The Murder Artist

CHAPTER 7

She gets in late the next morning, stumbling out of the secure area at National Airport, her good looks strained by tears. After a stiff embrace, I take her elbow, pivot her to the left, and introduce her to Christiansen.

Christiansen is here as a courtesy, to – as Shoffler put it – “help escort Mrs. Callahan to your house.”

I told the detective to forget it when he first put forward this idea, but Shoffler talked me around, noting that uniformed policemen can really help get you through a media crowd. “A guy in uniform can be all business; hell, he can even be rude to reporters – and it just looks like he’s doing his job. The squad car, the uniform – they’ll help.”

“Oh,” Liz says, her eyes widening at the sight of the policeman. She throws me a wild glance, and I know what she’s thinking – even though it makes no sense, even though I would be the one to tell her. She thinks Christiansen is here in some official capacity, to deliver bad news.

“Ma’am,” he mutters, tilting forward in a kind of bow.

She waits, frozen, and when it becomes clear that Christiansen is not going to say anything else, she collapses into me, her face hot and damp against my shoulder. “Oh, Alex,” she says. “Alex?”

I’m more or less holding her up as the crowd streams around us. We just stand there, Liz weeping against my shoulder. I’m not sure what to do. But then she steps back, bats at her face to dry her tears, and starts off toward the baggage claim area, moving so fast I almost have to run to keep up. We stand together, watching the suitcases tumble down the chute toward the conveyor belt.

I open my mouth to say something, but it falls closed of its own weight. What can I say? How was your flight? Sorry I lost our sons?

The telephone call to tell her what had happened was a nightmare, but this – this is so much worse. Instead of Liz arriving to the reunion I’ve been imagining, the jumping and excited boys and their beaming please-come-back-to-me-I’ve-changed father, this is how the love of my life reenters my world. She stands not twelve inches from me, enclosed within a force field of grief and anger. Of course she was scrupulous on the telephone, as I struggled to explain what happened. She did everything she could to reassure me it wasn’t my fault, that I shouldn’t think that way, that she doesn’t blame me, of course she doesn’t blame me.

But of course it’s a lie. How can she not blame me? It’s impossible.

“What happened to your face?” she asks in a neutral tone. “You look-”

“The search,” I tell her with a shrug. “The woods.”

“That’s mine,” she says, in a tight little voice. Her hand jerks up and points toward a green suitcase. The gesture is almost mechanical, as if she’s a wind-up toy.

I don’t recognize the suitcase. The sight of it – bright lime green with leather trim – makes me sad on a number of levels. It’s one more thing acquired during our separation – the blouse she’s wearing, the boys’ new backpacks, and so on – and this accumulation of objects seems to emphasize the divergence of our lives. And then there’s the stylish, buoyant look of the suitcase, which speaks of an alternate reality, Liz off for a jaunt to someplace chic.

Instead of here with me in this nightmare.

“It has wheels,” she says, once I’ve fought through the throng and wrestled the suitcase off the belt. I carry it anyway, and if hefting its weight is not exactly a pleasure, it offers – like meeting the plane – a respite from my sense of uselessness.

Already, it’s clear that as the machinery of disaster gains momentum, I am more and more peripheral to the effort. I’ve given my account of what happened a half dozen times now, tracked down the best and most recent photographs of the boys and given consent for the broadcast and distribution of their images. I’ve supplied detailed descriptions of their clothing. I’ve called all the neighbors to see if anyone spotted anything at the house – a car, the boys, lights, anything. (Yasmin Siegel confessed that she’d fallen asleep watching The Sopranos.) I’ve given consents: the phone may be tapped, phone records accessed, computer examined by experts, house searched.

In fact, I’m irritated that they haven’t searched the house yet. I don’t understand what’s taking so long, as I complained to Shoffler over the phone right before I left for the airport. “Kevin was here,” I told the detective. “He called from this telephone. He didn’t get here on his own, that’s for sure – which means that the kidnapper was here. You should be crawling all over this place.”

Shoffler told me to relax. When there were jurisdictional issues – they had to liaise with D.C. Metro – it took a little while to get the wheels rolling.

