Vanishing Girls (6 page)

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I can go to sixty-five, but no lower.”

“Fifty-five. Because you called me ma’am.”

“Sixty.”

“Deal.”

I paid and arranged to have it delivered in the morning. After stopping at Blue Marble to buy my mother a pint of her favorite black raspberry ice cream, I headed to Kane Street, where she rented an apartment. We hadn’t seen enough of Mom since arthritis started creeping up her spine, and I missed her, especially today. She found it difficult to walk the seven blocks to our house, and sitting in a car was no easier. It was hard to imagine how she’d tolerate traveling all the way to L.A. with us in two weeks, but she swore that she’d be fine since her doctor promised to load her up with painkillers. The trip had been planned before the arthritis hit in full force, and my sister-in-law, Andrea, who was pregnant again, couldn’t travel. Mom refused to even contemplate missing a chance to spend the holidays with all of us.

My mother lived on the ground floor of a brownstone on Kane Street near Tompkins Place. It was a quiet pocket of the neighborhood, leafy except in winter, when the stout limbs of thick old trees shot their spindly branches together in gray lacework against the sky. Tonight’s bright moon cast the scene with a strange clarity. I thought of Abby Dekker, sat down on the nearest stoop, and started to cry. But only briefly. I was overtired and overreacting. I rubbed my face dry with the palms of my hands, stood up, and continued to my mother’s building down the block. I let myself in with my own key, first opening the iron gate and then the inner door.

“Hello!” I called out immediately, so she wouldn’t be afraid.

The volume of a television quickly diminished in the living room down the hall.

“Karin honey, is that you?”

“Hi, Mom.” I left my coat and purse on the chair by the front door, picked up the Blue Marble bag, and flicked lights on as I made my way through the hallway off of which sprouted her three rooms: bedroom, living room, kitchen. Off the kitchen she also had a big yard all to herself; it had been one of her stipulations when she’d hunted for a place to live.

She was sitting in the only chair that was at all comfortable for her, a plush white leather recliner that leaned as far back as she wanted it to, resting her feet on a matching footstool. I stooped down to kiss her.

She saw the bag and smiled. “How did you know I was craving that?”

“Were you?”

“I am now.”

She switched off
Antiques Roadshow
and watched me pass into her smallish kitchen, a starkly modern room that had been renovated, along with the bathroom, just before she’d moved in. I liked the simplicity and cleanliness of this kitchen; it meant business and didn’t tolerate clutter, unlike the large country kitchen of my later youth in Montclair, New Jersey, that became a magnet of disorder every afternoon when Jon and I got home from school. Mom had once commented that this kitchen felt “unexpected” and “like a meditation.” She had grown used to widowhood and seemed to have adjusted well to the quietude of living alone. I liked to believe that we—Mac and Ben and I—staved off loneliness for her, together with a handful of good friends she’d accumulated since arriving in Brooklyn a few years ago. We had offered to give her Mac’s study as a bedroom, so she could live with us, but she’d insisted she enjoyed her privacy too much to relinquish it just yet.

I returned with two of her white bowls holding a couple scoops each of the lavender-colored ice cream. She spooned some into her mouth, and sighed, before speaking.

“How’s Mac feeling?”

“He’s in for the long haul. You got
your
flu shot this year, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” She patted my knee. “I like it when you mother me. You’re a good mother, Karin.” She craned her neck to look closer at my face. “Were you crying?”

“Just a little. Crazy day.”

“That’s why I hate the holidays—they intensify whatever’s happening in our lives.”

She meant the miscarriage; we’d talked about it enough for her to know how sad it had left me.

“No, Mom, it isn’t that. I’ve been spending a lot of time with Billy since last night. At two different crime scenes.”

Now she reared back. “Why?”

I explained what had happened, about Billy’s obvious PTSD, but kept the details of the murders minimal. But it turned out she knew all about them anyway.

