The Last Good Night (24 page)

“No, this was great,” I tried to reassure her across a distance I could not traverse.

 

I
LOCKED THE
door of my suite and flipped all the lights on, illuminating the pale grays and pinks of the rug, the couch and chairs, a sea of pastel swirls. I kicked off my shoes and sat down next to the telephone. The message light was dark. Outside the thickly paned windows, I could see the lights of the convention
center along the Mississippi shining their endless promise of camaraderie and sales, but inside everything was silent.

I was filled suddenly with longing for Sophie. I missed the dead weight of her head when she fell asleep rocking on my lap, my forearm tingling because I was reticent to disturb her, I missed the twitching of her translucent pink eyelids when I finally carried her to bed and laid her carefully on her side. I missed the sound of her breathing. I thought of Mrs. Townsend and imagined Sophie being ripped from me. Surely she would take pieces of my flesh with her, that's how much she was a part of me now.

It was just ten-thirty but I was hesitant to call David in New York, where it was an hour later. The phone would startle him and wake Sophie. I pictured him sitting up in bed, papers by his side, a pen behind his ear, stretching out in the freedom my absence brought.

For years when I was younger, I used to try to picture my father, my real father, precisely picture what he was doing at any given moment. There were so few facts to build a fantasy on, though, that in the end he remained static, an immobile man with an immobile face.

I flipped through the guide to the numbers for various hotel services and closed the vinyl book. There were other times in other cities when I was so lonely I would call my horoscope late at night just to hear another voice.

I unbuttoned the side of my skirt and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.

The room grew about me, expanding until there were no walls at all, only empty and unanchored space.

I reached over and rummaged through my purse until I found the crumpled yellow sheets of paper with Jack's phone number at the Hotel Angelica. I had put it off long enough, too long.

I smoothed them out across my lap and stared at them.

Finally, I dialed and listened while the phone in room 658 rang.

“Hello?” A woman picked up, her voice heavily accented in Spanish. “Hello? Yes?”

“Excuse me. Is, um, Jack Pierce there?”

“Who?”

“Never mind.”

I hung up and called the Hotel Angelica's front desk. “Jack Pierce, please.”

“One minute. Pierce, Pierce. He checked out four days ago.”

“Did he leave a forwarding address?”

“No. He didn't leave nothing at all.”

I sat still for a long while and then I got up, rewound the video of the Townsend piece, and pushed the “Play” button, grabbing a notepad and a pen before I settled down again to work.

 

T
HE
T
OWNSENDS' HOME
was on a flat suburban street of one-story houses and neatly manicured lawns twenty minutes out of town. The camera crew was already there when we arrived the next day, busily transforming the Townsends' living room into an intricate web of wires and lights.

I stepped over the cables and looked about the narrow room. The couch and chairs were of a matching brown and gold nubby wool, so new looking I doubted if they had been fully paid for yet. There was an aqua ceramic vase filled with pastel silk flowers and drapes of a diaphanous white nylon. The walls were lined from floor to ceiling with glass cases. A thousand dolls stared out of them.

There were Madame Alexander dolls with rouged cheeks and enormous eyes, dressed in tutus and taffeta gowns, kewpie dolls with blond mohawks and nun dolls in old-fashioned habits,
their painted eyebrows thin and arched on their pale innocent faces. There were Marine Corps Barbies in navy dress uniforms with medals on the chests, blond hair cascading down, and Hawaiian Kens in floral shirts. There were little boxes of baby dolls, swathed in pink and white, with names like “Hope,” “Faith,” and “Love” written across them in gold script. There were dolls in high chairs and dolls in ornate wicker carriages, their chubby plastic arms outstretched, forever waiting to be picked up.

“Good Lord,” I whispered.

Stacy, who had been there all afternoon, just looked at me and smiled.

Mrs. Townsend was in the bedroom getting her hair done by a local aficionado who had been called in for the occasion. It was another half hour before she emerged. She was, as Stacy had said, a large woman with beefy arms and legs, and a large rotund face that swelled about her eyes and mouth. Her hair, shiny with a fresh coat of lacquer, was a uniformly stiff flip. It was hard to believe she was only twenty-eight. She patted her hair nervously. “Do I look all right?” she asked.

“You look fine, Mrs. Townsend.” I couldn't really blame her for worrying about her hair. Once I had to interview the mother of a college student killed in a plane crash by a terrorist bomb and all she could talk about when I went to meet her in makeup was whether she should get a perm. It's nerves. Television-shock.

“Call me Jane Ann.”

“Laura.” I offered her my hand and we shook. “Thank you for doing this. I realize how hard this must be for you.”

She nodded.

