Dombroski said. “Did you bring a picture of your daughter?”

“Oh, no, I didn’t think of it,” Kate said, feeling fresh anguish, but Ian reached for his wallet.

“I’ve got a school one.”

He dug it out, laying the small shot carefully on the desk. It was two years old, and it startled Kate to see just how much Grace had changed in that time. Had they also changed so much physically?

Despair washed over Kate as they drove away from the police station. “We can’t just sit and wait for twenty-four hours.”

“I agree.”

“Do you really think she’s run away to be with Damien?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go bring her home.”

They made the long drive into Manhattan mostly in silence, but for the first time in a long time it was companionable. Using Ian’s Blackberry and the phone number Ian had culled from Grace’s cell, Kate was able to locate Damien’s address.

“Let’s not call him,” she said. “If she
is
there, it would only warn her. I think we’re better with the element of surprise.”

“Do you think we should bring the NYPD into this?” Ian said, and she felt touched that he was actually asking for her advice.

“Not yet. It might just make things harder.”

Damien Rattle lived in a prewar apartment building on the Upper East Side that had Art Deco embellishments and a doorman. Ian had paid a fortune to park in a lot five blocks away, and Kate felt bedraggled when they huffed up to the door.

The doorman, a man both broad and tall enough to have played linebacker, wore a navy blue uniform with gold braid on the coat sleeves and cap. The effect was of a dressed bear in some circus, yet he looked them over with narrowed eyes, as if he found them lacking the proper polish, before reluctantly holding the door.

Polished marble floors in the lobby were slippery, and reflected several large upholstered chairs and a round dark wood table topped with an enormous vase of fresh flowers. Their heady perfume contrasted unpleasantly with the smell of grease and cheese. The young Asian guard sitting at the desk had a piece of pizza halfway to his mouth, but put it abruptly down when he spotted them.

“Yes?”

“We’re guests of Damien Rattle,” Ian said. “He’s expecting us.”

“I’ll just call upstairs and check,” the guard said apologetically, hand hesitating over the phone as if waiting for Ian’s permission. “Whom should I say is calling please?”

“The Corbins.”

He smiled, revealing twisted teeth that seemed incongruous with his neat jacket and tie and gel-slicked black hair. At his request, they sat down in the armchairs and watched his nimble fingers flip through a directory before placing the call. His gold badge said
ANAND
followed by a surname so long that Kate was still trying to sound it out when he gestured them toward the elevators with another bright smile.

“Twentieth floor, sir, madam.”

As the numbers climbed in the elevator, Kate felt her anxiety return in force. What would they do if Grace didn’t want to come home? A smaller voice inside was pressing the question of what they’d do if she wasn’t here, but Kate suppressed that voice. Think positive, think positive. She wished she’d taken yoga classes last year when a friend suggested it. Now Kate tried to remember what the friend had told her about breath and the importance of breathing in centering herself. She closed her eyes and tried taking long, deep, slow breaths, pushing out with her stomach and then pulling in.

“Are you okay?”

Startled, Kate opened her eyes. Ian was staring at her as if she’d suddenly sprung another head. “Yeah,” she said, heat rushing through her face.

There was a slight ping and the elevator doors slid back silently. They stepped out of the silver box onto a dark blue carpet and padded silently toward Number 202, which they could see at the end of the hall.

Just as Ian raised a finger to press the bell, the door suddenly swung open and a woman wearing riding regalia and carrying a glass of what smelled like Kentucky bourbon greeted them with a hearty “Hello!”

Ian took a step back and bumped into Kate, who fought down nervous giggles. The woman’s smile faded. She had a mane of white blond hair held back from her face with a tortoiseshell band. The whole thing look shellacked. Plucking a pair of reading glasses from somewhere in the voluminous white shirt she wore tucked into jodhpurs, she slid them on top of a nose not found in nature and surveyed Kate and Ian while shifting in her polished riding boots. After a moment, she whisked the glasses off her nose and said in a surprised tone, “Who are you?”

“We’re the Corbins, Ian and Kate.” Ian did the introductions and Kate tried to smile. “Are you Mrs. Rattle?”

