The Secret Hour (23 page)

 
“We didn’t even know her very well, Mags,” John said chidingly.

 
“But I liked her…and she liked me! She gave me her scarf and glasses!”

 
“She shouldn’t have. I’d’ve taken you to the mall.”

 
“This is better,” Maggie whispered. “She said I’m brave…How did she know?”

 
“Like she said—you behaved that way the day she met you.”

 
“If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have gone looking for courage today,” Maggie said, her chin wobbling again. “Didn’t have to look at those pictures…”

 
“That’s what you were after?” John asked, pulling her onto his lap in that same wing chair he’d sat in so many years ago.

 
“Yes,” she said, starting to cry again, clutching Kate’s white scarf to her face. “I wish I hadn’t seen that girl…”

 
“Me, too, Mags.”

 
John kissed his daughter’s head. He found himself thinking of Willa Harris, hoping that she wasn’t one of them, one of those girls, one who hadn’t been found yet. He hoped Kate would never have to look at pictures like Maggie had just seen.

 
“We have to tell Teddy she said good-bye.” Maggie sniffled. “He’ll be sad.”

 
John didn’t reply. Somehow he knew that, too. There were nice people in the world; his job didn’t always bring him in contact with them, but there were. He found himself touching her scarf with his fingers.

 
What did it mean, that he had come after Teddy but before Brainer in her list of good-byes? He felt surprisingly, absurdly grateful that she’d mentioned him at all. He wondered where her journey would take her next.

 
He wondered, and he couldn’t let it go.

 
The Seven Chimneys Inn, the sprawling stone mansion just east of Breton Point in Newport, on Rhode Island’s craggy coastline, had once belonged to Rufus Macomber, the railroad magnate. He had built a fireplace in the bedroom of each of his seven daughters, and although the house had five more chimneys besides, he had intended the name to honor his girls.

 
Kate checked in, and then drove straight to the Newport Police Station. She parked at a meter on the square, walked up the hill to the brick building behind the courthouse, and asked to see Detective Joseph Viera.

 
“Hi,” she said, when the compact, muscular detective came out of an inner office, rolling down his shirtsleeves and straightening his tie. “I’m Kate Harris—we’ve spoken on the phone before.”

 
“Yes, of course. Come on in.”

 
“It’s nice to meet you after all this time,” Kate said, preceding him through the door of a small office. “You know, to put a face to the voice. Thanks for all the work you’ve done on my sister’s case.”

 
“You’re welcome. Still no word about her?” Detective Viera asked, gesturing at a chair across the cluttered desk,

 
Kate shook her head. The floor seemed to move slightly beneath her, as it did whenever she realized that her sister had been gone six months, and that no one knew where Willa was.

 
“You realize, there’s nothing much new I can tell you,” he said. “I’ve spoken with—what’s his name”—searching his notes—“here it is, Detective Abraham O’Neill, in Washington, D.C.”

 
“Yes, he’s overseeing the case—I called the Washington police first,” Kate said. “When she didn’t come home.”

 
“That’s appropriate, Washington being her hometown. The investigation focused on Newport, I seem to remember, because it was the last place she was seen…”

 
She tried to smile at his helpfulness, nodding. “Yes,” she said, hearing also the word he hadn’t said: “alive.”

 
“What brings you up here now. Miss Harris?”

 
Oh, that question. It brought tears to her eyes faster than anything. She had to purse her lips, sit very still for a long moment, staring at the big clock on the wall, watching twenty seconds tick by before she could trust herself to answer.

 
“I have to know…”

 
Detective Joseph Viera waited. He knew she wasn’t done, and he probably knew what was happening in her gut right now. She surely wasn’t the first sister of a missing person he had met; perhaps Kate’s reaction was just a predictable symptom of a horrible condition: Missing Sister Syndrome. There had to be such a thing, she thought. Something as devastating as how she felt had to have a name.

 
“Sorry,” she said, feeling a tremor go through her bones.

 
“Take your time.”

 
“So much time has gone by…I never stop hoping for the phone to ring, thinking someone will call to say they’ve found her…”

 
The detective nodded, but the jaded look in his eyes let her know how impossible he thought it was.

 
“I know the Washington police have done a good job—they’ve coordinated all kinds of police reports from three states and the District. But I guess I felt it was my responsibility, as her sister, to come up north and do this for her. To
be
here…to walk where she walked.”

 
“I understand.”

 
Kate paused, knowing he didn’t; not really. The detective didn’t know the details—the awful, hurtful details that had led to Willa’s going away. He knew about the affair; all the police did. They had questioned Andrew, questioned Kate herself. But he didn’t know about Kate’s guilt—for encouraging Willa to work for Andrew, and for saying, in a high, piercing voice, that she would never forgive her.

 
“I think about Greg Merrill a lot,” Kate said, watching Viera’s eyes.

 
“The Breakwater Killer?”

 
Kate nodded.

 
“He did most of his killing in Connecticut,” Viera said. “In fact, if I’m not mistaken, all of it.”

 
“All the ones they know about,” Kate said.

 
“Well, she fits his profile, from what I know of it,” Viera said, eyes cast downward at the pile of papers, “but I’m looking at her file here, and plenty of other things jump out. It’s possible, Miss Harris, and I’m sure Detective O’Neill would say the same thing, that your sister just doesn’t want…”

 
“To be found,” Kate said.

 
“Sounds like an unhappy love affair all around. For everyone. Maybe she thought the best thing to do was just…quietly go away. Shame is a powerful motivator.”

