Every Secret Thing Read online

  “Cheer up, Sarge,” Infante said. “We won this round.”

  “Campbell died last week,” Lenhardt said.

  “Campbell?” Nancy asked, even as Infante nodded.

  “H. Grayson Campbell. H. Grayson Campbell the Third, or maybe it was the Fourth. Died in a nursing home. Last time I stopped to talk to him, he thought I was his stepson. Guy’s got no control of his bowels or his bladder or his brain, he’s facing down death—and he still won’t tell me where she is.”

  “Do I know Campbell?” Nancy asked. The name was familiar. Maybe she had seen the file on Lenhardt’s desk. He pulled old files all the time. The sergeant never stopped learning, never stopped studying. And she never stopped watching him.

  “Just a rich guy who had a habit of bouncing his wife off the walls every now and then, even after they split up. One night, she doesn’t bounce back.”

  “You allege,” Infante said, aping a defense lawyer’s prissy voice.

  “Yeah, I allege. Her kids from her first marriage allege. Her family alleges. We’re all alligators, heaping our suspicions on this poor, misunderstood citizen because his ex-wife happened to go over there to talk about her Visa bill, and she’s never seen again, dead or alive. Now that the bastard is dead, I can say it out loud, say it to the world, and it doesn’t do a damn thing. It was her husband. And he left this planet without telling me where he left her.”

  “Where do you think he put the body?” Nancy asked.

  “I don’t know. Where do county guys go to dump their bodies? If he was a city mutt, I’d check Leakin Park. But he ain’t no city mutt, and even after ten years out here, I never have figured out where county guys dump their bodies. Too much acreage.”

  Nancy looked down at her plate, an assortment of deep-fried things—mushrooms, zucchini, the cheese-filled poppers. She needed to go back on her diet. She hadn’t tried, not with a case working, which meant life was all carryout. She calculated calories and carbs, pondered buying a stationary bike. She thought about anything and everything to block out the memories that surged whenever anyone said “Leakin Park.”

  Lenhardt looked in his lap and Nancy understood that his beeper must have gone off.

  “Wife time,” Infante said, laughing.

  “Hey, at least Nancy and I are still on our first spouses,” he said, getting up and going to the phone, leaving Infante and Nancy alone.

  An awkward silence fell. Although the two had spent plenty of time alone together, they seldom socialized. “I had a case once,” Infante said, “where I thought the guy put his wife in a wood-chipper. Guy was really big on gardening. I’ve never seen so much mulch. Everything was mulched.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Nancy said, with an inappropriate heat.

  “What?”

  “I mean, if there was a wood-chipper, you could check it for blood. You can’t mulch a person without a trace, much less scour all the trace evidence out of a wood-chipper.”

  Infante looked at her as if to say: “The fuck did I do?” Nancy couldn’t tell him, because he hadn’t done anything. But picking on Infante would somehow even up the day, make up for what happened when the last of the quartet was being maneuvered into handcuffs for transport to the county jail.

  This was the one who had done it, the one who had taken the knife and driven it into the victim again and again and again. He was slight, weighed less than Nancy. But there was something menacing in the very fineness of his bones, as if a bigger boy had been boiled down until all that remained was this concentrated bit of rage and bile.

  He had bugged Lenhardt, too, although he didn’t realize it. That was a mistake, not knowing when Lenhardt was mad at you.

  “We got you, you know?” Lenhardt couldn’t help telling the little one after he signed on the dotted line. “Your friends gave you up. They told us plenty, by the way. Your buddies, your pals, your confederates.”

  Confederates—another Lenhardtism. He had told Nancy he used it for the very associations it raised. Confederate–Confederacy–Civil War–slavery. For the young black men of Baltimore, the wrongs done to their ancestors brought them nothing but shame. To have been a slave was to have been weak. To be descended from slaves was just as bad. But only Lenhardt would think it through this way.

