Beautiful Lies

twenty-five

The damage was extensive. I could tell by the way drivers were passing me in the lot, giving me a wide berth and craning their necks to look back at me, that the Jeep was really looking bad. I got out of the vehicle and walked around it. It looked as though it had narrowly escaped the compactor, both the passenger and driver side severely scratched and dented where it had alternately hit the Firebird and the mountainside guardrail. I was glad that I’d invested in the extra insurance.

I suppose I should have called the police, or maybe even driven to the nearest police station and given up this quest. I mean, clearly that was the message, right? If that driver had wanted me dead, he wouldn’t have pulled off at the last minute, allowing me to return to the proper lane and avoid the collision with the oncoming car. The intention was to terrorize me, to scare me off my errand, and I was terrorized. But I was also angry, angrier than I had ever been in my life. And more determined than ever to find out what was happening to me.

The other big question at this point was: What was I doing exactly? Remember, this all started because I felt the need to leap in front of an oncoming van to save a child who’d wandered into its path. That act had set into action a series of events that led me to question my identity. But now I also found myself driven to know what had happened to the other children who went missing the same year as Jessie Amelia Stone. Sometime after I’d finished my milkshake and before I’d finished my fries, I’d made a decision. You know how in the safety instructions on an aircraft they tell you to put on your own oxygen mask before you offer assistance to anyone else? It was like that. I couldn’t answer the question of what happened to Charlie, Pamela, or Brian until I knew what happened to Ridley. And because of the events of my recent life, I had to know more about Jessie to figure that out. So I started the car and continued to drive to the clinic to which Maria Cacciatore told me Teresa had taken Jessie, the Little Angels Children’s Health Clinic. I thought of a few different lies I might tell that could get me access to her files, if they even still existed. But in the end, the truth was the key.

As I walked through the automatic doors, I noticed a Project Rescue sticker on the glass. Its logo was the impression of a pair of cradling arms, the image of an infant nestled there, below which it read, This Is a Safe Haven. Quite a coincidence. I remembered how Detective Salvo didn’t like coincidence. I decided I was with him on that one.

“I need to see the person in charge,” I told the young man who sat at the reception desk. He was cute, with a round, earnest face and just the hint of stubble on his jaw.

“You mean, like in charge of all the doctors?”

“No. In charge of the whole place. In charge of the files.”

“Oh, you need your medical records.”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“You just need to see that lady over there and she can help you.” He pointed over toward a humorless-looking old woman manning a giant desk. I could see immediately that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with her.

“It’s not going to be easy that way. I don’t have any identification.”

He looked at me grimly and started to shake his head. “Uh…”

“Can you just get me the person in charge? Please,” I said, offering him my sweetest smile. He smiled back. It is my opinion that as a reasonably attractive young woman, you can talk your way into almost anything. Maybe I’m right. Or maybe it’s just the confidence that gets me what I want. Either way, I needed something to work today.

“Okay,” he said, giving me a conspiratorial look. “Have a seat.”

I waited a while, flipping through an old copy of Parenting magazine. The debate on spanking is alive and well, as is the new debate over vaccinations. I vote no on spanking, yes on vaccines. Why did people even want kids, considering all the ways you can screw them up?

“Can I help you?” A warm baritone broke into my thoughts. I looked up to see an extremely large black man with a shining bald head and gold wire-rimmed spectacles. There was the lightest dusting of gray in the stubble on his jaw. He wore a physician’s white jacket over a royal blue oxford and a tie with an Escher-type print of the Grateful Dead Dancing Bears. I stood and offered my hand, which he clamped in his gigantic bear claw. He held on to my hand for a second.

“Do I know you?” he said, looking at me with a cocked head.

“I don’t think so.”

“Yeah,” he said, a wide grin splitting his face. When I first saw him, I put him in his late fifties. That megawatt smile shaved about fifteen years off his face. “You’re the one that saved that kid. Amazing. Good work.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s me,” I said, smiling back. “Ridley Jones. Thanks.”

“Dr. Jonathon Hauser.” He kept smiling and nodding for a second. Then: “What can I do for you, Ridley?”

“Is there someplace we can talk? It’s kind of a long story.”

He looked at me, his brow wrinkling in benevolent curiosity. “Sure,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Come with me.”

