Authors: Jacqueline Sheehan
W
aiting in the parking lot of Cumberland Farms while Melissa bought water, Rocky opened her cell phone at the first sound. She held it to her ear and could hear the cracks forming in Natalie. She walked to the edge of the building, the exterior brick still warm from the day.
“I want you to drop off the cash at ten
A.M.
at the first rest stop on Route 25 South past Portland. There are two garbage bins in the women's bathroom. Wrap the money in a white plastic bag and put it in the garbage can nearest the door when no one is looking. Then go back to your car and drive away. I'll be there, but you'll never see me. Do you understand me?” said Natalie. She sounded panicked; Rocky could nearly hear the girl's heart racing over the phone. What was happening?
Rocky willed each word to come out right. Each word had to travel as an emissary to Natalie and reach the place inside the girl where her soul had not been upended and rubbed raw with a metal rasp.
“I understand. Tell me where I'll find Danielle. You know that I have to bring her back with me. I need to get to her quickly or she'll be frightened. Is she with you? She's very young. You know how it is with young children,” said Rocky, then instantly regretted her last words. She had slipped a knife into Natalie's worst wound. Rocky heard the emotional trigger go off, a bank shot from one cell tower to another that twanged with Natalie's long-contained rage.
“Oh, she'll be afraid, but for all of a day, maybe two if you're really stupid and can't figure out where she is. It's the kind of place no three-year-old would want to be. You and Tess and everyone else will race in to rescue her. That's just fucking amazing. Pardon me if I can't get worked up over her fear. No one came for me, not my father. Afraid was just the beginning for me. . . .” Natalie's voice broke up, disintegrating into a buckshot of sound.
Blood pounded in Rocky's temples. She heard the trill of the overhead fluorescent lighting, the night insects scissoring their passionate legs together in beguiling songs. A moth smacked directly into an incandescent bulb, and Rocky felt the vibration in her spine. She moved her foot and a grain of sand exploded beneath the ball of her right foot. Natalie had said “three-year-old.” She wasn't talking about Danielleâshe was talking about being left with her mother's body.
“What happened to you was so terrible, and you needed someone to take care of you and keep you safe,” said Rocky. Not too much, don't say too much. Hot sweat spread to her shirt, drawing it closer to her body. Rocky knew what happened when the police found Natalie when she was a toddler. She had not been alone in the apartment. She'd been with her mother's body for five days.
“Don't say that psycho shit to me,” hissed Natalie.
“Every kid needs to be safe. No shit intended. It's like air or food. Being safe is as basic as air or food,” said Rocky. Suddenly, as if her ears had popped after a long plane ride, Rocky heard a catch in Natalie's voice where a soft place still lived.
“Tell me where I can find Danielle. And Cooper,” said Rocky, keeping her voice even and middling.
“Forget Cooper. Franklin said we couldn't keep him. And you know how it isâI had to let Franklin think he was making decisions. Just like you thought you were making decisions. Do exactly what I told you to do,” said Natalie.
Click.
Melissa came out of the store with two plastic bottles of water. “Was that Natalie? What's happening?”
Rocky slid the phone back into her pants pocket. “We've got to get to Danielle. Natalie is starting to decompensate, and I need to get to her.”
Melissa handed one of the waters to Rocky. “She's starting to what?”
“Sorry. She's unraveling, falling apart. She may be re-creating a scene that happened when she was just a toddler. Her mother was murdered in an apartment, and Natalie was with the body for days. They could be anywhere, but we need to try the most obvious place first, where you saw that van.”
Rocky's phone cawed again. She dropped her water bottle and pulled it out, thinking it was Natalie. “It's Isaiah. I'm not going to answer it. I can't.” She walked to the truck and opened the door. The phone went off again. “Shit. It's Hill. Isaiah must have called him looking for me. I'm not answering him either.” She held the phone up to her cheek for a moment and closed her eyes, as if she could draw sustenance from the two men through the unopened cell phone. Her distrust of Hill, introduced by Natalie, popped like a balloon.
