Vanishing Girls (21 page)

“These cops wanna talk about You Know What,” Mr. Esposito grumbled. “That crap again. Listen, youse: none a that happened. The Walczak boys were a bunch a troublemakers. You wanna know what really happened? Willy Walczak’s girlfriend Kim went with my son Johnny, and the Walczaks rigged a story to break our hearts.” He pounded his chest once with his fist. “It wasn’t bad enough Joey here’s a little different? They had to rub it in our faces even worse?”

I tried to catch Joey’s bright blue eyes as his father slammed the door, but he drew them away. A loud click told us they had turned the lock on the inside.

“This whole Father X thing”—Mac turned quickly to avoid a blast of colored lights, but I’d seen the frustration in his glance—“it isn’t going to lead anywhere, Karin. The Walczak-Esposito thing sounds like a personal vendetta.”

“I know, but—”

“This isn’t a pedophile case, Karin. Whatever went on with that—whether it’s true or not—all that’s irrelevant.”

“But all those missing kids ending up in the sex trade, ending up dead. And the way the Dekkers died—they knew something. I’m convinced of it. And Abby getting hit by a car like that, on Nevins Street, so close . . . Father X hardly leaves her side. Why won’t she talk?”

“Maybe she can’t.”

“They don’t think there’s anything wrong with her vocal cords, and neurologically she’s been checking out okay.”

“Except for not being able to speak?”

“
Come on.
You know there’s something to it: She saw something; she’s scared.”

“Sure she saw something. Maybe she saw her parents get killed. Maybe she saw Patrick Scott eyeing her from his car. Maybe she saw Billy when he was freaking out. Anything could have scared her that night.”

“How would she have seen Billy? He didn’t get there until after Abby was hit by the car.” I glanced at him, the side of his face flashing red, red, red.

“I was just making a point.”

Down on the sidewalk, Times Square at our back and the dark Brooklyn evening in front of us, we left the block and kept moving. Back up on Smith Street, cafés and restaurants beckoned; the early shift was starting to come out for Saturday night.

W
e arrived home to the chaos of a happy home. Dathi and Fremont were huddled over the laptop at the kitchen table, sharing a bowl of tortilla chips. Mary and Ben were sprawled out on their stomachs on the living room floor, placing stones we’d collected last summer at the beach inside a dollhouse Mary must have carried up from downstairs.

“I hope you don’t mind.” Mary scooped up a handful of stones from the floor: faces had been drawn on each one with marker.

“Why would we mind?” I kissed the top of Ben’s head, but he didn’t turn around. He was happy, so I was happy.

“I’m having a party,” he said after a moment, still not looking at me, “and all these people are invited.”

“A stone party. Good idea.”

“I think he means a birthday party,” Mary said. “He told us his birthday was coming soon.”

“It’s true, his birthday’s in a couple of weeks. A party—okay.” It
was
okay; in fact, I’d been feeling guilty that I hadn’t done anything about it yet. “Okay, Ben, we’ll have a party on your birthday.”

Soon, we all stood in the front hall, cheerfully bidding each other good night. Wishing Fremont luck at his gig later. Making plans for Mary to return on Monday.

Just as they were about to leave, Dathi turned to me. “Perhaps we could watch Fremont play?” Her eyes were so bright.

“Tonight?”

“Perhaps.”

If she had demanded it, I probably would have said no. But the way she asked, with such careful diplomacy, made me want to please her. “I guess we could eat a quick dinner and get over there in time.”

“It starts at eight,” Mary said.

“Go for it,” Mac called from the living room. “I’ll put Ben to bed.”

“See you guys later, then,” I told Mary and Fremont as they carried their equipment out the door and down the front stoop.

By seven-thirty, Dathi and I were in the car on our way to Park Slope.

P
erch Café on Seventh Avenue was packed with teenagers. The narrow storefront opened onto a spacious rear area, where the first band was getting ready to play. It was too crowded with teenagers to see Fremont, but Dathi plunged right into the crowd in search of a spot with a view. For all her politeness, she wasn’t shy.

I found Mary sitting at the bar, drinking a yogurt smoothie, waiting. All the parents, and there weren’t many, were clustered by the front. There were half a dozen small tables where some people sat eating dinner; a couple of waitresses zipped around serving and clearing. I ordered a cup of coffee and joined Mary, pulling up a stool.

The sound of an electric piano pealed through the space.

I leaned back and tried to see above the packed bodies, which were jostling and hopping to the music, but couldn’t see the band. I couldn’t see Dathi, either.

“She’ll be fine.” Mary had read my mind.

