“Maybe you better start at the beginning and tell me step by step what happened.”
“But my daughter! Anything could be happening!”
I put my cup and bagel down. “Mira, I have to get all the details straight in my mind because any clue might be the one that helps me find Talley. Believe me, this will save time later, and, if you call the cops it’ll take them twice as long to get started on this, and there will be a lot of hoopla. Odds are very good that your daughter is fine. Because you have had no personal contact with them, there’s no reason for property criminals to kill, especially not a pretty little middle-class white girl. The public would eat it up and there would be a manhunt coast to coast. They probably don’t want that kind of heat on them.”
Mira’s face turned shocked and angry. “What does being a pretty white girl have to do with it?”
I sighed. “I’m just stating the bald, non-PC truth. Dozens of poor kids of color go missing every day in America, but only a handful of well-off white girls. Who gets on TV?”
Mira looked as if she was on the verge of tears. “That’s horrible. I never thought anything like this would ever happen to us.”
“No one ever does.” I projected my best professional sympathy, to get the client back to the vital topic. “Take a deep breath and tell me what happened from the beginning. Give me details if you can.”
Mira took that deep breath and spoke. “Friday night after work I drove home and parked in my garage. Talley should have been here waiting for me—she’s a latchkey kid. The school bus drops her off on the corner. When I got inside I found a note in the middle of the table. There was also a big envelope with a form to fill out with all the information they wanted, just like an application, and a little plastic box with silicone in it for my thumbprint.”
“What did it say? I don’t suppose you copied it?”
“No, I didn’t think to...It just said to fill out the form and put everything including the note into the envelope, seal it and put it in my mailbox. It said they were watching, and not to call the cops or anyone, or else, and that they would return Talley by Saturday evening.”
“What happened next?”
“I did exactly what they said. I filled in every bit of information and put my thumbprint in the silicone box.”
I couldn’t resist. “And they could read your handwriting?”
Mira rolled her eyes. “That’s doctors. I am the one who has to interpret their scrawls, so my penmanship is very good, thank you very much.”
“Sorry.” I wasn’t, really, because I was beginning to vaguely dislike Mira. I wasn’t sure why. Mira wasn’t overly privileged, or rude, and she certainly couldn’t be blamed too much for knocking back a few in a situation like this, two days full of helplessness. Maybe it was just the feeling the woman looked down on me, despite the fact it would be my ass on the line. Or maybe it was a hunch she wasn’t being fully truthful with me, risking her daughter.
“Anyway, I put the envelope in my mailbox—it’s out front at the curb—and went into my bedroom and stayed there like the note said.”
“Your bedroom faces the back, right?”
“Right.”
“So when did the envelope get picked up?”
“Sometime in the middle of the night, I guess. I fell asleep finally about two and then I woke up around seven, thinking it had all been a dream, until I remembered again that Talley was gone. No one had called. I went out to check and the envelope was gone from the mailbox. I came back inside, got something to eat, checked my email, turned on the TV, and I waited. They called about an hour later.”
“So that was Saturday morning...they called around eight? But you checked the mailbox around seven?”
“Yes...does that matter?”
“It may.” It indicated, but did not prove, that the kidnapper-thieves were not actually watching or listening in at the Sorkin house. I would have thought they’d have called as soon as they saw or heard Mira check the mailbox, not an hour later...unless they were very clever, and that’s what they wanted anyone to think.
“Go on. Tell me about the phone call. You didn’t happen to record it, did you?” Lots of doctors had recorders on their phones, for malpractice protection.
“No. I never thought I’d need anything like that. I mean, I don’t deal directly with patients. I was hired for my degree, not my clinicals.”
Maybe that was what bothered me about Mira: the fact that she was a part, if only a minor one, of the Big Pharma machine that kept prices artificially high and profits fat. I tried to fight my emotions by reminding myself that I had also sometimes wandered into gray areas in the service of the greater good. Who was I to judge a single mom trying to give her daughter a good life? It wasn’t as if Mira was on their board of directors, holding fat stock options.
Every snowflake in an avalanche thinks itself guiltless.
A little girl was in the hands of kidnappers, I reminded myself. Not to mention the five grand and a client that, no matter who she worked for, did not deserve her current karma.
On the other hand, the whole point of karma was that what comes around really does go around, so maybe Mira had earned this pain. Who knew? I’d only met the woman today. Maybe she was not what she seemed.
But Talley...no. I refused to buy that one. At ten, Talley was innocent. I had a child to find and, if I could, to bring home safe. “The phone call,” I reminded Mira.
“Yeah. Well, his voice was ordinary. Middle aged, as I said, I think, and probably white. At least, he didn’t seem to have any...”
“Ethnic markers?” I prompted.
“Yes. No accent, either.”
“So you mean he sounded like he was from around here?” When people said “no accent,” what they usually meant was that the person sounded like they did.
“Yes, that’s what I mean. American English, not black or Hispanic or Asian...no offense.”
I chuckled. “One grandmother was Chinese, one Mexican, but my parents and I were all born here, so...none taken.” It showed just how PC everything was getting that Mira felt she had to apologize for making a simple factual observation. “Go on.”
“He reminded me they were watching and listening, and that if I kept quiet and they had no trouble, Talley would be returned Sunday morning. It wasn’t fair, because they said Saturday night before, and now they pushed it back. Then they let me talk to her for a few seconds, I guess just to show that she was all right. She said she was okay. I could tell she was scared, but not absolutely terrified. She always was a brave little thing, like a boy.”
I bit back a reflexive lecture on gender stereotypes. Reminded me of myself and things my mom used to say. So much for enlightenment. Instead, I stuck to the facts. “Was that it? Did they say how Talley would be returned to you?”
“No, but...I mean, this is supposed to be a safe neighborhood. They could drop her off anywhere and she could just walk home, and it’s not like they care about her...oh, God.” A sob welled up from Mira and forced itself from her throat. “Please, you have to get her back.”
I reached across to take Mira’s soft, well-manicured hand in my own callused left, keeping my right back. Though I’m a leftie and hadn’t lost much capability, and to look at the right you couldn’t tell anything was amiss, people were still funny when they sensed injury, as if at some level they thought it was contagious.
“I’ll do my best. So, what next?”