On the floor and against the wall were a large 7UP sign and a huge yucca plant beyond the sincerest hopes for survival. Behind the screen in the bedroom were a mattress with clean sheets and one pillow, a few transparent plastic storage bins labeled SOCKS and SWEATS, and a dentist’s chair pointed at two TVs and two stereos.
There was a bag containing an unopened shower curtain. Beth strung that together with the rings and put it up. Trolling through the refrigerator then, Beth threw out a bulging trash bag filled with grisly Styrofoam boxes of takeout and dumped some milk that was on the verge of cottage cheese.
She folded the sleeping bag where Kerry had lain and topped it off with the pillow. Kerry, who’d said she needed to move, had walked the mile or so to see Candy.
Finally, there was nothing left for Beth to do.
“No one wants to eat, but we can go get a few things,” said Vincent. “Maybe coffee and bread and milk and bologna and frozen pizza.” Beth fought the urge to gag at the mention of lunch meat. “I can’t believe that Pop went in there with them given what Ben said.”
“You will someday,” Beth told him quietly.
As they drove along in Vincent’s ancient Citroën, Vincent said, “Ma. It’s bugging me. Something about that letter. I have this sense of something about it. But I don’t know what. If I could talk to Rob or Emily …”
“Emily?”
“The editor, Emily Sydney…. I know something’s in the film. A link. Somewhere.”
The telephone in the office vibrated, like some kind of little insect trapped in Rob Brent’s hand. He dropped it and nearly hit the floor after it: He had been asleep in his desk chair and his leg was numb.
For so many hours, it had toned the old Blondie song “Call Me” nonstop, with other calls breaking in on the first calls, which, when he switched over, were interrupted by other calls, until his jaw literally ached from answering questions he had no answers for. No one knew Vincent’s number but Pieces by Reese was listed for both of them, two lines. Finally, Rob had switched off the tone and set the phone to vibrate.
He sat up and rubbed his stubbled jaw. He was going to put this phone down, once and for all, take a long shower, and fall in his bed for eight or fourteen deep ones. There was nothing he could do. Nothing.
He laid the phone on the table. It brrred again, spinning in its insistence. At the same moment, the fax machine erupted with a waterfall of sheets that spilled onto the floor. Rob picked up the first. It said the same thing as the second and the third and all twenty that came after.
PICK UP PICK UP PICK UP IT IS VINCENT I NEED TO FIND EMILY WE WILL COME TO THE STUDIO IT’S A LEGAL TERM IT’S A LEGAL TERM.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“They’ll check it out, thoroughly,” Candy said. “They’ll go through the whole film. Humbly and the FBI guy.”
“Thoroughly enough for you?” Vincent pressed her.
“Vincent, it’s never thoroughly enough for me,” Candy said. “Not ever and especially not now.”
“Let’s make sure, then,” Vincent said. “Then we’ll call Humbly. It’ll take what … a few minutes to find the exact place he said something like that?”
It took eleven hours. And that was after Vincent got Emily to California from Canada.
Vincent called everyone he knew and it was finally the production company that had purchased No Time to Wave Goodbye that found a charter to fly Emily the editor down from Vancouver. By 6 p.m., she was in Venice. Candy and Vincent drove to the studio, the majority of which was in Rob’s house, with Beth and Pat following. Vincent’s genial partner, Rob, met them there. They all went into the studio with Emily and watched as, with absolute efficiency, the small, quiet girl pulled her dark hair back into an elastic band without a thought for how many ends poked out. As Pat watched, he thought, This is definitely not a Hollywood chick.
“Where do you want to start?” she asked.
“Well, of course with the Whittiers. Like I told you, the kidnapper used legal language. The part about Jackie’s depression or Blaine’s perspective before and after … I don’t think those could have any bearing,” Vincent said. Where exactly had Bryant Whittier mentioned the fixation on the tragedy of others as a form of something … something bad, like pornography, but that wasn’t the word? Was it Bryant for sure?