  For a fleeting second, the young man had looked surprised, then his face closed up again. Nancy guessed his emotions had flowed much the same way at the chicken place. He had been caught off guard by his former boss’s bravery—and punished him for it. He had chased the night manager from the kitchen to the parking lot, increasingly desperate, worried not about being caught, but about being disgraced by the other boy’s futile courage. He had killed him to show the others the price of such valor.

  Now he lunged at Nancy, grabbing a handful of her ass.

  “Nice,” he said, “for a white girl.”

  Lenhardt had punched him so hard in the stomach that the kid had doubled over and fallen to his knees. The sergeant smiled at Nancy over the boy’s prostrate body, happy for the opportunity, inviting her to land a kick or a punch if she wanted. When she passed, he gave her a curious look, then helped himself, distributing the punishment he thought fair. The kid had to lie there and take it.

  He had touched a cop. Nancy couldn’t help feeling that she had failed, that a better cop wouldn’t have been grabbed in the first place. And Lenhardt had let her mistake slide because he was so happy for a chance to smack that kid before the day was over.

  “The wood-chipper—” Nancy began again, and she knew she was going to off-load to Infante the anger she had caught from the kid. Life was just a long game of emotional tag, one bad mood passing from person to person. But before she could finish, her Nokia chirped and the text message scrolled by in plain view.

  I’M HOME

  The words seemed to shiver on the screen, but that was probably just some disturbance in the cell. The Kenwood Homecoming Queen again. Why didn’t she just get her own public access channel on Baltimore County cable, keep her friends up-to-date with a 24/7 crawl.

  “Your hubby?” Infante asked.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “He’s pissed at me. Besides, I already know where he is.”

  The message stared insistently back at her. Was it for her? No way. She wouldn’t even try to make a connection if it weren’t for Lenhardt, the sheer coincidence of tonight’s conversation: If he was a city mutt, I’d know to check Leakin Park.

  Leakin Park. Even a near homonym, such as Lincoln or leaking, could make her jump. Leakin Park. The name always brought back the little lean-to in the woods, or the silhouette of her classmate from the academy, Cyrus Hickory, standing in the door. He told her to stay back, but Nancy had to prove she could do whatever he did, so she crossed the stream, walked up to the falling-down house—

  No. Over the past seven years, Nancy had learned she could choose, that she had the power not to cross the threshold if she wasn’t up to seeing what was on the other side. So tonight, she did what she didn’t do then. She backed away, so she was moving away from the little house in the woods, splashing backward through the polluted stream, edging up the hill, her gloved hands empty, blessedly empty.

  Lenhardt came back to the table, threw his money down, and waved off the bills that Nancy and Infante tried to add. “I’m one drink away from a divorce,” he said. “Marcia is more lenient than .08, but not by much. You should go home, too, Nancy.”

  “What about me?” Infante asked.

  “Not even Dr. Joyce Brothers herself could save your relationships, Kevin.”

  “True enough,” the detective said amiably, more amused than anyone at the string of Mrs. Infantes that had come and gone in the last twenty years. He got up and headed to the bar. The barmaid had a trace of a limp, but she was still redheaded and still pretty, in that hard, shellacked-hair way of a county barmaid.

  Out of nowhere, Lenhardt asked: “You ever think about a baby?”

  “Baby?” He knows, she thought. All this t
ime, he’s known and he’s never asked. Of course he would know. Cops gossip like Polish grandmothers. You know the background on Porter, right? The Kolchaks’ niece? A shame, but she brought it on herself. You’d think she’da known better, with her background.

  “Having a baby. You think about it?”

  “Oh.” She was so relieved that she didn’t mind Lenhardt getting personal with her. “Doesn’t everybody? But Andy has one semester of law school left, and I just made Homicide.”

  “Babies are more important than any of that.”

  “Yeah. How many kids you got?”

  “Three,” Lenhardt said. “That I know of.” He popped his eyes and let his mouth gape, but he was too tired to pull off his own shtick.

  “Be good,” he said abruptly and ambled off.

  Be good? Where had that come from? But she took his advice, took it across the board. Drove straight home, woke up her sleeping husband, and made love to him, which he assumed was her way of apologizing, and maybe it was, although she didn’t think she had anything to apologize for. Life was so short, and she didn’t want to be at odds with the person who knew her best. The person who loved her before, the person who loved her after, the person who swore he would love her always.

