Weight of Silence (4 page)

On my way over to the Gregory house, I contact our sheriff, Harold Motts. I need to update Harold as to what is going on. Let him know I have a bad feeling about this, that I don’t think this is merely a case of two girls wandering off to play.

“What evidence do you have?” Motts questions me.

I have to admit that I have none. Nothing physical, anyway. There are no signs of a break-in, no sign of a struggle in either of the girls’ rooms. Just a bad feeling. But Motts trusts me, we’ve known each other a long time.

“You thinking FPF, Louis?” he asks me.

FPF means Foul Play Feared in the police world. Just by uttering these three letters, a whole chain of events can unfurl. State police and the Division of Criminal Investigation will show up, the press and complications. I measure my words before I speak them.

“Something’s not right here. I’d feel a lot better if you called in one of the state guys, just to check things out. Besides, once
we call them in they foot the bill, right? Our department can’t handle or afford a full-scale search and investigation on our own.”

“I’ll call DCI right now,” Motts says to my relief. “Do we need a crime scene unit?”

“Not yet. Hopefully not at all, but we just might. I’m heading back over to the houses. Better call the reservists,” I say. I am glad that Motts will have to be the one who wakes up our off-duty officers and the reservists, take them away from their families and their jobs. Willow Creek has a population of about eight thousand people, though it grows by about twelve hundred each fall due to the college. Our department is small; we have ten officers in all, three to a shift. Not near enough help when looking for two missing seven-year-olds. We’d need the reservists to help canvas the neighborhoods and question people.

“Louis,” Motts says, “do you think this is anything like the McIntire case?”

“It crossed my mind,” I admit. We had no leads in last year’s abduction and subsequent murder of ten-year-old Jenna McIntire. That little girl haunted my sleep every single night. As much as I want to push aside the idea that something similar may have happened to Petra and Calli, I can’t. It’s my job to think this way.

I can’t keep up with them, they are too fast. I know he has seen me, because he turned his head toward me and smiled. Why don’t they wait for me? I am calling to them, but they don’t stop. I know they are somewhere ahead of me, but I am not sure where. I hear a voice in the distance. I am getting closer.

The temperature of the day was steadily rising and the low vibration of cicadas filled their ears. Griff had become uncharacteristically hushed and Calli knew that he was thinking hard about something. Anxiety rose in Calli’s chest, and she tried to push it down. She focused her attention on trying to locate all the cicada casings she could find. The brittle shells clung to tree trunks and from limbs, and she had counted twelve already. Ben used to collect the shells in an old jewelry box that once belonged to their grandmother. He would spend hours scanning the gray, hairy bark of shagbark hickory trees for the hollow skins, pluck them carefully from the wood and drop them into the red velvet-lined box. He would call out to Calli to come watch as a fierce-looking, demon-eyed cicada began its escape from its skin. They would intently watch the slow journey, the gradual cracking of the casing, the wet-winged emerging of the white insect, its patient wait for the hardening of its new exoskeleton. Ben would place its
discarded shell on her outstretched palm and the tiny legs, pinpricks of its former life, would tickle her hand.

“Even his wife knows something is going on,” Griff muttered.

Calli’s heart fluttered. Thirteen, fourteen…she counted.

“Even his wife knows he’s too interested in her. Toni runs to him when she’s in trouble,” Griff’s voice shook. “Does she come to me? Off she runs to Louis! And me playing daddy to you all these years!” Griff ’s fingers were now digging into her shoulder, his face purple with heat and dripping sweat. Minuscule gnats were orbiting his head. Several stuck to his slick face like bits of dust. “Do you know how it makes me look that everyone,
everyone
knows about your mother?” He unexpectedly pushed Calli roughly to the ground and a loud whoosh of air escaped her as her breath was slammed from her.

“So, that gets a little noise outta ya? Is that what it takes to get you talking?”

Calli scrambled backward, crablike, as Griff loomed over her. Her head reeled, silent tears streaked down her face. He was her daddy; she had his small ears, the same sprinkle of freckles across her nose. At Christmas, they would pull out the large, green leather picture album that chronicled Calli’s and Ben’s milestones. The photo of Calli at six months, sitting on her father’s lap, was nearly identical to the photo of Griff sitting on his mother’s lap years earlier, the same toothless smile, the same dimpled cheeks looking out at them from the pictures.

Calli opened her mouth, willing the word to come forth. “Daddy,” she wanted to cry. She wanted to stand and go to him, throw her arms as far around him as they could reach, and lean against the soft cotton of his T-shirt. Of course he was her daddy, the way they both stood with their hands on
their hips and the way they both had to eat all their vegetables first, then the entire main dish, saving their milk for last. Her lips twisted to form the word again. “Daddy,” she wished with her entire being to say. But nothing, just a soft gush of air.

