Missing Persons

66

“She hasn’t had a good Christmas since she was six.” Bill said into the glass. “That’s eight years, most of her life. She hates Christmas.”

She misses her mom. Diane had told me that Mallory missed her mom. The year that Mallory was six was the year that Rachel abandoned her family for the lure of Las Vegas weddings.

Psychotherapy 101: Christmas for Mallory was irrevocably linked to loss.

Finally, I thought I understood why Mallory had felt so compelled to see Hannah Grant for psychotherapy: Mallory hadn’t had a good Christmas since she was six. She went to see Hannah because she didn’t want to have another bad Christmas, another Christmas when her primary emotion involved desperately missing her mother.

“She’d get so scared,” Bill said. “Every year, right after Thanksgiving she’d start to get scared.”

Scared? That’s what Bob had said about Mallory, too. She was scared. Why scared?

“Scared?” I asked. I would have suspected that Mallory would show signs of anxiety or depression on the anniversary of her mother’s abandonment. But fear?

Bill wiped at his eyes with his fingertips. “She thought it was going to happen again. She couldn’t be comforted. No matter what I tried to do over the years to help her deal with it, nothing worked.”

Rachel had deserted her family eight years before. Was Mallory afraid that her father was going to leave, too? Was that the vulnerability she felt? “What, Bill? Mallory thought what was going to happen again?”

He turned back from the window. His face was pink and bright. “What happened eight years ago on Christmas? Mallory thought she’d be next. Every year since that year, she’s been afraid that she’d be next. That the same man was coming to get her.”

Oh my God, what an idiot I am. Mallory was scared because of the murder of her friend. “They were friends? When they were little?”

“Classmates. A sleep-over or two. You know what it’s like for girls when they’re that age. That Christmas, Mallory was already so vulnerable because of… what was going on with her mom. What happened that night scared her so much. She used to cry and cry every time she saw the pictures on TV. And those pictures were everywhere.

“She was so determined to confront her fears about Christmas, to grow out of it. She desperately wanted to get past all this, to feel safe.”

“The police know all this?”

“Of course; it’s why they think she ran. They think she got spooked and left to go find her mom and that something-you know-happened to her on the way.”

“Did she know about Doyle? About the blackmail?”

“She knew something was up with me, that I wasn’t myself. She’d mentioned it. It’s in her journal.”

“Did she know about the tunnel?”

“I know what you’re thinking-that that’s how she got out of the house. But how could she know about it? I didn’t know about it until last night. She was terrified of the basement. The basement is where her friend’s body was found eight years ago. She never went down there. Never.”

“Doyle?”

“Doyle could have shown it to her, I guess. But why? He had too much to lose if he exposed what he was doing. And I think he knew I meant that I’d kill him if he went near the kids.”

I thought, Bob. That’s how she could know. Bob’s fingerprint was in the basement. Bob was taking care of Doyle’s empty house. Bob knew all about the theater-he had told me that he thought it was a great place to watch movies. And Bob certainly knew about the tunnel.

Bob and Mallory had talked.

Had Bob actually been there on Christmas night, holed up in Doyle’s theater watching movies?

Mallory’s friend-the other little girl, the tiny blond beauty queen-had died eight years before as Christmas Day became the day after.

She was scared, Bob had said about Mallory.

She thought it was going to happen again, her father had said about Mallory. She feared that someone was going to come into her house and do to her what someone had done to her little friend. She feared that someone was going to bust in and leave her head crushed and her neck garroted, that someone was going to abandon her alone and dead in her grungy basement on Christmas night.

Doyle? Bob? The man loitering outside?

Who?

I’m a gullible guy. But I’m aware that I’m a gullible guy, so aware that sometimes I catch myself and pause long enough to question what I’m hearing. Right then, I stopped, and I questioned. Do I believe what Bill is telling me?

Yes, kind of.

Is he telling me the truth? No, probably not completely.

I replayed some of the earlier conversation I’d had with Bill Miller. “When Doyle moved out in the fall and put his house on the market, I thought he might have realized that the till was empty, you know? He knew my finances as well as I did. Better, maybe. I thought-God, I was naive-I thought things might be over. But that’s when Doyle went to Walter and started blackmailing him, too. Walter and I realized he’d moved away so that we couldn’t find him. My boss wasn’t happy. He’s not a pleasant man when he’s not happy.”

“What,” I asked, “did your boss do when Doyle started blackmailing him?”

“Same as me. He paid him off, bought some time. After so many years you don’t expect to get caught.”

Content is the aphrodisiac of psychotherapy. For a therapist, it’s so tempting to get caught on the wave of the story, to get lost in the facts and the promise and the details of the narrative. What suffers when the therapist succumbs to that seductive lure?

Process. And process-what is going on in the room-is almost always where the truth hides. I forced myself to be a therapist. I returned my attention to the process.

“Why did you decide to tell me all this, Bill?”

“I didn’t know what you’d already figured out. I actually thought you might know too much. That would be a whole new problem for us.”

“Us?”

“Me and Walter.”

“I don’t quite understand,” I said. But I did.

Bill’s voice was almost apologetic as he said, “I’ve just tied your hands, Alan. You can’t tell anyone what I told you. It’s confidential, now. I can’t afford to have anyone know what I’ve done. Walter can’t either. So, just in case-for some insurance-I’ve sealed your lips.”

Was Bill right?

In his reading of the law, and of my professional responsibilities, yes.

In his reading of me, no. He had no way to know, but I was more than ready to say “screw it.” Was I angry? A little. Less than I would have anticipated. “Doyle knew everything,” I said. “He may have-”

“Doyle’s dead, remember?”

“Did you-”

“Kill him? No. God, no. I would have liked to, I might even have been willing to, but… no.”

“Did your boss?”

“He’s probably capable of it. Walter’s in Vegas now trying to find Rachel. To see if Mallory’s with her. We have to keep her under control. He and I are in the same boat on this one. Our families are both at risk.”

“Rachel knows about the orthodontist?”

“She’s my wife; of course she knows. I don’t have secrets from Rachel.”

I stated the obvious. “You’re desperate, then. You and… Walter?”

“Yes, we are.”

“Why did he go to Vegas?”

“One of us had to get to Rachel. I couldn’t-the press might have spotted me. They’re everywhere.”

I’d noticed. “Do you think Mallory’s there?”

“I hope she is.” His despair about his daughter was palpable. “The alternatives are so horrifying that I can’t even…”

My cell phone rang. I checked the screen: Raoul. Thank God. “I need to get this,” I said. “It’s an emergency. There may even be some news that affects Mallory.”

“Go ahead then,” Bill said.

“Raoul?” I said. “Any news?”

“I’m at the hospital with her. She’s okay.”

Diane? “Hold on a second; I’m with someone.” I covered the phone and turned to Bill. “Could you please go out to the waiting room while I take this?”

Reluctantly, I thought, he walked out of my office and down the hall. I kept my hand on the phone until I heard the waiting room door open and close.