The Scamp (12 page)

He closes the window and then the computer. You've tried to find her, he says.

I have. I keep thinking that someday, she'll write to me, or something. I've always been in the same town. The same stupid trailer, even, except for those few months.

What few months? Couper says.

With the baby, I say. It's hard to keep my face from clouding over, from gathering tight at the brow, sinking into a hard frown, puckering toward crying.

He rubs my arm. I have some other resources, he says. We can try searching again, if you want.

I want it more than anything. But I don't tell him that. I nod. Because if I start talking, I'll start crying. I'd thought it, after Summer, before Summer. When I found out I was pregnant, the person I wanted to tell was Khaki. The person I would have had in the room with me when she was born, Khaki. When Summer died, I wanted to lay my head on Khaki's lap and let her stroke my hair and tell me it would be okay.

I'd missed her for so long.

Right now though, Couper says, I have to make an appointment with the chief of police in Summersville.

Summersville calls itself a city. On the outskirts, a textile mill, a huge looming complex of buildings billowing smoke. An entire system of machines cultivating, willowing, carding, spinning. The sight of it, so oversized and powerful, is threatening. It gives me a cold twinge in the pit of my stomach, the way a nuclear plant does.

The town itself has that slow creep that Southern towns do. There's nothing touristy, nothing to come visit except maybe family. It's not small and it's not big. It's hot and dusty, a grid of streets with plain houses, a couple of churches, a Laundromat, a coffee shop, a diner. Big enough to have its own school, its own grocery store, and a small newspaper. There's a creek that runs through the cemetery where they found the teenager. Alyssa.

The police department is not at all what I expect. The station back in South Lake, just a concrete building with a few cubicles, a secretary, one small holding cell they use mostly for drunks. Couper invites me to go with him into the Summersville precinct, a grid of half walls, desks, and phones. The chief of police has an office in the back, with glass walls and blinds. And she's a woman.

I'd been picturing a man. A middle-aged guy with a comb-over maybe. She's tall and has brown hair that's to her shoulders and unbound. She looks like a runner. Lean and strong. There are plants in the office, and
pictures of kids and dogs. When Couper walks in, her face warms and she smiles and shakes his hand with both hands. She looks at me, the way I lag behind in hesitation, and then Couper introduces me as his intern.

Well, Mr. Gale, she says, I'm happy to have you take a look.

That's excellent, he says. I can't make any promises. But you never know when something might fall into place.

We haven't had a fresh pair of eyes in quite some time, she says. The nameplate on her desk says
CHIEF OF POLICE, DAWN L. POWERS
. Chief Powers.

How long ago did they happen? I ask. My voice sounds small in there, the room echoey.

It's been nearly five years, she says and walks around the side of her desk. Come with me, she says, I'll show you the file room.

It's a cold back room with beige metal shelves that are crushed together and wheel apart with a crank. Chief Powers has an office assistant come in with us, a young man in a short-sleeved dress shirt, with a trim waist and soft-soled shoes that don't make a sound.

Anything you need copies of, Chief Powers tells Couper, just hand to Kyle, and he'll make you a duplicate. And thank you, she says to him.

Thank you, he says.

She is almost out of the room before she says
Nice to meet you
to me.

His preliminary research takes forever. Couper sifts through boxes of interview transcripts, half reading, setting aside what he might need, putting others back. The room is like a refrigerator, and even Kyle doesn't stay. He works on his own filing for a bit, and then goes to a desk outside the room, where I think it must be warmer, and not lit like the inside of a morgue, and makes phone calls, and sits at a desktop computer.

Okay, Couper says. He has a stack that's an inch thick. I can read these at home, he says.

You haven't been reading them? I say. It feels like it's been hours.

Just making sure I have the right things, he says. He hands the stack to Kyle, who doesn't get to it right away. Couper lays out some photos.

More of the mother, Jessa, with her complete family, both children, the husband. Then some of her husband's car, the garage, their backyard, taken by police photographers, with numbered markers.