Griff stepped closer to her, rage etched in his face. “You listen here. You may be livin’ in my house, but I don’t gotta like it!” He kicked out at her, the toe of his shoe striking her in the shin. Calli rolled herself into a tight little ball like a woolly bear caterpillar, protecting her head. “When we get home I’m gonna tell your mom that you went out to play and got lost and I came out to find you. Understand?” He struck out at her again, but this time Calli rolled away before he connected. The force of the kick caused him to falter and trip off the trail and into a pile of broken, sharp-tipped branches.

“Dammit!” he cursed, his hands scratched and bloodied. Calli was on her feet before Griff, her legs taut, ready for flight. He reached for her and Calli turned on the ball of her foot, a clumsy pirouette. Griff’s ruddy hand grabbed at her arm, briefly catching hold of the smooth, tender skin on the back of her arm. Then she pulled away and was gone.

I sit at the kitchen table, waiting. Louis told me not to go into Calli’s room, that they may need to go through Calli’s things to look for ideas of where she may have gone. I stared disbelievingly at him.

“What? Like a crime scene?” I asked him. Louis didn’t look at me as he answered that it probably wouldn’t come to that.

I’m not as worried about where she is as Martin is about Petra, and I wonder if I am a horrible mother. Calli has always been a wanderer. At grocery stores I would turn my head for a moment to inspect the label on a jar of peanut butter and she would be gone. I would dash through the aisles, searching. Calli would always be in the meat section, next to the lobster tank, one pudgy finger tapping the aquarium glass. She would turn to look at me, my shoulders limp with relief, a forlorn look on her face and ask, “Mom, does it hurt the crabs to have their hands tied like that?”

I’d rumple her soft, flyaway brown hair, and tell her, “No, it doesn’t hurt them.”

“Don’t they miss the ocean?” she’d persist. “We should buy them all and let them go into the river.”

“I think they’d die without ocean water,” I’d explain. Then she’d gently tap the glass again and let me lead her away.

Of course this was before, when I didn’t have to wonder if the next word would ever come. Before I woke up from dreams where Calli was speaking to me and I would be grasping at the sound of her voice, trying to remember its pitch, its cadence.

I have tried Griff’s cell phone dozens of times. Nothing. I consider calling Griff’s parents, who live downtown, but decide against it. Griff has never gotten along with his mom and dad. They drink more than he does and Griff hasn’t been in the same room with his father for over eight years. I think this is one of the things that drew me to Griff in the beginning. The fact that we were both very much alone. My mother had died, my father far away in his own grief from her death. And Louis, well, that had ended. Not with great production, but softly, sadly. Griff had only his critical, indifferent parents. His only sister had moved far away, trying to remove herself from the stress and drama of living with two alcoholic parents. When Griff and I found each other, it was such a relief. We could breathe easily, at least for a while. Then things changed, like they always do. Like now, when once again, I can’t find him when I need him.

I nervously fold and refold the dish towels from the kitchen drawer and I think I should give my brothers a call, tell them what’s happening. But the thought of putting the fact that
Calli is lost or worse into words is too frightening. I look out the kitchen window and see Martin and Louis step out of Louis’s car, Martin’s shirt already soaked with the day’s heat. The girls are not with them. Ben will find them. They are of one mind, and he will find them.

Martin Gregory and I approach Toni’s front door. Martin has had no luck in locating his daughter or Toni’s, and I am hopeful that the girls will be sitting at the kitchen table eating Toni’s pancakes, or that they have shown up at the Gregorys’ where Fielda waits for them. I am still distracted by my quarrel on the phone with Christine and I try to dismiss her harsh words from my mind.

Toni’s door opens even before I can knock and she is there before me, still so beautiful, dressed in her typical summer outfit—a sleeveless T-shirt, denim shorts, and bare feet. She is brown from the sun, her many hours in her garden or from being outside with her children, I suppose.

“You didn’t find them,” Antonia states. It is not a question.

“No,” I say, shaking my head, and we both step over the threshold into her home. She leads us inside, not to the living room as before but to the kitchen, where a pitcher of iced tea sits on the counter, along with three ice-filled glasses.

“It’s too hot for coffee,” she explains and begins to pour the tea. “Please sit,” she invites, and we do.

“Have you any idea where else they could be?” Martin asks pleadingly.