Or had it been Walter Hutcheson? Hutcheson too was articulate. He had a degree. He resented intrusions on their privacy in Laurel’s name….
But no. It had to be Whittier: No one else was so pompous or verbose. No one else had used that phrase about cause and effect. But when? Where in the film?
Slice by slice, they searched the rough cut. Vincent’s head ached, and the little room seemed to fill with a mist of exhaled anxiety.
There was an extraordinary amount of footage. The Whittiers had been first; Vincent had had no idea how much film they would need for each segment, so they’d spent the most on the Whittiers—nine hours. After Emily had set up her own programs, she and Vincent were able to search by references to what was pictured on the screen or, using another strategy, to spoken words. After an hour of searching, they couldn’t find “contact compassion” or “sensationalism.”
“What if he used another word?” Emily asked.
“Are you sure it was that word?” Candy asked. “That was in the letter. In the movie, it was ‘voyeurism.’ I think it was.”
“I don’t remember him saying that when we interviewed him, though. And even more, I don’t remember that whole sequence. Maybe it was out of sequence. It has to be at the beginning or the end. It sounds like a wrapping-up thing—you know, ‘in conclusion….’ I could never have imagined that I’d ever forget a word anyone said,” Vincent marveled. “Now it all seems like a lifetime ago.”
“Excellent illustration of the theory of relativity,” Emily murmured. “Time really is flexible.” She downloaded a larger thesaurus. She tried other words—“lasciviousness,” “obscenity,” “voyeurism”—straining the words, one by one, through the opening and closing segments. They found nothing.
“Try them all in segment four,” Vincent suggested. “The one tagged Social Responsibility.”
Emily plugged in each of the key words. On “voyeurism” they got a hit.
“Is this it?” Pat asked and began to cough.
“I hope so, Pop,” Vincent said. “What’s the matter? Did you choke?”
“No, I, uh, I forgot to breathe.”
“Don’t have a heart attack, Pop. It’s rush hour in Southern California. You’re dead two hours before an ambulance gets here.”
Pat said, “I’m fine.”
“Turn it up,” Vincent told Emily.
They heard Bryant Whittier say, “For one thing, people have compassion fatigue. The instant dissemination of every piece of tragic footage, worldwide, has worn out genuine personal concern. We’re a global society. Our eyes can’t be on every sparrow. A child is safe in a hospital after an earthquake but then is stolen by a sexual slavery ring. It batters the mind. It’s not like it was with Ben. Do we weep for the child who drowned on the beach in the tsunami or the one who was saved and abducted?”
“Shit,” Vincent interrupted, as Emily hit pause. “Does he ever stop yakking?”
“Shhhh,” Emily told Vincent.
Bryant went on, “Or the child left in the car while her mother went into the store to buy diapers, who died of heat exhaustion? Her mother was a client of mine. Responsible for the death, yes, but criminally negligent? No, simply a young, very young woman left holding the bag by her simpleton boyfriend. The only people who stay obsessed with these things are people who are awake far too late at night or in front of the television far too …”
“Where is it?” Vincent asked.
“Wait,” Emily said. “Be patient.”
“I’m not.”
“Right,” she replied.
Bryant Whittier continued, “For them, it’s a form of addiction. It’s like people who chase tornadoes. They think knowi
ng about something can change it—after which, therefore because of which, ad hoc ergo propter hoc …”
“That’s the thing Tom said. The phrase in Latin…. That was what it was,” Vincent said.
Rob looked up from his laptop. “Ad hoc ergo whatever. Play it again, Emily, please.” Emily did.
Then, on Emily’s screen, Bryant went on. And on. “People who like to get excited over other people’s triumphs, like sports fans, or weep for the tragedies of people they will never meet … it’s almost voyeurism.”
“Bingo,” Emily breathed.
