The Weight of Living Read online

  “When?” Dawson had asked.

  Nagler had smiled sourly. “This afternoon at that car explosion. I wanted to grab that little jerk by his collar and smack his head against the front door three or four times. He had walked into that bookie’s back room with the word Sucker tattooed on his forehead and they took him for everything he was worth, and his wife paid for it.”

  He picked up the cheeseburger, contemplated the cold meat, the stiff cheese and dropped it back on the plate.

  “And I guess that it doesn’t mean a damn thing. The state will send him to prison for life, and the relatives will stop visiting her grave and say it’s good they didn’t have kids, and rain will wash it all way. No one will learn anything, because even while we are speaking, one more clown is sitting at his computer on one of those sports sites convincing himself some rookie shortstop hitting a buck-twenty is going to become Derek Jeter overnight and save his happy home.” Nagler had sighed and pushed the cheeseburger away. “I just get so sick of it, want it to be more than it is, but it never turns out to be anything more. That woman died horribly for no reason and all I can do is call in a crew to sweep up the mess.”

  Dawson had left it at this: “You’ve always made it matter, Frank. Always. Calmed the victims’ families. Took away part of their pain. More people appreciate that than you know.”

  Now, in the dark parking lot, Nagler smiled at the comment. Dawson always said stuff like that, for public consumption.

  And now Dawson’s being followed. Is that my fault?

  All because of a little girl found in a Dumpster.

  Nagler paused by his car, the air still, the city in his immediate area, tranquil. His sore left foot, stung by a half-stumble off the dark curb, ached with each new step.

  Was that a sound? The broken streetlight flashed three times. What was that? Nagler scanned the darkness with his flashlight.

  Was that the muffled rumble of a car engine idling? Or the crack of a broken heart?

  Where did all that pain go, Jimmy? Why does it weigh so much?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  6

  It felt silly to do it, but, necessary.

  As Nagler drove out to the Catholic Sisters home, where the interview with the young girl had been finally scheduled, he took a few random lefts and rights, circled through a couple shopping centers and even got into an ATM line at a bank just to survey the road.

  Nothing.

  “You’d think,” he told Lieutenant Maria Ramirez, “With all the cameras and technology at our disposal we could find one black SUV in this city.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Fake plates, fake inspection sticker, all the markings removed, even the dealer insignia. And with all our technology, we only have three blurry photos. Everyone needs to be careful.”

  And so we were being careful, Nagler thought sourly. And reporting every strange vehicle, every unknown person, every knock on the wall.

  After he turned left off the main road into the driveway that lead to the Catholic Sisters Home, Nagler stopped the car just inside the tree line and got out. He edged over to the end of the driveway and glanced in both directions and saw nothing. The Sisters Home was a great stone mansion built by one of Morristown’s millionaires, a banker, he recalled, on a bluff overlooking an ancient river valley. The driveway was the old carriage road carved into the woods and had been placed in such a way that when the woods fell away at the top of the hill, the four-story dwelling filled the visitor’s view, the road circled around to the right and then curved to the left so that one could admire the magnificence of the home, and of course, the wealth of its owner.

  As he arrived, Nagler wondered if the compound built by the old miner Garrettson up in the Jefferson hills rivaled this one. And then he wondered why it mattered.

  Inside the building, a grim-faced Sister Katherine greeted him.

  “She’s been raped, Frank,” she said bluntly.

  Nagler winced, but had expected such a verdict.

  “Several times,” the old nun said. “Both vaginally and anally. There were also signs of infections.” The Sister’s face fell into a hard, set-jawed grimace with no hint of Christian forgiveness.

  “Is this recent?” Nagler asked.

  Grace Holiman from the county office of social services, said it seemed to be long-standing. “The doctor found scarring, old scarring.” Holiman locked her eyes on the table, and then looked up at Nagler. “We think she might have been a prostitute, Frank. Not willingly, of course, but ...”