Barry Townsend came in a minute later. He was half the size of his wife, a knotty man wearing a baseball cap and a denim jacket that reeked of cigarette smoke. He had a sunken sun-hardened face that made him look sixty-five, though he was
probably in his early thirties. He hardly mumbled hello when I introduced myself.

We spent the next hour making small talk and doing light and sound checks for the crew.

Finally, it was fifteen minutes before airtime.

“Tell me again what you're going to ask me?” Jane Ann insisted.

“About your son. About what happened that day. About your lawsuit,” I said. I didn't want to be too specific. I wanted her answers to be fresh, the more emotional the better. The makeup man powdered our faces and we settled into chairs in the living room while the thousand glassy-eyed dolls looked on.

The pre-taped intro played over our monitor, ending with the exterior shot of the Townsends' house and then Stacy motioned to me with her forefinger. We were on.

“Good evening. Thank you for letting us into your home, Jane Ann, Barry. I realize how painful this must be for you. You are living every parent's nightmare.”

Jane Ann's lower lip trembled. “It
is
a nightmare.”

“Why don't you tell us about your son?”

Jane Ann's eyes filled suddenly with the tears I had not seen all day. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Barry's Adam's apple lurching up and down as he rested his hand on the spread of his wife's thigh.

“He was a good boy,” she began. “He placed second in the citywide spelling bee last year. That boy just loved to spell. He knew the alphabet before he was two, if you can believe that. There's no telling what he could have done.”

I paused, waiting as the camera closed in on her crumbling face. For a moment I, too, was lost in it. But even then I realized how well this would play on-air. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever feel anything firsthand again.

“Can you tell me what happened that morning? Why were you in the federal building?”

“We were going to the passport office. Kyle was hoping to go
to England with his church group for Christmas. We'd saved for it for years. They go every winter, you know. They call it a Medieval Christmas.”

Barry tapped impatiently on his wife's leg, as if to tell her to move on.

“Let's talk about the lawsuit,” I said. “You're convinced that it was negligence on the government's part that killed your son?”

Suddenly, Barry leaned forward and began to speak, his voice gravelly from cigarettes, from exhaustion, from pain. “Did you know that the G.S.A. was supposed to replace the entire heating system last year?” he asked. “Did you know that the inspector never even went downstairs to the basement, that he lied on his report? They spend two goddamned years repatinating the statues on the courthouse roof from the goddamned 1898 World's Fair and they can't secure the safety of their own citizens.” His eyes bulged from his shriveled face and it was hard to know how it would appear on screen, righteous anger or nuttiness. The camera magnifies certain parts of your personality—a tic, a desire for attention, sadness, vitriol—and negates others. Everyone becomes a caricature of themselves on television.

We spoke of the upcoming court case and then once more of Kyle.

“He was my only one,” Jane Ann said at the end, “my only one.” A flicker of a smile appeared on her teary face. “He's in heaven now. And I know God is taking care of him. He's eating strawberry ice cream in heaven. That's what he liked best, strawberry. He used to slice the strawberries with his spoon until they were nothing but little red specks before he'd eat them.” She wiped her wet eyes with a soggy tissue.

When the camera clicked off, all three of us remained seated, unable to quite emerge from the tunnel we had been in for the last nine minutes. Finally, I rose and shook the Townsends' hands one last time. “You're very brave. Let's hope you did some good.”

“Can you stay for coffee?” Jane Ann asked.

“Thank you, but I really think we'd better leave.”

“Maybe they want something harder,” Barry said.

“No, really. Thank you anyway.”

They hovered about us, watching our every movement, making it difficult for us to leave, as if they knew that as soon as the door was closed we'd be moving on to other stories, newer ones, fresher ones, while this one was theirs to keep, to keep forever.

At last, the cameramen finished packing up their bags and carried them out to the van parked on the front lawn.

I was still standing in the center of the living room when Jane Ann bent down and picked a large doll dressed in a lace christening gown out of a wicker carriage. She cradled it in her arms and then she handed it to me. “Doesn't it feel just like a real baby?” she asked.

 

I
T WAS STILL
dark out when the taxi took me to the airport at 4:30 the next morning. Inside, the stands that sold red plastic crawfish and popcorn, postcards, and paperbacks were still closed. I managed to find an early edition of the
Times-Picayune
just as I boarded the plane.

As I settled into my seat I tried to practice square breathing—inhale for four counts, hold for four counts, exhale for four counts, hold for four counts. It was something I had once heard a radio call-in psychologist say helped with anxiety attacks.

The flight attendant brought me a glass of orange juice and I took a sip before I buckled my seat belt. There was no one else in first class.

