No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay [8]
“The thing that always nagged at me was, why’d she survive? Assuming, of course, that the rest of the family was dead. Because I just never bought into the theory that a family would up and leave a kid behind. I could see kicking a kid out of the house who was difficult, that kind of thing happens all the time. But to go to the trouble to disappear just to be rid of one of your children? It didn’t make any sense. Which had to mean some sort of foul play. Which always brought me back to the original question. Why did she survive? There aren’t that many possibilities.”
“What do you mean by that?” The voice of Paula Malloy, although the camera never wandered from Finlay. Malloy’s questions had been edited in later because she hadn’t been sent to Arizona to interview this guy.
“Figure it out,” Detective Finlay said.
“What do you mean, figure it out?” Malloy’s voice asked.
“That’s all I’ll say.”
When she saw that, Cynthia was furious. “Jesus, this again!” she shouted at the television. “That son of a bitch is implying I had something to do with it. I’ve heard these whispers for years. And that Paula fucking Malloy said they weren’t going to run anything like that!”
But I had managed to calm her down, because the segment had been, on balance, pretty positive. The parts where Cynthia was onscreen, walking through the house, telling Paula what had happened to her that day, she’d come across as sincere and believable. “If there’s someone who knows something,” I assured her, “they’re not going to be influenced by what some boneheaded retired cop says. In fact, what he said, that might make it even more likely someone would step forward to contradict him.”
And so the program ran, but it was up against the season finale of some reality show featuring a bunch of overweight aspiring rock stars who had to live under the same roof and compete to see who could shed the most pounds and win a recording contract. Cynthia waited by the phone the moment the show finished, figuring someone would see it, someone who knew something, and call the station immediately. The producers would be in touch before the sun came up the next day, the mystery solved. Finally, she’d know the truth.
But there were no calls, other than one from a woman who said her own family had been abducted by aliens, and a man who theorized that Cynthia’s folks had stepped through a tear in the fabric of time, and were either on the run from dinosaurs, or having their minds erased in some Matrix-like future.
No credible tips came in.
Evidently no one who knew anything saw the show. Or if they did, they weren’t talking.
For the first week, Cynthia called the Deadline producers every day. They were nice enough, said that if they heard anything, they’d be in touch. The second week, Cynthia held off to every other day, but now the producers were getting short with her, said there was no point calling, they’d had no responses, and that if anything did come up they’d be in touch.
They were on to other stories. Cynthia quickly became old news.
2
Grace’s eyes were pleading, but her tone was stern.
“Dad,” she said. “I’m. Eight. Years. Old.” Where had she learned this? I wondered. This technique of breaking down sentences into individual words for dramatic effect. As if I needed to ask. There was more than enough drama to go around in this household.
“Yes,” I said to my daughter. “I’m aware.”
Her Cheerios were getting soggy and she hadn’t touched her orange juice. “The kids make fun of me,” she said.
I took a sip of my coffee. I’d only just poured it but it was already verging on cold. The coffeemaker was on the fritz.