Julia Phillips - Disappearing Earth

“You don’t,” she said.

The photographer paused to choose his next words. “Listen, did Alla Innokentevna tell you what Lilia looked like?” Marina shook her head. “She was older than your daughters,” the photographer said, “but short. Small. She was eighteen but she looked younger. I…wonder if someone might have hurt her. She could’ve run away herself, but she wouldn’t have stayed away like this, I think, so long.”

Marina worked on the muscles in her mouth. The tent’s plastic rustled under her weight.

“You think he did something to her?” she asked.

“He could have. He might have.”

“Have you reported this to the police?”

“The police didn’t pay any attention to Lilia. Anyway, there was never anything to report. Only suspicion. He’s creepy. But then—”

“I mean about my daughters,” she said. “The car.”

“I just— No.” His forehead wrinkled. “I didn’t know about any car.”

She slit her eyes at him. His anxious face, his bent knees. “You just said—”

“Those pictures you showed us, I’ve seen those before. There were posters up here with their faces. But I never put them together with her. There was no…I’ve never heard about any kidnapper.”

She closed her lips. Then she said, “What do you mean, never heard?”

“The posters said two Russian girls in the city were missing. Nothing else.”

Did no call for a kidnapper ever go out through the peninsula? What had the police been doing all this time? By winter, Marina knew, authorities were already turning their attention toward custody battles, or swimming accidents, or trafficking off Kamchatka. But before that? When had the major general first discounted their witness? Was it in the first weeks of the investigation? The first days?

“I never heard about some man who took the girls away in a black car,” the photographer said.

“Black or blue,” Marina said. Her head was back down.

Music filtered through the trees. The sound of the river. “I can take you to see him,” the photographer said. “Yegor’s house is twenty minutes away. We can drive there.”

“You want me to go driving alone with you.”

The photographer flushed and sat back on his heels. “No, I’m not— I understand. You’re thinking of your daughters? So am I. I’m not trying to get you in a car alone.” He was short-haired, solid, very young. “You can bring your friends. We can do whatever you like.”

Around them, the cheers from the marathon. Marina evaluated the photographer. Eager as he was, he seemed genuine, someone sincere. Certain.

The major general, telling her the girls drowned, hadn’t looked so sure of himself. “All right,” Marina said. The photographer stood and held out a hand to help her up. She reached backward for her phone, tucked it into her pocket, and followed.

At the edge of the clearing, Eva and Petya met them. Petya had his arm around Eva’s shoulders. “What’s going on?” Eva said. “Petya told me the Esso reporter upset you. Do I owe you an apology?”

The drizzle was starting up again. Where the evening sun should have been, at the base of the sky, was only a bleary white spot. Marina introduced them to the photographer, who said, “I’m Sergei Adukanov. Call me Chegga. I was telling your friend—”

“Chegga lives here,” Marina said. “He knows a man with a big black car.”

Eva’s face sharpened in the low light. Her muscles tightened enough to pull on her bones and make her eyes large. Sometimes Marina forgot, from Eva’s chatter about horror movies watched and festivals attended, that Eva, too, had loved Marina’s daughters. Marina almost wanted to give her own apology for offering this false hope now.

The photographer told the group about Yegor Gusakov. When he mentioned Alla Innokentevna’s daughter, Petya squinted. “One minute. Please. You think this has something to do with Alyona and Sophia?”

“Lilia looked younger than she was,” Chegga explained, “and this guy might be—”

“Did you just find out about this case?” Petya asked. “Because it’s very easy, when you first hear about it, to jump to conclusions. But when you actually know the people involved, and when you see the steps of the investigation, you understand this is not so simple to solve.”

The photographer chewed on his cheeks. “I understand that. I’m not naïve.”

Petya turned to Marina. “You need to protect yourself. This sounds like village gossip.”

“Maybe,” Marina said. “So I want to ask Alla Innokentevna for the truth.”

Couples still danced on the stage. Their arms waved in the air to the beat. As her group crossed the grass clearing, Marina counted the kilometers between Esso and Petropavlovsk, the number of seats in a Toyota SUV. Could someone have driven from the city to here without notice? The roads did empty outside city limits. She saw that yesterday. And after he took the girls in the late afternoon, he would have driven into the night, unseen…and if he had carried extra fuel cans in his trunk, instead of stopping at a gas station, he could’ve gone the whole way without talking to anyone…

But the police must have searched the villages. They told Marina they looked everywhere.

But Chegga said he hadn’t talked with any officers. He had never heard a description of the kidnapper before. To recover the girls, the city authorities only sent out posters with Alyona’s and Sophia’s photos and birth dates. Alla Innokentevna had warned Marina to expect this: To stop us, the police say many things…

But it should not have mattered if the details coming out of Petropavlovsk’s headquarters were false. Marina herself had called the Esso police station in August. She had called every regional branch on the peninsula. They told her then they had no record of any kidnappings or lost children.

But Marina did not ask them about any eighteen-year-old they presumed had left home.

Behind the stage, in damp shadow, they found the organizer talking to a younger woman. “Alla Innokentevna,” Chegga called. “Forgive us for interrupting.”

The organizer frowned from him to Eva to Marina. “Go ahead.”

Hours earlier, Alla Innokentevna had said she would take any questions. She had dipped close to Marina to offer her assistance and request help. And it had taken Marina all day, all this terrible year, to understand what to ask for. Marina said, “Would you tell me what really happened with your daughter? With Lilia?”

The younger woman next to the organizer flinched. She wore no glasses, and her skin was unlined, but she looked like Alla Innokentevna—the same full lips and rounded jawline. Alla Innokentevna took her by the arm and said, “Don’t get into it, Tasha.”

“The police told you she ran away, correct?” Marina said. “They told me my daughters must have been lost while swimming. But someone else saw them climb into a car with a man that day—a big, dark, shiny car.”

“You’re the Golosovskaya girls’ mother,” the younger woman said.

“Alla Innokentevna, did you know Yegor Gusakov bought himself a nice car a few winters ago? A large black one?” Chegga asked.

The younger woman said, “Who? Which Yegor?”

Alla Innokentevna’s eyebrows were high. She kept her hand tight on the younger woman’s elbow. “You wouldn’t know him. He finished school between Denis and Lilia. He lives toward Anavgai…You’re joking,” Alla Innokentevna said to Marina. “This is the favor you want from me? To chase down this boy?”

“I’m coming to you to ask for information.”

“Information.”

“About this man. What this man might have done.”

Alla Innokentevna turned to the photographer. “Is your mother in the village or out with the herd now? What would she think, to see you mislead someone in this way?”