By the time the plane began its descent into Newark Airport, the sun had risen sharp and incessant. I shut my eyes behind my dark sunglasses and repeated my new prayer: Please let me live so I can raise my daughter.

It was just eight-thirty when I opened the front door to the apartment. The foyer was quiet, the marble table empty except for a neat stack of yesterday's mail.

I walked to the edges of the living room and looked in. It was untouched, unmarred. Everything was precisely as I had left it.

I heard sounds in the kitchen and walked back. Inside, David was fixing himself his first mug of milky coffee. He looked up sleepily and smiled. “Welcome back.”

“Hi, honey.” I went over and embraced him. His body was warm and slouchy, still redolent of pillows, sheets, slumber.

“You were great last night,” he said.

“You say that to all the girls.”

He laughed, kissed me.

“How's Sophie?” I asked. “Is everything okay?”

“Of course everything is okay. She's sleeping. Just like she always is at this hour.”

I smiled, shrugged. It is one of the oddly disconcerting things about travel that life goes on while you are gone with so easy an adjustment.

“Let me just rinse my face with some cold water,” David said, “and then you can tell me all about your trip.”

“All right.”

While David went back to the bathroom at the far end of the apartment, I returned to the foyer, hung up my coat, and began to flip through the mail. On the bottom of the stack of bills and business correspondence there was a large manila envelope, thick with bubble lining. I pulled it out. It was marked “Photo—do not bend.”

I put down the rest of the mail and opened the package, certain that it must be the pictures that the photographer from
Vanity Fair
had promised to send of Sophie with me.

But it wasn't.

It didn't register at first what it was.

And then it did.

It wasn't Sophie at all.

It was a different girl, a different place.

Me at the Breezeway's gates.

Caught unaware, squinting into the Florida sun.

I looked at it closely.

The high cork platform sandals.

The cutoffs.

The eyes lined in black.

I turned it over.

On the back, written in script in a silver Magic Marker, it said,
Everyone has to pay. Even you
.

L
ATER, YOU REMEMBER
everything.

Every detail of the day, that day, that at any other time would pass effortlessly into the effluvia of the past. Inconsequential. Meaningless.

Later, you scour every moment, every movement.

Looking for clues.

Looking, too, for those last shreds of time, time before the single slice that literally cuts through life itself.

Innocent time.

Ignorant time.

Time that you wish only to stop.

But of course, you can't.

 

I
ROSE AT
6:45 the next morning. As I always did. Just as I always did.

I kissed David, looked in on Sophie, and then I did my exer
cises. I remember that my left wrist hurt as I did push-ups. At the time it was little more than an annoyance, but now it is one of the things most vivid to me, that sharp stab of pain in my wrist.

By the time I was done, David was dressed for an early meeting with a student. I remember wondering if it was a girl, one of those fresh-faced eager long-haired girls that clustered in his office.

Sophie was still sleeping.

I remember the smell of her room when I looked in on her, a blend of Desitin and diapers and talc and something else, something milky and sweet, Sophie-dom itself.

I showered and dressed in a fitted black-and-white tweed suit. Later, I incinerated it. How could I ever wear it again without thinking of that day?

Sophie woke at eight-thirty. I listened to her cooing happily as she rattled a teddy bear with bells in its belly before I went in to get her.

This is what I remember: laying her on the changing table, the swell of her white belly rising up, the impossible smoothness of her flesh as I bent down and kissed it, moving up her body with my mouth, over the transparent skin of her chest that barely covered the pale blue veins, the rolls of her neck, her fat red pudding cheeks. She pursed her lips in pleasure and began to razz, bubbles spilling down her chin, and I razzed back, our lips touching, our tongues, our saliva mixing.

I dressed her in navy flowered leggings and a navy turtleneck, snapping the padded elastic of the pants against the hollow of her back as she laughed at the sound it made. She wore white socks on her still flat and puffy feet, and white sneakers. It was hard to tie her shoelaces with her feet waving madly in the air, and I grew frustrated and impatient with her play, grabbing her meaty calves firmly to stop it. I wish it had been otherwise, I wish I had laughed, tickled her toes, held her tight and never let her go, but I didn't.

And then, when Dora came, I kissed Sophie three times on the forehead, and I went to work.

 

I
SPENT THE
first two hours in my office reading the early news over the wires and taking notes for possible future projects for
In Step
.

The debut had been a success. We had come in second in our ratings period with an 11.6 share, which meant that just over eleven million people had watched, not bad considering we were up against a Schwarzenegger movie. The reviews were reasonably good and my interview with the Townsends was generally considered the highlight of the show. Jerry's nose was twitching as he sniffed the wind, pleased with what he found. Even he returned my calls faster than he had before, when the odor was less certain.

