Absolute Brightness (15 page)

“Whaddaya mean?”

I waited for her to close her purse and look up at me so I could see the blank expression on her face; it was perfect.

“Did you decide this or did Chuck? Am I going to be interrogated? Am I a suspect?”

“Don't be ridiculous. He wants to talk with us.”

Us
used to mean Deirdre, Mom, Dad, and me. Then Dad left us, and
us
meant the three people he left behind. For a while Leonard tried to become a part of
us
, but I think all parties have to agree to the deal if it's going to work and that never happened, because mostly I was never up for it and Deirdre had resigned from
us
, including the
us
that was just her and me. Apparently
us
had been whittled down and somehow had become just Mom and me.

As Mom stood in front of the mirror, poking and prodding her hair into place, I thought I might tell her about what had happened between Travis and me the other night in his car out on Beach Road. I thought for a moment that a confession of this kind would solidify our
us
ness and make us buddies; but every time I tried to imagine her reaction, all I could see in my mind was her face going white with anger. Wouldn't she freak when she found out that the boy from the mall had kissed me hard on the mouth? She might even scream when I described how he had pressed his lips against my neck, waggled his tongue in my mouth, and jiggered his hand up inside my blouse. Of course there was always the possibility that she might just hear me out and do nothing other than make a small, strangled sound at the back of her throat and smile.

I decided if I told her, she would be bugging me for weeks, searching my face, my clothes, trying to figure out if I was still a virgin. She wouldn't care about how softly Travis said my name into my ear, or how he found a way to climb smoothly on top of my thighs in that front seat, or how gently he slid his left hand down between my jeans and abdomen or how long he was able to keep his fingers positioned there without moving a knuckle. She would merely want to know if I'd said no to him and at what point.

“
Deirdre! C'mon! Now!
” Mom yelled up the stairs. Then she turned to me and without really seeing me, she said, “I'm driving Deirdre over to Mina's for an overnight. Help me out and clean up a bit around here.”

Poor Deirdre. She didn't have anyone kissing her in the front seat of a Nissan Sentra. She still didn't have a car of her own, and there was no boyfriend in sight. She had passed up our father's offer of a new car when she graduated and she had even turned down a possible date with several irresistibly gorgeous seniors. On both counts, everyone thought she was crazy or at least in a state of clinical depression. Meanwhile, she hadn't been accepted into a single college, mostly due to the fact that she hadn't applied. She kept meaning to, and her SAT scores were decent enough, but no one pushed her, no one insisted, and then suddenly it was too late and everyone began to talk glowingly about the community college as if it were a real institute of higher learning instead of a dumping ground for students with bad grades, out-of-date hairstyles, and lousy attitudes.

Anyway, that's the reason I figured Mom didn't want Deirdre at the meeting with Chuck that afternoon—her attitude. It was lousy. She also wouldn't stop ragging everyone about Mr. Buddy being a possible suspect in the case of Leonard's disappearance, and we had been down that road plenty. As it turned out, Chuck had interviewed both Mr. Buddy and Ms. D, and afterward he announced that they were both in the clear as far as he could tell. But Deirdre wasn't convinced.

“Just you wait,” she kept saying.

Chuck stopped by at exactly two thirty, and by two forty the three of us were sitting in the living room sipping iced lemonade. Mom and I sat side by side on the couch. Chuck plopped down on the green chair opposite us. Because Chuck had placed his blue binder on the coffee table in front of us, I had a feeling that we were about to enter Phase Two of the investigation, and I was curious to find out what had brought us to that point on that particular afternoon.

He began by reporting that there had been no real news regarding Leonard's whereabouts. And this, he told us, could be considered either good news or bad news depending on how we chose to look at it. For example, it was good news because a lack of evidence often meant the victim (in this case, Leonard) could still be alive and hanging out somewhere beneath the radar. The bad news was that the longer it took to locate a victim, the less likely it was that that person would ever be found.

Chuck pulled out a pile of papers from his black binder; and as he held them lightly in his big, rough hands, he made a short speech about Megan Nicole Kanka.