“Essie e-mailed me this morning after she heard the news about what happened in this neighborhood.” Essie was Mom’s good friend from an art history class she had taken last year at the New School in Manhattan. “She sent me a link and I checked a few online newspapers. Karin, are you telling me
you
were there?”

“I was.”

She stared at me a moment before speaking again. I knew she wished I was completely out of law enforcement; after everything we’d been through already, she couldn’t understand why I still worked cases with Mac and was studying to be a forensic psychologist. I had tried to explain to her: It was what I did, what I knew, what I was good at.

“You’re a moth to flame, Karin.” She sounded displeased, but dropped it. We had already had this conversation a few times in the past and my mother was not one to attempt the impossible, like changing my mind about something I had already decided to do.

We visited for an hour or so, until a new wave of exhaustion overcame me; it was just past nine o’clock but felt like midnight. I headed home, feeling as if I’d collapse if I didn’t get into bed right away.

Chali was sitting in the kitchen, reading a magazine, when I walked into the quiet house.

“They’re both asleep?” I asked her.

She closed the magazine and looked at me, her eyes a little droopy; it had been a long day for her, too. “Mac’s fever is still high—103.4. I gave him some more ibuprofen and put some ice water by his bed.”

“Thank you so much, Chali. I really appreciate you staying late tonight.”

“How was the ceremony?”

“Not much of a ceremony, really. At the end of the meeting they handed him a plaque and said some nice words. He hated every minute of it.”

“Detective Staples needs to learn to appreciate himself more. And I still say he’s a handsome man, even with one eye.”

“I’ll tell him you said so.”

“Do
not
tell him I said so, please.” But she giggled.

“You’ll be happy to know that I bought a Christmas tree. It’s coming in the morning.”

“Excellent. Ben and I will decorate it in the afternoon.” Chali was a devout Christian and, though she hadn’t mentioned it explicitly, I knew she’d been disappointed that I hadn’t yet made any acknowledgment of Christmas.

“I’m seriously wiped out,” I said. “Mind if I just head right down to bed?” She had her own keys and was used to letting herself out.

“Yes, but,” Chali began, half rising from the table, and then sitting back down, “I hoped to have a word with you. I remembered something that I wanted to—”

She had that look on her face, when she started to really talk. If I had one complaint about Chali, and it was an insignificant one, it was that she occasionally talked too much. She was a born communicator who should have been educated and let loose on the mass media or at least the blogosphere. Instead, she had grown up semi-illiterate in a minuscule village in central India, teaching herself to read and write on the sly.

“Do you mind too much if we hold off until tomorrow? I only slept a few hours in the last two days and I can barely see straight right now.”

She hesitated, then stood up. “It can wait. I’ll just go home and take a nice hot bath.”

“You need to rest up, too,” I said. “Dathi will be here before you know it.”

“January first.” She lit up with one of her smiles. “It will be a new year in the most perfect way.”

“Thanks again, Chali.”

“Good night.”

Glancing into her dark eyes, I felt a trill of something uncomfortable, a sensation of foreboding. I brushed it aside; it had been a long, difficult day.

“Good night. See you tomorrow.”

Chapter 6

I
stood back and looked at the tree that now occupied a large space of our living room. Closing my eyes, I breathed in the exquisite pine smell. I wished I’d be able to join Chali and Ben in decorating it that afternoon, but I’d promised to take my mother to a doctor’s appointment. It was almost noon. Ben and Chali would be home in about twenty minutes and I still had a lot to do.

I took my laptop downstairs, pausing outside my closed bedroom door for sounds of Mac. It was quiet; he was probably still sleeping. Then I heard the roiling wheezing coughs that had begun to worry me. I waited for it to die down by the cracked open door, wondering if he’d woken himself up. He hadn’t. Day three of any flu was like the heart of a storm; you hunkered down while the worst passed. But the sound of that cough—I didn’t like it.

