Of course it probably meant nothing. That Marissa had walked out of the store with a classmate from school. Nothing unusual about that. She could imagine with what polite stiff expressions the police would respond to such a “tip.”
In any case, Marissa would still have returned to 15th Street on her way home. So busy, dangerous at that hour of day.
It was there on 15th Street that the “unidentified” classmate had seen Marissa being pulled into the Honda. Leah wondered if the witness was the red-haired Jude.
Exactly what the girl had told police officers, Leah didn’t know. The detectives exuded an air, both assuring and frustrating, of knowing more than they were releasing at the present time.
Leah found herself at the edge of the paved area. Staring at a steep hill of uncultivated and seemingly worthless land. Strange how in the midst of an affluent suburb there yet remain these stretches of vacant land, uninhabitable. The hill rose to Highgate Avenue a half mile away, invisible from this perspective. You would not guess that “historical” old homes and mansions were located on the crest of this hill, property worth millions of dollars. The hill was profuse with crawling vines, briars, and stunted trees. The accumulation of years of windblown litter and debris made it look like an informal dump. There was a scurrying sound somewhere just inside the tangle of briars, a furry shape that appeared and disappeared so swiftly Leah scarcely saw it.
Behind the Dumpster, hidden from her view, the colony of wild cats lived, foraged for food, fiercely interbred, and died the premature deaths of feral creatures. They would not wish to be “pets” — they had no capacity to receive the affection of humans. They were, in clinical terms, undomesticable.
Leah was returning to her car when she heard a nasal voice in her wake:
“Mrs. Ban-try! H’lo.”
Leah turned uneasily to see the frizz-haired girl who’d given her the flowers.
Jude. Jude Trahern.
Now it came to Leah: there was a Trahern Square in downtown Skatskill, named for a Chief Justice Trahern decades ago. One of the old Skatskill names. On Highgate, there was a Trahern estate, one of the larger houses, nearly hidden from the road.
This strange glistening-eyed girl. There was something of the sleek white rat about her. Yet she smiled uncertainly at Leah, clumsily straddling her bicycle.
“Are you following me?”
“Ma’am, no. I... just saw you.”
Wide-eyed the girl appeared sincere, uneasy. Yet Leah’s nerves were on edge, she spoke sharply: “What do you want?”
The girl stared at Leah as if something very bright glared from Leah’s face that was both blinding and irresistible. She wiped nervously at her nose. “I... I want to say I’m sorry, for saying dumb things before. I guess I made things worse.”
Made things worse! Leah smiled angrily, this was so absurd.
“I mean, Denise and Anita and me, we wanted to help. We did the wrong thing, I guess. Coming to see you.”
“Were you the ‘unidentified witness’ who saw my daughter being pulled into a minivan?”
The girl blinked at Leah, blank-faced. For a long moment Leah would have sworn that she was about to speak, to say something urgent. Then she ducked her head, wiped again at her nose, shrugged self-consciously and muttered what sounded like, “I guess not.”
“All right. Good-bye. I’m leaving now.”
Leah frowned and turned away, her heart beating hard. How badly she wanted to be alone! But the rat-girl was too obtuse to comprehend. With the dogged persistence of an overgrown child she followed Leah at an uncomfortably close distance of about three feet, pedaling her bicycle awkwardly. The bicycle was an expensive Italian make of the kind a serious adult cyclist might own.
At last Leah paused, to turn back. “Do you have something to tell me, Jude?”
The girl looked astonished.
“ ‘Jude’! You remember my name?”
Leah would recall afterward this strange moment. The exultant look in Jude Trahern’s face. Her chalky skin mottled with pleasure.
Leah said, “Your name is unusual, I remember unusual names. If you have something to tell me about Marissa, I wish you would.”
“Me? What would I know?”
“You aren’t the witness from school?”
“What witness?”
“A classmate of Marissa’s says she saw a male driver pull Marissa into his minivan on 15th Street. But you aren’t that girl?”
Jude shook her head vehemently. “You can’t always believe ‘eyewitnesses,” Mrs. Bantry.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s well known. It’s on TV all the time, police shows. An eyewitness swears she sees somebody, and she’s wrong. Like, with Mr. Zallman, people are all saying it’s him but, like, it might be somebody else.”
The girl spoke rapidly, fixing Leah with her widened shining eyes.
“Jude, what do you mean, somebody else? Who?”
Excited by Leah’s attention, Jude lost her balance on the bicycle, and nearly stumbled. Clumsily she began walking it again. Gripping the handlebars so tightly her bony knuckles gleamed white.
She was breathing quickly, lips parted. She spoke in a lowered conspiratorial voice.
“See, Mrs. Bantry, Mr. Zallman is like notorious. He comes on to girls if they’re pretty-pretty like Marissa. Like some of the kids were saying on TV, he’s got these laser-eyes.” Jude shivered, thrilled.
Leah was shocked. “If everybody knows about Zallman, why didn’t anybody tell? Before this happened? How could a man like that be allowed to teach?” She paused, anxious. Thinking Did Marissa know? Why didn’t she tell me?
Jude giggled. “You got to wonder why any of them teach. I mean, why’d anybody want to hang out with kids! Not just some weird guy, but females, too.” She smiled, seeming not to see how Leah stared at her. “Mr. Z. is kind of fun. He’s this ‘master’ — he calls himself. Online, you can click onto him he’s ‘Master of Eyes.’ Little kids, girls, he’d come onto after school, and tell them be sure not to tell anybody, see. Or they’re be ‘real sorry.’” Jude made a twisting motion with her hands as if wringing an invisible neck. “He likes girls with nice long hair he can brush.”
“Brush?”
“Sure. Mr. Zallman has this wire brush, like. Calls it a little-doggy-brush. He runs it through your hair for fun. I mean, it used to be fun. I hope the cops took the brush when they arrested him, like for evidence. Hell, he never came on to me, I’m not pretty-pretty.”
Jude spoke haughtily, with satisfaction. Fixing Leah with her curious stone-colored eyes.
Leah knew that she was expected to say, with maternal solicitude, Oh, but you are pretty, Jude! One day, you will be.
In different circumstances she was meant to frame the rat-girl’s hot little face in her cool hands, comfort her. One day you will be loved, Jude. Don‘t feel bad.
“You were saying there might be — somebody else? Not Zallman but another person?”
Jude said, sniffing, “I wanted to tell you before, at your house, but you seemed, like, not to want to hear. And that other lady was kind of glaring at us. She didn’t want us to stay.”
“Jude, please. Who is this person you’re talking about?”
“Mrs. Branly, Bantry, like I said Marissa is a good friend of mine. She is! Some kids make fun of her, she’s a little slow they say but I don’t think Marissa is slow, not really. She tells me all kinds of secrets, see?” Jude paused, drawing a deep breath. “She said, she missed her dad.”
It was as if Jude had reached out to pinch her. Leah was speechless.
“Marissa was always saying she hates it here in Skatskill. She wanted to be with her dad, she said. Some place called ‘Berkeley’ — in California. She wanted to go there to live.”