The Church of Dead Girls (14 page)

Soon it became generally known that Chihani had been taken to City Hall and that his car had been towed to Potterville. I would be willing to wager that each person who thought about Chihani also thought about Oscar's being arrested for placing those bombs. And people thought about the IIR in general. Indeed, some began to wonder if the group hadn't been involved with the vandalism in Homeland Cemetery, which the police continued to investigate. No proof existed that the vandalism and the bombs were linked, but Aurelius was a small town and the number of people willing to break the law was limited. So people thought there might also be a connection between the IIR and Sharon's disappearance. It was not lost on Franklin that Aaron was supposed to have met Sadie on Monday afternoon and hadn't shown up. Where had he been? Of course Franklin passed this information on to Ryan Tavich.

Ryan must have felt unhappy with himself. Though he knew that the IIR was responsible for the vandalism, he had decided not to say anything about it. He didn't see it as one more instance of his protecting the son of his dead lover or even Harriet Malcomb. He was simply avoiding trouble for a bunch of rather harmless students. Given the unpopularity of Chihani and the suspicions about the IIR, the fact that its members had been tipping over the gravestones of some of Aurelius's most respected dead would be blown out of proportion. So he had kept silent.

R
y
an had in fact tried to find Aaron the Monday of Sharon's disappearance. He went to Aaron's apartment four times. He stopped by Harriet's apartment twice. They had become very cool to each other since August. It irritated Ryan that he couldn't look at her without desire and it irritated him that in their five weeks together he had never known what she felt about him. Ryan also visited the other members of Inquiries into the Right, including Barry, who said later, “He looked angry. I thought he wanted to hit me.”

Ryan couldn't help thinking about Aaron's violence toward Hark and Sheila Murphy. He also thought how Aaron had been hanging around Sadie. Perhaps Ryan was even jealous. When he took Sadie fishing he may have seen himself as offsetting Aaron's influence. But no matter how much Ryan disapproved of Aaron, he couldn't help the fact that whenever he saw him, he saw Aaron's mother's face staring out at him, those slightly upward-tilted eyes.

Ryan should have told Percy the moment he learned that Aaron was missing, but he didn't. Monday night and Tuesday morning he searched for Aaron, waking up the members of the IIR and going twice to Paula McNeal to see if she had heard from her half brother. But nobody had heard from him.

Paula had left Franklin's house around five o'clock, soon after Sadie had found Franklin and her in bed together. She was sorry that Sadie was upset but she was also angry at Franklin for acting as if he had betrayed his daughter. It was Paula's habit when something bothered her, however, to be silent, to swallow it, so it was easy for others to think that nothing was wrong. The news of Sharon's disappearance overwhelmed her resentment but didn't make it go away. So she went home, and Franklin spent an hour or two with Ryan Tavich before going to the city council meeting. He left Sadie at my house because Mrs. Kelly was still occupied with the police.

I was struck that Franklin brought her over personally instead of letting her walk. After all, I lived two houses away. It was my first intimation of the changes that would occur because of Sharon's disappearance.

Sadie was upset about Sharon but the news hadn't quite sunk in. She was more concerned about finding Paula with her father.

“Why does he like her?” she kept asking. “Can't he see that she's only tricking him?”

“Why would she trick him?” I asked.

“Because she's dishonest.” Sadie glared at me from under her bangs. Then she grinned at her own seriousness.

“But what do you think she wants from him?” I asked.

“Maybe his money, maybe our house. Maybe she hates me and is trying to hurt me.”

“Maybe she loves him.”

“He doesn't need that kind of love,” said Sadie.

I kept a few boxes of macaroni and cheese on hand for her visits and we shared one that evening. Sadie did her homework and then watched TV while I worked on lab reports. The eleven o'clock news ran a brief story about Sharon's disappearance and showed the photograph of Sharon standing in front of the garage.

“That's my sweater,” said Sadie. “That's the sweater that Paula gave me.”

—

Ryan Tavich finally found Aaron at around eight o'clock Tuesday morning. Or rather, Ryan was parked in front of Aaron's apartment building when he looked in his rearview mirror and saw Aaron walking up the sidewalk. It was a cool morning but Aaron was in his shirtsleeves. Ryan got out of the car.

“I've been looking for you,” said Ryan.

Aaron didn't say anything. His hair was loose and hung down past his shoulders. There were circles under his eyes.

“Where have you been?”