  “Damn it,” Nagler hissed. In his head, he heard the command from McCann to leave the case alone, let the system handle it. Well, no more.

  “Hate to say it, ladies, but now I have a case, a crime. Did she speak at all, about anything?”

  “Nothing,” Sister Katherine said. “After the examination, we asked that a sexual abuse specialist from the prosecutor’s office and a counselor from New Boundaries speak with her, and as gentle and concerned as each of them was, she said nothing.”

  “Did she say anything to any of the other girls?”

  Sister Katherine shook her head. “She seemed to whisper something in the chapel the other night. I’ve been taking her there alone to see if the silence of that room might allow her some measure of safety. I kneel with her before the altar and bow my head. She mimics it, but just the motions, not the spirit. Then, just for a second, I thought she said something. It was too soft to hear. I asked her if she wanted to say something to the Lord, but she just stared straight ahead.”

  Nagler rubbed his eyes and sighed. “And we still don’t have a name?”

  Grace Holiman slowly shook her head. “I have my staff requesting birth records from area hospitals and town offices from ten to fifteen years ago to see if there is any clue. We are also seeking adoption records.”

  “And now with the possibility that she was raped, I can get into old sex cases, to see if they help,” Nagler said. “What would help her the most?”

  “If we could find her name,” Grace Holiman said. “We don’t want to pick one for her because I fear that if she was prostituted out, she may have had to choose a different name each night, or become a different persona. Giving her the wrong name could send her deeper inside herself. The next best thing would be a family member.”

  Nagler nodded slightly, taking it all in, and pursed his lips. “Okay. Makes sense. What do you call her?”

  “I call her My Child,” Sister Katherine said.

  ****

  Thirty minutes into the interview, Nagler had run out of questions and assurances.

  But he had one item left.

  Till then, the girl had mostly stared silently at the table and rolled a pencil through her fingers or around in a circle, first using the point as the center of the circle, then the eraser end. The paper in front of her was smudged with gray ghost marks where the side of the lead had been pushed around; her fingers were tinted gray.

  Nagler placed his tape recorder on the table and saw that she flicked a quick glance at it.

  “I want to play something for you,” he said. “It’s a voice from a telephone call we received at the police department. It is short.” He shifted the recorder so he could be sure she could hear the voice and pushed “play.”

  “She is six.”

  He pushed the stop button.

  The girl didn’t react.

  Nagler reset the file and pushed play again.

  “She is six.”

  Her index finger and thumb closed around the pencil, as if she was releasing tension. Her face did not change, nor did she look up at Nagler.

  Nagler glanced at Sister Katherine and Grace Holiman and shrugged slightly. One more time.

  “She is six.”

  A flicker of worry, a wrinkle on her brow; a wince?

  Pain, Nagler decided. Briefly, slightly, but deeply. Pain.

  She picked up the pencil and rolled the lead around in a wide circle, sometimes running off the edges of the paper, her
hand quickening the pace, the line growing thicker, deeper, like a hole, till she stopped.

  Then inside the circle, she wrote one character.

  6.

  Nagler, the nun, and the social worker stared at the drawing.

  Sister Katherine took the girl’s hand and with her other hand traced the dark circle. “This is you?” she asked as she continued to follow the pencil mark.

  The girl pulled her hand away and placed them both on her lap and stared at the table.

  Sister Katherine nodded to Nagler and stood. “Come, my child,” she said, and directed the girl from her seat and out of the room.

  “I think she recognized the voice,” Nagler said, as the door closed behind the retreating pair.

  Holiman nodded, “I agree.”

  “Then what’s all this?” he asked.

  “Other than the first time she expressed herself? I’d say it’s a wall. Is she inside the wall? Is she that figure 6? What does that mean? Was she kept there, trapped there by her family or captors? Maybe that voice in that phone call is a family member.”

  Nagler leaned back and exhaled. “What’s the 6 mean?”

  Holiman sighed. “I don’t really know, Frank. Maybe a starting point.”