“So it has to be him,” Vincent said. “He said both things. He said they were voyeurs and that just caring didn’t influence or change anything. He said the same thing that was in the letter. There’s a legal term … Ad hoc something something …”
Vincent continued, “I never heard the phrase until last night. I wouldn’t have even thought of it if Tom hadn’t mentioned it. And it’s the connection.”
“You talked to Tom, your old therapist?” Pat asked. “That’s good.”
“I’m glad you were listening when you talked to him,” Emily said. “So we know that this footage wasn’t in the final cut. And it can’t be something a person could pick up from watching the movie.”
Vincent asked, “But was it in the first cut? The one that was screened in Chicago? Oh, Jesus.”
“Search the term,” Rob suggested, squeezing his bulk into the group surrounding Emily.
“I would, but I won’t know the exact phrase until I hear it or even something like it,” Vincent said. Backing away, Rob sat down on the floor against the wall and opened his own laptop.
“No,” Emily said, her fingers flying over the keys. “Wait. Let’s be sure. Let me check.” She reached out for a cup of coffee on which the milk had gone to greasy film and looked down at it doubtfully. Pat replaced it with a fresh cup.
“Beth bought new milk,” said Pat. “It’s safe, Emily.”
Emily said then, “Thanks, Mr. Cappadora. It’s good coffee. You make good coffee. Not like Vincent.”
“He doesn’t measure it,” Pat said. “He just eyeballs what looks like it should make the right number of cups.”
Emily asked, “You measure it?”
Pat nearly laughed and said, “Are you kidding or serious?”
“I’m serious,” Emily said. “I never knew people measured coffee.”
Pat smiled, the crooked, boyish look awakening a face that seemed to have aged twenty years in just days. Looking at his father, Vincent was reminded of Walter Hutcheson’s frosty-gray ponytail. How could Vincent have suspected Walter, the simple, good-hearted old hippie? Bryant Whittier must dye his hair, Vincent thought then. He was between the ages of Vincent’s parents. He had to have some gray, not a full head of chestnut cut like old pictures of Ronald Reagan.
That didn’t mean he was a psycho, though.
“It’s a teaspoon of grounds for every cup,” Pat told Emily. “And you have to make sure the water’s ice cold and if you really want it good, you rinse out some eggshells and put them in with the grounds.”
“Why?” Emily asked.
“I have no idea,” his father admitted. “My ma said to.”
“Here. Here it is!” Emily said suddenly. “Now we know for sure. No part of that phrase or those words was in the first or final cut.”
“Emily, let’s get married,” Vincent said.
“Okay. Let’s see how this works out first.” She stood up and kissed Vincent on the cheek.
“Emily, when I call his wife, Claire, can we tape it somehow?” Vincent asked. “Will you stay, like a witness? You don’t have to be back in Vancouver till like … tonight?”
“Tomorrow is good.”
“I’ll get you the best hotel room in town.”
“It’s okay. I can just stay here if you have a sleeping bag or a futon. Your dad can teach me to make coffee.”
Vincent said, quietly, “Okay.”
“The recording. Like a wiretap?”
“Sure.”
“You don’t have equipment. All you can do is put a regular microphone with a cup on the receiver. I think it’s illegal.”
“Not if you have the consent of one of the parties in the conversation,” said Rob.
“How do you know that?” Vincent asked.
“Former life,” Rob said, rummaging for one of his dozen tiny digital recorders. “Here. Just press the button when she picks up. Use my phone. All it says is Robert Brent.”
“I can’t call her right now,” Vincent said. “The sun is barely up.”
“Aw, go ahead,” Rob told him.