Buoyed, I suddenly found myself percolating with ideas for the Nightly Notes as well as for future segments of
In Step
. As I read, I underlined potentially incriminating evidence about the auto industry's illegal levels of emissions in an article in the
Detroit Free Press
.

It was 11:46. I don't know how I know that. I must have looked at the digital clock on my desk or at my watch. Newsrooms are rife with clocks, with the strictures of time. Anyway, it was exactly 11:46 when Carla knocked on my door and came in with an alarmed look on her face. Two men I didn't recognize followed closely behind.

“These men say they are detectives,” Carla said. “They want to talk to you.”

“Yes?”

One of the men, his overcoat still buttoned, his yellow hair greased straight from his forehead, turned to Carla. “If you'll excuse us?”

She looked at me and I nodded. She left the door ajar on her way out.

The detective reached over and closed it. He was so blond, pasty and soft, he looked as if he only had to shave once or twice a week. He turned back to me. “Miss Barrett?”

“Yes?”

“I'm Detective Flanders.” He opened up a battered black leather fold and showed me his badge. “And this is Detective Dougherty. We're from the Sixth Precinct.”

My heart stopped. It was my home precinct.

I did not want them to speak again. I didn't want it to start, whatever
it
was.

My blood began pumping in a rapid staccato rhythm.

Flanders shifted his weight nervously. He glanced once at his partner before he began in a faltering voice. “Miss Barrett, um, there's been an incident.”

I rose, panic jutting up through my throat. “What kind of incident?”

He paused. “It's your daughter,” he said quietly, unable to look me in the eye.

“Oh God, oh my God.” My skull turned to ice. “Is she all right?”

“We don't know yet,” he said in a strained voice.

“What do you mean, you don't know?” I screamed. “Is she hurt? Is she in the hospital? Where is she? Where's Sophie? Where's my baby?” I leaned across the desk, my arms grasping for something, anything. I grabbed Dougherty's coat and shook it. “Where's Sophie?” I cried again.

“Miss Barrett, maybe you should sit down,” he suggested helplessly.

“Just tell me where is she,” I repeated. And then, for just an instant, a still calm came over me. “This is ridiculous. I know where she is. She's with Dora. I just have to call Dora and she will straighten this all out. She's fine. Sophie is fine. Of course she is.”

Dougherty and Flanders exchanged a brief look before Dougherty spoke. “Ma'am. I'm sorry. But…” He inhaled, steeling himself.

“But what?” I demanded frantically.

He exhaled, paused. “Someone has taken her.”

The words bounced off of me, at once meaningless and horrific. “What are you talking about?” It was a foreign language they were speaking, an underwater language. I could make no sense of it.

Flanders's mouth moved in a nervous mime before the words began to come out. “Your baby-sitter, Dora Rickley, was walking your baby in Washington Square Park when someone,” he said quietly, “someone took her. Sophie,” he added haltingly.

“Dora would never let anyone have Sophie,” I protested. I had to make them understand that they were wrong, they had to be wrong.

Flanders's eyes blinked nervously. “She had no choice. I'm sorry, Miss Barrett. The man had a gun.”

My legs buckled and Dougherty slid his hands beneath me as I fell back into my chair.

When I looked back up at him, my peripheral vision had blackened. The detective's face was blurred and then sharp, too sharp. “Where is Sophie? Is she all right?” I pleaded. “Just tell me where she is.”

“We're looking for her, ma'am. We have men everyplace, covering the park, the streets, going door to door to see if anyone got a license plate number. We've put out a felony alarm over the radio with a description of the car,” Flanders said.

I stared over at his doughy face and then I bolted up and rushed to the door. “I have to find her. I have to find my baby.” I clawed desperately at the knob while Dougherty gently tried to calm me. “Where is she? You must know where she is. Please. Just tell me where she is.” I was shaking Dougherty now, shaking and shaking him.

“Miss Barrett, maybe you'd better come with us,” he suggested.

“Where's Sophie?”

Flanders put his hand on my shoulder to steady me. “We'll take you downtown.”

“I have to call my husband.”

“Two detectives went to his office to notify him. He'll meet us at your apartment. Ma'am, really, why don't you let us take you home?”

I followed them numbly out through the newsroom, where people stopped picking up the wires and typing into their computers to stare at us.

 

A
N UNMARKED CAR
was waiting downstairs and I followed the two detectives into it.

I stared blankly at the backs of their heads from my seat in the rear and mumbled a litany of prayers, Sophie, Sophie, Sophie.