Parking in downtown Portland was a problem on a good day, but tonight Rocky had to think of a place where the police would be less likely to spot the truck. She was sure that Isaiah had called them asking about it. He would have spotted the missing truck key from the clutch of keys she left under the seat.
Rocky took a guess and figured that the patrol cops wouldn't cruise through the parking garages, at least not with any regularity. She parked the truck on the third level of the garage near the cinemas. They headed on foot for Chester Hill.
“Show me where you were when you took the picture with the white van in the background. Let's start there,” said Rocky.
“A
re you sure it was the same van?” asked Rocky. After starting at the place where Melissa had seen the van, they had been walking the streets of Chester Hill for an hour. It was nearly 11:00
P.M.
, and most of the people who carried their belongings in black plastic garbage bags were gone, tucked in for the night only to be replaced by a younger, more hollow-eyed night shift of street people. Melissa, who had spent days wandering the area photographing people and dogs, said that she didn't recognize any of them. “Maybe Natalie and her boyfriend Franklin don't really live in Chester Hill at all. The only streets we haven't checked are the alleys.”
Rocky wanted more than anything to find Danielle quickly, but one look down an alley at night slowed her nerve. She had nothing with her for protection, and she had involved her sixteen-year-old neighbor. She couldn't let anything happen to Melissa, who suddenly seemed so young and unsuited for dark alleys.
“Here's what I want you to do. See that convenience store? I want you to go inside and stay there for about thirty minutes while I check out the alleys in the neighborhood. Buy some stuff, get a paper, talk to the clerk, but don't leave. You can keep a lookout to see if the van goes by,” said Rocky.
“That is totally a stupid idea,” said Melissa. “I'm not some seven-year-old kid. Remember, we're trying to save a seven-year-old kid. We are much better off staying together, and you can't make me leave you to go skulk around an alley by yourself.” Melissa crossed her arms over her chest and did a thing with her lips that Rocky hadn't seen before that was like seeing Melissa in the future, when she'd be running the world. Melissa was right, Rocky couldn't force her to do anything. She'd never been able to override the girl's steely will.
Rocky took out the cell phone and held it in her hand. “Okay. We're doing this together.”
They crossed the street. Rocky looked up and down the street to judge who would see them entering the alley. Cars cruised by slowly. One car slowed, tinted windows lowered, and Rocky saw a man assessing the two of them. They probably looked like tourists in the wrong part of town. The car kept going.
The alley was wide enough for one car, but it would be the perfect place to tuck a van. As soon as they entered its dark mouth, the stench of urine hit Rocky. She heard a car door slam shut and a bottle smash; someone turned up the bass of their throbbing music, and a dog began to bark. Deep, thunderous barks, muffled by distance, and yet there was no mistaking the source. She could have picked out his bark from one million other dogs.
Rocky grabbed Melissa's arm and said, “That's Cooper.”
“I know. Which direction?”
“I can't tell. He sounds far away,” said Rocky, who more than anything wanted to run in a straight line to Cooper. She'd vault fences, cars, leering guys in black cars, she didn't care, but she had to know which way. She swiveled her head around like a satellite dish, as if she could pick up his beam.
Her cell phone went off in her hand. It was Natalie.
“You've got to go get the little girl. She's trapped in the apartment,” said Natalie. Her voice was small and stretched thin. “I had to stop him. He was going to hurt her. I can't go back there.”
Through one ear, she heard Cooper, far off and barking. Through the other, she heard the shards of Natalie. Rocky's veins began to constrict and freeze. Who had Natalie hurt? Franklin? In her confusion had she hurt Danielle?
“Tell me where she is and I'll go and get her.”
“The apartment is up high, three stairways. There's nothing to drink, and there's blood on the floor. I have blood on my shoes. I have to throw them away.”
“Natalie, I'm going to help you. Tell me the address. You know the name of the street. Take a breath. You're taking good care of Danielle. I knew you would,” said Rocky, praying that Natalie could hold her disintegrating mind together.
“Walnut Street. You have to hurry.”
