Birthday Girl Read online

  Elliott smiled thinly. “What is the nature of your question?”

  “The nature of my question is, What else am I supposed to do? Until I see her body or until I get her back, Lacey is alive to me. She has to be. Statistics, philosophies, history—they’re all useless.” She pounded a fist to her chest. “The connection between me and my daughter is what matters. The only thing that matters.”

  Elliott put his head back until it rested against one of the giant bags of dirt. Seemingly unaware of what he was doing, he raised a hand to his face and touched his own cheek, then let it drop. Overhead, the rain drummed steadily on the corrugated roof.

  “Elliott? Dr. Nash?”

  He cleared his throat, still looking at the ceiling. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you . . .” His voice faded. “Do you ever hear your daughter?”

  “Hear her?” she asked, her voice catching in her throat.

  Elliott looked away, embarrassed. “Forget I asked.”

  “If I say yes, you won’t think I’m crazy?”

  “I was a psychologist. Crazy is a relative term for me,” he said.

  “I can still hear Lacey sing to herself, very late at night. Almost to keep herself brave. But when I told the police I could hear her, I could feel her emotions, they started to shut me out.”

  He stared back at her. “Does Lacey . . . speak to you?”

  “Directly? No,” she answered sadly. “It’s like I have a connection, but it’s only one way. I hope she can feel me, hear me, too.”

  He sagged back into the bags and sighed, a long rattle that started in his chest and worked its way up his throat. “Why me, Amy Scowcroft? You have no family, no friends?”

  Her expression was bleak. “No, I . . . don’t have anyone else. All the resources that were brought to bear—the police, the press, the community—they’ve moved on. I can’t afford to pay anyone to look for my daughter, and I can’t talk anyone else into helping me. All I’ve got is myself—and you, if you’ll help me.”

  “What makes you think I can do anything for you?” He gestured at himself. “I’m a wreck. I sleep in boxes. I beg for food. I’m worse than nothing.”

  “Detective Cargill is a good man. He wouldn’t tell me to reach out unless he thought you could help me. Your skills as a psychologist, your experience understanding criminals, your empathy . . . I don’t know, he saw something, remembered something, that told him you’d be able to help me find out who took my daughter.”

  Before he looked away, the stoic mask he’d been wearing slipped and she flinched at the pain and sadness she saw there, a physical match for the grief she felt herself.

  “That’s a good reason for Amy Scowcroft,” he said. “But why should I help you?”

  She leaned in and pinned him with her eyes. “Something terrible happened to you, Elliott. I don’t know what it was, but I know you’re searching for a way to make sense of it, of how this . . . thing, this horrific event, fits into your life. Or how your life fits into it.”

  He snorted, but she pressed on, moving closer.

  “Listen to me. Maybe you’ve given up and you think there’s nothing left for you, or maybe you’re just . . . tired of asking why. I get it, believe me. But if you think there’s a chance, any chance in the world, that your life could use a guide or a goal or a purpose right now, there’s this. There’s Lacey. There’s me, sitting here, asking you. Help me find my child, Elliott. She’s alive, I know she is. But for how long?”

  5

  The Children

  It was Charlie’s birthday and they were having a party.

  Sister had sent them to their rooms and instructed them to stay there until she called, her eyes gleaming with a feral green light. It was a look adults got from time to time. They’d all seen it before, not that that made it any less scary. That glint said they weren’t being seen as children anymore, but as objects, as things.

  Huddling in their rooms, they waited for the small brass bell to ring—though, when it came, none of them moved until it rang a second time, insistent and angry. Since the night she’d brought fried chicken home, Sister had been increasingly taciturn with them, even mean, and they’d found it better to stay out of her way, but there was no ignoring this summons. They met in the hall, then shuffled to the landing at the top of the stairs. As they began to descend, Charlotte looked back. Maggie hadn’t moved.

  “Come on, Maggie,” she said, holding out her hand. “We have to go.”

  “I’m scared,” the little girl whispered.

