The Murder Artist

CHAPTER 13

I always know how long it’s been since the boys disappeared. I don’t have to do the math; it’s instantly available. Today, as I drive my parents to the airport, it’s been twenty-one days, eight hours and change.

I suggested they go home (as Jack and Marguerite did a week ago) and it didn’t take much to get past their token resistance.

In the terminal, my mother hugs me for a long time, then dabs at her tears. My father gives me a manly abrazo. I linger outside the security bay and watch a bald man with bulky shoulders pull my mother aside for extra scrutiny. Stripped of her bright yellow linen blazer, she stands with her arms outstretched so he can pass the wand around her. He does this so slowly and methodically, her arms begin to shake from the effort of holding the position.

This is how unreliable my grip on my emotions has become: One second I’m just observing the bald man harass my mother and the next I’m incandescent with rage. It takes a real effort not to bust through the security gate and go after the guy. I’d like to take him down. I’d like his head to hit the floor. I can already hear the mantra – “I was just doing my job” – but I don’t buy it. If he’s trying to focus on likely terrorists, he’s wasting everybody’s time and money harassing my mother. He’s not “just doing his job”; he’s on a power trip.

As the days roll by, the media hoopla continues to fade. Kevin and Sean are relegated to the occasional news update. The calls and e-mails, volunteers and donations fall off too. The hotline grows lukewarm, the yellow ribbons start to tatter and fade, the posters of the boys disappear from store windows, displaced by announcements of choral music programs, missing dogs, Run for the Cure bulletins.

Meanwhile, the police are doing “everything we can” – which isn’t much. At least for a while, there continue to be leads, and each one causes in me a brief hope before Shoffler declares it a dead end.

He drops by one night with packages of Chinese food. He tells us they’ve been working hard on the subculture of Renaissance festivals, “looking for the tall man, circulating everything – sketches, descriptions, the dog, the whole shebang. You wouldn’t believe how many medieval enthusiasts are out there.”

“How many Pied Pipers can there be?” Liz asks.

“You shouldn’t think of him that way,” the detective cautions between bites of lo mein. “The costume might have been deliberate – you know, a disguise. It’s like guys in uniform. Say we have a burglary, a bank job – whatever. Man’s in a UPS uniform, mechanic coveralls, maintenance man blues – that’s all anyone remembers.”

“So what about the guy,” I ask, “the tall man? You getting anywhere?”

Shoffler makes a face. “So far,” he says, “nothing but Elvis sightings.”

Cromwell. Most days, I drive out to join the core volunteers, the ones who continue to show up every single day, even in the stultifying heat, to search. I make the long drive willingly; it feels good to get out of the house and do something.

Although I realize, one day, struggling through the underbrush in the area outside the fairgrounds, that I’m participating in the search with no hope of finding any trace of the boys – but also with no fear of doing so. I don’t believe I’m going to see a small crumpled form, the clothing intact, the flesh melting into the leaves and sticks. Liz is different. When she makes the trip, she searches with a stricken intensity that conveys all too well what she expects to find.

Me – I think the boys are with The Piper, whoever he may be, and although by now the dangers of “denial” have been pressed on me many times and I know I may be fooling myself, I still think Kevin and Sean are alive. This makes searching with the volunteers in Cromwell almost a kind of ritual, a form of devotion to the cause of finding the boys, like saying a prayer or making a pilgrimage.

Some of the Cromwell volunteers alarm me. I wonder about their ardor for the task, their willingness to wade into yet another patch of the poison ivy-choked, bug-infested terrain. By now, I’ve grown to know many of them. Although most have just latched on to this search the way others might fasten their efforts to fund-raising for breast cancer or lobbying for a new playground, there’s something unsettling about a few of them. The dark fervor in the eyes of one man disturbs me, as does the quasi-religious devotion of a couple of women.

I wonder what the rest of their lives are like, that they can afford this huge investment of time. Once in a while, I find myself thinking one of them might be involved with the abduction, an accomplice, reporting back to The Piper. Although I feel guilty for harboring such thoughts, I’ve compiled a file of their names and addresses, their jobs and marital histories, their quirks and hobbies. I’ve turned it over to the P.I., Mary McCafferty.

The situation between Liz and me continues to deteriorate. During the first few days after the boys were abducted, what happened was so terrible, we took some comfort in our common loss.

That’s long gone, replaced at first by a Jack-like formality from Liz that’s slowly segued into something even less friendly. When we’re in the same room now, she can’t seem to stay in her chair. When our eyes meet, hers skid away from mine.

Behind it all is the undeniable fact that at rock bottom, she blames me. This comes up more and more, in the form of “if only” scenarios.

