Ariana tried a smile. "Would you like to take a walk?"
"No, Ariana, I don't want to take a walk. In your letters-the first two I ignored but I guess you can't take a hint-you asked me how you could make amends."
"Yes."
"So I'm here to tell you: Don't send me your self-involved AA nonsense. I don't care. I don't want to forgive you so you can heal or recover or whatever the hell you call it. I have no interest in your getting better. This isn't the first time you've tried AA, is it?"
"No," Ariana Nasbro said, her head held high, "it's not."
"You tried it twice before you murdered my husband, isn't that right?"
"That's correct," she said in too calm a voice.
"Have you reached Step Eight before?"
"I have. But this time it's different because-"
Wendy stopped her with a raised hand. "I don't care. The fact that this time it might be different means nothing to me. I don't care about you or your recovery or about Step Eight, but if you truly want to make amends, I suggest you walk outside, wait by the curb, and throw yourself under the first passing bus. I know that sounds harsh, but if you had done that the last time you reached Step Eight-if whatever wronged person you sent this same me-me-me crap to had told you to do that instead of forgiving you-maybe, just maybe, you would have listened and you'd be dead and my John would be alive. I would have a husband and Charlie would have a father. That's what matters. Not you. Not your six-months-sober party at AA. Not your spiritual journey to sobriety. So if you truly want to make amends, Ariana, stop putting yourself first for once. Are you cured-totally cured, absolutely one hundred percent positive you'll never drink again?"
"You're never cured," Ariana said.
"Right, more of that AA nonsense. We really don't know about tomorrow, do we? So that's how you should make amends. Stop writing letters, stop talking about yourself in group, stop taking it a day at a time. Instead, do the one thing that will guarantee you'll never murder another child's father: Wait for that bus and step right in front of it. Other than that, leave me and my son the hell alone. We will never forgive you. Not ever. And how selfish and monstrous of you to think we should so you, of all people, can heal."
With that, Wendy turned around, headed back to her car, and started it up.
She was done with Ariana Nasbro. Now it was time to see Dan Mercer.
CHAPTER 6
MARCIA MCWAID SAT ON THE COUCH next to Ted. Across from them was Frank Tremont, an Essex County investigator there to deliver their weekly briefing on the case of her missing daughter. Marcia already knew what he would say.
Frank Tremont wore a suit of chipmunk brown and a threadbare tie that looked like it had spent the past four months crinkled in a tight ball. He was in his sixties, near retirement, and had that seen-it-all, world-weary aura that you find in anyone who has been at the same job too long. When Marcia had first asked around, she'd heard rumors that Frank might be past his prime, might be coasting through his last few months on the job.
But Marcia never saw any of that, and at least Tremont was still here, still visiting them, still in touch. There used to be others with him, federal agents and experts in missing persons and assorted members of law enforcement. Their numbers had dwindled over the last ninety-four days until it was just this lone, aging cop with the horrible suit.
In the early days, Marcia had tried to busy herself by offering the various officers coffee and cookies. There was no such pretense anymore. Frank Tremont sat across from them, these clearly suffering parents, in their lovely suburban home, and wondered, she knew, how to tell them, yet again, that there was nothing new to report on their missing daughter.
"I'm sorry," Frank Tremont said.
As expected. Almost on cue.
Marcia watched Ted lean back. He tilted his face up, his eyes blinking back tears. She knew that Ted was a good man, a wonderful man, a great husband and father and provider. But he was, she had learned, not a particularly strong man.
Marcia kept her eyes on Tremont. "So what next?" she asked.
"We keep on looking," he said.
"How?" Marcia asked. "I mean, what else can be done?"
Tremont opened his mouth, stopped, closed it. "I don't know, Marcia."
Ted McWaid let the tears flow. "I don't get it," he said, as he had many times before. "How can you guys not have anything?"
Tremont just waited.
"With all the technology, all the advancements and the Internet…"
Ted's voice trailed off. He shook his head. He didn't get it. Still. Marcia did. It didn't work that way. Before Haley, they'd been a typically naive American family whose knowledge of (and thus faith in) law enforcement was derived from a lifetime of watching TV shows in which all cases get solved. The well-groomed actors find a hair or a footprint or a skin flake, they put it under a microscope, and presto, the answer comes to light before the hour mark. But that wasn't reality. Reality, Marcia now knew, was better found on the news. The cops in Colorado, for example, still hadn't found the killer of that little beauty queen, JonBenet Ramsey. Marcia remembered the headlines when Elizabeth Smart, a pretty fourteen-year-old girl, had been abducted from her bedroom late one night. The media had been all over that kidnapping, the whole world transfixed, all eyes watching as the police and FBI agents and all those crime scene "experts" combed through Elizabeth's Salt Lake City home in search of the truth-and yet for more than nine months, no one thought to check out a crazy homeless man with a God complex who'd worked in the house, even though Elizabeth's sister had seen him that night? If you'd put that on CSI or Law & Order the viewer would toss the remote across the room, claiming it was "unrealistic." But sugarcoat it as you might, that was the kind of thing that happened all the time.
The reality, Marcia now knew, was that even idiots get away with major crimes.
The reality was, none of us are safe.
"Do you have anything new to tell me?" Tremont tried. "Anything at all?"
"We've told you everything," Ted said.
Tremont nodded, his expression extra hangdog today. "We've seen other cases like this, where a missing teenage girl just shows up. She needed to blow off steam or maybe had a secret boyfriend."
He had tried selling this before. Frank Tremont, like everyone else, including Ted and Marcia, wanted this to be a runaway.
"There was another teenage girl from Connecticut," Tremont continued. "Got caught up with the wrong guy and ran away. Three weeks later, she just came back home."
Ted nodded and turned to Marcia to have his hope bolstered. Marcia tried to muster a rosier facade, but there was simply no way. Teddy turned away as though scalded and excused himself.
It was odd, Marcia thought, that she of all people could see clearest. Of course, no parent wants to think that they are so clueless as to miss the signs of a teenager so desperately unhappy or unhinged that she'd run away for three months. The police had magnified every disappointment in her young life: Yes, Haley hadn't gotten into the University of Virginia, her first choice. Yes, she hadn't won the class essay contest or made the AHLISA honors program. And yes, she may have broken up with a boy recently. But so what? Every teen had stuff like that.
Marcia knew the truth, had known it from that first day. To echo the words of Principal Zecher, something had happened to her daughter. Something bad.
Tremont sat there, not sure what to do.
"Frank?" Marcia said.
He looked at her.
"I want to show you something."
Marcia took out the Mickey Mouse photograph she'd found at her daughter's locker and handed it to him. Tremont took his time. He held the picture in his hand. The room was still. She could hear his wheezing breath.
"That picture was taken three weeks before Haley vanished."