“It’s something we’ll be looking at,” Frank said.
“I didn’t take all of Altair’s equipment with me the other night-they only let me walk away with the dog and his collar and leash. It might be worthwhile searching those SAR equipment bags and Sheila’s other belongings. If they find a little collection of teeth, it will be easier to prove that Sheila planted the ones she found out at the Sheffield Estate.”
“I’ll mention it to them,” Frank said. “What are you doing the rest of the day?”
“Taking Ethan to see Dr. Robinson at one. Then after that, I’m meeting a photographer at Blake Ives’s house. I’m starting on that follow-up story about families with missing children.” She sighed.
“Not an easy assignment.”
“The best ones never are. Besides, I volunteered for it.”
“Let me know how things go with Ethan. And say hi to Doug Robinson for me.” She promised she would, then added, “Let me know how things go with Ben.”
Which made him realize that he had volunteered, too.
“Maybe it’s none of our business,” he said, knowing even as he did that he was looking for a way out.
Silence.
“I guess Ben has a right to know,” he said. “I wouldn’t want him to hear it from someone else.”
“You want me to tell him?”
He did, but for all the wrong reasons. “No, I’ll talk to him.”
“Thanks,” she said, clearly relieved.
They made dinner plans and hung up.
“I must be slipping,” he said to himself, and drove off, wondering how the hell he was going to break this news to Ben.
CHAPTER 29
Wednesday, April 26
3:40 P.M.
LAS PIERNAS
WHAT else do you want?” the photographer asked me. He had just taken photos of a stuffed animal-a lion that’d had most of his mane, whiskers, and one eye loved off of him. It was one of many stuffed animals he had photographed, some in groups, some alone. But mostly he’d taken pictures of the lion, whose name was Squeegee, for reasons known only to a former three-year-old who wasn’t around to be asked about it.
The photographer was being extraordinarily patient this afternoon. He had young children, a daughter and a son, and although his own marriage was in good shape, I think Blake Ives’s story horrified him.
While he had been on toy safari, I had taken possession of three CDs of photographs from Blake Ives. Ives had big blue eyes and dark gold hair; the many framed photos of his daughter on his walls showed that she had inherited those traits from him. “I did what you said,” he told me as he handed over the digital versions of the photos. “There are ones of all of us-me, Bonnie, and Carla. Mostly Carla, though. Bonnie said I took too many pictures of Carla.”
The words were spoken calmly, all the bite well beneath them. The temperamental man who had called me a few days ago was nowhere in evidence. Far from raging, he seemed painfully in control of himself. All three of us were unnaturally subdued, given the reason for meeting-to photograph the Museum of Carla.
The phenomenon wasn’t a new one to me. Over the years, I’ve covered any number of missing-persons stories, and so I had seen these little museums before. Shrines, some would say. Some parents of missing kids had them, others didn’t. A few couldn’t stand reminders, and boxed them up within weeks, as an act of anger or grief or surrender, or all three. Others came to the first anniversary of loss and put everything into the attic or gave it away on that day, as if the motions of closure would bring it about. They undoubtedly knew closure was not to be so easily acquired, although perhaps these actions brought some form of relief.
Still other parents preserved the child’s room, thinking of it as a magnet that would draw their loved one back. A child’s bedroom furnishings and toys became something tangible to hold on to when the child himself or herself had unthinkably slipped from their grasp. For some, these rooms were a physical demonstration of remembrance, a defiant refusal to let go. A sign of enduring hope. Sometimes I find myself wondering if there is anything more cruel than enduring hope.
Ives was a curator. Carla’s room was just as it had been the last time she was home. Cleaned and dusted. Favorite toys on the bed, the lion among them.
He moved to a closet and opened it. “I gave away most of her clothes,” he said, “except for her favorite pj’s. I know she won’t fit in them now, but…”
He went over the story he had told me on the phone, this time in greater detail. In the years after she left the newspaper, Bonnie had apparently gone on something of a downhill slide. Ives had met her about halfway down the slope-when she was already picking up speed, hurtling toward hitting bottom. That came when she grew restless with caring for an infant, and ran off with Reggie Faroe, a man with a criminal record and a drug problem. Blake and Bonnie Ives were divorced by the time Carla was two. The courts, considering Bonnie’s history and reports on Faroe, agreed with Blake that he should have full custody. Bonnie moved around a lot but stayed in touch and visited her daughter. As Carla went from infant to toddler, Bonnie’s desire to be a mother seemed to be renewed. “She was cleaning up her act-or so I thought,” Ives said. “She claimed Faroe was no longer in the picture, but I didn’t trust her. I never let Carla spend the night with her. Bonnie seemed content to spend hours with her here. Hinted about maybe getting back together.” He paused. “I’d love to say I didn’t fall for that, and if I had been by myself, I probably wouldn’t have listened to it. But I kept seeing how good she was with Carla, and thinking about Carla growing up without a mother. And Bonnie seemed more stable than she had been in years. So I was tempted.”
He walked around the room, picked up Squeegee, and held him.
“She came over one afternoon and asked if the three of us could have lunch together in a restaurant. While we were there, I went to use the gents and came back to an empty table. By the time I figured out that she wasn’t just in the ladies’ room with Carla, she was gone. I think someone, probably Faroe, must have been waiting outside to pick them up and drive off with them, because I was the one who drove us to the restaurant. A private detective found out that Faroe was living in Nevada around then, but he disappeared not long after Carla was taken, so I think he’s taken them to another country, probably Mexico.”
He looked down at Squeegee, said, “This guy was her favorite,” and gently repositioned the lion on the bed. “She used to get scared when there was a thunderstorm. Lots of kids do, I know, but…Anyway, I’d sing that song from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.’ She loved that song. Whenever it rains, like it did the other day? I think about that, and then I wonder if she’s scared.”
He stood up and exhaled hard, like someone who had been sucker-punched in the gut.
The pain, the loss-easy to see. Likewise, his fears for his daughter’s safety. What took a little longer to observe was that he had been brought to a halt on a journey that was designed to go on to another end, the one parent and child were meant to share. It took a little longer to see how incomplete this had left him.
He gestured toward a stack of brightly wrapped packages that filled one corner of the closet. “Birthdays,” he said. “Christmas.”
The photographer wanted Ives to pose with them. Blake hesitated, then did. “She’ll be too old for most of them now,” he said, and pinched the bridge of his nose, hard. The tears didn’t fall, but he looked like hell while he held them back.
The photographer was too well trained to miss the moment. Our bosses would love it. Neither of us took joy in that, despite whatever rep those in our professions may have. I don’t expect anyone who wasn’t there to understand this, but shying away from Blake Ives’s misery would have, essentially, dishonored it.