Cemetery Girl

“Okay,” Abby said. “Just tell me what she saw. I can handle it.”

She showed no inclination to leave the hallway or return to her seat, so I plunged into the story. I didn’t tell her everything, but I told her a lot. When I reached the part about the man and the lap dance, Abby’s composure broke ever so slightly. She looked down at the floor, and the movement shook loose a strand of her hair. When she went to tuck it back behind her ear, her hand shook. I felt sick to my stomach just repeating it, so I left out the worst part. .

Caitlin on her knees, in front of the man. .

“You said this was about six months ago?”

“Yeah, about that long.”

Somewhere a clock ticked steadily, a monotonous back-and-forth sound.

“That’s a long time, Tom,” she said.

“Not that long.”

“It is in this instance. The police told us-”

“The police? You’re telling me about the police? Abby, they’re not working on the case that hard anymore. They’re on to other things.”

“The police have told us that we have a twenty-four- to forty-eight-hour window here. After that, leads grow cold. They dry up. People forget things, or else they fabricate memories. .” Her voice sounded flat. She was repeating talking points.

“Yeah, I get it.”

“And this woman’s a stripper. She’s probably on drugs. Or drunk. Is that how she knows Liann? Is Liann her lawyer? I value Liann’s advice about Caitlin’s case, but if she’s bringing this girl around with some crazy story-”

“Okay, okay, forget the witness. Forget what she said.” I moved forward and stood in front of Abby. I put my hand on her shoulder, rested it there gently, offering her support. She looked a little surprised but didn’t pull away or brush me off. “The point isn’t the witness here, okay?” I said. “What matters is that six months ago someone saw Caitlin. Our Caitlin. Alive. Not ten miles from here.”

I knew I’d reached her. When I’d said, “Our Caitlin,” she took a little breath, a quick intake of air that told me those words still meant something to her.

“We thought she’d be far away. . or we thought-”

“She’d be dead.”

“Yes. That. We thought that about our own daughter. Abby, we shouldn’t have to think that about our daughter. We shouldn’t. And now we don’t. We have hope again, Abby. Real hope. For the first time in years. .”

She looked at me, straight into my eyes, then down at my hand, where it still rested on her shoulder. She seemed to be considering me. Not the news or the witness, but me.

“But this is all dependent on this woman having really seen what she says she saw. She doesn’t know Caitlin. She saw a picture of when Caitlin was twelve, but she’d be so much older.”

“But Ryan came. He talked to her. They’re going to do a sketch and send it out.”

“Did he believe her?” she asked. “Did he say this was solid?”

“You know how Ryan is. He’s cautious. He has other cases he’s working. He doesn’t want to give us false hope.”

“Did he believe her?”

I hesitated. That told her all she wanted to know. She started to pull away, but I applied pressure on her shoulder, trying to keep her from backing up.

“Ryan wouldn’t be having the sketch done if he didn’t believe her,” I said.

“I thought you had such a low opinion of the police.”

“I know they haven’t always told us the truth. They never once told us they thought she was dead, did they? But you know damn well they were thinking it. They just string us along, make vague promises and offer platitudes. ‘We’re still working on things. . We still have leads. .’ They don’t care. Liann’s right. They can’t care as much as we do-that’s just a fact of something like this. The cops go home to their own wives and kids, and the parents of the victim have to keep carrying the flag. That’s why we have to keep her memory alive. That’s why Liann is so important. She cares like we do. She understands. Her daughter was-”

I stopped myself.

Abby didn’t say anything. Where just a few moments earlier it felt as though I had been making progress with her, slowly thawing the ice and reaching an essential part of Abby, just as quickly things turned back away. I was losing her again. I could sense a turn in the air as palpable as the arrival of a cold front.

“What?” I asked.

“We’ve never talked about it, Tom.”

“About what?” I waited. “That she might be dead?”

Abby shook her head. “That she did run away from us.”

“No, Abby. Never.”

She became more animated. “She was so moody and withdrawn. I never knew what she was thinking or feeling. She could have lived a whole life we didn’t know about. And those Internet searches. Seattle. . the trains. . She was taking the dog to the park. Maybe she met somebody there, somebody she was talking to. We wouldn’t know.”

“What are you saying?”