Missing Persons Page 9

  That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.

  Bob did trust me just enough to come back to see me every Tuesday afternoon at 4:45. That was the foundation of our relationship. In two years of treatment, he’d missed only one session, and had canceled that appointment four weeks in advance. Forty-five minutes, once a week, that was our deal. Bob knew what time our appointment started. He knew when it ended. After a hundred tries, though, he still had only the most vague concept of what should happen in between.

  I saw him on a sliding scale, discounting my usual fee by well more than half so that he could afford to come in. Bob would always pay me at the beginning of the last session of each month, just before I handed out my bills. His personal check to me was always placed in the same type of security envelope, was always folded the same way, and was always double sealed, once by licking the flap, and once by the addition of two long strips of Scotch tape.

  Bob’s handwriting was tiny and precise and rounded. The first time he gave me a check I had to use a magnifying glass to read the amount. I didn’t know how the university credit union managed to clear his checks. But it did.

  On occasional Tuesdays during our time together we did something that loosely resembled traditional psychotherapy. More often the sessions were an odd interchange that to an outsider probably would look more like social skills training than anything psychotherapeutic. Not unlike someone afflicted with Asperger’s syndrome, Bob had no innate sense of how human interaction should work. He would end up being insulting when his intent was to be impersonally cordial. He would often be cruel while he was merely trying to create some protective psychological space. During the first year of treatment we’d spent a half dozen autumn Tuesdays troubleshooting how Bob might respond differently when a student walked up to his desk in the physics department and said, “Good morning,” or “Hi.”

  His previous stock reply-“What difference does it make?”-hadn’t been working too well for him.

  The most surprising thing about psychotherapy with Bob? As the months passed I’d grown fond of this man who was about as easy to get close to as a porcupine. In the lingo, I had developed a positive countertransference for him. And maybe because I’d developed affection for Bob my empathy for his plight was sometimes swollen out of proportion.

  I vowed to keep an eye on it.

  14

  Bob’s connection to the Millers didn’t appear to be particularly unique or interesting. He hadn’t baby-sat Mallory, nor had he gone to high school with Mrs. Miller. He wasn’t a family friend, hadn’t played Santa at any Miller family holiday gatherings. In fact, his particular connection to the girl’s disappearance seemed to be a relatively common affliction that he shared with many viewers of cable news TV stations. Bob, it turned out, had quickly grown obsessed by Mallory’s disappearance, which, I feared, meant that for at least forty-five minutes a week I was likely to be forced to be vicariously obsessed by Mallory’s disappearance, too.

  I was less than thrilled by the revelation that Bob was transfixed by Mallory’s plight. As he described his fascination my silent protest was a pathetic No, please no. At a clinical level Bob didn’t need the obsession; his pathological casserole was certainly not wanting for the addition of an obsessive crust of any description. At a more selfish level, I’d already begun hoping-like the great majority of Boulderites-that the case of the disappearing girl was going to go away gently, that Sam and his like-minded police colleagues were right and that this time the case of the disappearing girl wasn’t really a case of a disappearing girl at all. Like ninety-nine percent of Boulder’s residents, I was hoping that Mallory Miller-despite what I’d learned about her recent history from Diane-was just a girl who’d left home for one of the many bad reasons that young teenage girls choose to leave home.

  But I wasn’t to be so lucky. From the first time Bob mentioned her name-“Do you think she ran? Or do you think she was kidnapped? Mallory?”-I became concerned that Bob and I would begin to spend some unknown number of Tuesday sessions rehashing the latest news and gossip about her. Since Bob devoured the Enquirer and the Star-he didn’t buy them; he scoured the student union looking for discarded copies-I was even going to be force-fed tidbits about Mallory that I wouldn’t have been exposed to in the more reputable news sources.

  How did I know all this?

  Because Bob had been transfixed by the Kobe thing, too. And the Michael Jackson thing. Not to mention the Scott Peterson thing. That’s how I knew.

  I was realizing, almost even begrudgingly accepting, that it was beginning to look like I couldn’t get away from Mallory Miller no matter how hard I tried.

  The Tuesday session with Bob during the week between Christmas and New Year’s was like dozens before it. Bob was distracted and distant, and we spent a chunk of the allotted time in silence. He surprised me by ending the appointment with a request he’d never made before: He asked if we could meet again later that week.

  Could I actually be witnessing nascent signs of attachment, the therapeutic Holy Grail in the treatment of a schizoid personality? Highly unlikely, but I gladly offered him an additional session on Thursday, the penultimate day of the year.

  15

  The phone rang later that evening while I was giving Grace her bath. Lauren spoke for a few minutes before she joined me in the bathroom and handed me the portable and a towel for my hands. “It’s Diane,” she said, and I exchanged the delights of playtime in the bathtub for the dubious pleasures of the telephone.

  It struck me as not a great deal.

  “Hi,” I said as I moved out of the bathroom and walked across the master bedroom to the big windows facing the mountains. The still-snowy spots on the winter landscape seemed fluorescent in the moonlight.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Diane said.

  “Yeah.”

