Birthday Girl Read online

  Charlotte was about to close the door when she noticed a tiny piece of fabric hanging down from the top of the opening of the wardrobe. Curious, she reached up and felt along the inner frame. Her hand encountered a square lump the size of a few slices of bread. She tugged at it—it was hung from a small nail or thumbtack—and pulled out a hand towel, torn in several places, that had been folded and tied to form a hobo’s bundle.

  Inside was a thin cotton handkerchief, balled into a knot. Charlotte unwound it, revealing seven dull quarters in the center of the knot. She gasped. No one was allowed to keep money, and she hadn’t seen anything more valuable than a penny since she’d been in the house, which meant Charlie had either stumbled across a small stash or stolen it. A cold tingle ran up her spine as she imagined rifling through Sister’s purse while the woman herself was just around the corner.

  She put the quarters aside. Also in the bundle was a small paring knife that had gone missing months ago—Sister had been furious when they couldn’t find it—three cookies that were now just a pile of crumbs, a set of three matches, and, finally, a brass skeleton key, polished to a dull shine and rounded in places. There were no markings on it and nothing to identify what it unlocked.

  Her pulse pounded in her head as she stared at the odd collection. Since the moment she’d been brought here, she’d been allowed no personal items besides her clothes—which she didn’t want anyway—so finding Charlie’s tiny stash was like discovering buried treasure. But it was a treasure that could mean big trouble, maybe the worst.

  She jumped as, downstairs, Tina started kicking the basement door. Moving quickly, she pocketed the key, folded the towel, and placed the bundle back in the corner of the wardrobe the way she’d found it. A key she could hide, but if Maggie saw the bundle in their room, the secret wouldn’t last for a minute. A wave of nausea raced through her at the thought of Tina or, god forbid, Sister finding the key.

  Charlotte took her time making sure the package was just like she found it, then shut the door to the wardrobe. She took one last glance at the disheveled, soiled bed, then crept out of the room before one of the others caught her, her mind swirling with possibilities.

  12

  Elliott

  “This is the best I could do on short notice,” Dave said, dipping his hands into the first box and picking up a thick sheaf of papers. “It’s a mishmash of cases going back five years. If you want to go back further, I’ll need more time to pull it all. I figured you’d want to get started right away.”

  “Five years is a good sample size,” Elliott said. “Hopefully it’s representative of case types and enough, maybe, to start looking for patterns. What’s the origin of the files?”

  “Some of them are from my own collected notes; the rest are summary case files I printed out late last night or early this morning. And, sorry, but a lot of it has been sanitized for public consumption, so there were redactions even in the photocopies. That info is gone unless I really dig.”

  “Still, this is . . . incredible,” Amy said, her eyes wide.

  “Yeah, well, don’t get too excited. Bear in mind these are all summaries and truncated files. If I’d printed out all of the information for each case, it would fill this room. You’re going to have to piece together a lot of it to get a complete picture.”

  He went on to explain the organization scheme. Red-tagged folders, two hundred and sixteen sheets in all, represented five years’ worth of missing children cases that had been successfully closed. They were summaries of summaries, with as many as ten blurbs per page, representing over two thousand individual kids. Most, Dave explained, were either runaways who had returned to the families or abductions by a family member, usually an estranged parent, where the child was found and returned.

  The two remaining sections were categorized as “abductions by strangers” that had been solved and the small group of cases where the child hadn’t been found alive. The latter had dates of discovery as well as basic biographical information.

  Blue-tagged folders were open cases where the child hadn’t been found. The summary consisted of a paragraph, a last known address, and a cryptic string of sentences that seemed to include the name and district of the officer who had taken the initial report and a reference number for more detailed history. Each ended with the statement, “No additional information.”

  “So we have names. Addresses. Dates of discovery,” Elliott said, flipping pages. “Cause of death and location for the ones who didn’t make it. And summaries if we need more information.”

  “Pretty much,” Dave said. “Any idea how you’re going to tackle it?”

  Before Elliott could open his mouth, Amy said, “We have to convert all the numbers into Abjad values, naturally; then we can work out patterns from there.”

  The two men turned to her, blank.

  “Sorry?” Elliott asked.

  “The Abjad value,” she said. When their faces remained confused, she turned to her tower of papers and pulled out a laminated reference sheet that she handed to Elliott. He turned it over in his hands. Signs of the zodiac lined the bottom, and each corner sported an astrological symbol. In the center was a large table with columns for both Western and Arabic letters, as well as numbers.

  He raised his head and glanced at Dave, then back at Amy. “Is this supposed to explain something?”

  “Abjad is a divination system that comes from the number you get from a word. Ancient Sufis used them to discover the deeper values hidden in common meanings. Like this.” She picked up a tablet of paper from the floor. Simple but lengthy addition problems were scribbled in every open space. She flipped to a fresh sheet and began jotting down letters, then consulted the reference table she’d handed to Elliott. “See, E-l-l-i-o-t-t gives a score of 19. N-a-s-h is 188. Add them together and your name has a final value of 207.”