I tell myself it’s the same in the aftermath of any disaster: Once over the shock, the loved ones of victims look around for a way in which the event could have been prevented. I remember this from many assignments, the anguished faces of mourners after preventable disasters (the Rhode Island nightclub fire, the Florida Valujet crash, the explosion of the shuttle): “It’s such a tragedy because it didn’t have to happen.” It plays out in our legal system – suits are filed before the flames die down. The litigation of blame.

In this case, there’s no need for inquiry or reconstruction. I’m the embodiment of “human error.” And as the agent who could have prevented the catastrophe, I am slowly becoming – in the heart and mind of my wife – its cause.

We attend a fund-raiser sponsored by the Center for Abducted Children. It seemed impossible to refuse, but the event itself is tough to stomach. Liz and I sit at the dais, along with other celebrities of misfortune. Some of the parents wear laminated photographs of their children pinned to their chests like identity badges, a heartbreaking gallery of winsome smiles and sparkling eyes.

Dozens of strangers offer help and sympathy but there’s something about all this that sets my teeth on edge. In some cases, I get the impression that it’s a weird kind of stardust they’re really after.

The main speech is delivered by a single mother named Melinda. She tells the harrowing tale of her eight-year-old daughter’s abduction in the simple but powerful way of a born storyteller. She makes all the right pauses for effect. Eight years after the girl went missing, her remains were discovered buried in a neighbor’s yard.

“All told, about one hundred children a year are kidnapped and murdered by strangers,” she tells us. “Despite the saturation coverage such abductions and murders get from the media, that makes it one of the rarest of crimes. A child is more likely to be hit by lightning.” She pauses. “Some of us have been hit by that kind of lightning.” She crosses her hands over her heart, according a sad nod to some of us seated at the head table. One of the women lets out a lone sob. “When it does happen,” Melinda tells us in a husky voice, “it’s lightning fast. 74 percent of these kids – my daughter Bonnie was one of them – are killed within three hours of their abduction.

“Of the children who were abducted,” Melinda continues, “the vast majority, seventy-six percent, were girls, with the average age being eleven. In eighty percent of the cases, the children were grabbed within a quarter mile of their homes. So don’t feel your child is safe in your front yard, or riding her bike down your block. It’s the same with car accidents, most of which occur within a mile of home. The vast majority of other types of accidents occur in the home as well. Our homes, ladies and gentlemen, may be our castles – but they are not fortresses.”

While she pauses for effect, I think: Kevin and Sean don’t fit. They’re not girls, they’re much younger than the average age, they were more than fifty miles from home. And there were two of them.

“So we need the resources to act fast, too,” Melinda says. Her timing, as she launches into the plea for funds, is impeccable. I’m not surprised to learn that she’s pursuing a new career as a motivational speaker or that she’s written a book, Keeping Our Children Safe, full of pointers about how to protect children from predators without at the same time scaring them silly. The book is available outside the banquet room. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the center.

After the public departs, there’s a prayer circle for parents and relatives of the missing. We sit on folding chairs, holding hands. My neighbor clutches mine with such a ferocious grip, I almost lose feeling in my fingers. After the minute of silence, we take turns reciting aloud the details of our personal catastrophes.

I walk out when I realize that most of those in the circle are in fact grieving. They’ve come to share coping strategies for what they regard – except for the ritual nod to an unlikely miracle – as the permanent loss of their children. Like the parents and spouses of MIA victims lost in Vietnam, they no longer seek their “loved ones.” What they’re after is something else, something always referred to as “closure.” In other words: the remains. Evidence of death.

“I can’t stay here,” I whisper in my wife’s ear. “They think their kids are dead.” When I stand up to leave, she comes with me, but not because she wants to. “Excuse us, please excuse us,” she mutters as I yank my hand out of my neighbor’s and careen toward the door.

In the car, her eyes are hard and unforgiving. “Who do you think you are, Alex – judging them about how they were handling their loss?”

“They think their kids are dead. I don’t.”

Liz bursts into tears.

That night, she makes the announcement: “I’m going back to Maine,” she says. She looks at her fingernails and, once again, starts to cry.

The next day, she’s gone.

Work. Although Al told me from the moment he heard about the boys that I could forget about work for “as long as it takes,” last week I got an e-mail asking me to “clarify” my plans. Either I should come back soon, at least on a part-time basis, or I should request a formal leave of absence, one that specified a time frame and a date of return. The fine print noted that given the circumstances, the station would continue to provide benefits even if I did choose to remain on “compassionate leave.” Benefits, yes, but since my absence would require the hiring of a replacement – no “remuneration.”

