Christian White - The Nowhere Child

I parked the car and followed a narrow dirt track into the bush. Pine needles crunched underfoot. Although I couldn’t yet see the river through the trees, the bush was alive with the sound of churning rapids, and the air was wet with spray.

The trees arched and parted the closer I got to the river, finally peeling back to reveal a wide landscape, stunning and simmering. I stood looking over the rapids for longer than I intended, wondering what doors I would open by meeting with James Finn again. He had agreed to have lunch with me, and I wasn’t the least bit prepared. I felt mentally off-balance; one nudge from the odd American accountant could send me toppling. Yet what choice did I have but to hear him out?

A lone fisherman was sitting on an outcrop of rocks on the opposite bank. He stood up suddenly, started reeling in his rod excitedly. When he saw his line was empty he deflated, tossed it back into the water and sat back down to wait.

James was waiting at a table near the back of the cafe, nursing a cup of tea and reading from a Kindle. He looked every bit as cold and wooden as when we first met.

‘I’m glad you came,’ he said when he saw me.

‘ That’s what she said ,’ Dean would have answered, unable to resist the opportunity. It hurt to think of my stepdad, to wonder what he might think about me investigating his dearly departed wife for kidnapping.

I ordered a coffee and we looked awkwardly at menus, even though the last thing in the world I felt like doing was eating.

‘Claire won’t let me drink coffee,’ James said. ‘That’s my wife. She knows how wired it makes me. Hence the tea.’

‘She’s not out here with you?’

‘She’s keeping the home fires burning.’

I opened the menu, pretended to read it, then closed it again. ‘I feel like I should tell you up front that just because I’m here, doesn’t mean I believe you.’

‘Understood.’

‘What I’m saying is my mother’s name is on my birth certificate. And I think I would have noticed if she spoke in an American accent.’

‘Yet you’re here,’ he said flatly. ‘And for the record, accents can be faked just as easily as birth certificates.’

‘Why are you doing this, exactly?’

‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I believe you’re—’

‘Sammy Went, I know. But why are you so interested in her? What’s your angle, I mean? It was nearly thirty years ago. Do you moonlight as a private investigator?’

‘Armchair sleuth is probably more accurate,’ he said. His fingers drummed restlessly on the table. Up until now he had been nothing but confident, measured and a tad robotic. Now he seemed awkward, nervous and a tad human . ‘Like I said, I know the Went family. I was in Manson when it happened. Sammy’s disappearance just sort of … stuck with me.’

My coffee arrived.

‘How did you find me?’ I asked.

‘Let me show you.’ He took a small backpack from the seat beside him and pulled out a manila folder. It was marked, Leamy, Kimberly .

He opened the file and handed me a picture of a face with ghostly hollow eyes and a vaguely familiar expression. It wasn’t a photograph or a drawing, but something in between: an artist’s 3D composite showing a woman with dark hair, a long nose and tightly drawn, lifeless lips. At the bottom of the page was printed, Sammy Went, predicted age 25–30 .

‘I commissioned a forensic composite artist to mock that up,’ James said. ‘Based on Sammy’s appearance and family background they determined that this is what she might look like today.’

The composite looked abstractly like me, but if I had committed a crime and police were relying on it to track me down, I could take my time fleeing to New Zealand.

‘I ran that composite through a dozen facial recognition programs comparing it to millions of images online. I got a little over seven thousand hits. I went through each one, narrowed that list down to around nine hundred, and then investigated each one.’

‘That must have taken you forever.’

‘My mother used to say I have the patience of Job,’ he said. ‘The sketch matched with a photo you were tagged in on Facebook, which led me to where you teach. I thought about sending you an email, but I had a feeling about you. A hunch.’

‘It’s a long way to come for a hunch,’ I said. ‘And this is hardly proof . You said it yourself; there were nine hundred faces on your list. And even if what you’re saying is true, wouldn’t I remember something?’

‘Maybe you do,’ he said. ‘Have you ever heard of decay theory?’

‘No.’

‘So, imagine that when a memory is formed, the brain creates a neurochemical trace, so that when you need to, you can retrieve it. Think of it as a big red thread that starts in your consciousness and weaves deep into your mind. When you want to recall a particular memory, you tug on the thread and up it comes.’

As a demonstration, he raised and lowered the teabag in his cup. ‘Simple. Makes sense. But Decay theory suggests that when a particular memory isn’t retrieved over a long enough time period, the thread fades and weakens, and eventually …’ He drew the teabag from his cup and snapped the string in half. The bag disappeared beneath the milky tea. ‘When the thread is broken, the memory just floats around in your brain, untethered, unanchored. You might not think you remember being a little girl in Kentucky, but that little girl might still be up there, in your mind. Maybe she’s figured out how to reach you. Maybe that’s why you’re here.’

I pictured Sammy Went sitting in the middle of a vast black void where all the lost memories find themselves. A red string was tied around her waist, but the other end was slack. She tugged and tugged at the thread, but every time it came back empty, like the fisherman at Dights Falls.

‘That’s not why I’m here,’ I said.

He nodded, tapped the manila folder twice. ‘I know. You’re here to see proof. The smoking gun. Mind if I use the bathroom first?’

While he was gone I stared at my name on the manila folder. He had left it conspicuously on the table. Did he want me to read it myself? If he was right about it containing the smoking gun, then denial might no longer be a viable option.

Ignoring the file for now, I had a snoop through his Kindle instead. In my experience, a bookshelf – digital or otherwise – usually painted a pretty clear picture of the person who stacked it.

Most of the books in James Finn’s digital bookshelf were non-fiction; some history, some war, but mostly true crime. Some of these I recognised – Ann Rule’s The Stranger Beside Me , John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood – but there were plenty more I didn’t. There were books about political assassinations, mafia-related crime, celebrity murders, cold cases, serial killings and, surprise, surprise, child abductions.

Oddly enough, seeing all this darkness relaxed me. James’s bookshelf had betrayed him as an armchair sleuth with a macabre curiosity for crime.

Unless …

Scanning fast for Sammy Went’s name, I wondered if he was secretly a crime writer himself. The awkward, cranky demeanour certainly fit. Maybe he was writing a book about Sammy Went and I was his third act.

When James returned from the bathroom he took a deep breath before sitting back down. ‘You ready?’

He opened his backpack. Inside were police reports, maps and files. As he fished through the bag he took out a stack of documents to make room. Sitting at the top of a pile was a list of names under the heading Sex Offenders in Manson and Surrounding Counties . About a third of the names were crossed off, which I assumed meant James had eliminated them as suspects. Others were underlined or circled.