I dug my fingernails into my skin, deeper and deeper, as a chill fear pooled in every cell.

Sophie, Sophie, Sophie.

The smell of cheap aftershave filled the car, making me nauseous. No one spoke. We seemed to be moving through the city streets in slow motion. I banged my hand once against the glass window and cried out. Flanders turned around but my hand was in my mouth now and I was gone, just gone.

Sophie, Sophie, Sophie, I pleaded, aloud or silent, I don't know.

In the background, the police band radio nattered on and on about other crimes, other concerns. My stomach and bowels convulsed.

I crammed my fingernails into my scalp, in and in and in, repeating her name with each stab, Sophie, Sophie, Sophie.

 

W
HEN WE GOT
to the apartment, David was already there, standing ashen and lost in the center of the living room. “Laura.” He reached for me with outstretched arms, but I broke away and ran to Sophie's room.

I pushed open the door, smelling her, sensing her, ready for her.

But inside it was dark.

The crib was empty.

I turned the lights on, my hands gripping the door frame.

Nothing.

I leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor, beating my fists into the thick carpet over and over. “No, no, no.”

“Laura, stop.” I felt a hand on my back. David was kneeling beside me.

I looked up and saw the tears in his eyes. “David.”

He wrapped me in his arms.

“I can't believe this is happening,” I cried. “How can this be happening?” I felt his heart pounding in his chest as he held me, or maybe it was mine. “Who would do this to us?”

“I don't know.” His voice was filled with cracks and splinters.

We clutched each other and did not speak for a long time.

Finally, he said, “We have to go back to the living room. The detectives need our help.”

He waited while I struggled to catch my breath, and then we helped each other up.

The four detectives, talking softly to each other, quieted as we approached, watching us nervously.

We stopped in front of them. David touched my arm and I buried my face in the hollow of his neck, my sobs half-hidden in his flesh. The detectives averted their eyes, embarrassed.

Suddenly, a single thought pierced through my pain. “Where's Dora?” I demanded.

“She's at the precinct, ma'am,” Flanders said. “Our detectives are questioning her there.”

“Is she a suspect?” David asked.

“Everyone's a suspect in a case like this. But aside from that, we're hoping she can remember something that might help us.”

One of the detectives who had accompanied David stepped up and introduced himself to me. “I'm Detective Johns,” he said. “And this is Detective McElvey.”

I stared at him. I didn't care about their names, I didn't care about anything at all. I only wanted Sophie.

“Do you have any idea who might do something like this?” he asked.

“Christ, no,” David said.

“Miss Barrett?”

Before I could speak, the doorbell rang. I ran to open it, certain that it would be Dora, walking in with Sophie—that this was all just some horrible mistake. I hurried to undo the lock, smiling, open-armed, here I am, Sophie, waiting here.

A tall ruddy man with brilliant auburn hair strode purposefully in, followed by another man with deeply lined skin and coal black eyes.

I fell back.

The first man took a quick glance around the room before introducing himself. “Miss Barrett, Mr. Novak. I'm Detective Mike Harraday. Major Case Squad.” Flanders stiffened but said nothing as he stepped aside.

Harraday held out his hand and I looked down at it, unsure of what to do with it. It had nothing to do with anything.

He withdrew it. “And this is my partner, Detective Carelli.”

Carelli nodded. The worried expression in his eyes terrified me.

“Where's my baby?” I demanded. “Where's Sophie?”

“We're doing everything we can to find her. I promise you,” Harraday said.

“Where is she?” I insisted.

“Maybe it would help if you sat down,” he suggested.

But I could not seem to move.

“Please,” he said, as if he were the host of an awkward party.

David helped me to the couch and then perched beside me, our fingers intertwined. Harraday sat down opposite us while the other detectives stood a few feet away, watching.

I leaned forward. “Where's my baby?” I pleaded again. I knew that if I asked enough, someone would tell me, someone would have to tell me, please just tell me.

Harraday took a deep breath. “This is what we know so far,” he began, his voice gentle, concerned, calm. “Your baby-sitter, Dora Rickley, was walking your daughter in the park this morning when a man in a ski mask ambushed her…”

My throat constricted, David moaned.

“…held a gun to your daughter's head…”

I shut my eyes.

“…and took her from the stroller.”

“He didn't use the gun?” David asked, his words nearly smothered by fear and pain.

“No.”

“Where did he take her?”

“We don't know yet. They got in a car. Unfortunately, no one got the license number. When Dora screamed, the foot patrolman on duty in the park, Officer Pike, came to her assistance and radioed in for help.”

“How could this have happened?” I cried angrily. “How could you have let this happen? Why didn't anyone stop him?”