He lit a cigarette-still only had the menthols on him, he had to get to a store soon-and was surprised when Burke didn't show any upset about smoking in the house.
Crease leaned forward and pulled a shining glass ashtray close to him.
He said, "Tell me what happened."
"What's the point?"
"Maybe there is none. But explain it to me anyway. Give me the details."
"Don't you already know them?"
All that Crease knew about Mary's kidnapping, and everything that followed, was mired in memories of his own shame and urge to run. He had to start over, disconnect from it, get it clear. "Not in the broader sense."
"How broad a sense do you want them?"
Crease sat back, took a deep drag, and said, "How about if you quit running me around the block and just tell me what happened the day Mary was taken?"
The voice got a rise out of Sam Burke, who raised his chin an extra inch like he was expecting to get jabbed. He folded his hands over his knee and focused himself, going way deep inside. Crease could see him diving.
"This isn't about my little girl. This is about you and your father. That's the only reason you're interested. For your own selfish reasons. "
"So what?" Crease said. "Maybe I can get done what the others were never able to do."
"I don't see how."
"You don't have to see how."
"Your father killed her."
"I know that."
Sam Burke sat waiting for more. It was going to be a long wait. Crease had never apologized for his old man and wasn't about to start now. Saying you were sorry for somebody else, ten years dead, just wasn't going to get the job done.
Crease wondered if Burke would get some kind of a kick out of hearing how he went to the mill and ran around pointing his finger and going bang bang, pretending to be his father, imagining the girl right there in front of him. Probably not.
"You've got nothing to lose," Crease said.
"Don't I? Are you quite so sure of that? Because you shouldn't be, no, you truly shouldn't be, I would say. Every time I see her photo, every mention of her name, the name `Mary', I lose myself. Can you understand that? Can you possibly know what I mean? I disappear, I cease to exist for an instant. I go someplace where my girl is still with me, where she is looking up into my eyes, and holding my hand, and my wife is not in Terrytown or elsewhere. I vanish off the earth. And then I come back, you see. There's the trouble. That I come back. And yes, she's still dead, and I am alone, and the things that once mattered most can matter no longer. So I say to you, I do have something to lose, and it will be very costly to me to lose any more of it."
So that's how it was for him. Crease got it now.
He'd been wrong. Burke didn't have nearly as much control over himself as he did over his environment. The man was ready to shake loose at any second. He didn't want to say anything more, but his mouth wouldn't stop working. You could tell it panicked him, but it had been so long since he'd spoken about Mary that he couldn't turn it off.
"You know what she enjoyed doing more than anything else? Playing hide-and-seek. It was more than a child's game, you see. This house is over one hundred and twenty years old. There are many nooks and niches in it, places for a little girl to hide herself away from the world. She would grab something from us-my watch, her mother's gloves or some kitchen utensil, and she would run. She would hide. A girl who likes to hide so much came out into the open and was stolen from our own yard. Yes, that's what happened. Appalling. She stepped into the open and was shot down by the sheriff whose duty it was to get her home safely again. Don't you find that ironic?"
"No," Crease said. "I find it tragic."
"You only say that because it is," Burke said. "I'm vanishing, you know. Inch by inch, I'll soon be gone."
Crease could see it happening. He thought, this guy, he doesn't have much longer to go. Maybe if Crease could get some answers, Burke would start seeing himself in the mirror again.
Burke's clipped, darting style of speech went on and on. "There isn't much to tell, really. It was the fifth of June, a warm day, a sunny day, but not especially hot. Mary didn't want to wear long sleeves, she hated long sleeves, and she and Vera-my wife, Vera-fought about that, but not much, really, and Mary usually won such battles anyway. She was just going to play in the back yard, alone, with some dolls and their accessories. Everything has accessories, the cars and the pools and the wardrobe for the dolls, an entire city set up in the yard. She was very popular, Mary was, she had many friends in the neighborhood, but that day she was alone."
"You were home?"
"Until noon or so. I went in to work late, being the owner does have some advantages. I spent the morning watching a film I wished to watch. A documentary on VHS, rented right next door to my hardware store, Bob's Video. It's not there anymore. Don't ask me which documentary it was, I don't recall. I remember a great deal about that day, but not the film I wanted to watch so badly that I spent the morning at home. Afterwards, Mary, Vera, and I had lunch together-chicken salad. I didn't say goodbye to her. She ran out the back door to play and I left through the front. Vera followed me down the driveway to get the mail from the box, and I drove off. An hour later, she phoned me at the store. Mary was gone."
Crease stubbed out his cigarette. "Had they made contact yet?"
"No. I rushed home and we searched the house… we thought perhaps she was playing hide-and-seek again, although Mary never did this when we spoke firmly with her and demanded she show herself. She would always come out then, smiling, happy to have fooled us for so long, and that was all right. It was always all right so long as she showed herself when we finally asked, you see? But she didn't come out that day. We searched the yard, we visited our neighbors, we called the police. I-"
Here it comes, Crease thought.
“-spoke with your father." Burke wasn't able to keep the hostility out of his voice, and the fever started up in Crease's chest, began to burn. "He told me he'd be right over. It took less than ten minutes. He was very powerfully built, your father, with an air of authority. He seemed very assertive, effective, despite the recent death of his wife. I'd always found him trustworthy, even though at that moment I smelled the alcohol on his breath. But I was a near-sniveling mess. Vera was already in shambles. We held onto each other and dragged ourselves around together like cripples. The phone rang again. It was a man. A voice I'd never heard before. He said he had Mary. He would return her for the sum of fifteen thousand dollars. He was specific in his instructions. No police."
"But my father was already there."
"Yes, you see, your father was already there. I couldn't even follow his demands because the sheriff was already there."
"What did the man on the phone say exactly?"
"He was brief. He wanted fifteen thousand dollars. He wanted me to bring it to the abandoned mill and leave it. No police involvement. Mary would be returned to us within twenty-four hours without harm."
"How easy was it for you to get your hands on that kind of money?"
"Very easy," Burke said. "We weren't especially well-to-do, but fifteen thousand dollars isn't an outrageous sum of money. We had sixty thousand in our savings. It seemed like such a ridiculous amount to ask for in exchange for the life of our daughter."
"Yes, it does."
Burke made as if to change position, maybe move over on the couch an inch, but then he resettled himself to the same position."The details, do they still need to be so broad, or are you familiar with what happened afterwards?"
"The dolls," Crease said. "Were any missing? Broken?"
"Only her teddy bear. It was her favorite, her sidekick as it were. Her best friend. The other dolls were toys that she and Teddy both played with, you see?"