  “We won’t let her hurt you again,” Charlie said, but his voice broke on the word “again.” He gave Maggie a weak smile, then held out his hand, too. “We’ll go together. It’s my birthday, after all.”

  Charlotte gasped as a thought occurred to her. “Is this . . . ?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, and it was then she could see how scared he was. “What choice do we have?”

  Feeling sick, Charlotte grabbed Maggie’s hand, coaxing her down a step, then reached back and grabbed Buddy’s sweating hand. He held it tight, even though he was a boy. Tina trailed behind, but wouldn’t have held hands anyway. Linked, they descended one step at a time.

  “Come to the kitchen,” Sister called, and they trooped barefoot—none of the old shoes fit them, and they never went outside—down the hall to obey. She stood next to the old soapstone sink, watching them as they filed in. Her hand rested on a large plastic grocery-store clamshell on the counter. Noses lifted. They could smell the sugar in the icing, but they kept their eyes averted.

  She told them to sit at their assigned seats, everyone except for Charlie, who was given Sister’s chair at the head of the table. Sister was thin and, to them, very tall, with shoulder-length hair parted in the middle and streaked with gray. Sister smiled at them, causing Charlotte to shudder: the gleam in the woman’s eyes was gone, replaced by the hollow stare of a predatory bird.

  At each place setting was a fork, a small glass of milk, and a battered plastic party hat, oft-handled and missing the original foil fringe. Stained crepe streamers hung from the ceiling, and a cardboard banner pronouncing HAP Y BIRTHDA ! had been strung from the tops of the cabinets so that it hung over the table. Sister put Charlie’s hat on for him, fussing with the elastic string under his chin, then stood behind him, one hand on his shoulder. He looked as though he had a stomachache. A large glass of milk, a special treat, sat next to his paper plate.

  “It’s Charlie’s birthday today.” The waxy skin of Sister’s face was drawn tight over cheeks that shone like market apples. “Put your hats on.”

  Sister pulled the cake out of the clamshell with a loud pop and set it on the table. She squared it just so, then crossed the floor with jerky movements like she was being pulled by invisible strings.

  The lights flicked off and, in the darkness, Sister had to shuffle carefully back to the table, where she fumbled with something that rattled like small bones in a box. The match struck with an orange light that flared harshly in the darkness and filled the room with a sulfuric stink. One by one, she lit the candles.

  “Sing to Charlie,” Sister commanded. They began to sing then, their high, thin voices never rising beyond a whisper. Sister pushed the cake closer until thirteen candles bathed Charlie’s face in their glow, revealing the start of peach fuzz on a face so pale that the veins were visible in his cheeks. He kept his eyes locked on the table in front of the cake.

  The song ended and their voices died off. Sister prodded Charlie, who leaned forward and—needing three weak tries—blew the candles out, plunging the room into darkness again. The sharp, sweet smell of smoke filled the room, and the embers at the tips of the candles were tiny orange points of light that died out, one by one.

  “Eat your cake and drink your milk, everyone,” Sister said in the swiftly fading light. “Today is a very special day for Charlie.”

  6

  Elliott

  Elliott stretch
ed long legs out to the sidewalk, warming himself in the sun, trying to leave his inner turmoil behind for once and lose himself in what would probably be one of the last pleasant days of the year.

  After a night spent in the shed, he’d set out for Alexandria’s shopping district to ease his mind. There was a café where the baristas, some of them just a bit of scratch away from hitting the streets themselves, would pour him a cup if the boss wasn’t there and even look the other way when he shambled to the back to perform a quick washup in their only restroom. If the owner walked in, he’d have to dodge out the back and into the parking lot, but even if he got caught, the guy would just growl at him to keep a low profile next time. In fact, Elliott was sure it was the boss who approved the free coffee. People were generally kind. They just weren’t always sure how much they should express it.

  Today, the young barista had handed him a day-old pastry with the coffee, but asked in a whisper that he please not eat it in the shop. He’d nodded, thanked her, and slipped it into a pocket. As he left, she gave him the sweetest smile he’d seen in a month, and he turned away before she could see what it did to him.

