Cemetery Girl

He sighed a little, then looked again. He studied the picture longer than before, even going so far as to tilt his head back and to the side to get a better angle.

“No,” he said. “She’s just a little girl. I’ve never seen her.”

“She’d be sixteen now.”

“Sixteen? How old is she in the picture?”

“Twelve.”

“Do you know how much a kid changes between twelve and sixteen?”

I put the photo back in my wallet.

“I wish I did,” I said. “I really wish I did.”

Chapter Six

The woman with Liann looked young, college-age young, and she wore a T-shirt, short cutoff denim shorts, and flip-flops. She carried a blue and red gym bag, and when they came abreast of the bar, the bartender, the same one who’d served me, grunted.

“You’re late, Tracy.”

“Did someone die and put you in charge, Pete?” she asked.

Liann looked as out of place in the Fantasy Club as I felt. She wore a no-nonsense brown business suit, and her brown hair was pulled back in a short ponytail. Liann was older than me-she was approaching fifty-but she maintained a rail-thin figure through a combination of jogging and biking. She looked strong and determined as she brought the young woman toward me, a motherly hand resting on the girl’s arm. Her presence comforted me as it had ever since she’d shown at our house the day after Caitlin disappeared.

I stood up as they approached my table-one in the corner and out of the way-and I shook the woman’s hand as Liann introduced us.

Up close, in the glow from the stage lights and neon beer signs on the wall, I saw that while my initial assessment was correct-the girl named Tracy was only about twenty years old-the years didn’t look like easy ones. Her hair looked thin and brittle from repeated bleachings, and lines were already forming at the corners of her mouth and eyes. She was thin but not in a healthy, youthful way. Instead she appeared tired and worn, like someone who didn’t sleep or eat right.

I offered to get everyone a drink, but Liann shook her head. They both sat down.

“We should get started,” Liann said. “Tracy has to work.”

I took my seat, my hands folded on the table.

“Okay, Tracy,” Liann said. “Go ahead.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “How do you two know each other?”

Tracy looked down at the tabletop. Liann turned to me and said, “We’re short on time here, Tom.”

“I understand that,” I said. “But I want to know where this information is coming from. Liann, you work with women and families who have been affected by violent crime. And you’re a lawyer. I want to know which role you met Tracy in.”

“Tom, Tracy has had some issues-”

“I got busted, okay?” Tracy said, raising her head to look at me. “I got busted for drugs, and Liann was my lawyer. She kept me out of jail.”

I nodded. “Okay, I get it.”

“It’s not really relevant,” Liann said. “Tell him what you saw, Tracy.”

Tracy took her time getting started. She reached into the gym bag and brought out a pack of cigarettes-Marlboro Lights-and a lighter. Once the cigarette was burning, she let a stream of smoke go up toward the ceiling, then waved her hand around out of consideration for Liann and me. The ceremony completed, Tracy fixed on me with a level gaze.

“I’ve seen you before,” she said. “I used to dance at the Love Shack, and you would come in there showing that picture of your little girl around. You showed it to me one night.” She took another drag, exhaled. “I have a little girl, too. She’s almost five. Cassie. She stays with my aunt while I work, but I see her sometimes.”

She wanted a response, so I provided one. “That must be tough,” I said.

Tracy nodded as though my words carried some eternal truth. “It is. It sure as hell is.”

Most of the twenty-year-olds I interacted with at the university came from privileged backgrounds and were often more worldly and widely traveled than I was. Tracy didn’t have that life. She didn’t spend her winters in Vail or her summers in Can-cun. More likely, she spent her whole life in the counties surrounding New Cambridge, and she’d carry the rough features and country accent common among locals with her the rest of her life, markers of who she was.

“What’s your little girl like?” Tracy asked.

“Tracy-”

“I want to know, Liann, that’s all. I’m curious.”

“It’s okay,” I said to Liann. “I don’t mind.”

But then I felt stuck. Four years of interviews with cops and reporters, four years of encapsulating Caitlin for flyers and Web sites. I never felt able to adequately sum her up so someone who didn’t know my daughter would recognize her. And I couldn’t help but wonder: would the picture I created of the twelve-year-old who walked out the door that day bear any resemblance to the sixteen-year-old young woman I hoped she lived to become?

“She’s smart,” I said. “Really smart.”

“You’re a professor at the college, right?”

“Yes.”

“Figures she’d be smart then.”

“She’s kind of quiet, too. She kept to herself a lot.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Yes. She has blond hair, very blond. And her eyes were-are-blue. Bluer than yours even.”