Chapter XXII

The pickup from the jail nearly went without a hitch, but nearly is never good enough.

Mattia Reggio arrived at the Cumberland County lock-up ahead of time, was waiting by the door when Colleen Clark was released, and they were on the road before she even had the chance to take more than a few breaths of evening air. Reggio, who had spent a lifetime looking in rearview mirrors, spotted immediately that they had been followed out of the lot by another vehicle—a blue Chrysler driven, he thought, by a woman. Reggio wasn't taking any chances, so instead of heading straight for the freeway, he lost his pursuer at the St. John intersection before cutting back toward the river and continuing on to Scarborough. He tagged the would-be tail for a reporter with better-than-average contacts at the jail, and memorized the plate. Regrettably, he elected not to share that plate detail with either Moxie or me.

Reggio dropped Colleen at my door, and he and I exchanged a few words. Reggio was aware of how I felt about him, but I believed it was more cause for sadness than outright resentment on his part. He wanted me to like him, and I couldn't bring myself to do it, yet I wasn't above acknowledging my own hypocrisy where he was concerned. He might once have hurt men, or worse than hurt them, but I had certainly done so. Reggio could at least claim the benefit of the doubt.

I showed Colleen to her room. It was the one my daughter Sam used when she came to stay. She'd occupied it for all of her early childhood, before she and her mom moved to Vermont. Her belongings, including books, games, and even a couple of old dolls and soft toys, were on the shelves, and she still kept clothes in the closet and dresser. It was only as I stood on the threshold with Colleen that I realized how inappropriate it might be to ask a woman with a missing son to sleep in the room of someone else's child. She must have seen something of this on my face, because she touched my arm and said, "I'm happy to be here. In fact, I'll take comfort from it."

"If you're sure."

I left her to freshen up while I went to prepare dinner. It was a while since I'd had company for a meal at home, Angel and Louis excepted, so I made peperonata with rice, and prepared some flatbreads while Colleen showered. Moxie called as I was taking the bread from the griddle. He was making sure that Colleen was settling in as best she could.

"Did Matty tell you about being followed from the jail?" he said.

"That's the first I've heard. Is it something we should pursue?"

"There's no need. He lost the tail well before he left Portland, and the story is already on the Net. The driver must have been Hazel Sloane. She's a reporter out of Bangor. Either she failed to read the memo about the release time, chose not to believe it if she had, or was tipped off by someone at the sheriff's office. Whatever the reason, it looks like she was cooling her heels a couple of vehicles away when Colleen Clark came out, because the footage is already on the website of the Bangor Daily News."

This meant Moxie's ploy to convince everyone that Colleen was holed up in her home had failed. He went on to reveal that one of Sloane's colleagues had been waiting at the Clark house when a vehicle different from the one that had made the pickup arrived to disgorge a woman with her head covered by a jacket—a woman, what's more, dressed in clothing different from whatever Colleen had been wearing when she emerged from incarceration. On the other hand, no one had yet discovered where Colleen was currently sequestered. As long as she kept her head down, there was a chance we'd be okay. The local media knew better than to come knocking on my door asking questions, and Scarborough residents valued the privacy of others in return for their own being respected.

"Well, Reggio managed to lose Sloane," I said, "which is the main thing. I may not relish his company, but he knows how to drive."

"Are you aware that you feel compelled to reiterate your dislike of him whenever his name comes up?"

"I feel you need reminding of my reservations."

"You're not always around when I need you. Even if you were, donkey work doesn't do justice to your particular skill set."

"Then we'll have to agree to differ on Reggio's finer qualities."

"If God judges sinners as harshly as you do," said Moxie, "we're all going to hell."

Colleen Clark entered the kitchen. Her hair was wet from the shower, and she'd changed into a T-shirt and track pants. They made her appear even less substantial than ever, as though the night behind bars had contrived to shrink her still further.

"Colleen's here," I said. "Do you want to talk to her?"

"Sure."

I told Colleen she should feel free to speak in the next room if she didn't want me to overhear her conversation.

"I've got nothing important to say," she replied. "And if I did, you'd need to hear it anyway."

She made some small talk with Moxie while I put the food on the table. By the time she hung up, I'd opened a bottle of red wine and poured her a large glass, with a smaller one for myself out of politeness. I rarely drank at home, or alone.

"You made all this yourself?" she said, as she took in the spread.

"I have about four dishes in my repertoire. I was going to make chili, but it has unfortunate jailhouse connotations. This struck me as more elevated."

I let her serve herself. She took barely enough food to fill half the plate, which wasn't large. She tried the peperonata and managed not to make the elaborate choking noises in which Angel liked to indulge when confronted by generous amounts of garlic and onion.

"Stephen wouldn't eat something like this," she said.

"He doesn't like Italian food?"

"He doesn't like any food that doesn't include meat. His father was the same way, or so he says."

"Was?"

"His parents died shortly after he graduated high school. I never got to meet them."

"May I ask how they died?"

"They were overtaking a truck hauling logs somewhere up in the County. One of the support ropes broke. The rest you can picture for yourself."

She drank some of the wine. When she put the glass back down, it was a lot emptier.

"I've spoken with your husband," I said.

The fork paused at her lips.

"How was he?"

"Unyielding."

She scowled in mock disapproval.

"I meant in general. Is he okay?"

"I'd say he remains… resilient, under the circumstances."

"He was never very good at expressing his emotions. He keeps everything bottled up."