I set up in Mac’s office where I could get some work done before Chali and Ben got home and had their lunch; I could use that time to review more résumés for the part-time assistant I now felt we needed more than ever. I had gone through nearly fifty résumés that morning, and they continued to pour in. If the flow didn’t abate by evening, I would cancel the ad early; it had been set to run for a week. I managed to click open another dozen and sort them into e-mail folders—yes, no, or maybe—when my cell phone rang with a call from Ben’s nursery school.

“Karin? It’s Alyssa from Open House.”

“Not another timeout.” Ben’s nursery school teacher had called once before to report that my headstrong son had refused to give up another boy’s color-coded rug spot at circle time; the teachers liked to nip social jockeying in the bud, and keep parents informed every step of the way. But how would kids learn anything if adults constantly intervened in their struggles?

“He’s been an angel. I’m calling because his sitter hasn’t come for him yet. Was there a change in plans today?”

It was twelve-sixteen according to the blinking icon on the laptop screen, about the time Chali and Ben usually arrived home. “She must be stuck on the subway. I’ll run over and pick him up right now.”

“He’s welcome to stay longer, but the full-day kids are settling in with their lunches and he doesn’t have anything.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m on my way.”

Chali had never been late for pickup before, but you couldn’t live in New York City without getting snagged by the subway system sooner or later. I grabbed my coat and purse.

Outside, it was cold and bright. No one else was around as I hurried up our block and turned the corner onto Smith Street, where I nearly collided with the Three Musketeers. They were banded together as usual, talking, heading in the opposite direction from their regular morning walk. I wondered if this was their usual time of return from wherever it was they headed every morning when I was taking Ben to school. The shortest among them, wearing yellow and red sneakers and a sideways Mets cap, jumped when I accidentally came too close. His sideburns were shaped like daggers and his skin had a worn, grainy quality. He smelled like a combination of cigarettes and mint toothpaste. I almost apologized for surprising him but changed my mind when he shot me an irritated look. I shot one back, and walked quickly in the direction of Open House, four blocks down.

Halfway there I stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of two local newspapers displayed on a rack outside a deli. Both showed the front of the Dekker house cordoned off with police tape, bouquets of flowers staggering up the front stoop. A mother I recognized from the playground wheeled her daughter’s stroller past and saw me.

“Isn’t it awful?” she said, and kept moving.

I nodded, assuming she’d read the alarm in my expression as a reaction to the crime, not the fast-moving ubiquity of the news of the Dekkers’ deaths. I flipped open the pages of one of the papers to see if there was anything about the prostitute, but found nothing.

Ten minutes later, jogging back down Smith Street behind my scootering son, I impulsively decided to detour to the Dekkers’ house. I wanted to see what was happening over there, and Ben would never notice the deviation from the usual route home. I got ahead of him and kept going instead of making our turn, to avoid passing our building. He dutifully followed, happy just to be whizzing along on wheels. I slowed down and let him get ahead of me so I could keep my eyes on him. When we reached the Dekkers’ block, I could see from a distance that the activity had not died down so much as shifted. The CSI vans were gone, but cop cars remained and uniforms still guarded the house. There were more reporters, from the look of it. And the front stoop was now piled high with flowers, candles, balloons, and stuffed animals.

“A party!” Ben shouted, and sped up.

I ran to catch up to him. “We’re not invited. Come on, let’s cross the street and go home.” I caught his shoulder to slow him down and maneuver through two parked cars. Maybe it wasn’t the greatest move to teach a small child to cross in the middle of the street, but suddenly I didn’t want him near a crime scene. Any crime scene. Ever.

A
fter lunch I hauled out the box of Christmas decorations and let Ben hang a few ornaments. He was a handful, and I felt acutely aware of how accustomed I’d become to Chali keeping him busy on weekday afternoons. I kept checking the time; it was getting later and later. In just a few minutes I would have to leave to get my mother. The thought of taking Ben an hour on the subway and then having him boomerang around a doctor’s waiting room for possibly another hour was exhausting. I tried Chali’s cell phone again; and again it was intercepted by voice mail and her cheerful voice promising to call back soon. I left another message and sat there, wondering what to do.

