Stephen Dixon - Frog

He starts up the driveway. “You should wait for them here,” Kaden says from the porch. “Or they’ll meet you at your place, Pollard told me to tell you. But they’re on their way. You’ve got a number of serious complaints against you, sir. You’d better get yourself a good lawyer — one who’ll be able to get you off with only a few years, for you can be certain I’ll see that you’re charged with everything that can be thrown at you. For slander, trespassing, verbal intimidation, assaulting Miss Reinekin, barging into a private home and tossing the occupants around like an ape. Whatever you’ve gone through and are going through, you can’t do these things to people because of it. You have — it gives you — no moral license to, do you understand that, sir? No, you wouldn’t.”

Drives home, Pollard’s waiting for him there, is arrested, taken to the police station, jailed overnight, state’s attorney and detectives question him the next day, released on is own recognizance, search continues, he drinks himself to sleep every night, Denise is on medication for a while, search is ended, woman’s exonerated, he’s indicted for the disappearance of Olivia, Kaden never presses charges, Miss Reinekin drops hers, he asks for a lie detector test and passes it unqualifiedly, he asks to be hypnotized by a court-appointed hypnotist and is told his story didn’t change one iota from the one he told before being hypnotized, state drops its case against him: no body or witnesses or evidence of any wrongdoing beyond parental neglect no matter how hard they looked, though the state’s attorney feels sure, he tells reporters, that Howard’s guilty of some heinous crime against his daughter which they’ll find out about in time and charge him with and send him to prison or even execute him for. Denise doesn’t know what to think through all this. She doesn’t believe the woman was involved in Olivia’s disappearance, but how couldn’t she be if Howard says she was? That’s not saying she thinks he had anything to do with it, she says, other than being irresponsible in leaving Olivia with a stranger, but how couldn’t he have anything to do with it if the woman didn’t? Did he lose Olivia someplace, she says once—“Quick, answer me now, no time to think of one, no or yes?” “No, absolutely not.” Maybe, she says, both he and the woman are responsible in a way she hasn’t figured out yet. “Are you lovers, and an accident happened with Olivia and you’re covering up for each other in some way where you both assumed you’d get off?” “What am I supposed to answer to that?” “Of course; that was ridiculous of me, but I simply don’t know what to think. I’m not afraid of you for Eva, but I’m also not entirely comfortable with you for her and myself. I’m just confused.” Goes on like that. She won’t make love with him anymore, the few times he’s felt like it since Olivia disappeared, and then she won’t sleep in the same bed and then the same room with him. Then she brings Olivia’s bed into Eva’s room and sleeps there. She puts it all down as just part of her continuing grief and confusion.

Fall’s come, it’s cold, cottage isn’t insulated, everyone they know has left, she wants to return to their apartment in the city, he wants her to stay with him here but in a heated house. “Maybe Olivia will turn up somehow. At the very least, if we’re here and badgering the police, they’ll continue looking for her more than they would if we weren’t here, or at least not give up looking for her completely or investigating what might have happened that day. Maybe, while Miss Reinekin wasn’t looking, someone came and snatched Olivia away — possibly one of the persons or a group of them sunbathing on the grass that day; or even the sailor of the sailboat I saw when I swam in the lake — and will want to turn himself in for whatever reason and also give up Olivia. Or Olivia could escape from her kidnapper — a door left unlocked a first time and she just walks out or something. I’ve read about such things — sometimes happening weeks later, sometimes years. That wouldn’t explain why Miss Reinekin insists I was never at the lake with Olivia. Maybe she was threatened by this person or group not to say anything about the kidnapping or they’ll kill her and maybe kill Olivia also, and that’s why she’s been lying all this time. Maybe Olivia was taken away at gunpoint. Lots of maybes, maybe one of then on target, or one future one. But I can’t leave feeling Olivia might still be around here or in an area near here and that I might, by just sticking and looking around, think of or do something to get her back.”

Denise leaves with Eva, he rents a room in town. He looks for Olivia or does something to help find her every day. Asks everyone he can about her in this county and the surrounding ones. Goes to houses and logging camps in the woods and other remote areas with photos of her. Places ads in newspapers with a photo of Olivia and him, asking if anyone was or knows anyone who was at the lake that day and saw him with Olivia or just saw anyone with her that day or any day since. Puts up her missing-child poster everywhere he can. Tries to generate news interest in her disappearance, by calling and sending letters to news editors, and when that doesn’t work, in the story of the father obsessed with the search, so her picture will appear again in the papers and on local TV. Goes to the Kaden house sometimes. It’s boarded up for the winter. Explores the beach and woods around the house, thinking he might have missed something the previous times; studies the house from all sides, trying to determine by the windows and dormers and roof shape and size of the walls whether he missed a room or two when he went through it. Would like to break inside, but he might get caught and jailed or ordered out of the county or even the state for a while. Many people in the area think he had something to do with Olivia disappearing and that by staying on and looking for her so hard he’s just trying to establish his innocence and get their sympathy. That’s what the anonymous notes say that frequently come through the mail or are slipped into the letter box of his building and a couple of times under his door.

He searches through different parts of the lake woods almost every day. Goes into them in high boots because of the snow, calls out for her, nails her poster to trees, thinks he’ll one time find a sign of her, something hanging from a tree branch or message or article of clothing left someplace, though maybe not till the spring thaw. Maybe there’s a habitable cave in the woods no one knows about or a hut, same thing, but completely camouflaged. Pollard said the searching teams covered every part of the woods, but there had to be areas too thick for anyone to go in to, or at least not without the cutting tools he always takes with him. He imagines coming on one of these huts — he’s come on two already not shown on the town’s survey maps he has, but with no doors or roofs — and looking inside the window, seeing Olivia and a man talking, eating. He smashes down the door with his foot and charges inside and knocks the man down and beats him, continues beating him with his fists or one of the tools till the man doesn’t move. Till he’s dead — the hell with him. Two or more men, he’d charge in the same way and use his tools on them, cutting through them, aiming for their faces and necks and groins, and then scoop up Olivia, dress her for the cold, or not dress her — just run with her to his car and drive to the one doctor in town.

He goes to the lake a lot, mostly to look around it but sometimes to think. Gone out on the ice several times to see what he could make out on the shore from there. Crisscrossed it, walked in to every cove, stood in various spots on it to see if any smoke was coming from places where no houses were supposed to be. Once he thought he saw a girl around Olivia’s height on the beach not far from where he lost her. Walked back without taking his eyes off her, yelled while he walked “Don’t move, don’t go away, stay there for God’s sakes, it’s Daddy,” then imagined her on shore when he got there and putting his coat and scarf around her and picking her up and kissing her head and hands all over and carrying her back to the road where he left the car — running with her, shouting “I’ve found her, my little baby; everybody, I’ve found her, found her.”