The woman’s confusion changed into a look of distaste. “Rachtel—it’s German. My late husband’s name. I’m Mrs. Treysmith now.” She raised her glass to her mouth and took a quick belt of whiskey, unintentionally flashing a large sparkly wedding set on her left hand. “Have we met?”

“No, but we have met your son,” Kate said. “Damien?”

“Yes. I only have one child—Damien was enough for any mother.” She laughed, a high-pitched tinkling sound that must have taken a great deal of practice.

“I can imagine,” Ian said dryly, and Mrs. Treysmith looked confused.

“Is Damien here?”

“Well, I don’t really know. He’s a grown man, you know. I can’t really mother him anymore as much as I might long to!” Another tinkling laugh.

“Who’s at the door then, Joan?” A gruff male voice called in a distinctly working-class British accent.

“Friends of Damien’s,” she called back. “Isn’t that nice?”

“Tell them to bugger off. I’m trying to watch the game.”

“Nigel’s a huge football fan,” Joan confided to the Corbins. “Soccer football, that is. I don’t know why they don’t just call it soccer. It makes it so confusing when we’re talking about sports with friends.”

“We’re looking for our daughter, Mrs. Treysmith,” Kate interrupted. “Grace Corbin. Have you seen her?”

“I don’t think so, no.” Joan Treysmith didn’t look the least bit interested in why they’d be searching for their child. “Sorry I couldn’t help.” She flashed another bright, dippy smile and started to shut the door.

Ian blocked it with a hand. “We want to see Damien, please.”

She frowned, glancing back toward the interior of the apartment and then at them again. “This isn’t really a good time,” she said.

“Sorry, but we need to talk to him now,” Kate said.

Joan Treysmith took another swallow of whiskey. “All right. I suppose you’d better come in while I see if he’s even here.”

She ushered them into a hallway and called out, “Lola!” A young Filipino woman wearing a shapeless gray maid’s uniform that couldn’t disguise her beauty appeared in the hall. “See if Mr. Damien’s in his room.”

The girl nodded and started down the hall. “Chop, chop,” Joan called after her. “Don’t take all day about it.” She turned back to the Corbins and said in a conspiratorial whisper. “I swear, sometimes she moves slowly just to annoy me.”

The three of them stood silently in the hall with Joan Treysmith blocking further entry into the apartment. What didn’t she want them to see? Kate could hear nothing but the sound of a television in the room beyond her.

“Hum, humhumdehum.” Damien’s mother hummed some song as she rocked back and forth, the heels of her shiny boots clicking on the floor, which was the same shiny marble as the lobby downstairs.

Her utter calm, childlike in the worst way, transfixed Kate. She stared at her and then forced her gaze away, looking down at her own dusty sneakers, bought on sale at a discount chain.

Was Grace somewhere in this vast apartment? Even now, as they stood here in polite silence, Grace could be doing God knows what with this woman’s son.

Three minutes passed like an entire day. Kate could have sworn that the light shifted, moving along the wall with the passage of time. At last the maid reappeared, moving soundlessly on rubber-soled shoes. Tense, Kate sprang forward like a false start off a diving block. The young woman shrank back, fear crossing her otherwise impassive face.

“Is he here?” Kate asked, not waiting for Damien’s mother.

Lola shook her head. “He’s gone to California.” She vanished down a hall in the opposite direction before anyone could make any more demands of her. Mrs. Treysmith’s eyes opened wide and she clapped a hand to her mouth for a split second, and then waved it in the air.

“That’s right, he’s gone! I completely forgot!”

“If you’re lying to protect your son, I’m going to have the police down here so fast it’ll make your head spin,” Ian said.

“You can’t talk like that to me!” Joan Treysmith looked deeply offended.

“What the hell is going on out here?” A hulk of a man with a florid face appeared behind Damien’s mother. In his soccer jersey and track pants, he looked like a professional wrestler. Perhaps that’s what he did for a living.

“You must be Nigel Treysmith,” Kate said.

“Yeah, that’s right. What do you lot want?”