Slow footsteps creaking up the stairs told me that Mac was out of bed.

“Are you okay?” I called down. “Do you need something?”

“The bedroom’s getting claustrophobic.” His voice sounded faint, even as it grew nearer. “Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.”

I found him halfway up the stairs, steadying himself on the banister.

“Dizzy?”

“Just for a minute.” He continued up. “But I can’t lie there anymore.”

“You’re pale.” I touched his forehead with the back of my hand. “And hot.”

“You’re hot, too, baby.” He tried to wink at me, but it wasn’t funny and it definitely wasn’t sexy.

I steered him to the couch, where he lay, wheezing, with his head on a cushion I arranged for him.

“Nice tree.” He managed a tepid smile.

“I have to head over to my mom’s, to take her to see Dr. Alderson.”

“Where’s Chali?”

“That’s the problem.” I explained.

“Go ahead. I’ll keep an eye on Ben.”

“That’s not a good idea, Mac. You can hardly move.”

“If you close the doors to the hall and the kitchen, I’ll be okay. And put out some snacks for him. And hand me the remote control.”

He was right; he could supervise from the couch, and the remote control worked wonders in a pinch. Plus Chali would probably turn up soon. I set out a couple of juice boxes and bottles of water along with a bowl of dry Cheerios, kissed my guys, and took off.

L
ater that evening, my mother stood between the long dark windows at the front of our living room, beside the Christmas tree, placing the ornaments Ben handed her in the high spots he couldn’t reach. She had let her short hair go white, and in the darkness the passing of every car outside and each flash of colored lights from the tree made her glow on and off, unevenly, with a shimmer that would burst and then fade. In her free hand she held a nearly finished glass of white wine.

“ ‘Old age is a massacre,’ ” she said.

“What?” I glanced up from the floor, where I was slipping hooks into ornaments that didn’t have any.

“Philip Roth said that. And Bette Davis said—”

“ ‘Old age is no place for sissies.’ ” She had quoted that one before.

“That’s damned straight.” She drained her wine and steadied herself on the windowsill. Her pain management doctor had decided to change her medication and was weaning her off one to begin another. The wine was going to see her through the night. We’d been back at my house three hours and she’d been on her feet the entire time because sitting, she said, felt like a hot poker up her spine.

The doorbell rang and my heart jumped, thinking it might be Chali—but why would it be? She had her own set of keys, and we hadn’t arranged for her to babysit tonight. I stood abruptly and loped across the living room to the foyer just as the bell rang a second time.

I paid the deliveryman and took the bag with our dinner to the kitchen. Made Ben a plate of chicken and broccoli with rice and set it by his tall chair. Served my mother and myself some pad Thai with shrimp, and called them to the table. When Mac woke up, I’d bring him some reheated soup.

Mom stood beside the table, washing down bites of noodles with a steady flow of wine. I knew she was going to argue with me about spending the night, but how would I get her home in her state? I wasn’t going to mention anything until after I’d gotten Ben bathed and into bed. Maybe then I’d put on a movie. Was there any chance she would fall asleep on her feet and I could just shift her down onto the sofa bed? I wished I could give her my bed, but with Mac sick there was just no way.

“Where does Chali live, exactly?”

I looked up at my mother, standing there with a fork dripping noodles suspended near her mouth.

“Sunset Park.”

“That’s Brooklyn?”

I nodded. “It’s not too far from here, probably fifteen minutes.” Fifteen minutes by car, bus, or subway. It was hard not to think about how relatively close Chali’s apartment was, how easy it would be to drop in and assure myself that she was all right.

“I guarantee you she’s in bed with the flu.”

“She had her shot. And she would have called.”

“You never know.”