 
“That’s not possible,” Kate said stubbornly. “Willa would never do that to me.”

 
“Okay, well, you know your sister,” Viera said. Kate could see his face shut down: The eyes were suddenly guarded, the jaw set. She regretted her outburst. Now he’d be talking to her like an emotional family member, censoring anything he really thought.

 
He remained polite, even friendly. He reviewed Willa’s file, sharing with Kate the details they had come up with.

 
There was the record of O’Neill’s original phone call, back in April. He had sent a unit to Willa’s Adams Morgan apartment, found notes on a phone pad indicating an imminent trip to New England—chambers of commerce, reservation services, the elaborately doodled word “Newport.”

 
Credit card records had confirmed her destination, narrowed the search to Newport. The file contained Newport Police interviews with the Seven Chimneys Inn’s owners, chambermaids, and other guests; statements given by a bartender at the Candy Store and a waitress at the Pier. Records of Kate’s follow-up calls, at least one a month, followed.

 
“That’s really about it,” Viera said. “All we have.”

 
“Are you sure?” Kate asked. “No one else saw her, talked to her?”

 
“Not that we found. I have indications from O’Neill’s office that she went on from here…something about Massachusetts.”

 
“She was in Connecticut, too.”

 
“Ahh. Well…”

 
“I know; I have to contact them. I’ve already been to Connecticut.”

 
“Merrill’s stomping grounds. They have him, you know. Maybe you could talk to someone there.”

 
“I have,” Kate said, picturing John O’Rourke’s hard eyes.

 
“Sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” Joe Viera said, standing to shake her hand.

 
Numb, Kate walked out into the cold afternoon. She hadn’t learned anything new, and discouragement flooded her body. What was she doing here? She had taken a leave of absence from work, searching for something she might never find: one tiny thread, one unturned stone, one vague hint of what had happened to her sister.

 
The interview had done one thing: brought back family memories.

 
When they were children, their parents had driven them north, so they could compare the beaches of Chincoteague with those of Rhode Island. They had stayed at the Sheraton Islander, visited the Breakers, Rosecliff, and Mrs. Astor’s Beechwood. Walking the cliff walk, they had watched yachts racing offshore, and they had seen a man land a record-breaking striped bass on the rocks in front of Doris Duke’s house.

 
But one of Kate’s happiest memories was of dinner at the Pier. They had ordered oysters and lobster bisque, sole stuffed with huge pieces of lobster, and baked stuffed lobster. Their father had pronounced the oysters as good as Chincoteague’s, and Kate and Willa had eaten lobster till they were both too full to move. The salad dressing had had tiny mustard seeds in it, and their mother had been delighted.

 
“Mustard seeds mean faith,” she had said. “All you need is the tiniest bit for it to sprout and grow. And you can do anything with faith…”

 
Kate went to the Pier in search of a little faith and a sense that Willa had once been there.

 
The hostess led her to a table by the window. She sat by herself, scanning the tables, wishing she knew where her sister had sat. The police had told her what Willa had eaten that night, so Kate ordered the same things: salad, oysters, stuffed sole. It was all delicious, and the view of the harbor and the soaring Newport Bridge was dramatic; fortified, closing her eyes, Kate could almost feel her sister’s hand on her shoulder, hear her whisper, “Keep looking, Katy. I need you to find me!”

 
“I will,” Kate said out loud.

 
She was sitting alone, and people at nearby tables turned to see whom she was talking to. They probably thought she was crazy. Kate had started thinking that herself, lately. Before taking her leave of absence, unable to concentrate at work, she would close her eyes and talk to Willa.

 
Or, riding the Metro from her town house on Capitol Hill to her office in Foggy Bottom—just blocks up from her old Watergate apartment—she would imagine Willa sitting beside her. She dreamed of the conversations they would finally have: Willa explaining what had happened between her and Andrew, Kate listening, telling her sister that she forgave her; Kate longed for that opportunity. Because her heart had been so rock-hard and angry when Willa had left.

 
“I’m crazy,” Kate said out loud, sitting alone at the Pier, proving that she really was.

 
Her life was on hold; there was no doubt about it. Once the top staff scientist on the Academy’s marine environment team, she had turned her files over to a colleague, until she could find out about her sister. She knew the work she was capable of, and she was far from doing it.

 
“Come back, Willa,” she said, staring through the reflections in the big windows, straight out to the Newport Bridge. “Come back and let me forgive you…”

 
She stopped herself. Did that mean that she had started to believe Detective Viera, that she thought Willa had a choice? Could it be possible her sister was hiding somewhere, too ashamed to return home?

 
No, Kate thought, staring at the dark harbor. No, it was not. The bridge’s lights ran between the two tall towers, graceful strands of illuminated pearls. Willa had crossed that bridge, but where had she gone? Kate had checked Connecticut and Rhode Island, which left only one place.

 
Massachusetts.

 
Fairhaven wasn’t far away; just thirty or so miles north and a little east. Kate had to keep looking for Willa. She thought of the full moon, high and serene, exerting pull over the tides: No one could see it. As children, she, Matt, and Willa had all found it magical and mysterious. Kate’s need to find Willa was like that: a powerful force deep inside. Who knew what unturned stone might be there for only Kate—Willa’s sister—to see?

 
Kate could make the ride to Fairhaven in about an hour. After that, she knew she had to return to Washington, to try to put her life back together.