“We want our daughter,” Ian said, and he stared at Nigel as if the man weren’t twice his size. “I’m going to ask just one more time, and if I don’t get a straight answer I’m calling the police.”

At the second mention of police, Mrs. Treysmith’s hands wobbled. “Police? There’s no need for that, is there, dear? Tell them that Damien left.”

“That’s right, I kicked him out on his lazy arse.” Nigel said. He patted Mrs. Treysmith, whose eyes had clouded over. “It’s the only way he’ll learn to do for hisself.”

Ian pulled out his cell phone, but Mr. Treysmith shook his head. “Put that thing away,” he said in what was probably supposed to be a placating tone because it was a slightly softer bark. “I’m telling you the lad ain’t here.”

“I want to see his room,” Ian demanded.

Nigel Treysmith looked at his wife, jerking his head toward the hall. Joan shook her head, but wobbled down the hall. Nigel Treysmith swept a meaty hand toward Ian and Kate. They trooped after Joan, and Nigel brought up the rear.

The apartment was much bigger than Kate had imagined, the ceilings high, the rooms large. They passed at least three rooms before arriving at Damien’s. She thought of the small place that they’d called home for so long and how they’d had to maximize the space with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and other space-saving devices.

Damien’s room was somehow both ornate and austere, furnished with antiques and empty. Ian strode over to the attached bath and switched on the light. Then he looked inside the wall of closets.

“As you can see, neither Damien nor your daughter is here,” Nigel Treysmith said. “Now I’ll ask you to please leave.”

They were quiet again on the drive home, but this time it was of shattered expectations. “At least we’ve got a lead we can tell the police,” Ian said.

Kate nodded. “They can’t have gotten very far.”

Neither of them was consoled.

Kate couldn’t sleep that night. For the first time in thirteen years she didn’t know where her daughter rested, if she rested. Lying in the darkness, she remembered the weeks after Grace had been born when Kate had been afraid to sleep, afraid that Grace would stop breathing. How many times had she reached out a frantic hand to lightly touch the tiny figure in the bassinet? And just as many times had she been reassured by the fierce rise and fall of that thin, newborn chest. Babies seemed to fight for life and teenagers seemed to throw it away.

What if someone had hurt Grace? What if the same person who’d taken Lily Slocum and Elizabeth Hirsh had found her or what if Damien had hurt her, discarding her body like that awful case in Central Park years ago?

And what if his parents had been lying and Grace was tucked away somewhere in that vast apartment, hiding out with him because she didn’t want to go home? It was ironic that this was the better option given how hard they’d worked to get Grace away from him.

Wondering where Grace could be alternated with berating herself as a parent. She should have been a better mother. A better mother would have known her child’s whereabouts. A more attentive parent would have seen Damien coming, would have helped her ward him off.

“Kate?” Ian’s voice in the dark startled her. She’d assumed he was asleep; he was always able to sleep. Never in their married life had she known him to go sleepless even when he’d been up for tenure at NYU, even when Grace was born and every little squawk she’d made had startled her exhausted new mother into consciousness. Ian never missed sleep, yet here he was awake at almost two in the morning.

She reached a hand blindly toward him and found the slight burr of his cheek. He pressed his hand against hers, holding the touch, and she felt warmth flood through her, a familiar response to touch and yet so unfamiliar, too. A place revisited and different this time around.

“I know it’s my fault,” he said. “I didn’t listen to her, I was too quick to get angry with her, and that’s why this has happened.”

“You think she’s run away?”

“Yes. Don’t you?”

She hesitated, not sure to share what she really thought, but his hand had left hers and reached across the bed to stroke her hair. It was soothing, hypnotic, and the dark made a good confessional.

“What if he’s hurt her,” she said.

“Who? Damien?”

“Yes. Or the killer.” His hand stopped moving and she spoke fast to ward off any objection. “I know you think that’s crazy, but it could have happened. Look what happened to Lily Slocum and Elizabeth Hirsh.”

“We don’t know what’s happened to Elizabeth Hirsh. She could have gone home or somewhere else.”

“And never checked in with her parents? Did you read the story in the paper?”

“I skimmed it.”

“Her mother said she’d never gone anywhere without telling them.”