The girl couldn’t say why they weren’t good friends. Fair enough.
“What about a boyfriend?” April asked. “Did she have a boyfriend she might have gone away with?”
“She had one for a while, but he dumped her.”
“Recently?”
“Yeah, Ellie was pretty upset. That’s why she didn’t want to go with anybody. She wanted to be alone.”
“When did you see her last?”
“I saw her when she left for the airport.”
“The airport. Which airport?”
“I don’t know. LaGuardia, I think. I don’t remember which airline.”
“What time was it?”
“It was afternoon.”
Connie told April what Ellen was wearing when she left, and they hung up. Someplace warm. That left a lot of places. Mexico, the Caribbean, Florida. California. She checked the flights going out of LaGuardia to sunny places on Thursday afternoon a week before. There were a lot of them. The airlines didn’t keep passenger lists for this long. And if Ellen were running away, she might not have used her own name anyway. Checking airlines was not a useful path to pursue. It was exactly a week since Ellen had left the city. She was due back in school the following Monday. April was quite certain she would be there.
She handed in her report. This was more detailed than the initial one. Now she knew what Ellen had been wearing, and the fact that she had most probably left the city of her own volition, probably by air, during a school vacation. The assignment notebook and calendar on her desk had corresponding stars in red ink to show when papers were due and test dates. Ellen was a conscientious and methodical student. The following Thursday was starred for a test with a note to “Study hard for this one.” Nothing about her room indicated a girl who didn’t intend to come back.
The case was not closed, however. Sergeant Joyce had received several calls from the parents—both parents, at different times—demanding a stepped-up investigation. Joyce assured the Roanes they were doing everything they could to locate the girl and told April to stay with it.
April called Jennifer Roane with another approach. “Does Ellen have a credit card?” she asked.
“Why? Has it turned up?” Jennifer started to cry.
“No. But if she used it, it’s a way of finding where she went. Her roommate says she left last Thursday for the airport.”
“What?” Jennifer said, appalled. “You mean, she went somewhere?”
“It looks like it. Do you have the credit card number?”
“Just a minute.”
Jennifer Roane was away for several minutes. Finally she came back with the credit card number. It was a MasterCard.
“Anybody else use this card?”
“Uh, her father. I have my own.”
“Thanks.”
April called MasterCard. “This is Detective Woo, NYPD. I need some information on recent charges to card number 956-1900-9424-1992.”
“You’ll have to talk to my supervisor.”
“That’s fine. What’s your supervisor’s name?”
After a brief discussion with the supervisor, April faxed an official Police Department request for information to the MasterCard office. An hour later, she received a printout of charges to the account for the last month. Among them was a charge to American Airlines on the date Ellen left her dorm. And a number of charges to a restaurant and shops in—bingo: San Diego.
13
Jason slammed his appointment book shut on the five worrying letters to Emma that had come in the five days since his return from Toronto. Then he masked the movement by rearranging a few things on his desk and checking the answering machine to make sure it was on. As he did this, he realized it was absurd. Harold wouldn’t notice his office under any circumstances. Harold never commented on anything but himself. Jason looked quickly around anyway.
His was the usual sort of psychiatrist’s office, with a leather analyst’s couch, a leather Eames chair behind it, a large desk covered with papers, and a rolling desk chair, also leather. He had covered the windows to the outside world with bamboo blinds, but left open a few tiny windows into himself for those patients who truly needed to find him. Antique clocks came and went as he added to his collection and moved them about. But none in here distracted by ticking loudly or chiming the hour. A number of prints, needlepoint pillows, knickknacks, and mementos in a wide variety of tastes and quality, given him over the years by his patients, companionably coexisted with his books on every available surface in the room. Years ago he used to hide everything away, as if personal things from his patients might reveal their names and crowd the space with their voices. But now he knew therapy did not require empty spaces and blank walls to be successful.
For people like Harold, the walls were as good as blank anyway. He didn’t care what was on them. Today he nodded at Jason, but didn’t actually greet him, look at him, or ask how he was. As far as Harold was concerned, his psychiatrist had absolutely no life beyond taking care of him. Jason knew this, and knew that Harold didn’t see the dark shadows under his eyes or the turmoil behind them.
He stood as Harold crossed the room with a loping walk and sat in the Eames chair next to the desk. Harold had always been meticulously dressed and was now. Very distinguished. He was wearing a dark suit with a gray silk tie, a white shirt, and black shoes. His hair was cut very short. He was an inch or two taller than Jason, and ten years older. His hair was almost all gray now. Two years ago when Harold first came to Jason, his hair had been black. He had been a big beefy man. Now he was caved in. His cheeks looked as if they had been deflated. His mouth had thinned out into a line. Often—several times in a session at least—he sucked his lips inside his mouth and closed his teeth over them as if to stop himself from saying or doing something. Jason had a French clock on the shelf that was a brass bull standing on a clock face. That was Harold two years ago, bullish on himself.
“I had a dream about Marilyn last night,” Harold said.
Jason sat in his chair and rolled it away from his desk into the center of the room, trying to quell his anguish. Emma had appeared in a quirky and sexual movie, and now somebody was writing upsetting letters to her. He shifted in his seat but couldn’t relax.
One letter came every day on the dot, very strange and rambling letters that no psychiatrist could read without being concerned. They were signed,
“Tell me about the dream,” Jason said to Harold, and thought about the letters.
There was a lot of Right and Wrong in them. Maybe they were some religious thing. They mentioned right path, wrong path,
Emma thought they were equal to the kind of chain letters they got as kids that threatened bad luck if you didn’t copy them and send them to fourteen friends. Curses like, your mother wears army boots. Drop dead. Burn in Hell. She argued there was nothing to it. Jason knew she was wrong; there was something to this. He just didn’t know what.
“How long will this go on?” Harold asked.
“A long time.”
“I thought when she died I would get some relief. But, I don’t know. I feel worse.” Harold let his chin sink down on his chest.
“You’ll feel worse for a while, and then you’ll feel better,” Jason murmured.