“I’m actually not worried about her. She’s got so much common sense and resilience.”

“I noticed that. It’s unusual.”

“I hear her crying at night, but she hardly ever talks to me about it. She doesn’t know me that well, I guess, but still. You’d think she’d need someone to talk to.”

Mary swallowed a long sip of her smoothie and put down her glass. “People in that part of the world think differently. I’ve been in India; before having Fremont I used to travel a lot. In the East, death is part of life.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“It’s hard to get it until you see it. Their whole belief system is different than ours.”

“Dathi’s mother, Chali, used to talk about karma. I mean, she was a practicing Catholic and she still believed in karma—I couldn’t get over that.”

“Yup. It seems strange to us. But all those things can be true at once. Just like life and death can coexist at the same time—it’s a concept that’s just alien to us. In the East, people mourn as deeply as we do, but it’s different. It’s hard to explain. It’s like, for them, when someone dies they don’t really lose them. The life force doesn’t end, it transfers, kind of.”

I thought about that for a minute; it was such an appealing concept. The deaths of loved ones I’d endured had been horrible blows, permanent losses. Even my miscarriage—the loss of someone not yet fully formed, more the prospect of someone I would have come to cherish—had been devastating. Each loss was a brutal injustice. It had never occurred to me to think of it in any other way.

“Does Dathi know how her mother died?” Mary asked softly.

“She does. But you’re right: She seems to accept it in a certain way I don’t quite understand.”

Mary smiled elusively. “Karma means intentional action, good or bad. It’s all-important. It all adds up. Dathi probably assumes she’ll see her mother again, in one form or another. Or maybe not
see
so much as
experience
. She probably also assumes that whoever murdered her mother will be avenged in kind, one way or another, sooner or later.”

“Karma.” I nodded. “Right.”

Bands changed and there was some movement in the crowd. I couldn’t help looking for Dathi again; and again I didn’t see her. But I did see someone else I recognized: Joey Esposito. His head flashed blond and blue above the crowd. And then he turned and saw me, too. He started to turn away, until I smiled. He hesitated, waved, and pushed his way out of the pulsating bodies to come over and speak with me.

“Sorry about that before. My dad doesn’t like cops.” His eyes rolled up. Without the damper of his father’s presence, he was funny, even flirtatious. He was also flaming. If I wasn’t mistaken, he was wearing sparkling green eye shadow and a touch of mascara.

“I understand,” I told him. “But we’re not cops; we’re private investigators. And we’re not digging into the old case against Father X. This is new, about the recent murders.”

Mary leaned forward, listening intently.

Joey stepped in closer, his eyes twinkling under the bar lights. “I don’t mind talking about it. No one raped me, okay? Maybe I exaggerated that part a little bit because I hated going to church. But it was true about the priest. And Eddie wasn’t the only one who didn’t see his face; I didn’t see it, either. The man was wearing a mask, one of those plain white face masks you pick up cheap for Halloween. He only got me into that closet one time. Lucky for me, Eddie opened the door—that’s when I ran out.” He sounded sincere, until he added with a whimsical flourish: “That’s my story and I’m sticking with it!”

I didn’t know what to think; Joey seemed like a fabulist. It was easy to see why people weren’t confident in his side of the story. But did that mean it never happened at all?

“Do you have any reason to think it
wasn’t
Father X?”

“Now? Who knows. Then? I was a little kid. It was the priest, at the church, I’d seen him around that afternoon. Why wouldn’t it be him?”

“Any other kids ever come forward, telling the same story?”

When Joey shrugged his shoulders, a slender silver chain glistened on his neck. I thought I saw a crucifix dangling off it before realizing that it was a little silver penis. He seemed to notice, and enjoy, the way my attention froze on it a moment.

“What about your brothers?” I asked.

“According to them,
nada
,” Joey said. “It was just
moi
. And
of course
some people thought I deserved it.” He batted his eyelids.

I tried not to laugh. If he had been anywhere near as hard to read as a young child as he was now, it would be a blatant lie to claim that no one could possibly doubt him.

“Thanks for talking, Joey.”

“What’s your phone number?” He pulled his cell phone out of his jeans pocket. He dialed in my number as I recited it, then called me. I answered and hung right up. Now we had each other’s numbers, though I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. I hoped he wouldn’t consider me a confidante for his storytelling, but then I corrected myself: What if he was telling the truth?

He leaned forward to air-kiss my cheek, like we were girlfriends, and went to find his coat. I turned to Mary, who was smiling, watching Joey dance his way toward the door.