  From there, he’d shuffled to one of his favorite spots in town, a set of park benches close to the main street, but with enough distance to keep from scaring people. Elliott sipped his coffee, munched his pastry, and stretched out to enjoy the day until the lack of sleep and sun-filled warmth made him drowsy. Shadows played on the street and sidewalk. With the cup growing cold in his hand, he let his eyes droop.

  Of the simple comforts in life, he thought sleepily, there were things he’d forgotten and had learned to like again. A cold glass of water on a hot day. Staying dry under an overhang while the rain fell a foot from your face. Pure sunlight hitting you slantwise on a breezy November day.

  Objects meant little to him now that he’d discovered that he could lose nearly all of them without the sky falling, like cars and phones, though it helped when you had nowhere to go and no one to call. Money, it had turned out, was surprisingly unnecessary, though it had taken him years to find ways to manage without it.

  Then there were the things you never thought you needed but longed for anyway. Naturally, that particular list could go on and on, but what he really missed, Elliott thought, were keys.

  He missed their sound, the jangle that was a particular music different than anyone else’s. He missed how he could twirl the ring of them on a finger like a cowboy’s six-shooter, holstering them in his pocket as he walked into work. He’d had a dog—Marilyn had taken him when she’d left—that had known the sound of those keys through the door or from the curb. The dog, a collie, would come to the window as soon as he pulled the keys from his pocket and stare at him as he walked up the driveway, prancing in place like she was standing on a hot plate.

  After years of living on the street, Elliott had come across his share of discarded keys and toyed with the idea of putting together a fake set, just to hear the jingle once again. But he’d tossed the idea as quickly as it had come to him. Coping mechanisms were nice, but complete fictions were dangerous. It was a short trip from fake keys to an imaginary dog; he’d seen it happen. The healthiest alternative was to take the good things—genuine and unaffected, even if they were humble—as they came to you.

  That’s what had bothered him about Amy Scowcroft. Her belief she could find her daughter was nothing but a wish. Heartfelt? Of course. Genuine? Certainly. But, in the end, still just a wish. Constructing a set of beliefs around cosmic connections and a mother’s intuition didn’t change that. It was a delusion.

  Like hearing your dead daughter’s voice in your head? Nothing like that, is it?

  “No, it’s not,” he snarled. An old man walking by glanced up, alarmed, and took a wide step toward the street. Elliott sagged back against the bench.

  The sound of Cee Cee’s voice was enough to get him through the day, that’s it, that’s all it was. A small patch of fabricated reality to help him get by was not the same thing as a life-altering self-delusion.

  Life altering? Like the kind that makes you lay your head on a train rail? Choo-choo, Dr. Nash!

  He groaned and rolled onto his side on the bench.

  He wished Amy Scowcroft well, he really did. But nothing he did for her would matter, and he couldn’t face the idea of her fantasy coming unraveled while he watched, sit there while her life burned when the truth was revealed. She could do it on her own, if she wanted. But he simply didn’t have the courage to bear witness while it happened.

  God damn Dave Cargill for sending her to him. Dave, a good Samaritan even when he wasn’t being a cop, would’ve been simultaneously embarrassed and thoughtful, wanting to give her a reason for hope while not quite revealing why it would make sense to seek out a penniless bum for help.

  What Dave had remembered was that Elliott had testified in dozens of cases, studied hundreds more, and could read the criminally insane like a road map. He knew the psychological contours of the Ted Bundys and Luis Garavitos and Karl Denkes of the world better than he knew his own family. He’d written for journals, spoken at conferences, and taught at universities. But when the theoretical had become real—very real—for him, none of his training or education or experience ended up mattering one tiny bit. That’s the part Dave had forgotten.

  He took a moment, willing his irritation to dissipate. To his surprise, it did, and he drifted back into a pleasant dreamy state.