The rain dripping from the evergreens outside the house was the consistency of a child’s slush drink. Claire Whittier wondered if she’d be warm enough. She wore trousers with a pair of tights under them and her travel raincoat and Jackie’s black ballet flats, with her walking shoes in her small satchel. Because Bryant was so thrifty and the cost of flying out of Los Angeles was less than from San Francisco—at least for this trip—Claire would take a car service all the way from Durand to L.A., saving, from what Bryant had said, the cost of two more nights in Tuscany. It would also save him the trouble of coming back from his meeting to their home. Bryant said he would not live in California if there were no San Francisco and would not live near San Francisco if there were not a civilized small town such as Durand; he loathed the southern part of the state. Still, it was a long drive for Claire, even though she wouldn’t be at the wheel. She had two novels in her carryall. She might sleep. Claire had not slept well lately. Not even her customary pills had helped.
When the phone rang, Claire jumped, startled.
It was her neighbor, Laura Pool, who would be caring for the dog, Macduff, and bringing in the mail while they were in Italy. Claire had been unable to tell her friend Laura exactly how long they would be away; Bryant hadn’t been specific. But he was rarely able to be absent from the office for more than two weeks. Claire had asked Gary, their longtime caretaker, to drive up to the summerhouse. If the weather turned nice in the coming weeks, as it surely must, Gary would air it out and check for any winter damage or bats in the eaves. Bryant would be eager to go up there when they arrived home, perhaps at Blaine’s spring break.
“Claire, did you turn on the television this morning?” Laura said. “The New York Times has a story about this kidnapper’s letter. It’s online.”
Claire asked, “The kidnapper? Of the Cappadora baby?”
“Yes,” Laura told her. “It might be real or it might not. I know how you are with computers. I’ll just print it out and pop over.”
Shivering, Claire decided to drape a black shawl she had left up in her bedroom over her trench coat. Running back down, she opened the door for her neighbor, noticing, as she did, a postcard that had fallen through the mail chute with a few business envelopes and catalogs.
“Brrr,” said Laura. “I moved to California for the sunshine. This is not what I was promised.”
“Don’t be a simp,” Claire told her. “By now, most years, it’s beautiful. This is the longest winter I can remember.”
“Anyhow, here’s the story.” Laura stood beside Claire as Claire read the article and the text of the letter. “I think the person sounds intelligent. But so did the Unabomber,” said Laura.
“I think it’s interesting that he says, or she says, that the baby will be returned safe. And that what the person wants is to make a point.”
“In a pretty roundabout way,” Laura said.
Not for a lawyer, Claire thought.
At that moment, a cold drop landed in the dark cradle of her stomach. “Thank you, Laura, for everything,” said Claire.
The women hugged. Then Laura stroked Claire’s hair. “This must make you think of … Jackie. All the police questioning and the false leads. People are writing in online that they think this is a confessor, too. Probably works at the library. But I do hope what he says is all real.”
After La
ura left, Claire looked at the postcard. It pictured the underwater state park in La Jolla. But it had been mailed three days earlier, from Chicago.
What a fool he thought she was, so unobservant as to miss a postmark. She got out her mobile phone to call him, knowing that in ordinary times, he’d be up, doing a brief workout with his workout cords. But his voice mail picked up.
Claire left the phone anchoring the slip of paper from Laura’s printer on the front hall table and walked down the hall to Bryant’s office.
She had gone into Bryant’s office before, of course, but not often.
It had been one of Mother Whittier’s admonitions—which, according to Bryant’s sister-in-law Jeannie, amounted to a manual of operating instructions—that the two best things a woman could do to preserve a long marriage to a Whittier man were never to work outside the home and always to honor the man’s private space.
Claire braced herself hand to hand in the doorway, scanning Bryant’s rows of glass-fronted barrister’s bookcases, his costly but austere displays of photos of Jacqueline and Blaine and of the four of them together—up at their summerhouse in the San Juan Diego mountains.
There were others of Bryant and Jackie alone, skiing up at the few acres of vacant land that were once owned by Bryant’s lumber-baron grandfather, where Claire had never gone, where he and his brothers went to hunt.
There was a photo of them here, at home in Durand, outside the front door, under the very eaves that were dripping now, next to the lilacs, on the day of Blaine’s high-school graduation. All of them were arranged in neat and matching silver frames.