“It’s annoying. How can you stand it?”
“I suppose the same way that you get used to the noises in a big city. It’s just there—you don’t really notice it after a while.”
Fitzgerald nods and lights his cigarette. “Do you mind?” he asks after the fact.
“Naw, go ahead,” I reply and we both stand there, listening to the cicadas’ anxious song.
“You feel bad,” Fitzgerald observes.
“Yeah, I do,” I respond blandly.
“It needed to be said, the thing about the McIntire girl. They need to know it’s a possibility. Give them a few minutes to let it settle in their minds and they’ll be ready to go forward. There’s no way they will accept that their little girl could have been lured from her home, raped and murdered, but the possibility will be there, and they will be out here in a moment ready to fight like hell to find her, to prove that’s not what happened.”
“We need to bring in search dogs, organize a formal search,” I tell him, knowing this is already on his mind.
“I agree. We can get a trained hound and handler from Madison or even Des Moines down here by late this afternoon,” Fitzgerald responds, taking a deep pull on his cigarette.
“The families are not going to want to hear about a search dog. Sounds too much like we’ll be looking for bodies,” I say, not relishing the thought of being the one to relay the information to the Gregorys and Toni.
“What’s your gut feeling on this one, Louis?” Fitzgerald asks me, leaning against an old oak tree.
I shrug. “Not sure, but between you and me, I would look at Toni’s husband a little more closely. He’s a shady character, a drinker. Rumor has it he can be violent.”
“Violent in what way?”
“Like I said, just rumor. Toni doesn’t talk about it, there’s never been a domestic call. Several drunk and disorderlies on Griff, and one DUI. Just something to keep in mind as this all unfolds,” I say wearily.
“Good to know,” Fitzgerald says looking off toward Toni’s house.
“Days like this, I wished I smoked,” I say, eyeing his cigarette.
“Days like this, I wished I didn’t,” Fitzgerald replies, as Martin Gregory steps outside his home.
“I’m sorry,” Martin apologizes. “We are ready to go on, tell us what you need to know. Please…come in.”
CALLI
Calli had traveled deeper into the forest, beyond any spot she had been before. She was lost, the fawn had long since left to join its mother. Calli wandered around, trying to get her bearings. The trees here were thick and shielded the sun’s rays from her, though the air around remained steamy, heavy with moisture. The trail in front of her led upward, a winding, rocky path that disappeared into a stand of hemlocks. Another trail led downward, she thought to the creek. Her tongue felt oversize and dry; she was so thirsty. She considered going back the way she had come, but dismissed the idea, knowing that Griff was still there somewhere. The muscles in her legs were shaky and tired from running and a dull hunger had settled in her stomach. Calli scanned the forest around her; she saw the plump red-and-yellow berries that the cardinals flocked around, but knew she should not eat them. She tried to remember what her mother and Ben had told her about the berries of the forest, what she could eat and what was poisonous. She knew about mulberries, the fat purplish-red berries filled with sweet juice that hung heavily on branches. She could eat those, but she knew not to eat the reddish-brown berries of the toothache tree, because they would cause your mouth to go numb. She trudged upward, eyes inspecting every bush and vine.
Her eyes settled upon a thorny tangled thicket holding blackish berries hanging from a white stem. Black raspberries. Calli hungrily plucked them from the twig, their juice bursting out of their skin with her touch, staining her fingers. The sweetness filled her mouth and she continued picking, fanning mosquitoes away from her find. Her mother had taught her where to find the wild black raspberries and she and Ben would collect as many as they could in old ice cream buckets, trying not to eat too many. When their buckets were full, they would carry them home to their mother, who would carefully wash them and bake them into pies that she served with homemade ice cream. Calli loved homemade ice cream and everything that went into making the concoction. She would tromp down the basement stairs where they stored the old hand-crank ice cream maker. It awed her how just adding the eggs, vanilla, milk and rock salt would create something so delicious. She didn’t even mind the ache in her arm from turning the crank, and Ben would take over when she couldn’t turn it anymore. The first thing she would do, she decided, when she got home was to haul that old ice cream maker up the steps so they could make a batch.
When she finished eating all the raspberries she could reach, she wiped her blackened fingers on her nightgown and rubbed the back of her hand across her mouth, the imprint of her lips left behind like lipstick. Her hunger sated for the moment, Calli decided to continue her climb upward, to the highest point on the bluff. From there, perhaps she could see exactly where she was at and which direction would lead her home. But it was so hot and she was so sleepy. Just to lie down for a few moments, just to rest. She found a shady cluster of evergreens, well off the trail, cleared away the sharp branches that lay at its base, and, using her arms as a pillow, shut her eyes and slept.
BEN
We’ve been waiting for eons for Deputy Sheriff Louis and the other guy to get here. Mom made me put on a nice pair of shorts and a shirt with a collar for when they come over to talk to us. I’m starving, but feel weird making a sandwich or something when you’re out all by yourself with maybe nothing to eat. I grab a box of crackers and take ’em upstairs to eat in my room. When I walk by the door to your room, there’s this little stretch of crime scene tape stretched across the door frame. Stupid, I think, people rifling through your stuff in your room when we should all be out looking for you in the woods.
I see Mom sitting on the floor of her bedroom, pulling things out of your treasure box. It’s really an old hat box filled with junk. I got one, too. Mom calls it our treasure box because she wants us to put all the important stuff from our life in it. Then when we’re old and gray, as she says, we can dig through all the things that at one time were so valuable to us. Actually, I’m already on my second treasure box because my first one got all filled up. She doesn’t notice me standing there so I just watch all quiet. She’s surrounded by a bunch of your school papers and art projects and she’s touching each one, gentlelike, as if one wrong move will cause them all to turn to dust. She reaches into the box again and brings out something that I can’t quite figure what it is. Neither can she, because she just stares at it for a long time, turning it around in her fingers; it’s whitish-gray and about three inches long. Mom hears me behind her, turns and holds it out to me.
“What do you think it is?” she asks me as I take it.
I shrug and pick at some of the gray bits that look like fur sticking out of it. “I think it’s an owl pellet,” I say. “Look, you can see little bits of bone sticking out.”
Mom looks and takes it back from me. I love that about her. Most mothers would freak out at the sight of something like owl throw-up, but she doesn’t.
“Yeah, I think you’re right. Why would Calli have this in her treasure box?” she asks.
I shrug again. “I guess for the same reason that I have a box of periodical cicada shells in my room.” This causes her to laugh and I’m glad, she hasn’t laughed much lately. She carefully sets the pellet back in the box and pulls out a pile of something that looks like cotton.
“I know what this is!” Mom exclaims, smiling. “It’s dandelion fluff all bunched together!”
“Okay,” I say, “I can kinda understand the owl pellet, but I don’t get the dandelion fluff.”
“Don’t you remember?” she asks me. “‘When fairies dance upon the air, reach out gently and catch one, fair. Make a wish and hold it tight, then softly toss your pixie back to summer’s night.’”
“I wonder what she wished for,” I say.
