Vanishing Girls (26 page)
Authors: Katia Lief
“Because
you
were responsible,” Ladasha spat.
“Yes, in a way I was.”
“In a way?”
“What about Chali Das?” Billy asked.
Finally
.
Father X nodded somberly. “The next day, when the police and the newspapers were trying to find out what happened to the Dekkers, the babysitter came to confession. She told me she feared Abby had been abused, that she had sensed something was off when she babysat for Abby once, that she herself had been a child bride and she felt she detected something familiar in the girl. An anxious silence. I listened quietly, but I thought I would lose my mind. I didn’t know what else she was aware of but I couldn’t let it go. I realized I had to kill one more time. But I couldn’t get into the house for one of Reed’s knives.” He shook his head. “The whole thing was falling apart.”
I stopped listening: In my mind I was back in Chali’s apartment, looking for her, finding her dead. Wondering why she had been singled out for such cruelty. At that point, I couldn’t do it anymore. I got up and walked out of the room.
M
ac filled me in on the rest later that night, when we were home, decompressing at our kitchen table after the kids were in bed. We had had a drink before dinner and now we had another one; but no amount of alcohol could cloud my brain enough to dull the painful truth.
According to Father X, Steve Campbell was the Facebook expert, an allegation supported by the CCU, which had finally succeeded in tracing the account controlling Abby’s page to Steve. It was he who located the resurfaced girls and Reed who silenced them, together creating the scenario of a serial killer to deflect the real problem: The girls were all connected through them and their trips off the coast of Brazil. They were tour operators, basically, having developed a business catering to mostly American men seeking sex with children. Each year, fifteen to twenty men flew to Miami, where they boarded a chartered yacht and headed south into the Atlantic Ocean. They spent a full week together, having their fun. Then they went back to their lives as husbands and fathers, bankers and doctors, lawyers and teachers, neighbors and friends.
B
en’s birthday arrived on a Sunday. When Mac and I rolled out of bed at just past nine, we could smell that Dathi was already up and cooking in the kitchen: The rich aroma of poori wafted down the stairs to our room. She had made it once before and we’d all watched as the golden circles of dough puffed up in the pan. I had been so impatient to try it that I’d burned my tongue, but wouldn’t make the same mistake this time.
When we got to the kitchen in our bathrobes, Ben was at the stove with her, standing on a stool. He was wearing his plaid pajamas and looked like a little man—four years old already; I could hardly believe it.
“Happy birthday!” I kissed the tousled top of his head.
“Happy birthday, Mommy.”
“It’s
your
birthday, silly.” Laughing, Dathi flipped a poori, which sizzled when it landed. “No one else’s.”
While the poori was finishing, Mac scrambled eggs and I started coffee. Then I cleaned the strawberries I’d bought the day before as a special treat; they were so dear in the winter, we rarely got them. Soon we were all sitting around the table, a family of four, which six months ago was just what I’d expected to be doing at this time of year—but with a different daughter. Dathi was on the way to becoming ours now: We’d hired lawyers in both countries, and the official adoption paperwork was being prepared. So far there had been no objections from Uncle Ishat, the Indian Consulate, or the Indian government. Apparently she didn’t matter to anyone else: She was just a girl adrift in the world. But she mattered, deeply, to me, and in growing increments she had started to matter to Mac, as well.
Mom arrived in time to snag the last piece of poori. Between her new medication and a new physical therapist, she could make the walk over by herself now. She had brought a gift wrapped in colorful paper and decorated with a curly ribbon. Ben nearly assaulted her, trying to get it out of her hands.
“Not yet.” Mom laughed. “Karin? Mac? You better get to it.”
We had been waiting for her. I went to the front hall and opened the coat closet, where last night we had managed to stash Ben’s unwieldy gift: a new bicycle, shiny royal blue, with a good loud bell and training wheels. He ripped off the badly wrapped paper and jumped on, ringing the bell nonstop. Now Mom tried to give him her gift, but he had lost interest. I handed it to Dathi to open for him.
“Ah, his helmet,” she said. I wondered if it reminded her of her own helmet, the gift from Chali, which had gone unused because she didn’t have a bicycle to ride. She strapped the silver helmet, dotted with green frogs, onto Ben’s head.