Megan Kanka grew up in Hamilton Township, New Jersey. She was only seven years old when a two-time sex offender with a history of child molestation invited her into his house to present her with a puppy. There was no puppy waiting for Megan. There was only rape. And death. Eighty-nine days after Megan disappeared, the state legislature of New Jersey passed a law in her honor. Megan's Law still stands. It requires that community workers, teachers, parents, and neighbors be notified whenever a known sex offender decides to settle in a New Jersey neighborhood. There are now similar laws throughout the nation, though none are as strict as the one in my home state. Everywhere else, the sex offender has to register but no one is notified.

In the county where we live, there were sixty-three sex offenders listed on the New Jersey Sex Offender Internet Registry at that time. All of them were men. Twenty-four had tattoos. Forty-five had prior offenses against women or girls; eighteen had been caught with boys younger than sixteen years of age.

A thin puddle of sweat had accumulated on the curl of Chuck's upper lip, and his forehead was also pretty moist by the time he had finished his explanation. He took a swig of lemonade and then directed his gaze at me. He asked me if I understood.

I was, like, “Hello? This is the twenty-first century. I watch TV.”

Chuck seemed satisfied with my response, and so he continued.

“I'm going to show you some pictures of men in Monmouth County who have prior convictions for assaulting young boys. I want you to look at them and tell me if you've ever seen any of them. Arright?”

Mom and I nodded.

Chuck laid them out on the table one by one. They had the faces of carpenters, repairmen, delivery guys, the kind of men we saw every day of our lives all over the place but never really noticed. Each one of them was particular, with his own hairstyle and his own face. These were mug shots, so the subjects weren't smiling at all and every one of them seemed to have the same deeply sad and utterly lost look in his eyes. You could almost feel sorry for them, the way you might feel sorry for a favorite uncle or cousin who had lost his shoes. They looked sorry for themselves. Each one had his own computer-generated page on which details were listed—age, weight, height, race, hair, and eye color. Information about the make and license plate number of the guy's car was also included, along with his indentifying body marks and finally what he was accused of doing.

The crimes were described in a style curiously lacking in detail, as if someone had drawn a veil over the actual events.

*   *   *

After flipping through the pages one by one, my first thought was,
Well, none of these guys ever actually
killed
a kid
. Leonard could be alive somewhere. Violated, but still alive. Odd as that sounds, I found the thought encouraging.

Then another thought occurred to me. These were just the obvious few, the men who'd been caught. There must be hundreds of men driving around Monmouth County every day in their Sunbirds, Corollas, Blazers, Cherokees, Spectrums, Prizms, Luminas, looking for a victim. Hundreds of men who hadn't yet been found out, photographed, and registered were probably still at large doing what they do. Where were
their
faces? How many pages of them would appear in Chuck's database but only after being caught, accused, turned in?

Once, a few years ago, Deirdre and I passed a parked blue Chevy Malibu over on Oakland Street. A guy with a face like a fist was sitting low in the driver's seat. His window was rolled down, and he looked as though he was struggling to open a bottle of something that he was holding in his lap. He called us over to help him. Deirdre got there first, and that's when she realized it probably wasn't a bottle of ketchup or whatever that he was struggling with. It was something more personal. Deirdre grabbed my arm and quickly pulled me away from the car. She made me promise not to tell Mom no matter what. At the time I was very disappointed, because I was on the lookout for the opportunity to see an actual penis. Just out of curiosity. Deirdre told me that if that had been my first experience of seeing a penis, I would have been scarred for life.

“Have you talked to Mr. Buddy?” I asked. “I mean, Buddy Howard. He was the majordomo of the Drama Camp.”

“I know. I did already.” Chuck wasn't giving anything away; his face had gone into freeze mode. “You keep mentioning him. Is there something you think we should know about him?”

“No. It's just he spent a lot of time around Leonard, and well … I don't know … He was kind of…”

“Phoebe?” my mother said, as she rose from the couch and smoothed the front of her skirt, “Go outside and play. I want a word with Detective Chuck. In private.”

Telling me to “go outside and play” was as odd a suggestion as telling me to be “present.” I haven't gone outside to play since I was about nine years old. But I did it anyway, because I know for a fact that when Mom starts using phony speech like that, something real is about to happen.