I’ve surrendered my cell phone to a so-called communications technician dispatched by Shoffler. A woman named Natalie – the two of us went through the call lists, so I could identify the numbers, both of incoming and outgoing calls. I recognized all of the numbers. Krista, my assistant at the station. Liz. Cass Carter, whose son is in Kev and Sean’s car pool to St. Albans day camp. Dave Whitestone, my producer. My folks. And so on. Natalie affixed an evidence number to my Nokia and gave me a receipt for it. She also provided a clone – a phone with the same number – in case a repeat call comes in from Kevin or Sean. Or from someone with a ransom demand.

I also talked to a kind woman named Shelley at the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, scanned a photo of the boys into the computer so that the organization might begin its national poster campaign. Another woman – Shelley’s superior – is supposed to call later to discuss other options and to offer advice.

Now I’m reduced to staying out of the way. I want to scour the earth for Kevin and Sean, but instead I’m immobilized.

We glide along on the moving sidewalk toward the parking garage. Behind me, Christiansen jingles the keys in his pocket. In front of me stands Liz, rigid with the effort of suppressing her terror.

When Christiansen turns the corner onto Ordway, Liz gasps. The little knot of reporters that began gathering early this morning has ballooned into a crowd. Two communications vans jam the alley on either side of the street, another sits in the Hokinsons’ driveway, wedged up against their red Explorer. There are light towers, cables snaking across the lawns and sidewalks, camera and sound crews. A couple of well-dressed figures stand solitary within little established zones of space, prepping light and sound equipment for the stand-ups they’ll do later. Neighbors stand in their doorways, too, gaping at the sudden occupation of the block. As the crowd catches sight of the squad car, there’s a rush for position.

“Oh, shit,” Christiansen says. “Pardon my French, ma’am.”

From Liz, a little moan.

I feel a jangle of dread, a weird sense of exposure. I’ve been part of scenes like this plenty of times, one more reporter in the press conference crush, or in a mob waiting to waylay some key figure in a story. With cable and satellite and the increase in venues for news, the size of these media mobs is getting out of hand. A couple of years back, I was part of the team covering the D.C. sniper case for the station, one of the more than nine-hundred badged for the press conferences held by the Rockville police chief.

I think – too late – that I should have warned Liz. And it’s probably going to get worse. The story is going to be the top of the news, front page, lead story. The fact that I’m in the business, that I appear on TV, that my face is familiar to some, that I am (as Liz and I used to joke) “a third-string celebrity,” will just stoke what is going to be a firestorm of coverage.

Liz cringes against me as the crowd begins to engulf the car. I know it would be a mistake – because a person shielded from the camera is automatically guilty of something – but it’s all I can do to keep from throwing my jacket over Liz’s head to protect her. She’s weeping against me, really losing it.

“It’s all right,” I murmur. She takes deep shuddering breaths, trying to compose herself.

It’s not working. Her hands are balled up into fists and she screws her knuckles into her eyes. “Just get us into the house,” I tell Christiansen.

“How?” The tips of the officer’s ears glow bright red.

“Walk fast, no eye contact, don’t talk to anybody. Say ‘excuse me.’ Nothing else.”

And that’s what we do. I follow Christiansen as if he’s a blocker on a punt return, yanking Liz left, then right into the momentary gaps the police officer creates. We somehow get through the blizzard of flashes, the mechanized chatter of camera shutters, the cacophony of shouted questions and comments.

“Excuse me!”

“Can you comment-?”

“Excuse me.”

“That’s the mother; she looks-”

“Excuse me.”

“… know if there are any suspects?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Callahan, can you tell our…?”

“… parents of the boys have been separated…”

“Excuse me.”

“… possible the twins were trying to run away?”

“Fuck,” Christiansen says, once we’re inside the door. He’s panting for breath, his ears on fire.

Making it inside and closing the door on the madness feels like a victory, but the sense of triumph lasts only a few seconds. Liz looks up at me, her eyes wet and out of focus. “Alex,” she starts, but then she just stands there, swaying.

“Liz-”

“Alex!” she shrieks. She pummels my chest with her fists. “Where are they? You have to find them!”