And the teenager, her face and her full body naked to the elements. Evidence of footsteps through the leaves in the back part of the cemetery, but nothing on the path in the main part, where the roads are paved instead of dirt or gravel.

How long before they found her? I ask.

Two days, Couper says.

Her face in the close-up is already puffed with bloat, her skin pale and marbled with blue markings.

She looks beaten, I say.

That's just the decay, Couper says. It's the beginning of the body breaking down, under the skin. There were no signs of trauma other than to the neck. He says this with his eyes on another document, not looking at me. I wonder if he remembers that he's talking to a mother. A mother whose daughter died.

I push the photo away and look up at the grid in the ceiling. If I'm not careful, all I see is Summer's face with the life gone out of it. Her sleeping baby face, lips like a rose, cheeks pale. If I don't stop, I think about her body, breaking down, marbling itself in decay. About what is left of her now, if it's just a small curve of bones, or only dust.

What's her mother in jail for? I say.

Larceny, Couper says. She was stealing from the company she worked for.

Is she still in?

Yes.

Jesus, how much did she steal?

Hundreds of thousands, Couper says.

For what?

What do you think? he says. What do you need that kind of money for?

Drugs, I say. I mean, unless you're buying up property. Or hookers.

Yeah, he says. He laughs a little, quietly though, and even then it echoes some in that metal room. When Kyle comes back with a packet of paper for Couper, Couper puts his hand on my goose-bumped arm and says, Let's get you out of here.

The closest campground is twelve miles outside of town, on a road called Dry Fork. The campground is full of fishermen, the sites dotted along a creek. When the guy shows us our site, he says he has a slot only because there was a cancellation. And when Couper sees it, between a willow tree and an elm, with the land sloping down to a wide and lazy creek, he says, It's perfect.

Now we're here, I say to him, in my own camp chair beside the water. Before, you were in South Lake, I say.

Yep, he says. He holds the papers that Kyle gave him, bound with a black metal binder clip.

What if you were supposed to meet someone in Summersville instead of South Lake? I say.

I already met you, Couper says without looking up.

But what if I'm the wrong person?

He lets the papers sag onto his chest and looks at me over his glasses.

You're not, he says.

Jessa's husband, Kevin, still lives in the same house, a brick Cape Cod on a side street on the edge of the village, where there are no sidewalks. The streets, curved and quiet. The yards, fenced and treed with flowering bushes, azaleas, camellias, and roses. The kind of street you can stand at the top of and see all the houses aligned in a perfect array, an arch of suburbia, like the curve of the world. The Loys' house has a white door, white shutters, and a white clapboard porch built off the back of it.
In the backyard, a wooden swing set with yellow plastic swings, a clubhouse, a blue plastic slide.

Before, Couper took me to Walmart. You need some better clothes, he told me. The police chief looked at you funny, he said.

My mother threw out my nicer clothes, I said.

But I didn't disagree. I also thought the police chief's aloofness toward me was because she didn't like my jeans, or didn't trust my face, or both.

Sometimes, I think people can see Summer's scar on me, that I light up with a neon aura that says
DEAD BABY
. One hundred and fifty pounds of damage coming your way.

We bought three summer dresses and a sweater to go over them. A pair of sandals, a package of underwear, a razor, and bras. It was hard to find one at Walmart that fit me, that wasn't ugly and sold in a box. But I found two in the right size. One of them was camo. Couper kind of smirked at that one.

And so, I show up at Kevin Loy's house in a deep-pink silky knit dress that has white hibiscus flowers, a scoop neck, and little cap sleeves. It falls to my knees. If nothing else, I look more like an assistant and less like a hitchhiker. Even if my insides say
runaway
.

Couper gives me a legal pad and tells me to take notes. I've never seen him take notes, but I think the two of us sitting there, waiting for details from a possibly still grieving husband is probably too much, so he gives me something to do. I write down the time, 1:15
PM
, and the date, June 12.