  On his way to the parking lot, Nagler’s phone buzzed. It was Guidrey, that Atlanta detective. Nagler waited and the call went to voicemail. Later.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Randolph Garretson is not dead

  Where have you gone? Why are you so silent?

  How lonely is it inside that dark circle?

  Nagler stared at the two photos of the girl: The original dirty kid, hair matted, skin greasy with filth, and the after, hair washed and combed, face scrubbed, a new shirt.

  The face was blank in each, the eyes withdrawn.

  He sat hunched at his kitchen table under the cone of light from a yellow horn-shaped lamp that had been suspended from the ceiling forever, it seemed. How many times had he said he would replace that lamp, paint the walls, refinish the floors? He had repainted the house, but covered the faded, chipped white with a glossy coat of the same color, repelled, it seemed by the choice of something newer, darker, brighter, and the endless process that left him muddled and frustrated.

  He recalled watching the girl starting to draw the circle on the paper, a single line, then two, then a blur of dark pencil marks, faster and faster until the walls it represented rose off the page and she stepped back inside.

  Or did she? She had placed the number “6” inside the circle.

  Is that wall your prison or your defense?

  Are you inside that wall, or outside? I know so little, he thought. Does that wall protect you from the world, or hide the world from you? Or both, he suddenly thought, and it felt like a breakthrough.

  We all have places to hide. How do we get you out? This house is my dark circle. The place I retreat to hide from the world. My sanctuary. How do I get out?

  In an echo, he heard Lauren laugh. In a subtle, gentle way, after she had moved in two years ago, she had brought change and light to the little home that Nagler had occupied like a soldier in a barracks for nearly thirty years.

  It was little things at first, around the kitchen. New towels, pot holders, a bright yellow tablecloth draped over the old wooden table he had used uncovered for years.

  Flowers on window sills, hanging pots of mums on the porch. Small sample-sized cans of paint.

  It was not, Frank understood, surreptitious. They talked, often, about the changes. We can’t see the sameness, can we? Can’t sense the stillness that fills our lives, that we accept like breathing, that we defend.

  Still, it was a shock to find Lauren standing naked in the bathroom one morning. She had stepped from the steaming shower and was wrapping her hair in a towel when he had pushed open the door.

  “Can’t a girl get any privacy?” she laughed, placing her hands her hips.

  “Sorry,” he had said and looked at the floor and began to back out.

  “Hey,” she said, smiling as she grabbed a second towel and began to dry her body. “Get used to it.”

  And so he had.

  They both did, he knew. Yet it seemed that they were still walking around the edges; the voice in his head was Jimmy Dawson’s from years ago talking about trusting one another. Maybe we still don’t, that there is another level unreached.

  He picked up the photos and glanced back and forth. Nothing would have changed if not for Lauren. I would have come home each night, sat in this dark kitchen under this same yellow light .... Is that where you are? He asked the girl in the photos. Sitting in a tiny dark room with a dim bulb overhead. What is the word I can use to drill a crack in that wall to let in some light? Would you even let me? It is trust you need? Help me let you trust me, so we can end all this.

  Nagler leaned his head back against the back of the chair.

  Why is this case such a mess? Is it even a case?

  We have a missing girl, well, found girl with no name or history, a black SUV that may have both dumped her on the street and is apparently following people, including me. A police commander who wants me to mind my own business, and a school principal who is either too afraid or too disinterested to talk. And a missing cop. And that dead guy from Atlanta. Nagler pulled out his phone, recalling that Detective Guidrey from Atlanta had called.

  “Hey, Frank, John Guidrey. Sorry I missed you. I sent you some new files. Call me when you read them. I’ll be in and out. Half of Atlanta is apparently trying to kill the other half. We seem to have a drug war. The short version is that Randolph Garrettson is not dead. See ya.”

  Nagler shut off the phone and dropped it on the table.

  Randolph Garrettson was not dead.