Mom was probably right: Chali’s flu shot could have backfired this year. Or maybe there was some kind of an emergency with her daughter, Dathi. My imagination did a U-turn and now, instead of seeing Chali feverish in her bed, I saw her at the Indian Consulate in Manhattan, desperate for some reason I couldn’t know, begging for help. Had something gone wrong with the visa she had arranged for her daughter’s much anticipated visit? But the visa had already been approved, plane ticket purchased, plans set in place. I shut my eyes. Tried to melt the plank of hypervigilance that had installed itself across my forehead, as if every day now would bring a new crisis.

Chali was
fine
.

Tomorrow she would call me.

The real problem was that I had edged too close to my deep well of anxiety, and was peering in. I couldn’t stop thinking about the onslaught of death these past two days. The Dekkers. The prostitute. And Abby Dekker . . . the moment I thought about her and wondered if she was still in a coma, still alive, a wicked headache spread across my skull. The loss of a daughter—mine (twice) or anyone’s—opened a cavernous pit in my soul. I told my mother I’d be right back and not to pause the movie; I couldn’t concentrate on it, anyway. I went to the bathroom for a couple of ibuprofen. Then, in the kitchen, I closed the door and dialed Billy.

“Is it a bad time?” I heard voices behind him, a woman’s voice, the sound of people laughing in the distance.

“Not really. I’m at my sister Janine’s on Long Island. She’s having her annual holiday party.”

“Are you alone?”

“In the bedroom.”

“I hear a TV.”

“I’m catching the game.”

“Why bother going to a party if you’re going to hide out and watch TV?”

“If I didn’t come to her party, she’d hold it against me, and it isn’t worth it. But I’m tired. Couldn’t sleep much last night.”

“Did you call that number I gave you? For POPPA?”

He sighed. “Not yet, but . . .”

“
Billy
.”

“I’ll call them.” But the way he said it, I didn’t believe him.

“Where did you go last night after the community meeting?”

“Headed home, the long way. Stopped for a couple of drinks. I was home before midnight but couldn’t get to sleep until around five, and then the alarm clock screamed in my ear at seven.” He paused to sip something, swallow. “I keep thinking about it, you know?”

I did. But he meant more than the three violent cases that had dropped on him in less than twenty-four hours. In the midst of all that, he’d time-traveled to a bad, distant place where the last woman he’d loved had tried to kill him.

“How is Abby doing? Have you seen her again?”

“No, but I talked to that coordinator a couple of times. No changes. No nothing. No new leads on suspects. Haven’t heard back from the lab on traces off Abby’s clothes, but whoever’s car hit that kid had to leave something behind on her. We just need something to start with.”

“It’ll come,” I tried to reassure him.

“It always does. Well, usually . . .”

“What about the gun?”

“Nope.” He took another long swallow. I understood his frustration: if they found the weapon, it would yield something to go on.
If
. In the pause, the conversation shifted.

“So . . . Chali didn’t show up at Ben’s school this afternoon.”

“Hmm.”

“And she still hasn’t called.”

That got his attention. He was quiet, but I could tell he was listening.

“I’m worried about her.”

“I’m sure she’s fine.”

“Don’t try to placate me, Billy.”

“Something came up, Karin. Stuff happens. She’ll call tomorrow.”

But that was what Billy did when he knew there could be reason for worry: He intervened with stalwart rationality. I was going to protest. Chali was one of those people who never left you waiting. Who didn’t forget or neglect obligations. Who always called. Janine’s voice interrupted, though, before I had a chance to argue.

“Get your sorry ass off the bed, William Luther Staples, and come back to the party!”

“Luther?” I chuckled.

“It’s an old family name. Gotta go.”

I
n the morning I dropped Ben off at school, picked up Mom’s new prescription, and arranged to take her home later after the new medication had had a chance to make itself known. When I left them, Mac was sitting in the living room, draped over a chair, and Mom was stretched out on her stomach on the sofa bed. I felt like a negligent nurse on a hospital ward; but I needed to do this, and quickly: In two and a half hours I’d have to be back to pick Ben up from school, unless Chali showed up. But something told me she wouldn’t. I had the worst feeling.