“Ben’s still out looking in the woods. He knows where Calli would go,” Toni says. There is a curious lack of concern in her tone. Incredibly, she doesn’t appear to think anything is actually amiss.

“Does Calli explore the woods often, Toni?” I ask her, carefully choosing my words.

“It’s like a second home to her. Just like it was for us, Lou,” she says, our eyes locking and a lifetime of memories pass between us. “She never goes far and she always comes back. Safe and sound,” she adds, I think, for Martin’s benefit.

“We don’t allow Petra in the woods without an adult. It’s too dangerous. She wouldn’t know her way around,” Martin says, not quite accusing.

I’m still thinking of the way Toni has called me “Lou,” something she hasn’t done for years. She resumed calling me
Louis
the day she became engaged to Griff. It was as if the more formal use of my name acted like a buffer, as if I hadn’t already known the most intimate parts of her.

“Ben will be here soon, Martin,” Antonia says soothingly. “If the girls are out there—” she indicates the forest with her thin, strong arms “—Ben will bring them home. I cannot imagine where else they may have gone.”

“Maybe we should go out and look there, too,” suggests Martin. “A search party. I mean, how far could two little girls have gone? We could get a group together, we would cover
more ground. If more people were looking, we would have a better chance of finding them.”

“Martin,” I say, “we have no evidence that that is where the girls went. I would hate to focus all of our resources in one area and possibly miss another avenue to investigate. The woods cover over fourteen thousand acres and most of it isn’t maintained. Hopefully, if they’re out there, they have stayed on the trails. We’ve got a deputy out there now.” I indicate the other police car that is now parked on the Clarks’ lane. “I do think, however, we need to let the public know we have two misplaced little girls.”

“Misplaced!” Martin bellows, his face darkening with anger. “I did not misplace my daughter. We put her to bed at eight-thirty last night and when I awoke this morning she was not in her bed. She was in her pajamas, for God’s sake. When are you going to acknowledge the fact that someone may have taken her from her bedroom? When are you—”

“Martin, Martin, I didn’t mean to suggest that you or Toni did anything wrong here,” I say, trying to calm him. “There is no reason to believe they were taken, no signs of forced entry. Her tennis shoes are gone, Martin. Do you think an intruder would stop to make Petra put on her shoes before they left? That doesn’t make sense.”

Martin sighs. “I’m sorry. I just cannot imagine where they could have gone. If they have not been…been abducted and they are not at their usual playing spots, the forest just seems to be the logical place for them to go, especially if Calli is so comfortable there.”

Antonia nods. “I bet Ben will be here shortly with the
two of them, their tails between their legs at the worry they have caused.”

A thought occurs to me. “Toni, is there a pair of Calli’s shoes missing?”

“I don’t know.” Toni sits up a little straighter, her glass of tea perspiring in her hand. “I’ll go check.”

Toni rises and climbs the stairs to Calli’s room. Martin sips his tea, sets his glass down, then, unsure of what to do with his hands, picks up the glass again.

Martin and I sit in an uncomfortable silence for a moment and then he speaks.

“I have never understood how Petra and Calli became such good friends. They have nothing in common, really. The girl does not even talk. What in the world could two seven-year-olds do for fun if only one of them speaks?” He looks at me with exasperation. “Petra would say, ‘Could Calli and I have a sandwich? Just peanut butter for Calli, she doesn’t like jelly.’ I mean, how would she know that when Calli did not speak? I just do not understand it,” he says, shaking his head.

“Kindred spirits,” a soft voice comes from the stairwell. Toni steps into the kitchen carrying a pair of tattered tennis shoes in one hand and an equally worn pair of flip-flops in the other. “They are kindred spirits,” she repeats to our questioning looks. “They know what the other needs. Petra can read Calli like a book, what game she wants to play, if her feelings are hurt, anything. And Calli is the same. She knows that Petra is afraid of thunderstorms and will take her to her bedroom and play the music so loud that it covers the sound of the thunder. Or if Petra is feeling blue, Calli can get her giggling. Calli makes the best faces—she can get all of us
laughing. They are best friends. I don’t know how to explain how it works, but it does for them. And I’m glad of it. Petra doesn’t care that Calli can’t talk and Calli doesn’t care that Petra is afraid of thunder and still sucks her thumb sometimes.” Toni pauses and holds up the shoes. “Her shoes are still here. We’re going shopping for school shoes next week. Her cowboy boots are still in the garage, I saw them earlier. Calli doesn’t have her shoes on. She wouldn’t go into the woods without her shoes.”

Toni’s chin begins to wobble and for the first time since her girl has gone missing, she looks scared. I put my hand on her arm, and she does not pull away.