“Out,” said Aaron.

“Where?”

“Just out.”

“Why didn't you meet Sadie after school yesterday?”

“I was busy.”

“Do you know anything about Sharon Malloy?”

“I saw something on the news last night. Did they find her?” Aaron took an elastic out of his back pocket and began putting his hair in a ponytail.

“Where were you yesterday afternoon around three o'clock?”

“I was busy.”

“Be more specific.”

Aaron thought a moment. “That's as specific as I'll get.”

So Ryan took Aaron to City Hall and turned him over to Percy. He also told Percy about Aaron's history and the IIR and let on that he suspected the group of the vandalism in the cemetery. Chuck Hawley, who happened to be looking into the vandalism, overheard their conversation.

“Why the hell didn't you tell me that earlier?” asked Percy, more in surprise than anger.

Ryan started to speak, then shrugged. Chuck told me afterward that Ryan became rather red in the face.

Percy called the police in Troy and asked them to detain Oscar. He also had the other IIR members brought to City Hall. Then he and Ryan visited the college, where they talked to Chihani before driving him to the police station as well. All this was noticed. By noon most of the town knew that the members of IIR had been arrested. And it was all over the high school, though in a rather garbled version. It was said that Jesse and Shannon had tried to resist and were beaten up. Leon Stahl had suffered a kind of stroke. Jason Irving had tried to climb out his back window but had been caught. Harriet was found hiding in her closet. Joany Rustoff and Bob Jenks had been caught naked together and were taken downtown in their underwear. Barry had wept. None of this was true, though perhaps there was a germ of truth in each story. For instance, Barry told me that he'd been upset but he swore he hadn't cried. It hardly mattered. These were the stories that circulated. It didn't seem far-fetched that this Marxist group from the college had abducted Sharon. Hadn't they already tried to blow up the high school?

Few people were convinced the IIR was completely guilty but few believed its members completely innocent. They had clearly done something wrong—after all, they had been arrested. Then, later that day, we heard that vandalism charges had been brought against all the members of the IIR except for Leon Stahl, and people recalled the overturned tombstones in Homeland Cemetery. And those who had never suspected the IIR of the vandalism were surprised at themselves, or so they said, because didn't it make perfect sense that the group had done it?

Fear and ardent speculation make an unhealthy mixture. By the end of the school day, students were talking about satanism and witchcraft. I even heard Mrs. Hicks, the English teacher, speculating that Sharon might be the victim of human sacrifice. By then Sharon had been missing twenty-four hours. Many people still thought she would turn up, but the presence of reporters, police, and various strangers led to much conjecture. And there was this business of the IIR members' being arrested. The fact that none of them had been charged with anything to do with Sharon didn't matter. People had a vague idea of their history, a vague idea of events, and out of these vaguenesses they formed a narrative.

In the faculty lounge Sandra Petoski, usually a sensible woman, speculated about Barry Sanders, saying she had always wondered if he wasn't emotionally disturbed. Others jumped in with stories about Barry, and Aaron as well, till it seemed that Sharon's disappearance had been bound to happen. And the school was only a microcosm of the town itself, because the same sort of speculation went on everywhere. Inquiries into the Right must be involved, it was argued, and the mastermind behind the group's behavior was Chihani. And as for why Chihani would want the tombstones in the cemetery tipped over—well, wasn't he a Moslem, wasn't he a Communist? Even the fact that he drove that red car was held against him. I felt the police should have acted with more discretion, but they too were naive and in situations such as these they had only a rudimentary sense of cause and effect. They couldn't foretell the effect of these events on our town.

Tuesday afternoon the members of the IIR were taken to the courthouse in Potterville. They were pressured to admit their connection with Sharon's disappearance, and the vandalism charges were a tool to make them talk. In the meantime, search warrants were obtained and their apartments were searched by the police.

Barry was escorted into an office and made to wait. Soon two plainclothesmen entered and told him that he faced five years in jail because of the vandalism. Had narcotics been involved? Barry couldn't remember any. He could think only of what his mother would say and how angry she'd be. Though he knew that Sharon was missing, he had no idea that his arrest was connected with that. One of the plainclothesmen told Barry that perhaps the vandalism charges would be dropped if he told what he knew about Sharon. Barry had known one of Sharon's brothers, but he wasn't sure he had ever seen Sharon, at least not recently.

“What does the number 666 mean to you?” Barry was asked.

