Dennis Lehane: Gone, Baby, Gone

“Have they discounted him as a suspect?” I said. “There’s no way he would have hired a friend to do it?”

Lionel cleared his throat, looked at the floor again. “The police said he’s embarrassed by my sister and doesn’t think Amanda is his child anyway.” He looked up at me with those lost, gentle eyes of his. “They said his response was: ‘If I want a rug rat to shit and cry all the time, I can have a German one.’”

I could feel the wave of hurt that had washed through him when he’d had to call his niece a “rug rat,” and I nodded. “Tell me about Helene,” I said.

There wasn’t much to tell. Helene McCready was Lionel’s younger sister by four years, which put her at twenty-eight. She’d dropped out of Monsignor Ryan Memorial High School in her junior year, never got the GED she kept saying she would. At seventeen, she ran off with a guy fifteen years older, and they’d lived in a trailer park in New Hampshire for six months before Helene returned home with a face bruised purple and the first of three abortions behind her. Since then she’d worked a variety of jobs-Stop amp; Shop cashier, Chess King clerk, dry cleaner’s assistant, UPS receptionist-and never managed to hold on to any for more than eighteen months. Since the disappearance of her daughter, she’d taken leave from her part-time job running the lottery machine at Li’l Peach, and there weren’t any indications she’d be going back.

“She loved that little girl, though,” Lionel said.

Beatrice looked as if she were of a different opinion, but she kept silent.

“Where is Helene now?” Angie said.

“At our house,” Lionel said. “The lawyer we contacted said we should keep her under wraps as long as we can.”

“Why?” I said.

“Why?” Lionel said.

“Yeah. I mean, her child’s missing. Shouldn’t she be making appeals to the public? Canvassing the neighborhood at least?”

Lionel opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked down at his shoes.

“Helene is not up to that,” Beatrice said.

“Why not?” Angie said.

“Because-well, because she’s Helene,” Beatrice said.

“Are the police monitoring the phones at her place in case there’s a ransom demand?”

“Yes,” Lionel said.

“And she’s not there,” Angie said.

“It got to be too much for her,” Lionel said. “She needed her privacy.” He held out his hands, looked at us.

“Oh,” I said. “Her privacy.”

“Of course,” Angie said.

“Look”-Lionel kneaded his cap again-“I know how it seems. I do. But people show their worry in different ways. Right?”

I gave him a halfhearted nod. “If she’d had three abortions,” I said, and Lionel winced, “what made her decide to give birth to Amanda?”

“I think she decided it was time.” He leaned forward and his face brightened. “If you could have seen how excited she was during that pregnancy. I mean, her life had purpose, you know? She was sure that child would make everything better.”

“For her,” Angie said. “What about the child?”

“My point at the time,” Beatrice said.

Lionel turned to both women, his eyes wide and desperate again. “They were good for each other,” he said. “I believe that.”

Beatrice looked at her shoes. Angie looked out the window.

Lionel looked back at me. “They were.”

I nodded, and his hound dog’s face sagged with relief.

“Lionel,” Angie said, still looking out the window, “I’ve read all the newspaper reports. Nobody seems to know who would have taken Amanda. The police are stymied, and according to reports, Helene says she has no ideas on the subject either.”

“I know.” Lionel nodded.

“So, okay.” Angie turned from the window and looked at Lionel. “What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and gripped his hat so hard, I thought it might come apart in those big hands. “It’s like she was sucked up into the sky.”

“Has Helene been dating anybody?”

Beatrice snorted.

“Anybody regular?” I said.

“No,” Lionel said.

“The press is suggesting she hung around with some unsavory characters,” Angie said.

Lionel shrugged, as if that was a matter of course.

“She hangs out at the Filmore Tap,” Beatrice said.

“That’s the biggest dive in Dorchester,” Angie said.

“And think how many bars contend for that honor,” Beatrice said.

“It’s not that bad,” Lionel said, and looked to me for support.

I held out my hands. “I carry a gun on a regular basis, Lionel. And I get nervous going into the Filmore.”

“The Filmore’s known as a druggies’ bar,” Angie said. “Supposedly they move coke and heroin in and out of there like buffalo wings. Does your sister have a drug problem?”

“You mean, like heroin?”

“They mean like anything,” Beatrice said.

“She smokes a little weed,” Lionel said.

“A little?” I asked. “Or a lot?”

“What’s a lot?” he said.

“Does she keep a water bong and a roach clip on her nightstand?” Angie said.

Lionel squinted at her.

“She’s not addicted to any particular drug,” Beatrice said. “She dabbles.”

“Coke?” I said.

She nodded and Lionel looked at her, stunned.

“Pills?”

Beatrice shrugged.

“Needles?” I said.

“Oh, no,” Lionel said.

Beatrice said, “Not as far as I know.” She thought about it. “No. We’ve seen her in shorts and tank tops all summer. We’d have seen tracks.”

“Wait.” Lionel held up a hand. “Just wait. We’re supposed to be looking for Amanda, not talking about my sister’s bad habits.”

“We have to know everything about Helene and her habits and her friends,” Angie said. “A child goes missing, usually the reason is close to home.”

Lionel stood up and his shadow filled the top of the desk. “What’s that mean?”

“Sit down,” Beatrice said.

“No. I need to know what that means. Are you suggesting my sister could have had something to do with Amanda’s disappearance?”

Angie watched him steadily. “You tell me.”

“No,” he said loudly. “Okay? No.” He looked down at his wife. “She’s not a criminal, okay? She’s a woman who’s lost her child. You know?”

Beatrice looked up at him, her face inscrutable.

“Lionel,” I said.

He stared down at his wife, then looked at Angie again.

“Lionel,” I said again, and he turned to me. “You said yourself it’s like Amanda disappeared into thin air. Okay. Fifty cops are looking for her. Maybe more. You two have been working on it. People in the neighborhood…”

“Yeah,” he said. “Lots of them. They’ve been great.”

“Okay. So where is she?”

He stared at me as if I might suddenly pull her out of my desk drawer.

“I don’t know.” He closed his eyes.

“No one does,” I said. “And if we’re going to look into this-and I’m not saying we will…”

Beatrice sat up in her chair and looked hard at me.

“But if, we have to work under the assumption that if she has been abducted, it was by someone close to her.”

Lionel sat back down. “You think she was taken.”

“Don’t you?” Angie said. “A four-year-old who ran off on her own wouldn’t still be out there after almost three full days without having been seen.”

“Yeah,” he said, as if facing something he’d known was true but had been holding at bay until now. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”

“So what do we do now?” Beatrice said.

“You want my honest opinion?” I said.

She cocked her head slightly, her eyes holding steadily with my own. “I’m not sure.”