Jude spoke with the ingratiating air of one child informing on another to a parent. Her lips quivered, she was so excited.
Still Leah was unable to respond. Trying to think what to say except her brain seemed to be partly shutting down as if she’d had a small stroke.
Jude said innocently, “I guess you didn’t know this, Mrs. Bantry?” She bit at her thumbnail, squinting.
“Marissa told you that? She told you — those things?”
“Are you mad at me, Mrs. Bantry? You wanted me to tell.”
“Marissa told you — she wanted to live with her ‘dad’? Not with her mother but with her ‘dad’?”
Leah’s peripheral vision had narrowed. There was a shadowy funnel-shape at the center of which the girl with the chalky skin and frizzed hair squinted and grinned, in a show of repentance.
“I just thought you would want to know, see, Mrs. Bantry? Like, maybe Marissa ran away? Nobody is saying that, everybody thinks it’s Mr. Zallman, like the cops are thinking it’s got to be him. Sure, maybe it is. But — maybe! — Marissa called her dad, and asked him to come get her? Something weird like that? And it was a secret from you? See, a lot of times Marissa would talk that way, like a little kid. Like, not thinking about her mother’s feelings. And I told her, ‘Your mom, she’s real nice, she’d be hurt real bad, Marissa, if you—’ ”
Leah couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. It was as if she’d lost her daughter for the second time.
His first was to assume that, since he knew nothing of the disappearance of Marissa Bantry, he could not be “involved” in it.
His second was not to contact a lawyer immediately. As soon as he realized exactly why he’d been brought into police headquarters for questioning.
His third seemed to be to have lived the wrong life.
Pervert. Sex offender. Pedophile.
Kidnapper/rapist I murderer.
Mikal Zallman, thirty-one. Suspect.
“Mother, it’s Mikal. I hope you haven’t seen the news already, I have something very disturbing to tell you...”
Nothing! He knew nothing.
The name MARISSA BANTRY meant nothing to him.
Well, not initially. He couldn’t be sure.
In his agitated state, not knowing what the hell they were getting at with their questions, he couldn’t be sure.
“Why are you asking me? Has something happened to ‘Marissa Bantry’?”
Next, they showed him photographs of the girl.
Yes: now he recognized her. The long blond hair, that was sometimes plaited. One of the quieter pupils. Nice girl. He recognized the picture but could not have said the girl’s name because, look: “I’m not these kids’ teacher, exactly. I’m a ‘consultant.’ I don’t have a homeroom. I don’t have regular classes with them. In the high school, one of the math instructors teaches computer science. I don’t get to know the kids by name, like their other instructors do.”
He was speaking quickly, an edge to his voice. It was uncomfortably cold in the room, yet he was perspiring.
As in a cartoon of police interrogation. They sweated it out of the suspect.
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t true that Zallman didn’t know students’ names. He knew the names of many students. Certainly, he knew their faces. Especially the older students, some of whom were extremely bright, and engaging. But he had not known Marissa Bantry’s name, the shy little blond child had made so little an impression on him.
Nor had he spoken with her personally. He was certain.
“Why are you asking me about this girl? If she’s missing from home what is the connection with me?”
That edge to Zallman’s voice. Not yet angry, only just impatient.
He was willing to concede, yes: if a child has been missing for more than twenty-four hours that was serious. If eleven-year-old Marissa Bantry was missing, it was a terrible thing.
“But it has nothing to do with me.”
They allowed him to speak. They were tape recording his precious words. They did not appear to be passing judgment on him, he was not receiving the impression that they believed him involved with the disappearance, only just a few questions to put to him, to aid in their investigation. They explained to him that it was in his best interests to cooperate fully with them, to straighten out the misunderstanding, or whatever it was, a misidentification perhaps, before he left police headquarters.
“Misidentification”? What was that?
He was becoming angry, defiant. Knowing he was God-damned innocent of any wrongdoing, no matter how triviaclass="underline" traffic violations, parking tickets. He was innocent! So he insisted upon taking a lie-detector test.
Another mistake.
Seventeen hours later an aggressive stranger now retained as Mikal Zallman’s criminal lawyer was urging him, “Go home, Mikal. If you can, sleep. You will need your sleep. Don’t speak with anyone except people you know and trust and assume yourself under surveillance and whatever you do, man — don’t try to contact the missing girl’s mother.”
Please understand I am not the one. Not the madman who has taken your beautiful child. There has been some terrible misunderstanding but I swear I am innocent, Mrs. Bantry, we’ve never met but please allow me to commiserate with you, this nightmare we seem to be sharing.
Driving home to North Tarrytown. Oncoming headlights blinding his eyes. Tears streaming from his eyes. Now the adrenaline rush was subsiding, leaking out like water in a clogged drain, he was beginning to feel a hammering in his head that was the worst headache pain he’d ever felt in his life.
Jesus! What if it was a cerebral hemorrhage...
He would die. His life would be over. It would be judged that his guilt had provoked the hemorrhage. His name would never be cleared.
He’d been so cocky and arrogant coming into police headquarters, confident he’d be released within the hour, and now. A wounded animal limping for shelter. He could not keep up with traffic on route 9, he was so sick. Impatient drivers sounded their horns. A massive SUV pulled up to within inches of Zallman’s rear bumper.
He knew! Ordinarily he was an impatient driver himself. Disgusted with overly cautious drivers on route 9 and now he’d become one of these, barely mobile at twenty miles an hour.
Whoever they were who hated him, who had entangled him in this nightmare, they had struck a first, powerful blow.
Zallman’s bad luck, one of his fellow tenants was in the rear lobby of his building, waiting for the elevator, when Zallman staggered inside. He was unshaven, disheveled, smelling frankly of his body. He saw the other man staring at him, at first startled, recognizing him; then with undisguised repugnance.
But I didn’t! I am not the one.
The police would not have released me if.
Zallman let his fellow tenant take the elevator up, alone.
Zallman lived on the fifth floor of the so-called condominium village. He had never thought of his three sparely furnished rooms as “home” nor did he think of his mother’s Upper East Side brownstone as “home” any longer: it was fair to say that Zallman had no home.
It was near midnight of an unnamed day. He’d lost days of his life. He could not have stated with confidence the month, the year. His head throbbed with pain. Fumbling with the key to his darkened apartment he heard the telephone inside ringing with the manic air of a telephone that has been ringing repeatedly.