Kevin's on his lunch break. The older daughter, in junior high. The baby, in kindergarten.

He won't look Couper in the eye.

I know that it's still very difficult, Couper says, and I appreciate your time. Chief Powers, Couper starts, and Kevin cuts him off.

Didn't do enough, he says. Did she hire you?

No, Couper says.

I look around the room. There are two loud clocks, out of sync with each other. Pictures of fruit in the kitchen, where we sit at an oak table. Grapes and apples and pears. Kitchen curtains with a pattern of wheat. A painting of a vineyard that says,
I am the Vine and You are the Branches.
Where we'd come in, the front door held a plaque that read,
As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord.

I'm just getting to the point, Kevin says, where I'm moving past it. Since there's no answer, he says, no lead, no nothing. What choice do I have?

He's pinkish, the way Jessa is in the pictures. Gingery, but hardhanded, muscled in a long, ropy way. He wears khakis and a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow.

I understand, Couper says. Where do you think she is? he says.

Where do I think she is? Kevin says. Where do you think she is? I thought you were here to solve this.

Couper sits, quiet, and just watches him. He waits until Kevin repeats it.

Where do I think she is.

Yes, Couper says.

Kevin huffs and pushes his chair away from the table. Unbelievable, he says. There was no reason to suspect me, he says, and then he points one hard finger down at the table and thumps. They questioned the shit out of me, he says. And I was the victim. I was the one who . . .

That's not what I'm asking you, Couper says. He leans back in the chair, his chest broad and open. I scribble some equivalent of their conversation on the legal pad.

Kevin waits.

I'm asking you where you think she is, he says again, and then adds, in your heart, Kevin. What do you think happened to her? I'm not here to accuse you, Couper says. I'm trying to put together a life for Jessa, to trace some pattern, something that may point to where she is.

I think she left, Kevin says. And after that, I don't know.

Why? Couper says.

She was talking. Always talking. He stops, and pinches the bridge of his nose. To a woman, a friend from church who got it into Jessa's head that she didn't have to stand for this anymore. She pumped her full of ideas about what a woman didn't have to put up with is what happened, he says, and she left.

Who was the woman? Couper says.

What were the ideas? I say, because I don't believe him, and because
pumped with ideas
sounds like something paranoid my mother would come up with.

Ideas about me, he says to me. That I wasn't good enough for her. That she ought to have better than what we had, what I work for. That her life was bigger than caring for her own children, he says. No calling is bigger than motherhood, he says to me.

That's what I've heard, I say, and under the table, Couper pats the side of my leg. I can't tell if he's comforting me or telling me to shut up.

Who was she? Couper says.

Some girl, Kevin says and then laughs. Not even married. She didn't stay, he says.

Do you remember her name? Couper asks.

No, Kevin says.

I hear Couper sigh, and try to hide it. What do you mean she didn't stay?

She didn't stay in town. She wasn't from here, and she didn't stay here.

Did they leave together? Couper says.

No.

Are you sure? Couper says.

Yes, Kevin says. She was here after Jessa was gone. Ask Carter, he says then.

Carter?

Carter James, Kevin says. You can try him at his shop, on Elm.

I write this down.

He dated her, Kevin says. And they questioned her, too, he says. The problem, he says, is that when a woman wants to keep a secret from you, she can. And when a
woman goes astray, you might as well let it go. There isn't much harder than saving a hardheaded woman, he says. And two of them together? He waves his hand.

What have you told your daughters? Couper says.

That she died in an accident, Kevin says.

Really, I say. I'm having a hard time keeping my mouth shut. I see Couper's face settle into something. Disbelief, or maybe resignation. He deflates a little.

What if she comes back? Couper says.

Then I'll let them believe in miracles, Kevin says.

Couper drives the car around the town. Elm Street is off Main Street, and the shop is at the end of Elm, past the houses and the school. It's a small metal warehouse with a covered lumberyard behind. The sign says
THE CARPENTER'S SON
. Couper drives past it.