  In fact, he felt like he’d been welded to the steel seat, stationary and immovable. Hypnogogic paralysis, a distant portion of his mind reminded him, an intellectual remnant of his former life that would take a lobotomy to remove. The same puddle of knowledge also contained the always-entertaining party trivia that some claims of alien abduction could be blamed on a variant of what he was experiencing right now, hypnopompic hallucination. He’d actually interviewed an avowed abductee who swore he’d been taken to Neptune and taught to breathe underwater.

  But did you remember, a dark memory whispered in his ear, that a less amusing cause of sleep paralysis is childhood sexual abuse? The recollection rose like a tide, threatening to drown him, but he gently shoved the thought away, willing it to drift downstream as he’d done with his anger at Dave. Once again, it worked, and he watched his anxiety, whispers fading, float into the distance.

  A truck wheeled past, its big engine roaring as it took a right onto Route 1 south, out of town. Someone had the volume on their rap music turned up, but then the light turned green and the sharp, angry lyrics dopplered away. Pedestrians chatted away on their cell phones, a monologue that was not too different from some of the more disturbed homeless he knew.

  Elliott’s stomach growled as the smell of burned sugar suddenly pushed the stray thoughts aside. A small coffee and a stale pastry didn’t amount to much halfway through the day. He sat up groggily.

  “What wrong with him, Daddy?” The voice was close enough to be in his ear. Elliott surfaced like a fish on a line.

  Standing at the corner, waiting to cross, was a young father holding hands with a little boy on his left and a little girl on his right. Each of them held an ice cream cone only slightly smaller than their heads. The boy looked over his shoulder at Elliott as he took impossibly large licks off the cone. Half of the ice cream made it onto his tongue, the other half onto his face. Elliott tried looking away, but his gaze was pulled back magnetically to the little girl.

  As he watched, the top scoop of ice cream slipped off her cone and hit the pavement with an audible splat. She stared at it unbelieving for a moment, then started howling.

  “Oh, Taylor,” the father said when he saw the catastrophe. “Why couldn’t you be more careful?”

  The accusation brought on a fresh wave of tears. The father realized his mistake and let go of the boy’s hand to kneel and see what kind of triage he could perform on the rapidly melting scoop.

  The brother, oblivious to his sister’s anguish, tottered over, holding the cone out. “Want some?”
r />   Elliott opened his mouth—no thanks—when the father looked up from where he was trying to console his daughter. The man’s eyes flickered from his son to Elliott and back again. Emotions played across his face—alarm, guilt, fear—then the father lunged for his son’s arm. “Sam, no!”

  The man yanked the boy away hard enough to make him cry. The father began a whispered lecture, his face down and turned away from Elliott. Behind the unfolding drama, however, something more interesting had caught Taylor’s eye: the little girl, ice cream forgotten, turned to watch a dog and his owner sprint across the street on a yellow light, barely missing the red. Smelling the ice cream, the dog strained toward the little girl.

  At the sight of the dog, a grin split her face.

  Head down, the father lectured his son.

  The girl ran.

  Crossing traffic surged, a pickup truck roared, the engine impossibly loud. A hoarse shout—mine?—ripped the air. Elliott was on his feet and off the curb. The sole of his left shoe came loose, the end flopping open like a drunk’s mouth, the tip of his sock lolling like a tongue, hampering him. He was running, reaching, diving.

  Muscles he hadn’t used in years stretched to the breaking point, screamed as his hands cupped the air. The little girl’s face, fear present in every line, was suddenly very close. Green eyes, a snotty nose, sugar-sweet breath.

  The squeal of tires.

  His reflection in the chrome of a bumper so close.

  Elliott folded the little girl to his chest, turning his body, grunting as he took the sharp, wedged impact in the flesh of his upper arm and shoulder.

  Both of them were screaming and squirming as he tumbled to the asphalt with the little girl cradled to his chest. He was still flat on his back when the father ripped her from his arms. Elliott’s hands remained in position like he was holding a prize—she was this big. Traffic was in chaos, pedestrians on the corner were shouting. The driver of the truck was half-out, one foot on the ground, his face pale and sick-looking. Horns honked farther up the line as irate drivers demanded action.