  “About Hannah.”

  I wasn’t at all surprised. Diane and I had talked about Hannah a dozen or more times since her death. We’d do it a dozen more, and maybe a dozen more after that. My friend liked to process out loud, and Hannah’s death continued to haunt her.

  “These things take time, Diane. They just do. This time of year especially, you know. The holidays make it harder.”

  She sighed. “That’s not what I mean.”

  I stuffed my repertoire of grief platitudes back into storage and said, “Okay.”

  “What if this is why she died? Because she met with Mallory Miller. What if somebody killed Hannah because she met with the kid that one time?”

  “I’m… listening.”

  “Don’t use that voice. I hate that voice. You think I’m crazy? Tell me this didn’t cross your mind.”

  “I can honestly say it didn’t cross my mind.” It had-briefly-but I wasn’t about to admit it and inadvertently provide monster chow for the dragons inhabiting Diane’s cave of paranoia.

  “Hannah might have been murdered, right? That’s a possibility?” Diane’s tone was hoarse, slightly conspiratorial. I couldn’t figure out why.

  “Are you at home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “I don’t know. This is the sort of thing people whisper about, isn’t it?”

  “Okay, just wondering.”

  “Now answer me.” She was still almost whispering. “It’s a possibility that Hannah was murdered, right?”

  “Yeah.” The coroner’s finding on manner of death was “undetermined.” That conclusion didn’t mean Hannah had been murdered, nor did it mean that she hadn’t been murdered. We both knew Diane had her own hypothesis on the matter.

  She spelled out her theory for me anyway. “Slocum hasn’t been able to identify a motive to support a conclusion of homicide, right?”

  “Yeah.” I could graciously grant Diane the motive argument, fully cognizant that Slocum hadn’t been able to identify means or opportunity, either. He was 0-for-3.

  “Well, what if this was the motive? Something Mallory told Hannah. Someth
ing that needed to stay secret.”

  I tried to imagine some possibilities. Couldn’t. The time frame seemed wrong. Hannah had died over a week before Mallory disappeared.

  “Like?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I thought you would have… an idea. This is your bailiwick, not mine.”

  Bailiwick? I was hoping it wasn’t a new companion word to holy moly. Regardless, Diane was doomed to be disappointed by the sparse contents of my bailiwick. I didn’t have any theory about the secret that Mallory might have shared with Hannah.

  From the bathroom Lauren called out, “Check the stove for me, sweetie. I have something cooking.”

  I inhaled, and followed the tantalizing aroma of spicy hot cider all the way to the kitchen. A cinnamon stick and some cloves were floating in a steaming apple brew. Lauren had been preparing a treat for us when the phone rang. I shut off the gas to the burner but stayed close by so the steam would rise toward my face.

  Diane wasn’t patient about the delay. “You still there?” she asked.

  “I’m thinking.” What I was thinking about was whether I should add some good whiskey or a dollop of rum to my cup of hot cider.

  “You done yet?”

  I said, “Maybe if Hannah had died after Mallory disappeared, it might make some sense to wander down this road. But Hannah died first. And that was over a week before Mallory disappeared.”

  “You think I’m crazy.”

  It wasn’t a question. “No crazier than I thought you were before you called.”

  “Funny.”

  “Based on what you told me there was nothing incendiary about the session. Nothing worth killing Hannah over.”

  “She said her father was ‘up to something.’ Remember?”

  “But the question is what? She may have meant that he wanted her to take up the viola, or change schools, or get braces. Who knows? Hannah didn’t spell it out.”

  “I expected you to be more helpful, Alan.”

  No doubt because this is my bailiwick. I said, “Sorry.”

  “You don’t want to do this, do you?” she asked.

  Her question wasn’t an accusation. Diane was belatedly recognizing my resistance to be involved with anything that had to do with Boulder’s latest missing girl.

  “No, I don’t. But I will.”

  “Is it because of Grace?”

  “I’m sure that’s part of it.”

  “What then?”

  “I’m working on that. I don’t like the parallels to eight years ago. The whole thing is creepy. I’m a father now, it’s…” I could have just admitted that I wasn’t working on it very hard, but Diane wouldn’t have let me off the hook. The truth was that I wanted the whole Mallory Miller thing to go away.

  She softened. “Think about it, please. See if anything jumps out at you. Can you at least do that?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I can do that.”

  Grace was in fresh jammies, Lauren was swathed in soft flannel, her slender feet cushioned in sheepskin Uggs, and the mug of hot cider, with a little bourbon, was warming my hands. The three of us sat together on the couch in the living room and read bedtime stories about little girls and flowers, and dogs and friends.

  Grace cackled and giggled and was delighted at the pages.

  I held my daughter a little tighter than usual as Lauren’s late-day gravelly voice soothed us all.

  I waited until Grace was in bed and Lauren was settled into the soothing rhythms of a game of pool in what-had we possessed a table and chairs instead of a tournament-quality pool table-should have been the dining room, before I went downstairs and climbed on the road bike that I’d set up for indoor workouts in the basement. I warmed up quickly, maybe too quickly, and soon had my spin up where I wanted.

