The Secret Hour (6 page)

 
“Kate?” he shouted. That was her name—Kate Harris.

 
Ripping through the bedrooms upstairs, John found himself formulating a usable description of the woman. Five foot six, slim, straight brown hair, odd stone-colored eyes, gray coat, black shoes, something to help the cops find her—his blood turned cold as he realized what he was doing. Knowing himself becoming, in that instant, the father of a missing girl…

 
John felt the chill of cold truth. Searching his own house, the feeling grew stronger: Was he one of them now? One of those parents—loved ones who came home one bright day to find the nightmare starting—those parents he knew so well from witness lists and cross-examination—parents who had lost their children? Was he on the after side of a before-and-after life? The before-Maggie-was-missing and the after-Maggie-was-missing life?

 
“MAGGIE!” he bellowed.

 
The house responded in silence.

 
John thought of the Moores, the Nastoses, the McDiarmids, the Litskys…they had gone through this; he had heard them testify to it: “I came home from work, and she wasn’t there…” or, “We called her on Friday night, but she didn’t answer…” or, “We searched and searched, but we couldn’t find her.” They had somehow opened the door to the monsters—

 
“Maggie! Kate!” he yelled.

 
Kate Harris! A plain name, a nice, normal-looking woman. John felt the stab—the standard description of a serial killer. “Seemed so
nice
, seemed so
normal
…” The boy next door…But women killed too, he thought. Women were not exempt from the inner forces that drove people to harm others.

 
Where had Kate Harris taken his baby girl? His sweet little stubborn little soccer-shirt-wearing bath-forgetting beloved daughter…Maggie. Margaret Rose O’Rourke. Maggie Rose. Mags, Magpie, Maguire, Magsamillion, the Magster.

 
“Maggie!”

 
Up to the attic. Smells of dust, mothballs, something dead rotting in the walls—the bats were back, John thought. They’d had bats three years ago, and Theresa had called an exterminator. His throat caught, thinking of his wife.

 
Another before-and-after, he thought. The before-the-accident, the after-the-accident. How best to define the moment his life first fell apart? Too frantic to think, John raced through the musty attic, looking in the old wardrobe, behind the cedar chest, inside Theresa’s grandmother’s leather-bound trunk.

 
He let out a sound so inhuman—the relief of not finding his daughter’s body mixed with the anguish of not finding his daughter—that it flushed the bats from the rafters and brought them swarming around his head. They surrounded him with dark, translucent violence, scratching his ears and face with something shockingly sharp—claws? Teeth?

 
John didn’t know. He ran down the stairs, wedging himself through the door and slamming it behind him. One or two bats escaped the attic, dispersing into the bright vastness of the colonial house’s second floor.

 
He still had the basement to search: his workshop, the laundry room. The garage, the garden shed, the boathouse. But he didn’t have time; minutes were flying by, and he already knew.

 
This is it
, he thought, going for the phone in his bedroom.
This is it, this is the moment. Payback for your career, payback for defending the people you defend.

 
Does it mean they’re right—you’re a demon doing the devil’s work, that you’re a party to the crimes after the fact, that you should just let the killers fry? Is that what this means?

 
My daughter’s missing, just like those other families.

 
Now I know what it’s like
, he thought, starting to dial.
Now I know.

 
John sat on the bed. He picked up the receiver. It felt slippery in his hand. Fingers shaking, he went to punch the buttons and hit air instead. Trying again, he dialed the 91 of 911, when he heard the front door open. Brainer barked. Maggie squealed.

 
“He’s home! There’s his briefcase—Daddy!”

 
“Maggie,” he yelled.

 
Running down the stairs, he felt his daughter fly straight against his body. She clamped on in a death-defying hug, as if she were out to win the Olympics of hugging. Usually he had to pry her off, but right now John held on even tighter than she did. Brainer tried to bump between them, getting nowhere.

 
“We didn’t expect you home so soon,” Kate Harris said.

 
John raised his eyes, looked at her over Maggie’s head. Kate was smiling. Or at least, she was trying to. Her mouth turned up, dimpling her smooth, freckled cheeks. But her river-stone eyes looked so sad, as if no smile had really touched them in a long, long time. John wasn’t in the mood for smile analysis, so he dropped the thoughts and gently eased his daughter away.

 
“Why isn’t Maggie in school?” he asked.

 
“She wouldn’t go,” Kate Harris said.

 
“She goes anyway,” John said. “You’re supposed to know that.”

 
“I am?”

 
“You’re the adult.”

 
“Hmmm,” she said, as if giving that some thought. “Yes, you’re right.”

 
“Where were you?” he asked.

 
 
“We wanted to take our—Maggie’s—mind off worrying about you,” she said in that faint southern accent.

 
“I was worried,” Maggie confirmed.

 
“Mags, will you give me a minute here? Go out to the sunporch. I’ll be right there, okay?”

 
“Dad, don’t be mad,” Maggie said, looking stricken. John had seen her look stricken so many times in the last two years, it activated an automatic guilt mechanism in his brain. He did what he always did—promised her something to make her feel better.

 
“I’ll play checkers with you,” he said, regardless of the work he had waiting for him at the office. “Go set up the board.”

 
“I will,” she said, backing away, “but don’t be mad at Kate.”

 
“Don’t you worry,” John said. “Go set up the checkerboard.”

