“That’s not a good idea, Mrs. Clark,” Agent Fitzgerald informs me. “It’s not in the best interest of the investigation.”
“What about Ben?” I ask. “Who is serving his best interest? What’s all this nonsense about Jason Meechum? This has nothing to do with Calli, and I don’t understand why you’re bringing it up.” My voice is shrill and I hate the fact that I was losing control of it.
More softly, I continue. “Deputy Sheriff, I am surprised that you found it necessary to share that information with Agent Fitzgerald.” To Fitzgerald I say curtly, folding my arms in front of me, “Tell me now what it is that you think I should be doing. Then you tell me what it is you are going to do in order to find my daughter.”
Agent Fitzgerald stands and mirrors my own stance. I wonder if that was something that they taught him in agent school to put me more at ease.
“I’m sorry about upsetting your son. However, as I have said many times, we must look at all angles. Have you considered that someone may be upset with someone in your family and be taking it out on Calli? I’m not saying this is so, but we must look at all possibilities. As for Deputy Sheriff Louis, he had no idea I was going to broach the subject of Ben and Jason. Please don’t blame him.” Fitzgerald looks properly chagrined.
I shake my head in disgust. “What is this? Good cop, bad cop? I’ll stay here. You go do what you have to do to find Calli, but if you do not find her by six o’clock this evening, I’m calling everyone I know, forming my own search party and going into those woods. I know she’s in there, and I am going in after her.”
“I will not support a search after dark,” he replies. “But I understand your need to participate in searching for her. We are, at this moment, organizing a search. The key word is
“I will also need to speak with your son again. Getting upset and running away will not help Calli.”
“Ben would do anything for Calli,” I say through clenched teeth.
“I believe that is true, Mrs. Clark. We’ll speak soon.” Fitzgerald turns to leave.
“Wait,” I call after him. “What are you going to do now?”
“We are going to follow up some leads, interview neighbors and other individuals and we are going to search for Calli and Petra.”
“What leads? What individuals? Do you know something?” I ask desperately.
“Nothing concrete that I can share with you at this time, Mrs. Clark. Oh, and please be aware that the media will most likely be contacting you shortly. This can be a very good thing. I suggest that you say no more than that your daughter is missing. Get the girls’ pictures out there. The more people who see their faces, the more likely that they will be spotted. A crime lab team will also be here shortly to gather evidence from the home. Please stay out of Calli’s bedroom. We want to have as much evidence intact as possible. I suggest that you stay at a family or friend’s home for the duration of this. Please let the officer know where you will be staying. We’ll talk soon, Mrs. Clark. Goodbye.”
They are gone before I can argue about not wanting to leave my house. Ben’s gone, Calli’s gone, and I am in my home all alone, except for the police officer, and I hate that feeling. I walk outside, trying to decide on whom I can impose by showing up on their doorstep. Who wants to be dragged into the middle of this mess? Maybe Mrs. Norland, our elderly neighbor. She is as close to a friend that I have anymore, even though most of our interactions are simple waves from across our yards. My eyes take in my garden, which needs weeding, and I decide to wait a bit for any news before calling Mrs. Norland. I’m not going to let a stranger run me out of my own home. I go to the shed to gather up my gardening gloves, trowel and bucket. I haven’t watered in days, but know not to do so now. The blazing sun would evaporate the droplets immediately and the plants would not be able to drink.
In the darkened shed, a knotty, peeling structure that is beginning to lean, I grab my gardening tools and notice among the cobwebs four old gallons of paint, a soft, creamy yellow. Years ago, my brothers had moved away and my father joined them soon after. The house was too lonely, he said, without my mother. After Griff and I were married, he handed me the keys to the white, peeling two-story, and wished us much happiness there. I was eighteen.
I still had wanted to live in a yellow house. I had spent hours in the hardware store, staring at paint chips, trying to decide on the perfect shade for our home. I lugged the gallons of paint home the week after the wedding; Griff smiled and said he would get right on it. He never did. I was eighteen then. Now I’m thirty-one and still no yellow house.
I step back out into the blinding sun and scrutinize my flower beds. Where to start? They are all neglected; it has been too hot to venture out into the heat these past weeks. My vegetable garden is brimming over with overripe tomatoes and zucchini. My flower beds are filled with creeping charlie, deer-bitten blossoms and wilted stems. My eye settles on a patch of dirt just beyond my vegetable garden. I had sowed it with grass seed earlier in the summer, but it didn’t take. Instead, it appears that the plot has expanded to a stretch of soil about five feet long and three feet wide. I step over an overgrown stalk of rhubarb and examine the patch. Two perfectly shaped child’s footprints are imprinted in the dust. The toes are entirely defined. Larger prints of a man’s boots are facing the smaller marks, almost toe to toe. Then a few steps farther just the boot prints, somewhat swept over by drag marks. My stomach fills with dread. The footprints could be old, I reason, but I know better. I bend down, lightly touch the dust and rub it between my fingers. I stand quickly and run back to the house to tell an officer and to call Louis.
MARTIN
Before Fitzgerald and Louis leave they encourage us to go over to a relative’s or a friend’s house for the remainder of the investigation. They say it will be comforting to have family and friends nearby and that we shouldn’t compromise any evidence in the house by having people coming in and out.
“What if Petra comes home?” Fielda argues. “I need to be here for her!” They assure her that someone will be at the house at all times and someone will contact her with all updates.
I drive Fielda and myself over to Fielda’s mother’s home. Mrs. Mourning greets us tearfully and flutters nervously about Fielda. Fielda looks ill and we both persuade her to go lie down.
Her head is aching and I search through the bathroom medicine cabinet for some Tylenol PM’s to help her rest. I suspect she needs something more, but I would never give her something stronger. I bring the tablets and a glass of ice water to the bedroom where Fielda is curled up under the quilt her grandmother had made. She looks so frail there, and old. This surprises me. Fielda, when in motion, is solid and vibrant, a force of nature, young. I am not used to this, taking care of her; she always has looked after me. Odd, I know, because being a bachelor until I was forty-two ensured that I took care of myself quite efficiently until I met Fielda.
I enter the bedroom and close the door behind me. The room is hushed and cool. Fielda obediently lays the pills on her tongue and sips the water that I offer her. I pull the sheet up around the curve of her shoulders as she settles her head on the pillow. “Just for a minute,” she says about resting. She doesn’t want to, doesn’t know how she possibly could rest with our daughter out there somewhere, but I murmur softly into her ear to just close her eyes for a moment. Her curly hair fans out, dark on the crispness of the pillowcase. I long to crawl in next to her, to swallow a handful of pills and let sleep pour over me. I cannot, though; I need to be alert, prepared to aid in the search for Petra. Louis and Fitzgerald assured me that they would contact me when their interviews with Antonia and her son were complete.
When Fitzgerald and Louis had finished questioning Fielda and me, shaken my hand and climbed into the car, a feeling of dirtiness edging toward perverseness crept next to me. Agent Fitzgerald did not accuse me of anything, certainly. However, he did request that Fielda and I stop in at the police station and have our fingerprints taken. Exclusionary purposes, Fitzgerald reassured us. I am not an uninformed man—oblivious at times, I admit, to the world around me—but not unaware that family members are the initial suspects in any missing child situation, and that more often than not, they are the guilty ones. The verity that the police, my community, my colleagues would entertain the notion that I could harm two young children,