I said good-bye to Officer Chuck, and though I don't think he was quite ready to see me go, he waved me off with a cheery “be good.” Whatever that meant. I then stepped into the front yard. The whole neighborhood seemed like it was trapped in a bottle; there wasn't a breeze stirring. There was only one way to be able to hear what Mom had to say to Chuck: Take a deep breath, creep behind the azalea bushes close to the house, crouch down in the dusty earth below the open living-room window, and listen. Which is exactly what I did.

We hadn't recognized any of the guys in the pictures. Mom just sat through the whole thing, holding her hand over her mouth as if she couldn't allow herself to speak even if she'd wanted to. Now she said, “How about I top off that lemonade for you, Chuck?”

He said, “No, thanks. 'S good though.”

She said, “I guess you have a list of men in your computer who have, well, assaulted girls, huh?”

He said, “We do. Why do you ask?”

She said. “Do any of the men go for girls
and
boys?”

He said, “It's rare. One guy I showed you has two prior arrests. One for each. But like I said, it's rare.”

She said, “I was just wondering.”

(There was a silence. I heard some ice rattle in a glass, which I figured was the last of Chuck's lemonade.)

He said, “Well … I oughta—”

She said, “There is one more thing. Ordinarily I wouldn't bring it up, and I'd appreciate it if we could keep it between ourselves. But … well … um … it may have some bearing on Leonard's case.”

(More silence. No ice.)

She said, “It's about my husband.”

He said, “Uh-huh. What about him?”

She said, “Well, it was never reported. We … I didn't … it involved one of my girls. My older.”

He said, “Deirdre.”

She said, “Deirdre. Yes. That's right. Um. This is so hard. I…”

He said, “It's okay.”

She said, “No. It's not okay. I never did anything about it, report it, I mean. To the police or anything. I couldn't. For Deirdre's sake I couldn't. It only happened that one time, but … well, that was it. We … I … he doesn't live with us anymore. Not after that. I never told anyone.”

She blew her nose, and from the sound of her voice, I figured she was crying.

He said, “Why are you telling me now?”

She said, “I know that Leonard was in touch with Jim. A few times. Jim is my … my…”

He said, “Husband.”

She said, “Yes. Was.
Was
my husband. Leonard set up this surprise meeting between the two of us. He was trying to bring us back together. The family.”

He said, “He didn't know about—”

She said, “Of course he didn't know. I told you, I never told anyone. But then I started thinking just now, looking at those pictures. Well, you know how the mind works. I just thought…”

He said, “I understand. I'll check it out.”

She said, “You won't have to report it, will you? I'd rather not dig it all up. It was three years ago, and Deirdre is just getting on with her life and all. It's behind us now.”

He said, “Sure. No problem. It'll be between us. I'll look into it.”

She said, “I mean, I don't think Jim would ever … but you live with a person and you find out they're capable of something … it makes you wonder what else you don't know about them.”

He said, “I appreciate your … honesty, Mrs. Hertle.”

She said, “Please, call me Ellen.”

He said, “I should get going.”

She said, “Right. Yes. Well, thanks. Thank you so much.”

And that was that.

As Chuck made his way out the front door and down the pavement to his car, I had to lie down in the dirt close to the house in order not to be seen. After his car pulled away, I heard Mom lock the front door from inside. I was alone, and the whole neighborhood was humming because every AC unit was cranked up full blast except ours, which was broken. An occasional car whooshed by our house. The passengers were sealed up and strapped inside their sports utility vehicles; and they probably didn't notice anything unusual as they passed by. All they saw was a row of dreary houses on some suburban street. Ours was no different from the rest except that the attached garage had been transformed and then extended to the very edge of the property line so that it accommodated the salon. Big deal. Passersby might wonder who in the world would get their hair done in a place like that. They might challenge the artistic merits of Mom's neon
HAIR TODAY
sign. They might even notice the
CLOSED MONDAYS
sign, which was displayed in the front window, and then remember that it was indeed a Monday. But no way in the world would a random person suspect that anything out of the ordinary had happened inside our house.