Laura Lippman - Every Secret Thing

Plus, television kept the missing girl in play all day long, while the newspaper was a one-shot deal at best. Every local station had shown the photo on the ten and eleven o’clock newscasts and were now using it on their Saturday morning news shows every half hour. Nancy could tell how often the morning television shows were cycling by the pattern of the phone calls. The girl’s picture would pop up on Channel 2 or 11 or 13-just the picture, and an explanation that she had been missing since she “wandered off” in Westview Friday evening-and a few minutes later the phone would ring the double staccato chime that indicated it was being forwarded from the 911 communications center. The public didn’t realize it, but the department gave out a seven-digit exchange for the com center in such cases, which meant that everyone who called ended up on the Caller ID log. So far, every tipster had been a lunatic. But it only took one, as Lenhardt liked to say. It only took one.

The phone rang just then, almost as if Nancy had willed it.

“Nancy Porter?”

“Yes?” This was odd. Her name wasn’t out there in connection with the case. Only Bonnie, the corporal, had gone on camera.

The woman on the line quickly answered the unspoken question. “I just spoke to your sergeant and he said I should speak to you. I have…information.”

Nancy sat at her desk, working her notepad from her purse, digging out a pen. “Can I ask your name?”

The caller ignored that question, racing ahead, eager to say her piece. “There is something I think you should know about the missing girl, Detective Porter. Something you would not be expected to know, but something I cannot help knowing. When you have this piece of information, I think it will change the way you are pursuing this matter.”

Jesus, Nancy thought, has this tight-ass woman ever heard of contractions?

“This is information that might not be meaningful to you, but it is meaningful to me, and it should be meaningful to you. It will be meaningful to you if you pay careful attention-”

Holy Christ. How had this one gotten past Lenhardt? She was clearly a well-intentioned wacko, some shut-in who yearned to find her place in the world by pretending to knowledge she didn’t have. Was Lenhardt playing a joke on Nancy or testing her?

“If you could get to the point, ma’am,” Nancy said as gently as possible.

“This is the way I get to the point,” the caller snapped. “My name is Cynthia Poole Barnes. And you will listen to me. You will absolutely listen to me, and everything I have to say.”

Cynthia had awakened that morning to the sound of a familiar song, one she heard almost every day now, at least twice a day. “I know you…” Rosalind was watching Sleeping Beauty again. She had watched it every day this summer until Cynthia had been forced to put her on a schedule-once in the morning, once in the afternoon, with no other television at all. She had thought that once Rosalind understood it was a choice between Sleeping Beauty and the rest of the television-video universe, she would choose to watch other things. But Rosalind was a monotheist straight from the womb. She wanted one toy, a stuffed bear, and one book, Grimm’s Fairy Tales . She also needed only one parent, but given that it was Mommy, Cynthia didn’t mind that so much.

And now Rosalind wanted this white-blond princess waltzing in the forest over and over again. The end of the film, which scared Cynthia to this day, did not intimidate Rosalind at all. The thorns grew over the castle, the dragon’s shadow filled the screen, yet Rosalind’s gaze remained locked on the set, unflinching and unwavering. She could watch without fear because she knew how it ended. She was equally blasé about the terrors in Grimm, whether it was Cinderella’s stepsisters mutilating their feet, or Rumpelstiltskin tearing himself in half from fury when the Queen guessed his name.

Cynthia looked at the clock-it was seven-thirty. Warren would be up and dressed, anxious to go to his golf game, but determined not to disturb Cynthia while she slept. She slipped on her robe and went downstairs, giving him permission to escape into the summer morning. There was something about her husband in golf clothes that made her want to cry, a combination of pride and irrelevance she could never explain. It had mattered so much, once upon a time, to get into Caves Valley. Then it mattered not at all.

Warren knew it, too, felt the loss as deeply as she did. She never doubted his grief, never claimed hers was any larger than his. But only one of them could withdraw from the world, and he had granted Cynthia that privilege. Warren still worked, and part of his work meant playing golf on Saturday mornings, putting on his spikes and his cheerful-lawyer face, heading out to oil the relationships that brought a steady stream of work into the firm. Cynthia would be the first to tell anyone who dared to ask that Warren, in some ways, had it harder than she did.

The thing was, no one ever dared to ask.

Yet he always felt guilty about leaving her on Saturday mornings, always looked abashed. Which was good, for it kept him from realizing on this particular Saturday how much she wanted to be alone. Cynthia didn’t want Warren around when she called the police.

But she wouldn’t call for several hours. To call so early would seem hysterical, suspect. She would wait until the local news stations had shown the photo again and again. And then she would call, feigning ignorance, pretending not to know or care who was assigned to the investigation under way.

It had taken Cynthia’s father less than an hour last night to put her in touch with Sergeant Lenhardt, who was still in the office at midnight, although he had sent his detectives home to prepare for the long day ahead, a day of interviews and field work, even if it was the Fourth of July. He had treated Cynthia with respect and kindness-she was the daughter of Judge Poole-and encouraged her to call the detectives directly.

“Nancy Porter,” he said. “Or Kevin Infante, who’s the primary on the case. But if you’d rather deal with Nancy -well, that’s okay.”

“And why would I rather deal with Nancy?” She knew, of course. Some things are never forgotten. But she was curious whether this sergeant knew as well. Cynthia had a weakness for wanting to know how much others knew about her, the strange attraction-repulsion that gossips, even reformed ones, often feel toward gossip. She dreaded the idea that people might be talking about her. She dreaded the idea that they weren’t.

“I don’t know,” the cautious sergeant said, leaving a space for her to fill, if she so chose. When Cynthia volunteered nothing, he added: “Women like talking to women sometimes, in my experience. They’re both good detectives, they’ll hear you out. They’ll want to know what you know.”

“Why don’t you tell them what I’ve told you? Why do I need to call them at all?”

Now it was his turn to be evasive, to wait out a silence. But the seconds ticked by, with neither speaking, and it was the sergeant who finally broke.

“If you call Nancy-or Detective Infante-then it’s a lead they’ve developed. If it comes from me, they’ll feel second-guessed.”

Plausible, Cynthia thought. But the very fact that she found it “plausible” marked it for the half-truth it probably was. The sergeant wasn’t telling her everything. Which was only fair, as she had not told him close to everything.

So she sat in her kitchen on Saturday, waiting for the morning hours to tick by, waiting for Sleeping Beauty to follow the arc of her destiny, from privileged birth to a date with a spindle to the deathlike sleep from which only true love could wake her. She heard all this because the nursery was still equipped with a baby monitor, which was on all the time. If only Tanika, upstairs on the phone, had remembered to turn it on that day, as Cynthia thought of it. That day, the only day. If only Tanika, hearing the phone ring, had remembered there was one in the kitchen, hadn’t dashed up the stairs to grab the extension in Cynthia’s room. If only she had remembered on which side of the door she had parked the carriage-or hadn’t lied about it later, hadn’t sworn to the skies that Olivia was inside the house, behind the latched screen door. The girl’s clumsy lies, told to cover up her mistakes, had only slowed down the investigation and sent detectives scrambling in the wrong direction.