  If a girl, I wondered, a fourteen-year-old girl, had shown up in my waiting room wanting an emergency appointment, what would I have done?

  Mallory had probably told Hannah it was “important,” or something similar. I didn’t know a therapist, myself included, who wouldn’t have listened to what she had to say. Why? “Important” could have meant she wanted to report abuse. And if a kid wants to report abuse, it’s the responsibility of adults, especially mental health professionals, to bend over backward to listen.

  I also wondered whether Hannah had made the connection between the teenager in her office and the little girl she might have seen in her waiting room ten years or so before. Had Mallory said anything to remind her?

  Remember me? I’m Mallory.

  I tried to put myself in the same circumstances. Would I remember a kid so many years later? Would I even recognize that it was the same kid?

  I didn’t think I would. Miller is a common name. Sometimes my friends’ kids changed so much in only a couple of years that I hardly recognized them. Adrienne’s son Jonas had grown so much in the past year that he looked like a completely different child. Sam’s son Simon had gone from little boy to man-child, it seemed, in weeks.

  Even if Hannah had remembered the small child she had befriended in the waiting room, the memory wouldn’t have given her many clues. Hannah would have no reason to know anything about the details of Mary Black’s care of Rachel Miller.

  But why was Mallory so vague about her concerns about her father?

  That was my most troubling question: Why would a girl insist on a session with a therapist and then be vague about what was happening at home?

  I made some assumptions about the session that I thought were safe.

  Hannah would have asked Mallory directly about drug use, specifically about alcohol. Hannah hadn’t told Diane about any concerns with substance abuse, so apparently she felt satisfied with whatever answer she’d received from Mallory.

  Given that Mallory had revealed her mother’s history of mental illness, I suspected that Hannah had directly or indirectly done some version of a mental status exam during the interview to see if what afflicted mother might also be afflicting her progeny. Had Mallory passed?

  I didn’t know that. Probably. But there were plenty of unknowns.

  I listened for a moment to the sharp cracks and gentle taps that punctuated Lauren’s pool playing. Returning my attention to the bike, I reminded myself that I was doing a lot of speculating.

  Mallory had said her father was “up to something.”

  But what had he been up to?

  Was it related to Mallory’s anxiety about the holidays?

  And why had Mallory chosen that day to sit in the waiting room to see Hannah? A great question.

  I didn’t have a great answer, or even a good one.

  16

  Coloradans don’t tolerate gray skies with any equanimity.

  Other weather we endure. Gray skies, no.

  On the high desert landscape where the Great Plains rise into the Front Range of the Rockies, we live through the often relentless heat of June and July with little complaint, reassuring each other that even though it’s 103 degrees outside, at least it’s a dry heat.

  Our once-a-decade oh-my-God blizzards, or our annual winter cold snaps of day-after-day temperatures below zero and wind chills that feel arctic? Most of us write them off as the price of living in close proximity to the best skiing on the planet.

  The hundred-mile-an-hour winter Chinooks blowing out of the mountains in January and February? Hey, lean into it, it’s only a little wind.

  Golf-ball-size hail? Fierce summer thunderstorms? We live in a desert. We need the moisture.

  But the absence of sunshine?

  After two consecutive overcast days the grumbling begins, everyone’s temper shortens, traffic cops stop giving warnings, and people aren’t quite as nice to their dogs. Add a third or, God forbid, a fourth day of concrete-colored skies, and most of the state’s residents, especially the natives, begin to wonder for what it is they’re being punished. A few furtively check their IDs to see if they’ve been magically relocated to Seattle or Cleveland or Buffalo or some other sunshine-deprived location a
s penance for an obviously serious transgression against humanity.

  It’s not that it’s always sunny here. But I have to admit that it feels like it’s always sunny here. The tourist board throws around statistics: We have 300-plus days of sunshine each year, we’re sunnier than San Diego, much sunnier than Miami. I don’t know if any of it’s true. But I do know that the reality is that in Colorado I awaken every morning expecting to see the sun for a healthy chunk of the day.

  One day of gray is disappointing. Two days in a row becomes a mini-crisis.

  Anything more is cause for alarm.

  Once the sun had set on Diane and me as we walked the Mall sharing our secrets about the Miller family, the rest of that week between Christmas and New Year’s-the week after Mallory disappeared-was meteorologically bleak. Thursday brought constant flurries under steely skies. Friday taunted-the sun’s silhouette was occasionally visible behind quickly passing clouds, but warming rays never reached the ground in a way that left behind even a hint of a shadow. Saturday, snow flurries fell intermittently all day long, icy winds howled from Wyoming, and by nightfall downy drifts began to cushion the bases of fences and the low sections of walls that dared to face north.

  The sun had disappeared from our state-probably forever-it seemed.

  A googol of reporters was camped out in Boulder, still expecting-or, God forbid, hoping for-a garroted body to emerge from a Boulder basement.

  But Mallory Miller stayed stubbornly missing.

  I was getting dragged into the riddle of her absence further and further.

  Everybody was cranky.