Anna Pitoniak - Necessary People

“Yes,” I said. “Saturday night. A week and a half ago.”

“Can you walk me through the weekend?”

I described it to him in detail, as I had for Detective Fazio a few days earlier. At the end of it, he frowned. “So there was no one else at the house? Just the two of you?”

“Just the two of us.”

“Was Stella with you the entire weekend? Did she ever go out?”

“Um,” I said. “She went out for a while on Saturday morning. She took the car.”

“She didn’t say where she was going?” I shook my head. The detective extracted a piece of paper from his folder. “Do you recognize this number?” he said.

“No,” I said. “Two-oh-seven. Isn’t that the local area code?”

“Stella was texting and calling this person all weekend. This was the last number she called on Saturday night. Several times, right around ten thirty. We traced the number back to a burner phone. Sold just a month ago, from a convenience store.”

“Huh,” I said.

“We found cocaine in her glove box, and marijuana in the kitchen. Do you know whether she brought that up with her from New York?”

“I have no idea.”

“But she’s a regular drug user?”

“I mean, she’s twenty-six years old. She goes out. She likes to have fun.” I paused, and then decided to plunge forward. “You’re guessing that this burner phone was, what, a dealer?”

“It’s possible.”

“She had friends in the area. People she’d met during the summers. I think there was a guy she got coke from. I never knew his name.”

He nodded, took a few notes. “No one thinks about it in these ritzy summer towns, but it’s a big problem around here,” he said. “Opioids and heroin, especially.”

“Stella never did anything like that,” I said. “Except, wait. This guy she was dating, he had knee surgery, and gave her his leftover OxyContin. That was a while ago, though.”

“Was this boyfriend”—he checked his papers—“James Richter?”

“Oh, no, no. This was several years ago.”

“So this has been going on for a long time.” He sounded satisfied by his own observation. “Let me ask you about the safe upstairs. There were a few items missing.”

“I heard. Jewelry and a gun, right?”

“Why do you think Stella took the gun?”

“How do you know she took it?” I said. “What if someone else broke into the house and took the gun and, I don’t know—kidnapped her?”

“There’s no sign of forced entry,” the detective said. “No damage to the safe. And that’s a top-of-the-line model. You can’t get it open without the combination.”

“Well, maybe they forced her to open it.” My voice was getting louder.

“Miss Trapp, I know how distressing this is.”

“You’re implying that this is all her fault.” My righteous indignation almost felt real.

“We’re investigating every possibility,” the detective said. “But the evidence suggests no foul play. No blood, no damage, no sign of a struggle. That e-mail made it clear that she wanted to get away for a while. Also, the Bradleys have a camera installed at the gate. The footage doesn’t show anyone entering the house, except you two.”

“A—a camera?” I startled. How did I miss a camera?

“See,” he said, taking another paper from his folder. A photograph. “Here’s you, leaving the house around eleven p.m. on Saturday. That’s the last activity the camera captured. Just after Stella made those phone calls. Did you hear what she was saying?”

“I was in the other room,” I said. “I couldn’t really hear. But she sounded… agitated.”

The detective squinted at me, nodded slowly. “Agitated,” he said, making a note. “Those phone calls probably are the key to figuring out what her plan was. Wherever she went, she got there by boat. Unfortunately, there’s no camera down by the boathouse. Could’ve shed some light. Damn shame.”

“Shame,” I echoed dumbly.

“The woman at the motel confirms that you arrived just before midnight.” He chuckled. “A small town like this, everyone notices everything. Not many visitors this time of year.”

“I can imagine.”

“But other than you, there was nothing unusual about that weekend. No strangers coming to town. No one casing the Bradley property.” The detective sighed, shut his folder. “Would you do me a favor, Miss Trapp? It’s the mother. Believe me, I know how hard this is on her. But she needs to let us do our job. She can’t be second-guessing us at every step.”

“Anne likes to be in control,” I said. “That’s how she operates.”

“But sometimes parents can’t see the truth about their kids. She thinks this drug thing is some crackpot theory. I’m only asking that you help her stay calm. Open-minded. I’m afraid this case might be a lot simpler than she thinks it is.”

I had come up to Maine for the police interview, but Anne insisted I stay there for Thanksgiving. She treated me as a talisman. Stella had brought me into the Bradley family. The two of us were a package deal. Surely, by staying close to the family, I’d draw Stella back.

Stella’s grandparents arrived with turkey and stuffing and pies prepared by their housekeeper in Boston. “Routine is key,” Grandmother Bradley said sternly while we sat at the long dining table, soft strains of Bach in the background. “Anne, you have to keep your wits about you.” Thomas, Oliver, and I returned to New York after the holiday, but Anne stayed in Maine. Her daughter had now been missing for two weeks. There had been no activity on her credit cards. The police confirmed with the cell carrier that her phone had been shut off the whole time. Anne’s worry had deepened into a more serious panic.

If we were producing this story for TV—and our audience loved a story like this, a beautiful rich girl gone missing—most of the footage would be useless. Anne, berating the police for their inefficiency, channeling her frustration into excessive exercise. Thomas, remaining laser-focused on his work, answering every e-mail and calling into every meeting. Oliver, speculating snarkily about where Stella was. They weren’t reacting like they were supposed to, because they didn’t know yet how the story ended.

What we needed were the freighted silences, the teary interviews, the panning and zooming of pictures from Stella’s childhood against a sentimental soundtrack. We needed the money shot: the bereft mother, breaking down when she realized that she’d ignored the warning signs. Preferably while she was sitting in front of a wall lined with family photos. Keep the camera on her for several long seconds. Let the audience feel her pain.

The Bradleys didn’t know how to be vulnerable in public. They were determined to look normal for as long as they could. They didn’t want Stella’s photo splashed across the news. They didn’t want the neighbors organizing a search through forests and fields. They didn’t want their dirty laundry aired for all of America to see.

Detective Fazio was retiring from the Rye Police Department at the end of December. After thirty years, he had a pension waiting. But Thomas offered to pay him five times his police salary if he would serve as a private investigator. They would spare no resources in the search. There would be a bonus when he found Stella. When. That was the operative word.

Anne called me in mid-December, several weeks into the investigation. It was late, nearly midnight. I could tell that she had been drinking, and crying.

“I’m so worried, Violet.” Her voice was thick and quavery. “I know something terrible happened to her. I just know it.”

“I’m worried, too,” I said.

“She was so beautiful. Too beautiful. It makes other people do crazy things. Some nutjob just taking her, doing God knows what to her.” She let out a whimper of pain. “I always knew this would happen. I always knew someone would take her away from me.”