I was tempted to inform her that he'd shown no difficulty with expressing his feelings about her, but I didn't think it would help, or be appreciated. The Clarks' relationship was both unsettling and peculiarly toxic. Colleen Clark's loyalty to her husband might have been considered admirable had he not been so committed to seeing her imprisoned, and had the fate of his child seemingly mattered less to him than the prospect of punishment for his wife.

I forced myself to recalibrate. I realized I had already evaluated both Colleen and Stephen, concluding that one was, in all likelihood, innocent, and the other guilty, if only of a deficit of character. Neither verdict was going to make my work any easier. It might even lead to the same errors that I felt had resulted in Colleen's arrest and impending trial.

The officers and detectives of the Portland PD were not foolish or venal, but there often comes a point in an investigation when locked-in errors begin to determine the course of inquiries. In the event of the death or disappearance of a child, the police will look first at the parents, because so many of these cases turn out to be instances of domestic harm. We typically hurt those we are closest to, and the young are particularly vulnerable. For the police, the bloodied blanket in Colleen's car had confirmed a suspicion present from the start, and they were now fulfilling the role for which they believed they were being paid: to close cases and help secure convictions. If they were in error, the reasons were comprehensible.

Paul Nowak and Erin Becker represented a more nebulous proposition. They, too, were paid to close cases, but those cases would also determine their political futures. In the choice between a potentially unsafe conviction or no conviction at all, elected officials like Nowak and Becker were under pressure to pursue the former. It could take years for a wrongful verdict to be overturned, by which time they would have moved up the ladder, leaving to someone else the task of clearing up the mess. But a lack of convictions, especially in high-profile trials—of which Colleen Clark's was destined to be one—would damn them. It was the great flaw in a system that depended on elected officials to implement justice, because it would always be easier just to enforce the law.

Colleen was speaking again, but so lost was I in my own thoughts that I had to ask her to repeat herself.

"I said, ‘What now?'?"

"For you, or me?"

"For both of us."

"I'll have to ask you to remain on the property for a few days," I said. "I'd prefer if you didn't go walking on the road or beach because it won't take much to connect a sighting of you to me. If you do go outside, stick to the back of the house, as it's not overlooked. I have books, music, and streaming services, but mostly you should take the opportunity to rest. You've been through a great deal, and the trauma is ongoing, though you don't need me to tell you that. Also, you may be surprised at what you remember upon reflection—anything, anything at all, you should feel free to share with me or Moxie, however minor. We can chase it down, and if it turns out to be a dead end, we'll cross it off the list."

"But won't that be wasting your time?"

"If you recall our first conversation, that's not how an investigation works. Think of this as a grid that has to be searched, a finite series of possibilities to be explored. With every square we check, even if we find it empty, we're narrowing in on those that may contain something useful: in this case, the truth of what has happened to your son. Sometimes, you get lucky and hit the right square first time out, but that's very rare. Typically, you have to comb a lot of empty ground first."

I didn't add that this was why investigations sometimes went on for years, or that finite could also mean near infinite.

"So that's what you'll be doing while I'm here?" she said.

"And also when you return home, because it could take a while. But as I told you before, Moxie hired me to ensure that he has all the information required should this case go to trial. I'll balance those duties—to you, to him, and to Henry—as best I can, but if they become overwhelming, and I require help, I won't hesitate to ask for it."

She'd eaten about a third of the food on her plate, along with half a piece of flatbread, but had finished her glass of wine and was twisting the stem between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand.

"I'll trade you more wine for more eating," I said.

"I don't have much of an appetite."

"You're no good to us if you're tired and underfed. You have a role to play in this. We require you to be focused."

She picked up her fork again.

"You're worse than my mother," she said. "How much do I have to eat?"

"Just what's on your plate, but if I find any food hidden in a napkin or the plant pot behind you, we'll have words."

I waited for her to resume picking before I refilled her glass. To her credit, she finished the portion of peperonata—and, admittedly, most of the bottle—before she excused herself. She offered to help me clean up, but I told her not to worry about it. She still had wine left in her glass.

"Do you mind if I bring this upstairs with me?" she asked.

"I don't mind at all."

She swirled the wine and watched spirals form.

"Do you think I drink too much?"

"For what you're going through," I said, "I'm not sure there's enough wine in the world."

"Before—" She paused, drew a breath, began again. "Before the blanket was found in my car, I was being criticized in the press for drinking with a child in the house, as if I were a bad mother for wanting to unwind while Henry slept."

"And you wondered if they might be right?"

"More than that, I thought they were."

"Whatever happened to your son didn't occur because you poured yourself a glass of wine."

"Stephen told me to ignore it all," she said. "The stuff about my drinking, I mean. He didn't want me to ascribe any significance to it. At the start, he was so intent on protecting me, on telling me that it wasn't my fault. I don't think I remember him ever being kinder to me than he was in those first few days. He even poured the last of the wine down the sink and disposed of the bottle, just so I wouldn't have it to fixate on."

"What would you like to happen between the two of you, when this is over?"

"If I don't go to prison, you mean?"

"We're operating on the assumption that you won't."

She mulled over the question.

"I think I could forgive him for doubting me. I'd even be prepared for us to try again, except I don't think he'd be willing."

"And Henry?"

"I feel Henry is dead. I want to believe differently. I want to believe he's coming back to me, but I feel he's gone. I felt it early on, like a sundering."

She stepped into the hallway. She didn't want to try to explain further for fear that she might not be able to speak the words.

"It was a very good meal," she said, "the best I've had in a while. Thank you—for the food, and for letting me stay here."

"My pleasure."

She showed no signs of unsteadiness as she went to her room. I hoped the wine might help her sleep, but when I went up to bed an hour later the light was shining under her door, and I could hear her weeping, weeping as though she might never stop.