We sat in his plain but neat and well-lit office and I told him the whole story, omitting anything questionable or illegal, which basically eliminated all mention of Jake. I also didn’t tell him about the whole getting run off the road by a mysterious driver in a ’69 Firebird thing. My hope with the good doctor was that his Dancing Bear tie communicated a kind of hippie, rule-breaking center. That he might be the type of person who would be willing to sidestep regulations in the interest of justice.

“That’s a hell of a story, Ridley,” he said quietly when I’d finished. “But without proof of your identity, I’m sure you realize that I can’t release Jessie’s records.”

“But you think you might have them here?”

“We do have them. And I know this because about a year ago a young man, a private investigator, was here asking for the same thing. Said he’d been hired to revisit some cold cases, children who’d gone missing back in the seventies. Jessie Amelia Stone was one of those kids. We dug up the records, which were still in the basement of this building.”

Jake had been here, too. I guess I wasn’t really that surprised.

“Were the other children patients at this clinic?” I asked, trying to stay focused.

“I’m not able to reveal that information,” he said, leaning forward. “Of course, had I never heard of them, I’d be able to tell you that.”

I nodded my understanding. “Did the investigator gain access to any of those files?”

“As much as I would have liked to help him, I told him that he’d need a court order to have those files released.”

“And?”

“And I never heard from him again.”

I sighed and leaned back in the chair. I hadn’t realized but I’d been sliding forward toward him, my shoulders tensing. I felt like you feel at the DMV, powerless against a system as unyielding as a stone wall, forced to play by the rules or not play at all. I appealed to that Dancing Bear center.

“Dr. Hauser, I’m not a private investigator. And there’s a possibility that I may actually be one of those children. Isn’t there anything you can do?”

He looked down at the leather blotter on his desk and I could hear him release a breath. “What do you even hope to find in these records? How is seeing them going to answer any of your questions?”

I shrugged and said truthfully, “I don’t know. But I can’t think of any other place to go from here.”

He looked at me for a long moment, his hands steepled in front of his face. He gave his head a little shake and stood up. “Give me a second, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. And he left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

I stared at the wall behind his desk. Degrees, photographs, and newspaper clippings hung against the dark faux-wood paneling. I got up and walked behind his desk to take a closer look. An undergraduate degree from Rutgers University caught my eye. Class of ’62, the same year my father graduated from college before going on to medical school. I gazed over the other myriad degrees and awards. Another caught my eye; it was a plaque from Project Rescue awarded to Little Angels for their “Excellence in the Care and Service to Children.” I remembered the decal I had seen on the clinic’s doors and for a second some bells started ringing in my mind. Little Angels Health Clinic—had I heard that name before Maria Cacciatore told me about it? I went back to the chair and sat down, racked my brain, and came up with nothing.

The doctor entered the room again and he had a file in his hand.

“Listen, Ridley. I’m a medical professional bound by very strict rules and regulations. Any violation of those rules could cost me my career. Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” I said, still turning the clinic name around in my mind.

“That said,” he went on, “I helped that investigator and I’ll help you. I’ll tell you what I told him, at least.”

I leaned toward him, offered a grateful smile.

“The investigator, his name was Jake, was also a child of the welfare system and his mentor, Arnie Coel, was a good friend of mine,” he said. “Aside from the investigation, he had his own reasons for wanting to know what happened to those kids.” He released a sigh here.

“As much as I’d like to, I really can’t tell you what’s in these files,” he said, “but I happen to know that the doctor who attended Jessie Stone is still practicing in New Jersey. He’s close to retirement, but he might be willing to talk to you. You may even convince him to petition the Medical Association to release this file. Since Jessie was his patient, he’s the only one that can really do that for you.”

I nodded. “Thank you,” I said. I wasn’t sure if it was going to be any help, but I guessed it was better than nothing.

“His name is Dr. Benjamin Jones. I’ll give you the number for his private practice.” He chuckled a bit then. “Quite a coincidence, you having the same last name. But I guess it happens to you all the time.”

Dr. Benjamin Jones. My father.

I heard the distant beat of drums and the room seemed to darken and spin. I was afraid that I might be sick in his office. “Yeah,” I said, the fakest smile I have ever worn threatening to shatter like glass. “Happens all the time.”