Meanwhile, Mac ducked downstairs to the basement. I heard him struggling up the stairs but didn’t go to help him because I didn’t want the kids to follow and ruin the plan.
When he appeared in the living room, a little breathless and wheeling a much bigger bicycle—a girl’s two-wheeler, white with maroon trim—Dathi’s jaw dropped. Eyes tearing, she ran to Mac and buried him in a hug.
We had promised Ben a party, and he would have one, but it was not going to be the kind of party he expected. Instead of games and cupcakes and balloons at home, Mac, Dathi, and I got bundled up and struck out into the brilliant blue morning. Mom was going to skip this part and meet up with us later. The temperature had risen over the last few days, melting most of the snow, and now you could move along unimpeded. Ben and Dathi, strapped into helmets, rode their new bikes on the sidewalk. Mac and I rode our bikes beside them along the edge of the street. It took a while, because we had to stop frequently for Ben, but he was a trouper on his new set of wheels . . . and by the time we reached the Atlantic Avenue entrance to Brooklyn Bridge Park, he was getting the hang of it.
The plan was to meet everyone here. We were the first, so we waited on a bench overlooking the East River and the southern tip of Manhattan, a packed checkerboard of skyscrapers.
“It’s cold,” Ben said.
“We’ll warm up once we’re on the move.” I kissed his cheek
“Here they are!” Mac pointed at Mary and Fremont, arriving on their bikes; he zoomed ahead while she chugged behind.
Dathi circled to meet them, a little wobbly but mastering the bicycle she had waited so long for. Moments later, when Billy rode up, she repeated the circle to greet him.
“Nice bike, kid,” he greeted her.
Grinning, she followed him back to the bench, where Ben now sat on Fremont’s lap.
“Ready?” Dathi pointed herself in the direction of the path that edged the river.
“Not quite yet,” I told her. “We’re waiting for a few more.”
Mac tried to suppress his smile, but it was contagious and I struggled not to smile as well. We both knew how much this would mean to Dathi, and even though it was Ben’s birthday, this was going to be our last chance to see Abby for a while. The gift for Ben was more people to lead on his procession along the water to the restaurant, and when we got there, a cake was waiting with his name on it.
After a few more minutes, Abby came riding along on her own bicycle, one of the things she’d taken out of the Bergen Street house for her imminent move to Connecticut. A middle-aged couple followed on rented bikes.
Abby had a set of biological grandparents still young enough to care for her with the energy they had once put into searching for their daughter, Tina, who vanished when she was twelve years old. It turned out that her DNA had been accidentally dropped out of the database, which was why she remained unidentified as long as she did.
The Giffords lived in a nice house a few blocks from the ocean, where they had raised four children—Tina had been their second oldest. Now there were aunts and uncles and lots of cousins living mostly nearby. Of all the cousins, Abby was the oldest, as Tina had been so young—only fourteen—when she’d given birth.
Ray and Sandy Gifford pulled up behind Abby, who had tossed over her bike and jumped off to inspect Dathi’s. Abby winced a little when she moved, and she still had a slight limp, but most of the healing she had to do now was emotional; her body was well on its way.
“How on earth are we going to keep up with her?” Sandy asked cheerfully; but it was a purely rhetorical question. Their gratitude for Abby was on record in all their words and actions since the day they’d learned of her existence. When Sandy smiled, watching Abby inspect Dathi’s new bike and dole out enthusiastic approval, an array of deep wrinkles flowered in an expression that was both joyous and tragic. She had mentioned to me, when we’d spoken on the phone to arrange this, how much Abby resembled Tina; how wonderful that was, and how painful.
“It won’t be hard,” Ray said warmly, lifting a gloved hand off his handlebar to pat his wife’s shoulder. “It’ll be one of the easiest things we’ve ever done. She’ll be our new beginning.”
Abby smiled at her grandparents as she strode past them to pick up her bike and remount.
Dathi and Abby led the way, with Ben and Fremont following. The adults trailed close behind, six sets of eyes, all watching in case anyone stumbled. On our right, in the near distance, the steep canyon of the city. On our left, the graphite surface of a winter river shining under an unseasonably bright sky. In front of us, a smooth path that curved and curved again as we made our way forward together.