Barry thought hard. Was it like 911 or had it been the number on his locker at school? “I don't know,” he said. He sat very still and blinked his eyes.

The plainclothesmen asked Barry how he'd spent the previous twenty-four hours and where he had been at three o'clock Monday afternoon. Barry had been at school and in the evening he had visited his mother. He had thought he might see Aaron in the evening but Aaron hadn't been at home.

“How do you know he wasn't home?” asked the plainclothesman.

“I called and there was no answer.”

“And where do you think he was?”

“I've no idea.”

“And when did you last see Mr. Chihani?”

“At the meeting on Friday night.” The two men alternated in asking their questions and it made Barry quite dizzy.

“And what was discussed?”

“Desai's
Marxian Economics.
Mr. Chihani talked about it and we discussed it.” Barry hoped they wouldn't ask him what it was about because he had only the vaguest idea.

“Did anyone mention Sharon Malloy?”

“Not that I recall. I'm sure no one did.”

“Do you think she's pretty?”

“I can't remember what she looks like.”

“Do you like little girls?”

“I guess so,” said Barry, who didn't like little girls but was afraid of saying the wrong thing. “They're all right, but I haven't seen many since, well, since I was a little boy.”

Ryan managed to separate Harriet from the others and talked to her in a small office. “I thought you weren't going to tell anybody about Homeland,” she said. She had taken out her contacts and wore glasses with clear frames. Her black hair hung on either side of her face. She wore a Colgate sweatshirt that hid her figure. Ryan could see no trace of the breasts that had once amazed him. She looked about twelve and had a pimple on her chin. Ryan felt shocked that he had ever had sex with her.

“It was bound to come out,” he said.

“I'm going to tell them all that you fucked me.”

Ryan found that he couldn't look at her. “Do what you want,” he said.

“You think I liked it, don't you? I only did it because Aaron told me to do it. You're a short old man.”

“Aaron?” said Ryan, hardly registering her insult. “Why?”

“Ask him if you want to know.”

“I guess I'll have to,” said Ryan, not looking at Harriet's eyes but focusing on the pimple on her chin. And he wondered if he ever had sex with any woman except as an attempt to get Janice McNeal out of his head.

None of the IIR members had anything to say about Sharon. Several, like Leon Stahl and Joany Rustoff, claimed not to know she was missing. Aaron said he had a vague memory of her, as did Barry, but the others said they didn't know who she was. As to where they had been during the past twenty-four hours, most of their movements could be verified. They had had classes, they had gone downtown. They had stopped by Bud's Tavern for a beer. Some had done one thing, some another, but each had a period of time for which he or she had no alibi.

Leon was released and Ryan drove him back to Aurelius.

“Boy, am I glad I stayed home that night,” Leon kept saying. “They wanted me to come to the cemetery, they kept asking me. This is the first time being fat has done me any good.”

The others were charged with vandalism; all but Aaron were released on their own recognizance. Aaron was kept in jail with bail set at $25,000. He called his half sister and she contacted her father's lawyer, Henry Swazey, who would try to get Aaron released on Wednesday. The state police in Troy had investigated Oscar Herbst and said he couldn't have abducted Sharon. He'd had a dentist appointment late Monday afternoon.

Wednesday afternoon Franklin visited Aurelius College to talk to Houari Chihani, hoping to get something to put into the
Independent
for the following day. He found Chihani in his third-story office in Douglas Hall. There was no new information about Sharon, though the police had lots of leads. Most seemed bogus: people who thought they had seen Sharon in places as far away as Chicago. But the IIR was being talked about and people couldn't get past the fact that Mrs. Kelly had seen Chihani's red Citroën.

Because Chihani had been questioned by the police and knew the IIR was under suspicion, he must have been wary of Franklin, but he didn't show it.

Franklin sat down on the other side of Chihani's desk and took out his notepad. “Do you have any ideas about what might have happened to Sharon Malloy?”

“None.” Chihani had thin lips that reminded Franklin of a flattened letter
M
set above a flattened letter
W.
They made Franklin think that Chihani was smiling slightly, but he wasn't sure if that was true.

“You can't imagine why she might have been abducted?” asked Franklin, writing in his pad.

“I can imagine dozens of reasons but they are no more than possibilities. We don't even know she was abducted. She might have gone with the person willingly. Or perhaps there was no other person. Perhaps she went off by herself. At this moment she could be anywhere in the world.”