  Dave snorted, but Elliott kept a straight face. “What do you with the number once you have it?”

  “Look for more connections, try to find intersections with other names or places.”

  “The values aren’t consecutive?” Dave asked, bemused. “Like A is worth one, B is worth two?”

  “Oh no. The values were determined long ago and are nonlinear. And they’re case sensitive. It’s all very complicated.” She held up the laminated sheet. “That’s why I need this.”

  Elliott gave her a look. “It’s a . . . magic number?”

  “Not magic. Numerology. A tool for finding those connections I told you about, underneath the surface of things. But permutations can make the calculations a little hairy.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, the value for R-o-b-e-r-t is 209, but it could also be Bob, which has a value of two, see? Or maybe you shouldn’t be using Abjad at all. If the person was Jewish, you would use the gematric value. Or you could go all the way back to isopsephism. There are as many schools of arithmancy as there were cultures—it could take a year to translate all of the cases into every school. But Abjad is the most powerful.”

  Elliott blinked. “Of course. How do you handle dates?”

  “You calculate the Abjad value of the month and add the numeric values of the day and year. Let’s take January 24, 1985.” She consulted the table again. “The Abjad value of January is 143. Add that to 24, add that to 1985, and you get 2,152.”

  “What’s so special about January 24, 1985?” Dave asked.

  “It was the first sighting of Halley’s comet on its last return to Earth.”

  “Sorry I asked.”

  Elliott pointed at the numbers on her tablet. “Why not the numeric value of the month, so that January was just worth one?”

  She pursed her lips, considering. “We could do that, but I think the name of the month has more spiritual heft than the number. Like, June is named for the goddess Juno, which has actual meaning and history, right? But the number six, not so much.”

  “Spiritual heft?” He stroked his beard. “Numerology?”

  She nodded.


  “Arithmancy?”

  She nodded again.

  “And you think this works?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Dave coughed into his hand, giving Elliott a knowing look, then turned to the door. “I’m going to have to take off. Good luck. Both of you.”

  “Thank you, Detective!” Amy called as he let himself out. He threw a wave over his shoulder and shut the door. Amy turned back to Elliott. “You seem to be having second thoughts.”

  “No, no, that’s not it. I’m just having trouble believing this is an . . . effective way to go about finding your daughter.”

  “It’s not that different than what the police do. They ask a question and grab a piece of information, then see if it leads to another, right? Or psychology. You ask a question, put that answer in a category, then look to see if it links to something else. Ask questions, compare information. Find clues that pull you in the direction of something else that you didn’t know existed.”

  Elliott opened his mouth, then shut it. “All right. Dave’s files give us a lot of material to work with. How do you want to move forward?”

  She smiled, enthusiastic and energized. “Calculating the Abjad numbers can be a drag, but with two of us on the job, I think we could get through it in a few hours. How about I read off the files, compare it to the table, then you add the numbers?”

  He glanced around. “You’re doing this without a computer?”

  “I had to pawn it to pay the rent. We’ll have to do it by hand.”

  “So I’m a . . . calculator?”

  “Yes. But only at first.”

  “I’m not sure that’s putting my psychology degree to best use.”

  “You might be surprised,” she said. “Help me with this; then we’ll do the psychological mumbo jumbo after.”

  “Mumbo jumbo?”

  “Just teasing.” She flipped over a fresh sheet on the tablet, handed it to him with the pencil, then picked up the case files and looked at him expectantly. “Ready?”

  13

  Sister

  Sister stared at the stove, not sure why it had caught her attention. She’d slept poorly the night before, dreaming of Charlie, and now she was late for work. The children had been fed and sent off to their chores or play—Charlotte to teach Maggie more Melton, Buddy to read, Tina to the cellar—and she had no time for distractions.

  But still . . . the stove had caught her attention. Maybe a whiff of gas or a stray thought had made her look over, suddenly making conspicuous what had been invisible to her for the better part of forty years.

  Her eyes ran over the ancient Wedgewood with its fat, round dials, the white porcelain top, the thick steel burners. She had never used it to cook. Touching it to push Maggie into it had taken every ounce of willpower she’d had. Most days, touching it made her physically ill. To even walk near it caused a shudder to go through her.

  For all that, she couldn’t abide it getting dirty, just like Mother, who would get on her hands and knees to wipe the undersides of things, places where no one would ever see. She made the others take turns cleaning it.

  The thing squatted in the corner, taunting her. A memory, held at bay in the corner of her mind, suddenly wriggled to the front, displaying itself obscenely. She began to shake.

  Why, Mother?

  Because you didn’t listen to me, dear.

  I promise I won’t do it again. Please.

  Of course you would say that now, dear. The guilty always repent once they see the punishment that awaits. But the virtuous do what is right without prompting, with no expectation of reward or fear of punishment.

  Please, Mother. I didn’t know it was wrong!

  You will now. The craven will burn in Hell.

  Please, Mother. Please!