Almost everyone agrees that returning to work is “the best thing.” The basis for this conclusion is some sketchy if universal notion of work as distracting and therefore therapeutic. It boils down to this: If I’m too busy to think about my missing sons, I’ll be less depressed.

I doubt this.

Getting up, getting dressed, the old familiar commute – it seems so strange to resume this routine. And the station itself feels like foreign terrain. TV stations are crazy places, loud and frantic with energy, everyone always careening toward or recovering from a deadline. Me? I feel inert and idle amid the hive of activity. I exist within a kind of insular bubble created by everyone’s elaborate courtesy. Voices lower when I walk by, glances slide away, no one knows what to say to me or how to act in my presence. I can see the wheels turning – should I mention it, or not? When I explain that nothing they can do or say could make me feel worse, they feel rebuffed.

One day, after I return to work, Shoffler drops by. He arrives with a six-pack of Sierra Nevada and a huge soggy pizza. “Health food,” he says, with his high-pitched stuttery laugh. “Stick with me and you, too, can be a fat slob.”

I’m glad to see him. In fact, I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather see at my door – except my sons. For openers, Shoffler is just about the only person in the world who’s always ready to talk about the one thing of actual interest to me. Besides, he’s cynical, funny and, I’ve come to realize, very smart. We usually end up going over and over the busted leads to see if there’s something we missed: the origami rabbit, the whippet, the witnesses who saw the man getting into a black panel van, the latest Elvis sightings, the chicken blood, the “enemy” list of folks I’d attacked on the air. Shoffler checks his notebooks – he’s on his third now. The case file, he tells me, is seven binders thick. Each case, he’s explained, starts with a single three-inch loose-leaf binder. The binders – which Shoffler has allowed me to look at – contain copies of every piece of paper generated by the investigation: report, witness statement, interview, crime scene photo, forensics tests, search warrant, search warrant inventory, evidence receipt, and so on.

We eat the pizza, watch an O’s game, and shoot the breeze for a while before he gets around to the reason for his visit.

“I hate to tell you this, Alex,” he starts, then stops. He’s uncomfortable, tapping his fingers against the top of the pizza box, jiggling his foot. At the look on my face, he pushes his hand toward me. “Don’t worry. It’s not about the boys. There’s nothing new. It’s about… me: I’ve been taken off the case.”

“What?” Shoffler is known as a bulldog, who never lets go, who sacrificed two marriages to work, who spends any spare moment pounding away at his cold cases. “What do you mean? You don’t ever close a case. You’re famous for that. Taken off the case? Why?”

A big sigh. “Here’s the deal. It’s not just you – all my cases are being reassigned. There’s this new thing been in the works ever since 9/11 and it’s finally happening: Metro Area Counter-Terrorism Unit.” His hands fall open, like a book. “Officers from every jurisdiction, plus a coupla Bureau designates, folks from Customs and INS. I’m the guy from Anne Arundel. Look, I’m sorry.”

I say nothing. It’s a real blow.

“Your case has been handed over to a young detective named Muriel Petrich. I may be a bulldog, but she’s as smart as they get. And ambitious. That’s a good combo.”

“Right.”

“Look, I know…” He shakes his head. “You can count on me to keep my hand in, right? And call me anytime, any reason. You get an idea, a lead, whatever, I’ll do what I can. But give Petrich a chance – she’s a tiger.”

“Right.” I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. I feel Kevin and Sean are being abandoned.

I’ve fallen into the habit of sleeping in the family room. Half the time, I crash on the futon, dozing off while still in my clothes, to wake at two or three or four, the TV still playing, the lights still blazing. Tonight, as soon as Shoffler leaves, I clear away the beer bottles and pizza debris, I put all the dishes in the dishwasher, turn it on, wipe the counters. Then I make the rounds of the house, turn off the lights, lock the doors, then strip down to my underwear and get into bed.

This is the white iron bed Liz scrimped and saved for. She ought to have it in Maine. It seems terrible that I can’t picture where she lives or the things that surround her, that I should be in the midst of all the objects she so lovingly accumulated. The bed: I remember nights when one of the boys or even both would come in at night, waking from bad dreams, or lonely or sick, and stand at the foot of the bed and say, “Mom?” Not “Dad,” never “Dad,” I can’t fool myself about this. It was always Liz they turned to because she was always there. I remember weekend mornings when the kids came in to wake us, piling onto the bed, the four of us launching into a brand-new day.

I lie in the dark. Every now and then, a car turns up Ordway and a pair of lights slides up the wall and across the ceiling. I lie in the dark and come to a decision. Going back to work, stumbling through the hours in a preoccupied fog – I can’t do that.

I’m going to find my sons.