I
am truly grateful to so many people whose support, creativity, and hard work helped propel this novel into the arms of readers around the world, among them: Matt Bialer, Lindsay Ribar, Stefanie Diaz, Liate Stehlik, Lucia Macro, Esi Sogah, Thomas Egner, Eleanor Mikucki, Pam Spengler-Jaffee, Seale Ballinger, Gillian Greene, Hannah Robinson, Hannah Grogan, Kate McLennan, Suenje Redies . . . and the many others who have had a hand in launching Karin Schaeffer into the world for a third time.
“T
his look alright?” Mac adjusts the lapels of his gray jacket and runs a flattened hand down the length of his yellow tie. The rarely excavated garment bag that houses his best suit lays puddled on the floor by the foot of the mirror.
Looking over from where I sit on the edge of our bed, I say, “You look handsome,” and smile at my husband. I try to think of the last time I saw him so dressed up and can’t remember.
I tug on a pair of panty hose that constrict like a sausage casing, then yank them off and toss them across the room; they float to a landing beside the garment bag. “Whoever invented stockings should be hanged.” I can get away with going barelegged in my linen dress since it’s been officially summer for nearly a week.
Just then Dathi darts past our open bedroom door: she has unpeeled her skinny jeans and put on a skirt and top for the occasion of her little brother’s kindergarten “stepping up.” It feels exciting and a little daunting, this gesture at a graduation ceremony aimed at launching an education everyone hopes will end with college. The idea of Ben not going straight to college after high school makes me nervous. I just turned forty, still haven’t graduated college, and am beginning to think I never will. So I applaud Ben’s school for making a big deal about the passage to first grade. Next thing you know he’ll be graduating twelfth grade and charging forward without questioning the importance of education—right? I swallow back that familiar lump of baseless dread, amazed (again) at how being a parent can reduce you to a feeble sauce of worry.
Dathi steps into our room, barefoot, a pair of black flats dangling from one hand. “Karin, I hate to tell you this, but my new shoes don’t fit anymore.”
“You’re growing like a
weed
.” She’ll never be as tall as me, but she’s shot up recently, gotten all stalky and long-limbed, and is probably close to her full height now. That she has her black hair twisted into a loose bun atop her head makes her look even taller. And she is developing; you can see a curvaceous outline forming under her white top. Her dark skin has faded a shade or two after her second winter in Brooklyn; the sun-soaked complexion she brought with her from India now ebbs and flows with our seasons. After her mother Chali, who was Ben’s babysitter, was murdered, Dathi came to live with us. Her legal adoption only recently came through, but even before it was finalized we were committed to mothering and daughtering each other. I fill a need for her as much as she does for me, having lost two biological daughters, one at age three and the other as a stillbirth.
“I can squeeze my feet in, I suppose.”
“Here, see if these fit.” I toss her the low-heeled patent sandals I had planned to wear.
“No, I couldn’t.”
“Yes, you could, you can, and you will.”
She slips her feet into my shoes, which are a little big but better than having her feet pinched all morning.
“We’ve got a little time, right?” Crossing the room, Mac looks at his watch. He’s been up for hours—dropped Ben at school and then came home to eat, shave and shower—and I know it’s bothering him that he hasn’t touched base with work yet today. Our good friend and part-time assistant Mary has probably been there for nearly an hour. “Think I’ll swing by the office before we go.”
As his ambivalent, unofficial partner, I pay close attention but rarely jump first.
“Twenty minutes,” I say to his back as he vanishes into the hallway. “We’ll ring the bell.”
Dathi and I finish getting ready. While she checks Facebook for the seventh or eighth time that morning, I pick up our cats’ empty dishes and put them in the kitchen sink. Jeff and Justin, year-old brothers, always nap on the couch after breakfast; I steal a quick pet of Jeff’s soft orange fur, then Justin’s silky black fur, as I cross the living room to the front door. Jeff coos but doesn’t wake.
“Ready.” Dathi joins me at the door and out we go into the buttery June morning. The tall old trees are in full leaf, casting welcome shade on an early summer just growing warm. Bergen Street is still as a portrait: the procession of brownstones with stoops tiered to the cracked uneven sidewalk, the sentinel watchfulness of the houses’ gleaming windows awake to the life of the street. As the office is conveniently down the block, we don’t even have to cross over to get to the ground floor apartment cum office suite that MacLeary Investigations shares with a freelance graphic designer named Andre.