  “Please.” She whispered it and blinked. She was standing in front of the stove now, her fingers caressing the wide chrome handle. She snatched her hand away. When had she moved? Against her will, her hand floated downward, resting on the handle again. Her breath came in erratic gasps, as though someone were choking her, then letting go.

  Pulling with a slow and steady pressure, she hoped to avoid the squeal of springs, but the sound was in her head anyway. She shivered like she had a fever. A strange sound filled the air, and she realized her teeth were chattering. Unable to stop herself, she yanked the oven door open all the way.

  Staring back at her, eyes wide and bright as new quarters, her hair hanging down like a curtain, was a little girl.

  The girl opened her mouth.

  Please.

  She screamed and squeezed her eyes shut hard, slamming the oven door and stumbling backward until she crashed against the heavy farmhouse table. She slid to the ground, screaming into her hands and retching.

  Light footsteps pattered in the hall behind her.

  “Sister?” Tina.

  She had to make herself pull her hands away from her mouth. “Not now.”

  “But I heard—”

  From the floor, half turning, the words were ripped out of her. “I said not now!”

  The footsteps retreated.

  She put both hands across her mouth again because, if she screamed or cried, Mother would turn the dial. Never too high and never for too long, but she could still feel the heat on the skin of her palms and knees, blooming and growing all around her until an animal fear filled her, thrashing and hysterical, pushing and kicking on the door while her mother held it shut, the woman leaning her whole weight against it until she’d decided her willful, sinful eldest daughter had learned her lesson.

  She crawled across the floor. Hand quaking, she reached out from where she lay sprawled and gently pried the door open again. She flinched once more at the squeaking spring, paused, then yanked it open until the oven gaped like a whale’s mouth.

  The stove was a simple black box, the racks taken out long ago and lost, smelling faintly of char and gas and fear. Scratches marred the speckled black surface of the interior.

  It was empty.

  But the little girl with the eyes like quarters had never gone away. She was just inside her, all the time.

  Forever.

  14

  Elliott

  It took the rest of the afternoon.

  As soon as the door shut, they dove into the boxes, pulling out folders, wrapping their heads around the mountain of information. Pure determination got them through the first few hours, but as the rays began tilting through the window into the little room, Elliott nodded off, eventually falling asleep with the pencil still in his hand. He woke when Amy gently pulled it away, his eyes popping open and his hands balled into fists.

  “It’s okay,” Amy said, backing away. “Elliott. It’s me. Amy. It’s okay.”

  His head snapped back and forth in a panic; then he took a deep breath and his hands relaxed as he got his bearings. He groaned and sat up.

  Amy looked at him with concern. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Yeah,” he said in a tight voice. “That’d be great.”

  She busied herself a few steps away in the kitchen. In a moment, the steam rolled out of the pan, announcing the water was ready. Amy poured for two, stirred, then brought the coffee over to him. “It’s instant, sorry. I don’t have anything stronger.”

  He took a sip, then glanced at the mug. It had a unicorn jumping over a rainbow on the side. “This is fine. Thank you.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as she blew into her coffee, letting the heat wash across her face as she peered at him over the rim. Without raising his head, he said, “Go ahead and ask.”

  “What?”

  “You want to ask me something,” he said. “So ask.”

  She looked away. “It isn’t fair of me. You’re extending yourself to a stranger, with no promise of payment—”

  “I’m not looking for payment.”

  “I know. Not of the monetary kind. But I feel like I need to know more about you.”

  “Why D
ave Cargill told you to find me? And no one else?”

  She shrugged, embarrassed. “Yes.”

  He tightened his hands around the cup, choosing his words. “When I worked with Dave, I was a forensic psychologist, helping the cops and the courts with the criminally insane. Questioning, diagnosing, recommending. Sometimes I helped put them away for good, sometimes I got them treatment that turned their lives around. The word ‘forensic’ sounds quite clinical, as though I plucked minds out of heads and unlocked their mysteries by holding them up to the light. A real scientist. In reality, I was in court half the time, maybe more. I gave my testimony, answered the DA’s questions, and promptly forgot about the rest.”

  “What happened?”

  “What happened was not everyone forgot me.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “John Jeffery Kerrigan was a thirty-seven-year-old serial pedophile whose childhood history read like a horror movie. As did his rap sheet. When I took the case, I tried to be impartial, scientific, but what I learned made me hope he’d get put away for life.”

  He shrugged. “Colleagues told me it was my best performance on the stand. There are well-known precedents for passing abuse from parent to child. It’s called ‘intergenerational transmission of violence,’ and I made sure the jury knew exactly what it was, that Kerrigan was both a victim and a perpetrator of it, and he wasn’t going to find treatment—and no child would be safe—if he was put back on the streets.

  “There was a moment of high drama when Kerrigan threatened me from across the courtroom, but I didn’t take it to heart. Plenty of defendants did that when I testified. But Kerrigan was a special case. I’d done my homework on his abusive father and difficult childhood and laid it out for the jury. He never forgave me for describing it so thoroughly. On top of that, my testimony was the most damning part of the prosecution, and Kerrigan knew it.