Click.
“No!” screamed Rocky. “You have to tell me where on Walnut!”
Melissa's eyes caught the spark of the streetlight. “Walnut? Is that where Danielle is? I know that street. I wrote down the street names when I was taking pictures,” said Melissa. She spun slowly around for a few seconds, and then said, “This way.”
Melissa ran with long thin legs trained for cross-country, and Rocky struggled to keep up. The girl was half a block ahead of her. Rocky sucked in as much oxygen as she could. The sound of Cooper grew louder. They ran two blocks up and two more on the crest of the hill, and then she saw flashing lights. Melissa tore around the corner. Before Rocky could make the corner, she heard Melissa scream, “Don't hurt the dog! That's our dog!”
Rocky put on a burst of speed and was hit with a wall of multicolored lights from two police cars. She couldn't see Cooper, only the back of a small crowd that had gathered.
“Sir, control your animal. We've had a report of a vicious dog. Your dogs must be on leashes. Sir, if you can't control your dog, we will have to restrain him by force,” said one of the cops. Rocky saw the glint of a mace container. Cooper barked wildly and clawed on a doorway. A man with a huge backpack stood in between Cooper and the cops.
“I've had worse done to me in Iraq. Do not fucking spray this dog.”
Melissa plowed through the crowd. “Ryan? You found Cooper? It's me, Melissa.”
Ryan and his dog both turned to look at Melissa. So did the police. One cop was a young woman; her eyes scanned the crowd, the dogs, the homeless man, and now Melissa.
“Is this your dog? Do you know this man?” asked the cop, who slid the canister back onto his belt.
Rocky burst through the crowd and skidded to a stop. “Cooper!” She threw herself on him, wrapped her arms around his thick neck. He stopped barking to whine in delight at her touch, wrapping his body around her legs, taking a loop around Melissa, before launching back at the door, barking and scratching.
“This is it. This has got to be the place. Walnut Street,” said Rocky. She turned to the cops. “We've got to get in there. There's a small child who was taken. . . .”
“Do you mean the kid from Peaks Island?” asked the cop. The cop leaned into her shoulder and spoke into her phone. “We are entering an apartment at 435 Walnut. Possible child abduction.”
The cops pried open the front door with a small crowbar. Cooper slid past them and lunged up the stairs, galloping. The two cops followed at a pace that Rocky found maddening. When they hit the second landing, she surged ahead of them, pulled on by the sound of Cooper barking at a door. “It's this one, up here,” she cried. She wished she had the crowbar.
One crack of the bar, and they were in the apartment. Both cops had pulled their guns. A man lay on the kitchen floor. Rocky leapt past him to the only other room she saw. There was Danielle, curled up like a sow bug on a filthy mattress. Rocky bent down and picked up the warm girl, who mumbled dream talk. Rocky held her like a baby and rocked her, shielding her from the sight of the bloody man on the floor and the police squatting next to him, calling for an ambulance. Cooper hummed at her thighs, sniffing any part of the child that he could reach. Melissa strained to get in, held at bay by the arrival of more police.
Danielle opened one groggy eye. “All clear?” she asked as if they were back on Peaks, practicing archery, not at a scene of bloody carnage.
Rocky let out a sob of a breath. “All clear. Entirely all clear.”
R
ocky knew a part of Natalie that no one else knew, and probably wouldn't believe if she told them: the part of the girl that had spun out of control and then still helped them find Danielle. Natalie had called her a day after Danielle and Cooper were found. She had heard the choked sound of Natalie's voice, without artifice or theatrical expertise. Not a word as such, but the sound she had heard when Natalie first contacted her, the first squeeze of the girl's throat. Before she could hang up, Rocky had told her in a rush, “We found Danielle. Cooper helped us after he made it back to Portland. And Franklin isn't dead.” She heard Natalie's jagged breathing, and then the connection was severed.
Even after the state police had stopped cruising the rest area outside Portland, Rocky had gone there for three days in a row, perched at a picnic table, hoping against hope that Natalie would show up. Cooper stayed by her side, not interested in ball or stick fetching, keeping a solemn vigil.