  Oh crap. Jesus. I have no idea why that might be important, but it probably is.

  He leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. When he closed his eyes he could see the girl’s hand drawing the black circle again and again; swirling, deeper, digging deeper, until there was silence behind the wall, silence that could not reach the depths of the darkness, like reaching the inky bottom of the cold sea.

  “Frank!”

  Lauren’s cry yanked him from the neck-bent, chair-wedged sleep.

  “Oh, God, Frank!”

  Half-awake, he found Lauren lunging at him, arms around his neck, trying to crawl into his lap.

  “Hey, kid, what’s up? Wait, wait, this chair won’t hold us both,” he said as he stood up, still holding her and walked backward to lean against the sink.

  She curled inside his arms and sighed deeply.

  “Okay, breathe a little. What’s up?”

  Lauren let out one long breath and her body relaxed. “I was being followed. You know I went to my mother’s, and on the way home, there was a black SUV trailing me, taking every turn I took until I pulled into the police lot in Roxbury.”

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “Because I think I have a picture of the driver on my phone.”

  ****

  “Don’t act so surprised,” Lauren said while she and Nagler waited at the police department for Lieutenant Maria Ramirez.

  “People have been following me since I came to Ironton, or have you forgotten Debbie Glance and Tom Miller,” she said.

  “No, I haven’t forgotten them,” Nagler laughed. “Debbie Glance would have killed you if she had the chance, and tried to pin all her gang’s theft of public money on you, and Miller ...” Nagler reached out to Lauren and pulled her into his arms. “I’m glad you’re smarter than they are.” He felt her shudder.

  “Hey, chickie sleuth,” Ramirez pushed her way into the room. “Where’s that phone? You think you got our guy, huh?”

  “Yes. I was at my mother’s. She lives in an old subdivision, so old that most of the trees are fully grown and the houses have rows of shrubs lining the curbs. The streets wind through the neighborhood so there aren’t a lot of square cross streets, and it’s easy to hide by parking a few feet from
the intersection, or in a driveway. That’s where he must have been. There’s one house with a big boat, all he had to do was sneak in next to it. How’s it going?”

  “Little blurry, but one or two of these might be good,” Ramirez said. “Give me a minute. I take it you were driving when you shot these?”

  Lauren smiled. “Oh, yeah. I had pulled into the left lane by the fast food joint on East Avenue like I was going straight, and for some reason he pulled to the right but got behind a pick-up truck hauling a heavy farm tractor. Turned out the guy in front of me was going into the restaurant, so I had to wait. Then that guy turned and the pick-up with the trailer lurched forward slowly and I had a chance. I pulled to the right, passed the SUV snapping away. Slipped in front of the pick-up, and made a right onto East Ave. just as the light changed. The pick-up never made the intersection, and the SUV was pinned there. He was too far forward to cut the turn through the drugstore parking lot, so I thought I lost him. But he caught up to me near Budd Lake. The traffic was heavy, so we jockeyed back and forth from lane to lane for a couple of miles ’til I blew the red light at the Netcong train station and then gunned it to the Roxbury police station.”

  “I did like you taught me, Frank. Kept him behind me so he could not stop short and have me ram into him, causing an accident. I parked behind a dump truck and snuck around the building to see if he was still on the road. I saw him go by pretty quickly, and then waited for ten or fifteen minutes before I left. I went west back to Netcong, got on 80, and drove home. I think he realized there were maybe a half-dozen roads I could have taken after I lost him at the train station light.”

  “So what’s up with this guy?” Ramirez asked.

  “He’s just watching, letting us know he’s there,” Nagler said. “When we find out who, we’ll find out why.”

  “Well, there he is,” Ramirez said. “Damn it, Nagler. It’s our missing cop.”

  ****

  “You can’t go in there, Detective.”

  “Are you going to stop me?” Frank Nagler hissed at Nancy, the secretary to Jerrold McCann, the police commissioner.