David Bell - Cemetery Girl

She wanted a response, so I provided one. “That must be tough,” I said.

Tracy nodded as though my words carried some eternal truth. “It is. It sure as hell is.”

Most of the twenty-year-olds I interacted with at the university came from privileged backgrounds and were often more worldly and widely traveled than I was. Tracy didn’t have that life. She didn’t spend her winters in Vail or her summers in Can-cun. More likely, she spent her whole life in the counties surrounding New Cambridge, and she’d carry the rough features and country accent common among locals with her the rest of her life, markers of who she was.

“What’s your little girl like?” Tracy asked.

“Tracy-”

“I want to know, Liann, that’s all. I’m curious.”

“It’s okay,” I said to Liann. “I don’t mind.”

But then I felt stuck. Four years of interviews with cops and reporters, four years of encapsulating Caitlin for flyers and Web sites. I never felt able to adequately sum her up so someone who didn’t know my daughter would recognize her. And I couldn’t help but wonder: would the picture I created of the twelve-year-old who walked out the door that day bear any resemblance to the sixteen-year-old young woman I hoped she lived to become?

“She’s smart,” I said. “Really smart.”

“You’re a professor at the college, right?”

“Yes.”

“Figures she’d be smart then.”

“She’s kind of quiet, too. She kept to herself a lot.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Yes. She has blond hair, very blond. And her eyes were-are-blue. Bluer than yours even.”

Tracy smiled, and I couldn’t help but think I was looking into the face of some older version of Caitlin, the one who never came home.

The bartender, Pete, came by carrying two cases of beer. His biceps pressed against his shirt like cannonballs.

“You’re almost on shift, Tracy.”

“Fuck off, Pete.”

Pete sighed and kept walking.

Tracy waited until he was gone, then leaned in and stubbed out her cigarette.

“I saw your little girl once. At the Love Shack.”

Despite the club soda, my mouth felt dry. I didn’t say anything; I didn’t move, not wanting to create a vibration that might prevent her from telling me what I needed to know. Instead, I sat perfectly still while an icy sensation grew beneath my shirt collar and spread down my back. I waited.

Tracy dug into her pack and lit another cigarette.

“This was about six months ago, about six months after you came in there showing that picture around. Do you still have that picture with you?”

“Tracy, tell him the story, just like you told me,” Liann said.

Tracy glanced at Liann and nodded, looking a little like a chastened teenager. She flicked her ash onto the floor.

“It was a regular night, just any old night. I don’t remember what day of the week it was. Probably not a weekend since we weren’t that crowded. This guy came up to me and said he wanted to buy a lap dance. I told him, ‘Twenty dollars,’ and he said, ‘Sure,’ like it was no problem with the price. Some of them come in there and try to get the price down, or else they’re real careful how they ask because they’re hoping they’re going to get something more than a lap dance. They say, ‘Twenty dollars to go back there with you,’ you know, because they’re thinking if they don’t specify we might go back there and do something besides the lap dance. Something extra.” She shook her head. “They didn’t let us do that at the Love Shack. No way.

“At the Love Shack they have little rooms off to the side, three of them. That’s where we went for the lap dances. They weren’t much bigger than closets really, but there were those vinyl bench seats built into the wall, and usually another chair just sitting there in the room. Sometimes we got guys who came in who were shy, and they’d sit in the chair for a while, waiting. We’d let them do that for a little bit, but not too long. If they didn’t hurry up, they needed to go. There was money to be made.”

Tracy stared at the table and picked at a chip in the Formica. “Anyway, I went behind the curtain and into room number three to wait for the guy. I got kind of a bad vibe from him, just the way he talked and handed over the money.”

“What kind of bad vibe?” I asked.

She looked away. “I don’t know. Some guys I can tell are just going to be relaxed and easygoing. Regular guys who are just doing this for fun.” She kind of smiled, as though thinking of a distant but pleasant memory. But the smile passed quickly, and she looked back at me. “But there are other types. I know all about them. They have something else on their mind. Do you know what that is?”

She seemed to be waiting for an answer, so I provided one.

“Sex?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I wish.” She shook her head again. “No, these guys want to hurt somebody. Girls, mainly. They want to control a girl or clamp down on her. They want to use her for something, overpower them.”

“Did this man hurt you?” I asked.

“He came into room three,” she said, “where I was waiting. He was older, in his fifties probably. His hair was kind of long and greasy, and it was going gray. He was ugly. His nose was wide and fat, his skin was kind of puffy. He looked right at me and came over to the bench, and I almost just gave him his money back right there and told him to forget it. We have bouncers and everything. They listen for trouble, and they’re good, but being in the room with that guy made my skin crawl.” She shivered just thinking about it, and I assumed her feeling was a cousin to the icy sensation that still possessed my body. “Then I saw the girl behind him.”

“Caitlin?” I asked.

She nodded.

Liann reached over and placed her hand on top of mine. She didn’t say anything, and while her touch felt warm, it brought no real comfort.

“I’ve danced for couples before,” Tracy said. “Plenty of times. It wasn’t that weird. But I’d never danced for a couple like that. At first I thought maybe they were father and daughter. Hell, maybe he was her grandfather. But then he reached out and took her hand and pulled her close, and I got it. I understood what was going on between them two. They were a couple.”

“Tom?” Liann asked. “Are you okay? Are you going to be sick?”

I didn’t know. I didn’t answer. But I did feel like I was coming down with something. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep everything down, if the beer and greasy food was going to come pouring back out of me in a hot, messy rush.

Liann was up and almost immediately came back with another cup of club soda. The sickness eased; my temperature regulated.

“Do you want to stop, Tom?” Liann asked. “We can do this another day.”

I shook my head.

“I know it’s hard to hear,” Tracy said, although she didn’t sound all that sympathetic.

“Why didn’t you tell this to the police back then?” I asked. “Why are you telling us this now?”

Liann stepped in. “Tracy didn’t make the connection until she saw the stories and the picture in the paper this week, the stories about Caitlin’s service. When she saw them, she called me. Like Tracy said, I’ve helped her out before when she’s had a little trouble. And some other members of her family as well. It was no big deal, just kid stuff. She’s over that now, though.” Liann reached out and placed that comforting, motherly hand on Tracy’s arm again. “She trusts me.”

“You remembered Caitlin all that time later?” I asked Tracy. “You recognized her picture in the paper?”

“I’d seen you before,” she said. “And then. .” Her voice trailed off.