I parked opposite the address we’d found in the phone book. Actually, given the street’s condition, I just rolled to a stop and killed the engine. There was no place to park, and no traffic to avoid in any case.
We both left the car and stood soundlessly in the street, staring at the house before us-a patched-together wooden box, single-story, its small windows opaque, a glimpse of tattered blue tarp showing through the snow covering the swaybacked roof. If Shawna Davis had once lived here, it took no great imagination to see why she might have left.
The street was eerily bereft of the usual clatter of civilization. I could hear no dogs, no children, no cars, no voices raised in joy or anger. For all intents and purposes, it seemed like this small portion of hopeful North Adams had missed out on the dream and simply died.
I motioned toward a narrow, crooked, shoveled trench in the snow, connecting the front door to the street. “Somebody’s been at work since the last storm.”
We walked cautiously in single file up to the door and listened. I couldn’t hear a sound. Suddenly hesitant to make a loud noise in this funereal setting, I finally knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” The question was hostile, immediate, from just beyond the thin paneling. Its abruptness made us both jump. I noticed Ron unbutton his coat for easier access to his gun.
“Mrs. Davis?” I said to the closed door, “My name is Joe Gunther. We’re police officers from Brattleboro, Vermont. We wondered if we could have a few words with you.”
“What about?” The voice was cracked and hoarse, as if from underuse.
“Do you have a daughter named Shawna?”
“Maybe.”
Ron and I exchanged glances. I chose my words carefully, skirting the truth of our mission. “You’re not in any trouble, Mrs. Davis, and neither is Shawna. We’re just looking for some information. No harm will come to you.”
There was a long pause before the voice came back. “You have a warrant?”
Ron sighed and visibly relaxed. I resisted telling Mrs. Davis that she’d been watching too much TV, and instead used her own preconceptions against her. “We don’t need a warrant for a conversation. We can get one, though, if we think you’re trying to hide something from us.”
The lock snapped angrily and the door swung back to reveal an angular, bitter, pale woman in her thirties with a dirty face and several missing teeth. She was dressed in a pair of tight blue jeans and a red-and-white wool shirt, pulled out to disguise a malnourished, swollen stomach. The hot smell that swept out to greet us made me realize how lucky we’d been to be chatting through a barrier.
“Fucking cops,” she said and turned her back, vanishing into the gloom.
Ron and I tentatively followed, instinctively moving to opposite sides of the door frame once we’d entered. Both of us had spent too many years exploring similar buildings to feel any safety within them.
I narrowed my eyes to see into the darkness, breathing shallowly until I could get used to the stench. I heard the creak of sofa springs as the woman’s dim shape folded into a dilapidated couch against the far wall. My vision improving, I saw by the live cigarette in the ashtray by her elbow that she’d been sitting there before our arrival, presumably in the dark, doing nothing.
I didn’t bother looking for a seat, not wishing to overexpose myself to my surroundings. “You are Wilma Davis?”
She snorted and then coughed, reaching for the cigarette.
“You don’t even know that much? This is going to be great.”
“And your daughter is Shawna?”
“You already said that.”
“She went to the dentist’s office under a year and a half ago to have a cap put on one of her teeth. Do you remember that?”
“Sure I do. Figured she couldn’t get boyfriends if she didn’t have all her teeth. I told her men don’t give a fuck about a woman’s teeth-not what they look for anyway. Cheaper to have ’em pulled. Cost a god-damn fortune.”
She dragged on her cigarette.
I paused, waiting to see if she’d say more, but she’d apparently run dry. I was struck by her lack of curiosity about why we were here. “Why didn’t she go back to get the job finished?”
“It was finished enough,” she answered disgustedly. “She got the fucking cap. Where did she think the money would come from?”
“You paid for the cap?” I asked.
“Who the hell else was going to? Of course I paid for it.”
I thought for a moment, filtering her words from their meaning.
Despite the overstated anger, she’d acquiesced to her daughter’s desire to get her tooth fixed and had obviously paid for it at great sacrifice. “You knew it was only a temporary repair-that the tooth would rot unless a permanent cap was put in?”
She crushed the cigarette out as if she wished my eye were beneath it. “I’m no fucking moron. That’s what got me so pissed off. I was playing ball with the little jerk. I was going along with the whole deal. I had the goddamn money.”
She finished in a snarl, and hurled the dead butt into the darkness of a far corner.
I took a guess. “But by the time the second appointment came around, Shawna was gone.”
Instead of answering, Wilma Davis merely dug into her breast pocket for another cigarette, which she lit with trembling fingers.
“Why did she leave, Mrs. Davis?” I asked after a few moments.
Her voice had calmed. “Why do they all leave? I did. Everybody leaves, sooner or later.”
“You know where she went?”
“I was the last person she was going to tell. I came home one day, and she was gone. That was it.”
“When was that?”
“Late last April… What’d she do, anyway? Rob a bank?”
Nine months ago, I thought. I ignored her belated question for the time being, sensing she’d been anticipating the worst from the start. “Did she have any friends we could talk to? Someone she might’ve kept in touch with?”
She leaned forward in her seat, stabbing the cigarette in my direction, her question already moot in the misery clouding her mind. “I can sure as hell see you don’t have kids. They don’t talk to you; they don’t tell you their friends’ names; they don’t tell you shit. You watch their faces, looking for the child you knew, and all you see is they hate your guts. They bleed you dry, and then they drop you like shit.”
She rose and approached me, still talking as if her rage might stave off the pain we both knew was coming. I heard Ron shift slightly, returning to the defensive. “You want to know who her friends are? Go find them yourself. ’Cause when you do, she’ll probably be there, too, doing drugs and getting fucked by men who won’t look her in the face. That’s what happens to little children, mister. I know. But you can’t do anything about it. You can kick and scream all you want, but the more you do, the more they want to leave. You tell ’em the truth-as plain as the shit on your shoe-and they tell you you’re full of it.”
She had closed the gap between us, her face inches from mine, the cigarette forgotten in her hand. Her breath encircled my head. “You find her, policeman, you tell her I’m dead, just like she is. She won’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, but she’ll find out soon enough.”
In the twilight from the greasy windows, I could see the tears in her eyes-the shiny paths they left on her cheeks. “Will you do that? Will you tell her?”
I did look her in the face and chose not to lie. “We might’ve already found her, Wilma. And if I’m right, maybe you can bury some of your grief along with her. She’s not in pain any longer.”
She stared at me in silence for a moment and then burst out sobbing.