  Andy went back to sleep, but Nancy never did, not that night. She stared at the ceiling, adding seven to eleven, then subtracting it.

  The call had to be a wrong number.

  Thursday,

  April 16

  8.

  The first child disappeared from the Rite Aid at Ingleside Shopping Center. She was strapped into a cart on aisle 11—Baby Needs, Foot Care, Feminine Hygiene—when her mother, Mary Jo Herndon, remembered a new kind of hair gel she had seen advertised just that morning. The gel promised to get rid of the frizz while adding shine. She saw herself with straight, glossy hair, tossing it around as she laughed with some man. Maybe Bobby, maybe not. The actual man was less important than the shiny banner of hair, flying around the way it did in commercials, warm as sunlight on her shoulders.

  Hair care was one aisle over, but there was a woman between Mary Jo and the end of the aisle, a big-butted woman who was studying the Dr. Scholl’s products with fierce concentration, her basket placed at an angle that made it impossible for another cart to get by. And Mary Jo didn’t want to ask her to move because there was something obstinate in that big behind, the sense of a woman spoiling for a fight. It was easier to leave the cart, step around the woman, and jog to the hair care aisle. After all, she was just going to grab the gel and then go to the cash register. The trip was already out of control. Mary Jo had come for toilet paper and charcoal, and now her cart was almost full.

  Rite Aid didn’t carry the brand she remembered from the commercial, but it had a dizzying array of alternatives and Mary Jo paused to consider her options. There was a whole line of products in sleek lavender bottles, but the manufacturer called it a system, suggesting it was all-or-nothing. Part of her mind knew this was a gyp, a bluff. There was no way you had to buy the whole set to get the benefits of the gel.

  But Mary Jo also believed an expensive purchase could be transforming. The product might not be any better, but choosing to pay extra was a way of saying you deserved a little luxury in this world and that mind-set could make it so. Didn’t she deserve the best, or at least something better? That’s what everyone said: You deserve better. Of course, her friends and family were talking about Bobby and her living situation, but there was no product on the earth that could fix Bobby. She grabbed a bottle of the lavender stuff and trotted back to aisle 11.

  Aisle 11 was empty. No Jordan, no cart, no big-butted woman staring down at the Dr. Scholl’s products. Mary Jo must have gone the wrong way, turned right when she should have turned left. No problem. She retraced her steps, heading to aisle 9.

  That was empty, too.

  The first empty aisle had made her nervous, but it had been a safe, contained nervousness, for she assumed she had taken a wrong turn, that Jordan was waiting for her around the next corner. Mary Jo had felt the way she did on the long, cranking climb of the roller coaster at Adventure World—scared for the sake of it, yet secure, knowing the climb was just part of the suspense, that the fine print on the ticket was just for show.

  When she reached the second aisle, she no longer knew what was happening or how it would end, and then all bets were off, all promises voided. She started trotting the long, diagonal corridor that bisected the store, shouting out Jordan’s name and trying to imagine the worst. Because if she could imagine a thing, it couldn’t happen.

  A child cried, sharp and scared, and Mary Jo ran toward the sound with gratitude and relief. But the child she found on aisle 3 was a boy, his face red from where a hand had just lashed out, his mother glaring at Mary Jo, ready to defend herself. Mary Jo left them, thinking: You are so lucky to have a child to slap. No, that wasn’t quite right. She promised God she would never slap Jordan again, never raise a hand to her in any way if he would just give her back. She didn’t, not often, and she knew it was wrong. Never again, she promised. Never again. You hear me, God?

  Other promises followed as she ran a serpentine path through the store, up and down the aisles, calling Jordan’s name at intervals. She would be a better mother overall, patient and kind, not even yelling. She would be nicer to her sister, although Mimi did have a way of lording over her, making Mary Jo feel like a fuck-up because Bobby had proved to be so unreliable. What else? Oh God, she would be so perfect in every way if Jordan turned up.