On the third day, she heard a familiar sound, the steady and true footsteps, even before she saw him. Hill had found her. He didn't say anything at first, just sat next to her, putting one arm across her shoulders. When Rocky curved into him, choking back the dashed hopes of Natalie, he wrapped his other arm around her until he had encircled her. He kissed the side of her head and swayed with herânot so much that people stopping to stretch their legs at the rest area would notice, but enough so that Rocky never wanted him to let go again.
“How did you know I'd be here?” she asked, her face still pressed against his neck.
“Melissa. I came looking for you on the island. I saw Melissa walking with Tess and her little granddaughter. She told me that if she had to guess, she'd say that you'd be here, that you don't give up easy on someone. Is that true? Could that be true about us too? Because if it is, then we're a matched set.”
As if in answer, she felt the slow, appreciative thump of Cooper's tail against her leg.
“H
ow can a person disappear?” asked Rocky. If she could find Natalie, she'd tell her that the money didn't matter, it never did. And she'd tell her about her father, the little that she had learned about himâhis drug addiction, how he had made a feeble effort to find Danielle and her mother, how years later rehab finally worked for him. She'd tell Natalie that however weird it seemed, she was genetically Bob's cousin, if that mattered for anything. She had already told Natalie about the way Bob would tuck a dog or cat under his arm and carry it from the stainless steel examining table to the back room, how the creature would melt into his side, glad to be held, tucked close to the broad trunk of his body.
Every agency she had contacted, the state police, the FBI, and one private detective, had all said the same thing. If Natalie did not want to be found, there were one million ways for her to shape-shift into a new person in a new place. And there were more ways than that for a girl like Natalie to die. The human imagination knew no limits to snuffing out a girl.
Ira Levine told her the same thing, but with one qualifier. “Somewhere along the line she made a decisionâshe hit the tipping point. I've seen kids flick a switch after they've been hurt. The lucky kids are the ones who decide to hold out hope. That one decision can define the rest of their life. Natalie went the other way. She thought she understood the world completely, and in order to survive she was going to cut through life like a laser. It made her unable to see good, caring families when they tried to help her. Her last four families were some of the best in the system. I've checked them eight ways to Sunday. She accused all of them of hurting her in the most heinous ways. She was hurt early, but not by these families.”
Rocky had seen all of Natalie's records by then, having scoured them in Levine's office for any clue.
He continued: “If she's found, she'll be arrested on federal charges of kidnapping, and judges don't like kidnappers of young children. She's eighteen, and legally she's an adult. Natalie is motivated not to be found. And according to her accomplice, Franklin, she has enough well-drafted false identification to last a lifetime.”
Franklin had a severe concussion, a cracked skull, and an impressive line of stitches across his head. Rocky had gone to the hospital where Franklin was recuperating until he could be transferred to a prison. She had thought she might learn something from him, some nugget of information about Natalie, about where she had gone. The state trooper assigned to guard Franklin let her in and stood inside the room, feet spread wide, hands at his sides.
“I'm Rocky,” she said, standing at the foot of the bed. “You tried to hurt me and people I love. You dumped my dog out like he was garbage. If they don't send you to prison, I will personally track you down and beat the shit out of you for trying to hurt a little girl and a dog. I promise.”
The state trooper stepped forward and put his hand on Rocky's arm. “I will have to ask you to leave now,” he said, pressing his lips together to suppress a smile.
Franklin hit a button and his bed whirred him to a sitting position. “Where is the bitch?” slurred Franklin through his swollen lips. “She stole my hard drives.”
“You still have no idea how smart she is. She played you from the beginning. . . .”
“Visiting hours are over for this guy. Time to go,” said the trooper, leading Rocky to the door.
Some people shimmer with poison, and Franklin was one of them. If Rocky had stayed in the hospital room one more minute, she would have been in danger of breathing in his air, which was toxic enough to strip the lining of her lungs. With another gentle tug, the trooper led her from the room.