Dennis Lehane - Moonlight Mile

Brian Corliss lived in Reading on a maple-lined street with wide white sidewalks and lawns that looked like they shaved twice a day. It was a solidly middle-class section of town, leaning toward upper maybe, but not to an elitist degree. The garages were two-car, not four, and the cars were Audis and 4Runner Limiteds, not Lexuses and BMW 740s. All the houses looked well cared for, and all were adorned with Christmas lights and decorations. None more so than the Corliss house, a white Colonial with black shutters and window trim, a black front door. White icicle lights dripped from the gutters, porch posts, and railings. A wreath as big as the sun hung above the garage door. In front of the bushes on the front lawn stood a manger replica and figures of the three kings, Mary, Joseph, and a menagerie of animals arrayed around an empty cradle. To their right stood a somewhat incongruous menagerie of snowmen, elves, reindeer, Santa and Mrs. Claus, and a leering Grinch. On the roof, a sled sat by the chimney and more lights spelled out MERRY CHRISTMAS. The mailbox post was a candy cane.

When we pulled up the driveway, Brian was in his garage, unloading groceries from the back of an Infiniti SUV. He greeted us with a wave and a smile as open as a heartland prairie. He was a trim man who wore a denim Oxford unbuttoned over a white T tucked into a pair of sharply pressed khakis. His canvas safari jacket was maroon with a black leather collar. He was in his mid-forties and looked to be in exceptional shape. This made sense, because he’d made his living the last ten years first as a fitness trainer and then as a fitness guru. He traveled New England speaking to small companies about how they could raise their productivity by getting their employees into better shape. He’d even written a book, Lose the Fat and All That, which had become a local bestseller for a few weeks, and a cursory study of his Web sites (he had three) and his autobiography suggested he hadn’t neared his career ceiling yet. He shook our hands, not overdoing the grip the way a lot of workout fiends do, and thanked us for coming and apologized for not being able to meet us halfway.

“It’s just the city traffic, you know? After two, forget about it. But I mentioned it to Donna and she said, ‘But won’t the detectives have to drive back in that same traffic?’ ”

“Donna’s your wife?”

He nodded. “She had a point. So I feel guilty.”

“But we’re imposing on you,” I said.

He waved that off. “You’re not imposing at all. If you can help bring my daughter back to me, you’re most definitely not imposing.”

He lifted a grocery bag off the floor of the garage. There were six of them, and I reached for two. Angie took two more.

“Oh, no,” he said. “I can get them.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Angie said. “It’s the least we can do.”

“Jeesh,” he said. “You’re very kind. Thank you.”

He closed the hatch of the Infiniti and I was mildly surprised to see one of those moronic 9/11 Terrorist Hunting Permit decals on the rear window. I suppose I should have felt safer knowing that if Bin Laden dropped by to borrow a cup of sugar, Brian Corliss was ready to put out his lights for America, but mostly I just felt annoyed that the thousands who had died on September 11 were being exploited for a dumb fucking decal. Before my mouth could get me into trouble, though, we were following Brian Corliss up the path to the black front door and entering his two-hundred-year-old house.

We stood by the granite kitchen counter as he unloaded the groceries into the fridge and cabinets. The first floor had been gut-remodeled so recently you could smell the sawdust. Two hundred years ago, I doubt the builder had seen the need to go with the sunken living room or the pressed copper ceiling in the dining room or the Sub-Zero in the kitchen. All the window frames were new and uniform eggshell. Even so, the house had a mismatched feel. The living room was white on white-white couch, white throw rugs, off-white fireplace mantel, ash-white logs in the ivory metal log basket, a huge white Christmas tree towering over it all from a corner. The kitchen was dark-cherrywood cabinets and dark granite counters and black granite backsplash. Even the Sub-Zero and the chimney hood above the stove were black. The dining room was Danish Modern, a clean, blond hard-edged table surrounded by hard-edged high-backed chairs. The ultimate effect was of a house that had been furnished from too many catalogs.

Framed pictures of Brian Corliss and a blond woman and a blond boy sat on the mantel, on the shelves of a credenza, on top of the fridge. Collages of them hung on the walls. You could follow the boy’s growth from birth to what looked like four. The blond woman was Donna, I assumed. She was attractive the way sports bar hostesses and pharmaceutical reps are-hair the color of rum and lots of it, teeth as bright as Bermuda. She had the look of a woman who kept her plastic surgeon on speed dial. Her breasts were prominently displayed in most of the photos and looked like perfect softballs made of flesh. Her forehead was unlined in the way of the recently embalmed and her smile resembled that of someone undergoing electroshock. In a couple of the photos-just a couple-stood a dark-haired girl with anxious eyes and an unsure, fleshy chin: Sophie.

“When was the last time you saw her?” I asked.

“It’s been a few months.”

Angie and I looked across the counter at him.

He held up both palms. “I know, I know. But there were extenuating…” He grimaced and then smiled. “Let’s just say parenting is not easy. You have any kids?”

“One,” I said. “Daughter.”

“How old?”

“Four.”

“Little child,” he said, “little problems. Big child, big problems.” He looked across the counter at Angie. “And you, miss?”

“We’re married.” Angie tilted her head toward me. “Same four-year-old.”

That seemed to please him. He smiled to himself and hummed under his breath as he put a dozen eggs and a half-gallon of skim milk into the fridge.

“She was such a happy child.” He finished emptying the bag and folded it neatly before putting it under the counter. “A joy every day. I fully admit I was unprepared for the day she turned into such a Sullen Sally.”

“And what turned her into… that?” Angie asked.

He peered at the eggplant he pulled from the next bag, frozen for a moment. “Her mom,” he said. “God rest her. But, yes, she…” He looked up from the eggplant as if surprised to find us there. “She left.”

“How old was Sophie when she left?”

“Well, she left with Sophie.”

“So, she left you. She didn’t leave Sophie.” Angie glanced at me. “I’m a little lost, Brian.”

Brian put the eggplant into the crisper drawer. “I regained custody when Sophie was ten. She-this is hard-Sophie’s mother? She developed a chemical dependency. First on Vicodin, then on OxyContin. She stopped acting like a responsible adult. Then she left me and went to live with someone else. And they created a wholly unfit environment for a child to grow up in, believe me.” He looked at both of us, waiting, it appeared, for an indication of agreement.

I gave him my best empathetic nod and commiserating gaze.

“So I sued for custody,” he said, “and eventually I won.”

“How many years was Sophie with her mother before that?” Angie asked.

“Three.”

“Three…”

“Sophie’s mother was addicted to painkillers throughout that time?” I asked.

“Eventually. I mean, she stopped, or claimed she did. For the full three years.”

“So what created the unsafe environment?”

He gave us a warm smile. “Nothing I feel comfortable discussing right now.”