“His father is the polar opposite of him,” I said. “It’s like he landed in that family by accident.”

“That kid needs to grow up and start his own life as soon as possible. It’s the only way.”

The next song ended. Dathi pressed herself out of the crowd and stood at its edge, looking around. Her eyes smiled when she saw me. I waved, and she disappeared back into the undulating throng.

That night I lay in bed a long time, thinking about Joey Esposito. Was there any chance it was true? Had a masked priest tried to assault him when he was a young boy? Or was he still processing the Walczak family’s grudge against his family? As for the legal case, it was easy to see why it had been dismissed: Despite the onslaught of sex abuse cases being brought against the Catholic Church, even five years ago, this one obviously had dubious merit. Eddie Walczak’s father had leveled an accusation, not the Espositos; and the rivalry between the Walczak and Esposito sons complicated the whole thing. Even Joey, who claimed it was true, couldn’t say who had been behind that mask.

O
ver the next few days Mac and I tried to find out what we could about the Dekkers’ connections with the church, but nothing appeared unusual. Billy and Ladasha, for all their hard work and all her bravado in her secret shadow investigation with George Vargas, also appeared to have nothing to show for it. At least, nothing anyone was sharing with us.

The dead were receding farther into the past, as they tended to do. And our lives notched forward day to day to day.

Then, on Tuesday, Abby grabbed for a lifeline.

Chapter 19

S
asha Mendelssohn called to say that Abby had drawn a picture of herself and Dathi.

“I think it’s a good sign,” Sasha said. “She’s doing so much better now—physically, at least. Her cast is coming off her leg, and there’s been some discussion about discharging her to the Campbells, possibly as soon as next week . . . but we’re still hoping for a better assessment of her true neurological function. The problem is, she doesn’t relate well to any of the adult staff here, and she hasn’t bonded as well with any of our other young patients as she did with your daughter.”

“You want me to bring Dathi by for another visit after school today?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“I’ll ask her. But I guarantee you, the answer will be yes.”

We were back up at the hospital that very afternoon.

Abby wiggled up in her bed the moment we walked in. Dathi hurried to pull up a chair and soon the two girls were huddled together. Abby moved better; her body was healing if her mind hadn’t yet. Knowing that the cast would be removed soon, the girls set about decorating every blank inch with pens borrowed from the front desk. Dathi then used my phone to take pictures, which she e-mailed to herself. They were uploaded to her Facebook page within hours.

We visited again on Friday after school and then again on Sunday afternoon. Each time, it was the same: They enclosed themselves in a private bubble of drawing, lanyard weaving, Dathi reading aloud or talking and Abby listening. I took to wandering the halls, visiting the cafeteria and gift shop, even sitting in the waiting area sometimes to give the girls privacy.

After what felt like a particularly long visit, I waited while Dathi zipped herself into her jacket and rattled off another round of good-byes to her new “BFF but don’t tell Oja”—when Father X and Steve Campbell arrived and the atmosphere radically shifted. Abby’s discomfort was swift and obvious: Her gaze swiveled to the ceiling, her body stiffened.

“Hello!” Steve reached out to shake my hand; his leather glove felt saturated with cold from outside. “I heard you’ve been here a lot lately; guess we keep missing you.”

“The girls have really hit it off,” I said. “We’ve been to see Abby three times this week, but we don’t stay late.”

“We’ll have to make a point of getting them together when we get Abby home, on Tuesday,” Steve said. “Just got the good news on my way in. Isn’t that great, Abby? Linda’s home right now, getting your new room ready.”

Abby held her muteness like a life raft.

“Well, they’ve got a stack of papers for me to sign. Back in a minute.” Steve turned to me with a smile. “See you soon, I hope.”

The thought of leaving Father X alone with Abby made me deeply uncomfortable. But before I could think of an excuse to stay, Dathi did it for me by sitting back down in the chair.

“We weren’t leaving,” she said, zipping her jacket all the way up. “I’m just cold.”

“It seems warm in here to me,” Father X said. “But you’re used to a hot climate, aren’t you?”

Neither Abby nor Dathi responded or even looked at him, but I couldn’t take my eyes off his face: hating him: the high pink draining from his cheeks as his temperature adjusted, his eyes shining wet, the wrinkled grid of his forehead.

Leaning against a wall, I crossed my arms over my chest and got as comfortable as I could in an uncomfortable position. Dathi stayed planted in the chair, uncharacteristically refusing to offer it to an elder, and read aloud from the end of
The Giver
. Father X hovered quietly, occasionally yawning. As soon as Steve returned, holding a large envelope, Father X went for his coat. Steve seemed surprised that the visit was already over.