Almost there, I notice a woman walking in our direction; she appears out of place, even in our gentrified neighborhood, with her soft pink sweater, creased slacks, and big diamond ring. She’s more put together than the people you normally see out this time of day, those left behind by the morning rush to Wall Street and Midtown; anyone around here not swept away in the early commute is pretty much a jeans-and-bedhead freelancer of one kind or another, an at-home parent or a student.
Close to her now, I breathe in the luxuriant scent of perfume and feel an unwelcome spark of envy. She’s an outsider
and
she’s rich. Mac and I work hard to keep afloat but lately, as the economy has slowed, so has our income and sometimes now the bills get ahead of us. How can it be that there are still people out there for whom jewels and perfume and pressed slacks are worn with the preternatural ease of a birthright? Before we even get to speaking distance, I don’t like her; and I like her even less when she turns in to ring Mac’s office bell. Andre never gets in this early, and even if he did, his clients are never this posh. But then, neither are ours. I mentally scan today’s calendar: no new clients are scheduled; the only thing of any importance that’s supposed to be happening is Ben’s ceremony.
Mac’s voice emanates from the intercom: “Yes?”
“Is this MacLeary Investigations?”
“Delivery?”
“I apologize, you’re not expecting me, but—”
“Hang on. Be right out.”
She clutches her purse and glances over her shoulder at me and Dathi standing behind her. I decide not to take out my key because I don’t want to go in, I want Mac to come out, or we’ll be late.
“There’s no sign,” she says. “I wasn’t sure I had the right address.”
“We should get a sign.” Immediately regretting the
we
. I’ve argued strenuously against adding myself to the company name yet can’t help lumping myself in anyway. Sometimes I think Mac is just waiting for me to break down and make it official, and some days I almost relent, but then I slip backward into a familiar yearning to disown this kind of work. It draws you deep inside. Masticates you. Dribbles you out like spit.
The door swings open before she can ask me if I work with Mac. She has that fraught look in her eyes new clients get when they first decide to take action and hire a private detective.
Mac glances at us and ekes out a smile for his unexpected visitor. “How can I help you?”
Mary appears behind him, curious. As always, the purple canvas slippers she keeps tucked under her desk peek out beneath the frayed hem of her bellbottoms. You can see she brushed her brown hair this morning but it didn’t do much good.
“Are you—”
Mac offers a welcoming hand to the woman. “Mac MacLeary. I’m sorry if . . . did we have an appointment this morning?” He glances at Mary, who shakes her head.
“No,” she holds onto his hand, “I’m Cathy Millerhausen. I don’t usually just show up, but I came on impulse.”
“You caught me at a bad time; I was just on my way out the door.”
“Please, it won’t take long.
Please
.” She squeezes his hand. Droplets gather on her upper lip, and she stares at him, waiting. Her desperation is palpable; you can practically see the anxiety that wafts off her like waves of steam.
“We’ll save you a seat,” I tell Mac. “If you get there by eleven you won’t miss anything.”
His eyes shift between Cathy Millerhausen and me, and he asks her, “Is fifteen minutes enough?”
“I don’t know how long something like this usually takes.”
“Well, it’ll have to be.” Mac steps aside to invite her in.
“Have fun!” When Mary waves at us, the tattoo in the palm of her left hand catches Mrs. Millerhausen’s attention: a quarter-size smiley face. If Mary had raised her right hand, our visitor would have seen a lotus flower. Her expression doesn’t shift, which almost surprises me; but when you’re preoccupied, it takes a lot more than a silly tattoo to distract you. Whatever was on the woman’s mind had her attention in a chokehold.
M
ac steps back into the pool of shadows in the outer vestibule so Cathy Millerhausen can pass. Under the grim fluorescent light in the hall her skin attains a fragility it lacked outside in the full spectrum sun with all its hues. When she tries to smile, lines spray across her cheekbones. A knot forms in his stomach at the panic in her pale eyes.
He says, “I’m at the end of the hall,” and leads her along a narrow passage off of which three offices blossom to the right: Andre’s first, his last, with the windowless room shared by Karin and Mary sandwiched between. As part-timers and last on board, the women landed the worst space, though no rationale has ever made the distinction comfortable for Mac. When he first rented office space here, the middle room was occupied by a woman novelist—he corrects himself:
novelist
. No one to his knowledge has ever called him a
man detective
. Through the open door he sees that Mary is back at her computer, working.