 
They watched Maggie walk down the hall; her shirt, stained and too big, was now also quite wet. But her chopped hair was neatly brushed.

 
“You heard her,” Kate said, perfectly dressed and impeccably groomed—all except for the cuffs of her gray pants, which John noticed, were also sopping wet. “Don’t be mad at me.”

 
“She’s a kid,” John said. “She doesn’t know what’s going on. Where the hell were you? Do you know how crazy I was? I was just about to call the police—I thought you’d taken her…”

 
Kate’s expression changed. From calm, almost playful, she went straight to looking shocked.

 
“God, I’m sorry.”

 
“You must have realized!”

 
“Honestly, I thought we’d be home long before you. We just ran down the street to the car wash—”

 
“You washed your goddamn
car
?” he asked, blood pressure rising, knowing that the previous winner of the Baby-sitter X Bad Judgment Award had just been knocked off her pedestal.

 
“No, we—” Kate began.

 
“I don’t have time for this conversation,” John said, shaking his head, holding his temple. It had swollen up and felt the size of a melon under his hand. “I have to play checkers with Maggie, then take her to the office with me—if you had any idea how much work I have to do!”

 
“I know—I’d be happy to stay with her.”

 
“No,
thanks
,” John said.

 
“Will you please listen to me for a minute? I’d like to explain—”

 
“No need, Ms. Harris.”

 
“Honestly, there is. It’s very important to me! I’ve waited—”

 
“I don’t know what explanation you think will suffice for taking my kid without asking, without leaving a note. It’s outrageous. It’s criminal, if you want to get right down to it. The kidnapping statute is written—”

 
“You think I’d kidnap Maggie! Please, just listen to me!

 
Shaking his head, John jammed his hand into his pocket, came up with a few twenty-dollar bills. “Here, take this to cover your expenses. I’ll just tell the agency it didn’t work out.”

 
Kate backed away, not touching the money. When John looked into her eyes, he saw a shimmer of amusement. Was she kidding—she thought this was funny?

 
“Take it,” he said. “Unless you want me to pay the agency, let them send you a check.”

 
“That would be much better,” she said, her voice cool but her eyes still hot. They flashed, like sunlight striking a blue-green river.

 
“Your choice,” he said, shrugging. He thought about wishing her good luck, but what a joke—although he didn’t believe she was a criminal, she had no business in the field of child care. Now, anxious to see Maggie, he walked Kate Harris to the door—for the sole reason of making sure she walked through it, to watch her drive away as he locked up tight behind her. Brainer stood beside him, wagging his tail.

 
“I had a feeling we might not get to talk today,” she said. “I tried…”

 
“Talk?” he asked, confused.

 
She shook his hand. They looked into each other’s eyes. The moment stretched out longer than it should have, and John slowly pulled his hand back. To his surprise, her gaze had made him feel nervous; his palm was cold.

 
“Good-bye,” she said. “Will you please say good-bye to Maggie for me? And Teddy, when he gets home from school?”

 
“Yes,” John said, watching her walk down the steps, carrying her coat. Her posture was erect, her head held high. Sunlight touched her brown hair, picking up glints of copper and gold. Her gray pants were snug, her thighs shapely—he quickly lowered his gaze, noticing again those wet, black cuffs.

 
“Tell Teddy the tangles are gone.”

 
“The
what
?”

 
But Kate Harris had climbed into her car, started it up. John waited until she had turned around, started to drive away. Brainer bumped his leg, and instinctively John gave him a pet. The dog’s coat felt damp, soft, and smooth. When John looked down, he noticed: Brainer’s fur was five shades lighter without the mud and thorns and seaweed.

 
The dog had had a bath.

 
Reaching for the door, looking down the street, he saw Kate Harris’s car drive past the seawall and out of sight.

 
Tell Teddy the tangles are gone
…. John shook his head. What a day—the brick, the hospital, thinking Maggie was missing. Glancing down at the hall table, he saw that Kate had left a card: a small white business card printed with a Washington, D.C., address and one handwritten local phone number. That summed it up for him, and an entire story flashed through his mind: relocation. She’d probably burned her bridges down south, come up here to start over.

 
“Mags,” he called, sliding the card into his shirt pocket. “Ready to play?”

 
“Bring it on, Dad,” she shouted from the sunroom. “And prepare to lose!”

 
John took a deep breath. He had bats in his attic, a shattered front window, and no baby-sitter—but his daughter was safe, home. Brainer, gleaming in sunlight streaming through the broken picture window, bounded ahead, leading John O’Rourke straight to Maggie.

 
“She’s gone,” Maggie whispered as soon as Teddy walked through the door at four-thirty.

 
He stopped short, standing in the front hall. He was all gross and sweaty from his soccer match, freezing cold because he hadn’t worn a warm enough jacket. It was getting dark earlier the closer they got to Halloween, and the house had looked gloomy from the street—not enough lights on. His mother used to always welcome them home with lamps blazing; Teddy flipped on the hall chandelier.

 
“What do you mean?” he asked.

 
“She’s gone,” Maggie whispered, gesturing toward the closed den door. That meant that their father was working at home. “Dad didn’t like her.”

 
“Kate?” Teddy asked, feeling the breath knocked out of him.

 
Maggie nodded. “Because she took me in the car without asking. Dad was here when we got back, and he was
ballistic
.”

 
“Where did she take you?”