  “Ma’am. Ma’am.” The pharmacist’s voice was insistent, chiding, a voice of authority. He was going to tell her to stop shouting, stop running. Who was he to say she couldn’t yell, when her baby was missing? “Ma’am—please, ma’am.”

  “I’m looking for my little girl, my Jordan. She’s three? Has long curly hair like mine, only kinkier and darker?” She didn’t understand why everything was coming out like a question, as if she needed this strange man to confirm what she was saying. “She was wearing—she was wearing—”

  Oh, God, what was she wearing? A dress. Jordan was going through this stubborn phase where she insisted on wearing dresses every day. Green? Blue? A hand-me-down from Mimi’s three girls, something with smocking or embroidery at the top. In the car, Jordan had pulled the top off her Sippee Cup, leaving a dark red stain on the front. Mary Jo had screamed at her because Jordan knew better, she had taken the cup apart to be contrary. But Mary Jo wouldn’t do that, never again. Stains came out if you treated them right. Stains weren’t important.

  “Ma’am.” The pharmacist grabbed Mary Jo’s arm and pulled her down a corridor leading to a rest room. There was her cart, with all her things—the toothpaste and the toilet paper and the potato chips and the charcoal and the two plastic lawn chairs in case they cooked out tonight, if Bobby stopped by for dinner. And there was Jordan in the booster seat. Her dress was blue. Right, she knew that. Her daughter’s dress was blue.

  Jordan looked scared, and Mary Jo, who could not see her own face, didn’t realize her expression was not much different from when the Sippee Cup had come apart in the car. She grabbed the girl from the cart and covered her with kisses, asking what had happened, demanding to know who had moved the cart, but giving Jordan no chance to answer. She started sobbing, thinking of all the possible bad endings. Only then did Jordan begin to cry and babble. But her three-year-old vocabulary was not up to the task of telling her story.

  “Did you see anyone?” Mary Jo asked the pharmacist. “Who would have pushed my cart here? Was she in the way? Who would do a thing like that? What kind of store is this?”

  In her mind, she was seeing some employee push the cart aside because it was blocking the aisle. She would sue, she would raise a fuss. What kind of person pushed a cart with a baby into this little corridor by the bathrooms?

  The pharmacist shrugged. At dinner that night, he would tell his wife the story, putting all the blame on Mary Jo. His own children were grown. He could
afford to be smug, all the near misses his family had known over the years long forgotten.

  As for Mary Jo, she never told the story to anyone—not to Mimi, who would have found a way to blame her, or Bobby, who was in a sour mood when he finally dropped by that evening, long after Jordan had gone to bed. He brought a few dollars, but when Mary Jo asked when she was going to start getting a check regular, now that he was working, he said he’d quit if she tried to garnish his wages, that a man couldn’t get ahead in this world if women were always going to be at them. She said he wasn’t much of a man if he couldn’t support his daughter.

  It was a familiar argument from start to finish. Bobby slammed out, leaving her to clean up after their cookout. Bobby was always careful to get a meal before he let a fight begin. Mary Jo went to bed alone. He hadn’t even noticed her hair, which she had washed and styled with the new gel. If he had commented on her hair, she might have told him the story of what happened in Rite Aid. Or not. Bobby might have used it against her, and even Mimi would have found a way to blame Mary Jo.

  It would be two months before the next child disappeared.

  Monday,

  June 22

  9.

  Summer finally began. It began over and over again. It began in mid-May, with a disturbingly early heat wave. It began again on Memorial Day, when the private swim clubs opened for business, even though the heat wave had receded and the weather had reverted to the cold and dreary days of April. It began with each last day of school, district by district, with the city of Baltimore always the last to release its children. It began with the first Code Red day, an index of air, not terror, issued when the heat held the smog too close to the city. It began every Friday about 4 P.M., when the local radio stations reported that the back-ups at the toll plazas for the Bay Bridge were now three miles, four miles, five miles long. It began when the fireflies appeared and a new generation of children tested the folklore that the insects could not fly if one walked with them balanced on a fingertip.