In Mac’s office he sits at his desk, the window full of summer greenery open behind him, letting in a slight breeze. To combat the darkness of the ground-floor rooms, the landlord painted this one a cooling yellow. From the ceiling a vintage fixture douses the room in agreeable light. A framed poster of windows flung open to an ocean hangs across from him so when he works he remembers there is more than this. Neatly stacked file folders documenting evidence of betrayal and paranoia and everything in between snake around two edges of the large desk, making him look busier than he is. Work has slowed with the halting economy. He already knows he’ll take her job as much as he knows he won’t want to. He’s seen it a hundred times, that despair in her eyes, and the truth is it no longer easily moves him.
“How can I help?” he starts.
She sits across from him, back straight, hands folded on crossed knees, all tight angles that irritate and disturb him. “It’s my husband.”
He nods.
“I think he’s unfaithful.”
Of course, what else? “Go on.”
“He was unfaithful during his first marriage—unfaithful with me.” She clarifies, “Godfrey left his first wife for me.” Her skin reddens violently. “So I know he’s quite capable of it.”
At this point Mac sinks deeply into listening mode; nothing so far sounds all that unusual. He leans back, gets comfortable. She pulls her diamond ring up to her finger joint and then pushes it back down, twists it so the stone briefly vanishes before reappearing, dazzling as it catches the light.
“I suppose men like Godfrey always cheat.”
“What kind of a man is that?”
“Very rich, very powerful men.”
“You’re his second wife, so I’m guessing he had you sign a pre-nup.”
She nods. “But with a clause my lawyer insisted on: ‘If Godfrey Armstrong Millerhausen has sexual intercourse with another woman during the term of the marriage, if the marriage has lasted at least five years, and only if the infidelity occurs after five years of full-time marriage, then the prenuptial agreement is null and void.’ And that’s a quote.”
“And you’ve been married five years.”
“Nine.”
“Would the pre-nup leave you broke?”
“Not exactly. But without enough money to continue—”
He sees it coming and tries not to cringe: “In the lifestyle to which I’ve become accustomed.” He thinks,
Who cares how pampered you’ve been, lady
? But that isn’t what she says.
“—the care our son needs on a daily basis. We have twins, and one of them has special needs.” Her knuckles whiten as she grips one hand over the other.
Mac leans forward, and asks, “What kind of needs?”
“He’s intellectually disabled. I caught a virus when I was pregnant and it made Ritchie’s brain development dysfunctional. Otherwise my boys are identical. Or would be, I mean. They’re eight, and Bobby’s fine, but Ritchie. . . .” Her voice fades to silence.
“Bobby doesn’t need any special care at all?”
“No. They both attend private school, of course, but Ritchie’s school is very expensive. And his therapists outside school are exorbitant, but necessary to keep him moving forward even incrementally. I would never be able to cover his costs on what the pre-nup would leave me.”
“And you don’t believe your husband would pay for his son’s care?”
“I can’t be sure. He doesn’t pay much attention to Ritchie, and I know he blames me for the virus, irrational as it sounds. But it’s the way Godfrey is: someone is always at fault; someone always has to pay a price. Be accountable. That’s Godfrey.”
“What makes you think the marriage is in jeopardy?”
“Are you married, Mr. MacLeary?”
“Mac. And yes. In fact, you just met my wife.”
“Oh, the tall woman outside.”
“Karin. She works with me. Our son is graduating kindergarten this morning.” Mac glances at his watch, shifts in his seat. Eight minutes: that’s all Mrs. Millerhausen’s got left.
“I can feel it,” she tells him. “There just isn’t much between us anymore. He’s lost interest in me . . . and the boys, too, I sometimes think.”
“Okay . . . and you know for a fact he’s got someone on the side?”
“Not for a fact, no. But I think he does. I’ll need proof, of course, so when he hits me with the divorce I can void the pre-nup. That’s all I want. I don’t need to save the marriage—let him go to her, it’s what he does. I can live without him, but my boys need to be raised.”
“I understand.”
“Ritchie will be all right, more or less, if he continues to get the best care. Godfrey once suggested institutionalizing him—but that breaks my heart, Mr. MacLeary . . . Mac. Have you ever seen those places?”
“No.”