“So soon?” Steve asked.

“She seems tired.” Father X glanced at Abby with a gentle smile that gave me the creeps. “We’ll be back tomorrow, dear.”

“Linda will come with us, okay?” Steve promised. “She said to give you a kiss.” He did not, however, try to deliver it.

As soon as they were gone, Dathi whipped off her jacket. She had sweated so much her shirt was wet.

“Abby, honey.” I stepped away from the wall and moved closer to her bed. “Does Father X scare you? Don’t you like Steve and Linda?”

She looked at me quickly, and for a moment I was convinced she was going to say something. But instead her gaze moved away, returning to the wall opposite her bed, where the first drawing Dathi had made for her was now surrounded by four others.

“That’s okay.” It wasn’t, but what could I do? I turned back to Dathi. “Come on, now we really do have to leave.”

Dathi whispered yet another good-bye in Abby’s ear; but when Abby nodded in response I got the feeling it had been more a question and answer than a relay of good-byes. Dathi carried her jacket to the elevator, while I slipped mine on. Riding down alone to the lobby, she blurted out:

“Abby isn’t scared of Father X. She likes him. It’s the other priest she’s scared of.”

That stunned me. “What other priest?”

“She just wanted you to know that.”

“Okay—but how do
you
know?”

“She told me.” Dathi’s smile was bright and proud. A chill flashed through me.

“Has she spoken to you?”

“Yes. Of course. She is my best friend.”

“You mean she actually
talked
to you? Not wrote, or drew a picture, but
spoke
?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Every time I visit. She has a lot to tell me. For instance, Abby doesn’t want to go live with those people.”

I couldn’t be sure if it was true—it seemed to me that Dathi had a vivid imagination—but I was willing to suspend my disbelief for now. It was also a matter of stubborn hope:
Of course
Abby would talk eventually; why wouldn’t she? She was terrified of something she felt she couldn’t say, but she wouldn’t be able to hold it in forever.

“Why not?”

“Her mother’s coming back for her. How will she know where to find her if she’s been moved?”

“Dathi—her mother isn’t coming back for her.”

“Oh, but she is.”

“How can she?”

The elevator doors dinged open and people started pressing in. The lobby was busy with visitors and hospital personnel coming and going. It seemed that just beyond the rotating doors of the main entrance, there was some kind of confusion outside.

“Dathi, what did she mean by ‘the other priest’? What other priest?”

We pushed together through the revolving door and walked into a scene of chaos: reporters and rubberneckers jostling for the best view.

Father X was surrounded by uniformed police, trying to tell them something, but they didn’t appear to be paying much attention. One of the cops pushed the father’s left shoulder to turn him toward the open door of a waiting squad car: his hands were shackled behind his back. The undersides of his palms were lined and swollen. I looked around for Steve Campbell, but he was nowhere in sight.

“You’re making a mistake,” Father X pleaded. “Please, hear me out.”

The cop pushed him all the way into the car. Another one kicked it closed.

They weren’t listening to him: an arrest had already been made; their job was to get him to their precinct where he could talk all he wanted—or not.

I stepped forward and asked the nearest uniform, “What’s going on?”

His expression hardened. I knew the look: He had no intention of answering some nosy lady from the crowd. He shut himself into the front passenger seat and the squad car drove away.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” I shouted after him, regretting it as soon as it slipped out. I glanced at Dathi, ashamed of myself; but her quick, delighted smile made me laugh. We stood there, staring at the pair of taillights blazing red into the gathering darkness before vanishing around a corner.

“I’m getting to know you better, Karin.” Dathi took my hand. “I like you best when you’re at your worst. Does that make any sense?”

“Do you think you’ve seen me at my worst?”

“Perhaps I didn’t mean
worst
. Perhaps I meant
unguarded
.”

I gave her hand a squeeze. As we walked toward the subway, I called Mac and told him what had happened.

“I know,” he said. “It’s all over the news.”

“What are they saying?”

“Karin, you’re right there! Don’t you know?”

“No one would tell me anything.”

“The cops are saying he’s a ‘person of interest’ in the Working Girl Murders.”

“Since when do they arrest a person of interest?” But it was a rhetorical point; we both knew they only arrested you if there was serious reason to believe you were directly involved in a crime. I felt vindicated: So I had been right. But I wanted to hear it from the source.

I called Billy’s cell phone and left him a message: “Why did you guys arrest Father X, exactly?” But he didn’t call back before we descended into the dead zone of the underground tunnels.